Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

“My father,” I said, “burned me with an iron to teach me a lesson.”

“Teach you what?” she said.

“Not to play with fire.”

“What?”

I shrugged. “Maybe just that he could. He was the father, I was the son. He wanted to burn me, he could burn me.”

She raised her head and her eyes filled. Her fingers dug into my hair and her eyes widened and reddened as they searched mine. When she kissed me, it was hard, bruising, as if she were trying to suck my pain out.

When she pulled back, her face was wet.

“He’s dead, right?”

“My father?”

She nodded.

“Oh, yeah. He’s dead, Grace.”

“Good,” she said.

When we made love again a few minutes later, it was one of the most exquisite and disconcerting experiences of my life. Our palms flattened against each other and our forearms followed suit and at every point along my body, my flesh and bone pressed against hers. Then her thighs rose up my hips and she took me inside of her as her legs slid down the backs of mine and her heels clamped just below my knees and I felt utterly enveloped, as if I’d melted through her flesh, and our blood had joined.

She cried out and I could feel it as if it came from my own vocal cords.

“Grace,” I whispered as I disappeared inside her. “Grace.”

Close to sleep, her lips fluttered against my ear.

“’Night,” she said sleepily.

“’Night.”

Her tongue slid in my ear, warm and electric.

“I love you,” she mumbled.

When I opened my eyes to look at her, she was asleep.

I woke to the sound of her showering at six in the morning. My sheets smelled of her perfume and her flesh and a vague hint of hospital antiseptic and our sweat and lovemaking, imprinted into the fabric, it seemed, as if it had been there a thousand nights.

I met her at the bathroom door and she leaned into me as she combed back her hair.

My hand slid under her towel and the beads of water on her lower thighs glided off the edge of my hand.

“Don’t even think about it.” She kissed me. “I have to go see my daughter and get back to the hospital and after last night, I’m lucky I can walk. Now, go clean up.”

I showered alone as she found clean clothes in a drawer we’d agreed she could commandeer, found myself waiting for that usual sense of discomfort I feel when a woman has spent more than, oh, an hour in my bed. But I didn’t.

“I love you,” she’d mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.

How odd.

When I came back to the bedroom, she was stripping the sheets from the bed, and she’d changed into a pair of black jeans and a dark blue oxford shirt.

I came up behind her as she bent over the pillows.

“Touch me, Patrick,” she said, “and you die.”

I put my hands back by my sides.

She smiled as she turned with sheets in hand and said, “Laundry. Is that something you’re familiar with?”

“Vaguely.”

She dropped the pile in a corner. “Can I expect that you’ll remake the bed with fresh sheets or are we sleeping on a bare mattress next time I come over?”

“I will do my best, madam.”

She slid her arms around my neck and kissed me. She hugged me fiercely and I hugged back just as hard.

“Someone called when you were in the shower.” She leaned back in my arms.

“Who? It’s not even seven in the morning.”

“That’s what I thought. He didn’t leave his name.”

“What’d he say?”

“He knew my name.”

“What?” I unclasped my hands from her waist.

“He was Irish. I figured it was an uncle or something.”

I shook my head. “My uncles and I don’t talk.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re my father’s brothers and they aren’t any different than he was.”

“Oh.”

“Grace”—I took her hand, sat her beside me on the bed—“what did this Irish guy say?”

“He said, ‘You must be the lovely Grace. Grand to meet you.’” She looked at the pile of bedclothes for a moment. “When I told him you were in the shower, he said, ‘Well, just tell him I called and I’ll be dropping in on him sometime,’ and he hung up before I could get a name.”

“That’s it?”

She nodded. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Not many people call me before seven, and when they do, they usually leave a name.”

“Patrick, how many of your friends know we’re dating?”

“Angie, Devin, Richie and Sherilynn, Oscar, and Bubba.”

“Bubba?”

“You met him. Big guy, always wears a trench coat—”

“The scary one,” she said. “The one who looks like he might just walk into a Seven-Eleven one day and kill everyone inside because the Slurpee machine isn’t working.”

“That’s the guy. You met him at—”

“That party last month. I remember.” She shuddered.

“He’s harmless.”

“Maybe to you,” she said. “Christ.”

I tilted her chin toward me. “Not just me, Grace. Anyone I care about. Bubba’s insanely loyal that way.”

Her hands ran the wet hair back off my temples. “He’s still a psychopath. People like Bubba fill emergency rooms with fresh victims.”

“Okay.”

“So I don’t ever want him near my daughter. Understand?”

There’s a look a parent gets when she’s feeling protective of her child and it’s an animal’s look, and the danger that steams off it is palpable. It’s not something that can be reasoned with, and even though it stems from the depths of love, it knows no pity.

Grace had that look now.

“Deal,” I said.

She kissed my forehead. “Still doesn’t solve the identity of the Irish guy who called.”

“Nope. He say anything else?”

“‘Soon,’” she said as she came off the bed. “Where’d I leave my jacket?”

“Living room,” I said. “What do you mean—‘Soon’?”

She paused on her way to the doorway, looked back at me. “When he said he’d be dropping by your place. He waited a few seconds and then he said, ‘Soon.’”

She walked out of the bedroom and I heard a weak floorboard creak in the living room as she walked through.