Page 40 of A Trap So Flawless

But I don’t really want to drink right now.

Not when there are much better drugs in this house.

“Valentina!” I shout her name as I storm from the office.

“Hello?” comes her faint response from upstairs. Sweet relief at the sound of her voice, gushing fast and hot as blood. She’s still here.

I take the stairs two at a time. She’s not looking at the books, and she isn’t in the bathroom. Maybe she’s on the third floor.

But the door to my old bedroom stands slightly ajar. And as if every instinct I’ve got is primed to sense exactly where she is, I know that’s where she’s ended up.

I go inside.

She’s lying on my bed. On her back, with her hands folded demurely across her belly.

Like a nun.

Or a corpse.

“What are you doing in my bed?” I ask between harsh breaths. I’m breathing much harder than I should be.

I told her she could take a nap, sure. But I figured she would do it on the couch or something.

“Is it alright?” She’s looking at me, and she seems sincere enough in her question. Yet she makes no move to rise.

“It’s alright,” I reply. It’s just bizarre to see her there. I don’t think anyone’s touched that bed in close to fifteen years. And now, Valentina’s in it. My past and my present are melting together. There’s something almost eerie about it. Like it’s happening in a dream.

“I just wasn’t expecting to find you here,” I go on. “You’re reminding me of that old story. The one about the bears who come home to find a pretty young girl asleep in their bed.”

She looks startled, her mouth dropping open. And then that perfect fucking mouth forms itself into a perfect fucking smile, and Jesus fucking Christ, someone needs to shoot me in the head. Put me out of this lovesick fucking misery. Because I don’t know how I’ll ever get over this. Get over seeing her in the bed my grandda built me, smiling at me like…

Like she likes me.

“What are you smiling at me like that for?”

“I’m smiling because I had that exact same thought last night!” she says. She shakes her head as if she just can’t believe it, still holding onto the dreamy delight of her smile. “Goldilocks. I felt like Goldilocks.”

“That’s the one.”

“I was lying in bed beside you,” she says. “And I kept thinking that I needed to get up and find another bed. One without a bear in it.”

“And did you?” I ask, jerking my chin to indicate the bed she’s occupying now. She slides her shoulders up and down on the mattress, the lying-down version of a shrug.

“I guess I just thought that I wanted to see the world through a young Darragh Gowan’s eyes.”

The sound that crawls out of me then can’t quite be called a laugh.

“Not a pretty sight, I’m afraid.”

Not unless I’m looking at her.

“Yeah. I figured,” she says. The smile is gone now. “I remember you once told me that you were never a child.”

“That’s because I wasn’t.”

She rolls her eyes. “You expect me to believe that you were born a fully-formed man?”

“I was born addicted to opioids.”

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