She wiped the wetness from her cheeks. Wendy’s tears. Max didn’t know how to cry.
Was it a vision or a disjointed dream? She didn’t know. Usually she could ask Cameron. Not tonight. His peppermints hung in the stale air, but she didn’t call out to him. It wasn’t anger that kept her quiet. It was fear. She’d rather endure the visions than give him another opening into that long ago night he died, or to the things she’d felt tonight while dancing with Nick.
They’d had fights when Cameron was alive, both of them too stubborn to end it before it escalated into a screaming match. Back then, he’d disappear for a day or two. But he’d always come home. With flowers. Or her favorite mocha.
He hadn’t left her again since the day he died.
His apology was a far off echo she had to ignore.
She didn’t want to talk about how the dream, while she knew it was Wendy’s memory, was also a statement about her own behavior. She was the slut being punished, for all the men, all the amoral desires.
Unfurling, she sat up, pulled her feet beneath her, then stretched across the bed to push up the window. Over-painting had made the slide stiff. She yanked, and it rose with a start, toppling her over onto her hip. She lay there, the night air gently caressing her.
She imagined it was Cameron. She knew he’d come to her in a sweet dream if she wanted, wash away the nightmare, wash away the earlier argument.
She also knew that afterward, he’d want to talk about...everything. And that she couldn’t bear.
Something soft rubbed against her face, and a purr vibrated near her ear. “Buzzard,” she whispered.
The cat pushed its nose against hers, rubbed its sleek face across her cheek, staked its claim of ownership, then flopped on the bed, warm fur pressed to her belly.
Max let it stay, just for the night, and fell asleep with the comforting warmth of something alive tucked close to her body. The scent of peppermint drifted in through the window.
She remembered the ring the moment before sleep claimed her.
A ruby ring. Like the one Remy Hackett wore.
*
Cameron didn’t talk to her all weekend. She didn’t talk to herself either.
By Sunday night, alone in her too-narrow bed with nothing more than Buzzard the cat, she was going mad.
“I’m sorry, Max.”
Weren’t cats supposed to hiss a warning when there was a ghost around? Buzzard had neither raised his head nor opened his eyes. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” she whispered.
“You thought that was a bullshit movie line when I was alive. You sure as hell don’t believe it now that I’m dead.”
“Have it your way. But that was Friday night, Cameron. You don’t need to apologize. Let it go.” She wished she could.
“Status quo, huh, Maxi?” he murmured, then left it alone the way she wanted him to. “Wanna talk about the vision?”
The vision? For a moment, she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. Oh yeah, the Wendy dream. She’d begun to think of it as one of her own, not a vision, not some dead woman’s memory, but her own personal nightmare inspired by her actions over countless nights for two years, the needs she couldn’t control.
There were, however, parts of it that were undeniably Wendy. And someone else. She could almost feel the cold, hard concrete floor beneath her knees and the fist against her ear. Then, quickly, the physical sensation of hurling that blow, consumed with the need to hurt, humiliate, and control, the almost sexual thrill of it and the swift stab of pleasure when the fist connected.
Both themes sickened her. Power over weakness. In one way she was the abused, in another, the abuser.
“I figured it out,” she murmured into the dark.
“You said you forgave me.”
“I do.” She would always forgive him. It was herself she wasn’t so sure about.
“You don’t sound like you mean it,” he singsonged.
“Nag, nag, nag.” She had to fight the smile wanting to rise to her lips. He was here. That’s all that mattered.
His laughter swirled. “Okay, now you sound like yourself again. So tell me about the dream.”
“You’ve already read my mind.” She prayed he hadn’t read any of her emotions concerning the nightmare.
“I know all about your emotions.”
“Then you know I don’t want to talk about them.”
She was the bad girl, a very bad girl. She knew it. Cameron knew it. That’s why he’d made those awful, sarcastic, cruel but very true comments on Friday night. She deserved the punishment.
His warmth surrounded her as his words filled her head. “But I was talking about the substitution of sex with strangers for intimacy. I was talking about why you do that, not about punishment.”
“Please, Cameron, not tonight. Please don’t start this again tonight.” It was the closest she’d come to begging for anything in...maybe forever.
“What do you want to beg for?”
She wanted to beg for him to be alive.