Page 88 of Damaged

James

I finish doing the dishes and go back upstairs to brush my teeth again.

I threw up twice last night, and I still can’t get the taste of it out of my mouth. Once was on the drive here from New York with Sophia still sleeping in the back seat.

I pulled over and walked toward the woods, barely making it off the pavement before I emptied my guts. It wasn’t from stress or fear or pulling the trigger on that degenerate.

No. I was sick from putting Sophia in that situation. And I’m still sick.

My stomach is on a carousel like I’m back in college and have the spins. I haven’t eaten breakfast. A few small glasses of water earlier are all I can keep down.

I didn’t know you could be literally sick from guilt. Sick from watching someone you care about pass out from shock.

Sick from knowing it was all your fault, and it wasn’t even the first time she’s been in danger because of you.

I rescued her. Brought her to safety. Carried her inside. But all this can be erased in the ledger book of good deeds. She needed my help because I put her in that situation. Simple as that.

I can’t for one second pretend to be the hero she thinks I am. The police asked how I knew something was wrong at the gallery.

There’s street camera footage of me breaking every traffic law known to man to get there. I can’t say I saw it from a live feed. All the cameras were disabled when the power was cut. I told them I remembered seeing something was off when Sophia was dropped off in the taxi. That there was a black van at the endof the block that slipped my mind until I had proper time to sit and think about it.

I’m not sure the detectives bought it. But therewasa van there. I remember seeing it. The cameras will back me up.

I’ll have to get lucky, because I can’t rat Cody out.

No, I must deal with him another way. My own way. To think he’d let me use Sophia as a prop, as a key the robbers could turn to get the artifacts… He thought she was little more than an employee to me. And he thoughtlethallywrong.

I swish mouthwash around for a minute and spit. I have some shame mixed in with my guilt, because my thoughts about Sophia aren’t entirely pure. She’s adorable in my T-shirt. I want those big brown eyes looking up at me. Those smooth legs wrapped around my back.

What is wrong with me? She needs to recover, not be lusted over.

“Hey,” I hear behind me. “Do you maybe have an extra one of those?”

Sophia stands back several feet in the master bedroom. I stare at her tousled morning hair. It’s so thick and tangled in places that it looks like coils of twine.

So innocent. So beautiful. I stare at her for several stunned seconds before I realize she’s wondering if I have an extra toothbrush.

“Um, shit,” I say.

She laughs. “You don’t have a toothbrush, do you?”

“No. I’m sure there’s a spare in one of these bathrooms.”

“How many bathrooms does this place have?” she asks.

I have to squint and think. “Five. No… Yeah. Five.”

“You’re not just going to send me on a wild-goose chase, are you?”

I start opening drawers in the vanity but don’t find an extra. We go to the hallway and start with the linen closet.There are cleaning products and towels and even a new tube of toothpaste, but there’s no toothbrush.

The rest of the bathrooms are a similar story. There are soaps and shampoos that have been stocked by housekeeping since I bought this place, but there’s no brush. Most of the bathroom drawers have nothing in them but a sparse layer of dust.

“Okay, handsome,” Sophia says as we stand defeated at the final vanity. “How open are you to the idea of sharing?”

She’s not acting like she’s damaged. And I realize maybe it’s not just a show for me. Maybe she is okay.

“It’s disgusting.”

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