Chapter 5
five
My Lindy girl is an itch I can’t scratch. An addiction that consumes my every waking thought and when I manage sleep, she haunts my dreams.
Every morning between seven fifty-nine and eight-oh-one, she walks into her office building.
Coffee in her right hand, bag on her right shoulder, keys in her left hand, always left, even when she’s juggling.
She hesitates at the glass, tucks her hair behind her ear twice, then pauses and repeats the tuck a third time before she steps through.
What do you thank yourself for in the mornings?
Lindy Girl:
I’m not thanking myself.
Care to elaborate?
Lindy Girl:
Care to tell me how you know I say thank you in the mornings?
My thumb taps the knife. One, two, three.
Not particularly.
Lindy Girl:
Me either.
Adrian thinks I’m spiraling, whatever the fuck that means, but he keeps the video feed on my phone.
I spend hours watching the footage like a highlight reel, memorizing how she tilts her head when she unlocks her apartment, how she checks her mailbox with a little bounce in her step, how she sometimes forgets her keys in her door and turns back, mumbling to herself.
Every evening between four fifty-seven and five seventeen, she walks out of her office building and to the parking garage. I can usually force myself to wait until she’s home to message her, but only because I’m watching her the whole way.
Sleep Lindy girl. I’ll keep watch.
Lindy Girl:
That’s not how phones work.
Mine does. For you, mine does.
The fourth time Caleb says he thinks I need to get laid, I break his nose. Slight overreaction, maybe, but this has less to do with sex than Caleb will ever believe. Not that I don’t think about it.
I think about it too damn much. The soft underside of her wrist under my thumb.
The way her breath would stutter if I crowded her against a door and told her to give me her eyes.
The line of her throat when she swallows.
I catalog stupid things because I’m not allowed the real ones yet.
How her mouth will taste like coffee and whatever toothpaste she uses.
How the corner of her lip will catch on my knuckle when I make her say please.
I picture her on my lap with a book, trying to read while I turn pages slowly just to make her squirm.
One button for one confession. One inch of skin for one truth.
My mouth following every mark I put on her until she forgets to be careful and lets the sound out that’ll only ever belong to me.
I practice patience. I watch. I keep the rules I made with Sava like rosary beads. The want burns, but I hold the line. Patience is protection for both of us. For a while, the lie works.
But I know how this ends. You don’t put a hurricane behind glass and expect the glass to hold.
One day I’ll crack. On purpose. I’ll take every saved second, every moment I had to force patience and turn them into slow hands, slower orders, yeses and good girls.
And there won’t be any going back. I can wait.
I will wait. But when I stop waiting, that’ll be the last patient thing I ever do.
I think about quieter things too. Her in my kitchen in one of my shirts, feet on my thighs while we eat takeout from the carton, her laugh caught under my palm, the world narrowed to the size of my hand on her hip. Spending every second worshiping, ruining her.
Atlas fucking grins like this is the best entertainment he’s ever had. And maybe it is. None of them have ever seen me like this. I’ve handled blood and bodies better than I’m handling one woman.
Melinda Paige Westbrook.
When she texts me during the day, it’s like being resuscitated and taking my first clean breath. But when my phone buzzes at one forty-one in the morning, I stop breathing all together.
Lindy Girl:
Someone’s at my door. The handle’s jiggling. I’m probably overreacting. I just…I’m scared.
I’m out of bed, pulling on jeans, boots, strapping my knife to my hip.
Call 911. Stay away from the door. Lights off. Phone on silent. Go to the bathroom and lock it. I’m close.
I’m not, but I will be. I’m out the door when the second text lands.
Lindy Girl:
Okay. In the bathroom.
I ride to her building not giving a single fuck about red lights or traffic cams. I cut the engine two blocks out and run the rest of the way.
My pulse is even; my breath is not. The street camera on my phone gives me nothing.
I hate that I can’t see her floor. Hate it so much my molars ache.
I triple check everything outside the building before I run inside and up the three flights of stairs.
Do you hear anything?
Lindy Girl:
No. It stopped. I think. I can’t tell. I hate this.
Stay put.
A door opens down the hall. I catch the tail of a shadow in a stairwell window, then the low mumble of a man. Keys jangle. A lock protests two doors down from Lindy’s. A woman hisses, “Wrong door, again,” and yanks him inside by his hoodie.
False alarm, Lindy girl. Drunk neighbor. You did everything right.
Lindy Girl:
I feel stupid.
Safety isn’t stupid. Text me when you’re back in bed.
I stand in the hall until my hands stop wanting to rip that drunk fuck out of his bed and scrape his face along the carpet until his skin rubs raw. When her okay, I’m in bed lands, my hands quit shaking. She doesn’t need more. I do.
I stay in the hall for another thirty minutes, reciting the long list of reasons I can’t break into her apartment. An idea hits. One I’m surprised took this long to form. It’s the only reason I talk myself out of leaving. I text my brothers to meet me on my walk down the stairs.
On the ride to the warehouse the dark grows a new set of teeth, ones I’ve never seen before.
I see threats to her everywhere. Every idiot peddling a bike.
Every person standing under a busted streetlamp.
The busted streetlamps. A ride-share that loops past me twice.
Maybe they’re nothing, but men like me learn the hard way that “maybes” almost always cash out in blood.
My phone chirps as I park. I hop off my bike and pull it out.
Lindy Girl:
Thank you, Cassius.
I answer immediately.
Anytime Lindy girl. For you, anything.
My chest loosens the smallest degree. I’m not escalating, not obsessing. Threats are real. I’m protecting the woman who might be mine.
The lie is still elegant enough I can almost keep believing it.
Inside the warehouse I don’t make speeches. Atlas’s grin is already there, bright as a fuse. Adrian’s mouth goes flat. Caleb looks like he wants to skin me alive.
“Say it,” I tell them.
“There’s a line, Cassius,” Adrian says. “This is it. Street cams are one thing. Inside her building? Inside her life? You want probable cause tattooed to your forehead?”
Atlas rocks on his heels. “I can do it in under ten. She’ll never clock it.”
“That isn’t the point,” Adrian says.
My thumb finds the hilt hanging on my hip. One, two, three. “I’m not asking permission.”
Adrian’s shaded eyes cut up. “You are asking us to be accomplices.”
“You are accomplices. You’ve been accomplices. This isn’t any different from any other fucking day,” I say, too even.
“It’s different and you know it,” Caleb says. “She’s not a mark, she’s an innocent woman.”
“I’m not asking permission,” I repeat. “You three can keep being the brains and I’ll keep being the blade. That’s the arrangement we’re all so fucking grateful for, right?” I blow out a breath. “So, if this blows up in our faces, I’ll deal with it.”
Adrian breathes through his nose. “You think I like that arrangement? You think I sleep? I’m the oldest. It should’ve been me. But instead I’m the one who has to keep you from drowning in your own choices and that might be worse.”
“Then let me drown,” I say.
“Nothing is blowing up in our faces.” Atlas glances between us. “We’re not sloppy, but if you insist on being stupid, Cassius, at least let us make it safe.”
Adrian rubs his temple. “She’s innocent, Cassius,” he says, repeating Caleb’s words. “You cross this line, you don’t get to uncross it.”
“I’ve crossed worse,” I say, quiet enough to sting. “I would cross worse, for any one of you.”
Atlas breaks first. “Tell me exactly what you want and where.”
Adrian stares at me for a long beat, then, before I can answer Atlas, says, “You put anything in a bedroom or a bathroom and I’ll rip it out myself. We clear?”
I hold his gaze. “Crystal.”
Adrian pauses in the doorway. “You can call this protection all you want,” he says, not turning, “but there’s a part of you that needs it. That part isn’t a saint. Watch that.”
Caleb shakes his head as he follows Adrian out. Atlas trailing behind them. They’re done with the conversation for now but I don’t care, because I won.
Atlas installs the cameras while she’s at work. One in her kitchen, one in the hallway, one in her car. He asked me if I wanted audio and I said no. I want her words to be mine. Not stolen. I don’t want to hear her say someone else’s name. But I do want to know if she does.
She lines her mail on the counter in four neat piles.
Straightens the edges, rotates a paperclip so it faces the same way as the others.
She checks the deadbolt twice, then a third time.
She does that with lights too, off, on, off.
She runs her thumbnail along her coffee-lid seam three times before she takes a sip.
At the sink, she lines the sponge with the tile grout.
That night, I watch her fold laundry and dance barefoot through her living room with a glass of wine, hair down, swaying to music I can’t hear.
People think anxiety is shakiness and tears. With her, it seems to be order. Systems. Rules that she’s built to hold the world still.