Лиза Макманн - Fade

Cabel, conscious enough of his many burn scars, isn’t quite ready to show off the ones below the belt. So Janie admires him from five feet away instead. And hopes he’s gotten over his issues about Janie helping with this case.

“Your eyes are bright again,” he says. “It’s good to see you rested.

And your scar is wicked sexy.” He picks up his towel and wipes the sweat off his face, then rubs the towel over his honey-brown hair. A few damp strands travel down his neck. He walks up to her and moves her hair away from her face, getting a good look at the inch-long scar under her eyebrow that is now healing nicely. “God,” he murmurs.

“You’re gorgeous.” He plants a gentle kiss on her lips, and then he towels off his chest and back, and slips on his T-shirt.

Janie blinks. “Are you high?” She laughs, self-conscious. She’s still not accustomed to attention, much less compliments.

He leans in and runs a finger lightly from her ear, across her jaw line, down her neck. Her heart pounds and she closes her eyes inadvertently, sucking in a breath. He takes advantage of her distraction and begins to nibble on her neck. He smells like Axe and fresh sweat, and it’s making her crazy. She reaches for him. Pulls him close. Feels the heat from his skin blasting through his shirt.

It’s the touching they both long for.

The holding.

Spent their whole lives, each without any. Figure it’s time to make up for it.

Cabel hands her the weight bar.

“So…,” Janie says carefully. “You feeling better about me doing this, uh, bait thing?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.” She lowers the bar to her chest and presses upward.

“I don’t want you doing it.”

Janie concentrates and presses again. “Why? What’s your problem?”

she huffs.

“I just…don’t like it. You could get hurt. Raped. My God…” he trails off. His jaw is set. “I can’t let you do it. Say no.”

Janie sets the bar in the cradle and sits up, her eyes flashing. “It’s not your decision, Cabe.”

Cabel sighs deeply and rakes his fingers through his hair. “Janie—”

“What? You think I can’t handle the job? You can go out and mess with dangerous drug dealers and spend nights in jail, but I can’t get involved in anything dangerous? What kind of a double standard is that?” She stands up and faces him.

Looks him in the eye.

His brown silky eyes plead back at hers. “This is different,” he says weakly.

“Because you can’t control it?”

Cabel sputters. “No—It’s just—”

Janie grins. “You are so busted. Better get used to the idea. I’m in for the ride on this one.”

Cabel looks at her a minute more. Closes his eyes and slowly hangs his head. Sighs. “I still don’t like it. I can’t stand the thought of any sicko teacher anywhere near you.”

Janie wraps her arms around his neck. Rests her head against his shoulder. “I’ll be careful,” she whispers.

Cabel is silent.

He presses his lips into her hair and squeezes his eyes shut. “Why can’t you just be the one safe thing in my life?” he whispers.

Janie pulls away and looks up at him.

Smiles sympathetically.

“Because safe equals boring, Cabe.”

Janie spends almost an hour lifting weights. Three weeks, Cabel says, and she’ll start to see the changes. All she knows is that her glutes are killing her.

6:19 p.m.

Janie and Cabel step on each other’s feet in the small kitchen as they broil fish in the oven and fix a mountain of veggies. Cabel is a healthy eater. And he insists Janie eats that way too. Now that she’s lost so much weight. Now that he realizes what she’s in for, for the rest of her life. “It makes me crazy, seeing you so thin like that, you know,” he murmurs as he checks the salmon. “And not in a good way.”

At night, on the nights she stays over, he massages her aching fingers and toes before she drifts off to sleep. Falling into one nasty nightmare will do that to her—leave her fingers numb and aching for hours after.

Cabel, having learned recently to control his dreams to some extent, has made dream control into a religion. He spends an hour a day in meditation, talking himself into calm, sweet dreams, working his way to his ideal—no dreams at all. At least when Janie’s over. So he can keep her nearby. He’s managed to prevent himself from dreaming one entire night now—with Janie as his witness. She woke up so refreshed, he hardly knew her.

That’s another reason why this new assignment is putting him on edge.

He knows the dreams will make this harder on her than on him.

Physically, anyway.

Mentally? Emotionally? It’ll be harder on him.

Because this love thing is foreign to Cabel. And now that he has found

Janie, he’s becoming increasingly protective of her. There is no man in the universe he wants to have to share her with. Especially a creep.

Even if it unearths a scandal.

Of greatest proportions.

The biggest scandal Fieldridge High has ever seen.

10:49 p.m.

Janie stays over.

“Are we okay?” she asks softly.

After a silence, Cabel whispers, “We’re okay.”

He wraps his arms around her in bed, and they talk quietly, like usual.

Janie brings it up first. “So, spill it. All As, right?”

He squeezes her. Closes his eyes. “Yeah.”

“I got a B+ in math,” she finally says.

He’s quiet. Not quite sure what she wants to hear. Maybe she just wants to say it and be done. Get it out there, so it can float away and not be so painful.

He waits a moment. And then murmurs, “I love you, Janie Hannagan. I can’t get enough of you. I wake up in the morning and all I want to do is be with you.” He props himself up on his elbow. “Do you have any idea how unusual, how important that is to me? Compared to some stupid test you took under extreme duress, twice?”

He said it.

It’s the first time he said it out loud.

Janie swallows. Hard.

Understands what he means, completely.

Wants to tell him how she feels about him.

Problem is, Janie can’t remember saying “I love you” to anyone. Ever.

She burrows closer into him. How could she have gone so many years without touching people? Hugs? Arms wrapped loosely in slumber, like a tired Christmas package whose ribbon hangs on, even until the last moment.

They confirm their plans for tomorrow under the covers. Opposite schedules unlike last semester, because they need to make a broader canvas through the school. All different teachers, too. This time Cabel set up his schedule with Principal Abernethy after Janie got hers, without Abernethy knowing why he picked the classes, teachers, and times that he chose. Principal Abernethy knows about Cabel’s job. But he doesn’t know about Janie’s, and Captain wants to keep it that way.

Cabel agreed with the schedule setup, except for one thing. His only insistence with Captain was to have study hall at the same time as

Janie. So he can cover for her, in case anybody ever sees what happens to her in there. Captain agreed.

Last semester, Janie and Cabel had identical schedules. Which Cabel insists was a fluke.

Janie doesn’t believe him.

Or maybe she wants to believe that he found her on purpose. Even

Janie can have her dreams.

They drift off to sleep. And when Cabel starts to dream, she startles awake, fights it off, and slides away from him, closes his door, and finishes her night’s rest on the couch.

January 3, 2006, 6:50 a.m.

She wakes up to the smell of bacon and coffee. Her stomach growls, but it’s normal hunger, not the famished, about-to-pass-out feeling she sometimes has after a night of falling into others’ nightmares.