Just a ghost of my past.
“If you want a nicer situation, you’ll tell me who you’re running from, otherwise I can get you a mailbox for your kennel because you’ll be setting up permanent residence down there my sweet little flower.” He said the same nickname, and even though it had hardly been minutes since he used it last, the contrast in the way it made me feel was almost crippling. He turned around and began to head to the door and the idiota part of me that was my Papá’s daughter, the part that refused to back down, decided to poke the bear.
“Did I break your little sex slave’s nose?” I chuckled out hollowly. I could see him pause for a moment in reaction as he white knuckled the door handle. Before he could pull the door open to walk out of the room, I could see the giant crow tattooed on his back with spread wings along the span of his shoulders, with its talons ready to strike. The black of its eyes eerily reminded me of my own. The loud slamming of the door being shut rang out against the room, and I slid my way down to the floor while my heart and brain struggled to catch up to my growing list of stupid decisions.
At least an hour went by, possibly two, Ronan was likely still pacing the hall outside of Mateo’s room. I could hear his steps against the marble floors every now and then for a few minutes at a time followed by some cursing. After a while he would disappear again as if it was taking all of his restraint to not come back inside. Mateo hadn’t come back either and I hadn’t seen Santo since before I broke that bitch’s face, so I was starting to get seriously nervous. I finally decided to make the best of a bad situation and use my surroundings. Taking advantage of my temporary prison, I walked towards his bathroom and turned on the beautiful gold faucet in the clawfoot tub.
I unzipped the ruined dress and let it drop to my feet, reaching down to remove the red bottom heels off my feet. I tossed them carelessly to the side as the thought of their cost annoyingly tugged at the back of my conscience. I’d spent the last fourteen years of my life struggling to make ends meet, always working a minimum of two jobs at a time. The thought of being someone’s captive and receiving gifts I couldn’t really afford was a real fucking mind trip cherry on top of the Stockholm sundae.
I stepped into the steaming hot water, and I was thankful I was alone so I could moan into the comfort of the bath without any judgment. I melted into the heat of the water and closed my eyes. I wasn’t sure how much time had gone by, but the steamy room began to lull me into a quiet stillness I hadn’t been able to surrender to since the second those elevator doors opened the first time I walked into this high-rise.
“I feel a little like the three bears from Goldilocks here,” Mateo’s gravelly voice cut in as I almost drifted into sleep, and I opened my eyes to find him shamelessly observing me in his tub. That was the thing about Mateo, he never looked away, or pretended like he wasn’t watching. It’s like he wanted me to see that he was looking at me, and it was kind of a thrill to capture his gaze when I was the object of its attention.
“I might never get a bath again in my life, how could I pass up this magnificent tub?” I asked him in a honeyed voice.
“I think we both know you’ll live to fight another day,” his expression was serious but somehow, I had amused him. He had a way of carrying a smile up to his eyes even when his lips were trying to conceal it.
“Ronan might disagree with you,” I pointed out to our mutual friend in the hall.
“Has he been in here? Did he do something to you?” His eyebrows pulled together in worry and the concern seemed genuine enough to startle me.
“Yes, and yes, but nothing I couldn’t handle on my own,” I stated, and his eyebrows lifted up even higher in question, but I didn’t give him more than a turn of the corner of my lips.
He walked towards the sink and opened a drawer pulling out a sponge in its packaging and an old Nike shoebox. He opened the box at me like it was going to be filled with treasure and I let out an actual gasp when the contents revealed a plethora of bath bombs, bath salts, essential oils, and bars.
“I knew I should have snooped around first,” I joked, and he smiled at me before dropping a fizzy gold ball into my bath. The dye quickly melted into the water turning it into a masterpiece of liquid gold specks and filling the room with the overwhelming scent of lavender and vanilla. I closed my eyes again and relaxed back into my original position as the bomb fizzled out into the bathwater.
“I went through your bag when you first got here,” he said nonchalantly like my privacy was of absolutely no concern, and pulled out the crappy burner I’d been carrying for the last year or so. “You wanna tell me why your contacts list is three people long?” He asked and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What can I say? I’ve always had a hard time making friends, you saw me out there giving my best to cocks-Ana,” I mused at him.
“No, I think that was Anya’s face that you used to tenderize our concrete table with,” he flashed me his teeth and I had to actually look away because that smile was starting to give me a physical reaction and at thirty, I was way too old for that bullshit butterflies-in-your-stomach kind of feeling.
“In my defense, Santo poured me at least six shots,” I bit my tongue through my teeth and wrinkled my nose at him in a friendly truce.
“I think Álvarez would do anything if you asked him,” he said but I challenged him immediately.
“Except let me go.” I turned my chin at him.
“You didn’t come here so that we could let you go Sunshine, you don’t fool me. That door has been unlocked all night but instead I found you in my bath. You want to be here. I just wish I could figure out what the hell is so bad out there that has you sleeping in a cage here,” he said almost angrily at whatever possible situation he could imagine had me cornered like this.
“To be fair, you have me sleeping in a cage here,” I pointed out. He rolled his sleeves up his forearms, and my mouth watered at the sight of his olive skin against the dark dress shirt that contained him.
“Hmm,” he said as he knelt next to the tub and poured a ridiculous amount of soap onto the sponge and reached into the water to pull my left foot out.
He silently scrubbed it into a soapy lather moving his way up my thigh slowly and ritualistically. His arm was fully in the water before he dropped the foot and picked up the other and repeated the process. “My little sister, Andrea, died when I was a kid.” He rasped out and my eyes met his, the pain I recognized so often in them became clearer with his words.
I stayed silent as he continued.
Mateo moved to my side and picked up my hand scrubbing at it delicately then washing up my arms and across my shoulder to the other side to repeat the action.
“She was killed. My piece of shit old man had been drugging her and raping her, I don’t know for how long. I didn’t know anything; I was a dumb kid who didn’t give a shit about anything except myself. Until one day, I came home and found him, his fucking disgusting body on top of her crushing her, when I pushed him off. I saw she was already a shade of blue, her mouth full of foam and bile. She overdosed from whatever he had given her that time.”
I could see the ghosts that haunted him in the smallest reflection of his eyes, and I recognized them because they reminded me of my own. I reached up and touched the sharp stubble on his face, “How old were you?” I asked, wondering how long it had been since his innocence was ripped from him.
“Old enough that I should have fucking killed him for it,” he said, his eyes burning with an intensity that made me truly believe he wished he could have. He rubbed the side of his head like a bad habit and winced. It was then I realized he was finally sharing that piece of himself with me, like he had promised to. “Twelve. She was ten.”
“You were just a kid. You can’t carry that weight,” I said to him, my fingers rubbing over the stubble on his jaw gently, the crease between his eyebrows slowly fading away. It was a comforting lie, I knew full well how easily a child could lose their virtue from the actions of adults. He pushed my shoulders forward and I hugged my knees to allow him to lather up my back, before sliding back down to recline again.
I heard the squirt of the body wash as he poured more into the loofa and his gaze didn’t waver from mine as he rubbed it thoroughly over my breasts and down my stomach. My eyes widened in surprise as his hand made its way down my center before pulling his arm out from the water.
There was a lingering awkwardness, but it didn’t last as he reached into a cabinet behind him and pulled out a large bath sheet and extended it open.
I stood letting the water fall to my sides as I lifted my arms up to allow him to wrap the towel around me, but it took him a few seconds longer than it should and he didn’t waste a second of it looking anywhere but at me, all of me.
He exited the bathroom, and I stepped out of the tub letting the water absorb into the mat before stepping on the cool black marble and slowly tiptoeing back into Mateo’s room. There was a black t-shirt draped over the bed with a horned goat illustration printed onto it, Mateo crossed back into the bathroom leaving the door open so I could hear the shower turning on.
I thumbed the fabric feeling the softness of it, allowing the towel to fall to the ground as I slid his shirt over my head. It smelled like him, a comforting fragrance of pine that was so refreshing and somehow reminded me of safety. It was a defeating realization that he slipped through my defenses and crawled his way in with his dimples and annoyingly cavalier attitude. Because no matter how hard Mateo Kane pretended to be, I had seen through that cold exterior and saw something gentler, someone who cared a little deeper than they let others believe.
The t-shirt fell past my thighs, and it was somehow the best piece of clothing I had worn in the last month. I nervously fidgeted with the hem of it as I waited for him to finish his shower. Millions of expectations and possibilities flooded my brain for how the rest of the night was going to go, and not a single clue for how it would end other than the depressing surety that I’d be behind those bars again when I woke up tomorrow.