Burn

by HoistTheColours

It was a pleasure to burn.

11. Ignite ll

Ignite - Part ll

"If I could do girlhood again,

I'd ask to be scarier.

Less whimpering—more pyromaniac urges,

more flirting with kerosene."

—Sally Wen Mao

Mr. J takes her to the beach.

She dozes on the way there, the gentle hum of the car lulling her to sleep, between a long stretch of interstate and some song on the radio she really likes—"In A Little While" by U2. The morning sun is warm on the dashboard, and it dances between shadows over her tummy and bare thighs.

She tries to fight it at first—her heavy, drooping lids—but her head keeps drifting forward with stubborn insistence, chin to chest, until she jerks awake, only for the process to repeat itself two more times after that. She's so tired that she thinks about crawling into the backseat so that she can nap back there, but she drifts off before she can put her idea into motion. She falls asleep with her head nestled against the window, finally, and she sleeps hard, doesn't even notice when the car shuts off, not until Mr. J rouses her, a hand on her knee, his thumb stroking back and forth across her skin until she blearily opens her eyes.

His soft touch comes as a surprise, and she turns to look at him, sleepy-lidded and confused, but then her brows draw together in pain from the sudden crick in her neck. She reaches up to rub the sore spot, and he releases her knee.

"Ow," she mumbles, embarrassed. She hopes she didn't fall asleep with her mouth open, or worse—that he didn't catch her snoring. Mr. J says she does that sometimes—which she vehemently denies, face burning with shame—but she can never tell if he's joking or not when he says it.

She blinks away the hazy edges of the dream she's already forgotten, looking around, searching for some familiar point of identification, something she might recognize; it's just some parking lot and a tall, cement building in front of them.

Her eyes still feel heavy as she takes in their surroundings, and her voice comes out croaky, thick from sleep.

"Where are we? Is this the surprise?"

The corner of Mr. J's mouth curls, just slight, the way it does when he's amused but won't commit to a full smile.

He jerks his head towards the outside in reply.

He gets out first, and she perks up a little as she slowly climbs out of the car. Petals of curiosity are blooming inside her belly, right next to her anxiety.

Mr. J leans against the back of the trunk as he waits for her. Watching.

The asphalt is sunbaked and freshly paved—shiny black and gummy, the smell of it making her eyes burn, both noxious and chemical-sweet. It radiates heat, too, heat she can feel creeping all the way up her legs, and it's a welcome warmth, especially after being cooped up in the chilly, air-conditioned car. She takes her time stretching out her limbs; she curls her toes inside her sneakers, stretches her arms over her head, stands on her tiptoes for a moment and allows the muscles in her calves to stretch. Feels good.

Mr. J beckons her forward with another jerk of his head when she's done. She shuffles towards him, joining his side, both excited and a little wary. She feels like a little kid when she's struck with the urge to loop her arm around his, like she's afraid of being left behind or something. She rejects the impulse, scratches her nails against her freshly-unearthed right arm instead. She still doesn't know if it's okay yet to touch him in such a public setting, if he'll allow that sort of open affection where other people can clearly see. She thinks that, maybe when she's feeling a little braver, she might try to hold his hand, just to test the waters—see what he does.

She settles for looking around instead, studying everything. Wherever they are, it doesn't look familiar. Just how far outside of Gotham are they, anyway?

But Mr. J's surprise destination dawns on her the closer he draws her towards it, and as he leads her through the parking lot, she hears the crying whine of seagull overhead, and in the distance, the telltale rumble of crashing waves. Her heart gives an excited flutter, and as she climbs the wooden steps onto the boardwalk, she already knows.

On the top step, when the ocean comes into view, Taylor's breath catches in her throat.

The ocean is right there, stretched out and glittering on the horizon.

She swallows down some unidentifiable tangle of emotions—surprise, mostly—and then awe, maybe even something like relief. It's perfect—safe—so much better than anything she could have imagined.

Her mouth is parted in disbelief as she steps onto the boardwalk, and she goes straight to the other side so she can hold onto the wooden railing there, gaze out across the stretch of sand and beach, to the glittering waves. There's a sailboat not far off, bobbing along the waves, and she readjusts her vision to take in the rest of the scene. The sand is spotted with umbrellas and beach chairs and towels, a cornucopia of color and movement. A shrieking peal of laughter from a small child trying to outrun a wave. A little boy flying an orange and blue kite, struggling to keep hold. A mother slathering sunblock onto her own shoulders, while her little toddler dumps a bucket of sand into his lap. A group of college-age girls lined on up their bellies, gorgeous and golden-skinned, soaking up the sun in colorful bikinis. Taylor can't possibly take everything in at once. It's so much. So beautiful.

Her eye catches on something sparkling to her right, and she turns her head to look at what appears to be a sprawl of carnival rides and games located at the end of the boardwalk, quite a ways down. A massive ferris wheel sits right on the edge of the water, on a long stretch of boardwalk that juts straight out into the ocean. Her eyes widen as she stares at it; she saw something like that in a movie, once, but she never imagined she'd get see something like it in real life.

"Thought my girl and I deserved a little, uh, vacation," Mr. J says, lowly, in a voice he usually reserves for more serious conversations.

Taylor turns back to face him, wide-eyed. "You mean—you mean we can stay?"

"As long as my girl wants."

My girl.

Taylor's heart feels so light, like it has wings, suddenly, like it might leap up and away. She can't help it when she throws herself into his chest, wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his chest, right next to his heart. She sucks in a breath, trying not to cry. She can't believe he's giving her this.

The moment only gets better, when he surprises her by returning her embrace. It's almost a shock, the way his arms come up. He loops his forearms across the back of her shoulders, one folded on top of the other. It might be the first time he's ever hugged her—like a real hug. He rests his chin atop her head, and she swallows, breathing in the fibers of his shirt, the way he smells like sweat, and musk, almost earthy. His belt buckle digs into her belly a little painfully, and even that's welcome.

"Do you really mean it?" she asks, her voice muffled from where her cheek is pressed against him. "We can stay for as long I want?"

"Sure do, baby doll. You call the shots."

She smiles against his chest, squeezing him so tight that her knuckles turn white. She never wants to let go.

She thinks about the last time Mr. J took her to the beach. Some quiet little coastal town in upper Jersey. Patriotic. Clean. Untouched by commercial real estate and big chain hotels. It was full of small-town history, little maritime museums and gift shops and family-owned restaurants. All the seafood was local, and the houses were blue and white—Victorian style—each with a perfectly cut bed of green grass in the front yard. Porch swings and flower beds and wind chimes. Windows with old-fashioned shutters that actually closed. The kinds of houses Taylor's always dreamed of living in. And the entire town a maze of inlets, with all kinds of boats docked along the harbor, their sails flapping gently in the breeze, gleaming and sunkissed. The sand was soft and the beachgoers were decidedly older—the kind of place where old folks went to retire. It had just been a day trip, but it was a significant one at that; it was the first time and last time she'd ever seen the ocean.

But this is already so different. There's a boardwalk here, and an amusement park, and the waves are bigger, and it's hotter. Brighter. She pulls away from Mr. J's chest to watch a boy whiz by on some kind of electric skateboard, and her eyes widen. She's never seen anything like that before.

Mr. J pokes her in the belly, drawing her attention back to him and making her squeal in surprise. She bites down on her smile as she squints up at him, where he's shrouded by the sun. He suggests they get something to eat, and Taylor eagerly agrees, nodding fast.

He lets her pick out a small deli along the boardwalk, one of those places that serves a little bit of everything. Mr. J gets a hotdog with all the trimmings. Taylor orders a bacon cheeseburger and peels off the pickles, giving them to Mr. J, and then makes quick work of her French Fries, which come housed in a little red basket; they're salty and covered in warm, yellow cheese, and she doesn't think she's ever had anything so delicious in her whole life. She gets cheese all over her fingers, has to lick them clean one by one, and Mr. J stares at her. She briefly meets his eyes, blushing in shame, and then finds a napkin instead, wipes her hands off under the table. He probably thinks she looks like such a pig, eating like that.

But it's not his fault that he doesn't understand; he doesn't know hunger like she does. He doesn't know about the hollow space that lives inside her belly, the cavity that can never be filled, no matter how much food she eats. He doesn't know about the shameful things she used to do for food, like breaking locks in the kitchen late at night, gorging herself in secret on whatever crumbs she could find, or how she used to feign sick at the orphanage just so that she'd get to stay overnight at the hospital, where they served three warm meals a day, and she could even get extra snacks from the nurses and aides, if she asked. And she always asked.

He doesn't know that once you've known a hunger like hers, you'll never know what it means to be full.

She eats the rest of her fries as slowly as she can. They're sitting in a little corner at a picnic table on the outside deck, facing the boardwalk, so that Taylor can people-gaze and watch the waves rolling in. A blue awning that covers the whole deck flaps gently in the breeze, and it's cool underneath this shade, makes goose bumps pimple over her arms and legs. The breeze coming off the ocean catches on the loose strands of hair that have fallen out of her braid, little whisps of blonde flying around her face, which keep stubbornly coming loose every time she tries to tuck them behind her ears.

The wooden picnic table is smooth and browned from constant use, practically a historical landmark in its own right; it's littered with an array of names and dates, some etched directly into the wood, others drawn in pen or permanent marker. Taylor studies the names there while they eat. Greg + Ashley 2014, with a little jagged heart carved next to it, and MASON WUZ HERE. Someone else carved a stick figure drawing of their cat—named 'Cheeto'—and that makes her smile. She fantasizes for a moment about what she would draw if she could. T + J, maybe, written inside a little heart. It makes her cheeks flush just to imagine it, the idea of the two of them—even if just their initials—existing somewhere so semi-permanent. She's seen pictures of that bridge in Paris, the one with all the love locks on it, and she thinks it's kind of like that, like a declaration. Like a promise.

She's happy and flushed after eating, her belly a bit rounder than before, and now all she wants to do is lie down in the sand and take a catnap under the sun. But Mr. J beckons her back to the car, and she almost doesn't want to get in—there's so much boardwalk to explore, and she wants to play on the beach—but he promises her that he has another surprise for her.

It's just a few blocks down the street—less than a five minute drive. He parks alongside the sidewalk, outside the cutest motel she thinks she's ever seen. A white stucco—two stories—trimmed in hot pink and aquamarine. There's a strand of neon pink lights lining the edge of the roof, and a tall sign out front that reads PALM TREE ESCAPE, scrawled in that vintage electric script that reminds her of the 50s. She's beside herself when she sees it—immediately wants to go inside and explore. They get out of the car, and Taylor stares up at it in awe.

"Is this where we're staying?" she squeals.

Mr. J pops open the trunk. Cars rumble slowly by on the street, slowing down for the crosswalk there and the yellow speed bump just before it. "You got some other place in mind?"

She bounces on the balls of her feet in excitement, grinning. She gets her duffle bag out of the back as he takes his, and then she's trailing at his heels as they cross the street and head into the motel.

She putters around the lobby as he gets them checked in, and she knows he keeps his eyes on her as he does, like he doesn't want her out of his sight for even a second. The sign out front had advertised free Wi-Fi and a pool, and of the two, she's infinitely more interested in making use of the latter.

When he's done, he finds her standing in front of plastic case mounted on the wall, full of pamphlets and brochures for local attractions and restaurants; she's collected one of each.

"Look! They're free!" She clutches them to her chest, grinning, and starts listing off all the places she wants to go and all the things she wants to do as she follows him down a long, narrow hallway.

"Hey," she says, interrupting her own wish list, "you ever wonder why carpets in hotels are so bouncy?" She hops along next to him next to demonstrate, and then says, "See? It's like they're squishy or something."

Her tummy flips a little when she catches the way he's looking at her, staring at her from the corner of his eyes, his mouth slightly upturned.

"They're sound absorbing," he says.

Taylor's eyes widen, almost comically large, and she stops in her tracks. "Ohhh," she says, amazed by this revelation. She bounces on the carpet twice more, just to test this theory. "That makes sense."

She has to jog catch up to him, but he waits for her at the end of the hallway, amusement still in his eyes as he stretches out his arm and stands aside, holding open the side door for her. In the next moment they're back outside, beneath the hot sun, and Taylor is following him up a white metal staircase to the second floor.

"Look!" she says. She wants to point, but between her duffle bag and the brochures haphazardly tucked to her chest, she's out of hands. "There's the pool!"

She's giddy just looking at it. A slab of gorgeous blue rectangle surrounded by white concrete and pink and blue beach chairs. Striped umbrellas. The area is closed off by a white fence, and just beyond that lies the beach. She can't believe they get to actually stay here. She can swim in the ocean and in the pool.

On the top step, she's distracted for a moment watching a little girl and boy playing in the pool together, using pool noodles as pretend swords. She feels a strange pang in her chest at that, a longing, and she kind of wishes she were playing with them, even though they're clearly younger.

But seeing them play together also reminds her of something else, some memory she's kept painfully tucked away. It's as if the world slows, in that moment, and she no longer sees the little girl and the little boy, but herself, splashing and playing with some dark-haired boy in some little motel pool, the sun heavy on them, the water so bright beneath the sun it's nearly blinding. She thinks, I know that boy, but she doesn't even remember his name.

Mr. J clears his throat, already several paces down the hall, and just like that, the almost-memory is forgotten, the thread tethering her to it snapped in half. She grins at him, and hurries to catch up, lugging her duffel bag behind her. She drops some of her brochures halfway to him and has to bend to scoop them up, hastily piling them back into her arms. She's a little breathless by the time she's finally standing next to him outside their room, more than ready to put her stuff down. Room 208. The key crunches around in the lock, and Mr. J pushes open the door.

Taylor barrels into the room first, squeezing past him in the doorway, immediately taking everything in. She dumps her pamphlets on the dresser and abandons her bag on the floor, scouring the room like an overeager puppy as she investigates every nook and cranny. She pulls open the mini fridge and the dresser drawers, runs her fingers over the coffee maker and its accompanying accessories. She investigates the bathroom and squeals excitedly over the washcloths on the sink folded into the shape of an elephant—she carries it out of the bathroom to show Mr. J—and then studies the free samples of soaps and shampoos, touching each one, reading the backs of the bottles. She has to test all the light switches and the sink and the shower, make sure everything is in working order. She goes to the closet and pragmatically declares that she can put her clothes on the right side, and his can go on the left, or maybe he could fold his and put them in the dresser, if he wanted? But then they might crease that way, so if she has to, she can put her clothes in the dresser instead.

Mr. J watches her the whole time. He's sitting on the edge of the bed, slouched over, relaxed, and when she finally comes to sit next to him—bouncing a little to test the bed's softness and declaring, "This is nice"— Mr. J quirks a brow.

"Are you done?"

She looks at him from beneath the fan of her lashes—embarrassed—and feels a blush wash over her that seems to creep all the way down to her toes.

"Yes," she says, bashfully. She looks down, smooths the flat of her palm over the white bedspread, and then looks at their hands, which are planted right next to each other; so close that she could outstretch her pinky finger if she wanted and touch his own.

The room is pale and sunny, everything clean and fairly well-kept, the furniture sand-colored, made of some kind of woven texture, almost like straw, and the carpet is brown. Loamy. There's a picture of a sleepy-looking sailboat on the wall above the bed, drawn in pastels. And there's just one bed. She tries not to give too much thought to that, but it's the first time they've ever stayed in a motel with just one bed. It's significant, she knows it is.

The place is cheap, and she knows that, too, but somehow it feels different from any of the other places they've stayed, maybe because of the knowledge that they get to stay here for as long as she wants, that this trip is on her terms.

She glances behind them for a moment, can see the ocean glittering through the slats in the blinds, and it calms her, slows her beating heart a little. But it also reminds her why they're here, what events brought them here in the first place, and suddenly she's thrust back to it all, to all the things she wishes she could forget. Ben. Ruby and Hank. The men in the rabbit masks and Wonderland and… him. Sometimes she swears she can still hear his voice in her head. Just a whisper, but his voice nevertheless, urging her to come back, reminding her that they're not done yet, that she's late—and there are consequences for being late.

She swallows and braves a glance up at Mr. J, looking at him from under her eyelashes, but he's already looking at her. He's always looking at her. Some of her earlier bravado and excitement starts to wane.

"Mr. J, did you… did you really mean what you said? About staying here for as long as I want?"

"Of course, baby doll." He frowns, cocking his head. "Why? This place not fancy enough for you?"

Taylor shakes her head, eyes widening. "No! No, I—I love it," she assures. She frowns, casts her gaze around the room before looking back at him. "I just… I just wanna know the truth."

Mr. J licks his lips, studying her. His voice is taut when he responds. "And what truth is that?"

Taylor's nervous, suddenly, afraid to ask. Afraid to upset him. She looks down and away, swallowing. She digs her fingers into the edge of the mattress. When the air conditioning box attached beneath the window cycles off, the silence feels even heavier to bear than before.

"Are we… are we hiding? Is that why we're here?"

She can't help but wonder. There's still so much she doesn't understand, so many answers she needs, to questions she doesn't even know how to ask, like how Mr. J was able to find her, and how did he know where to look? And was he in trouble now, for stealing her away? Had the police been involved? Had he made a big scene? Had it been on the news—was she on the news? Did everyone in Gotham know about her and Mr. J? Her and the Joker? Surely he would tell her, if that were the case… right?

His eyes bore straight into hers, making her squirm, but his face reveals nothing. "Why would you ask a thing like that?"

Taylor opens her mouth to answer, but the words die on her tongue when Mr. J reaches up, tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture shocks her, and his hand hovers there, three fingers curled behind her ear, his thumb resting on her cheek. She hardly dares to breath, then. Doesn't want to disturb the moment, this rarity of skin on skin. His tender touch.

"Because… because of everything that's happened," she breathes. His thumb strokes slowly along her cheek, his eyes so curious. Watching. "I just… wanna know if we're safe."

"Safe," he repeats. The way he says it sends air hissing from between his lips, as if he were testing out the word for himself. "You are safe. You're safe with me." His thumb pauses along her cheek, and he tilts his head. "I rescued you, didn't I?"

Her heart plummets, and her throat feels like a stretched-out rubber band. So tight.

"Yes," she rasps. Something catches in her throat when she says it, a lump of her own unshed tears. She feels emotional all the sudden, on the verge of another breakdown, and it's frightening, she thinks, how quickly she can oscillate back and forth between one spectrum of emotions to the next within the span of just a few seconds. "I just—" She lowers her head, squeezing her eyes shut to fight back the sudden insistence of her own tears. "—I don't wanna go back, Mr. J," she whispers. "I don't wanna lose you again."

It's a struggle to get the words out, but saying them removes a weight from her chest—one she hadn't even known she'd been carrying—and with its removal, the floodgates are opened.

"Oh, sweetheart…" he coos. His hand drops from her face, and she sobs, lets herself be pulled into the warmth of his embrace. She wraps her arms around his back and cries, smearing her tears against his neck. He strokes her back with one hand, bunching up her shirt. "There, there…" he says. "You just stick close to me. Daddy'll take care of everything, hm?"

She nods into his neck, wanting so desperately to believe him. She wraps her arms even tighter around him, pressing her body closer.

"My girl has nothing to worry about. Not here. Just you and me, princess."

His words soothe her as he continues stroking up and down her spine, his hand a solid, comforting weight on her back. Still, she clutches him fiercely, until her knuckles are white from the strain.

"Sometimes I think I can still hear him," she whispers, "in my head." She sniffles, readjusting her hold on him. "It's like… it's like he's still there. Like he's not really gone." She's not sure if she should tell him this, if this knowledge will only make him angry.

His hand on her back stills, for a moment.

"He is gone. He can't hurt you."

She nods into his neck again, sniffling, and then it's quiet between them. Mr. J resumes stroking her back, spreading warmth all up and down her spine, and Taylor pulls back from him, just enough so that she can look at him.

"I'm sorry about that day that I… that I followed you. I shouldn't have done that. I really, really shouldn't have done that." Fresh tears sting at her eyes, and the memory of that day still burns hot, painful to the touch, like an open sore that refuses to heal—a feeling she is all too familiar with. Her body is practically a canvas made for flesh wounds, like God had designed her for this specific purpose. She is all wound, all half-healed scar tissue—maybe her and Mr. J share this common.

But she remembers how angry he had been with her that day, whirling on her so fast, dragging her into that alley and pushing her onto her stomach on the concrete, holding her down with his foot on her back. He had talked to her like she was an animal—like a dog. She couldn't appreciate it, back then, but she understands now why he had been so furious, why he had been so cruel to her. None of this would have happened it if weren't for that day, if not for her stupid, reckless decision to follow him when he had explicitly told her not to. Mr. J had that that Mr. Hatter had seen her that day—and it was all over from there, wasn't it? Her fate sealed; she had unknowingly kickstarted into motion a series of events that even Mr. J could not stop.

"I always know what's best for my girl, don't I?"

Taylor nods again, this time forced to meet his eyes when she does, after he nestles a finger underneath her chin and tilts her head up.

Something glitters behind his eyes as he looks at her, something white hot. Dangerous. His lids are heavy when his gaze drops to her parted mouth, and she unconsciously wets her lips, her eyes drifting towards his mouth, too.

His lips are so pink, she realizes, so full, and she's never really noticed before. She imagines what it would be like to dip the tip of her tongue into the shallow little crevice along his lower lip, that jagged fork-in-the-river-shaped scar that descends partway over his bottom lip and spills over onto his chin. Would he like her touching him like that? And what about his other scars? Would he like her touching those, too? With her lips? With her tongue? What would they feel like? What would they taste like?—

She startles when a door slams from somewhere down the hall.

She pops up and off the mattress like a gunshot, and there's a blush on her cheeks when she sheepishly turns to looks back at him. Her heart is racing. She can't believe she—she thinks they were about to kiss.

Mr. J diffuses the moment—and her fluttering heart—by suggesting they do a little exploring.

Taylor nods her agreement, but she's too embarrassed to meet his eyes when she does.

The stick close to the motel, which is just fine by her since there's an entire strip worth of shops and restaurants lined on both sides of the street. She's wowed by the sheer amount of color. Gotham is so grey and sleek and industrial with its towering skyscrapers that blot out the sun, its massive steel bridges that connect Gotham to the rest of the Jersey mainland, the big cargo ships and steel containers that line the docks in the Narrows.

Here, though, it's an explosion of activity and color. Beach shops and arcades, restaurants and pawn shops and play-places; she marvels over a pirate-themed mini golf adventure zone, where there's a pirate ship and a lagoon and an impressive-looking sea creature lurking in the water. She makes Mr. J promise he'll take her there.

She loves the beach shops. There's so much to look at—so much she wants to buy. Towels and bathing suits and boogie boards and beach-themed memorabilia. Mr. J calls them tourist traps, but Taylor tugs on his arm and drags him inside each one anyway. He lets her buy a refrigerator magnet—an otter holding a sign that says 'Atlantic City', and a purple, oversized tie-dye t-shirt with an orange surfboard embroidered on the breast pocket. It's so 90's. She loves it. The cashier places her goodies in a yellow plastic bag, and Taylor swings it back and forth on the arm that isn't currently wrapped around Mr. J's. She can't believe she gets to walk in public with him like this—that she gets to hang all over him. Nobody even pays attention to them. It's beyond her wildest dreams. He looks so casual, dressed in loose, dark slacks and a button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. He's wearing his usual baseball cap, which he keeps pulled down low over his eyes. Safer that way. He's never been recognized before—and no one would really think to put two-and-two together (what would he be doing in a place like this, with a girl like her, after all?)—but he can never be too careful.

Taylor is surprisingly still a little full from their earlier lunch, so for dinner they get ice-cream cones on the way back to the motel. Two chocolate ones, smooshed into big waffle cones, with hers topped in a generous helping of rainbow sprinkles.

Later, when she's kneeling on the floor in front of the dresser in their room, sorting through their clothes, she tells Mr. J that all of her things are dirty, and she has nothing clean to wear for tomorrow. They find a little laundromat on the first floor—a small, cramped room with three washing machines, two dryers, and a Pepsi machine. Mr. J fishes some quarters out of his pocket to feed into the washer, and Taylor dumps all their dirty clothes in—whites and darks—and then they sit out by the pool to wait.

She doesn't have a bathing suit yet—which she casually reminds Mr. J, telling him she'll need one if they're going to go to the beach tomorrow—but she gets in the pool anyway, shucking off her shorts, but keeping her t-shirt on. The sun's setting, the sky a brilliant blaze of orange and pink, and the concrete is still warm beneath her bare thighs. The children from earlier are gone, and there's only two other people, a young couple wrapped around each other in the deep end of the pool, nuzzling into each other and talking quietly, so Taylor keeps to the shallow end so as not to disturb them. And she tries not to stare, but her eyes keep drifting towards them despite her best efforts, and it's hard for her mind not to wander; she can't help but imagine if that were her and Mr. J, how it would feel for her thighs to be wrapped around his bare waist like that, for her bikini-clad breasts to be pushed up against his chest, even if her boobs are considerably smaller than that woman's. She subconsciously looks down at her own breasts, the little bump of them through her sports bra and t-shirt, and she frowns. She really hopes Mr. J doesn't think her boobs are too small.

He's sitting on a metal lounge chair nearby—the kind with the rubber slats stretched across it— hunched over with his elbows on his knees. He seems to know exactly what she's thinking, looking at her in that way that he so often does, and Taylor swims to the edge of the pool, scooping up a mouthful of chlorine and salt water—and she spits it in his direction in a little arc that splashes near his feet. He narrows his eyes in mock warning, and she giggles, ducking under the water.

She spends the next hour doing little laps in the shallow end and practicing underwater handstands—breaking only once, so that they can go back to the laundry room and she can toss their clothes into the dryer—and then it's back to the pool. She swims so long her fingers and toes turn prune-y, but the water's so warm, and it relaxes her sore muscles and legs from all the walking they did today. After a while, she swims to the edge of the pool and lays belly-down on the steps, gently kicking her legs under the water as she chats with Mr. J, tells him about all her favorite little knickknacks and some of the shops she'd like to go back to. She asks him if he's ever played mini golf, and then confidently declares that she can teach him, even though she's never played it before herself.

She enjoys the way the neon pink lights from the motel reflect on the pool's glassy surface, and the breeze is warm, gently tousles her wet hair as she lifts her head and looks behind her for a moment, out towards the ocean, all the lit-up hotels lined up along the beach's edge. Most beachgoers have already departed now that it's dusk and the sun is merely a sliver on the horizon. She thinks she can even hear the sound of the tide rolling in.

It's dark by the time they go back to the laundry room to bundle everything up and carry it back to their room. Taylor wrings out her t-shirt and her hair as best she can without the aid of a towel, and then she snuggles into their warm clothes as she carries an armful of them up the stairs, feeling drowsy and content. She takes a short, hot shower, eager to get back to Mr. J, then changes into clean underwear and a t-shirt that are still warm from the dryer. She pats some sweet, peony-scented lotion onto her face from one of the miniature bottles on the sink, and lotions up her arms and legs, too. She's pleased to notice that some of her cuts are fading, and her bruises are starting to yellow, no longer the angry shades of purple and blue from before.

Afterwards, she sits Indian-style on the bed and carefully folds their clothes, trying not to yawn. Her eyes are so heavy, but it's a good sort of tired. She sets aside her outfit for tomorrow (her tie-die shirt from the beach store, and a pair of pink shorts), and then hangs up Mr. J's pants and his button-up shirts in the closet so they don't wrinkle. Mr. J sits in the armchair by the window, occasionally glancing up from his phone to look at her or the movie playing on TV. She catches his eye more than once and smiles shyly at him, pleased to have his attention.

Mr. J uses the bathroom after she's all finished folding clothes, and Taylor eagerly crawls into bed the moment the bathroom door shuts and he disappears from view. She pulls the blankets up to her chin as she waits for him, but then decides to fold them down around her waist instead. She wiggles her toes under the covers in her excitement and stares at the closed door, biting her lip. She hopes he'll want to cuddle.

They've been sharing a bed together for a while now—like, officially, ever since he'd touched her that night on the couch—but this feels different, somehow. This is a vacation. She's not waiting up for him for hours on end, anxious and afraid, only to have him jolt her awake in the middle of the night at three in the morning when he comes lumbering in, smelling like gasoline and bonfire smoke.

No, tonight… tonight she won't have to go to bed alone. She won't have to go to bed afraid that he won't return.

She waits—as patient as she possibly can be—smoothing out the wrinkles in the covers to distract herself, and periodically glancing at the crack of light visible beneath the bathroom door. She can see him moving around in there from the way the light shifts, but the shower isn't running and neither is the sink. What is he doing?

Taylor is almost startled when the door finally bursts open, and Mr. J comes striding out—still dressed—heading towards the front door.

"I'll be right back," he mutters, terse.

Taylor barely has time to process his words as she watches him snatch up the keys from the dresser.

He's leaving her? Alone?

"Wait!" she blurts, her heart seizing in panic. She's sitting upright in an instant. "Where are you going?"

He finally turns to look at her then, and she thinks his eyes almost seem to soften. He lifts his cellphone to his ear, gives it a little shake.

"Just gotta make a phone call, baby doll."

Taylor's heart is still racing. She glances back and forth between his face and his hand on the doorknob. She doesn't want to be left alone—he can't leave her alone.

"I'll come with you," she says. She's already pushing off the covers and slipping off the mattress to go to him.

She watches his gaze drop to her feet, and then slide up, roving up the length of her bare legs until he reaches the hem of her t-shirt, where it falls somewhere along her upper thigh, barely covering her underwear. For once, she's too worried to feel self-conscious, and she's at his side within seconds, clinging to his forearm, looking up at him imploringly.

She can't read his expression when he looks at her, but in the next moment he's gently unpeeling her fingers from his forearm, promising her that he's going to step outside for just a minute, and that she can watch him from the window.

She hesitates. She doesn't like it, but she's slightly pacified by the idea that she can keep her eyes on him the whole time, even if the irrational part of her wants to throw a tantrum of childlike proportions and beg for him to stay. What could possibly be so important that he has to go outside to talk on the phone? Why can't he do it here, in front of her? Is he hiding something? Is about what happened? Is it about her?

She blinks when Mr. J grabs her upper arm—so gentle—and pulls her in front of the window, skates back the curtain for her with his free hand.

"Right here," he says, voice low. "Stay right here."

He releases her arm, and Taylor turns, distraught, to watch him go. Every nerve in her body screams for her to go after him, to follow, but when he touches her like that, when he talks to her in that voice, how could she ever possibly disobey him?

The moment the door shuts, she's gripping the window sill, her thighs pushed up against the A/C unit and her eyes locked on him, never leaving. She hardly even blinks. Mr. J turns to face her, leaning his back against the metal balcony railing and crossing his legs at the ankle, phone held to his ear. He's watching her, too.

Had the circumstances been different, Taylor might've blushed under such careful attention, the way his eyes never leave her face, but she's far too preoccupied by the glass that currently separates them. He's right there, and yet, it still feels like there's an ocean between them. She tries—briefly—to read his lips, but he barely moves them, and she knows he's talking in that low, hushed way he does. His eyes are dark, almost hooded, and his expression gives nothing away. He's lit only by a hazy glow of neon pink, and the sky behind him is so black that not even the ocean is visible. But the way the wind tousles his hair is mesmerizing, has her wanting to reach out and skirt her fingers through it. He looks terrifying, and beautiful, and she wants him. My God, she thinks. She wants him so bad.

She has no idea what he's saying, or who he's talking to, and she knows better than to ask—but a part of her can't help but wonder if it has anything to do with what happened to her, what he did to save her, to get her out of there, and what might be transpiring back in Gotham in their absence. Mr. J had promised her that Mr. Hatter was dead. But what about Ruby? And Hank? And the men in the rabbit masks? What happened to them?

It's horrifying, suddenly, the idea of having to return back to Gotham, of finding the diner still there. Would Ruby and Hank still be there? Surely Mr. J wouldn't allow them to—to keep doing what they're doing? She can't even put a name to it, although she knows what it's called. Naming it makes it real, and she needs so badly for none of what happened to be real.

All it takes is a second—just a flashbulb of a moment—and she's back in that basement again, the tang of fresh plywood sharp in her nostrils, and the girls… staring at her from between the bars of their metal crates, their scared round eyes and the naked bump of so many shoulders and breasts and scraped-up knees. Sweat-soaked and shivering in their own urine.

All it takes is that split second of memory, and suddenly she feels on the verge of a panic attack. She reaches a hand up in an effort to orient herself—needing to touch something real, to ground herself in the present moment—and plants the flat of her palm against the cool glass of the window.

Mr. J is still there, watching, head tipped slightly down, phone held to his ear. She sucks in a breath and blinks back tears that sting.

She can feel the rapid rise and fall of her chest, but she can't hear it, can't hear anything but the insistent ringing in her ears, an ear-splitting static that drowns out all other noise.

Mr. J ends the call. It happens so fast. One second he's there and when she blinks away the blur of hot tears, he's not. Her heart plummets straight into her stomach, panic coursing through her, but before she can even spin around to face the door, he's right there, yanking the curtain closed. She hadn't even heard the door open.

He grabs her upper arms, squeezing her flesh, but she doesn't even register the sensation of it, is only dimly aware of his hands on her. She looks up at him—dazed—and realizes he's saying something, but she can't hear him. She can't hear anything at all.

He steers her backwards, towards the bed. Makes her sit down. She's eye-level with his belt buckle like this, and she can see a blurry, amorphous blob of her own pale reflection staring back at her, wide-eyed and afraid, like she's seen a ghost.

Then, his finger under her chin, tilting her head back to look at him. He's so tall, standing there above her, the light from the bedside table next to them illuminating the right half of his face, the golden tint to his eyelashes, and the bulging, rope-like texture of his right scar.

She sucks in a desperate breath, suddenly, as if she'd been holding hers this whole time, and she can hear it: the air entering her lungs, finally, and the TV in the background. She blinks rapidly, her eyes filling with more fresh tears.

"There she is," he murmurs. He strokes his finger under her chin. "Where did you go, hm?"

"Mr. J…" Her lower lip trembles, and her tears fall freely now. "Those girls, Mr. J, I—I—"

"Sh, sh, sh," he coos. His hand shifts, so he can cradle her face in one large hand, stroke his thumb across her wet cheek. "I already told you… I took care of it. They're okay."

She squeezes her eyes shut, more tears spilling down her cheeks. "But they're notokay… they're not okay," she blubbers. She reaches up with one hand and clings to his belt, hooking her fingers beneath the leather band as she looks up at him, crying. "I'm not okay."

She chokes, and Mr. J shushes her, pulls her against him. She wraps her arms around his hips and buries her head against his abdomen, crying into his shirt. She's not okay. She's not okay... will she ever be? How is she supposed to go on living after what she's seen? After everything that's been done?

He rubs circles into her back for a long time, smooths her hair, and it's comforting. Even during times like this, when she's in hysterics and can barely breathe because she's crying so hard, even then she knows how grateful she should be that he's offering her this simple comfort—the comfort of his touch. She knows, even beneath the weight of everything else she carries, that this is a gift, something that should not be taken for granted.

She nuzzles her face into his abdomen, her nose bumping along one of his shirt buttons. She squeezes him tighter. She never wants to let go.

He lets her cry until she's all cried out, and then, when her tears have dried and she's feeling well and truly embarrassed from her miniature meltdown, he tucks her into bed, pulling back the covers for her. She lays down on her side, facing him, and tries to ignore the tacky feeling on her cheeks from her dried tears, the way her eyes feel so red and swollen from crying. She must look like a mess, and the need to apologize bubbles up in her throat, but then gets stuck there. She starts and stops. Starts and stops.

"I—I'm so—so sorry," she whispers, her voice cracking, what little of it she has left.

The corner of his mouth lifts in a soft smile, and he brushes a strand of hair off her forehead from where he stands next to the bed, leaning over her, one hand propped against the mattress next to her head.

"There, there," he says. "My good girl. So brave. You're going to be just fine, aren't you?"

Taylor looks at him, and her heart clenches at his praise. He must know how much she loves hearing that—how much she needs to hear that. She's been told her whole life what a burden she is, how no one could ever possibly want her. How she's worthless, and stupid. But she's not stupid; she knows exactly why she's been passed from one foster home to the next on a near-constant rotation, like she's on a merry-go-round, only its one she can't get off. She knows why no one has ever committed to adopting her, why she has never been permanently welcomed into the arms of a loving family. She's know it's because of her baggage, years' worth of abuse, and trauma that even she hasn't even begun to unpack; one time, at a pediatric checkup when she was seven, the pediatrician had called it "PTSD". She had thought that was only something soldiers could have, men who had returned home from war, usually with a missing limb. But she was no solider, just some little girl who couldn't make it through the night without wetting the bed. Just some girl who used to cry inconsolably at the sound of police sirens, or the wailing drone of a passing ambulance. A girl who used to scream bloody murder in the middle of the night, every night, lashing out in her sleep, crying for someone to save her. Who could handle that? Who could possibly want to handle that? She was not a 'good girl', not in any sense of the word. But when Mr. J tells her she is? When he tells her she's brave, and strong, and that she's going to be okay? She really believes him. She has to.

You're going to be just fine, aren't you?

It's not a question, and she knows that. She will be fine. She has to be, for him. She has to show him she can be strong, and brave, and grown up. She doesn't want him to think that he has to baby her, or that she needs to be coddled.

Her worst fear always dangles just in the haze of her periphery, her fear of being thrown out, kicked to the curb because he's tired of her tears, her mood swings, her inability to control her emotions.

This thing between them—whatever it is, whatever she's supposed to call it—it's still so new. So raw. She can't ruin it when it's barely up and off the ground, can't risk doing or saying something that might compromise his feelings for her. Make him change his mind.

She licks her lips, urging moisture back into her mouth, and nods.

She is going to be just fine. She has to be.

"There," he murmurs, as if sensing her resolve. "That's my girl."

Taylor reaches up and dries her tears with the back of her hand, embarrassed. She turns her face into the pillow, so only half of it is visible, and for a moment, he just looks at her. Having his rapt attention like this is always its own special thrill, makes her heart beat a little faster inside her chest. He's still leaning over her, one hand planted flat next to her head, and she swears she can feel the heat radiating from his skin. She imagines—not for the first time today—what it would feel like to have his lips pressed to hers. Imagines what it would be like if he were to lean down and brush their lips together. Maybe she'd meet him halfway. Maybe he'd shift his hand and cup the side of her face, sweep his thumb across her lower lip—

She's afraid her wanting gives her away when Mr. J suddenly straightens to his full height, looming over her. He casts a long shadow over the bed, and she lifts her head from the pillow, brows drawing together in concern.

"Aren't you coming to bed?" she sniffles.

"In a little bit, baby doll." He moves to reach over and click off the bedside lamp, but Taylor sits up suddenly, looking at him.

"I'll wait up," she says. It comes out in a rush, as his hand hovers near the pullcord for the lamp, and she looks at him so earnestly, trying to convey her devotion; if he's not ready for bed, then neither is she.

She thinks she catches his mouth twitch at the corner, but she can't tell for sure. He drops his hand from the lamp, and then shrugs his shoulders as if to say, "up to you", and she takes that as a win.

She straightens and fluffs up the pillow behind her as she settles in against the headboard. Mr. J wanders off to the bathroom again, and this time she hears the sink running. He's in there for a long time, and she flips through TV stations while she waits, dosing off twice. The second time, she jerks awake just as he reenters the bedroom, and she sits up a little straighter, offering him a sleepy smile. Her eyes follow him across the room as he flops into the bedside chair, bends down to unlace his shoes. She tracks his every movement, drowsily following his long, dexterous fingers as he works through the lacing of his shoes. When he sits up, starts to unbuckle his belt, he pauses halfway, feeling her eyes on him. He glances at her from beneath his brows, and she flushes, looking away. So embarrassing. She doesn't want him to think she was ogling him—even though she definitely was.

When she diverts her gaze to the bedspread, picking at a frayed thread there, she doesn't look up again until she hears the slither of leather sliding through his belt loops. Mr. J untucks his shirt next, and Taylor thinks he's finally going to join her in bed, but he doesn't, and she watches him retrieve his cell phone instead. He sits back, rests his ankle on his knee as she watches him thumb in the passcode to unlock his phone.

She doesn't know why it makes her anxiety prickle every time she sees him on his phone, but it does, and her stomach churns with unease when she starts to wonder about what exactly he's doing, or who he might be texting. She resigns herself to having to wait a bit longer, but sleep overtakes her only minutes later, and she falls asleep while propped up against the headboard, cheek pressed to her shoulder.

It's dark when she jolts awake some time later, the fringes of a bad dream slithering away as she comes to. She's lying on her side, and the covers are pulled up around her chest, but she's cold.

For a moment, she doesn't remember where she is, or what day it is. She rolls over onto her back, flings an arm out to the side and finds something solid. Warm. Mr. J.

She's immediately comforted by his presence, and she scoots across the mattress to close the small distance between them, fitting herself against his back, tugging on his arm until she's got it draped over her middle. She squirms until she's nestled right up against him, her back to his front, so she can feel the rise and fall of his chest with his every breath. She spends a little while trying to match her breathing to his, but he breathes much slower than she does, his respirations more prolonged, and eventually she gives up.

Now that she's awake, she's awake, and she huffs, irritated. She threads her fingers through Mr. J's. His hands are surprisingly soft—maybe because he wears gloves all the time—but still rougher than hers, and she enjoys the contrast of their skin, the callouses on the tops of his palms.

"Mr. J?" she whispers. She squirms against him, trying to get comfortable, trying to align their bodies just right, but she must be wriggling too much, because his arm that she'd draped over her waist suddenly moves. Her heart seizes up when he wedges his forearm across her chest, between the valley of her breasts, and holds her tight, pressing her to him.

"Stay still," he murmurs, voice all thick, heavy from sleep. It makes the place between her legs throb a little, to hear him talk like that, to have his arm squished between her breasts. She wonders if he can feel how fast her heart is beating. His hot breath wafts through her hair, at the top of her head. She swallows and tries to ignore the sensations, her budding arousal.

"I can't sleep, Mr. J," she whispers. She waits a few beats for him to respond, for him to acknowledge what she's just said, but he doesn't. She huffs another sigh, then bites down on her lip as she debates telling him what's nagging at her. She doesn't want him to think she's a baby, but— "I can't sleep without my Ollie."

"Your what?" he grunts.

"My Ollie," she repeats, still in a whisper, "my stuffed otter from the aquarium…."

Mr. J is silent for a moment. "We'll get you another one," he says, gruff. "Tomorrow." The way he says it conveys finality, and she knows not to push it further. "Go to sleep."

It takes a little while, but she eventually does fall back asleep, feeling a bit more settled with Mr. J holding her so tight. She hugs his arm to her—ensuring that he won't pull it away—and closes her eyes, thinking of the beach.

---

Taylor is groggy in the morning, and more than a little cranky after she peels open the curtains to reveal an overcast sky—gunmetal gray—and the threat of looming storm clouds hanging low overhead. She can't believe it's going to rain.

"What are we gonna do now, Mr. J?"

Mr. J arches a brow as he comes to stand behind her, taking in the weather. "Hmm," he says. "Think I might know just the thing."

That piques Taylor's interest, and she scurries off to the bathroom to dress in the outfit that she'd laid out the night before. She brushes her teeth and French braids her hair in one long braid that trails down her back. It's her favorite style and it's easy.

Mr. J uses the bathroom once she's finished, and she's knelt on the floor, tying the laces of her sneakers when he comes out, dressed in a similar outfit from the day before. Brown slacks and a tucked-in shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his baseball cap in hand. Even after all this time, she still derives such a thrill from seeing him in regular clothes. He looks so handsome.

It's warm and a little muggy when they step outside, and the air feels taut—electric—like the way it does before a big storm rolls through, even as sun makes a valiant effort to poke out from between the clouds, disappearing and then reappearing at intervals.

They get breakfast at a nearby diner across the street, right off the main strip. It's not at all like Hank's—much to her relief. This diner is homey and quaint, with brown leather booths and yellow curtains halved over the windows that allow the morning sunlight to stream through. The walls are wood paneled, the tiles on the floor mismatched, streaked with skid marks. Some of the walls are adorned with old fashioned, paisley wallpaper, and nearly every inch is covered with framed photos of local sports team or some newspaper clipping—baseball must be big around here—and there's even a homemade checkered quilt hanging on the wall, with a bunch of signatures and a date sewn into each square.

It smells like fresh roasted coffee and bacon when they enter, and Taylor's belly growls in want.

The waitress leads them to a sunny little booth near the windows, and Taylor eagerly scans the menu as soon as the waitress sets it down in front of her.

She orders a glass of orange juice and the triple-decker pancake platter, and Mr. J gets a breakfast platter with pancakes, sausage, eggs, and hashbrowns. He orders coffee and drinks it black, much to Taylor's disgust. But she can't be worried about that now; she's too busy dousing her pancakes in a generous helping of warm syrup, her tongue poking out from between her lips in her intense concentration.

"You want some pancakes with that syrup?" Mr. J asks wryly, arching a brow, but she doesn't respond, too mesmerized by the way the sunlight looks when it's caught suspended in the honey-like rope of syrup that drizzles down from high above her plate. Satisfied, she puts down the little glass jar of syrup and skewers a fluffy piece of pancake onto the tines of her fork.

She fills her belly with enough pancakes to feed a small army, and Mr. J even shares a slice of his bacon with her.

The storm clouds return halfway through their meal, and it's raining sideways by the time they leave, pelting the sidewalks, the wind so strong it makes the traffic lights dangling over the street sway. They run to the car beneath an onslaught of blustering rain and wind, and the moment they manage to scramble inside and close the doors, the rain lets up, stopping entirely. They turn to look at each other at the same time, their clothes soaked and clinging to their skin, and Taylor bursts into laughter.

"Guess we should've waited," she giggles.

He drives her around town to show her some of the sights, in an effort to allow their clothes to dry before they head to the next destination. When she pesters him with questions about where they're going next, he tells her only that it's a surprise.

But when Taylor finally spots the sign for the mall, she squeals, clasping her hands near her chest. She's practically vibrating with excitement as they exit the parking lot and head towards the main entrance, crossing beneath a beautiful stone archway that opens up into a cobblestone walkway that's dotted with miniature trees and well-manicured bushes.

She bounces on her heels a little once they get inside, looking around in wonder, taking in everything all at once, but she hardly knows where to start. This is like nothing she's ever experienced before. She feels giddy and excited—but nervous, too. They've never been shopping together before. What if he doesn't like the things she picks out? What if everything is too expensive? She only ever shops at secondhand stores. She's gotten pretty good at thrifting, even it's hard to find her size sometimes, even if means having to browse in the kid's section. And this mall is huge—even bigger and brighter than the one back home.

She gazes up at the skylight in awe, the way the sunlight streams through in strong, warm beams. She is drawn to the edge of the railing that looks down over the first floor, where she can hear children screaming and laughing, and she sees a beautiful water fountain full of golden pennies, glinting up at her in the sun. It's so bright she has to shield her eyes with her forearm for a moment, and then she can see the people sitting on the round edge of the fountain, strollers parked near by, their shopping bags clustered around their feet. There are little children running around the fountain, playing a game of tag. She spots a little boy hiding behind an arrangement of potted plants jump out to say, "Boo!", surprising a little girl who happens to be running by. It makes Taylor smile, seeing that. Everyone looks so happy. So relaxed. She watches an older couple sitting on the edge of the fountain, sharing a little cup of ice-cream, and the old man lifts his spoon for his wife, who gratefully accepts the offered scoop. She watches a father bend down to tie his daughter's shoe—the little girl must be four years old, at the most—while she pets her father's curly black hair and chatters away to her mother, who is sitting nearby, nursing a little baby. The father, down on one knee, reaches his hands up to hold her face still and kisses his daughter's nose when he's all finished tying her shoe, and in turn she flashes him the cheesiest smile Taylor's ever seen. It makes Taylor's heart throb a little, seeing that; it's all she's ever wanted.

She doesn't realize Mr. J is still there, watching her, until she turns to look at him, leaning up against the railing, hip cocked, his weight braced on his forearm. He's been watching her.

"We gonna stand here and people watch all day, or get my girl some new clothes?" he asks.

She flushes, nodding her head, letting go of the railing and stepping away. She likes people watching. She could it all day. She wants to tell him about how, when she was little, when she lived at the group home and the orphanage, they were permitted to go on outings sometimes, and how she always made a point of hanging back from the rest of the group. While the rest of the kids were climbing on the monkey bars and pushing each other on swings, Taylor would stroll around the perimeter of the park, carefully assessing the mothers there who were watching over their children.

She'd study them for a long time, picking out her favorites, the ones who looked nice and approachable and safe, and when she had summoned enough courage, she would go to them; they'd be sitting on a blanket in the grass, pushing a stroller back and forth beneath the shade of a big tree to soothe a crying baby, or laying out food at a picnic table; those were always her favorite mothers—the ones who brought food. That usually meant they had plenty of food at home to share, when they could eat it in public like that.

Taylor would march herself right over and introduce herself, firing off a list of what she considered to be her most favorable attributes: my hair is very soft and you can touch it if you want, and I love Sour Patch Kids and dogs don't even scare me, only a little bit. Oh, and I always eat my veggies even when I don't like them, and I love to play outside and slides are my favorite! Oh, and I always brush my teeth before bedtime. And then she'd promptly ask if they wanted to adopt her. Do you want to be my mommy? You're very pretty, she'd shyly add, mostly because it was always true. She usually got halfway through her little speech before she was being dragged away to play with the other kids by one of the staff members who were supposed to be watching them.

"You really, really have to stop doing that, Tay." They always sounded so tired when they said it.

Taylor just scowled and went to sulk on the bench, surreptitiously looking for her next target. She only ever approached women because the one time she had approached a man, he took her hand and had led her halfway out of the park before one of the staff found her. She was ripped away from him as the man sputtered about how he was just trying to help her look for her mother, but the staff member pulled Taylor aside afterwards and said he was a bad man, and she got spanked when she got back to the orphanage. She was forbid from talking to strangers after that, especially men, and especially ones that looked like Mr. J, even if she didn't know why at the time.

All of this swims in the back of Taylor's mind as she looks at him, and she thinks, I want to tell you. I want to tell you how lonely I've been. She can see the curiosity glittering behind his dark eyes, like he wants to know what she's thinking. But a part of her is scared. She doesn't talk about these things with him, not really. She's afraid of what he will think—what he might say. She doesn't want him to think of her as just some pathetic orphan kid. She doesn't want him to think she's a loser—that she doesn't deserve love. His love.

Of course, he knows more about her than anybody—he's said so himself—but sharing these things with him, stuff like this, it still fills her with uncertainty. Maybe now that they're boyfriend and girlfriend, she can open up to him a little bit more? Maybe he'd want that?

"Here," Mr. J says. "One more thing." He reaches into his back pocket and retrieves a wallet; she doesn't think she's ever seen him carry a wallet before, and something about him keeping it in his back pocket feels like such a dad thing to do. She bites down on her lower lip to curb her smile, but then it fades entirely when he fishes a credit card out of one of the leather folds and holds it out to her. He tells her she can get whatever she wants.

Her eyes widen in shock, and she blinks at it, takes it from him gently—slowly—and then cradles it between the palms of her hands like it's some precious jewel, like it'll break if she drops it. She's never held a credit card in her whole life.

She looks at the card—shiny and blue—and her brows draw together as she reads the name printed on the front.

"Who's Henry Albott—?"

"Does it matter?" he asks, leaning in close, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Can't exactly put Mr. Joker on there, now, can I?"

Taylor nods. She supposes that's true. But does that mean that this isn't his card? Is it stolen? She couldn't possibly spend someone else's money, that'd be like—

"Relax," Mr. J says, sensing her unease, like he knows exactly what she's thinking. "It's mine."

Taylor's shoulders visibly sag in relief, and then a brief moment passes where she suddenly finds herself wondering what Mr. J's real name is. She looks at him, and she feels ashamed that she'd never asked. She'd never even really wondered until now. He's always just been Mr. J to her. But he wasn't always the Joker. She tries to picture him with a man's name: Joe, or Michael, or Oliver. But none of them really fit. She cocks her head to the side, contemplating it, and he steps closer, closing the distance between them in a way that perhaps they shouldn't in public.

"What? I got something on my face?"

Taylor smiles at him, and in a burst of confidence, leans up on her tiptoes to close the distance between him. "Just this," she says. She plants a smacking kiss on his right cheek, right below his scar, and she manages to stave off her blush until afterwards, when she pulls away. She bites her lip as she looks at him and he looks at her, and for a moment, she think he might berate her—somebody might have seen, after all—but then his mouth stretches into a grin, and his eyes crinkle a little at the corners when he does.

"Oh, that. Forgot that was even there," he says, innocently, head cocked to the side. "You might have to remind me again later." Taylor giggles, looking at him, and warmth blooms like sunlight down her spine when he returns her smile. God, she loves him. She loves him so much—

She blinks when he gently spins her around, his fingers brushing against her lower back.

"After you," he says, lowly, hunching down some so the words reverberate in the shell of her ear.

He sweeps his arm out in front of them as if to say, lead the way, so she does, biting her lip as he follows closely beside her, always just a step or two behind, even if she'd prefer him much, much closer. They enter a little boutique, some independently-owned store with some strategically posed mannequins in the window, one of them wearing a mini skirt that caught Taylor's eye. She wanders aimlessly through the racks. These clothes are way nicer than anything she's ever worn in her whole life. The outfits on the mannequin are so put together—boho chic, she think it's called—but very feminine. She doesn't know if she could pull something like that off. She think she'd feel like a little kid playing dress-up.

When someone brushes by her on accident—through a narrow passageway between clothing racks—she visibly startles, and afterwards she has to take a moment to calm her beating heart. She's just a little skittish, that's all. That's what she tells herself. She knows Mr. J sees, standing off to the side, where he's given her room to shop. Her reaction embarrasses her, but she wills her hands not to shake when she lifts them to comb through the rack of hanging blouses in the clearance rack. It still feels a little strange to be out in public after… after everything's that happened, like she's not supposed to be here.

Mr. J has his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking fairly unassuming, but Taylor knows he's watching her like a hawk. It should make her feel safe, but instead she just feels paranoid. She looks at a pretty floral blouse on the rack in front of her and reaches inside to fish out the price tag, and her eyes bug. It's marked down from seventy to fifty dollars. It alarms her to think that there are people who would spend that much money on a shirt—she could buy almost a month's worth of food for that much. Still, she looks at the top a little longingly for a moment, and then shuffles away to move onto the next rack. A moment later, however, there's a thwap inside her shopping basket, and she looks down to find the top there.

"Mr. J—" she starts.

"I told you… my girl can get whatever she wants."

"But it's too expensive—" she protests. This is way more than my allowance, she doesn't say. The words burn a hole on the tip of her tongue. She doesn't understand why Mr. J is letting her spend so much money when he's always given her so little. She ignores the queasy pulse in her belly that urges her to push for where this money comes from. It's probably better that she doesn't know.

"It's not." Mr. J drops his head down to get on her level, his face right in front of hers, and he's so serious in that moment, suddenly so big and so looming in front of her, she can't bring herself to argue with him. "Get it," he says. It's not a statement—it's a command.

She swallows to urge some moisture back into her mouth, caught in the vortex of his dark eyes. "Okay," she says. "Okay."

Despite his assurances, she still flutters a little aimlessly around the racks, checking price tags and frowning. When he sees her lingering for a long time over a particular item—as if knowing the internal debate going on inside her head—he finds the smallest size and drops it in the basket. She spends eighty dollars at the first store, and one-hundred and forty at the next. Mr. J carries some of her bags for her so that she can browse through the racks unencumbered. Guilt weighs heavy on her chest like a mallet, threatening to crush her heart and lungs, but Mr. J just keeps shoving more items in her basket after she's looked at them. He even picks out an item of his own. It's a little green top—a cardigan, really—with scalloped trim around the edges and sleeves, and it ties in a pretty silk bow in the front. It's cropped, so she'd have to wear something underneath it, like a camisole or something. Mr. J inspects it for a long moment, so long it makes her uncomfortable, as if he's imagining her in it, and then tosses it into the basket. She glances up at him and bites her lip, a little uncertain. He answers her unspoken question without even looking at her.

"I want you to wear that," he says. He narrows his eyes as he pauses to look at a hot pink shirt with rhinestones on it, staring at it as if it's personally offended him.

"Why?"

But he moves onto another rack and doesn't answer. She looks at the cardigan, lying at the top of her basket, and thinks that maybe it's because it matches her eyes.

It's also the same color green as the vest from his work suit.

She trails after him. "It might be too small for me," she says. It's definitely too small. It'll only cover her boobs, and just barely. Where is she supposed to wear something like that?

The metal hangers screech across the clothing rack as Mr. J pushes a line of hangers further down the rack. "It won't be."

She wants to argue, but a part of her is maybe a little thrilled that he'd pick something out for her. She'll just have to try it on when they get back to the motel.

She's surprised at how involved he is with her shopping. He'd kept his distance, at first, but when it became clear how uncomfortable she was spending so much money, he was quick to step in—and he didn't exactly seem to be hating it, either. She bites down on a secret smile as she watches him browse. He's fast—almost like he's looking for something in particular—but he doesn't rush her. When he's finished, he stands off to the side and lets her finish until she's done.

Sometimes he lingers and offers his opinion; and he makes her laugh when he adjusts a pair of invisible glasses atop his nose and she holds up a shirt to her chest for him to inspect. He makes a show of circling her and examining it, cocking his head this way and that, putting on an affected air.

"Hm," he says, in some ridiculous, over-the-top accent, "don't know about this one." He pokes a finger into her side, when he's standing behind her, right into the spot where she's most ticklish, and she lets out a little squeak. "Might have to make some, uh, adjustments," he muses. He pokes her other side with his other hand, still behind her, and then he's tickling her. She squeals and drops the shirt, and he doesn't stop until she's bent over with laughter and gasping for breath. She pushes back against him and thinks—fleetingly—that the cage of his arms and the solid heat of his chest to her back feels good. Really good. She doesn't think about the sudden slick in her underwear. She's flushed when she comes up—and definitely embarrassed—but they're in massive department store on the second floor in the junior's section, and it's practically a ghost town. She smooths out her hair as he whistles a jaunty tune and ambles innocently away, and then she shares a sly smile with him from across the racks. It's fun like this, she thinks, being in public but not having to worry about being seen. Not caring what other people think. She wishes they could be like this all the time.

The afternoon fades on, and the storm clouds from earlier that morning seem to be gone for good; sunlight slants bright and warm through the massive skylight that stretches across the ceiling, all the way from one side of the mall to the other. And in the center of the mall, there's a slight break where the ceiling takes on the shape of a giant dome, the inside of it made of stained glass, all different sizes and shapes. There are shades of cerulean and aquamarine and green—like sea glass—and the way the sunlight dapples through it almost gives the effect of them being underwater. It reminds her of the ocean, and that time Mr. J had taken her to the aquarium. She stops to stare at it for a moment before he gives her a gentle push between her shoulder blades. Mr. J's not really one to stop and look at the scenery—or maybe he just wants to keep shopping.

The big department stores are her favorite; Macy's and JCPenney and Dillard's. She feels like she has room to breathe as she shops, and they're not so crowded and dark as some of the other smaller shops they've been in. Plus, they have escalators inside them. She eyes one a little longingly inside the JCPenney, and Mr. J seems to smirk, as if knowing what she's after. He lets her ride it twice and then promises there will be plenty more. It's kind of dumb, how excited she gets, but she can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times she's been to the mall, so everything still feels so new and exciting and fresh.

The other thing she likes about department stores: there is no one attending the dressing rooms, no employee to track down to ask for a key—so she can take however many clothes in there as she wants and not feel embarrassed about it.

Mr. J sits outside the dressing room on a bench to wait for her, legs spread wide, his back to the wall, head tipped back. All her shopping bags are laid at his feet. He looks… content, she thinks, like he's actually enjoyed watching her shop around. She can't imagine why.

Taylor is halfway through the armful of clothes she brought in with her to try on when the zipper on the back of her dress gets snagged in her braid. She hisses at the sharp pain that jolts at a spot along the base of her skull, and when she reaches behind her to try and pull the zipper down even further, she gasps in pain. It's really, really stuck. She has to undo her bread in an attempt to free the strands, but that only seems to make the whole thing worse, and she groans in frustration.

"Um… Mr. J?" She stands on her tiptoes so her voice carries over the top of the door, where she can't see. "Can you help me?"

He's there a few moments later—she can see his shoes beneath the door, and the bags he sets down along the opposite wall—and she unlatches the lock so she can show him her dilemma. Her hair is a mess of tangles from the efforts of her struggling, and her face is cherry red. She's still slightly out of breath.

"The zipper got stuck," she huffs. She turns around so he can see, and she tries to ignore the fact that he can see her bra and the top of her lime-green panties. They're her least favorite pair, but the last clean ones she had left.

She hears his tsk behind her. "My, my, what a, uh, hairy situation we have here…."

Taylor bursts into laughter. "Mr. J!" she cries.

He chuckles behind her, and then pushes her head down when she tries to look up at him in the mirror in front of her. "Head down," he instructs, like he's talking to an unruly pet. "Let daddy untangle this mess…."

Taylor flushes despite herself. She's still not used to him calling himself daddy, something he's been doing with a lot more regularity, as of late. Sometimes she fantasizes about calling him that—what he would do, how he would react—but she can never quite picture it. She tests the word out on her tongue sometimes, just to see how it would sound, how the word feels when it leaves her lips—but she only ever says it when she's alone, a word she whispers to herself in the shower, or when she's lying in bed at night and waiting for Mr. J to join her. She'll say it quietly, then. But he'll never know how she practices, as if gearing herself up for it. She's never really had a reason to say it before, at least until now.

The longer he stands there behind her, the more her panties start to grow even more slick, and the stickiness gathering between her thighs makes her worry it will start to leak down her legs. Why is she like this? She rubs her thighs together and shifts, trying to be discrete about it. She can feel his warm breath on the nape of her neck, and it makes the nerve endings on her skin feel all lit-up. The small space they share feels supercharged. Heady. She stares at the reflection of their legs in the bottom half of the mirror, him standing behind her. Her brain suddenly supplies an image of him tugging the sleeves of her dress off her shoulders from behind, sliding it down, over her hips, letting it drop to the floor so he can smooth his hands over the curve of her waist, instead. And then his hand would slip lower still—big and warm—sliding past her belly and into her underwear, cupping her sex. "All this for me?" he'd ask, fingers lazily trailing through the slick there, his eyes boring into hers in the mirror. The bulge of his knuckles through her underwear is obscene, and the fantasy alone makes her whimper. She actually whimpers. The sound leaves her mouth before she can stop it. She tries to turn it into a cough, but it's too late.

"Did I hurt you?"

She's surprised by the pitch of his voice—much lower than she expected. She squirms and crosses her legs, rubbing her thighs together again.

"Just a little," she lies.

He's being surprisingly gentle—laboriously working through the snag, so she can keep as much of her hair intact as possible, but she's growing impatient. She balls her hands into fists and groans, exasperated.

"Just yank it out," she says, already resigning herself to her fate. "Go ahead. I—I'm ready."

She squeezes her eyes shut and waits for the pain—but it doesn't come. She cracks open an eye a moment later, peeking up at him in the mirror, and Mr. J chuckles behind her, his breath tickling the little hairs at the base of her neck.

"No need," he murmurs.

She feels the moment her hair is freed from the zipper, and her eyes widen in surprise.

"Oh—thank you."

He slowly drags the zipper back up—she doesn't correct him by telling him she was trying to take the dress off—and then meets her eyes in the mirror.

She thinks he might be about to say something when the sound of voices approaching interrupts—two girls chatting to each other, about to enter the dressing room. Without thinking, Taylor grabs him by the front of his shirt and pulls him the rest of the way into the small room with her, slamming the door shut and sliding the lock into place.

She forces him back against the opposite wall just as the two girls come in—a mother and daughter, from the sounds of it.

"I really don't like this one," the girl is saying. She moves into a stall two doors down from Taylor's.

"Just try it on, honey," her mom says. "You might change your mind."

The mom is standing outside her daughter's stall. Taylor goes to the door and peeks through the crack, just to make sure all their bags are still there.

When she turns back around, Mr. J is just there, smirking at her, like he thinks this is funny.

She draws her arms up to her chest and bites her lip, embarrassed.

He leans his upper back against the wall, crosses his legs at the ankle, surrounded by a messy pile of discarded clothes at his feet.

"Well," he says, voice low, "keep going."

Taylor blinks at him. "What?" she whispers. In the stall two rooms over, the mom is chatting to her daughter through the door, something about a wedding.

"I said, keep going," he repeats.

Taylor stares at him, and she understands. He wants her to keep trying her clothes on.

She swallows nervously—considering—and it takes a long moment for her to gather up her courage, to obey his request. She licks her lips, looking at him, and then closes the small distance between them. Mr. J seems curious, head cocked as he studies her, but she makes her intentions clear when she turns her back to him, lifts the hair from the back of her neck, indicating that he should pull down the zipper.

He does so, slowly, and Taylor has to swallow down the prickle of anxiety that's nestled like a tangle of thorns at the base of throat. She takes her time removing her dress, peeling the sleeves off one by one, slipping them off her arms. The dress falls past her hips and them pools on the floor at her feet, along with all her other clothes.

For a moment, all she can do is stand there. Her breath comes out heavy—slow—and she feels a dizzyingly hot blush fan itself out across her face and chest. She feels so insecure in that moment, so small, standing there in just her mismatched bra and underwear. She curls her opens over her belly subconsciously.

She inhales sharply when the warm pads of his fingers brush across the J on her back. The brand.

"Almost forgot what this looked like," he murmurs, voice still low, so only she can hear.

Her brain short circuits.

God, it always feels so good when he touches her there, like the skin there is remembering its architect, its designer, like it's glad for the return of the god who created it.

She releases a shaky exhale, closing her eyes for a moment, reveling in his touch. She lets him run the tips of his fingers across it for a few more moments, just long enough for her to will her limbs to start working again.

When she turns around to face him, finally, she's almost too afraid to meet his eyes. But she forces herself to look, to wade through the darkness in his gaze. He leans in close—too close—nosing along her cheek, hot breath fanning out across her skin.

"What a pretty girl you are," he murmurs. It makes her breath hitch. He nestles a finger under her chin, tilts her head up until she's forced to look at him. "My girl."

Taylor swallows, and his eyes track the bobbing of her throat for a split second before returning back to her face.

She's so relieved she feels like she could cry.

He lets go of her chin, and her hands shake when she reaches for a dress hanging up on a hook just to her right. Her skin is goose-pimpled and tingling from his previous touch. She removes the dress from the hanger and slips it up her legs. Then she turns her back to him, lifting her hair off her neck so that Mr. J can do up the zipper for her.

When she turns to face him once again, he looks at her for a long moment, unblinking.

"Pretty as a picture," he says. He reaches out to touch the fabric at her waist. It's stretchy and elastic, clinging to her curves in a way she doesn't hate. She glances at herself in the mirror, then looks back at Mr. J and smiles shyly.

"I like it, too," she says.

She tries on a few more outfits with him there, watching, and it feels like a religious experience. It feels sacred. He helps her zip, button, and tie everything that needs to be tied; he compliments each outfit as if it's dazzling. She's so fluffed up from his praise, riding the best kind of high, only the kind that he can give. The mother-daughter duo left a few outfits ago, but she didn't bother to mention it. She likes him here with her, watching. His attention makes her skin prickle, and she's so flush with arousal it's almost dizzying in its intensity, like when he'd had her spread out on the couch, had two fingers curled deep inside her cunt.

She clenches down instinctively at the memory, and when he heaps more praise on her, Taylor flushes. "You said that about the last outfit."

"I can't help it that my girl looks good in everything," he replies, as if this should be obvious.

She smiles to herself, pulling a pretty blouse over her head. It's baby blue, with tiny puff sleeves and little buttons up the front. She buttons those herself, and then moves the tag out of the way so she can assess herself in the mirror. She paired it with a jean mini skirt that gives her ass a little more shape than she's used to.

She flushes as she looks at herself. This one's definitely her favorite.

After she's tried everything on, she carries her bundle of clothes to the register, Mr. J hovering close by. She feels like such a grown-up every time she gets to hand the cashier his shiny plastic credit card. It's so liberating. Powerful.

She bounces on her tiptoes a little as the electronic beep! sounds every time the cashier rings up an item. "You find everything okay?" she asks, smiling as she scans that blue top that Taylor had liked so much. "Sure looks like you did," she adds, not unkindly.

Taylor nods, blushing a little because the pile of clothes she put on the counter rivals the size of a small mountain. "Uhuh," she says. She glances over her shoulder to look at Mr. J, as if needing his assurance to make sure this is still okay, that it's alright to be spending this much money.

"Aren't you a lucky girl," the cashier says, smiling. "Your dad sure is nice for buying all these clothes for you."

Taylor blinks. She's so taken aback she doesn't even know what to say. Her dad? This lady thinks he's her dad? She feels almost angry at that, for some reason. Of course he's older than her, and it's obvious, but they're together, like together-together. He's her boyfriend.

Taylor looks up just in time to catch the cashier looking over Taylor's shoulder, flashing Mr. J a megawatt smile, and Taylor's chest tightens, blooming with sudden heat. Oh. That's why she's mad.

She pushes back instinctively against Mr. J, her back to his chest, and he lays a casual hand on her shoulder, making Taylor frown; she wishes he would have put it on her waist instead.

The cashier ignores Taylor in lieu of chatting up Mr. J, and Taylor just stares at her, dumbfounded. The woman is probably around Mr. J's age, she thinks, maybe a little younger. She has shoulder-length hair styled in loose waves—beach waves, like she's seen girls do on those tutorials on Youtube—and her warm brown eyes are framed by chocolate-brown eyeshadow. She has dimples on either side of her mouth, and little golden hoops dangle from her ears. She's pretty—gorgeous, even. Put-together in that way feminine chic kind of way that Taylor's always been a little envious of: that class of women who have effortlessly mastered How to Be A Woman and are clearly good at it. Taylor finds herself wondering if Mr. J likes brunettes.

She stares at the woman's French tip manicure and imagines, for a second, those nails being dragged down Mr. J's bare chest.

"And nothing for you today, sir?" the cashier asks as she rings up that one dress, the one that had clung to Taylor's waist that she had thought she'd looked so pretty in.

"Got everything I need," Mr. J replies, far too casual, like he chats up pretty cashiers all the time. But Taylor goes still when she feels the pad of his thumb stroking slowly along the outside of her neck, where his palm still rests on her shoulder. It's so soft she barely even feels it.

"Surely not everything," the woman says—no, practically purrs—and Taylor feels a sudden call to violence of the likes she's very rarely felt before. She wants to smack her. This lady just won't take a hint.

It shouldn't come as such a surprise that other women would find Mr. J attractive—of course he's attractive. There's something undeniably hypnotizing about his eyes, the darkness therein, and he has a man's jaw—strong and chiseled. His chin a little pointed. Defined. And she thinks he'd have dimples if it weren't for the scars; but even those are beautiful, their ragged, brutal quality. Their unflinching honesty. This is who I am. And his gorgeous mouth, the fullness of his lips. His curly, dishwasher blond hair. Mr. J's not exactly pretty, but Taylor can't stop looking at him all the same; he's the most beautiful thing she thinks she's ever seen.

She feels her desperation mounting the longer this interaction draws on. Her eyes dart away from the woman, and she watches the little green numbers flash across the screen every time the cashier rings up a new item. She feels frantic. Borderline unhinged. She has to say something.

"Wait!" she blurts. She steps away from Mr. J, pushing herself up against the counter a little, as if she means to look closer. "Is that shirt really thirty dollars? Because I think the sign back there said it was fifteen." She's lying, she's actually lying, but she just can't let that woman keep flirting with Mr. J. She had to intervene, even though now she feels like she wants to throw up.

"Oh," the woman says, pausing. "I can have someone run and double check, if you want?"

Taylor quickly shakes her head. She can feel a blush coming on hard and fast, but she wills it away. "No, that's okay. I just—I don't think I want it anymore."

"No problem," she says, smiling. "I'll just remove it." She clicks a few buttons on the screen with her pretty manicured nails, and then smiles. "All gone," she chirps.

Taylor mumbles a half-asssed "thanks" in reply and then clings to the edge of the counter, hoping the cashier will talk to her again instead of Mr. J. She chews on her bottom lip in the ensuing silence, knowing she better fill it quickly if she's going to intercept another conversation between the two of them.

"Are there any… any good places to eat around here?" she asks.

The cashier's eyes brighten, like she's glad Taylor asked.

"You know, there's this great little place in the cafeteria—Tidal Wave—it's like a surf shack. Really good burgers and shakes, if you like that kind of thing." She carefully folds a pair of jean shorts. "I usually head there about three, for my lunch break," she says. She glances up at Mr. J, and Taylor swears she bats her eyelashes when she does. "I go there almost every day."

Taylor's fingers curl against the edges of the counter, until her knuckles are milk-white and shiny. She thinks steam is going to start pouring out of her ears if they don't get out of here soon.

"I hate burgers," Taylor says, nearly through gritted teeth, she thinks, but she's proud of herself for actually saying it—she's never told two lies in the same day, and so convincingly, too. It's a big accomplishment for her.

"Oh." The cashier seems genuinely put-out by this, but as per her usual sunny disposition, she doesn't let it deter her. "Well, they have other stuff too," she offers helpfully.

She finally finishes ringing everything up, and Taylor is so relieved to swipe the credit card at long last that she nearly misses the total. She goes a little bug-eyed when she sees it there on the screen, and she has to look over her shoulder at Mr. J again just to double-check that this is still okay. He gives her the barest nod, and Taylor swipes the card. She's never spent so much money in her life, she thinks.

The cashier hoists their two giant shopping bags onto the counter as the receipt spits out of the printer, longer than Taylor's forearm.

"Hope to see you again soon," the woman says, beaming, casting another pointed look at Mr. J, and Taylor snottily thinks, doubt it. The cashier tucks the receipt into one of the bags, and Taylor grabs them from the counter.

Mr. J picks up their remaining bags from the floor, which he'd set down while the cashier was ringing everything up, and then takes one of the new bags from Taylor's hand as they walk towards the exit, so she won't have to carry so much. He's surprisingly quiet on the way out of the store, but once they're out, Taylor heaves the biggest sigh, like she was suffocating in there.

"I hate that store," she scowls, walking fast. Mr. J widens his strides to keep up.

"Do you," he says. She almost thinks he sounds amused, but she chooses to ignore that.

"Yes!" she cries, slowing down a little, barely even aware of her surroundings. "That lady was so—so—!"

"I thought she was nice," he offers.

Taylor stops dead in her tracks. She sees red. She whirls on him, furious, and it isn't until she's looking up at him does she realize he's kidding.

He's smirking at her, like he thinks her distress is funny or something.

The sudden rush of emotions washing over her is almost too much to handle. Her shoulders visibly sag, and then she feels the telltale warning of hot, sharp tears pricking at her eyes, and she knows it's over from there. She drops her bags at her feet, feeling so foolish.

"Oh, honey," he coos. She stands there, head down, right there in the middle of the mall—as people filter around them like everything's just fine—and chokes on the tight bundle of tears lodged in her throat.

Mr. J is cool as ever. He scoops up her bags, and then guides her to an empty bench secluded near the corner, half hidden by a miniature potted palm tree. He makes her sit down. Lays their bags at their feet.

She immediately pushes herself into his chest and sobs. Mr. J reaches up and rubs soothing circles into her back.

"Poor sweetheart," he coos. "What's all these big alligator tears for, hm? What's got my girl so upset?"

Taylor sniffles pathetically. Her eyes are so wet, she can't even see. "I just—it's just—the way she was talking to you. The way she was flirting with you! She shouldn't have done that," Taylor wails. He keeps rubbing her back, so she blubbers on. "You're mine—you're mine," she says, her face buried in his chest, fingers digging so hard into his shirt, she's half afraid she'll rip right through it. "She was trying to take you from me. She was going to steal you away!" she cries.

"Sh, sh, sh," he soothes, so quiet. So gentle. "Mr. J's not going anywhere. There's only one girl for me," he says, stroking his hand a little higher, smoothing down her hair, "and she's currently getting snot all over my favorite shirt," he jokes.

That makes Taylor laugh, except it comes out all bubbled and choked, and she pulls back from his chest to look at him—her face steaked with tears, cheeks ruddy—and she thinks she sees affection in his eyes. Something bordering on fondness. She cries a little harder at that. He's being so nice to her, and she's—she's acting like a jealous baby.

"There, there." He holds her face in both hands and wipes at one of her stray tears with the pad of his thumb, smearing it away. "Nothing to be upset over."

"She was flirting with you," Taylor blubbers pathetically.

"Yes," he agrees. "And she wasn't very subtle about it, was she?"

"She thought you were my dad!" Taylor says this as if this is most outrageous part of it all. The most unforgivable thing.

Mr. J chuckles, moves a strand of hair from her face so he can tuck it behind her ear. "That's okay, baby doll. We know the truth, don't we?" He makes Taylor look at him, taking her chin between his forefinger and thumb and tilting her head up to look at him. "Don't we?" he repeats.

Taylor nods, sniffling.

"You're my boyfriend," she says, more than a little petulant, but needing to say it. Just needing to get the words off her tongue, needing to hear them confirmed. She can feel the slash of possessiveness that streaks across her heart when she looks at him, like a lightning bolt, like a thing on fire. "You're mine." She wipes the remaining tears from her cheek with the back of her hand, staring at him. "No one else can have you."

Mr. J's gaze is steely as he looks back at her, his eyes dark. Hooded. She has no idea what he's thinking in that moment. But he draws her face closer to his at the same time that he moves closer to her, and they're so close now their noses almost touch.

"I know, baby," he says, his voice low. Gravelly. It sends an ice-cold shiver hurdling down her spine.

"Promise?" Do you promise that you're mine? she's too choked up to ask.

He grins, eyes still so dark. "Pinky swear."

That makes Taylor crack a weak smile, and she hooks their pinkies together in a firm shake. Like always.

"Okay then," he says. He pats her knee twice, like that settles it, and she wipes the rest of her tears away with the back of her hand and helps him gather up all her shopping bags. She's suddenly self-conscious about her red, puffy eyes, and she hopes her little meltdown in the middle of the mall wasn't witnessed by too many people.

He suggests they drop everything off at the car so they don't have to lug all their bags around, and Taylor agrees. Her hands are kind of hurting anyway. They stuff everything into the trunk and then head back inside the mall.

"Let's get some food in you, hm?" He wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side, and Taylor thinks she might actually die, the fact that he'd do that in public. "What's my girl in the mood for?"

"Not cheeseburgers," she mumbles, nuzzling her face into his side.

Mr. J chuckles, giving her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. "Yeah," he agrees. "Me neither."