“Indigo and TJ helped,” Harlan says from where he’s leaning up against the corner of the RV, smoking a cigar and drinking his beer. Well, his third beer, as there are two crushed cans on the ground at his feet.
Chelsea looks back at Steve’s phone and gulps down the rest of her wine and gathers up her guts. She’s got to admit that Harlan intimidates her, but she’s pretty freaked out, and she’s determined not to let things go like she used to or pretend there’s nothing wrong when something is indeed very wrong. She’s determined to never carry that burden again. She walks around the corner of the RV to where Harlan stands and looks up at him, her arms crossed. She has to look up, and up, and up. The RV’s shadow casts him in shades of black, a bare bit of light hitting the wet of his eyes and throwing back the red end of his cigar.
“Harlan, I’m so grateful for…” She throws her hands around, tongue-tied. “All this. But I guess I didn’t know that the VFR would be such a big deal. The webpage…”
He smiles, starlight on square white teeth. “Chelsea, honey, if I told you how many hits and subscriptions and orders we’re getting right now, it would blow your mind. It’s really happening.” He looks up at the sky and blows three smoke rings. “It really is.”
“But you took us on knowing that we all had…things in our lives…”
“That you were running away from,” he finishes easily, more easily than she could.
“And now people will be wearing a shirt with my face on it.”
Harlan stands up, looming without meaning to. When he was slouched over, he seemed human, but now he’s something else entirely, so big he blots out the stars.
“They’ll be wearing a shirt with Florida Woman’s face on it. And you got to remember: You’re not her. She’s a construct, a mask. A pound of makeup, a hairdo, a costume, a bunch of glitter, an attitude. They used to put a full tub of petroleum jelly in my hair and shave my whole damn body and oil me up and put me in a little black Speedo and kneepads. I’m not Rampage. Anyone could be Rampage. I just wore his face for a while. You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who could confuse the two.”
Were words always this hard for her, or is it just that she finally has something to say that matters?
“I don’t confuse the two at all. I know who I am.” It might be a lie, but in this context, it’s not. “I was running away. I came here. Maybe…I don’t want to be found.”
Harlan looks pained, and his eyes slide away. He regards the glowing end of his cigar. “It might be too late for that, then, if someone’s lookin’ real hard. And you did sign the paperwork and sit for the photo session. We have full rights to use your image, in any way we see fit. But here’s the thing.” He turns the full force of his gaze and his body to her, and he’s the realest thing she’s ever seen. “I employ you here. I’m your boss and your landlord and your agent, and I take responsibility for that. After last night, I’m hiring more security, and what’s more, I will protect you with my life. Whether it’s jumping on top of someone storming or throwing out someone who threatens you. I would never let anything happen to you.”
His eyes fly wide like he’s seeing something far away, and his whole face crumples up, showing wrinkles that were invisible before. He dashes away tears, and Chelsea puts a hand on his huge arm as she hears him mumble, “Not again.” It’s like comforting a bull—his muscles are massive, his skin warm. Maybe they shaved him down before, but now he must do it himself, because his arm is entirely smooth.
He puts his large hand over hers and bows his head, letting a few more tears drip down under cover of the shadows. He’s dropped his cigar, and Chelsea stares at it, burning in the brown grass by his beer cans, wondering if she should stomp it out before it starts a fire.
“She was my everything, Chelsea,” he says, so soft and quiet nobody else can hear it, ragged and raw. “She was perfect. I never had no quarrel. And then I blinked and opened my eyes, and—”
He doesn’t have to go on. She knows now.
His wife, Rayna. She was a wrestler, too.
When that surfer kid brought her up on interview day, Harlan kicked him out.
Chelsea doesn’t want to think too hard about what happened to Rayna. She can imagine what those big hands could do when the Violence takes over. She hopes she never has to see anything like it.
“It’s okay,” she says, equally low. “It’s not your fault.”
“I keep telling myself that, and yet I just can’t quite believe it.”
“I know how it feels. We all do. That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’m here.”
He blinks down at her, eyes shimmering and soft. “You are, aren’t you?” he murmurs. His hand moves to cup her face, his lashes sweeping down, his head moving toward hers, his lips parting, and they’re atoms away from brushing hers in a warm whisper of beer and smoke—
“No!” She jerks her head away and steps back. “I mean, Harlan, I—”
He steps back, too, eyes wide and horrified, ashamed. Then a curtain falls, his posture straightens, and the spell is broken. When he speaks again, his voice is formal, the round edges of his accent gone.
“I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry. You’ll have to excuse me.”
Harlan grinds the cigar under his boot and stomps around the trailer and out of sight.
Chelsea stands there feeling…so many things. Too many to name.
Awkward. Guilty. Rude. Bad.
But also strong and good and brave?
Harlan Payne was going to kiss her, and she said no.
The biggest, strongest, most lethal man she’s ever met, and she defied him. Kindly, but still.
This is very much going to complicate their working relationship.
“Fuck,” she mutters to the starry Florida night.
43.
River grins maniacally, holding an X-Acto knife, and Ella cringes back against the padded booth.
“River, stop. That’s just mean,” Leanne says. She turns to Ella looking earnest. “But, um…are you a fainter?”
Ella is still frozen in place. “I don’t know.”
“Are you going to bolt?” River asks. “Or, like, kick me?” Antibac gel glistens over the red slashes Ella left on the side of their face.
“You get how this is scary, right? Literally everything about today?”
River stops and thinks—it’s rare to see someone actually think about something.
“Okay. You’re right. I guess it’s like when the dentist puts out all the freaky tools and then doesn’t tell you their functions.” They put down the knife. “I’m going to make a tiny cut on the inside of your forearm, a place that will heal quickly and not hurt too much. Leanne will capture the blood on a petri dish, where we’ll grow the culture to get more organisms. But what you’ll see me do is clean a big patch of skin off with rubbing alcohol, make a tiny cut, let Leanne get a few smears, clean the cut, and apply a bandage. No big deal. I’ve lived through it a couple of times.”