“And besides, what we did is more than enough for me.” Now he smiled, though his eyes remained grave. “I’ll always remember it—and you.”
A cold wave of dread rippled through her, replacing the warmth.
“Do you have to go?” she asked after a moment.
“Yeah, I do.”
Mels reached over and pulled the blankets around her body. “When?”
“Soon.”
“Do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Tell me before you do. Don’t let me find out because I can’t get ahold of you. Promise me that.”
“If I can, I will—”
“Not good enough. Swear to me that you’ll tell me—because I can’t…I don’t want to live with the uncertainty. That’ll be hell for me.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Okay. I’ll let you know. But I need something in return.”
“What?”
“Stay with me tonight. I want to wake up with you.”
Her body eased, her heart unclenching. “Me, too.”
When he held his arms out, she nestled in against him, putting her head against his chest, hearing the beat of his heart as his hands circled her back, and rubbed slow and even. Talking about sex and departures made her anxious; the contact, however, calmed her down to the point where she began to drift off.
Unfortunately, she had a feeling he wasn’t doing the same, and wished there was some way to have him relax. But it appeared this was yet another thing about them that was a one-way street.
“Matthias?”
“Yeah?”
I love you, she finished in her head. I love you even though it doesn’t make sense.
“After you go, can you ever come back?”
“I don’t want to lie to you,” he said hoarsely.
“Then I guess you’d better not answer that.”
Matthias turned his face into her hair and kissed her. “I won’t leave you hanging.”
Oh, but he would. After this was all over, she had a feeling she was going to be looking for him in any crowd, on every sidewalk, around each corner.
For the rest of her life.
Loss just plain sucked, she thought. And one would assume that as you got older, along with the other skills that you developed whether you wanted to or not, you’d get better at it.
Instead, it just seemed to kick up all the full list of things that you’d been forced by fate to leave behind: The fact that he was going to peel out of her life like a car pulling away from a curb made her feel as though her father had died yesterday.
Mels shifted her arms so she could hug him as well. And of course, the instant her hands made contact with his body, he stiffened—but screw that. He was going to have to let her touch him in some way.
Battered though he was…scarred though his skin remained…he was beautiful to her.
“You’ve ruined me for other men, you know,” she said.
He laughed harshly. “Not unless you like the Frankenstein types—”
Mels jacked her head up. “Stop it. Just—stop it. You can’t keep me from giving a crap about you, and you’re just going to have to suck it up if I want to put my hands on you. We clear?”
In the dim light that came from the bathroom, he started to smile, but then lost the expression, a strange emotion filtering through his features.
In a low voice, he said, “You’re an angel, you know that?”
Mels rolled her eyes and put her head back on his pec. “Hardly. You haven’t heard me curse yet?”
“Who says angels can’t have potty mouths.”
“No way.”
“Oh, and when have you met one lately?”
For some stupid reason, an image of Jim Heron jumping forward and putting his own body in the way of that ceiling panel shot into her head.
Unless he’d shown up at that very moment, she might have been killed.
“Actually, maybe you have a point,” she said on a shiver. “I could see how they’re out there…I really could.”
31
“Pablo, are you kidding me?” The woman jacked forward in the chair. “This is…blond.”
The inflection in that high-pitched voice made it sound as if someone had taken a dump on the crown her head.
As opposed to turning her tacky-ass bright red hair into a yellow that perfectly complemented her chemically peeled complexion.
Frankly, Devina was a little offended. The shit was hot.
Staring out of Pablo’s eyes, the demon put the man’s hands on his hips and decided that being in a service industry didn’t suit her. What a pain. In. The. Ass. Bitch had been thirty minutes late for the appointment, had wanted a soda while she processed—like this place was a f**king restaurant?—and then had whined about the temperature of the rinse at the sink.
And now this attitude.
“I tink you vill like eet when eet’s blown dry.”
The voice Devina spoke with was smooth and slightly accented with a no-way-to-place South American-ish variant. Then again, Pablo was a self-invention, apparently, a human who, much like she did, chose to clothe himself in ways that made him better than he really looked, sounded, and came from.
He was actually from Jersey.
She’d Googled him at his desk when things had been cooking on that head, because there had been nothing else to do—and God knew talking to the client was enough to make her want to have Pablo shoot himself in the head.
Maybe she should have let a couple of the assistants stay? Nah, then she’d have had to deal with them as well.
“Let mee vork viz eet,” she said though Pablo’s mouth as she ran the man’s hands through the long, wet tangles. “I vork wiz eet. You see.”
The client went on a tirade, reminding Devina of some of those nutjobs from the Bridezillas marathon she’d caught on WE TV the other night—and also of why she could never be a lesbian. Jim Heron’s flavor of swinging-dick, macho-bullshit double cross was easier to put up with than this inexorable, soul-sucking, passive-aggressive melodrama:
“…blahblahblah! Blah-blah! Blah blah blahblahblahblah blah blah…”
The blabbering kept up for a while, but like all deluges, eventually the shit stopped. “Fine,” the bitch said. “But I’d better like it.”
Devina smiled with the stylist’s mouth and picked up a brush and hair dryer. Using the kind of long, even strokes she did her own hair with, she set about straightening the semi-curly lengths. As she worked, she thought back to a month ago, when she had come in for her own appointment on time—Pablo was the best in town, after all—only to find this nasty-ass woman had barged in, all on fire about the cut she had been given. Pablo had deferred to the loud noise because there had been no other choice, plopping her into the chair, hitting the hair with a spray bottle of water, getting out the scissors.