Page 16 of Reaper
“Fine. How?”
As if it could actually change anything and somehow make the utterly exposed, open-air shower somehow not completely exposed, I look around the room, chewing my lip. Shockingly, it does nothing.
“I’ll go first. You stare at the wall until I tell you otherwise.”
“Fucking genius solution.”
“Fuck you.” My eyes go back to the showerhead. My nose twitches as a reminder that I can’t cling to any idea of dignity while I smell like I’ve been wallowing in the dumpster behind a strip club. “Turn around.”
“What if I say no?”
There’s a twinge in his voice, a momentary hint that maybe he isn’t just teasing me and being a complete asshole. Like maybe he wants to see me shower.
And there’s a part of me — just a twinge, a lie, nothing more — that says maybe I wouldn’t be so opposed to that.
If he weren’t my sister’s killer.
“Turn the fuck around. I’m going to shower,” I say, and he hesitates again. Maybe he’s trying to be an asshole, maybe he wants a peek, but I definitely don’t want to deal with any of his bullshit right now. “If you don’t, I won’t kill you after this.”
He turns.
Back to me, eyes glued to the wall, hands behind his back like he’s a soldier at polite ease or something approaching a gentleman, instead of what he really is — a killer surrounded by a cloud of murderous stench, like somePeanutscharacter after a detour through theJohn Wickuniverse.
Whatever it is, it’s a victory.
First, I take my shirt off. Slowly, eyes on him, half expecting him to turn around, but he doesn’t.
Then go my pants, my underwear, and I cover myself as best I can with my hands while I turn around and turn on the water. A furtive look over my shoulder still reveals him staring at the wall like a decent human being.
Yeah, right.
I force myself to shut my eyes, but that doesn’t help. Because the second I close my eyes, I see him on the back of my eyelids. I see that smile, I imagine what might happen if he were to turn around, if he were to walk to me, if he were to put his arms around me — how I might struggle a little, at first, how I might curse him and tell him to fuck off or threaten to kill him ever harder than I already want to kill him — and how my struggling would stop, how I’d give in to that smile, to those burning, sorrowful eyes, how those lips would meet mine, how I’d moan, how I’d…
Fuck, I can’t be thinking this.
I turn to the shower to cold. It gets really cold. “Fuck.”
“You okay?” He says.
I look over my shoulder. He’s still staring at the wall. “Shut up. I’m fine.”
The cold water is doing nothing. There’s still heat inside me, still thoughts about how maybe, even though every time I check, he is watching me, thinking, wanting… me. And how maybe I want that, too.
Want it despite knowing that fucking the man who killed my sister would be one of the most wrong, fucked-up things I could ever do.
The last vestiges of soap rinse off my body and disappear down the drain, leaving me feeling both blissfully clean and indelibly dirty. I turn off the water, grab a towel and then a robe, and wrap myself in both, wanting as much of a barrier between me and him as I can manage.
“Your turn, asshole,” I say.
It isn’t hard for me to keep my eyes on the wall while Ricky DeMarco showers behind me. Every impulse to turn around is burned to ashes by the inferno of hatred and disgust that rages inside me.
There’s a squeak as he turns off the water.
“I didn’t want things to turn out like this, you know,” he says, his voice coming amidst the rustle of the plush cotton towel as he dries himself.
“Didn’t want to end up in a mahjong club, showering off the remains of dumpster debris after hiding from the Russian mob? Who could even imagine wanting this?”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” He pauses. “Bringing up that mob and the fucking dumpster, what the fuck are you so scared of? This is your sister we’re talking about. We both loved her. We both wanted more for her than what she got.”
