The Swan and the Jackal

Chapter Twenty-Two

Cassia

I don’t know what’s happening to me.

But I don’t like it.

Fredrik gets out of the bed so late in the morning that I expect to smell chicken pot pie baking in the oven for lunch. Greta always makes it for me on Thursdays. The sun beams brightly through the bedroom window, nearly blinding me, not because I just woke up but because I haven’t seen the sun in a year. I’m quietly mesmerized by it as I lay on my side amid Fredrik’s sheets letting the light bring a flurry of black and yellow spots before my eyes.

Just as Fredrik is about to leave the room with a clean pair of boxers and a T-shirt crushed in his large fist, he realizes I’m awake and stops suddenly in the doorway. He turns to look back at me as if he’d forgotten something and I melt into his blue-eyed gaze.

“Come shower with me,” he says and then walks back over to the bed, reaching out his hand; a close-lipped smile plays softly on his handsome, stubbly face.

It makes me happy that he wants me to be with him for such a seemingly insignificant thing, but I can’t help but wonder how much of it is because he doesn’t trust me alone in the house unless I’m locked away downstairs. But I don’t care about that and I try not to think about it. I’m with him now in ways I’ve only dreamed of since he brought me here.

But why this ominous feeling of sadness in my heart all of a sudden? How can I be so happy because Fredrik seems to have given in to my feelings for him, yet I feel such a strange and looming sadness growing inside?

I take his hand and he helps me out of the bed. I stumble at first, so used to the chain always dragging behind me, but I quickly get the hang of it being gone. I just wonder how long that will last, but I try not to think about that, either.

Walking me down the short hallway with my hand clasped in his, I’m in awe of such small things. The beautiful dark hardwood floor under my bare feet, the cream-white paint on the walls and ceiling that make the dark crown moulding bordering the ceiling stand out. The rich marble accent table sitting at the end of the hall with a small Greek statue displayed in its center. Even the light fixture in the ceiling above me, dome-shaped with beautiful crystal carvings, holds my attention longer than something as simple and boring as a light fixture normally would.

When I glimpse the door to the basement, remembering him walking with me through it last night, my breath hitches and my throat dries out instantly.

I stop in the hallway with my hand still clasped in his. I don’t want to go any farther.

“It’s OK,” Fredrik says gently, tugging on my hand. “I’m not taking you down there.”

Urging me to continue, we walk only as far as the bathroom door and I find myself breathing again once we step inside.

Fredrik opens the glass shower door and turns on the water. I feel strange standing here. Waiting. Wanting to look at the bathroom in awe the same way I did the hallway, but I want to look at Fredrik more. His hard, tanned body, the strength of his solid, bulging calf muscles, the perfect curvature of his oblique muscles and how they dip down into his pelvis in a strong, masculine pattern. His six-pack abs that I still can’t get out of my head from last night as I grazed them under my fingertips when he was on top of me. When he was inside of me. Just thinking about last night makes me ache with need and tingle with warmth beneath my belly. Not just because of the sex, but because of how different Fredrik was from every other time before. He didn’t just take me, he cherished me.

A blush warms my face when he turns from the glass door and looks at me with those magnetic deep blue eyes.

He guides me with him into the shower.

The steaming water streams down on me, and it’s heavenly, but nothing is more heavenly than the feeling of his hands gently massaging the shampoo into my hair, or his lips on my wet shoulders, or the sides of my neck.

“Where would you like to go today?” he whispers against my ear.

A shiver runs up my spine.

Surprised by the question, I turn my head at an angle to get a glimpse of him behind me. His large hands steadily massage my hair.

“What do you mean?” I know what he means, but I can hardly believe he’s even considering taking me out of the house.

His lips fall on the corner of my mouth.

“Wherever you want to go,” he says. “You name it and I’ll take you there.”

Turning me around, he guides my head back under the steady stream of water. I close my eyes as he rinses the shampoo from my hair.

“I-I don’t know,” I say when he finally pulls me away from the stream and I can open my eyes again.

He smiles and looks a little surprised himself.

“You can’t think of anywhere?” he asks. “Not one place?”

I look up, pressing my lips together in a hard line on one side of my mouth, pondering the possibilities.

“Manhattan. Greenwich Village,” I say brokenly as I slowly recall the place. “I haven’t had a good hot dog in a really long time.”

Fredrik smiles and it makes me blush.

He does everything for me, washing me from head to toe, carefully cleaning around the healing, yet still very tender wounds around my ankle. And he kisses me under the constant stream of water. On the shoulders. The sides and center of my throat. The corners of my mouth. My forehead. My lips. And as much as I’d love to let him take me right here in the shower, I’m equally content that he doesn’t touch me in that way, and is very self-controlled.

When we’re done, Fredrik stands me in front of the steam-laden mirror, his chest and pelvic area touching me lightly from behind. He’s hard, but still he doesn’t lose self-control and it only makes me want him more.

I feel the tip of his finger tracing the scars on my back. Then he dips his head and his lips fall on them, one by one.

“Can you tell me where you got these scars?” he asks, kissing another one.

The question throws me off. Not because he asked, but because…I can’t remember.

“I…I don’t really know.”

It frustrates me wholly. I thought I had remembered everything about my past. How could I not remember something as unforgettable as the scars on my back? Fredrik always touches them. Since the first night he brought me here, he’s always had an interest in them. He would lie me on my stomach across my bed downstairs and gently pull my nightgown up to my shoulders. He would trace his fingers across the scars—just as he’s doing now. And then the tip of his tongue as if he were tasting and savoring a memory. I never knew the scars were there until I asked him what it was about my back that he seemed to treasure so much.

“It’s all right,” he says raising his head. “You don’t have to remember everything.”

I feel like he’s somewhat relieved that I don’t know. But that’s ridiculous. Why would he be relieved that I couldn’t remember any part of my past when we’ve both fought so hard and for so long to unravel everything?

I brush it off and smile to myself, thinking of only him. Of us. Being here together.

But then scars flash across my mind that I do remember. Absently, I finger the ones on my thighs—six on each side—cut in a perfect horizontal line three inches across. Fredrik’s hand touches mine, moving it away from them—the scars he made when he tortured me in that chair on the other side of the basement.

“I’m sorry I did that to you,” he says, his voice laced heavily with sadness and regret and shame and guilt. “I don’t want you to forgive me. Because I’ll never forgive myself.”

“But I do—”

He places his fingers over my lips. Instantly I’m compelled to shut my eyes and kiss them, but I don’t.

“Things will be different from now on,” he says with his lips against the side of my neck. Then I feel a soft towel rubbing gently against my back as he begins to dry me off.

“Fredrik,” I say almost in a whisper, “what made you change your mind?”

He squeezes the ends of my hair with the towel, soaking the water into the thick cotton.

“None of that matters,” he says. “I don’t want you to think about any of that.”

“But what about Seraphina?” I ask quietly, nervously.

His hands stop moving and I feel him sigh behind me.

“Most of all,” he says regretfully, “I don’t want you to worry about her.”

“But she’s looking for me. And I know you can protect me, but I’m still terrified of her. I’m most afraid when you’re gone. When it’s just me and Greta here.”

I feel the towel drop and then his hands cupping my upper arms. He kisses the top of my head, standing so much taller than me. And I know that it’s just an affectionate gesture, but I can’t help but feel it’s also one of regret, or maybe even grief.

“Cassia, would you believe me if I told you she couldn’t hurt you if you didn’t think about her?”

I start to turn around to face him, but he carefully holds me still. Then he reaches out a hand and swipes it through the thick layer of moisture covering the large mirror.

My hands begin to shake, though I don’t know why. My stomach ties into a nervous knot and I feel sick all of a sudden, my nerves frayed. I look down at the counter.

“I…I don’t know,” I stutter uneasily. “H-How would that keep her from finding me?”

I don’t know what’s happening to me…but I don’t like it.

Fredrik continues to wipe the steam away from the mirror. I continue to look down.

He stops and drops his arm, fitting both hands on my sides, just above my naked hips.

“Well, I think you let her get to you too much, love.” My heart leaps inside my chest every time he calls me that. “I want you to stop worrying about her. Just stop thinking about her and live your life. The way you are now. A prisoner to no one. Not to me, or to Seraphina. Can you do that?”

Reluctantly, I nod.

Then I turn to face him, putting my back to the mirror.

Pushing up on my toes, I kiss his warm and delicious lips.

He smiles.

“I think I can do that,” I say and smile back at him.

He makes me breakfast and we sit together at the kitchen table like a married couple, both of us with a mug of hot coffee, Fredrik peering down at the day’s newspaper. But I can’t help but make note of how much of that newspaper he doesn’t seem to be reading because he keeps raising his eyes from it to smile—to grin—across the table at me.

I feel like a teenager with my first crush all over again, my face flush with emotion.

We talk for the longest time about everything and nothing. And sometimes I find myself lost in his deep and precious voice. I could listen to him talk all day and I’d never get bored or want any interruptions.

By the time breakfast is over, I’ve changed my mind about going to New York. Not only because it’s ridiculous to go three hours away for a hot dog, but because despite Fredrik asking me to stop worrying about Seraphina, I can’t. And New York was where she tried to kill me. She plagues my thoughts and haunts my memories.

“Why don’t you want to go?” Fredrik asks.

I lower my gaze because I was never any good at lying and say, “I just want to stay in Maryland.” I laugh lightly for good measure. “I’ve been here for a long time and I’ve never seen anything outside of this house.”

Fredrik frowns.

I smile and say, “Oh no, love, I’m not blaming you,” to assure him.

Something flickered in his eyes when I called him ‘love’.

Why did I call him that? It doesn’t matter. I like it. And it feels right. Natural.

He flattens the newspaper on the table and looks at me inquiringly. “So then if not New York, where would you like to go?” His gorgeous smile broadens. “I’m yours all day long.”

My face flushes again.

“Why don’t you pick a place?”

He purses his lips.

I want to kiss them…

Fredrik

It’s all an illusion, the voice in the back of my mind constantly tells me as I sit across from Cassia in the finest restaurant in all of Baltimore. It’s all an illusion: The two of us. Sitting here together like this. Like any normal couple would. It’s an illusion, Fredrik. Over and over again. Because I have yet to let myself believe it. A part of me doesn’t want to believe it. The old Fredrik. And the even older one. The parts of me that I’ve only ever known. What is this strange light I feel when in Cassia’s presence?

It must be what a normal life feels like.

And while I feel a great sense of contentment, the light scares the hell out of me just the same.

An illusion, the darkness within me taunts. This kind of life was never meant for you, so don’t fall for it, or what’s left of your life will come crashing down around you into pieces so small that they can never be put back together again. Shut the fuck up!

Cassia’s smile is so vibrant, yet so fragile that I feel the smallest touch of darkness can easily wash it away. She’s wearing a pretty white sweater that fits loosely about her shoulders, revealing the softness of her collarbone and long, dainty neck. An elongated gray skirt clings to her hourglass form, down past her knees and drapes over a pair of tall black winter boots. I took her shopping when we left the house this morning. She was shy and at first didn’t want me to buy her things. So, I picked out outfits for her to wear and bought them anyway. And I dressed her. And while I dressed her, I kissed the scars on her back like I’ve always done. Scars left by cuts that I put there over time, one by one, as I made love to Seraphina.

We leave the restaurant and head back out into the cold, our shoes crunching in the mere two inches of snow that had fallen last night. I open the car door for her and help her into the passenger’s seat. The car is already warm. I made sure to use the remote start before we left the restaurant.

“Fredrik,” Cassia says softly from her seat, “I feel like I’ve known you forever.” I look over at her and her face is flush with heat. I smile gently—though inside I’m not smiling so much—and she continues: “I know that if I told anyone else how I feel about you, despite the circumstances of how we know each other, they’d probably think I was crazy. Greta must think I’m crazy.” Her eyes meet mine again. She’s looking for confirmation or rejection of her theory. I don’t have the heart to be honest with her.

I put the key in the ignition and unlock the wheel so that the car will remain running.

“Greta doesn’t think that way,” I say simply.

I don’t look back at her this time.

“But it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks,” she says with uncertainty. “Does it?”

I glance over briefly.

“No,” I say, though I don’t know what I’m saying, or even if I should be saying it at all. “The way anyone chooses to feel about someone else is their choice and their business.” I tried to be vague.

She smiles and folds her hands together on her lap.

“But I really do feel like I’ve known you forever,” she repeats. “I…can’t explain it. But it feels right.” She smiles.

Does she want me to agree?

What does she want from me?

I put the car in reverse and pull out of the parking space.

I spend all day with Cassia, just as I promised. She eventually began to loosen up and suggest places she’d like to go, things she’d like to do. It didn’t surprise me much that everything she chose was simple and not lavish or expensive. I would’ve gladly spent every dollar I own on her, bought her the most extravagant car. I would’ve done anything for her. But all she asked of me was to spend an hour and a half watching a movie in the local theatre. We ate popcorn and drank soda and sat close together with our shoes propped on the back of the empty seats in front of us. I hadn’t done anything like that in—I’ve never done anything like that. It was odd. But it was liberating and immature and unsophisticated, and I’d do it again. If she were with me. And Cassia, for such a small-framed woman, has a massive appetite—so did Seraphina. In addition to the lunch and then the popcorn, she had her fair share of fast food before the day was over.

Shortly after nightfall, we find our way to a nice bar in the better part of town. Cassia’s choice. She’s been calling the shots since before the movie.

“I used to sing in a bar and restaurant,” she says from the passenger’s seat. “When I lived in New York.”

“Really?” I ask, trying to sound surprised.

People come and go from the building in front of us all dressed in casual slacks and nice sweaters and long coats, couples arm in arm, some vaguely tipsy as they leave and make their way to their cars in the parking lot.

Cassia watches them in a soundless, thoughtful manner; her memory of her time singing in New York surely playing through her mind.

She looks over and smiles. “Yeah, I sang. It was my job, though.”

I smile in return.

“I bet you have a beautiful voice.” The most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.

Cassia looks down at her hands in her lap, her face turning red underneath that soft skin.

Then she giggles and says with a grin, “OK, yeah, I am pretty good,” but is immediately embarrassed by the confession.

Leaning over the console toward her, I cup her chin in my hand and close my lips around hers, stealing her breath away. I can’t stop. I’ve missed you. I don’t want to. But you’re not you anymore. I should stop, because I know that nothing good can come from this. But I can’t.

There has to be a way.

The kiss breaks. I stare into her soft brown eyes, savoring the taste of her mouth lingering on my lips.

It’s all an illusion—No…it’s not.

“Fredrik,” I hear her voice say, but it’s faint at first while I’m locked in my own fighting thoughts. “Is something wrong?”

I snap out of it.

She smiles at me curiously. “Why don’t we go inside?” she asks about the bar just feet from us.

Suddenly, I have a new plan. And this time I’m going to make it work. I look at her in silent contemplation, and within a matter of seconds I know what I have to do.

“How about we skip the bar,” I suggest, kissing her lightly on the lips. “I think I’d rather spend the rest of the night alone with you. We can kick back and watch TV. We can soak in a warm bath together.” Anything but the bar. Anything but what might help bring back more memories. The night Greta took off her shackle and they danced and sang to Connie Francis was the night that Cassia got her memories back. Memories I never expected, but nonetheless.

Cassia smiles. “OK,” she says without reluctance or question. “Then let’s go home.”

Home. Seraphina has come home.