Page 113 of Fierce

Letting You Burn

I landed at JFK after the most uncomfortable flight of my life to find a single voicemail. It was from ten hours earlier, and it told me nothing at all.

Hope’s voice, not sounding steady. “Hemi. It’s me. But you’re not there. Call me when you can. If you want to.”

I didn’t call, because it was almost two in the morning in New York. I went to the hotel instead. And heard at the front desk that Hope and Karen had checked out at noon the day before.

They were gone.

I almost told Charles to drive to Brooklyn, but I didn’t. If Hope thought I was too much for her, too demanding, how would she feel if I turned up at three o’clock in the morning and told her she was coming back to me? I couldn’t possibly be reasonable, not now, and I needed to be reasonable.

I was always in control. Always. Except now. Now, I was nowhere close, and I was going to have to do better. Starting by turning up at a reasonable hour and talking to her like a reasonable man.

In the end, it took me nearly twenty-four hours from the time I’d left Milan before I was standing on a snowy sidewalk and pressing the buzzer for their apartment. When a fella came up behind me and opened the door with his key, though, I didn’t hesitate. I followed him inside. If Hope didn’t want to see me? That was too bloody bad. She was going to see me anyway. I didn’t understand any of this, but I was going to.

So much for reasonable.

I took the four flights of stairs two at a time, then stood outside their door and knocked. When I didn’t get an answer straight away, I may have lost my equilibrium entirely and pounded on the door.

They had to be here. Where else would they have gone?

“Hope!” It was a bellow. I knew it, and I couldn’t help it. “HOPE!”

The door opened just as my fist was coming down on it again, and I spun with the effort to pull the punch, not to hit Karen in her poor abused head.

Because it was Karen, not Hope. Karen, looking…looking well, even though a bandage still covered the crown of her head. And somehow, despite the adrenaline, the fury, the grinding frustration, I softened.

“Hi, sweetheart.” I ran my hand gently over the fuzz that had begun to grow back to cover her naked scalp. She still looked vulnerable and plucked as a baby robin, and I kissed her cheek and asked, “How you goin’?”

“I’m good. I mean, I’m good. I hardly hurt, and it’s…” She laughed. “It’s amazing, you know?”

“Yeh,” I said. “I know. How about letting me in?”

She stepped back. “Oh! Sorry. What’s going on, though? I don’t get it. Did you break up with Hope? Is that why we had to leave the hotel?”

“No.” I could hear the grimness in my voice and couldn’t help it, because it had all come straight back again. “It wasn’t me. I’m here to find out what it was. Where is she?”

“In the bedroom.”

I was across to it in three strides, because that was how tiny this grotty apartment was. I knocked on this door, too, but I didn’t pound this time, because I’d reminded myself of that “reasonable” thing again.

She was hiding from me. Why? That wasn’t like Hope. She’d always faced me, no matter how forbidding I may have seemed, no matter how much a lesser woman would have quailed.

“Hope,” I called out. “Open up. Talk to me.”

The door opened, and she was on the other side, her mouth opening in shock. With headphones in her ears, and her laptop and files sitting on the bed.

Oh. She hadn’t heard me.

She yanked the headphones out, seeming to be struggling herself for something to say. “Hemi. You’re...you’re here.”

“Yeh.” I put my hands on my hips to keep from grabbing her. “Tell me what’s happened to make you leave me, and I’ll make it right. Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it. Just tell me.”

“Leaveyou? I...I didn’t.”

“What?” Now I was the one staring. “What do you mean, you didn’t? You moved out. You gave back the bracelet. Why?”

“Oh, boy.” She ran a hand through her hair, took in a deep breath, and blew it out. “I can’t...I can’t process. I think we’d better sit down. And I—did you mean it? The bracelet?”

---