25. Renne
Renne
Last time Hanna was teething, we went through two weeks of sleepless nights. Needless to say, when I felt teeth pushing at her gums and saw the rash on her cheeks, I knew we were in for it.
There’re moms out there who let the baby cry it out or medicate them, but I’m not one of them. I hold Hanna all the time, trying to comfort her, and then I carry her, rock her, even feed her in the middle of the night. She’s not really hungry. I’m soothing her.
Basically, I’ll do anything for her not to cry.
She’s a great baby, so when she does cry, it’s heartbreaking for me.
This time around, it’s different. I’m not the only one waking up at night trying to comfort her.
In fact, last night, I slept till five in the morning.
Connor got up with Hanna. He played her this strange acoustic music that he researched from his phone.
He said it calms babies. It’s magical, and he might be her magical unicorn. But even unicorns must sleep.
The blinds block the rising sun, but there’s just enough light peeking in at six a.m. when I walk into Hanna’s room to see that Connor fell asleep sprawled on the sofa beside the crib where Hanna sleeps on her belly.
The mattress pushes against her soft cheek and forces her mouth open.
A wet spot of drool stains the white sheet.
There’s nothing I’d love more than to take a picture of these two now.
I bite my bottom lip, wondering if I should.
Just one image. For the times when life gets hard again.
Because the worst is yet to come for me.
I know it like I know how to stitch a wound.
If the yacht massacre I witnessed taught me anything, it’s that life is short and you can’t control what happens to you.
Sure, I could have stayed at home that night and not gone out.
But who’s to say I wouldn’t have witnessed a shooting at the grocery store the very next day?
Or at a hospital while on the clock.
The day Connor Crossbow got admitted to my floor, I was just working. Then his brother took down half of Selnoa’s corrupt police department along with the criminals. One never knows.
Connor’s face is in the shadows. He’s shirtless and sprawled on the couch like one of those sexy fae kings I imagine sitting on their thrones. What can I say? I read fantasy romance.
Fuck it. I pull out my phone and hover my finger over the camera, about to snap a picture, when a familiar name pops up on the screen.
Quickly, I mute the phone and tiptoe into the hallway. Before I answer, I look around for a place where I can talk, but there are cameras everywhere. Oh, wait, Connor’s room. He disabled the cameras there.
I rush into his bedroom and close the door.
“Hello,” I answer the phone call while double-checking that the camera in this room is off. I find camera 1023 is a blank screen.
“Can you talk?” my contact asks.
“Not sure.”
“Are you safe?”
“Not sure.”
Connor’s not recording in the bathroom, is he? I walk into his bathroom and spot another door farther down, which is probably the toilet. Even if he’s not recording here, if I’m caught speaking in the bathroom, it’ll be more suspicious than if I’m in his room.
Damn it. Where can I talk safely? I chew my lip. It’s going to bleed if I continue nipping it, but I can’t help it when my life is one scare after another.
“Are you still there?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“We need to meet. I posted the location on the website.”
My hands shake. “Is there something wrong?”
“Your picture is circulating. Someone is trying to identify you. We might have to move you.”
“After the hospital incident, I told you staying here was risky.”
“There’s protocol. Paperwork.”
“Your paperwork will get me killed,” I hiss.
“The location is posted, and I gave you two time slots. If you don’t make the first window, you must make the second one.”
“Okay.”
“And Renne?”
Oh God, the sound of my name kicks up my heart rate even more.
“Stay away from Connor Crossbow.” The contact hangs up.
Yeah, okay, no problem. I look around Connor’s bedroom, sit on his bed, and put my phone away.
I tuck my hands under my bottom so they’ll stop shaking and close my eyes, imagining a beach resort, waves, sun heating my skin, Hanna playing with plastic turtles in the sand next to my towel.
People walk by, not paying attention to us.
We’re just two girls on the beach. That’s all we are.
The door creaks open.
Connor walks in and removes jeans, socks, underwear, everything, then grabs my wrist. “Morning. I took a nap, so we can call that sleep. I need a shower. You’re coming with me.”
I tug back, but my protest is weak and pathetic once my gaze lands on a fine piece of ass. The bathroom light turns on when we walk in. It’s dim and inviting. Connor says something in a language I don’t understand, and a big walk-in shower turns on.
At my apartment, I shower in an old, rusted tub with a boiler hanging over my head. Every time I turn, it nicks my shoulder. I’ve got scars. And a tetanus booster.
Connor walks under the water stream, wets his hair, then steps back to drizzle shampoo on his head.
“Are you going to stand there and watch?” he asks.
“I’m not sure what I’m doing.”
He smiles. “If you ask me nicely, I’ll tell you what to do.”
“I don’t need a man to tell me what to do.”
“As you wish.”
Immediately, I regret giving him attitude.
I wish I could tell him everything I’m going through, but I’m so far deep in with the police and agents who have been protecting me against a major crime lord that I think Connor will end me when he finds out.
The cops have been protecting me because I swore to help them put away said crime lord.
If I betray them, I’m sure they’ll throw me right back at the man, who will torture me, then kill me.
At the very least, if I don’t do what I said I would, they’ll remove the protection.
Either way, I’ll be dead in a matter of hours.
Connor wouldn’t protect a snitch. Especially not one who would testify against a crime lord. Who’s to say I wouldn’t snitch on the Crossbows? Nobody protects the snitch. I have to remember that.
“Come on, Mamma. I earned some time with you, don’t you think?”
“Oh, that’s not… I wasn’t rejecting the shower or anything.” I take off my clothes and join him, feeling a little shy. I’m not a shy girl. What is happening to me? Oh God, I must really like him.
Connor wets my hair, then drizzles shampoo on it.
“What?” he asks as he rubs the shampoo into a lather.
The head of his beautiful, pierced penis touches my belly, more specifically the baby pouch that’s left after the cesarean. No amount of dieting melts away the fat. My mom has the same pouch so it’s genetics.
“It occurs to me that I like you,” I say.
“Oh,” Connor says. “That explains the horrified expression I saw on your face. I would be horrified too if I liked me.”
I take the opening. “Do you not like you?”
“I hate me.”
I don’t know what to say to that. “But why?”
“Because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The tree is rotten, the land it grew on was rotten, and the apples are all rotten.”
“Hanna doesn’t think you’re rotten.”
Connor pauses washing my hair. I can almost see the glitch in his brain. He pushes me under the stream, and I rinse my hair while watching him struggle with what I said.
“No comment?” I ask
“Hanna doesn’t know me.”
“That’s not true. She knows the side of you nobody else knows.”
Connor shakes his head. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Stop arguing with me.”
“Why should I when I’m right, and you don’t want to accept that you can be gentle, kind, and caring? That’s the truth.”
He applies conditioner to his hair, then mine. “What is the truth?”
“That you’re not the monster you think you are. That people can love you.”
“People often love sociopaths. They’re lovable by design. Like a diamond. Beautiful. Admired. Will not return affection because it’s a rock.”
“Are you saying you can’t return affection?” I spin him around by his shoulders and grab a loofah, then lather it and scrub his back.
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“But you’ve returned my affection.”
“I just like fucking you, Ekatia.”
I wish he wouldn’t say that name like it’s a curse. I continue scrubbing his back as if his words don’t cut me to my heart. I don’t yet understand why they should hurt me. Connor is a fling. I’m not a stranger to flings. “I also like fucking you, Connor.”
“Then let’s just fuck.”
“Fine.”
Connor spins around and lifts me. Again, he impales me on him, but this time, the sex is vicious, aggressive, intense.
Rough, to put it mildly. He pounds into me as if he wants to bruise me, and my back scrapes the tile.
I dig my fingernails into his shoulders so I can hurt him as much as he’s hurting me. Maybe I can draw blood.
Probably. He might like it as much as I like how it hurts when he keeps impaling me hard. He’s aggressive, but I’m not afraid. I like this. I do like him. Really, really like him. As fucked-up as he is, he’s good to me and Hanna.
What I am afraid of is the moment when he figures out the monster he thinks he is likes me back. But perhaps by then, I’ll be long gone from his life and living in another city, working in another hospital, raising my daughter all by myself.
“I’ll pull out, don’t worry,” he says at my lips.
My reply gets swallowed by the kiss.
You don’t have to.