Page 86 of The Cartographer

As grateful as I am to Brandy—and I am—I can’t stomach being around him for long. He makes me feel like I did back then, and I don’t want to feel that way. Like a scared, fucked-up, and seriously angry kid. I was so fucking reckless. Maybe worst of all, he still talks about my father, and it makes me angry. Which is stupid. I should cling to the old stories as hard as I can, not let any particle of them slip through my fingers like sand, but I get so goddamn jealous that Brandy had more time with him than I ever did. Also, I don’t want to hear anything that’s going to make my dad less than a hero in my eyes. I’ve seen too many people I admire and respect fall, fail, do things that make my brain buzz with incredulity—how could youdothat?—betray my good opinion of them. Can’t there be one person on earth who I get to look up to? Even if he’s a false idol, I want someone to worship.

Before Allie can tell exactly how lost I’m getting in those old memories, of how exactly a friend of my father’s introduced me to the world I now call my home, I need to move this conversation along. India had understood. I don’t know Allie would. Middle-aged guy bringing a sixteen-year-old boy to a kink club? In other circumstances, I’d be skeeved out or at least cautious myself. But for me, finding kink is the reason my mother still has a son, and I won’t brook anyone talking smack about the man who did that for me.

“So, anyway, by the time I was in college, I was pretty well-versed, and I wanted more than anything else to share it with other people. Other people who must have been seeking as much as I was. Unlike me, they hadn’t found it yet. That’s how I met India.”

He nods, drinking up the droplets of information I’ve meted out. It’s a lot to process. Then he looks at me again with that steady, earnest gaze. “When you said earlier that there’s an animal inside you and I should be afraid?”

This is it. This is when he gets dressed, calls me a freak, and walks out. That’s what he should do, but I’m too selfish to tell him to leave. “Yes, I remember that quite clearly.”

“Thing is, I don’t think there’s an animal inside you.”

I open my mouth to protest that he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, but he cuts me off before I can. “I think there are two.”

That’s…not precisely reassuring. “What makes you say that?”

“I mean, there’s definitely a part of you that has some serious bloodlust. I saw it in some of the guys I served with, the ones who were itching for a fight, who would look for any excuse to get violent. We kept an eye on those guys and stayed away from them at the same time. That’s who you reminded me of tonight with those muggers. You wanted to fuck them up.”

Yes, I had. Would’ve delighted in beating both of them into a bloody pulp, so damaged and broken from my handiwork you wouldn’t have been able to tell where one body ended and the other began.

“But you never look at me like that. Yeah, you want to hurt me.” He smiles then, the sheepish one that says he’s still unsure how he feels about enjoying that as much as he does, but, oh, does he enjoy it. “But not like that. You don’t want to kill me. I know what that looks like, and that’s not you.”

Hard to argue with that. Not only does the idea of anything serious happening to Allie make me upset, but the idea of me being the one harming him? I would never do that, in reality or even in fantasy.

“So maybe that’s the other beast, the one you let out to play. And I…I like that one a lot, and I bet a lot of other people do too. So don’t use that as an excuse. You might have the potential to be dangerous, but you’ve got that shit under control. I refuse to be afraid of you.”

I cock my head at him, because…hell. I’ve convinced more people than I can count that all of their fetishes, impulses, inclinations, and desires are all okay. It’s how you act on them that makes all the difference. Which I’ve applied to myself: I keep that beast on a leash. Here Allie is, though, telling me, no, there’s two of them—one of which I set free to run about the earth with other people who want to play and the other that’s never let off its lead. It’s a shift. A small one, perhaps, but one I appreciate because it lets me wipe out the occasional voice in the middle of the night that tells me I should’ve sacrificed myself a long time ago.

I can’t say thank you for that, though. Don’t want him to lose confidence in me. Instead, I issue an invitation. “Then perhaps you’d like to play again?”

Chapter Twenty-Six

‡

Ialmost chokeon my toothbrush as India hip-checks me, her flannel short-shorts meeting my cotton pajama pants with a solid thump.

“Stop hogging the mirror.”

I bend down and spit before rinsing out my mouth and giving her a dirty look. “How can I possibly be hogging the mirror when there are two of them? Do you need both of them, Your Royal Highness of Vanity?”

She smiles around her own toothbrush and then spits into the sink in front of her and, to make her point, rinses her brush out in the sink in front of me.

“Cris doesn’t mind.”

Oh, the doe eyes. “Don’t you even fake innocence with me. I know every filthy thing you’ve ever done.”

“You’ve done a bunch of them to me.”

True. As I rinse out my own brush, I notice her staring at me, her gaze roaming my bare torso.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

She shrugs, the spaghetti strap of her camisole sliding down her shoulder. “It’s possible Matty asked me to keep an eye on you.”

“Did he now?” It doesn’t even take a second for me to regret the testiness in my tone. Not that India would let me get away with that anyhow. She’s got her hands on her hips, and she’s giving me one of those patented narrow-eyed glares of hers.

---