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He steps away from me, his mouth tight as though it’s difficult for him. I know the feeling. Even with mom and Julie just down the hall, it’s hard not to pick up where we left off last night.
Maybe I would’ve even been able to go all the way, so caught up in the heat of it, the flurry of lust.
Gesturing at the screens, he says, “As you can see, there’s nobody out there. The second you see somebody – anybody, Freya, I don’t care if they look like they’re just hiking or walking their dog – you wake me up, okay?”
He looks at me sternly, the weight of his instructions clear.
It makes me think of the day I’ll be lying in a hospital bed, our first child in my arms, and Felix looking at me just like this.
With the weight of our future, of our life together.
I haven’t even asked him if heeverwants kids. Let alone a family with me, the woman he’s starting something with…not leaping both feet into a brand-new life.
“I will,” I tell him. “I promise.”
“I’ll be in the bedroom in the next room,” he says. “Come and get me the second anything changes.”
I nod, and he walks over to me, wrapping his arms around me again. It’s so easy to sink against his firm body and feel the security and protection.
“I’ll be just next door,” he says, kissing me on the cheek briefly.
At the door, he pauses, smirking over at me. “I can’t kiss you again, not properly. I’ll lose control. You have no idea how beautiful you are, Freya.”
* * *
An hour later, Julie sits beside me in the security room, her hands clawing onto her knees. Nothing has happened on the screens, leaving me to think about Julie's phone call last night.
My gaze moves to the corner screen, showing Mom sitting in the living room, staring at the TV without really watching it.
Julie and mom are finding this far more difficult than I am to adjust to.
Which makes sense, considering they haven’t got Felix bashing around their mind.
“Julie,” I say. “I think it’s time we talked about the phone call.”
She stares at me blankly, her blonde hair in disarray, her clothes from last night looking as dirty as the rest of ours. I need to ask Felix about fresh clothes at some point.
Julie nods slowly. “It might be easier if I just…explain.”
Her voice catches, but then she sets her lips in a determined way, reminding me of the Julie I knew before she lost her dad in a gas explosion.
“Dad’s death wasn’t an accident,” she says.
A gasp escapes me, so loud I wonder if I’ve woken Felix in the next room.
“I don’t understand,” I murmur.
“Mike, my ex, he wasn’t a computer programmer, Freya. He was…Heisa criminal. I’m not sure what you’d call him exactly. He’s the leader of a gang.”
A profound sense of surrealism washes over me for what feels like the hundredth time.
Julie’s staring at me with complete seriousness…and something else too, almost like relief. She’s been waiting to tell me this, wanting to, I sense.
“What sort of gang?” I ask.
She swallows. “An effective one, I guess–an evil one. At first, I thought he was just some rich guy. But the more time we spent together, the more I learned about him. By the time I knew who he was, it was too late. He was threatening me…if I left, if I told anybody, he wasn’t a programmer….”
I reach over and touch her shoulder, squeezing it gently.
