25. Julia
Julia
Iwake slowly, with the strange certainty that something is different before I remember what it is.
For several seconds, I stay exactly where I am beneath the blankets, eyes closed against the pale Friday morning trying to find its way around the curtains, while my body begins answering the question before my brain does.
There is a pleasant ache low in my stomach, another one along the inside of my thighs, and when I stretch one leg beneath the sheet, muscles I apparently forgot I owned make themselves known with enough enthusiasm that last night comes rushing back in one very vivid piece.
A masked man between my legs, his hand around my throat and the roughened voice against my skin telling me to come. My own voice saying his name.
Ghost.
My eyes open. The other side of the bed is empty.
I don’t know why that disappoints me when I never expected him to still be here in the first place.
Ghost appearing at breakfast with bed hair and asking how I take my coffee would probably destroy whatever dark mystique he has worked so hard to cultivate, and considering I still have no idea what his face looks like, domestic morning conversation was always unlikely.
Still, my hand moves over the sheet beside me.
Cold enough that he has been gone for a while.
I remember falling asleep with his arm around my waist and his body fitted warmly along the back of mine, though I don’t remember hearing him get dressed or leave.
Apparently three orgasms and several weeks’ worth of poor decision-making are excellent sleep aids.
The faintest trace of his cologne remains on the pillow.
That does something stupid to my stomach.
I bury my face there for one second before immediately realizing what I’m doing and lifting it again.
“Jesus, Julia.”
I’m smelling pillows now. Excellent development.
Getting out of bed is considerably less graceful than usual, mostly because the first few steps confirm Ghost was not exaggerating about the consequences of letting him do whatever he wanted to me.
I make it into the bathroom, take one look at myself in the mirror and laugh under my breath at the woman staring back.
My hair is a disaster, there is a faint mark near the side of my neck that makeup is going to have to negotiate with, and my cheeks are still pink enough that I look suspiciously pleased with myself.
Which, annoyingly, I am. I should probably be having a much more dramatic reaction to what happened.
Instead, I need coffee. The house feels strangely quiet when I come downstairs wearing my robe, although nothing about it looks disturbed.
My T-shirt is folded over the back of the couch, which I definitely did not do, the black envelope is still on the coffee table and there is no indication that a man who has been watching my house for weeks spent half the night inside it except for the fact that I can still smell him if I stand still long enough.
Then I walk into the kitchen and see the folded piece of paper on the counter. My heart does a ridiculous little jump. I know his handwriting before I pick it up.
Little Ember,
You were sleeping too peacefully for me to wake you, so I left before morning could ruin the mystery.
Take a hot bath when you get up. Drink plenty of water, eat something that qualifies as an actual meal and be kind to the muscles that are going to remind you of me today.
I know I was rough with you. You asked me to be, and I loved every second of giving you exactly that, but wanting you that way doesn’t mean I stop caring about how you feel when it’s over.
And since you were asleep, I’ll admit something I probably wouldn’t if you could look at me while I said it.
I liked holding you afterward. More than I expected to.
Take care of yourself for me, Little Ember.
—Ghost
I read the last few lines twice. Not because they are difficult to understand, but because they sound different from the man whose previous letters have mostly concerned themselves with everything he wants to do to me.
This is softer without becoming sentimental, intimate in a way that catches me more effectively than another page describing his hands ever could.
I liked holding you afterward.
Apparently so did I. My thumb moves slowly over the bottom edge of the paper before I fold it again and leave it beside the coffee machine, where I can pretend I am not going to read it for a third time while breakfast is cooking.
I follow his instructions mostly because they are sensible and only partly because remembering the tone he uses when he tells me what to do makes obedience considerably more interesting than it should be.
I drink two glasses of water, force myself to eat toast and eggs instead of pretending coffee counts as nutrition, then run a bath hot enough that the steam fogs the mirror.
The heat works its way gradually into every sore muscle while I sink deeper beneath the water, and inevitably my mind goes straight back to him.
Not to anything complicated, just flashes.
The tattoos moving beneath my hands. The bison skull across his back.
The faint laugh behind the mask. His mouth in the dark.
The fact that he stopped the second I pushed against his shoulder, without making me ask twice.
And then the question that has been hovering since I found the empty side of the bed returns.
Will I see him again? His note doesn’t promise it.
Neither did last night, really. Ghost has built an entire relationship out of anticipation, and I have no idea whether his idea of “coming back” means tonight, next week or whenever he decides he wants me wondering about him badly enough.
I get out of the bath, I decide there is nothing I can do about that without standing in the middle of my living room and shouting questions into the trees. So I get ready for work.
The fact that I choose a higher-necked blouse has absolutely nothing to do with the mark on my throat. That is my story.
Daniel takes one look at my lunch and steals three fries before I have even put my bag down.
“I hope you know theft is still illegal when committed by an attorney.”
He chews with the calm entitlement of a man who has been stealing food from me for nearly five years. “Only if you can prove ownership.”
“The receipt is literally in my bag.”
“Circumstantial.” He rolls his eyes, emphasized by a hand wave.
I slide into the booth across from him and pull my plate farther away while he gives me the deeply wounded look of someone being denied a constitutional right to potatoes.
The restaurant is only a block from the office, one of those places we come to often enough that the server already knows Daniel wants sparkling water and I will eventually ask for another Diet Coke whether I intend to or not.
Friday lunch is busy around us, conversations overlapping with dishes and cutlery while sunlight comes through the front windows in pale rectangles across the floor.
Daniel drops a file beside his plate. I stare at it.
“You brought work.”
“You say that like you haven’t spent half our lunches reading over my shoulder.”
“That is because your legal opinions contain commas in places that offend me personally.”
He snorts. “Actually, this one is why I asked you to come.”
“You told me you were buying lunch.” I protest.
I mean, yes, I have worked through lunches but today feels like “I don’t want to work through lunch” day.
“I am buying lunch. I’m also exploiting your brain while we’re here.”
“Fine.”
He opens the file and turns one page toward me. “Remember the Kendall matter?”
I nod because I helped organize the documentation two weeks ago, which means I know significantly more about the case than my job description technically requires.
Their client, Melissa Kendall, has a temporary order preventing her estranged husband from contacting her after several increasingly aggressive incidents, but he has apparently discovered that court orders become much more entertaining when treated as suggestions.
“He hasn’t contacted her directly since the order,” Daniel explains, lowering his voice beneath the restaurant noise, “but now his sister is sending Melissa messages every couple of days about him. Nothing overtly threatening, just constant bullshit about how devastated he is, how she’s destroying the family, how the kids need their father and how he wants her to know he forgives her. ”
I put my fork down. “He forgives her?”
Daniel’s mouth twists. “Apparently generosity survives restraining orders.”
“Charming.”
He pushes several printed screenshots toward me. “I can make the argument that he’s using his sister to contact her indirectly, but right now we don’t have anything where he actually says, ‘Tell Melissa this.’ The sister could claim she’s acting on her own.”
I read the messages once, then again more carefully. There is a pattern in them that bothers me immediately.
“Don’t lead with the content.”
Daniel pauses with his glass halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“The content lets them argue the sister is just emotional and inserting herself into somebody else’s divorce.” I tap the timestamps with one finger. “Look at when she messages.”
He leans closer.
“The first one is fourteen minutes after Melissa refuses his request through the parenting app. The second comes nine minutes after she rejects the schedule change. This one is twenty minutes after her attorney tells his attorney she won’t withdraw the protection request.” I move to the next screenshot.
“She may not have written that he instructed her, but she somehow knows every time Melissa says no to something he wants before she starts sending messages about how unreasonable Melissa is.”
Daniel stops chewing. I can practically watch the argument reorganizing itself behind his eyes.