Page 20 of Beautiful Savage
Then I turn and walk out the door, slamming it behind me.
She still doesn't understand the beast I carry inside.
9 - Daphne
The handprint on his shirt has dried into the cotton overnight. Bougainvillea pink and green, the shape of my palm pressed over where his heart would be if he had one.
The morning light slants through the south window, painting everything gold. I've been awake for twenty minutes, studying the three pieces of evidence in this apartment. The shirt with my handprint. A fresh black t-shirt folded with military precision on the chair at the foot of the bed. It wasn't there when I fell asleep. And above the bed, my father's painting of bougainvillea, the same flowers I painted on my skin twelve hours ago.
The bedroll against the back wall is neatly folded in its usual position. I have no idea if he even slept there last night, only that he came in at some point to leave the shirt.
I pad to the bathroom alcove, pulling the curtain closed. The shower runs hot, washing away the last invisible traces of paint though I scrubbed it off last night. This morning's shower is different. Slower, letting the water wake me properly, feeling it slide down skin that still remembers being looked at.
After the shower, I move to the bed, picking up the folded black t-shirt. The corners align perfectly, creases sharp enough to cut paper. The fabric is soft from wear, and when I lift it to my face, it smells exactly like him. Cedar soap, clean cotton, something essentially male that makes my pulse quicken.
The decision is easy. I drop my towel and pull his black t-shirt over my head. It falls to mid-thigh, the neckline loose at my collarbone, sleeves past my wrists. I roll them once each, thenstand in his shirt and pull on my underwear, feeling claimed and claiming at once.
The apartment door opens.
Gunner enters carrying two coffees in a paper tray. He fills the doorway completely, and for a heartbeat, I remember this is the man who took me from my home two weeks ago. The man whose hands could snap my neck without effort. Then he steps inside, and he's just Gunner again, though the knife in his boot catches the morning light, a constant reminder of what he carries.
He stops at the threshold for a fraction of a second when he sees me wearing his shirt. The hesitation is almost invisible. A slight tightening around his eyes, the way his grip shifts on the coffee tray, knuckles whitening briefly. Then he crosses to the kitchen counter, sets the tray down carefully, keeps his back to me.
The apartment suddenly feels smaller. Eight feet between us might as well be eight inches. The handprint shirt on the chair sits between us like evidence of last night, and the morning silence has a different weight than yesterday's.
I can't stand still any longer. My body overrides every cautious thought, every warning my mind whispers. My bare feet carry me across the floorboards before I've decided anything at all. He registers my approach. His shoulders tense, the muscles in his back coiling like he's preparing for an attack. When I reach him, he doesn't turn fully toward me, just angles his body slightly.
My hand trembles as I lift it to his chest, fingertips barely touching the fabric over his heart. He goes absolutely still, not even breathing.
I rise on my toes and press my mouth to his.
The kiss is brief, almost chaste. Just the lightest brush of lips against lips. Two seconds, maybe less. He doesn't move, doesn'trespond, doesn't pull away. His lips are surprisingly soft against mine, warm and still. When I step back, my hand dropping from his chest, we both freeze.
The silence stretches longer than the kiss itself. We stand in the kitchen alcove with two feet between us, neither speaking, neither moving, both processing what just happened. My heart pounds so hard I'm sure he can hear it. The morning light catches the Saint Michael tattoo on his forearm, the warrior saint with sword raised, and I wonder what battle he's fighting right now behind those pale eyes that won't meet mine.
When he finally speaks, his voice is low and controlled, retreating to safer ground. "Nicolas has been calling your phone. We have the sim in a second model. He's trying to reach you."
The shift from the kiss to my father jolts me. "How often?"
"Every day. Sometimes twice a day. Yesterday, three times." He still won't look at my face. "My associate has been managing the responses. Delays. Making it seem like you're busy, not avoiding him."
My chest tightens. "And?"
"Last night, he drove here. From Pristine to Miami. He went back to the garden gate where I found him, then walked around to the front asking the door staff about a man with a Saint Michael tattoo. Stood outside La Sirena's entrance for thirty minutes. He's not on any list. They turned him away."
Papa drove two hours each way. Stood outside this building while I was three floors above him. The image of him at the velvet ropes, probably still in his paint-stained clothes, makes something crack in my chest.
"He's been calling more since then," Gunner continues. "The cover story is thinning."
Every sensible part of me screams to run. Papa is worried. I have a life in Pristine, students who need me, a cottage that's been home for twenty-six years. But my body has alreadychosen, recognizing something in this broken man that calls to something equally broken in me.
I could ask to call him. Could ask to go home. Could ask for this to end. Instead, I say, "Tell him I'm okay."
The words surprise us both. I'm joining the lie now, becoming part of the operation that keeps me from my father.
"Tell him…" I search for something only Papa would recognize, something that proves the message is really from me. "Tell him I'm painting again. Like the summer roses."
Every summer when I was young, Papa would set up watercolors in the garden and we'd paint my mother's roses together. He'll know that detail. He'll know it's really me.
