Chapter13: Delicate Beginning

Happy New Year my Darlings! :) I didn't finish it before New Years as I had planned :( But we only have four more chapters to go! Anyway, thanks once again for your support and kind words. I'm living internetlessly for a week to work on my novels, so the next update will be earliest next Sunday. Enjoy! :)

The delicate beginning rush
The feeling you can know so much
Without knowing anything at all

(Taylor Swift – Come back, be here)

I had been ridiculously nervous. And our movements had been clumsy at first, but soon we mastered the steps to our own private dance and we were completely in sync just the way we had been that first night. The way we had been yesterday evening when we'd taken care of Catherine. We just clicked and fitted together perfectly.

He had offered to make breakfast which I thought was sweet and probably also rare so I hadn't said no. When I came out of the bathroom I was surprised to see all sorts of food I'd never bought: Tomatoes, orange juice, toast...

"Johnny stocked the fridge last night." Mr. J explained. "Oh, that reminds me." He reached into his pocket and handed me a spare key. "You can have this back."

"Thanks." I said with a smile. "I don't remember giving you a key."

"You didn't." He said curtly. "I made a copy while you were in hospital."

"Sure you did." I looked at the key and then back at my boyfriend. "Do...you...want it?"

"Already have one." He smiled and held up his own set of keys which included one to my flat.

"Of course you have." I sat down at the kitchen table. There was an omelette on my plate and small tomatoes next to them.

I pushed the tomatoes aside and started to eat the omelette. I was surprised by how good it tasted.

"This is really good, Mr. J."

"You're surprised." He realised with a smile.

"No I'm not." I lied and avoided his gaze.

We ate in silence, until I asked:

"Does Johnny have a girlfriend?"

He put his fork down and frowned at me: "Are you trying to hit on my right hand man?"

I had to giggle at the idea. "No. I was just interested."

"I don't know." He leaned back in the chair with a relaxed smile. "Julia and he had something going on, but I never asked."

"Why not?" I asked and also put my fork down, finished with the omelette. "I would ask them all about their private lives, aren't you interested in that?"

"No." Mr. J said honestly. "Besides – they have no private lives. They live at my house and they do everything I say whenever I say it."

I nodded. I had seen the way his men acted around him.

"Do they ever get time off?"

"Of course." He drank a sip of water. "Johnny takes care of all those things."

"But when they have time off...what do they do?" I asked again, leaning forward.

"I don't know." Mr. J repeated. "I mean...would you tell me about your family and your friends, if you worked for me?"

I dropped my gaze. "I guess not." Then I smiled. "Honeymoon-Phase?"

He smiled back, knowing that I wouldn't ask him any more questions about what he did with family members and friends of people who misbehaved in his eyes. Mr. J's smile vanished when he saw my plate:

"You didn't eat your tomatoes."

I shook my head. "Sorry. I hate them."

"You hate tomatoes?" He repeated in what sounded like a shocked tone. "But...why?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I just don't like them."

"And what about pasta with tomato-sauce?"

"That's ok." I nodded. "So is Ketchup. But I can't eat them just like that."

He shook his head and then asked: "Not even on a burger?"

"Especially on a burger!" I shivered. "Gross."

My Puddin' shook his head. "That's crazy, Honey. And if I'm the one saying that – it means something."

I laughed quietly and then stood up to clear away our plates. Mr. J stood up to help me, but I shook my head.

"I can do it. You already cooked."

With a smile he leaned down to kiss me and then vanished into the bathroom. I heard the shower go on and started cleaning away the plates into the dishwasher. I couldn't help but smile. I hadn't been this happy in a long time, even though there were enough reasons to be unhappy. Quinn. Catherine. The Fierce Five.
But when I was with Mr. J nothing else seemed to matter. Once the kitchen was cleaned I made the bed. We had nothing to do today except for spending time together. We still had two weeks of our Honeymoon-Phase and as far as I was concerned our lives could carry on like this for a long time.

"Baby, I have good news!" He suddenly said behind me and when I turned around he was standing in front of me with a blue shirt and black trousers and his purple leather jacket. His hair was still wet and was flat on his head, making him look younger than he actually was. It was cute.

"What?" I asked stepping towards him.

"Look." He handed me his phone and I smiled. There was a picture of Catherine sitting on a pony with a large grin on her face. Mr. J. swiped to the left. Catherine and Julia both smiling happily.

"Thanks for the little girl, J. All our dreams are coming true." He read out a text message from Julia and grinned. "I can show this to Yvette and just change the contacts name."

"You don't have to." I said. "She's punished enough."

"That's impossible." He said in a cold tone. "She tried to kill you."

"But she didn't." I reminded him and leaned in to kiss his cheek and he sighed deeply, putting his arms around me.

I leaned against him and put my hand on his chest. Our lips had just met when the loud shrilling ringtone of his phone interrupted us. He growled and then looked at the display.

"It's Johnny." He told me before he answered the phone with an annoyed: "What?!" Johnny said something I couldn't hear and then Mr. J started to laugh: "Hahahaha...thank you Johnny!" He hung up and grinned down at me:

"Ready for some good news?"

"Catherine's parents are dead?" I asked and he rolled his eyes at my self-justice.

"No. Mrs. Turner is. She killed herself! Looks like Yvette told her about Catherine and scared the life right out of her! Isn't that hilarious?"

"But who sent the Fierce Five after me?" I asked in a careful voice. I didn't want to ruin his mood.

"We'll find whoever it was. I'm just glad that stupid bitch is gone. She's the one that sent her husband after you, did I tell you that?"

I shook my head.

"She did. She was the boss of them. I'm only sad she killed herself and I wasn't able to punish her for what she did to you." He stroked my cheek. "But we'll get our hands on Dr. Turner soon enough."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I turned away from him.

"What do you want to do today?"

He chuckled. "Honeymoon-Phase. Just hang out here?"

I wasn't sure, if he meant he wanted to hang out here because we were in our Honeymoon-Phase or if he couldn't tell me what he wanted to do today. Maybe it was a mixture of both.

"Is this your brother?" He suddenly asked and took one of the framed pictures from my desk.

"Yeah." I stood next to him and leaned my head against his shoulder.

"Are you sure you're not his twin?"

I had to laugh as I studied Shayne's blue eyes and blonde hair. He did look like a male version of me, even with the five years between us. "Everyone used to say that to us. But if you look hard you'll see the similarities between the two of them."

Sharleen's green eyes and brown hair always made people distrustful that she and Shayne were twins. But they had the same nose shape and their eyes, even if they were different in colour were also very alike.

The picture had been taken the summer before she'd died. Shayne was in his baseball clothes and still held the bat in his hand.

"He'd just won a game and we were celebrating."

"You look happy." He realized and I wondered if he remembered our conversation from yesterday. About how happy and sweet I'd been before Sharleen's death.

"I was." I had to smile as I reached out to take the picture from him. "We always celebrated whenever one of us won."

"Did you play Baseball too?" Now he was the surprised one.

"No." I had to laugh at that. "I was never very good with a bat. I did gymnastics."

"Gymnastics?" He repeated with a smile.

"Haven't you noticed how flexible I am?" I teased, but Mr. wasn't in the mood for jokes.

"And you just...stopped after her death?"

I sighed. "Yeah." I put the picture back on its spot and kept my back to him.

"I don't understand." He said honestly and I suppressed another sigh. I knew he didn't understand this. But we were in our Honeymoon-Phase, we were giving our relationship a chance so I owed it to him to explain.

"After she died..." I took a deep shuddering breath. It was hard for me to talk about Sharleen, but I knew he wouldn't understand that either. "After she died all of our lives stopped. It was just...it's hard to explain, because we didn't know before. She was the glue that held us all together and when she was gone everything fell apart. Mum started drinking and Dad moved out. I haven't spoken to him in years." I paused and was surprised when I felt his hand on my shoulder. "All the things that made sense to me before, my friends, school, gymnastics...it just all stopped. My life stopped when she was gone." I looked up at him. " And when Shayne and I finally started talking about what had happened I knew I wanted to be a doctor, just like her and I wanted to find him and I wanted to destroy his life, just like he had destroyed mine."

There was a silence and my Puddin' stroked my hair gently. Then he said:

"But you never found him."

I shook my head. "No. And then I gave up. My desire for revenge was driving me crazy." Those words made him smile. "It wouldn't change anything and I just...I think I lost more through my revenge plotting than through her death. It was all I thought about during my studies and my internship...my whole life revolved around it. I couldn't get close to people because I knew I couldn't tell them."

Mr. J was quiet for a moment and I wondered if he could understand what I had said to him. That revenge was tiring.

"So all these years...all you had was Shayne?"

"Yeah." I smiled. "I guess we really are like twins now."

He pulled his hand from my shoulder again, but didn't say anything.

"Does anything that I said make sense to you?" I asked.

"It used to." He mused, but I didn't dare ask what he meant with that.

He went back to kitchen table and took his glass of water.

"I have an idea what we can do." He said, swirling the glass in his hand. "Your leg is completely fine again, right?"

"Yeah."

"Good. You're going to need it." Mr. J pressed the glass into my hands and started moving the furniture. The sofa, the small table infront of it, my lamp...

"What are you doing?"

"We need the space." He answered without any further explanation. But I was getting used to that.

"Ok." I took a sip of his water and almost spat it out again when he suddenly roared:

"Harley!"

I almost coughed, but managed to swallow the drink. "What?"

"That's disgusting!" He exclaimed. "Now I need to get a new glass!"

And I couldn't help bursting out in laughter.

"It's not funny!"

"It's hilarious!" I shot back. "We had sex all night, but you won't share a glass of water with me?"

"You're a doctor!" He exclaimed as he came back to the centre of the room with a new glass. "You know how dangerous germs can be."

Because he sounded so offended I nodded earnestly and said: "You're right. Better safe than sorry."

Mr. J took off his purple jacket and beckoned for me to come to him. I set the glass down on my bedside table.

"You need to learn to defend yourself." He said clearly. "I won't always be around to save you and even without my doing you've managed to make yourself a lot of enemies."

"You're going to teach me?" Was there anything this man couldn't do?

He grinned, exposing his metallic teeth and looked happier than a child on Christmas Morning. The next two words he said were the last spoken between us for the coming few hours:

"Attack me."

So what did you think? :)