Page 53 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
Hope
I hadn’t been exaggerating. Even after a shower, my legs still felt like rubber, threatening to shake just from holding me up. Ever since we’d come back from New Zealand, I’d felt incredibly tired and overemotional, the last state I ought to be in right now. But then, a lot had happened since then.
It seemed like Hemi’s workout was just getting started, too. Eugene might have seen something wrong with Hemi’s fitness, but I had absolutely no complaints. The sight of him, his palms on the floor, his toes on an exercise ball, shoving off into an endless series of pushups—that wasn’t something I’d be forgetting anytime soon. I’d discovered that lifting weights was bizarrely arousing, too. Something about the blood flow, maybe, or just my deplorable weakness. In any case, I’d known that if I’d done any more of it, and watched Hemi in boxing gloves to boot, going after the punching bag I’d barely managed to hit, I might just have had a spontaneous orgasm, been tempted into rocking on that exercise ball myself when I’d been supposed to be doing situps. That would have been one impossible thing to hide, right there in front of Eugene. Much better to take a walk.
Especially, of course, after Hemi told me not to.
Eventually, he was going to figure out that ordering me around outside of bed didn’t work. Or you might say that eventually, I was going to teach him. I hoped.
I kept the walk short, because it was hot and humid out, and while I wandered my sweaty way through Central Park, avoiding the joggers and dog walkers and thinking how different it was from the quiet, cool, green solitude of New Zealand, I wondered how Karen was doing with her job search.
Maybe I should text her. I actually pulled out my phone, then hesitated with my hand hovering over the button. How did I feel when Hemi acted like I needed to be checked up on? It felt stifling, that was what. Karen was sixteen, she was spreading her wings a little, and I needed to let her do it. So I bought myself a smoothie with protein powder and tried to feel like a weightlifter instead of a shaky mess, and after an hour, I went home, heard the shower running, and caught Hemi leaning against the granite tile, his palms against the wall, his head bent beneath the spray.
“Hey,” I said.
He turned his head and looked at me, and I smiled and asked, “He’s tough, huh?”
I got a shadow of a grin for that. “Yeh. Good walk?”
“Maybe,” I said. “And maybe I missed you.”
“Well, then,” he said, getting his fierce back fast, “get that kit off and come show me how much. I’ve got a point or two to make with you.”
He should have looked vulnerable, exhausted and naked, the water pouring over him. Instead, he looked formidable. His muscles were pumped from the exercise, and my treacherous body was already responding to him as if it had never heard of words like “self-determination” and “independence” and “autonomy.” I pulled my dress over my head, stripped off the thong that was the only other thing I was wearing, stepped under the spray, and surrendered to the need that was pulling me. And then to Hemi.
He made his point, and he made it hard. Against the wall, to be exact. And then he took me to bed and made it all over again with lips and tongue and demanding hands, until I was as wrung out as I’d been after the session with Eugene, and all I could do was fall asleep.
Is there such a thing as sex lag? Because I think I had it.
As Sundays went, it wasn’t bad at all. As a bonus, Karen came home with a job at the movie theater. “Which is going to suck,” she said cheerfully over our Thai takeout dinner. “I’m going to start at the concession counter, they said, on the weekends. Not doing the cash register, because I’m apparently not ready for that yet. I’ll be on the popcorn machine, wearing a goofy hat, asking people if they want an extra pump of fake butter. But hey, everybody has to start somewhere, right?”
“Congratulations,” I said. “You’re right. It’s a start.”
Hemi didn’t say anything, and Karen looked at him, lifted her chin, and said, “Here’s where you say ‘Congratulations,’ too.”
He didn’t smile. Instead, his face was absolutely serious when he said, “Working’s good.” But when I was in the bathroom in my nightgown brushing my teeth, he came in, leaned against the counter, and said, “Has it ever occurred to you that I could be right about Karen?”
I stopped brushing for a minute, then forced myself to finish up. I spat my toothpaste into the sink and rinsed my mouth before I said, “No. It hasn’t.”
Hemi’s heavy arms were folded across his chest, his expression as hard as the granite counter, and I braced myself for whatever was coming next. When it did, though, it surprised me. “Never occurred to you that you and she could both be targets?” he asked.
“Targets of what?”
“I don’t know,” he said silkily. “Kidnapping, maybe? Ever think of that?”
“But I’m…” I tried to think. “We’re not even married. And Karen? That’s silly, surely.”
“You’re living with me. That’s not going to stay a secret. And can you possibly think that if somebody took Karen, I wouldn’t pay? If she’s a target, how much more of one are you?”
“Good thing you’ve got a reputation for being so cold and uncaring, then,” I tried to joke. His face got even harder, and I hurried on to say, “Sorry. I just can’t believe that’s a thing. And, what? She gets chauffeured to her minimum-wage job on the popcorn machine?”
“Yeh. I think she does, at least at night. And I’d like to be her guardian as well.”
“No.” The word was out of my mouth before I had a chance to think about it. “All right, at night. At night would be good. But I meant,” I struggled to explain, “that’s me. It’s always been me. I’ve always…Hemi, she’s sixteen. It’s two more years. I…”
“Are you thinking of your feelings,” he asked, “or her best interests? Suppose something did happen to you. Don’t you think she’s thought of that? You’ve lived on the edge your entire life. Do you want her to stay there?”
“She isn’t worried,” I said weakly. “Karen doesn’t worry. She trusts me. And you, too. You said you’d set up a college fund, and we both believed you. Besides, ever since she’s been healthy, she’s been getting more…” I hesitated.
