Golden Burn (Songs of Crime #1)

18. Odin

18

Odin

‘Cold Blooded Creatures’ - AlunaGeorge (Feat. Bryson Tiller)

H arriet twists herself on the bed so she’s facing me as I stand by the bedside table. She positions herself like a painting of Aphrodite resting on a linen cloud and she has no idea how much the sight of her in those thin pajamas is pushing me close to the edge.

Fucking hell.

Her body pressed against my chest, her sweet breath tickling my jaw, the way her fingers pressed into the skin of my face. Not an ounce of fear, or disgust, or even hate.

There’s a voice telling me to leave. To pack a bag and stay with Ford and Dom. This isn’t moving in the direction I thought it was going to go. She doesn’t seem to be the same person she was in Scotland who attacked me with a knife. She’s evolving, shedding the part of herself that was frightened and embracing her new role with vigor.

No, you idiot. She’s embracing you .

She can’t possibly come to like me. She’s clearly had too much to drink. Though the way she openly stares me up and down like a lioness ready to mate is downright sinful. If we were any other people at any other time, we’d fuck like we were going to die in the morning.

“Are you coming to bed shirtless again?” she asks quietly, almost a purr.

I should shut her down. I need to shut this down. But when she looks at me like that. Like I’m something she wants to explore. Like I’m not a monster, but a man she could trust with her body, her pleasure. I want to give her what she wants.

Maybe I’m the one that’s had too much to drink.

“I don’t normally wear pants, either. Do you have a problem with that?” I ask and start to unbutton my damp shirt.

She gulps. “No, not at all.”

My fingers move with a purposeful slowness. In my periphery, I notice how her lips part slightly and her legs rub together. I know my body is appealing, but when she looks as though she’s desperate for me to hurry, I feel like a God. My own desire flickers to life. An intense heat that ignites some part of me that seems like it’s dormant for centuries.

The final button slips out, and I peel off my shirt slowly. Her startled inhale is so pure it sends a shiver skating down my arms.

Imagine what she’ll sound like when you press into her.

I shake my head, dispelling the aroused thoughts. I reach for the belt around my waist and begin to undo it. Harriet purposely glances at the ceiling and allows me the opportunity to study her profile.

Just like a few hours ago, I’m struck by the appearance of innocence she wears, like a painting. I’m still fuming that she made such a stupid decision this afternoon. The panic that seized me doesn’t disappear quickly. She has no idea what I have dragged her into. No idea how brutal this world can be. She’s seen the tiniest of portions and she seems to understand it all. Each hour I’m with her, there’s more and more pressure to spill my guts about what happened to my former wife just so I can scare some sense into her. But when Harriet spoke her name out loud. It was like she kicked through my ribs and squashed my heart.

Gen…

In this moment, sitting before my future wife, I realize that I have mourned my past wife for longer than I ever knew her.

Four years together. Ten years apart.

Soul-crushingly brutal.

It still feels like a betrayal to be happy when she’s not around. To smile when she no longer can. And no amount of time can lessen the guilt. Nor the words of a therapist who speaks only because I paid them too.

Harriet, however, is getting under the sticky layer of tar I slathered over myself almost a decade ago. I know she sees it, and instead of being put off by the effort, she subconsciously picks at it every time we speak.

As she sits before me now—glazed blue eyes, tousled black hair and rosy cheeks. Smooth legs, round breasts, and collarbones that look good enough to eat—the harshness, the murkiness of my mistakes tattooed on my skin seem to not matter.

“I’m sorry about what I did tonight,” she whispers, knocking me from my head.

My hands pause their work on my pants. “Yes, well. I’m still trying to figure out whether to forgive you or punish you.”

She smiles despite the warning and bites on the fingers of her right hand, her eyes trained on the surrounding jungle immersed in twilight.

“My mom used to call me Etta the Bull because I would run head first into danger without ever noticing. I got hit by a car when I was ten. I raced after a dog that had escaped and broke my ankle when it got crushed under the wheel.”

I remain still, poised on the edge of the bed.

She laughs, a memory coming to life. “One time, my mom found me asleep in one of the recovery cages with a very cranky mastiff. I remember him barking so loudly when he was taken in for surgery to be desexed. I remember him licking my hair and the movement of his stomach beneath my cheek. I remember the fear on my mom’s face. But she never got angry at me. She just spoke calmly to me about how to make better choices, and I still always made the wrong ones.” She sighs deeply, mournfully. “I think I was so na?ve because she was always at my back, protecting me. I was the wings, and she was the body, sturdy and supportive. But God… she must have been terrified for me all the time.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, her fingers clawing at her skin. “I used to sleep in bed with her, even as an adult. I never slept in my own room as a child. I hated it. Sleeping alone, in the dark, down the hall from safety—it was the worst. Mom always left her door open for me, and I would always sneak in, even when she married my stepfather. ‘It’s a biological norm,’ I heard her tell him one night when he was complaining about me. ‘You want to sleep next to me. Why can’t my own daughter?’”

She huffs, wipes at her eyes, her gaze flicking back to me. “Sorry. I, ah—I haven’t spoken about her in a long time. I haven’t slept next to someone in a long time, too.” Her chin starts to wobble. Her eyes water. “She had a fatal heart attack a little over a year ago, and I—” She sniffs and brushes at her cheeks. She notices my half naked position and all the lust she was overflowing with is now replaced with melancholy.

She shuffles and steps off the bed. “I think I need to sober up.” She takes off toward the bathroom.

I contemplate putting my shirt back on when I hear the shower run. I go after her instead.

She stands completely still under the water, her clothes soaked and sticking to her skin. Her hands are bunched by her sides and her entire body shivers. I get closer and a spray of water hits my chest.

It’s freezing.

“Etta,” I growl, reaching for the handle of the shower. She slaps my hand away.

Anger rises in my chest. “What do you think this is going to achieve?”

Her teeth chatter as she admits, “It makes me feel better.”

I let her stand in her misery for ten seconds more. “Alright, that’s enough.” She continues to ignore me. “Fine.” I step under the spray, taking the brunt of the water on my neck and shoulders.

She reaches to shove me away, and her palms collide with my chest. Instead of flinching, she keeps them there, resting lightly on my abdomen. We stand like that for an indefinite time. Touching. Shivering.

“I did it for her. Selling the Tramadol. It was all so… convenient,” she sighs. “I never thought it would be so easy. They sought me out. Offered me a way to make money on the side without anyone knowing. I was desperate. I was so—” She cuts off. “I was stupid. It was wrong. I know it was wrong. But I couldn’t stomach the thought of losing her clinic, the place she fought so hard for. If I lost it, it would be like losing her all over again.” She fixates on my neck and my rapid pulse. “If I sold the drugs, I could keep the clinic, but I would be worsening an already horrible drug problem. But if I didn’t sell the drugs, then the clinic would go under, and I—It would destroy me.” She rubs her nose. “I’m a failure either way.”

“You’re not,” I tell her.

God, I’m the one who’s a fucking failure.

The sheer amount of silent pain she’s trying to hide cracks me wide open. I have done this very thing more often than I can remember. I’ve stood underneath scalding water till I blistered, dunked myself in ice cold baths till my toes turned blue, just so my mind could concentrate on something other than despair and longing and grief.

It’s almost as if her gentle, seeking touch unleashes the lock on my soul. She looks up into my eyes and pulls all the oxygen out of my lungs. And along with it, a piece of information I hate remembering.

“She was my wife.”

Harriet blinks, her fingernails dragging across my pebbled skin. “Was?”

“She died. A long time ago.”

Her face crumbles with sympathy. “So you have it too, this… this emptiness,” she says and presses her fingertips beneath my ribs.

“I do.”

She trembles violently now, the cold affecting her system more intensely than it’s affecting mine. I reach to the side and turn the shower off, but my gaze remains locked on hers.

“My heart will never be full again, will it?” she asks as the water disappears down the drain.

It takes me some time to find the right words. Even still, it won’t be enough to rid her of her torment. “It will be packed with different things, all in different places. It will seem foreign, but it will still be full.”

She sighs and drops her forehead onto my chest. “I don’t know if I believe you.” My hands immediately reach for her shoulders, holding her together. It doesn’t require any thought, any doubt. I do it because I must. Seeing her like this is worse than when she screams at me. “Everything about me is different. I don’t even recognize myself. The pain is everywhere. I’m always angry or always crying or always tired.”

She crumbles, curling herself into me, seeking the heat that is hidden underneath my chilled skin. Her arms fold into her own chest and she cuddles me like a newborn baby fresh from the womb. I rest my chin on the crown of her head and stroke her wet hair.

“I miss her,” she chokes.

“I know.”

Because I do. I will never know what it is like to not miss Gen. It is an itch that I can never scratch, a piece of my heart that will always be splintered, a nightmare I wish had been someone else’s reality and not mine.

I shifted bodies the night she died and I’ve been trapped in it ever since, too exhausted to find even a sliver of the old me. But somehow, right now, the temptation to search for it rises, like a fresh bud from a dead stem.

“Let’s get you warm,” I say, rubbing her arms.

She sniffles, “I’m pretty warm right now.”

“Not enough to my liking.” She lifts her head and finds my attention. I brush back a piece of wet hair draped across her cheek. My fingers linger, curled behind her ear. Her eyelashes flutter, her mouth parts on a satisfied inhale.

She unfolds her arms, and her hands begin to roam until she finds my hips. She pulls us closer together. I can’t help but grunt, because if I didn’t, I would moan.

I cup her cheek and rub my thumb along her damp skin. “I think you need some sleep.”

“I do,” she nods, but her eyes are not too convinced. It’s clear there’s still a kernel of desire that hasn’t been dampened. I grab a fresh towel and place it around her shoulders. Putting space between us is like peeling apart bricks. I have never wanted to wrap my body around another human being more than I have in the last hour. And that is strange, in and of itself.

“I’ll be a minute,” she says and I leave her to change.

I do the same outside the bathroom and by the time we are both dressed, the weariness of the last few days begins to take its toll.

Harriet shuffles to bed in a new set of pajamas with a glass of water in her grip. Without words, we slip under the covers. I remain upright. I won’t be able to fall asleep even if I wanted to.

“Goodnight, Odin,” Harriet says, pulling the covers up to her chin and turning on her side so she’s facing me.

“Goodnight, Harriet.”

“Call me Etta.” She yawns and closes her eyes, snuggling her head into the downy pillow. “Or sweetheart, you know, whichever suits your fancy.”

My face heats as the endearment that’s slumbered amongst my vocabulary hangs in the air. Harriet—Etta—smiles to herself but remains asleep, and that tiny glimpse of joy is powerful enough to make me feel as though I’m experiencing a high magnitude earthquake.

I reach and turn the lamp off, bathing the room in a purple haze, and wait for my head to stop spinning.

It’s a long, long time before it does.