Audition (North Security 4)

My throat constricts.

Someone else’s wife.

I leave her in the kitchen and wander through the house, to the very back. This space started out as a porch. Somewhere along the life of the house it became a back room, closed in with panes of glass. The original wooden posts have become part of the wall. The floor feels less substantial under my feet. It’s a step down from the rest of the house. But the floor isn’t what captures my attention. The swing does.

It’s a rickety, falling-down jumble of what used to be called play equipment. The swing still hangs from its chains. Someone as featherlight as Bethany might be able to sit on it still, but it would be a risk. The thing looks like the slightest breeze could bring it down. I used to plant my feet next to it and take aim at Bethany’s window. A far fucking cry from taking aim at a shadow overseas, but the same adrenaline rush. Her silhouette started out the same way every other enemy’s did. A barely visible outline against pitch darkness. Damn, did she become something different in the light. My dick goes hard at the memory of her muscles working in the climb. In the dance. I know what you need, Josh.

Her voice wraps around me like a rope and pulls me back to the kitchen. The teapot whistles on the stove. Bethany’s set out three mismatched mugs on the countertop. She bows her head, a slight smile on her face. “—my own choreography.” Mamere watches with rapt attention. It should be some Cinderella shit—the ever-suffering servant laying the teabags over the edges of the mugs. Balancing the strings just so. But I’m struck again, like a two-by-four to the back of the head, by the deep knowledge that she could be on her knees at the foot of my bed, naked and panting and begging, and still be a queen.

I’m one filthy motherfucker.

And for the next several moments, while Bethany goes on about studio space and a hundred other hopeful plans for the future that are like knives thrown into the hidden parts of me, I remain the filthiest motherfucker in this old house.

A knock at the door.

Bethany and her mamere lift their heads like a pair of birds, but it’s me who goes to answer it. Automatically. Like this is my house.

“Why would you want to do that?” Mamere says with a faint scoff. “It’s as good as taking your clothes off for all those men.”

A beat of silence. “I would have the final say.” Bethany’s voice is fierce but still gentle. Love suffuses every word. Forgiveness, even though each syllable is also ringed with pain. “Nobody would be telling me what to do. I would be in charge of the piece. I only need one chance to prove it.”

I’m under no illusion that I could belong here. I don’t entertain that ridiculous fantasy for a second. A man like me, part of something like this? Never.

Maybe I was entertaining that daydream, because something falls to the floor and shatters when I reach the door. Or perhaps that was only my complacency. Every nerve jumps into action. Why didn’t I see this coming? Did I let her distract me? I fucking did. I was so busy watching her ass sway in her black leggings and imagining pulling them off with

my teeth to take in the necessary details. Like the photos of Caleb Lewis that grace the walls in the entryway. Mamere keeps recent photos. Recent enough that what I did to Caleb shows on his face in one of them. But I don’t need a photo to know what he looks like now.

Because he’s standing on the porch, his hands in his pockets.

There’s a single heartbeat left where he doesn’t see me. Caleb’s not expecting me here, the fucker. I can’t believe it. He should be on the lookout for me everywhere he goes. Then he lifts his head. Narrows his eyes. Scowls.

I fling the door open wide. “Welcome home, buddy.”

He steps in and crushes my hand in his. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

I pound his back hard, pulling him close. I want him off-balance. “I’m at work,” I tell him jovially. “Protecting a client.”

“What client?” He backs up, putting some space between us, eyes ablaze. “What fucking client?”

“Caleb, come in here and have some tea.” Mamere’s voice floats out from the kitchen, knocking us apart as surely as if she’d stood between us and put her hands on our chests. Caleb still bristles, his shoulders set. What the hell does he think he’s going to do, tackle me in front of his grandmother? No. He won’t do that. “Bring your friend with you.”

I snort back a laugh. “Yes, Caleb. Let’s have some tea and catch up.” I fix him with a wide grin that feels like a feral dog baring its teeth.

“I’m short on time.” He turns on his heel and goes into the kitchen. I follow him in time to see him wrapping up Mamere in his big arms. After all the things I’ve seen him do, it’s jarring to see him hug her so carefully. We’re all such fucking contradictions, aren’t we? “I can’t stay,” he tells her, though he was clearly planning to stay when he got here. He was wearing that half-relieved, half-contemplative expression we all wear when we’re thirty seconds from kicking our feet up and closing our eyes somewhere safe. Caleb should know better. Nowhere is safe.

“Bethy’s put out the tea,” Mamere protests. She runs her hands over the front of his shirt. “It won’t take you a minute to drink it.”

Caleb keeps his body angled away from Bethany as much as he can. She presses herself against the counter. I can tell she’s trying to make it look like a casual lean. It’s not working. I keep my posture relaxed. It’s no reflection of how I feel, which is like a mean German shepherd at the end of its chain. I want to throw myself between them. Caleb straightens up and heads back toward the door, caught between the two of us. The air in the room crackles. His right hand balls into a fist. I track every twitch of his muscles. I let my guard down walking in here like a fucking idiot. It won’t happen again.

“Stay,” says the old woman. Bethany’s face is blank. She’s focused on some spot in the middle distance, far from here. She holds herself tight as if she’s trapped between wanting to run and wanting to stand tall. Like there’s some part of her that still, after all this time and all this bullshit, wants to lean into Caleb and face the world with him. It turns my stomach.

“I’ve got some things to take care of,” Caleb insists. “I’ll come back another time.” For the first time since he walked in, he swings his gaze from me to Bethany and back. Caleb Lewis doesn’t dare sneer at me in front of his grandmother, cataracts in her eyes or not. “As for you two.” The threat rings like a bell in the center of this cocoon of a kitchen. Mamere blinks, her near-blind eyes tracking Caleb’s voice. “I’ll be seeing you both very soon. Consider that a promise.”

Bethany, present time

Sleeping in Josh’s bed is killing me.

It’s only been a week, and it’s a good bed. Joshua North wouldn’t buy a piece of shit for a bed. It’s not some secondhand thing dragged in off the curb or even an IKEA piece that looked good in the showroom but deteriorates by the day under the fitted sheet. It’s somehow both plush and firm—probably the nicest mattress I’ve ever slept on in my life. And it’s making me feel like a broken doll.