Chapter Six
Carmen
He actually left.
I still couldn’t wrap my head around that hours later, after Sofia finished and called me out to look at our new garden, then declared we deserved pasta for a job well done, then decided we also needed to grow basil and oregano in the garden to ‘take our pasta up to the next level.’ She was clearly envisioning a world where we were making all our own tomato sauce from the garden, even though we only had three tomato plants growing.
And I wasn’t even sure what varieties they were.
But I let her dream out loud as she boiled pasta water and I threw together a salad.
I was not in the dream-killing business.
Not when it came to my sister. If she wanted to take over the whole backyard in tomato and basil plants and start her own artisanal pasta sauce company, I’d be right there with her.
Besides, when she was making plans like that, she really didn’t need much input from me other than the occasional sound of agreement. And I was in no shape to carry on a full conversation about something else.
Because a man who I’d attempted to murder the night before had shown up at my house with vague threats that somehow didn’t sound serious and questions. Then just… left when I told him to.
What was that about?
Was he just waiting until the house was quiet to sneak in and kill me? Slit my throat in my bed? Suffocate me with my own pillow?
I hadn’t realized I’d made a whimpering sound until Sofia looked over. “You okay?”
“Yep. Almost took my fingertip off,” I lied.
“Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve been a little off today. Did you and Rune have a fight?”
“Sort of.”
“Do you want to talk about it? I know, I know, you’re not a talker. Not about your own life and feelings. But I know it’s been forever since you’ve had a man in your life. And we both know I am more of a pro. So… we can talk about it.”
If by ‘pro’ she meant that every guy she met ended up half in love with her, then became borderline obsessed with her, then yes, yes, she was.
Even the guys she dated got a little too into her.
Which was usually why things ended. She started to feel suffocated with their attention and affection and needed to call things off so she could breathe again.
I, on the other hand, was not the sort who men fell in love with through one short glance.
Which, yes, we could blame on my resting bitch face.
But, like, why would you try to hit on me when I’m pulling my underwear out of the washing machine at the laundromat, you freak?
I liked to think my RBF kept the creeps away.
It also, you know, kept all men away.
There was a flaw in the system.
It usually didn’t bother me, being single.
I had a busy work life. I enjoyed spending time with my sister, who didn’t mind if I showed up to watch a movie in her room with a mud mask on my face and a giant mixing bowl full of popcorn, then talked through half of it because we’d seen it a thousand times before.
The only time I ever felt something even akin to loneliness was when Sofia was getting more serious about one of her admirers and spending time at his place instead of ours.
Or, worse, when they were at our place being all lovey-dovey, inadvertently reminding me that no one called me ‘beautiful’ or ‘baby’ in more months than I cared to admit.
God, it wasn’t even months anymore. It was well over a year.
Rune called you baby, a traitorous little voice at the back of my head whispered.
He had.
Several times.
Even with a knife to my throat, I would never admit that each time he did it, it sent a little shiver through me.
Why did the guy I’d been hating for over a year have to be so damn handsome?
“I don’t really want to talk about it. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“A big enough deal that he left…”
“He has a life too, you know,” I said, making my tone lighter, more playful, so she’d stop looking at me with that frown between her brows.
“Sure. Guys have lives. But they don’t usually skedaddle back to them without taking you up to bed first.”
“Who said he didn’t?”
“Did he?” Sofia’s eyes went bright as she reached for the box of spaghetti.
“I don’t ask you about your sex life, perv,” I said, tossing a cherry tomato at her.
“Fine. Leave me in the dark. I mean, a man with that much charm has to be great in bed. So congratulations on the awesome sex you refuse to tell me about.” She turned to toss the pasta in the pot, then rummaged around for a carving fork she always used to mix the spaghetti so it didn’t stick together. “He’s insanely beautiful.”
He might balk at being called ‘beautiful,’ but I couldn’t disagree with her on that.
“And he’s protective, which is hot.”
“What do you mean he’s protective?”
“I was telling him about the bullies at school and he said he would have beaten up anyone who did that to his little sister.”
“How long was he here before I got home?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe.”
“And you managed to talk about your childhood trauma in that time?”
“Well, it started with a girlie mug and then ended up at siblings and bullies.”
Ah, yes, Sofia and her famous winding conversations.
“He has a brother too,” she added. “In case you guys didn’t discuss that yet. And they used to get roped into tea parties with their little sister into their teens.”
Okay.
That was kind of sweet.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t grow up to be a monster who did horrible things. Plenty of serial killers did community outreach. It was always the guy “nobody suspected” who liked to blindfold and cuff people and hunt them like wild animals.
Just because Rune was nice to his siblings and had the face of a god didn’t mean he also hadn’t done what I knew he did.
“I’m not sure if I’m going to be seeing him,” I told her.
“Carmie. Come on. You’ve gotta give a guy a chance,” she said as she mixed the pasta. “I say this next part with love, so you can’t get mad at me,” she told me as she turned. “You are not the easiest person to get to know. And you tend to kind of push people away.”
I knew she didn’t mean it the way I took it, but the words landed like a metal bat to the stomach, knocking out my wind, filling me with pain.
“Oh. No. No, that’s not what I meant!” Sofia was immediately contrite, her eyes going glassy as she understood what I was inferring from her words.
I tossed the last cucumber on top of the salad. “I’m going to take a shower before dinner,” I said, turning and walking away before I cried in front of her.
“No, Carmie. Wait. I’m so sorry!” Sofia called after me.
“It’s fine,” I called down the stairs even as I reached up to swat a tear from my cheek.
I knew my sister wanted to follow. But when we’d decided to move together, we’d made an agreement that if someone was storming off, we would give them their privacy, that the only way cohabitation would work would be if we gave each other space when needed.
Sofia was not someone who needed it. She was comfortable with her feelings, and when she was in them, she wanted to be with someone, not alone.
But as the older sister, I felt the need to protect my sister from my moods, like I’d been doing our whole lives.
Healthy? Probably not. Especially since I didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
But we all did the best we could. For me, that meant closing and locking my door, sinking onto the floor beside my bed, pressing my face into a pillow, and purging more of the pain.
I thought the crying was done many months before, replaced with the anger that had kept me going since.
That was the funny thing about grief. The pain wasn’t linear. You could be doing well—great, even—for weeks or months or a year. Then some random Thursday afternoon, it cuts you off at the knees.
I knew better than to try to stop it. That only led to it creeping up on you at inopportune times. Like while you were talking to a client. Or in line at the grocery store.
There was a soft knock at the door as I was blowing my nose for the fifth time, once I felt wrung dry of tears.
“Dinner,” Sofia called.
I heard her feet retreating, then picked myself up off the ground, went into the bathroom to press a cold washcloth to my eyes and cheeks, then made my way downstairs.
Sofia was already on the couch, a heaping bowl of pasta perched on her lap as she held a much smaller bowl of salad, eating while watching one of the nonsense reality TV shows we watched together.
I grabbed my own plate and sat down next to her.
She reached over, gave my knee a squeeze, but said nothing as she got back to eating.
I picked at my food as my mind kept flashing back to sitting on that very couch a few hours ago, to a strong arm anchored around me. And despite everything, how good it felt to be held. Even if, objectively, he was forcibly holding me in place.
My sister was right about me sucking at relationships.
Even when I let myself get into one, I was so scared of being seen as clingy or needy that I never got what I needed out of them.
Like being held and comforted when I was upset.
Like being held… period. In my past interactions with men, any kind of physical affection was only a lead-up to sex.
And when it came with an expectation of something else, it really lost its appeal.
In quiet moments I’d never tell anyone else about, I didn’t fantasize about wedding rings and happily-ever-afters. I dreamed about a man who could sense I needed one… then just giving me a hug.
Finished with her food, Sofia’s arms went around me, giving me a one-sided hug.
“See? Who needs a man?” I asked as some of the tension slipped out of me.
“And I am here to remind you how unhealthy that is,” Sofia said with a little laugh as she retreated to her side of the couch. “I think you should call Rune.”
“Yeah, I won’t be doing that.”
Sofia shook her head.
“I like him for you.”
“You met him for twenty minutes.”
“And he was sweet and charming and Hamster approved of him. She’s not usually a fan of men. Remember how she used to glare at Marcus?”
“To be fair, I used to glare at Marcus too.”
“You’re so mean,” Sofia laughed. “But it wasn’t just Hammy and vibes. You guys looked so cute snuggled on the couch.”
If by ‘snuggled,’ she meant ‘held against my will,’ then sure.
“I hear you,” I told her. “But don’t get your heart too set on this, okay?”
Sofia let out an exaggerated sigh.
“Fineee.”
“I’m going to bed. I have that pain-in-the-ass client in the morning.”
“The one who makes you hand wash all his fabric grocery bags?”
“That’s the one.”
“Have fun with that. You can get a whole audiobook or two listened to.”
That was the plan: keep my mind and my body busy at the same time to stave off the anxiety and uncertainty that came with having some ‘one-percenter’ biker showing up at my house after I tried to shoot him.
Of course, that plan was shot to shit when I was on all fours in a client’s house, scrubbing the baseboards with a brush… and heard a man’s voice behind me.