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“You pistol-whipped him?” I asked for confirmation.
“Lightly,” he clarified and saw my concern. “I’m fine.” He’d been alone and had to wait for half the team to arrive.
That’s what gnaws at me.
I moved in closer, and we brought each other in a hug. My brother will always have my soul. Twenty-eight-years together does that.
A tough part came next.
I had to deliver the gut-wrenching news to Jane and Maximoff. After I finished, I thought it would have dissuaded them from staying in the townhouse. Hell, I’d grab a one-way ticket to anywhere but here.
Instead, they feel safer.
The intruder has been caught. He admitted to breaking in once prior and paying some tech friend to disable our security alarms. He was charged with a slew of crimes including two-counts of trespassing and violating his restraining order. So now he’s in jail, awaiting sentencing from a judge, but there’s not a chance he’ll skate by without at least a year.
Target officially neutralized.
It’s nice being back in my own clothes: red flannel over a gray tee, gold horns around my neck. But too much barbed wire lies ahead to relax.
And I have to let Jane crawl through and be torn up. I can’t move aside the painful parts anymore.
My muscles tense as I use a wooden spoon to stir thick, red sauce in a decent-sized pot, where meat has been simmering for hours. Cooking dinner for Jane is just one of the many things I love doing for her—but tonight’s dinner is going to have a side dish of hard truths.
She has a vague concept of what happened. She has no fucking clue that Banks caught a middle-aged man with his dick exposed, jacking off over her bed—or even that this bastard masturbated in his car right outside the house.
Providing the briefest, nondescript image and skimming over the full picture—that has always been our dynamic. I’ve been saving Jane from visualizing the disturbing realities of her fame.
I hate that I need to do this. I hate painting graphic pictures of what sick fuckbags say and do. But she can’t make an informed decision about living here without all of the details.
Still, this’ll hurt her.
I’m going to hurt her.
I strain pasta, steam billowing, and by the time I have food set on the iron café table, Jane climbs down the stairs and twists her damp hair in a bun. Just coming from the shower.
She sniffs the air and smiles brightly. “It smells like heaven.”
“You hungry?”
“Mmhmm,” Jane nods. “I’m mortadafam’.”
I didn’t teach her that word. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Banks.” She trots down the stairs, six cats almost tripping Jane, jumping at her calves and springing down the steps. Starving for attention from their mom. “He said it means you’re really hungry. Famished, even.” She reaches the first floor. “Did I say it well?”
“Perfect.” My feelings for Jane balls up in my ribcage and tries to crack the bones a million and one times.
And then my stomach tanks.
I fixate on the calico cat she picks off the floorboards. Carpenter nuzzles his furry head against her cheek.
She smiles and scratches behind his ears. “I missed you too, my love.”
Carpenter—that cat, he’d been in the bedroom with a fucking pervert, and that fact might kill her more than the other. It’s staking me in the chest.
“Can I do anything to help?” she asks while kissing Carpenter on the head.
“It’s all done.”
She frowns at my expression. “What’s wrong?” She sees me eyeing the calico cat. “Thatcher?”
“We need to talk, honey.”
Jane swallows. “Okay.” She gently sets Carpenter down, and then she assesses the glassware and food set on the table before disappearing into the kitchen.
She returns with parmesan cheese, which I forgot.
My lip lifts slightly, and the pressure in my chest almost relents. Ophelia and Licorice are rubbing up against my ankles, purring. Normally I’d pet the white and gray cats, but I crouch down and toss them a catnip-laced Darth Vader mouse.
They chase after the toy.
I stand back up and notice Jane frozen with a hand on an iron chair.
She’s zeroed in on the pasta in meat sauce. “I thought you said you wouldn’t cook me your grandma’s braggiol’ because you can’t do it like her?”
I did say that.
“It’s comfort food.”
Worry widens her gaze, but she takes a readying breath and lowers on the seat. “You think I need comforting?”
I sit across from my girlfriend. “Not just you. This won’t be easy for me either.” I nod to the soup in the small bowls. “I didn’t cook the pasta vasul’. My brother said our stepmom brought a container over yesterday for you and me.”
My family had been worried about us being snowed-in, and coming home to familiar food, made out of love, is simply pure love.
Family constantly makes me feel like the wealthiest man in the world. There’s not a day I’d ever take them for granted.
I look at Jane more. “I just heated it on the stove.”
She tries to smile, but her lips fall. “That was awfully sweet of Nicola.” She inspects the soup. “Pasta and beans?”
I nod, just once.
Say more. I’m naturally quiet, but in this setting, my conciseness and brevity packs on tension like ten tons of weight.
Jane pours wine, a dark Cab, in our glasses. Strain stretches between us. “I’m guessing this is about the culprit, but you should know that I feel extraordinarily safe here. I can already sense the warmest, most relaxing sleep tonight. Better than in a long while.”
Whatever great sleep she thinks she’ll have, I’m about to fuck it all.
She studies me and places the wine bottle aside. “Do you feel safe?” She looks pained. “I’m so sorry, I should’ve asked you sooner.”
I hold her gaze. “You don’t need to apologize. I feel safe, but I feel safe most places.”
Jane nods once, like I did, and cups wine between tense hands.
My ears ring in her silence. And I focus on my talk with Farrow hours ago. He said he was going to take Maximoff out to dinner and lay down every single horrific detail that occurred in this house.
I agreed to do the same for Jane.
We’re both just praying they’ll consider moving.
“I have to tell you what happened here,” I explain.
She inhales a sharp breath. “Must you?”
I nod. “You have to know.”
She takes a dainty sip of wine, then places the glass down. “Okay.” She folds her arms on the table. “I’m ready.”
With steaming pasta between me and my girlfriend, I have visions of Lady and the Tramp—but this is a fucked-up version of a Disney movie. Especially with the next words out of my mouth.
“He masturbated on your bed, Jane.” Direct. To-the-point.
She blinks a few times.
I’m more specific. “The police found his semen on your bed.” My muscles are flexed, just seeing her cage breath.
She reaches for her wine, thinks against it, and bends over to the floor. I watch Jane hoist Lady Macbeth, and her childhood black cat curls up on her lap. I realize, pasta is my comfort.
Her cats are hers.
Jane strokes her fur. “I thought…perhaps, the culprit just touched my bed, and that’s why you changed the duvet.”
“I threw away everything: the sheets, the blankets.” I pause. “The mattress is new too.”
She fights a swell of emotion. “Thank you.” Her eyes redden, hand staying still on her cat’s belly.
I want to hold Jane. Cup her cheeks in my hands and tell her that I have her six. That for as long as I live, no one on this earth will touch her with ill intent or hatred or harm.
I can’t.
I can’t give her a false sense of security. And I don’t want her to normalize what stalk
ers and revolting pricks do. We can avoid them better in a gated location.
“Security called him Sneakers,” I explain. “Because he always wore these dated white-scuffed sneakers whenever he stopped by the house.”
She blows out a short, controlled breath. “Is he a heckler?”
“A fan, or really, a suitor from your grandmother’s newspaper ad.”
“Oh.” Her chin trembles a little and she breathes in, the deepest breath she can.
“He was allowed to walk past the house. As much as he wanted.”
Jane nods.
