21. Valentina
Chapter 21
Valentina
T he next few days I stick pretty close to home. No more misadventures on the tube. When I go out on the dock or go swimming, I keep my time out there brief. It turns out this is somewhat unnecessary, as it appears that Darragh doesn’t spend any time at his new cottage during the day. On one of my morning walks with Mamma, I discover that his big green vehicle is gone. It doesn’t return until late at night.
But he does return. Every night. Sometimes, I stay up and wait for the sound of the wheels on the gravel on the road outside. Sometimes, it wakes me up from a dead sleep.
It doesn’t make any sense to me, but it very much seems like Darragh is only coming here to sleep and then going back to Toronto in the morning. Nearly three hours of driving each way. Every day. It’s one monster of a commute. His comment from the other day keeps echoing in my head. What I had to do was to get some fucking sleep.
More than five hours of driving per day doesn’t exactly seem like a recipe for a good night’s rest, but I highly doubt there’s any reasoning with him. Besides, I’m doing everything in my power to avoid him. So far, it hasn’t been too hard. I stay inside at night. And I assume that he does, too.
Mamma hasn’t even noticed that there’s a new owner next door. I wonder if Papà will be informed soon. He has to have somebody feeding him information about what’s happening around any and all of his many properties. If he has been told that the old Robinson place has sold, then there’s no way he’s aware that Darragh was the buyer. Otherwise, he’d be yanking Mamma and me out of here faster than I could say holy cannoli.
Days go by, and I wish I could say things felt somewhat normal and boring again, but they don’t. Even during the day, when Darragh isn’t here, the possibility of his arrival buzzes through the air like an electrical charge. His absence doesn’t feel like an absence at all. Only a ghostly prelude to his presence.
After a week of this, the tingling apprehension feels like it’s begun to poison my body. I’m tired and on edge, a heaviness building in my abdomen and tension behind my eyes.
Only, a trip to the bathroom before bed shows me it’s not poison at all.
It’s my period.
God, I must be going crazy. It’s my hormones, my stupid period, making me feel this way. Not Darragh.
Why am I giving him so much power over me? To the point that I believe that the normal processes inside my own body are due to his toxic influence? My cycle is somewhat irregular, but I should have recognized the signs. I glare at my panties, as if it’s their fault I’m such an idiot. The lining of the underwear is damp and pinkish-brown. Only spotting so far.
But it won’t be spotting for long. My period may not come on any sort of predictable schedule, but one thing about it has always been annoyingly consistent.
The murder-scene levels of blood it produces.
I need to get some stuff to deal with this. Sighing, I wad up toilet paper and stick it in my panties, just in case there are any unfortunately-timed gushes before I can get a tampon. I wash my hands and check the cupboards, but there are no supplies in here. Giving up on that, I head to my bedroom, rummaging around through my bag that’s mostly unpacked by now.
There’s not much left in here. Just the white bathing suit – useless without the ribbon to tie it at the front. A few bottles of hair products and my hair straightener that I haven’t bothered using. Nail polish. An extra phone charger.
My shiny little cosmetics bag full of period stuff isn’t here.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I am not in the hormonally balanced place to deal with this shit. I beat back irritation and fight for calm as I double check all the other spots in my room. The dresser, the bedside table, even under the bed. But the more I look, the more I know I never packed it in the first place. I can literally picture where that bag is in my bathroom at home.
Goddamnit.
I leave the bedroom, hating the feel of the damp toilet paper between my legs. I check all the other bathrooms, but there are no extra supplies anywhere. There’s no point in asking Mamma for any. She got a hysterectomy after I was born.
I can ask her to drive me into town, though. Only, I find her asleep – passed out, really – on her bed. On it, not in it. The TV in her bedroom is on, playing some old British miniseries we have on DVD. There’s an empty bottle of wine on her bedside table and a very precariously-placed glass near the edge.
“Jesus, Mamma,” I murmur under my breath. Even if I woke her up now, driving is out of the question. She’d probably reverse into a tree before we even got out of our own driveway.
Well, this blows. I’m trapped out here in the middle of freaking nowhere with no way to get what I need. I can’t even use a grocery or drugstore delivery app from my phone, because I don’t have any decent service, plus we’re so far out from town I doubt any driver would even accept the job. Trying to focus on something I actually can control, I take the wine bottle and wineglass off of Mamma’s table and bring them to the kitchen. I return to her room with a big glass of water that I put down gently beside her. I try to get her under the covers, but that turns out to be a waste of time. So instead, I settle on covering her with a throw blanket from the chair in the corner. Then, I turn out the lamp, though I leave the TV on. I know she likes to have some background noise at night.
Leaving her room, I close the door behind me. Now what? Toilet paper isn’t going to last long, even if it is the thick, expensive kind.
My mood brightens as I realize I do have at least one option. Maybe not ideal, but I could go ask the group renting the cottage beside us for supplies. There are two women there. At least, I think they’re still there. I didn’t notice them outside today, but that doesn’t mean anything. They could have just gone into town again, or maybe they were nursing hangovers indoors or something.
Feeling a little better now that I have some semblance of a plan, I grab my purse and head outside.
The air is pleasantly cool on my bare arms and legs. My flip flops smack against the bottoms of my feet and send the little rocks of our driveway, and then the road, skittering away. I can’t stop myself from glancing behind, back the way I came, but it looks like Darragh hasn’t arrived for the night yet. The sky is clear and bright with stars I never see in Toronto. Trees spike upwards into it, pointed like arrowheads.
The lots are pretty big out here, so it takes me a couple of minutes to reach the driveway of the neighbouring cottage. I don’t hear any music or partying for the moment, and when I turn into the driveway and get a better view beyond the trees, I see that there’s only one car here, when previously there had been three. The cottage windows are dark, and I don’t smell any smoke that would mean a bonfire out by the water.
“Shit,” I breathe, fiddling with my purse’s strap. Doesn’t look like anyone’s there now. Maybe they’ve gone somewhere for the night and only took two vehicles. I suppose I could still go knock on the door, just in case…
The sound of gravel crunching under the weight of wheels stalls me. I stop walking, only a few steps into the driveway, and turn to see two headlights bursting through the darkened road. There are no streetlights here, so it makes the lights seem extra bright. I squint and raise my hand to shade my eyes, but even half-blinded as I am, I know whose car this is.
Darragh doesn’t keep driving past to his cottage. Once he becomes aware of me, he stops his car in the middle of the single-lane gravel road. The lights and engines die. A moment later, the sound of a slamming door tells me he’s exited the vehicle. He comes around the front of it, then to the side, where he stops to stare at me.
“What do you want?” I ask, already over whatever shit he plans to pull on me tonight before its even begun.
He ignores my question. The unnerving black hole emptiness that his eyes embody at night go above my head, settling for a moment on the rented-out cottage, before coming back to me.
“What were you doing in that house?”
“I wasn’t in that house,” I reply. “I haven’t even made it to the front door yet.”
“And why were you heading for the front door?”
There’s an edged warning in the question, the far-off scent of danger, but I can’t quite sniff out the source of it. Why does Darragh care if I go knock on a neighbour’s door? He told me some bullshit about not bringing another man to his building a while ago, but he hasn’t given me any other ridiculous orders lately. So what the hell is his problem?
“I… I needed to borrow something.”
“Borrow?”
“Well, take. Buy, if needed.” I shrug one shoulder, making my purse bang against the denim shorts hugging my hip.
“What,” he drawls, leaning back against the vehicle and crossing his arms over his hard chest, dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt. “Need a cup of sugar?”
“Something like that,” I mutter, shifting from foot to foot. My skin feels suddenly too sensitive as Darragh’s eyes flit from my arms to my legs to my cleavage.
“I have sugar.”
Startled, I scan his face, looking for signs of a trap. But his expression is unreadable.
“You’d give me some sugar if I needed some,” I repeat in disbelief.
“Depends,” he says, cocking his head.
“On what?”
“On how nicely you begged.”
Oh, fuck this man all the way to Toronto and back. I’ve never begged for anything in my goddamn life.
Except…
You sank your claws into my flesh and you begged me. Begged me with those fucking eyes…
“What a lovely offer,” I spit, glaring at him in the darkness. “But I’m going to have to decline. Besides, I don’t actually need sugar. What I need is something you can’t provide.”
His frame, which had been so relaxed leaning against the car a second ago, goes taut with tension. He straightens to his full height, forcing me to tilt my head back as he approaches in two quick strides.
“There is not a single thing on this planet,” he says with quiet-yet-vehement confidence, “that I cannot provide.”
His words stun me, rattle me to my core, leave me reeling without anything to grab onto to defend myself. What he said felt so… specific.
Like he would provide for me.
But that’s crazy. Right?
I need to find solid ground. Find a way to push back on the oddly enticing way his voice has just worked its way into my veins.
“Alright, then,” I hiss with vicious sweetness. “Got a tampon?”
I have to admit that I expected to get a bit of a victory there. I thought I’d see some surprise in him, some shakiness or hesitation in response to my blunt mention of menstruation, a subject that would send a lot of men running for cover.
But he merely blinks lazily back at me and says, “Not on me.”
Then, in a smooth movement, he’s taken a step back towards the vehicle and opened the passenger door.
“Get in.”
“Why?”
He raises his brows in a sort of I can’t believe I have to explain this expression.
“Because I’m taking you shopping.”
“You… What?” Once again, I’m centreless and grappling for a response. Darragh somehow manages to strike the perfect, bizarre balance of unpredictability that steals my own balance in turn. No wonder he’s built such a vast empire, one to rival my family’s. He probably keeps both his enemies and his allies on their toes at all times.
"You heard me,” he replies. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, no. Absolutely not,” I say, shaking my head at the insanity of the suggestion. “I’m just going to ask one of them-”
“They’re not there. At least, the two couples with the women left.”
“How the hell do you even know that?”
He wasn’t even here all day!
“I know everything, pet.”
“If you know everything, then you should know I’m not getting in your goddamn vehicle.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” I repeat incredulously. “You know why not! Because you’re… You!”
One of my family’s most entrenched enemies.
Not to mention completely insane…
“Because I’m me,” he echoes. “Well, at the moment, it’s looking like I’m all you’ve got. You should know by now that there are no white knights in our world, my pretty little Titone. There are no heroes.” He gives me a biting sort of smile. “So you’re going to have to just make do with the villain.”
“Why do you even care about helping me?” It’s become a long-running theme by now. He stopped me from choking. He towed me back to shore in my tube. And now he’s offering to drive me into town for a tampon supply run? Why hasn’t he asked for anything in return yet? What the hell does he want ?
He probably doesn’t even know himself. For the first time in our back-and-forth, he suddenly hesitates. He runs his thumb back and forth along his lower lip, regarding me in silence for a long, tense moment.
Then, he abruptly drops his hand and says, quickly and moodily, like even the mere admission is pissing him off, “Maybe I’m not interested in standing around and letting you bleed.”
Speechless. I’m speechless.
Frankly, I’m not sure that’s ever happened to me before. Not to this degree.
Darragh Gowan doesn’t want to let me bleed?
Darragh Gowan, the man who once cooked up one of his enemy’s own balls and fed them back to him? Darragh Gowan, who’s been known to tie men up with their own innards while they’re still alive? Darragh Gowan, who threatened to cut Deirdre’s fingers off, one by one, so he could send them as a warning to her thieving father?
That Darragh Gowan?
“Speaking of which…” His eyes narrow as they fall to my crotch. “Are you going to bleed all over my seats?”
“OK. You know what? We’re done here,” I say, finally finding my voice inside a rising tide of humiliated fury. I take a step towards the road, but Darragh stops me, his fingers closing hard and quick around my wrist. It reminds me so much of our first moments together, when I was the one grabbing onto him.
Only, he isn’t choking. He is quiet, though. His gaze is intense as he stares at the place he touches me.
Then, he lets me go. Before I’ve taken another step, he hooks his fingers under the hem of his black shirt and peels it off over his head.
And I hate it, and I fight it, but the sight of his bare skin seals me to the spot. I remember falling against that skin, that chest, the scorching, inked heat of it. My heart slides all the way down to my clit. Something in me cramps, then clenches.
Darragh folds his shirt into a messy rectangle, then he puts the dark fabric down on the front passenger seat. He pulls the passenger door wider, holding it open for me in silent invitation.
Or silent command.
I bite my lip. Darkness inside the vehicle.
Darkness on the road back home without him.
Am I really considering this?
“If I wanted to kill you tonight,” he says casually, “I could have done it a dozen times over by now.”
There it is again. That specification of tonight . Like he might still change his mind and kill me tomorrow.
I can’t trust a word this man says.
But maybe…
Maybe I can trust the things he does. He’s come to my aid more times than I’d like to admit.
Perhaps this really is no different.
Screw it.
I get into the passenger seat.
Darragh shuts the door.