Chapter 52
Marin
Luke walks in and I see it before he says a word.
The cut above his left eye, held together with gas station paper towels and stubbornness. His jaw swollen on one side. The way he’s holding his left arm against his ribs like he’s keeping something together that wants to come apart.
“What happened to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Luke.”
“It’s handled.”
He’s not going to tell me. The same way he didn’t tell me about the cut on his arm. The same way he didn’t tell me about the bar, but forgets who my neighbor is. Luke collects damage the way other men collect receipts—quietly, without explanation, filed away where no one can see.
I should ask more questions. I should sit him down and clean that cut and find out who did this and why. That’s what a normal person would do.
I’m not a normal person. I’m a woman who just heard the truth from a man in her basement and doesn’t want to think about it for one more second.
“I think I’m just going to have to kill him,” I say. Flat. Casual. The way you’d say I think it’s going to rain.
From the basement, silence.
Good. Hear that, Charles.
Luke looks at me. My hair. My face. My hands balled at my sides. He takes all of it in the way he takes in everything—once, completely, without comment.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he says.
He crosses the kitchen in three steps. His hands are on my hips and I’m on the table before I’ve decided if this is what I want.
It is.
It isn’t.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is his mouth is on mine and I’m pulling his shirt over his head and the table is solid underneath me and the basement door is open and Charles can hear every goddamn sound.
Luke’s belt. My jeans. His hands under my shirt, rough and warm and not asking permission because I’m not offering it.
I’m demanding it.
I pull him into me like I’m trying to break something—him, me, the table, whatever cracks first.
“You’re hurt,” I say.
“I’m fine.”
The salt shaker hits the floor. The prayer beads follow. His hand is in my hair, pulling my head back, his mouth on my throat, and I wrap my legs around him and I stop thinking.
No. That’s a lie. I think about Charles.
I think about him sitting against that column in the dark hearing the table legs drag across the hardwood.
Hearing me. Hearing what I sound like when someone actually wants me.
I want him to hear it. I want him to sit in that basement and know that the woman he said can’t love is being loved on a kitchen table six inches and one flight of stairs away from his face.
Not loved. Fucked. There’s a difference. I know the difference. I don’t care about the difference right now.
Luke is not gentle. I didn’t ask him to be. He’s rough and fast and his hands are everywhere and he makes a sound against my neck that I will remember longer than I should. The table holds. The floor creaks. The house groans around us like it knows what’s happening and has opinions about it.
Afterward we’re both breathing hard and I’m lying on the table staring at the ceiling and he’s standing over me and neither of us says anything for a long time.
He hands me my shirt. I put it on. Slide off the table.
The prayer beads are on the floor next to the salt shaker. I leave them there.
Luke pulls his shirt on. Leans against the counter. Looks at me with the flat calm of a man who just did what he did and is already thinking about something else.
“So,” he says. “You still going to kill him?”
“I’m considering my options.”
“You’ve got a lot of land out here. Just saying.”
“He doesn’t want to be here. Why make it permanent?”
“That’s fair.”
“I was thinking of something cleaner.”
“Cleaner costs more.”
“I have savings.”
“You’re going to let a man like that eat your savings?”
“Yeah, on second thought…”
“Well then.” He picks up his keys from the counter. Turns them over in his hand. “Let me know if you need help digging.”
From the basement, just below this conversation, silence.
I pick up the prayer beads from the floor. Set them on the counter.
“See you Tuesday,” Luke says.
“Tuesday.”
He walks out. Boots on the porch. Truck starts. Gravel crunches.
The basement door is still open. Six inches.
I close it.