The phone call ends, and Jacob asks me if I'm hungry.
I shake my head. “I just want help with one thing.”
“What’s that?” Jacob asks, his brows furrowing.
My cheeks go red. “I was wondering,” I say, lifting the hem of my sweater. “Can you help me with this? I need this torture device off me.”
7
JACOB
I nearly choke when I see her lift her sweater, revealing her hips. And while I'm expecting to see panties or something, I don't expect to actually see the chastity belt on her body.
There is a medieval piece of metal strapped to her sweet curves, her pale skin. Her body that should be treated with care has been touched callously.
“He did this to you?” I ask, seething, ready to kill him all over again.
Juniper nods, solemnly. “Yeah. He knocked me out. And next thing I knew I came to with this thing strapped to me. Can you believe it? This piece of metal? I mean, it's twisted and sick, right? I mean, if it's not your kink, it's pretty fucked up to do to somebody.”
She frowns, worry in her eyes. I know what she's thinking. The fear she has that he may have done things to her that she doesn't know.
“Hey,” I say, “do you want to talk about it?”
“The thing is,” she says, “I'm a virgin. This man didn’t touch me. He was this superfan of my books…” She swallows, drops the hem of her sweater back down. “There was this scene in one of the novels where my heroine had a chastity belt and her captor kept her safe, never hurt her. He called his prisoner pet. That was what this man called me. He was roleplaying. He wanted to protect me, in some twisted way.”
Anger runs through me in a way it never has before. “I want to kill him.” I want that gun in my hands. I want that man's face before me. I want him gone.
Then I look at her. The innocence in her eyes.
And what I want more is to make Juniper feel protected. Beautiful, loved, cherished.
“Look,” I tell her, “of course I will get this thing off of you, sweetheart. I will do anything you want me to do.”
“Well, good,” she says, half laughing, half crying. “I can't believe he did this to me. I feel like a prisoner. It’s really fucked up.”
“You’re right to be angry.”
“I'm so naïve,” she says. “I left the grocery store and I just was so excited. I was in such a good mood,” she tells me.
She's standing next to me in front of the fire. And I'm itching to get my toolbox so I can start rooting around it and finding some metal cutters to get this thing off of her, off her precious body.
But I don't want to stop her talking. I want her to be comfortable because I know just touching her skin, touching her body might be hard for her. There is an intimacy that will be required for that and I don't want to rush her, but I do want to get that belt off her.
“I was feeling so good,” she tells me. “After meeting you and planning a date with you…” She smiles at me softly. She presses her hand on my chest. “We only met for a few minutes, but I felt comfortable with you, safe with you in that time, Jacob, which makes no sense. You're practically a stranger, but …” She swallows and her eyes find mine. “Maybe sometimes in life, you meet someone and they're not a stranger at all. It's like, you've known them forever.”
“Is that how you feel about me?” I ask her.
She nods. “Is that crazy? My best-friend Lemon’s parents, they knew they wanted to get married a week after they met.”
“You're already talking about marriage, huh?”
She laughs. “Okay. Now I do sound crazy.” She sighs. “Have you ever been married?” she asks me.
I tense, running a hand over my jaw. “Yeah,” I tell her. “I've been married once. Had a boy too.”
“Really?” she says. “So this is all old hat to you.”
“The spark was different with her,” I tell Juniper. “Honestly, it wasn't a spark at all. I knew Layla for a long time. Since high school. We got married right after. She was pregnant with our little boy, Spencer.”
“And where do they live now? Here in Polar Bear?” Juniper asks.
“I wasn't planning on getting into all this like this,” I tell her. My hand runs over my beard as I try to stay open, vulnerable.
But so is she. She is half naked. Her boots are off. And she's in that sweater that needs to be cleaned. Her coat’s discarded. Thank God because it was sopping wet. Her hair's wet all around her shoulders. The makeup she was wearing is smeared across her face.