Epilogue: The Dark Duet (7 page)

“God, I am starving! I want breakfast so
bad,” Livvie murmured into the sheets. Her forehead was plastered with sweaty
hair. I laughed.

“She speaks!” I
pushed the hair off her forehead and she closed her eyes to enjoy my touch.
What a strange pair we made.

“For a minute there I didn’t know if I
wanted to come or bolt out for pancakes.” She smiled at me. “You certainly take
it out of a girl.”

“Hmm, I put some back in, too.” I
winked. “We have to check out of here in about fifteen minutes. We slept late.”
I knew it wasn’t going to be a problem, but I still liked to give Livvie a hard
time.

“Crap. That’s hardly any time to take a
shower and I only have the clothes from last night.” She flipped over and
huffed toward the ceiling. I rolled onto my side and propped up on my elbow.

“We could go to
my flat. It’s close.”

“How close?”

I grinned. “Next door.”

Her eyes got huge.

“You dick!” she
laughed. “I thought you had a house.”

“People say ‘come to my house’. It
doesn’t mean they actually live in a house. I live in the hotel… but not in
this room. You can’t blame me for being cunning.
And
… we can order room service.” I smiled broadly and waited for
her reply. 

Thank goodness for whatever hormones make women so agreeable after you've laid them
right, because that's all it took to get her to agree. Also... pancakes.

After our pancakes (and an obscene
amount of syrup on some very interesting body parts), Livvie informed me she
had to go to her apartment and get ready for work. I wasn’t too happy about it,
but I decided to be cordial and allow her some sense of normalcy. We’d had a
lot of sex and done more talking than I cared for, but there were still plenty
of things unresolved between us. I had my work cut out for me with Livvie. She
wouldn’t even let me take her home.

“I can take a cab home. I’ll be in a
rush when I get there and I’d feel bad ignoring you.” She smiled at me while
putting on her shoes. “Can I call you when I get off work? It’ll be a little
before midnight since it’s a Monday.”

I was still in bed, naked. I hoped my
silent protest about putting on clothes after our shower would have inspired
her to keep me company, but it didn’t work. She still hadn’t said anything
about my confession. It was making me more nervous than I cared to admit.

“I still don’t
understand why you’re leaving me. You know I’ll get up to no good without you.”

She smiled at me again and walked
toward the bed. She bent down and kissed me on the cheek.

“I trust you.”
She moved away before I could drag her back into bed.

“You’re not wearing any underwear,” I
teased. The last thing I wanted was for her to run into trouble with some cab
driver.

“I think the odds of being kidnapped
twice in a lifetime are pretty slim. Don’t you?” Her tone was meant to convey
sarcasm, but there was an edge to her words that smacked of resentment.

I forced myself to smile when all I
wanted to do was tell her I was through taking her shit. I knew I deserved it.
I deserved much more than she was giving. It’s just not in my nature to let
people kick me while I’m already down.

“I suppose you’re
right. I’ll be here if you call.” I rolled out of bed, kissed her on the top of
her head, and walked into the bathroom to take a leak. I heard the door shut.

I tried to keep my mind away from
Livvie by keeping busy. I read a book. I returned the Lamborghini. I ate. I
searched through local and international news. Regardless of my intentions, it
wasn’t long before my thoughts veered toward Livvie again.

I thought about the night before and
her hasty exit in the morning. One set of thoughts made me smile; the other had
me on high alert.

Livvie’s apartment was near her school.
I researched the campus and neighborhood. Crime was relatively low. The
internet wasn’t flush with stories of sexual assault at her college. However, I
doubted the university would willingly offer such information. I made a mental
note to investigate for myself at a later time. Livvie had a tendency to trust
too easily.

I’d already done my due diligence and
researched her neighbors. The man across the hall from Livvie had been arrested
for domestic violence the year before but hadn’t been in trouble since. He’d
been living with a female student at the time. I’d be keeping a close eye on
him as well.

I showered around ten-thirty.

I had champagne brought up an hour
later.

By midnight, I was expecting the phone
to ring at any moment.

With each passing minute, I realized
the void inside me was alive and well. It was thriving. It had a taste for a
new sort of misery—hope.  It had been a
long time since I had allowed myself such an emotion. The void feasted on it
while old memories reminded me how dangerous it could be. Hope and fear are
different sides of the same coin. I had gone from missing Livvie to hoping I
could be the man she wanted. I didn’t know which was worse.

I had gone through all sorts of
scenarios in my mind prior to making contact with Livvie. However, her passive
aggressive behavior toward me was not one of them. My mind is much more
problem/solution oriented. Mad at me? Scream at me. Punch me if you’re up for
it. Please don’t smile at me sweetly, act like nothing is wrong and then leave
me disillusioned. And before you say anything, yes—I realize how fucking ironic
my words are. I have played my fair share of mind games with Livvie. It doesn’t
mean I liked being on the other side. No man does.

I took a cab over to her apartment. There
was a wall of buttons and a speaker panel just outside the door. I ran my
finger down a column of buttons until someone buzzed me in. I ignored the groggy
insults coming through the speaker. I made it a point to ignore the button
marked “S. Cole.”

The elevator to the fifth floor moved
at a glacial pace. Thoughts raced through my mind, each bombarding me with
different emotions. In the time it had taken to arrive on Livvie’s floor, I had
changed my mind about what to say or do a dozen times.

I could turn around, change hotels, and
let her wonder where the hell I’d gone. I could pound on her door and make a
scene in the hall. I could push my way past her when she opened the door and
refuse to leave until she gave me answers. I could tell her to go fuck herself
and then leave.

I could.

I wouldn’t.

I took a deep breath and knocked. My
heart beat a staccato rhythm and my breaths filled in the gaps. I’d been in
more than my fair share of perilous situations, but few had the ability to
affect me so physically.

After a few seconds, the door opened. A
small chain prevented it from opening fully. Livvie’s tear-stained face looked
at me through the gap. My anger evaporated and fear blossomed.

“Are you okay?
You didn’t call.”

Livvie glanced away and shut the door
in my face. I heard her dealing with the chain just before the door reopened
and she motioned me inside. I stepped slowly and carefully. As I let my eyes
wander around her apartment, I realized I’d never walked in Livvie’s world. I
didn’t know all the different sides of her. There was a blue sofa and a coffee
table in the shape of a splat. Fake orange daisies stuck out of a vase filled
with clear marbles. Framed posters adorned her walls:
Interview with a Vampire, The Crow, The Social Network, Inception
, a
poster of four different colored records, and a half-naked man whose virtues
were compared to chocolate.

I felt conspicuously out of place.
Livvie was young. She cared about movies, music, and boys. She preferred bright
colors. I smiled when I saw her PlayStation. A set of drumsticks, a microphone,
and a plastic guitar were crammed up against the TV stand. I wondered if Livvie
liked to sing or if she preferred one of the instruments. I wondered who she
played with and decided the couple she was always with seemed the most likely.
They knew her in ways I didn’t. It made me jealous.

“I’m sorry,” Livvie said as she walked
toward a side door. She was wearing a pink robe with teddy bears on it. I would
never have chosen an outfit like that for her. I followed her onto her balcony
and watched her light a cigarette. “I got out of work late and I figured you
were probably asleep.” She inhaled deeply and let the smoke out smoothly, a
sign of a well-seasoned smoker.

“How long have you been smoking?” I
asked. I hadn’t noticed her smoking during the course of my surveillance. She
smiled and scoffed sarcastically.

“You going to
give me shit about it?”

“No. We all have our bad habits.” I
would be doing something about the smoking, but I didn’t need to get into it
right then. She turned her head toward me and gave me a grin.

“Not all my
habits are bad.”

I smiled despite my unease.

“There’s a few I’m quite fond of,” I
quoted her. I stepped closer and brushed her hair away from her forehead. I
liked touching her. I liked to remind myself she was alive. To my relief, she
closed her eyes and enjoyed my touch.

“I only do it when I’m stressed out. I
took it up after I left the hospital. I haven’t had one in months.” She turned
away and took another drag from her cigarette.

“What’s the
real reason you didn’t call?” My fear surged. “Did you… change your mind? About
us?”

She glanced at me over her shoulder
before pointedly staring off into the night. She took two more drags from her
cigarette.

“I don’t know
what us
is
.”

My eyes were burning. The smoke, maybe.

“It could be whatever you want it to
be, Livvie. Or it could be nothing. It’s up to you.” I knew the moment the
words left my mouth they were a lie. She scowled at me.

“No, Caleb,
it’s not so simple. It’s been a year. A fucking year! You never gave me the
chance to be angry with you. You just disappeared and left me to worry that
maybe you were dead. I had the FBI up my ass and the whole time—the whole time—I
defended you. I defended what you did to me because I loved you and you’d just
risked everything to save me. And now you walk back into my life.” She wiped at
the tears on her cheeks. “And goddammit I can’t bear the thought of being
without you again. But there’s all this other shit too. All the things I never
let myself feel because I didn’t want to admit that maybe Reed and Sloan were
right. Maybe I can’t love you.”

Adrenaline coursed through my veins as
my dormant and underutilized emotions were accosted.

“Please,” I heard myself whisper. I
didn’t even know what I was asking for. Perhaps it was only that I wanted her
to stop saying those things. Her words hurt me. They hurt me more than I
thought anything could hurt. They hurt nearly as much as the memory of Rafiq’s
eyes going dead. My own words taunted me.

“I did think it was really cute when you said you loved me
though.”

Livvie, in her infinite capacity for
compassion, put out her cigarette and wrapped her arms around my waist. I took
the lifeline she offered and held her in my arms. I might have squeezed her too
hard. I didn’t want to let her go. I couldn’t.

“Caleb,” she gasped. I loosened my grip
but didn’t let her go. “I don’t want you to disappear again. Please, promise me
you won’t.”

I searched blindly for my voice and had
to clear my throat before I could speak.

“I promise,
Livvie. But I… I don’t know what to do. I’ve never been here before.”

“Neither have I, Caleb. And we’re
seriously more fucked up than anyone else I know.” She laughed morosely. “But
you have to give me time. You have to let me be mad at you. You have to promise
that no matter what I say or do, you’ll forgive me. You’ll wait for me to let
it go.”

So many emotions and I couldn’t let
them out. I settled for stating the obvious.

“Livvie, I’ll
forgive you whatever the hell you want. You don’t need my forgiveness; you never
have to ask for it. It’s yours, Livvie. Anything that’s mine to give is already
yours.” I placed my fingers in her hair and tilted her face up to mine. Her
lips were salty with tears, her mouth tasted like smoke, but beyond that there
was just Livvie. I needed Livvie.

In my best interpretation of every
superhero movie I’d ever seen (and I hadn’t seen too many by that time), I
lifted Livvie into my arms and carried her inside. She kindly gave me
directions to her bedroom. We made love on her pastel-yellow sheets amidst a
ridiculous amount of throw pillows.

***

Later, after we’d finished having sex,
Livvie engaged me in conversation. It reminded me of Mexico. We had always been
better in the dark. I’m going to spare you and, admittedly, myself the agony of
the details of what happened after we finished making love. You know what
Livvie went through. You know the truth about my past. After that night, I knew
it too.

I learned my name had been James Cole.
I had been born to an American named Elizabeth Cole and a man known only as
Vlad. I was five when I’d been kidnapped and sent to live as a whore. My mother
killed herself when I was twelve. I couldn’t help but take notice I’d been
taken under Rafiq’s care around the same time. I wondered if he’d known my
mother was dead when he’d decided to “rescue” me.