Not What it Seems by Nicky James

Twelve

Cyrus

What have I done?

So much for willpower and avoiding temptation. It was toppling as fast as a stack of dominoes. It had all started with the decision to take that stupid key card. Then I’d lied to the police, agreed to help River after having been so sure I wouldn’t—shouldn’t—and now, we’d just engaged sexually after I’d told myself a hundred times it was a bad idea.

I was a lost cause. I had the backbone of a jellyfish.

The sweat hadn’t cooled on my skin, and I was ready to jump out of bed and run. I lay still with my arm draped over my eyes, processing all I’d done and the consequences of my actions.

Why? What had compelled me to cross so many lines? Was I that lonely? That desperate?

“Are you freaking out on me?”

“Yes. A little bit.” No sense in lying. I wasn’t any good at that either.

“I was hoping maybe a good orgasm would chill you out some. Take the edge off all this tension you’re carrying around.”

“Stop talking. I need to work this out. You’re not helping.”

River shuffled on the bed beside me. At least I was confident he wasn’t about to snuggle me or anything. His presence was enough reality to ensure I didn’t decide I’d dreamed the whole thing.

“You think too much. It is what it is. It happened. So what? Sex can be just that. Sex. Don’t over-process it. I think this is one of those instances where your smart brain doesn’t do you any favors. Just enjoy the afterglow.”

I snorted. “Believe me, I know my head gets in the way. It’s been a problem my whole life.”

River made a grunt of affirmation then fell quiet. The heat of his gaze remained.

“Stop staring at me.”

He chuckled, but the weight of his attention vanished, and I knew he’d listened.

I dropped my arm. River was on his back, his fingers linked on his abdomen, his long legs stretched out on the bed, his cock heavy, limp, and sated against his thigh. He seemed relaxed. How, when we were over our heads in a mess, he could be so blasé I had no idea. I mapped his body, following the lines of his muscular thighs to his toes—lingering a moment—before sliding my gaze back up, assessing his much younger physique.

The self-incriminating voice that lived inside my head told me to cover up because my forty-five-year-old body was shameful compared to River’s.

Before I could move, River turned his head and narrowed his eyes. My thoughts must have been written all over my face. He rolled to his side and scanned my nakedness in the same fashion I’d done to him. I wanted to squirm, knowing I was softer, less defined.

Older.

“Fuck me.” He made a noise in his throat and shook his head. “I hope I’m that hot when I’m your age.”

I huffed a laugh. “Please.”

“I’m serious. You don’t see it, but hot damn.”

I didn’t know how to respond. Unless it was my mother, people didn’t often compliment me.

“So, this ex of yours. No offense, he sounds like a douche.”

“That’s a fair statement. He was. That’s why I left.” About ten months after I should have, but the point was, I had left.

“So why did you date him?”

“Well, I didn’t know he was a douche when we started dating. Obviously. He was fine enough at first.”

“Fine enough? That’s a ringing endorsement. Is that how high your standards go? Oh, look at him. He’s fine enough. I’ll date him. Honestly, you need to set them a little higher than that.”

“Thank you. I’ll make a note of your suggestion. How’re things with fuck-buddy Dalton?”

River’s face broke into a wide grin, and he nudged me with his foot. “Wow, you and sarcasm are an interesting mix. I think I like it.”

I sneered.

River ran his foot alongside mine and toned down his teasing smile. “Tell me about Grant.”

“Why?”

River shrugged. “Call me curious.”

“No.”

“Tell me about Grant, and I’ll tell you about Dalton.”

“I don’t want to know about Dalton.”

River laughed. “Lies. Here’s the thing. There isn’t anything to tell. Dalton is a guy I have over when I’m bored. We like to fuck. There’s nothing else there. He likes my dick. I like his. End of story. We don’t talk. However, this Grant guy is different. I know there’s a whole lot more to tell about him, so tell me.”

I sighed and glanced between our naked bodies, watching his foot rub against mine a few times. It was almost a caress. Almost tender, but I shredded that thought because that was typical Cyrus projection, and I knew I was wrong.

“Fine. I don’t know why we ended up together, to be honest. We were so different. Grant is this impulsive, egotistical, mean-spirited, cold-hearted, verbally abusive asshole. He liked to insult me every chance he got. My clothes, my hair, my manner of speaking, my penchant for following the rules. He hated how smart I was. He hated the food I cooked, the car I drove, the way I cleaned, my relationship with my parents. Everything.”

“Wow. Were these the highlighted features on a dating app? I mean, did you read about all those stunning attributes and think, this guy, this guy right here is perfect for my low self-esteem? A couple years with him, and I’ll be a right fucking mess.”

I frowned, a hot flush burning a path up my chest and settling in my face. “No. Why are you…”

River rested a hand on my hip and gave me a shake. I wanted to throw it off. “Holy crap. Stop giving me the evil eye. I was trying to be funny, which I’m going to stop doing now because I can see it has the wrong effect. I’m sorry.”

Was I that sensitive?

Apparently.

“How did you meet this amazing guy? What drew you to him in the first place? I mean, there must have been good qualities too, right?”

“He was smart. Brilliantly smart. I don’t know if he had an eidetic memory or something, but his ability to retain information was fascinating… and irritating. I was envious. All those years I spent in school, I had to study for hours. Grant would read something once and just know it. It made for some great debates and conversations. I mean, he could talk about anything. Politics, religion, science, history. All of it. I met him at a conference I was putting on in London. I was talking about a few new studies that had been done about schizophrenia. It’s my specialty. Did you know that?”

“I suspected.”

“Anyhow, he was in attendance, and we got to chatting afterward. I was shocked when he told me he was taking a few psychology classes at a local college. Most people who attend those conferences are practicing doctors or students in their final year at university. Not college psychology students. Plus, he was in his late thirties. He was old to still be in school. I figured he was doing one of those second career things. Then I learned that Grant was a professional student.”

“You mean one of those people who never leaves school?”

“Exactly. He had taken so many random classes over the years he could probably have gotten a few degrees had he applied himself properly. God knows he was smart enough. But he didn’t. He took whatever interested him, and that changed year by year or semester by semester. He was flighty in a way. Got bored easily.”

“Who has that kind of money? I’m still paying back my student loan almost a decade later, and I only did a three-year college course.”

I laughed. “Exactly. His family is well-off, but Daddy dearest stopped paying for his college education long after realizing Grant wasn’t goal oriented. That did not make Grant happy. He and his father were always on the outs. If they were getting along, Grant would work for his father at his company. If they weren’t getting along—which happened more often than not—Grant would scramble for odd jobs. Any money he earned went to pay for night classes. It was one of our ongoing arguments since I was financially stable. He didn’t contribute much.”

“Who has time for all that school? What was he, ADHD or something?”

I laughed. “Funny enough, I suggested that once upon a time, and he went off on me and told me to stop doctoring him. Honestly, I think what Grant craved was the college lifestyle. The social aspect. Parties. Drinking. Fucking around. Doing stupid stuff young kids do. He didn’t want to grow up.”

River shook his head. “He doesn’t sound like someone I can see you with.”

“We were complete opposites. Like I said, he was smart. We could spend hours debating and having intense, highly sophisticated conversations. It got deep and philosophical sometimes. I enjoyed the part of him who could do that. Then, in the next breath, he would want to do stupid shit like he was nineteen again. When I refused to take part, he had a temper.”

A temper was putting it mildly, but I didn’t want to get into it. It was embarrassing what I’d put up with. Grant knew how to cut a person deep. He knew exactly what to say to hurt me the most. And he hated, hated if I showed myself to be smarter than him. It was a constant battle of wits. Grant had turned everything into a competition. Even with my work and my specialty, he was adamant he knew more than me. He hated the relationship I had with my parents too. He told me they babied me and were the reason I didn’t know how to have real fun.

River reached over me to the side table, retrieving a remote for the TV. “We have a couple of hours to kill before we can go out. Wanna watch something?”

“Sure.”

It was absurd how natural it was lying naked beside River, watching mind-numbing television. We agreed on a documentary called The Endurance about some Antarctic expedition from 1914. It held my attention for a while, but my head was too busy with all the things going on in my present-day life to stay focused on some ship that had been encased in ice over a hundred years ago.

Plus, I was fighting the urge to curl up next to River, use his shoulder as a pillow, and fall asleep for a bit. I resisted, knowing it would be a huge mistake. He’d made it clear he wasn’t that type of person. Whatever notions I’d had last time we’d hooked up were wrong then and wrong now. I needed to separate from my feelings and learn to understand that just because a guy wanted to mess around and let me hang out for a whole weekend at his apartment didn’t mean he wanted to commit. With River, there would be no fancy date nights, no dinners with wine, no long walks on the beach, no lazy Saturday mornings, and no future wedding plans.

Maybe I was old fashioned. I didn’t see anything wrong with wanting those things.

But men today seemed opposed.

Not that I had the experience to make such a broad statement, but luck was never on my side.

Besides, River was in a tangled mess of his own. He wasn’t someone I wanted to bring home to my parents anyway.

Mom, Dad, this is River, one of my patients. I broke him out of an institution. He’s wanted for three murders. I don’t think he’s guilty, but god knows I have a knack for screwing up, so he might be.

The TV went black, and I blinked away from the tsunami of thoughts battering my brain. River was staring at me.

“What?”

“You’re far, far away right now. Does this ever stop?” He tapped my forehead.

I frowned. “No. It’s a curse.” I glanced around. “What time is it?”

“Getting late. Almost eleven. I was going to suggest we shower and head out soon. The working girls will be busy.” River cocked his head to the side. “Or maybe not. This town is small, right? Regardless, we should be able to ask around now without drawing too much unwanted attention.”

“Okay.” My chest tightened. Was I doing this? Was I taking part in this crazy scheme of hunting down a murderer?

It seemed so.

“Do you want to share a shower? If you need a little more stress relief, I can… take care of that.” River skated his hand down my stomach and dragged a single finger over my flaccid cock as he wiggled his brows.

I grabbed his wrist, my heart knocking harder at the idea, blood flowing south. I wanted to say yes, but the more I played into River’s hand, the more it would hurt when he walked away. Or didn’t text me back.

I would never be like those other guys, detached from sex, enjoying it for sheer pleasure without turning it into more. And why was that? What had happened to me to make me this way?

I shoved that puzzle aside to think about later. There must be a reason. I would dissect it and find the answer.

“Maybe not a good idea.”

River didn’t seem surprised by my response. He slid his hand away from my cock until it landed on the bed between us. “Bathroom is all yours.”

* * *

River wore the ball cap he’d stolen from the hospital and the clothes I’d grabbed for him at the local Walmart. As I drove up and down random streets in St. Thomas’s busier downtown area, he kept a lookout for places that might draw in a homeless population.

Having him in the car beside me was giving me anxiety. My armpits were drenched, and sweat trickled down my temples despite the blasts of cold air pumping from the vents. Every car that turned a corner or came up behind me made my heart beat harder and faster. I was waiting for a police cruiser to pull me over.

“We need to park and walk,” River said.

“What? We can’t do that.”

“We have to. If we’re going to find anyone to ask, it will be down these alleys and behind these buildings. You can’t drive down them. We need to be on foot.”

“You can’t be out there.”

“It’s after midnight. I’ll keep my head down.”

It was a bad idea. A horrible idea. Regardless, like always, because I didn’t know how to say no, I pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine. Blowing out a breath, I scanned the street in both directions.

River’s hand landed on my thigh. “Chill, Doc. We’re good. I promise.”

“You’re a wanted man, and I’m an accomplice. We are anything but good.”

“Do you see a swarm of police officers combing the streets looking for me?”

My shoulders fell. “No.”

“Because they scoured the area already and didn’t find me. They probably figure I found a way to London.”

“It doesn’t mean this isn’t dangerous.”

“I know.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I know that too.”

“I feel sick.”

River chuckled. “You’re doing great. Come on. I promise I won’t draw attention to myself. Unless you want to go search these back alleys by yourself. In that case, have at it.”

My skin prickled, and my lips twitched. “No. Please come with me.”

Because I was a coward on top of it all, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

We got out of the car, and I rounded the front to stand beside River on the sidewalk. He angled his head toward an alley beside a 7-Eleven. “This way.”

The humidity was thick. The moisture in the air seemed to absorb the rancid smells in the alley and hold them hostage. Urine, rotten cabbage, and something chemical I couldn’t identify. We followed a narrow passage behind several buildings, steel service doors and dumpsters at intervals. But no people.

“Maybe St. Thomas doesn’t have a homeless population,” I suggested after a while.

“Everywhere has a homeless population. Trust me. I lived in a foster home once in a town with a population of eight hundred, and we had a homeless guy. Everyone knew him. His name was Bucky.”

“Bucky?”

“Yep. He was, like, sixty or seventy.”

“That’s sad.”

“It is what it is. All I’m saying is, the homeless are everywhere.”

We walked on, my nose twitching, skin buzzing. I wanted another shower. The scent clung to my hair and clothes. We passed a pile of vomit, and the ripe odor made me gag. River chuckled and muttered something about me being a softy.

I hugged myself and sneered.

Inside my head, I was practicing the argument I would have with my mother when she found out what I’d done. I was dressed in orange, talking into a phone, staring at the disappointment on her face through a plexiglass window. Dad was beside her, shouting at me loud enough everyone in the prison could hear.

“There.”

I bumped into River’s back. He’d stopped walking without warning. Catching my arm, he pointed into the distance. I didn’t know where we were anymore. Nausea stirred my gut. Ahead, there were a group of seven people huddled near a tall service gate. A few of them were sitting, leaning against the building. Two were lying down. Sleeping?

River didn’t wait for me to respond or process. He dragged me by the arm toward the group. When we were closer, I noted they were an eclectic bunch. There was an older man with wrinkled skin, missing teeth, and one milky eye. His clothes were too big, stained and with fumes wafting off them. A girl who couldn’t have been out of her teens was huddled beside two middle-aged women with dark scraggly hair. Another man I couldn’t pin an age on sat against the brick wall, scabs on his face, staring into space. He was oblivious to our presence. A dark bottle sat beside him, but I got the sense he was high on something a lot stronger than alcohol. I couldn’t make out the two who were sleeping. Their faces were turned to the wall, but they were men.

None of them looked like how River had described his mother—or rather, the woman at the fence who he’d assumed was his mother.

Wary eyes followed our approach. One of the middle-aged women stood and met us in the center of the alley with a warning glare. “What do you want? We ain’t hurting nobody. Go on. Get out of here.”

River held up his hands in a calm-down gesture. “We’re looking for someone. Her name is Camilla Jenkins. Has she been around here?”

The woman was shaking her head before River finished asking.

“She might not have used her name,” I said.

“Blonde hair. Longish. She wore it in a ponytail. Under a hat maybe. Late forties. Skinny. Real skinny.”

I darted my gaze at River when he mentioned his mother’s age. It was the first time it occurred to me that she and I would be in a similar age bracket. And wasn’t that sad? I’d fucked a guy who was young enough to be my son—had I fathered a child at seventeen, but still.

The scraggly woman scanned River up and down, still shaking her head. “No one like that’s been here.”

“Are you sure?” He glanced around the woman, addressing the others. “Any of you seen a woman who fits that description?”

More head shakes.

Glancing back at the woman blocking our path, River asked, “Is there somewhere else I might look for her that you know of?”

“Not around here. This ain’t a big city, you know. We stick together as much as we can. Hey, you got some money I can borrow? I’m starving. Haven’t eaten in a few weeks.”

“Sorry.” River patted his pockets for show. “I don’t have anything.”

I dug my wallet out and fished a twenty from inside. Stepping around River, I held it out to the woman. She snagged it, but I held tight, refusing to let go. “Are you certain you haven’t seen this woman?”

“I swear it. If she was out here, I’d know.”

I let go of the twenty, and the woman scrambled back to the group. River snagged my arm and wrenched me back down the alley, walking at a fast clip. “What the hell are you doing giving her money?”

“What? She was hungry. You heard her.”

“She’s going to buy booze with that, not food.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the group. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” He huffed a laugh. “God, you’re so innocent it hurts. How do you function in the real world?”

“She might buy food,” I mumbled.

River chuckled. “Sure. You’re cute, Doc.”

“Shut up.”

He swung an arm around my shoulder and pecked my cheek. I shoved him off and stormed ahead, his laughter filling the alley behind me.

Back at the car, we sat, staring at the quiet streets of downtown without a direction.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Part of me doesn’t believe it was my mother who left that note. And then I remember that person by the trees, and I don’t know what to think. Do we stay here and keep chasing a ghost because she seems to know something? Or do we get the hell out of Dodge and go figure shit out in London?”

I rolled around possibilities, trying to make sense of it all. Shifting, I faced River. “I need you to think. Make a list of all the people who have some kind of grudge against you. People you’ve pissed off in your life. Probably recently.”

His eyes shifted out of focus. “Um, okay. Why?”

“Because someone has worked very hard to frame you for these murders. This whole lead-up you described. The taunts at your window. The gifts at your door. The phone. Everything. This isn’t some small plan. This was elaborate. This was on purpose. This was rooted in extreme anger. Revenge for something if I had to guess. You’ve made someone very pissed off.”

River was quiet a long time, shaking his head every now and again as the cogs rolled in his brain. “Christ, I have no idea. Seriously. I’m not anyone special. I mean, maybe I’ve pissed off a guy or two at the bar, but it doesn’t seem to fit this scale. Honestly, you’re the last person I probably pissed off because I didn’t return your texts. Would you frame me for murder because I ghosted you? Not likely.”

I sighed. “Well, someone is angry with you.”

River’s brow pinched. “A woman. A woman is angry with me. That feels even less likely.”

“What did you used to do for a living?”

“Not important.”

“It is. It might be.”

“It’s not.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“God you’re annoying.”

“So I’ve been told. Tell me. It might be relevant.”

“Fine. Fuck. I was a janitor at a local gym. Whoop-de-freaking-do. Are you happy now? I’m a nobody. Trust me. I keep to myself. I don’t bother anyone.”

“You went to school to be a janitor?”

River scowled. “No.”

“What did you go to school for?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m curious.”

“Business admin. Couldn’t get a job after, so I took the first thing that came along. I’m not some brainiac like you.” River glared out the window, gnawing his thumbnail.

I leaned back against the seat and drummed on the steering wheel. “Are you sure it was a woman in the alley?”

“Oh my god, how many times do I have to say it? Yes, it was a woman. I may not fuck women, but I know what they look like.”

“Is there even a small chance you could be wrong?”

“No.”

I threw my hands up. “Then I don’t know. I give up. Maybe the woman by the trees was your mother. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she’s the one who left the note on my car. Maybe she’s not. Either way, she could be the one who did this to you. This could all be part of her game.”

River was too quiet. When I rolled my head to glance across the middle console, his forehead was wrinkled.

“I’m just laying out the possibilities. I’m not trying to make you angry.”

“Can we drive? I need to think.”

“Are we leaving?”

We’d packed the car with my belongings, and I’d checked out of the room at the hotel. The idea was to look for River’s mother—if that was who it was—then go from there. We hadn’t found her.

“Yeah. Let’s go to London. If you want to drop me off somewhere discreet, I get it.”

“Shut up.”

River’s gaze lifted. “It’s fine. I understand if you—”

“I said shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Just Shut up.” I put the car in gear and headed to the highway. “I’m already in over my head. I’m not abandoning you.”

He didn’t respond, but I felt the presence of the smile on his lips

“Just shut up.”