Page 52 of Bitter Burn
Her lashes lift as she stares at me. She’s wearing a coat but no scarf or hat or gloves, and she’s only in leggings and a T-shirt underneath.
“Isolde,” I say.
White vapor curls between us as we breathe. “You’ll ruin your suit,” she finally says, eyes drifting to my knees on the iron earth.
“I don’t care.” I press her hand to my jaw—impossibly cold. Her lips are pale. “We’re going inside now. Come on. Yes, that’s it.” I’m standing and pulling her to her feet. She sinks a little, like she might not be able to stand, and I catch her before she falls, pulling her into my arms.
The fact that she lets me is proof enough that something is very wrong.
I carry her up to the apartment, and when we get inside, I sit her down on the kitchen table. She lets me tug off her coat and hand her a glass of water.
“When’s the last time you’ve eaten?” I ask.
She shrugs. Doesn’t drink.
I press my forehead to hers, close my eyes for a brief moment. I’ve been in combat, covert action; I have been shot, stabbed, beaten, and strangled. And the fear I feel now, swirling around this blank-eyed woman who won’t drink some water, is more powerful than any fear I’ve ever felt, because I’m more helpless than I’ve ever been. More worthless.
Famous kinkster Mark Trevena, and here’s his wife, cold and dehydrated and hungry, as dull and inert as one of her dusty practice knives downstairs, and he doesn’t even know where to begin to make her better.
God. All that work keeping her safe, only to lose her like this.
I kiss her forehead. “Drink, sweetheart. Just a little, if that’s all you can do.”
She lifts the glass to her lips and drinks a little. Not much, but some. I take the glass, set it on the table, and then pick her up and carry her into the bathroom, where I set her on the counter next to the sink.
“I’d like you to take a shower so you can warm up. I can leave now while you do so, or I can help you undress and then leave. Or I can help with all of it.”
She looks at me, not offering anything, and I dip a little so I can meet her gaze more completely.
“I need you to tell me what you want,” I clarify. “Do you want me to leave? Do you want me to stay?”
She reaches out and grabs my wrist. “Stay,” she says. Her voice is barely there, only an outline of itself.
“For the shower too?”
She nods.
I strip her out of her clothes carefully but quickly, pausing only briefly to look at the florid smears under her knees. Very, very fresh bruises. How long had she been kneeling out there? Was today the first day? I could walk into the Potomac right now for how stupid I’ve been, how fucking certain I was that the best thing for her was for me to stay away.
The woman in the navy dress from two weeks ago, spitting nails in my office, felt so indelible and inviolable, as sharp and certain as a sword—and now here she is clammy and rusted, like something dug out of a long-ago grave.
Have the whispers of the club done this much? Truly?
I undress myself too, but I leave my underwear on, not wanting to signal any ulterior motive on my part, and then turn on the shower. It hits the stone tiles with a hiss, and I check the temperature before I go back to help Isolde off the counter and into the spray.
And I can’t help it. I know silence is what’s warranted right now, but I’m shaken and floundering and so pissed at myself that I can’t stand it, so I’m muttering to her as I guide her into the shower.
“No gloves, coat unzipped—there’s supposed to be freezing rain this afternoon—you would have been encased in ice like a jewel under glass—you were top of your class at Columbia—surely you can think of smarter ways to punish me—close your eyes and dip your head back, good girl—and you’re barely eating—at this point, why even hide from the other saints and Ys? If you’re planning on stopping your own heart, but of course not before you leave some bruises all over your pretty knees first. My pretty knees, by the way, and my heart, the one you want to stop.”
For the first time, a little life comes into her face. She opens her eyes to look at me.
I shouldn’t be saying any of this, for fuck’s sake. I’d decided when Tristan and Isolde came back that I was renouncing my claim to her, that everything would be as it was supposed to be in the beginning: a play on the stage, and no matter how well acted it was, it would always have a curtain drawn at the end. I’d let myself foolishly reach for what I wanted—them—even though I knew, I’ve always known, that the curtain would never drop on love, not for me.
But I’m foolish and weak right now, because I don’t care about plans or endings or what a good man like Maxen or Tristan would do in my place. I care about her, and I love her, and this love flays me open, leaves nothing hidden, however bloody and primal.
I move behind her and start shampooing her hair; I find her scalp and massage, applying firm pressure with my fingertips, going gentle around her temples and behind her ears and then pressing more deeply into the muscles at the nape of her neck. I rinse the suds until the water runs clear down her back; I get the conditioner and speak in low tones while I work it into her long, silvery hair.
“You are Isolde Laurence, Isolde Trevena, and you are not allowed to slip through your own fingers, much less mine. I won’t have it, sweetheart. You are too dear, and you must know by now that I am too mercenary and too mean to let someone else take what’s dear to me, even if it’s you doing the taking.”
