“Wine would be great,” I said, forcing a smile, but I had to wonder if we should really try to start this again.
Once upon a time—and it was a long time ago now—we could’ve married, and continued on together. Or we might have just as easily drifted; a simple slipping away of two people who’d grown up and apart. Either way it would have been a choice unmarred by tragedy.
Instead, the unnatural death of hope lingered between us, a love murdered as surely as I was meant to be. So the question was, in this world, in my current reality, was that something that could be overcome? Because I was frightened by the long dormant emotions stirring inside me. It felt like I was on the verge of something risky and steep. An emotional precipice I could either leap from into a headlong tumble or pull back from and wisely head for safety. For a full decade now I’d chosen only safety.
“You’re thinking too hard, Jo,” Ben said, with a smile that made my world tremble.
I leaned back casually, just reclining, I thought. Calm as an earthquake. “How can you tell?”
“Your eyes go black,” he said, peering into them. “Nervous?”
“Petrified,” I said, surprising us both with my honesty. He laughed, and I was startled at the way it boomed out of him at first, then settled into a rumbling chuckle. Were you supposed to forget your first lover’s laugh?
“Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” he said, leaning forward again. “I wouldn’t dare.”
My gaze dropped to his lips. Too bad.
I searched for a subject that wouldn’t stir my hormones or remind us of the past or, God forbid, make my heart start that perilous tumble, finally settling on a part of his life that had nothing to do with me. “Do you still write?”
He nodded. “I’ve graduated from poetry, though. I’m into mysteries now, whodunits. Nothing published yet, but I’m still trying.”
“I’m glad. Your poetry was wonderful.”
He shrugged, a self-conscious rolling of the shoulders that gave away just how much it still meant. “It keeps my mind agile, anyway. I like creating the worlds, the characters, the situations.”
“And solving the mysteries?” I asked, and he nodded, popping a piece of bread in his mouth. “Is that why you like being a cop?”
He stopped chewing, looking thoughtful for a moment. “I’m not sure I do like being a cop.” And even he looked surprised at the admission.
“Then why do it?”
“I have to. It’s a compulsion. A calling.”
“An obsession?” I asked warily.
He looked at me. “Yes.”
I hesitated. This was fragile territory again. “Because of what happened to me?”
He blinked, but his expression didn’t change. I guess he figured if I could speak about it so openly, he could as well. “And because I can’t just live a comfortable life on the sidelines while horrible things happen to people who can’t protect themselves.”
I just stared at him, determined to say nothing until he answered my question.
He shrugged again, but there was a tremor, a visible fury, beneath the movement this time. “What do you want me to say, Jo? Yes, what happened to you, to us, marked me. It changed the way I viewed the world. How could it not?”
I found I couldn’t meet his eye. “But how can you let it still affect you?”
Ben circled the question like a tiger, coming at me from another direction. “What about your career, then? The photographer who captures the truth but remains safely on the other side of the lens. Nobody and nothing touches you, is that right?”
I folded my arms over my chest. That wasn’t right at all. My photography was good and relevant. Granted, Xavier’s criticism about not making money at it was almost true, but my photos had been heralded for their clear and unflinching look at Vegas’s most forgotten streets. When I snapped a photo, I leeched the neon from the scene, and what remained was even more startling for its stark simplicity. People lived on these streets. Teens were corralled into prostitution on these corners. There was a great deal more lost out there every day than in all the glittering casinos combined. I wanted people to recognize and think about that.
“We all become who we need to in order to survive,” I said stiffly.
“And who have you become, Joanna? A warrior? Some superwoman bent on vengeance who needs no one and nothing?”
Strange choice of words, I thought, pursing my lips. “Criticizing?”
“Simply asking.” But we both knew there was nothing simple about it.
“I was changed too, Ben,” I said, taking up the offense. “When someone holds out their hand to me I don’t grab it readily. I’m always on the lookout for the fist behind their back.” My eyes automatically traveled to the lone man sitting at the bar.
“Most women don’t think that way.”
“Yeah, and I envy those women. I even remember, vaguely, what it was to be one of them.” I leaned back in my chair and blew out a long breath, aware that I sounded way too bitter to be just twenty-five. “But more than envy them, Ben, I fear for them. I especially fear for the ones who will become like me.”
We used our waiter’s return with the food and the wine as an excuse not to talk, but when we were alone again, Ben said, “There’s no one like you, Jo.”
I rammed my fork into my pasta. “Don’t try and sweet-talk me now. You’ve pissed me off.”
He smiled and I wished he wouldn’t. I felt myself toeing that precipice again. Tumble, tumble, tumble. It made me want to push him away and run from the room, screaming. It made me want to draw him near and into my bed, sighing. I had more practice with the former, so I pushed.
“The knowledge of violence is my playmate, Ben,” I said, twirling angel hair around my fork. “I bed down with it in the evening and wake with it again in the morning. That’s never going to change.”
“I know about violence, Jo. Seeing what I see every day on the job…” He shook his head, poured wine into our glasses, and took a sip, his eyes growing dark. “It’s enough to make me want to head out onto the streets with you instead.”
I drew back. “But that’s—” Not what I’m doing, I wanted to say.
“Wrong?” he finished for me, mistaking my puzzlement for disagreement. “Why? How’s it different from the way you scour the streets? Searching. Stalking.”
“I take photos. I just look. I’ve never…touched someone,” I lied. I had. Once. But to be fair, he’d touched me first.
“You think I shouldn’t feel this way because of my badge.” It was a statement, not a question.
His defensiveness intrigued me, even as it gave me pause. “That badge gives you access, power over other people.” Maybe I was oversensitive to the power one person chose to wield over others just because he could, but this seemed pretty straightforward to me.
But Ben was already shaking his head, breaking a piece of bread apart in his hand, dipping it in the oil. “What this badge gives me is a second pair of eyes. Good thing too, because if I had to filter every foul rotted thing I see in this city through my own eyes I’d go mad. But this way it’s bearable. It won’t climb into me.”
Then what was that look? I wanted to ask him. What was that flicker I saw skirting his gaze, adding a hard glint to his narrowed eyes?
It occurred to me then that this was just as much of a blind date as the one with Ajax. I didn’t know who Ben really was. I knew the boy he used to be—the one tormented by his father, disappointed by his mother—but where had the past ten years taken him? What had he been doing? Why did he get divorced? And when did he get the tribal tattoo I’d seen branding his left shoulder when he reached for the bread?
Why, after all this time, had he asked me out?
“Has it ever, Ben?” I said, thinking his answer might tell me a little about all those things. “Gotten into you, I mean?”
He didn’t reply for a while, staring into the flame of our hurricane lamp as he chose his words carefully. “There was this call last week, the third time a unit was sent to this guy’s house in a month. Typical asshole wife-beater…except this time he’d decided to beat on their two-year-old son. So the boys show up, he greets them with open arms, throws the door open, calls them by name. ‘Hey, Harry! Hey, Patrick! How ya doin’?’”