Hansel 4(20)

“Shelly didn’t. Shelly loved you.”

“I fucking know she loved me,” My throat constricts. “She loved me,” I whisper, “and that was her mistake.”

“It’s not a mistake,” Leah says.

“She fucking died.”

“You didn’t do it.”

“It was my fault,” I snarl. I get up off the bed and point to the door. “You need to go now, Leah. I can’t talk about this anymore.”

“I can’t just go!” Her shoulders rise and fall, as if she’s close to crying. “I care about you. I love you, Luke.”

“I can’t sign on for that,” I tell her, moving back toward the bed. I hold my bandaged hands up. “I can’t even touch you.”

“Yes you can.” Her chin juts up. “You have.” She stalks out of my room and slams the door.





CHAPTER SIX

Leah



There’s a playground right across the street, across a field with bike paths, on the other side of some tall hedges. When I’m in the kitchen, loitering and obsessing over Luke, Echo tells me about it.

After I leave Luke’s room, I find echo in the den, teaching Lana how to do something on her own iPhone. Lana tries to catch my eye, and I refuse her.

I kneel down and wrap my arm around Echo. “It’s playground time,” I say. “You want to go?”

“Heck yeah!”

His nanny, Hally, turns around from where she’s making him tomorrow’s school lunch.

“Do you mind?” I ask her.

“No. No ma’am.” She smiles, and I can hear the Southern in her voice.

I hand the camera to Lana while Echo runs about the house, getting his water bottle and putting on his shoes.

“He’s doing fine, but if you want this,” I hand it to her, and she takes it, giving me a quizzical look I dodge.

Echo and I spend the next two hours at the neighborhood park, and I find out that Luke did foster him first.

Apparently, Luke had volunteered with some program that put him involved with an inner city child who was “at risk for bad things,” as Echo put it. When Echo’s Mother, a crack addict, moved them out onto the streets, Luke stepped in and offered to take Luke temporarily.

“He loves me,” Echo tells me from the top of an orange slide. His smile twinkles. “That’s why he adopted me.”

When the two of us get back to the house, Lana hands me the monitor.

“Sleeping,” she tells me. “I don’t think he needs me here. I’ve been in contact with some local doctors I think he should be seeing. Particularly a good trauma therapist.” She hands me a sheet of paper. “Do you mind if I go after tonight, Leah?”

“No. Of course not. Lana—” I throw my arms around her. “Thank you so, so much.”

“Only for you, my lovestruck sister.” She gives me a funny little smile and strokes my cheek. “Be careful with that, please?” She taps my chest, as if to say ‘be careful with your heart’.

I nod slowly. “I will be.”

We go over some of his vitals logs, and before the strike of midnight, Lana is pulling away from the house in her rental car, bound for a hotel near the airport, where her new husband has been waiting for her.

I know I should probably do the same, but the moment she leaves, I also know it’s not going to happen. I don’t feel finished here yet. I don’t feel that I can leave, no matter how tired I am of loitering in the kitchen area and making small-talk with Hally.

I don’t sneak to his room until both Hally and Echo are asleep. Then I leave the little, second-story room I’ve been assigned and tip-toe down the stairs. I find his door unlocked and consider it an invitation.

I find him sleeping, propped upright in the queen bed, his bandaged hands in front of him. I slide under the covers with him, tracing the hard contours of his body with my hungry fingers.

His eyes flutter. He groans and rocks his hips against the air.

I reach under the covers, and I start to stroke him. He wakes up in phases, his eyelids fluttering, his mouth pulling taut, his hands hovering in the air, wanting and unable to take what they need, as I have.

He’s rock-hard and groaning when he leans over and bites me on the throat, and I can tell by the strength of his jaw that he’s frustrated.

“I’m supposed to call the shots. You,” he murmurs angrily, “take what I give you. He can’t pull his dick out of my hand, so his eyes drift shut with the pleasure of my strokes, but at the same time, he barks orders at me.”

“Let go of me and stick your ass in my face,” he says. “I want to lick that pussy and that ass before you ride my cock.”