The Love Trap by Nicole French

12

Plaster dust accumulated in the corners, drifting across the tiled floors like snow. Through two small windows, both barred, I caught glimpses of barren fields in one direction, and some sort of large facility in the other. But whatever they gave me worked fast. One moment I’d be awake, asking for my mother, for Eric, for my dead father. The next I’d be surrounded by arms like tree roots, a waterfall of broth drowning my words. Then a sudden sweep of black, a bleary curtain that faded the winking winter sun.

Sometimes I fought them.

But they fought back.

The man with the goatee.

The other with the Russian accent.

“Eomma?” I croaked, barely able to form the word through numbed lips and a paralyzed jaw.

A lump across the room turned, and the tired, aching moon of my mother’s face appeared, her eyes deeply set into her wan skin, like two craters seen from space.

“Eomma.” My voice was a whisper slashed through.

She moaned, but her eyes didn’t open. My eyes closed too, and I dreamed I could feel her touch on my cheek, like I was a small child, while a deeper gnaw of hunger filled my belly and my bones ached with fatigue. We shared a collection of fevered dreams, unsure of how long they lasted, how much time had passed. Yu-na and I twisted on our cots, tortured mirrors of deliria.

The hours grew long. I wondered when the days would turn to weeks. Or if they already had.

The past blurred with the present.

“Eric,” I whispered as my eyes fell heavy again.

It was only in my dreams that he appeared. But it was also in my dreams that I started to scream.

* * *

2009

The T screamed away after I got off at the Harvard Avenue stop. Across the tracks, a line spilled from under the awning of Great Scott. I looked around, feeling shy, though I had been to this bar uncountable times by myself.

“Hey, pretty girl.”

I turned, and there he stood, a beacon of white and blond in a sea of black and spikes.

Eric smiled.

I melted.

“Glad you showed,” he said. “Happy birthday, gorgeous.”

Gorgeous? I wanted to ask. He had used the term before, but, like “pretty girl,” no one in their right mind had ever called me such a thing.

“Well, no use wasting perfectly good tickets.” I held up the two pieces of paper.

“Good,” Eric said. “You brought mine too. They’re sold out, you know.”

I smirked. “Who says I kept it for you?”

But he didn’t even react. “Come on, Lefferts.”

Eric held out a hand. And eventually, I took it.

From inside the bar, flashing lights. A bass line like a woodpecker. The singer whistled a warning.

I handed our tickets to the doorman, who ripped them and handed Eric back the stubs, then stamped our wrists with octopi.

We fell into an oblivion of bodies and bass lines. I pushed away their sweating skins, clutching instead the dry palm that guided me through the masses. Wherever he went, Eric shone. A bright light. How could I tell him that sometimes it was too bright? That sometimes it blinded me.

* * *

Present

Blinded. That’s what I was. The sun, shining through the shades, speared my weary eyes. I didn’t want to sleep anymore, but I couldn’t take the yellow-white shards, the way they seemed to stick my brain like skewers.

“Is it done yet?”

Who said that? The voice was familiar. On some level, my whole body seemed to recognize it.

I rolled over on my cot, cold and clammy, but also hot and sticky. The room was freezing, so my toes and forehead—the two parts of my body exposed in the winter air—were frozen while the rest of me sweat out the effects of my ongoing anesthesia.

Nausea roiled through my system. The broth was wearing off again.

The door to the room was open. Arrogant, I thought blearily. It was right there. I could just walk right out. They thought we were incapacitated to the point where they didn’t even bother to lock us up properly.

Well, they were right.

“I thought I would wait on that, Titan,” a voice I recognized as Jude Letour’s said. “It seemed a hasty decision. After all, you might want to dote on it in the end.”

“Do it.” Carson’s voice was steel compared to his underling’s. That’s who I heard before.

My eyes were shut, but I could still envision those icy hazels clapping on me inside the ultrasound room. I placed a hand over my mostly flat belly. In response, it grumbled. How long had it been since I had eaten solid food?

“What about Triton? Has he responded?”

“He’s out, but unreachable. I’m not worried. He’ll be here.”

“He’d better. We need those boats. Everything is ready to transport, but I’ve got NIS sniffing around the plant. We need everything out of the country yesterday. Do you know he called the CIA on you?”

There was a grumble, something I couldn’t quite understand.

“Forgive me for saying this again, but don’t you think there is perhaps an easier way? Triton is so unpredictable, and the girl is difficult at best—”

“Triton lost his rights to her a long time ago. But she’s his fatal flaw. The child—well, that’s just for good measure.”

There was a shuffle that covered their voices as I strained to hear what they were saying.

“I’ve got a meeting in thirty minutes to smooth the passage,” Carson said. “Get it done, Jude. I don’t want to come back without it finished. Otherwise he might not cooperate.”

Footsteps left the outer room and a door slammed behind him. A few minutes later, a shadow appeared in the door—Jude with the Russian attendant behind him. He carried another tray bearing soup, which Anton carried over to my mother, and a vial and syringe, which Jude brought to me.

“This,” he grumbled, “is a bit out of my realm if you ask me, princess.”

“Then why do it?” My lips could barely form the words.

Jude’s eyes narrowed. “Shut up.”

I watched as the attendant pulled my mother up roughly and instructed her to eat her soup.

“Eomma,” I croaked. “Don’t do it.”

But her eyes barely registered me, dilated like saucers, and she sipped lamely at the bowl like a sick puppy.

“Since you’re awake, that will make this easier,” Jude said. “If you’ll just cooperate.” He affixed the vial to the syringe, then pushed the stopper enough for a drop or two of the clear liquid to pop out the top of the needle.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Nothing so bad, I promise you. Just a little something to help you relax.”

“I—no.” Protect the baby. These kinds of drugs couldn’t be good for it. I didn’t want more. I didn’t want any. “No, please. I’ll stay here. I won’t fight, I promise. Just…please don’t give me anything else.”

Something like regret crossed Jude’s face. But only for a second. “I apologize,” he said almost formally. “But it’s out of the question.”

He pulled down the blankets to bare my arm.

“No,” I said, finding more strength than I thought I had to yank my arm out of reach. “No!”

“Anton,” Jude called irritably over his shoulder.

I watched over Jude’s shoulder as my mother slumped back onto the bed.

“What did you give her?” I squawked, scooting back into the corner of my cot. “What the hell are you doing to us?”

“Hold her down,” Jude instructed Anton in a bored tone.

Anton did as he was told with brusque, efficient movements, though his face twisted into a cruel parody of a smile.

“What do you want?” I cried. “Eric is going to come, you know. He will.”

Jude just bared his two rows of capped white teeth in triumph.

“Oh, my little concubine,” he said as he tapped the side of the syringe. “We’re counting on it.”

“You’re going to regret this,” I warned him.

At that, Jude just shook his head. “You really are clueless, aren’t you? To a man like Titan? Like me? There is no such thing as ‘no.’”

There was a sharp jab in my arm. I jerked away, but only so much as my weakened limbs could manage, which wasn’t much under Anton’s strong hold.

“Triton has to learn that his actions have consequences,” Jude said. “He has to pay for abandoning his post like this. For going against the orders of his Caesar. He’ll pay for everything that he’s done and everything his father did too.”

“You’ll pay,” I slurred.

Jude just smiled as darkness swallowed me again.

* * *

2009

I took a long swallow of my beer. PBR, of course. Eric knew what I liked.

“I don’t understand. You said that’s what you wanted too. Just sex. No strings. Easy.” I traced a finger over the condensation on the beer can. “This doesn’t seem easy to me. Birthday presents. A concert. This is much more.”

“Maybe I want more.” Eric took a long sip of his vodka and watched my reaction. “Maybe I want everything.”

The music behind us seemed to drop a few decibels. Eric’s gaze didn’t waver.

“When was your last girlfriend?” I wondered. “Is this some kind of test? Reaching your quarter-life crisis and deciding you want to try to gut it out for once?”

Eric frowned. “What the hell does my last girlfriend have to do with it?”

Ah, so I’d hit a sore spot there.

I drained my beer and set it on the bar with a loud bang. “Why won’t you tell me? Have you even had a girlfriend before, Petri dish?”

He swallowed another large sip of vodka. “Have you had a boyfriend?”

“I have. A few, actually.”

I leaned against the bar, watching the crowd instead of my date. It was the usual you would see here. Indie rock enthusiasts mixed with a solid contingent of punk fans Where every non-Red Sox lover in Boston conglomerated on the weekends. A meeting of like misfits.

They were my people. But they definitely weren’t Eric’s.

“Bad breakups?”

I drummed my fingers against the bar top. “You could say that.”

“Am I anything like them?”

I turned to look at him. “No one I ever took seriously.”

Maybe on the outside he was like those boys. The ones who came from the upper-middle class families in the Midwest. Who wore IZOD and played golf. Who hated anything spicy and thought Dave Matthews was the epitome of alt-rock.

But if I was being totally honest, I knew Eric was still different. Those boys dripped mediocrity, but Eric loved the best. Everything about him shone in a way those boys never had. And while they had talked me into the backs of their cars, toyed with me year in and year out, Eric never did anything but look me in the eye.

But the best liars could do that. They could fool anyone into thinking they were the genuine article, then burn it all up for the fun of it.

“We’ve been over this a million times. I know how this goes,” I said bitterly. “High school. College. It doesn’t change. The reality is that guys like you do not stay with girls like me. Why are you trying to force this into something it’s not? Don’t you remember Pretty in Pink?”

“As I remember, the preppy kid got the girl in the end.” Eric smirked. “Actually, I always thought the record store owner was the hottest one. Spiked hair and all.”

But I wasn’t about to be dissuaded. “Everyone knows that Andie should have ended up with Duckie, not Blane. He’s the one who showed up for her. Supported her. Loved her. That’s not up for debate. That’s canon.”

Eric’s disgust was visible, and for a long time, he didn’t speak, just turned his drink back and forth between his fingers. Finally, he looked up. “Do I look like I’m in high school, Jane?”

Some men in their twenties did, in fact, look like they were still prepubescent. I remember being genuinely shocked when I started college in a dorm full of gangly, baby-faced man-children. And they acted like it too. Especially when they whispered behind my back as I walked through the halls.

But I knew the way Eric’s body, taut and lean, had filled out in all the right places. How many times in the last month had I given myself permission to admire the smattering of gold hair over his chest muscles, run my fingers over the flat plane of his stomach, enjoyed the sandpaper hum of his unshaved cheek against mine?

Eric’s gaze didn’t waver. Instead, it captured mine right back. Boys, they couldn’t look a girl like me in the eye. But Eric wasn’t a boy. He was a man.

And now I couldn’t look away if I tried.

“No,” I said. “You don’t.”

* * *

Present

“Don’t,” I moaned, though don’t what, I had no clue.

My stomach hurt. Everything contracted, like menstrual cramps times ten.

Other things hurt too. My thighs ached, like they were bruised or overworked. My lower back felt like it was on fire. What was happening to me?

“She looks terrible.” Carson again, his voice dripping with something else. Disgust, maybe. “Is it done?”

There was that question again. Was what done?

“It is,” Jude replied. “Well, it should be in progress. Anton inserted the pills after I gave her the sedative. Took a little too much pleasure in it, if you ask me. She fought uncommonly hard for someone under that much dope.”

There was a grunt. “Give her the Valium mixture once it’s finished. She won’t cooperate if she’s too upset.”

There was another uncomfortable shuffle. “You know, Titan, I don’t think I would be quite human if I didn’t voice at least some concerns about your…tactics.”

“That is not your concern, Hermes.”

“God knows I can’t claim much of a moral compass for myself, but really, is this necessary? Disciplining obedience, I understand, but I hardly see what the child—or her, for that matter—has to do with Goseong.”

A long pause. A few cracking knuckles.

“Triton needs…convincing. Of my authority, which he has repeatedly refused to acknowledge. And he was also warned explicitly about the costs of procreating. That’s personal, yes. Deeply so. Eric, however, is even more incalcitrant than his father.”

“Funny. I’d heard that Jacob was a good man, all things considered.”

There was a scuffle. A bang as some kind of furniture fell to the floor, the thud of a body slamming against the wall.

“All right, all right!” Jude squeaked in a strangled voice. “All right. Message received. Jacob de Vries was scum of the earth, that’s the party line. I get it!”

“Jacob de Vries never met a single possession of another man’s he didn’t covet or outright steal.” Carson’s voice was strained as well, almost as if the name itself was too much for him to say. “He was a thief. A liar. A scoundrel. He took absolutely anything he wanted.”

“You mean anything you wanted?”

Another scuffle. The sound of broken glass.

“A joke, a joke!” It seemed Jude couldn’t help poking any bear himself, even if it was one of the most dangerous men on the planet. “Terrible family, terrible man. Rid the earth of all of them, of course, of course.”

“Just finish it. You have Anton at your disposal. I have a rendezvous at the border. When I get back, I want everything cleaned up. Torch the buildings. Nothing left. The boy is en route, and I don’t want him distracted by any of the evidence. Is that clear?”

Jude must have nodded, because the next sounds were of a door opening and closing as Carson departed.

My stomach cramped again, this time making me moan. A bloodstain blooming across the white sheets.

“Help,” I whispered as I watched my body fall apart. The blood flowered, a garden of red. “Help!”

A shadow appeared in the doorway.

“Anton,” Jude called. “Come in here. It’s started.” He turned to me with equal parts disgust and pity. “I wonder,” he said, “what will Triton do when he finds you like this? Will he still want you, ruined? Will you be his ‘pretty girl’? Will you still be his ‘Jane’?”

* * *

2009

“Jane. Jane!”

I broke out of my daydream, lost as I had been in the hum of the crowd.

“Were you even listening to me?” Eric demanded, now visibly frustrated. “It’s one thing if you’re going to push me away, but if you’re just not interested at all, I’d like to know right fucking now.”

I blinked with sudden panic. “No. No! That’s not…sorry, I was just lost in thought.”

Eric frowned. “I don’t deserve this.”

But instead of leaving like I expected, he snaked a hand around my waist and jerked me off my stool. Then he covered my mouth with a searing kiss. Every cogent thought I had flew from my head, and all I could sense was him. His lush, hungry mouth, his grasping, seeking hands, his hard, strong body pressed completely against mine.

When we broke apart, we were both out of breath, heaving like we had just sprinted a mile.

“I’m trying here,” Eric said as he pressed his forehead to mine. “I’m trying to make something real with you. I haven’t done that in a very long fucking time, but with you, I want it again. So fucking bad. With you, Jane. Is that clear enough?”

I swallowed. I wanted to say yes. Oh, God, I wanted to say yes to him, to everything he claimed. I wanted to believe.

But the room came back into focus, and we were suddenly the center of attention. People were staring. Many with confusion. The same question written clearly across their curious faces that was constantly running through mine: What is he doing with her?

“Don’t look at them. Look at me.”

Eric’s voice was strong, solid. The vibration of it rumbled through his chest and into mine.

“Pretty girl. Look. At. Me.”

So I did.

His steely gray eyes held mine as his hands roved my body, hiding nothing from any onlookers. His kiss swallowed me whole, daring me to think or feel anything else but him.

My cracks gaped.

My heart expanded.

Maybe the world was wider than I thought. I was so young, after all. Maybe this was what it meant to grow up.