He was starting to wonder if there was anything left that Gretchen Lowell didn’t know about him.
“Now you answer a question for me,” she said. She placed a hand on top of the hand she was already holding, so that he was entirely in her grasp. “Were you attracted to me, that day we first met? When I was the psychiatrist writing a book?”
“I was married.”
“So cagey. Be honest.”
He had already betrayed Debbie utterly. Why not this, too? “Yes.”
She pulled her hands from his and sat back. “Let me see it.”
He knew what she meant, and hesitated only briefly before reaching up and slowly unbuttoning his shirt. Then, when it was open, he pulled the shirt apart so she could see his ravaged torso.
She leaned forward over the table, her knees on her chair, perched on her elbows on the table, so she could see. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch, as she reached forward and ran her fingertip over the heart she had carved on him. But he wondered if she could see the pulse in his neck quicken. He could smell her hair. Not like lilacs anymore, some industrial prison shampoo, harsh and fruity. She moved her fingers to the vertical scar that divided his chest, and Archie felt the muscles in his stomach, and lower, tense.
“Is this from the esophageal surgery?” she asked.
He nodded.
Then the fingers danced to the midline scar that divided his lower torso.
“This isn’t my incision.”
He cleared his throat. “They had to open me up again. There was a little bleeding.”
She nodded and moved her fingers over the smaller scars now, from the X-Acto knife she had used to doodle on him. Her fingers traced the half-moon scars along his scapula, then across his nipples, then down to the hash-mark scars in the tender skin of his flank. It had been more than two years since he’d been touched. He was afraid to move. Afraid of what? That she’d stop? He closed his eyes. He would give himself this one brief moment of pleasure. What could it hurt? It felt good. And he hadn’t felt good in longer than he could remember. Her fingers skated lower. Blood rushed to his groin. She was unfastening his belt now. Fuck. He opened his eyes and grabbed one of her hands by the wrist and held it there.
She looked up, eyes shining, cheeks pink. “You don’t have to pretend to be good with me, Archie.”
He held her hand there, centimeters from his hard-on.
“I can make you feel better,” she said. “Just let my wrist go. No one has to know.”
But he held on to her. Every cell in his body begged him to let her touch him. But what was left of his mind knew that if he did, it would be the last thing, that she would have some last part of him. It would be over. She would own him entirely. She was amazingly good. She could torture him without even touching him. He laughed at that, and pushed her hands away.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
He shook his head. “You’ve done one hell of a job fucking me up,” he said. He got the pillbox from his pants pocket, opened it, and dumped a handful of pills into his hand. Then he popped them into his mouth one at a time and swallowed them.
“You’re already high,” Gretchen noted.
“Careful,” Archie said. “You sound like Debbie.”
“You have to watch the pills. The acetaminophen will kill you. Do your kidneys hurt yet?”
“Sometimes.”
“If you experience fever, jaundice, or vomiting, you need to get to an emergency room before your liver gives out. Are you drinking?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart,” Archie said.
“There are easier ways to kill yourself. I’ll do it for you.” She caught his eye. “If you bring me a razor.”
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “You’d kill me, and the first three guards who came in after me. Don’t let my erection confuse you. I still know what you are.”
She reached out and touched his face. Her hand was warm and gentle, and he turned into it almost by instinct. “Poor Archie,” she said. “I’m just getting started with you.”
She really was beautiful, Archie thought through his pill haze. There was something delicate about her. The luminous skin. The perfect features. Sometimes he could fool himself into thinking that she was almost human. He turned his cheek, and her hand fell away. “How many men like Reston do you have out there?” he asked. “How many time bombs?”
Gretchen leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Including you?”
Archie felt the room slip around him. “You had it planned all along. To call nine one one. To save me. To turn yourself in.”