Author's note:
Not a lot of sex in this chapter, if that's your motivation for reading, you can stop after the first sex scene.
There is a nightmare/flashback that may be upsetting to some readers, along with discussions of PTSD, depression, and substance abuse. If this content is bothersome to you, please resume reading at the next chapter.
Thank you again for all your views, votes, and comments, both public and private. I appreciate it.
##
Something was wrong.
I could feel it.
Something about this situation was not right, and I didn't fucking like it.
I stood in the hallway outside the door to my hotel suite, straining to hear, smell, SENSE whatever was making my inner alarm ring like the Big Ben bells. There was nothing, no sounds except for the streets. No blood on the bland white popcorn-textured walls nor footprints on the bland gray industrial carpet.
Dammit.
I slid my left hand into my sportcoat and slowly, quietly, removed the Remington Recon Commander. It was a far cry from the Glock I carried in Minnesota, by design. Every time I touched a Glock, I smelled my burning house, and my blood pressure spiked.
Using my slowly healing right hand to open the door hurt, a lot. It was a strain to lift my hand and the twist to turn the keys spiked pain all the way from my elbow to my head. Even holding the arm still in a sling all day, the action still caused an ache.
I pushed the door silently open just far enough to squeeze through into the entryway, closed it silently behind me, and aimed around the cool, dim suite. No one in the kitchenette.
Into the hallway again, and I saw why I'd felt during was off. My hotel room had an intruder.
Part of me was excited. Part was sadly resigned.
All of me was glad I didn't have to shoot anyone. I'd had enough of that for a lifetime.
I sighed and slipped the bulky forty-five back into my holster, and looked down at the naked gothic woman kneeling in front of my bed. In the curtained blue dimness of late afternoon, her milk-white skin practically glowed. Black hair skimmed her bare shoulders when she lifted her head to smile up at me. "Hey."
"Hey," I replied, weariness overriding my surprise. "How are you here? Why are you here?"
"You said you were staying at a Mariotte near your bank. I knew the name of your bank, found one with a Mariotte property with suites nearby. Bussed down, I don't know how to drive."
"I mean, like, how did you get in?"
I let the guy at the front desk squeeze my tits," she said nonchalantly. "Told him I was your girlfriend and had come down to surprise you. He felt me up, then let me in."
I raised my eyebrows at her. "You shouldn't have done that."
"I don't mind, they've been aching to be touched."
The tits in question were on display, slight pale swells, capped with prominently erect pink nipples. I averted my eyes from her bare body, walked around the beds, opened the curtain to let gold afternoon sun in.
The typical late-day rainstorm had streaked the windows with moisture, and I opened the patio door slightly admit hot, humid air, the noises of cars and pedestrians on the street below. "Not what I meant," I said quietly, looking out at the city.
I heard her feet on the carpet before I felt her, hands on my shoulders, body pressed against my back, lips on the nape of my neck.
"I want to be with you, Gary. I've had a month, more to think about it. I missed you when you were dead, when I thought you were dead. I was inconsolable. And then knowing you're alive but gone... That made it worse."
"I'm sorry," was all I could think to say.
"Remember when we talked about leaving that door open a crack? Not shutting it completely? I want to try. I want to try being in a relationship with you."
"I'm not coming back to Minnesota or Wisconsin, Jess. I'm staying here."
She stepped away, sat down in the office chair at the hotel-provided desk, seemingly oblivious to her own nudity. "You think I've got anything to tie me to Milwaukee?"
"You're going to move across the United States to a place where you don't have family, friends, a job, or any kind of support structure just to be with me? That's absurd."
"I've got nothing to tie me to Milwaukee. I'll do it. I'll make it work. Gary, I miss you. I really, really fucking miss you. I didn't get to walk through the parks with you this summer, cuz you were dead. I didn't get to do it this winter because you were gone, and it broke my heart. I keep thinking back on that weekend and I remember being happy. I know you were too, cuz we stayed in touch, even when... Even when things were bad."
I sighed. "Get up, get dressed. I'm hungry, and I'm getting something to eat."
One side of her face twitched up in that intelligent predator smirk I remembered so damn well. "Sure you can't think of anything you want to do first?" She stretched and her fingers wandered delicately down her milk-white skin towards the precise triangle of black pubic hair over her slit.
"Yeah."
Jessie made a pouty-face at me and rose to grab her bags from the bathroom.
###
Dinner was Cuban food, some thick meaty stew with rice being served out of a truck, and we wandered the city streets as the sun went down, looking at the architecture, so different from anywhere we'd lived. Jessie, now dressed in a denim skirt and black tank and sandals, kept skipping off down the sidewalk, oil-slick hair bouncing, to investigate some building or attraction or store, them bounding back to show me what she'd found.
I remembered what I'd loved about her - her intensity, infectious, almost childlike energy and desire for exploration, her intelligent conversation. We sat at a wire table by the food truck to eat, since one bum arm doesn't lend itself to holding a plate full of stew while walking, and she'd asked about my job and what it was like here and how my case had gone in Minneapolis.
I'd answered as warm breeze had stirred her black hair around her gold-lit face, and her soft, almost sheepish smile had brought a similar smile to my lips. Her laughter was infectious and joyful, and I remembered how giggly she was in bed, and the whole conversation made me forget the ache in my mangled arm, and the gnawing pain of missing Tori.
Months with no contact between us now, and the thought of her not being a part of my life, for the rest of my life felt like a spike through my heart. She was gone. Forever.
I'd lost her.
And she was never coming back.
Miami seemed to come to life as the sun set, and Jessie and I wandered back to the hotel through the concrete, glass, and steel canyons. The people seemed happier and younger, the cars flashier and louder, the streets more vibrant. Music and lights spilled from storefronts, and I wished I could freeze the moment that Jessie looked back at me while illuminated in pink-purple light, because it was the first time in a long time I'd been happy, and that particular second seemed perfect as it flitted through eternity, here and then lost.
We circled back to my hotel, sat on the cement steps outside, and traded a bottle of Wild Turkey back and forth, pouring some over the ice rapidly melting in the bottom of paper cups we'd gotten at the corner store where we'd gotten the booze. The slick, spicy liquor seemed to be the perfect dessert for the evening. Iconic, no better cap to a warm, humid night out.
"So how is Milwaukee?" I asked, filling the uncomfortable silence that had arisen.
"Still cold. Like five feet of snow. Way different than here." Jessie stretched and yawned. As night had fallen, the aired had cooled somewhat, and when she put her arms down and pulled her legs back in from her catlike-stretch, she snuggled up against my side and held out her cup for more whiskey.
"You're not gonna wanna go back," I told her jokingly. I instantly regretted my words.
Her face slid against my good arm as she tilted her head up to look at me, eyes taking a moment to focus on mine. "I already don't."
"Just wait till you see some of the insects down here. Mosquitoes the size of Kaiser rolls. And the spiders are why I carry a gun, not terrorists."
She giggled against my side, and I smiled, sighed, looked out at the street as people and cars streamed past rock and pop and rap and ethnic music blending together into one blurry soundtrack to the black and neon night.
"Can we just stop?" Jessie asked softly.
"Huh?"
"Just stop moving. Stop time. I wanna live forever tonight. Right now."
I chuckled. "If I had any powers of time manipulation, I'd use them elsewhere." Sensing my verbal gaffe after I'd made it, I recovered somewhat. "But this is a beautiful night. With a beautiful girl in my arm. Good way to spend it."
Jessie hummed happily and snuggled closer.
###
The gothic girl showered and brushed her teeth first when we returned to my suite, and I shrugged off her humorous attempts to coax me under the water with her. She exited the bathroom with a towel under her armpits and another wrapped around the top of her head, and I left her like that, taking my turn in the scalding water. The pounding heat felt good, like penance for my confusion over what to do with Jessie. I deserved this burning discomfort.
I scrubbed my teeth viciously, staring myself down in the mirror. What the fuck was I doing? Why wasn't Tori with me instead? With her in the room outside, everything would make sense. If know what to do.
I wouldn't feel so numb and dead and lost.
The suite was dark when I exited the bathroom, lit only in harsh whites and blues from the muted TV. The patio door was open, letting cool night air through the screen, music faintly audible from the streets below.
Jessie rose from the bed with a rustle of body on sheets and mattress, moved to stand before me. She'd combed her hair after removing the towel, and it hung in thick strands around her face and freckled shoulders. "Do you want me in your bed tonight?"
I very much did. I wanted to drown myself in her, in the yearning, straining distraction of wet bodies moving muscularly together towards a violently clenching release of stress and tension. I wanted to be ok with that. I wanted to want that.
But no matter how much I wanted it, the thought of pinning the elfin girl down and taking my pleasure from her seemed like a betrayal of my absent soulmate. Tori was the last woman I'd been with, and I kinda wanted to keep it that way
I knew it was illogical, but it...just...was.
"I'll sleep on the couch, you take the bed."
"Not with your arm you're not talking the couch. I'll take it."
"Nope."
