Page 44 of Damaged

It seems like James’s vendetta against love isn’t just because he’s a grouch. There’s something else to it, like he’s been scorned himself. It’s hard to picture, but maybe it was when he was younger.

There’s an intimacy in this moment. I feel kind of close with him after the events of the day. His hand on my leg in the car. His arm around my waist on the plane. I know there’s a tenderness to him. This tiger isn’t going to rip my face off, and my curiosity won’t let me be quiet.

“So, what has love done to you to make you hate it so much? Or can you just not stand weddings?”

James doesn’t react right away to my words. He keeps his eyes on the city. “It’s not what did to me, but what it did to someone close.”

“You hate love by-proxy?”

James looks at me again. There’s a seriousness in his expression that makes me regret my choice of words.

“When I was eight, my life fell apart. My parents died. I had to go live with my uncle in an apartment complex with one hundred other families in northeast Philadelphia.”

He pauses, but I don’t fill the air.

“He was a cold bastard. Took me in out of duty, when really, I might’ve been better off in the foster system. But I found myself some warmth. A big sister, so to speak. I was a cute kid, you see?” He smiles briefly before his face goes dark again. “Her name was Sabrina. She was probably only eighteen.”

I don’t dare say a word. James Callaway is telling me astory. My heart beats anxiously as I watch him collect his thoughts.

“We had a lot of fun together. Sabrina was smart, too, going to community college and planning to transfer to Penn State. She helped me with my homework. With my dreams. She was a big sister, I suppose. But she had this boyfriend… Dominic.”

His tone darkens. He looks at his hands as he speaks. And my breaths begin to shorten.

“She loved him with her whole heart. Even though he beat the shit out of her. But she would never leave him. It seemed simple to me then, and it does to me now, but I guess love makes everything more complicated. Clouds your judgement. Your mind.Never ever, she’d say when I told her to dump him. One winter evening, I knock on her door to study, and no one answers. I go home and wake up later to all the emergency lights out my window. The sound of heavy boots in the hall. Dead,” he whispers. Like it still hurts to say that fact any louder.

A strong gust of wind blows. It makes it so it would be impossible to hear James if he did keep talking, but that seems like the end of the story. Dominic killed her.

“I’m sorry,” I say when the wind calms. It makes my story with Jake sound like a high school breakup. I don’t know what else to say to James. I want to thank him for telling me, but it would come out weird.

He’d just nod. But I can’t stay silent. I put my hand on top of his a little awkwardly.

He stares at my hand, and his expression goes from tortured to amused. I wasn’t smooth, but at least I distracted him.

“Did they find him guilty?”

“What?” James says sharply, like he’s been in a trance.

“Dominic. Did they catch him?”

James pauses for a moment. He licks his lips quickly and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, they caught him.”

I suddenly remember the incident that Alana told me with the brick. James has a heightened disgust towards domestic violence. If he saw something like that happening in real time…

I realize it’s probably not a rumor that revolves around a billionaire. He likely did kill that man in the alley. I take my hand off his.

Tender but dangerous. I don’t know what to think of him.

Suddenly the patio door opens, and I glance over my shoulder to see the tattooed man walking out with a cigarette in his lips. He walks to the far side of the balcony, where he’s out of earshot. He leans on the railing facing away from us and smokes.

“That man was watching me at the bar.”

“He was probably going to make a move.”

“There’s something about him that’s… off.”

James looks at him. “He’s Russian.”

“How do you know?”

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