Audition - Skye Warren, Amelia Wilde Page 0,24
front of all the fuckfaces of the world like a pretty prize, you’re kidding yourself.” With these last words he stands, his muscled frame silhouetted against the fire. He wears a white T-shirt over slacks I know are designed to conceal weapons. The pants skim the line of his hips in a sensual touch. I want to leap up and hook my hands under his elbow, using the graceful swing of my weight to pull him back down next to me. But of course I won’t do that.
And maybe it’s only the power of suggestion, but a certain tiredness comes over my muscles now. A heaviness. I leave him standing in the sitting area and pad back to the massive bed alone. I take a deep breath, like I’m waiting in the wings for the first strains of music to pull my arms and legs, like I’m held up by string. That’s how it feels when I climb into bed, as if someone else does the heavy lifting.
Joshua North’s sheets have to have a thread count in the thousands. They feel like silk against my skin compared to the secondhand set I got for the ratty twin mattress in my apartment. The pillowcase is very nearly silky enough to assuage my regrets about not bringing my own pillowcase, which was the one semi-expensive item of all my bedding, and absolutely necessary. I don’t have the faintest clue what the protocol is in this situation. Do I leave him a note on the bedside table? If you’re going to keep me prisoner, I need a pillowcase that won’t fuck with my hair.
The bigger problem, of course, is that his bed smells like him. Like electricity and man and a stiff breeze.
As much as it pains me to admit it, he’s right—I should get some sleep. But the moment my head hits the pillow, the reel of my memories begins. All of them suffused with his scent. With the ragged beating of my heart. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to guide my thoughts away from that night. I’ve tried so hard to forget it over the years, but the memory refuses to be anything less than crystal clear. That’s what I get for talking about my father again.
He was so angry. That’s the one part I can’t get straight in my mind. What was he angry about? In the end it didn’t matter, but the scared little girl in me can’t stop wondering what I did wrong. I only knew that the way his face twisted and reddened meant something very, very bad. One foot stomped the floor, his hand slapped the kitchen counter, a macabre dance.
Give in and it’ll be over quicker. It’s what I thought then, and here I am, doing the same thing all this time later. Squeezing my eyes shut. Hoping for it to be over. Tasting the bitter acid at the back of my throat.
Back then I didn’t see where Caleb came from. I heard him—I heard everything. The strangled sound he made as he threw himself between my father and me. My eyes snapped open in time to see him bury his fists in my father’s shirt. My father’s weight should have been too much for my brother, but he was drunk. Wasted. And he teetered. He leaned far to the right, swiping at Caleb. The set of my brother’s shoulders looked like a man’s, but he was young, his shoulder blades fine like a bird’s wings.
How did it happen? It happened like this—Caleb let go of our father’s shirt. And because of the alcohol raging in our father’s veins, he didn’t fall backward, or sit down hard. His feet tangled underneath him, and he fell to the side. So many moments in our lives are decided by mere inches. A finger length can mean the difference between a solid landing and a broken ankle. Or a broken skull.
The crack of his head against the brick has me reaching for the blankets. So many years later, and I can still hear it as clearly as if it’s happening here in the room. I pull the sheets tight without thinking. I’m covered in the scent of Josh’s skin.
Caleb’s face, stricken in the dingy yellow light of the kitchen. His mouth in a horrified grimace. The darkness pooling beneath my father’s body.
But this time—this time—the sheets pull me back out of the narrative and into a strange, pulsing desire.
Because there are other memories. Memories I can’t