Chapter 13

Ellie

I woke up with my face against a pillow that didn’t smell like me. My head ached, but only barely. Something I could ignore with ease. I couldn’t ignore the sense that I didn’t belong where I slept.

The curtains shut the light out and the door had been closed. Even so, I knew I hadn’t slept at home. Every bit of the bed just felt like Mordechai. I couldn’t really explain it. The apartment felt like him too. The exposed brick, the empty bedroom and the decorated living room. The details got to me. The things I saw in the paintings that he had hung up. Everything had water. Every single picture had some body of water in it. It gave me about a million questions to ask. First, I wanted to know I ended up this bed.

I pushed the blankets off me and went to the window. One pull on the cord had the room lit up in seconds. I didn’t like looking at it, feeling like something was missing. No pictures of family. No books. No signs of things that might have brought him joy or passed the time. He had that stuff in another room, but why not in there?

When I poked my head out, I saw Mordechai standing at the stove, pushing scrambled eggs around in a pan. He had on his dark jeans and button up, but they didn’t look like they’d been slept in. I got a weird little tingle, wondering if he slept naked on the couch.

“Why did you move me?” I asked, emerging from his room.

Mordechai sighed, not bothering to turn around. “Should I have left you drunk on the couch? That wouldn’t have been very good of me as a host.”

He couldn’t see me roll my eyes, but I did it anyway. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I’m aware. I know you’re accustomed to a certain type of lifestyle. Your father made it clear that my job is to keep you comfortable as well as safe. Wouldn’t want to get myself in trouble.”

The ice in his voice made my ears ring. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe it annoyed him that he’d slept on the couch because of me. Looking over at it, I knew he couldn’t have fit on that thing.

“I shouldn’t have drank so much,” I said. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. You had a bad day.”

I stopped at the counter, standing in a spot where I could see his face. He still didn’t look at me, and his expression didn’t look any softer than his voice sounded.

“Are you doing okay?” I asked, scratching my temple and looking away from him.

“I’m fine. How about you go shower and I’ll have breakfast ready for you when you get out.”

“I could help you.”

“I’ve got it handled, Miss Locke.”

My stomach dropped. “Ah, okay. I’ll, uh, get out of your hair.” I couldn’t have done much anyway.

I showered, got dressed, and sat on the bed with the door closed for a few minutes. I knew what I would get when I walked out there. He would look at me like I was the spoiled daughter of the richest man in the state, and he would think I couldn’t be anything more. I didn’t blame him. Even so, I’d thought we’d moved past that at least a little. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.

“Breakfast!” Mordechai called while I fixed his bed. I had to make sure the blankets got tucked under the pillows just right or the room wouldn’t look symmetrical.

Before I opened the door, I flipped the light switch. One. Two. Three. I left it how I found it, counting one, two, three all the way to the table. I kept my head down, watching the floor and avoiding letting my feet step outside of the pretty blue wood panels.

Mordechai went to pull my chair out for me before I got a chance, and I could only feel guilty as I took a seat. I went to dish up some of the food in pans on the table, but Mordechai went for that too, pushing a little of everything onto my plate.

“You don’t have to do that,” I told him.

“It’s fine. You’re used to being served. Wouldn’t want you even more stressed out.”

Funny. My feet still touched the ground when I sat in the chair, but I’d never felt smaller in my whole life.

“I don’t want you doing things for me,” I said. “I’m a grown woman. I can do them for myself. I would have cooked for you if I’d been up earlier.”

He laughed, stabbing a piece of egg with his fork. “You told me you didn’t know how to cook.”

“I don’t, but I could figure it out. I can try making us lunch.”

“I think it would be better if you just read a book and let me take care of everything. You’ve been through enough and it seems like the smartest thing we can do is wait here, stay safe, and keep you relaxed.”

It didn’t feel like he wanted me to relax. It felt like he wanted the useless, spoiled brat out of his hair. He wouldn’t even look at me. We’d been laughing last night. We’d been having a good time. I had been able to sleep without nightmares because of that.

“Did I say something when I was drunk?” I asked. “Like, did I say something rude or stupid?”

“Do you usually?”

“I don’t know. I’m always alone.”

He went quiet but only for a few seconds. “You didn’t say anything. You walked out and fell asleep fast.”

Then why can’t you look at me?

We finished breakfast in silence. He finished first, since I kept stopping to tap my fork on the side of the plate. I had to do it for every bite, or I would swallow too fast and choke on it. Bite, tap while I chew, swallow, bite again. Bite. Tap. Tap. Tap. Swallow. Bite. Tap. Tap. Tap. Swallow.

Mordechai got up to put his dishes in the sink and start washing them. He did the same with the pans and cooking tools. I couldn’t help him. I had to finish eating everything on my plate or he would think me a wasteful, spoiled brat who didn’t know how to be grateful for anything. Someone who would just sit there and let the world exist around me. Blood on my boots. Dead men in streets. Maybe it didn’t matter if I helped with the dishes or not. I would find a way to ruin everything. I would find a way to let it all break.

I didn’t bother offering to clean my dishes when I finished eating. I got to the sink and he took them from me anyway. He would think what he would of me. I couldn’t stop that.

Mom didn’t pack books for me, so I sat on the floor in the corner and read something on my phone while trying desperately not to look up at Mordechai. Of course, I couldn’t really help it.

He sat on the couch with a sketch pad on his lap, drawing something I couldn’t see. I didn’t care about the picture so much as I cared about his face while he drew. His eyes darted all over the place, watching his fingers move as they shadowed and traced and mapped out his piece. I wanted to ask him about it. Better, I wanted him to offer up something of his own free will. I wanted him to talk because he wanted me to listen.

I went back to the story I didn’t care about, trying to come up with something to say. Everything I came up with sounded stupid, but I had no doubt he already thought me stupid. What did I even want? He didn’t respect me, but I still tried to get his attention. Did I think I could prove him wrong? Did it matter?

Yes, it did matter. If he would make me feel unwanted, then at least I could annoy the hell out of him.

I got up and moved to the couch. Mordechai didn’t so much as glance over at me. I told myself he didn’t notice me because of the picture he worked on, but I knew better. In the back of my mind, I remembered all those dozens of times I had been sitting around seething, thinking about how he didn’t even pay any attention to me.

“What are you working on?” I asked, unable to deal with the silence any longer.

“I have no idea,” Mordechai said.

“How do you have no idea?”

“I just pick something up and I start. Half the time, it ends up being something. You don’t have to pretend to be interested.”

My heart thumped. “I’m not. I didn’t like all the quiet and I wanted to know what you were working on.”

He stopped, taking a deep breath before he sat back and let the sketchpad lay on his lap. “I don’t really let people see me draw.”

“Do you want me to go into the other room?”

“No.”

His tone had been oddly demanding. “I don’t know why you’re acting all quiet, but I’ll assume it was something I did. I don’t know what it is, so I can’t really say I’m sorry for it. Just know that I’m aware I’m a dumbass. So much so that my father won’t trust me with our family business and is willing to wait until I have a son or maybe even share it with my future husband before he brings me into it.”

“You know that it’s just his old man head saying women shouldn’t be involved in anything messy like this.”

“He needs to get over it. He doesn’t tell me a thing. He didn’t even come see me after I got home.”

Mordechai set his charcoal down. “I’m sure he was busy.”

I shook my head. “It’s always like that. He thinks I’m soft. He spends so much time trying to put out fires with me that don’t even exist. Then he ignores the ones burning the house down. The ones that are going to make it harder to come back to see him once I leave and move on with my life. He put me here. He trapped me in this, and he’s going to trap me with some guy I don’t care about. The least he can fucking do is ask me if I’m okay, or help me get the blood out of my hair—”

My voice broke. I broke. I stared at my lap, wishing I had something to distract me. I had no threads to pull. No lights to turn off. I had nothing to break.

His hand came for mine, more hesitant than I’d ever seen someone be. When Mordechai touched me, it was so faint. He rested his hand over mine, smudging it with blackness. He pulled back for a second, then put his hand where it had been.

“Is this what you need?” he asked. “I don’t know how to do this.”

I stared at the smudge on my hand, and his fingers trying to wipe it away from my skin. It only made the smudges bigger, staining both our hands so much worse. “Yeah, this is what I need.”

“I think I was drawing the beach,” he said. “I don’t know. Everything is dark. I don’t do it for the outcome. I draw for the quiet it puts in my head. It doesn’t matter what the canvas looks like after.”

But it must have, because all the pictures looked the same. “You don’t let your friends see you draw?”

“I don’t have friends.”

“Even now?”

“Even now.”

“Guess we’re the same then. Should I have my dad call up your old acquaintances and bribe them to give you an hour of attention?”

He smiled, but not in a happy way. “I get more out of our back and forth than I would from any of that.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“Fighting is a lot realer than people being nice to me because they’re afraid.”

I knew that too well. Far too well. “I’m starting to think that I’ve never actually connected with anyone in my whole life. My mom’s the only person who even talks to me like I’m a real person with flaws. And you, of course. You’re not afraid to dress me down.”

“And you don’t seem to think I’m just waiting around to hurt you.”

“Of course not. Why would I think you’d hurt me?”

His hand tightened ever so slightly on mine. He stared at it, clearly lost in thought for a few beats. “A lot of people assume things about me. It’s why I do what I do. I’m a bully. I’m an attack dog. I’m a gun. I think it’s best to go with it. At least I have some control that way.”

I didn’t know the first thing about control. At least Mordechai had a chance for a real life. He could move on and do anything he wanted to do. I would be stuck, but he could have something better. I hoped he would, eventually.

“I think better of you,” I said. “You’re not just some attack dog.”

He smiled again, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Sometimes, we’re exactly what we seem to be.”