Page 13 of Beautiful Savage
The watercolor lying face-down on the desk catches my attention again, and I flip it over. Suddenly, I can sense Papa in the room. This is his work. I would recognize his brushstrokes anywhere, his color palette. The painting is beautiful, of course. A small walled garden with a stone bench in the center, bougainvillea creeping up the walls, light catching the leaves of a citrus tree.
It is the garden downstairs, the one I can just see if I press my nose against the window.
Could this be why Gunner took me? Because of a painting Papa did of his garden?
The door opens, and I drop the watercolor with a start. Gunner fills the doorway completely, has to duck slightly under the frame. The Saint Michael tattoo flexes as he grips the doorframe. Six and a half feet of contained violence studying my small rebellion with paint.
I slowly pick up my small paintbrush and resume work on my hand. If he wants to see what I'm doing, he'll have to look at me directly. He'll have to break his own rule.
Thirty seconds of silence. I feel his attention on my hand, on the small rose taking shape. My brush keeps moving, adding a shadow to a petal, though my hand trembles slightly. The pause stretches, weighted with something I can't name.
He doesn't speak. Finally walks to the kitchen, gets water, leaves again without a word.
I add the final touches to the leaf. Cap the paints. Rinse the brush carefully, watching pink water swirl down the drain, then darker pink, then green, then clear. The supplies stay on the counter. I'm not putting them away, not accepting or rejecting, just leaving them in limbo like everything else in this apartment.
I return to the bed, the rose drying on my skin. My mother's garden on my hand. A small bright thing in this cold place.
Night falls in the familiar rhythm I'm learning. He brings dinner, something with rice and vegetables that smells like someone who knows how to cook made it with care, and sets it on the desk without looking at me. Maybe I should paint a rose on my damn face, then he'll have to look at me.
The knife in his boot catches the lamplight as he moves. He sits in the shadows, pretending to read files he's probably memorized, while I eat in the pool of lamplight he gave me.
"Why the hell am I here?" I finally demand. "I just got home from work one day to find some strange massive man waiting for me, he kidnaps me just to feed me oranges? What is going on here?"
I don't expect an answer, and I don't get one. Just a line of tension across the back of his massive shoulders, which doesn't dissipate no matter how many times I huff and sigh.
At ten, I go through my evening routine. Change into the gray sleep shirt that's become my uniform. The fabric is soft from wear, hitting mid-thigh, the only comfortable thing in this place that stays so cold. I brush my teeth, wash my face, avoid the mirror. Come out to find him still at the desk.
I climb into bed, turn toward the wall. Twenty minutes later, I hear the familiar sounds. The bedroll unfolding, boots being removed, the thin blanket settling. Eight feet between us in the dark. Close enough that I can hear him breathe when the traffic noise fades. Far enough that we can pretend we're alone.
The day runs through my mind:
Our hands brushing in that narrow doorway. Half a second of contact that lit every nerve. His heat against my perpetual cold. The way we both froze.
Gunner writing as me to my father. The violation of him pretending to be me.
My dry observation that stopped him cold. The real me, slipping out before I could stop her.
These moments stack up in the dark, each one a small adjustment to what I thought I knew. I've been here three days and expected violence at every turn. But I've found something else.
My body registers what my mind won't name. The place between my thighs aches with each heartbeat, wet and wanting in a way that horrifies me. My nipples are hard against the soft cotton, visible even in the dark. My body goes its own way,wanting the hands that took me, craving the eyes that won't meet mine.
Not desire. That's too clean a word. Curiosity. About the hands that peeled the orange with such precision. About the man who lies about gardens. About why he won't look at me when looking is what everyone else does. About what would happen if he did.
The violence I've been waiting for hasn't come. The realization sits strange in my chest, rearranging everything I thought I understood. Instead, I'm lying in his bed with my mother's rose drying on my hand while he sleeps on the floor, and nothing makes sense anymore.
I press my thighs together, trying to ease the ache. It only makes it worse. The fear is still here, real and present. But something else has joined it in the dark. Something that makes me wonder what those scarred hands would feel like on my skin. Something that makes me listen to his breathing and wonder if he's really asleep.
The thought forms before I can stop it, landing hard: What else am I wrong about?
6 - Daphne
The decision was made at 3:20 AM, somewhere between the twentieth time I counted his breaths and the moment I admitted I was counting them at all.
I've been mapping his routine. Every morning at 4:30, the soft click of the door. His footsteps down the service stairs. At 5:30, the apartment door unlocks for staff. I've heard them cross the back hallway twice now, their voices drifting up from somewhere below. He stays away until at least 6:00.
I dress in the dark. My jeans, my semi-clean t-shirt, which I scrubbed with soap in the bathroom sink. The shoes I wore the day he took me, waiting by the door like patient dogs.
The lamp he moved to my bedside is off. His bedroll folded against the wall. The desk where he sits every evening, pretending to read files he's memorized. Everything exactly as it should be at 5:35 AM.
