Ripped (28 page)

They talked about people I didn’t know, situations I couldn’t relate to.

They laughed about guns jamming, about trying to dump bodies in frozen lakes, about a certain Russian client whose accent was so thick that Sable had misheard the intended target and nearly killed the wrong person.

“You and your code,” said Sable, tipping the beer into her mouth. “If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was calling him back to tell him that I wasn’t going to take the job, because the guy didn’t fit our profile, I would have blown his fucking head off.”

Cade laughed. “The thing was, though, the name of the real target didn’t sound
anything like
what you heard.”

I personally didn’t really think this was funny. It was kind of horrifying to me. If Cade wanted to have conversations like this all the time, then I wasn’t the person to do it with. I wondered if he’d be happier with someone like Sable. Someone who really understood him.

But then I wasn’t really sure why I was even considering the idea that Cade would be with me. I guessed that it had seemed much more plausible when we were alone together, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to worry that all Cade and I had was hot sex. We had nothing in common, and there was nothing that was going to keep us together.

Hell, I didn’t even know his favorite movie or television show.

At one point, Sable went to the bathroom, and in her absence, it was quiet.

I nursed my beer, feeling awkward. It suddenly seemed as if I didn’t belong here at all.

Cade eyed me. “Did I do something?”

“What?” I said.

“I piss you off in some way?”

“No. What are you talking about?”

He set his beer down on the table, and he talked to it, not me. “You just come to your senses, then? Realize that there’s nothing about the two of us together that makes any sense?”

That stung. I hugged myself. “I guess we don’t make sense, do we?”

And then Sable came back from the bathroom. She smiled at us. “Who wants more beer?”

“I think I’m going to bed,” I muttered. I got up took my beer to the sink to dump out the rest of it. I stole a glance at Cade. He still wasn’t looking at me. Fine. Whatever. I went back the hallway, away from both of them.

* * *

Cade

Sable handed me another beer.

I popped the lid off and took a long drink. I was in a bad mood, even though I should have seen things coming with Shell. I knew she wouldn’t want anything to do with me eventually, but things had seemed so good the night before. I didn’t know why she wanted her own room now. Didn’t make any sense to just suddenly decide she didn’t want to sleep with me. Sure, the beds were both narrow, but she hadn’t known that when she said she wanted to sleep alone. Besides, I wasn’t above dismantling the bed, taking it down the hall, and sticking them both together. Problem solved.

But I wasn’t going to suggest that and make myself look like a pathetic needy idiot. She was over it. I was fine with that.

I just really hoped she wasn’t pregnant, because that was going to make everything even harder.

It would be easier if I could take care of Ice, drop her off at her apartment, and never see her again. If she was pregnant, then the pain of all of it would be doubled, and it would linger, and I would think about it…

“What’s up with you?” said Sable. “Ice really get to you?”

I nodded slowly. “Ice. Yeah. I need to figure out what to do about him. I should probably go back to D.C. Hunt him down. Take him out.”

“Really?” She raised her eyebrows. “From what I remember, he was like your brother from another mother. You two were tight.”

I sighed. “You can’t be tight with Ice. He’s not wired that way.”

“Still. Whatever he’s done, I can’t believe that you’re thinking about killing him. What did he do?”

“He, uh, he just won’t let it go. And he’s got this obsession with Shell now, and I don’t know if he’ll give that up. I might have to kill him just so that she’ll be safe.”

She gave me a small smile. “You were always saving people. You saved me more than once.”

“I do what I can. Doesn’t balance the scales or anything. I’ve killed more than I’ve saved.”

She looked into her beer, nodding slowly. “And Shell? She’s special?”

I shook my head. “She’s… I don’t think so. I think it’s just sex. Hot sex.
Really
hot sex, but… no, nothing special.”

“Oh, too bad,” she said, but she didn’t actually sound that upset about it.

I furrowed my brow at her. “Sable, you’re a woman.”

“Yeah, last I checked.”

“So, what would make you—” I shook my head. “Never mind.”

“You can ask me.”

“Nah,” I said. “I realized it wouldn’t make any difference. You’re not like other women. There’s no way you’d do the same thing as they do.”

She looked down at her beer. “Yeah. I’m different.”

“Look, if I go back to D.C., then would you mind babysitting her?”

“I’m not sure she really likes me, Ripper.”

I sat back, taking a swig of my beer. “What are you talking about? She doesn’t even know you.”

“I just get that sense from her.” Sable picked at her beer label. “Look, why don’t you just lie low for a bit? Stay a week or so. Maybe Ice will forget all about you. You can call him in five days or something. See where his head’s at.”

I nodded. “All right. That makes sense.” But if Shell was feeling cold towards me already, it was going to be a pretty long week.

* * *

Shell

Days passed, and Cade didn’t talk to me. I was confused, but I thought maybe it had something to do with Sable. I had thought that he had no idea that she was in love with him, but now I wasn’t so sure. They seemed to always be together, laughing and talking and having a grand old time.

Except occasionally, I’d come on Cade talking on the phone. One day, I heard snatches of his conversation. “…no, I need someone to go in there and get rid of the bodies. I’d do it, but I’m not in the area… Of course I’m going to pay you.”

I gathered that he was calling one of his other hitman friends to clear away the bodies of the guys Ice had hired. The ones who were left at his house.

Another day, I heard him setting up work with contractors to come and repair the glass walls that had bullet holes in them.

But the rest of the time, he was with Sable, and he seemed so relaxed and happy with her.

I spent my days working on comic strips. I had missed a day, so I put up a late strip, and then I made enough strips that they would auto-post for the next three weeks. I had never been that far ahead, because I usually procrastinated a lot. Thing was, it was nice to dive into my made-up world. In my comic, the only problem that anyone had was a hangover or a lack of a romantic connection. It seemed simpler there, though those problems used to define me. Now, I was in fear for my life, and that dwarfed everything.

Well, everything except the fact that I wasn’t sure if I was pregnant or not.

And the fact that I missed Cade. I would lie in bed at night, remembering his hands on me, his voice in my ear, the way he expertly touched me, the way he ordered me to come. Damn it, but I was going to miss him for the rest of my life. I was pretty sure that I was never going to have sex that was so good ever again.

I was conflicted about the pregnancy thing. On the one had, obviously everything was better if I wasn’t pregnant.

But some part of me—some irrational part of me—wanted his baby, even if I didn’t have him. I imagined a little boy with Cade’s eyes. I would be there for him in the way that his own mother hadn’t been able to be. I would protect him and love him and watch him grow up. And even if I didn’t have Cade, I would have a little piece of him forever and always.

I knew it was insane. I knew that I’d never be able to make it work. But I still wanted it, almost yearned for it.

I found myself Googling pregnancy symptoms, even though I thought it was far too early to have any idea whether I was pregnant or not.

But through my online searching, I stumbled across trying-to-conceive (TTC) forums, and I began to learn all kinds of things about getting pregnant that I’d never really understood before. For instance, apparently, there were only a few days during the month when I could actually get pregnant. I had always thought it was more like a week. I thought that it was right before ovulation and right afterward. But I found out that after ovulation, the egg died pretty quickly if it wasn’t fertilized, so it was actually better to have lots of sex before ovulating because then the sperm would have time to swim all the way up and be right there when the egg was released.

Sperm could live inside your body for days.

I found that slightly odd to think of. That Cade had come inside me only a few days ago, and little squirmy microscopic carriers of his DNA were still alive inside my body. It could have been creepy, but it wasn’t. It was nice and kind of hot.

Of course, Cade and I weren’t talking.

I mean, we were polite to each other. We said things like, “Pass the milk,” and “Good night.” But we hadn’t had an honest-to-goodness conversation. I kept thinking about having one, but I didn’t know what to say.

He was always with Sable.

And I began to think that maybe he and Sable used to have a thing. He had thought it was over, but when he saw her, he remembered how much he was into her. I couldn’t forget about how his eyes had lit up at the sight of her, after all. And so then he’d had that stupid conversation with me over the beer, telling me that he and I didn’t make sense, all so he could go back to her.

I didn’t think he was fucking her, because I always saw them coming out of separate rooms in the morning, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he was sneaking back to his room so as not to rub it in my face.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that. At first it made me sad, and it really hurt, because I felt rejected by him.

But the more that I started to read about how many days past ovulation I might be and whether or not I would already start having to pee a lot or if my breasts would be tender or if I’d have implantation bleeding, the more I started to get angry.

This man had unprotected sex with me over and over, and then he just dropped me to hook back up with his ex?

There hadn’t been any promises between Cade and me, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fucked up.

I resolved to confront him about it.

But the morning that I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, he wasn’t awake.

Instead, Sable was the only person in the kitchen. She was making fresh-squeezed orange juice from the orange tree in the yard. She had this heavy-duty contraption that she always used for it. “Good morning,” she said, sounding cheery.

“Where’s Cade?” I said.

“Cade? Oh, you mean Ripper.” She picked up half an orange and stuck it it the contraption. “He was up late last night trying to figure out what he was going to do if Ice doesn’t back off. He’ll probably sleep in.” She yanked down a metal lever, which pushed down on the orange, squeezing all the juice into a container where it was collected.

I folded my arms over my chest. “Up late figuring stuff out. Right. Were you helping him?”

She picked up another orange. “Not really. I would have helped, but he’s never much interested in anyone else’s ideas. He’s convinced he’s brilliant. The hell of it is, he’s right.” She laughed a little.

I didn’t laugh. “Look, are you and him… is something going on between you two?”

She set down the orange and looked at me with sad eyes. “Oh, sweetie.”

“Don’t do that.” I pointed at her. “Don’t feel sorry for me. If you and Cade are—”

“Nothing,” she said. “We’re nothing. Only friends. That’s it.”

I wasn’t sure I believed her.

She put an arm around me. “He does this all the time. He seems to be completely unaware of the effect that he has on women. He just doesn’t get it. He thinks that everyone is as unaffected as he is, and then…” She shook her head. “Trust me, I know how you’re feeling.”

I pushed her away. It was worse than the two of them being together, suddenly. Now, I was just part of a pattern, a string of women that he left in his wake. I felt like an idiot. I sat down at the table, and suddenly—I started to cry.

“Oh, sweetie, don’t—don’t cry.” Sable tried to hug me.

I pushed her off. “So, you slept with him too.”

She sat down opposite me at the table. “It was a long time ago. It never meant anything to him. I think he was incapable of noticing whether it meant anything to me.”

I shook my head, feeling sick. Which made me wonder if it was an early pregnancy symptom, although the TTC boards seemed to say that usually didn’t show up until you were about a month along, so it probably wasn’t—

I got up from the table. “I need to get out of here.”

“I don’t think you should do that.”

“I just… I need to drive,” I said. “You have a car. Give me the keys.”