TEN
RAPT
“People disappear all the time.”
—Diana Gabaldon, Outlander
“Okay . . . it’s the last one.” Joy stretched with a lenghty sigh after she’d dropped a box full of my collection of troll dolls in the middle of March’s living room, next to a haphazard stack of twenty or so other boxes, half of which were filled to the brim with books and comics—all in all, I had enough muscular chests in there to populate my own gym. To be honest, March had carried the biggest part of my treasure, but Joy had insisted on giving us a hand, chiefly to inspect my new lair.
My eyes darted to March, who stood by my side as Joy inspected his lone Chesterfield and the Ikea floor lamp standing right next to it. He looked a little pale at the sight of the mountain of stuff we’d moved in. I needed to organize it. Quick.
“You don’t have a lot of furniture,” she told him, trailing a blue-painted nail along the back of his only dining chair. “But your place is okay.”
He welcomed the compliment with a nod. “Thank you.”
My lips pinched to stifle a laugh. “Okay” indeed. A two-thousand-square-foot penthouse—three thousand including the mezzanine—was absolutely . . . okay. And don’t even get me started on the terrace. March had yet to do anything with it, but it had “Island’s Barbecue Heaven” written all over it.
I gave March’s hand a light squeeze and rolled up the sleeves of my sweater dress. “Okay, I need to start putting all this stuff in my closet.”
“Will you need help, biscuit?” March asked.
Before I could answer him, Joy clasped her hands. “I’ll do it! This place needs a little mess!”
Avoiding March’s anxious gaze, I successfully turned my wince into a smile. “Um, maybe we can just put the boxes away for now. I’ll open them later.”
He shook his head. “No, no . . . if you want to open them, take your time.”
“Oh, those are so cute! Where did you get them?”
Like raptors and four-year-olds, Joy moved fast. Too fast for either me or March to stop her as she leaned closer to his bookcase and examined the collection of African tin cars lined on one of the shelves. She poked one. March’s Adam’s apple rolled in his throat. “It’s a little boring to just sort them by color. You could do something stylish and—”
“Oh no, no, please!”
A blue tin car in hand, Joy stared at me as if my face had just melted off to reveal that I’d been David Hasselhoff all along. “I just wanted to move them a little,” she said with a hesitant smile. Her gaze set on March as she placed the car back on the shelf. Between two red ones. “I’m sorry . . . I thought they were just for decoration.”
I caught the twitch in his fingers as he fought the urge to curl them. “It’s all right, you can . . . watch them, if you want.”
The car was no longer in its rightful place; there was something awkward hanging in the air as a result, and thank Raptor Jesus, Joy felt it. She walked up to me and pulled me into a crushing hug. “Vince is probably gonna let himself starve if I don’t get back to toss a pizza in the microwave.” She squeezed me harder and whispered, “I’ll call you tonight for a debrief.”
“Okay.”
She released me to gauge March with wary cornflower eyes. “Do you Instagram your food?”
He cocked a perplexed eyebrow. “I’m . . . afraid I don’t have Instagram.”
“Okay.” She smacked her tongue pensively. “I’ll learn to tolerate you.”
When his lips quirked, she added, “in a hundred years.”
•••
After Joy was gone, March and I contemplated all my boxes in silence for a good minute. Gerald stood in a corner, looking almost dead in the ashen morning light pouring from the floor-to-ceiling windows. I got the impression that he was staring at me weirdly again, and all of a sudden, I missed my old apartment on West 81st Street, physically. I leaned against March and took his hand, seeking his warmth to soothe that indistinct ache.
“Do you miss your apartment?” he said softly.
Was I that easy to read? Probably. For him anyway. “Yes,” I admitted. My memories were there, my old life. Everything before March, before Dries and Anies. But Vince-the-cutest-photographer-in-the-world had moved in, set up a studio in my old bedroom, and I could never recover that innocence again. It was time to move on.
“I’m sorry for all that mess. I’ll get it in order.”
“Don’t worry—”
I shifted to face him and stood on tiptoe, silencing him with a light kiss. “I know it’s hard for you too.” Caressing his jaw, I went on. “It’s a lot to take in. You’ve got boxes everywhere, we need to get a second dining chair, and Joy touched your tin cars. Plus, you’re worried because you know I’m gonna forget half the rules in the welcome guide, and Gerald is pissed that I’m moving in. I think he’s somatizing.”
As if to confirm my diagnosis, a soft thud drew our attention to the gnarled silhouette at the other end of the room. A shriveled green lump rolled across the hardwood floor to stop at our feet.
I buried my face in my hands and sighed. “He hates me.”
March pressed a kiss to my hair. “No. It’s nothing personal. Just the stress, I think. I suppose it’s a lot of change . . . for the three of us.”
I swallowed. I realized my eyes felt hot, but I wasn’t sure if I was crying because I couldn’t quite yet let go of the past, or because the future felt too vast, too bright to see past the blurry outline of the life to come, and that scared me.
“Kidnap me somewhere,” I rasped.
At first, he said nothing. But then my feet left the floor as he hauled me over his shoulder caveman-style. And he did . . . after he had reorganized his tin cars and cleared the living room.
•••
March adjusted his black leather gloves before taking the Mercedes’s wheel, and I loved that. Curled in the passenger’s seat, ready to roll in my old Assassin’s Creed hoodie, I watched the slow movement of his hands, listened to the leather squeaking, like that first time in my bedroom, when I’d been so sure he’d break my arms, but instead, he’d ended up supporting me above the bowl while I threw up lunch’s BLT and some Dr. Pepper.
Good times.
I skimmed through his phone’s playlist as the engine roared in the deserted garage. My fingers paused on a particular track, and a grin tugged at my cheeks as Jack Black’s voice filled the car. Roadie? Yup, that sounded appropriate.
“You like Tenacious D? I always figured you only listened to country.”
The wheel spun easily in his hands, and a patch of cloudy sky came in sight. “I’m open-minded.”
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” I shot back.
“I appreciate the reference, however approximate the citation,” March noted as the sedan glided along the Hudson—I made a mental note that the gods were on our side, complicit to our escapade: traffic was unusually light in Manhattan, even for a Sunday. Then again, it was lunchtime and the weekend after Christmas too.
I took on a low, raspy voice to answer him. “I have approximate knowledge of many things.”
He raised an eyebrow at me in the mirror; I figured he wouldn’t get that one. He wasn’t the type to watch Adventure Time—or Cartoon Network for that matter. I would have to convert him.
“So, where are you taking me?” I probed, all the while checking the signs. I-95, George Washington Bridge. Teterboro then.
His lips quirked, dangerous dark blue eyes looking straight ahead at the road. “The final destination is always a surprise for my clients.”
That little shiver, the millisecond of doubt about his intentions that made my heart rate pick up . . . I loved that too.
ISLAND AND MARCH WILL RETURN
FOR ONE LAST RIDE OF GLORY IN: