My Darrling (6 page)

“Wow,” I breathed. “I’m speechless.”

He put his guitar down on the floor. “I spent the day
learning it for you. The acoustic versions are always better.”

I half-laughed. “I’ve always thought so too.”

“I like your company,” he told me, and it took me off guard.

I cleared my throat. “I don’t know what to say. Isaac, that
was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. Thank you. Really, thank you so
much.”

“I’m not that good.”

I rolled my eyes. “And water isn’t wet.”

He laughed and stood up, running a hand through his hair. “Are
you hungry? Maybe we could order a pizza and watch a movie?”

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

I glanced around the room some more and drank in all the
little details: a suitcase spilling over with clothes, a laptop sitting on the
dresser beside the TV, an almost-empty bottle of Coke on one of the
nightstands, books stacked up beside the bed. It looked like a normal boy’s
room. Isaac looked like a normal boy. Talked like a normal boy.

Wasn’t a normal boy.

I lay back against the bed’s headboard as Isaac got the
movie ready. I had just met him last night, but somehow, as I watched Isaac
fiddle with the DVD player, I felt like I’d known him my whole life. And this
moment—lying in bed, waiting for Isaac to join me—felt just as natural as
breathing.

I hated it.

But I loved it.

Isaac was my favorite contradiction.

I couldn’t stop my mind from constantly reminding me of how
stupid—absolutely downright ridiculously idiotic—I was being.

“I only brought two DVD’s with me,” he informed me, his eyes
apologetic. “Donnie Darko and Caddyshack.”

I hugged a pillow to my chest. “I don’t think I’ve heard of
either of those, so it’s your call.”

He slipped a DVD in. “Donnie Darko it is.”

“Is it scary?” I wondered what, exactly, Isaac found scary,
if anything at all.

“More disturbing than scary.” He walked over and flicked the
light off. “Kind of like you,” he added with a playful smile.

I was alone in a motel room with America’s most wanted man.
My stomach twisted a little, but calmed down when he sat down next to me.

“Like
me
?” Where did he get off calling me
disturbing?

He lifted a shoulder. “You’re...weird. I like it.”

“How am
I
weird? I mean you—” I cut myself off there.
Hearing it out loud would make it real. Or it might make him mad. Or talking so
casually about it might glorify his sick, twisted, sadistic crimes.

My feelings for Isaac were in no way glorifying his murders;
what I felt for him was for the Isaac who gave me his coat to wear because I was
cold, who risked meeting me at the subway station to make sure I’d be safe, who
learned to play my favorite song on his guitar, who got me an autumn-scented
candle because it reminded him of me, who took me to the nicest café I had ever
seen. The soft-spoken Isaac with the innocent gray eyes, lively smile and
boyish dimple on his right cheek.

He clicked Play on the remote control and noise from the DVD’s
previews filled the room.

“You’re weird because”—he pulled the covers over both of us—“you
run into a guy who you recognized off the Interpol website, follow him, then go
for coffee with him, and now you’re in his motel room.”

Weird was an understatement.

“Yeah.” Goosebumps crawled up and down my body when he
leaned into me. I got an adrenaline rush just from Isaac’s touch; I couldn’t
imagine what more would do to me. “I guess I am weird.”

There we lay on Isaac’s bed, our only light the glow from
the television. Our arms were pressed together, the blanket pulled over the
lower half of our bodies.

There I lay, with a killer.

There I lay, with the boy who consumed me.

There I lay, with the first boy I had ever loved.

“We forgot to order the pizza,” Isaac reminded me. His
breath blew past my ear and it felt intoxicating.

I grabbed my phone and ordered a medium cheese pizza and two
Cokes. Isaac gave me cash and refused to let me chip in for my half. He seemed
to hate the idea of me paying for anything.

When the pizza delivery man came to the door I got a sick
thrill out of knowing that he had no idea that Isaac Darrling was hiding in the
washroom; that he was only about fifty feet from the Fallen Angel Killer. I
handed him the money and tipped him generously.

“You can come out now,” I called to Isaac after I shut the
door.

He came out from the washroom and I handed him the brown
paper bag with the Cokes.

He inhaled deeply. “Smells amazing. I’m starving.”

“Me too.”

We sat back down on the bed and tore into the pizza as
though we hadn’t eaten in weeks. I hardly ate anything all day because my
nerves were in shambles leading up to my visit with Isaac—but now my hunger seemed
to kick in with a vengeance.

We hardly spoke as we ate and watched the movie. I could sit
in silence with Isaac for hours and not feel uncomfortable. He felt like home
to me.

But the silence didn’t last.

It felt like my chest was pried open and my heart was being
ripped out when I heard three loud, consecutive bangs at the door.

“Police, open up!”

Eyes wide and jaw dropped, I looked blankly at Isaac and
whispered, “Go to the washroom, now.”

Isaac didn’t say a word, he calmly got up and slid into the
washroom and shut the door behind him. He seemed calm, and I didn’t know what
to think of that. But I guess he’d been expecting this for a while.

“Police!”

Bang, bang, bang
.

“Open the door!”

My chest rose and plunged with each strangled breath.

I opened the door.

“Good evening ma’am,” the officer greeted, his hands on his
holster. There was a female officer standing behind him, shining her flashlight
across my face and into the room.

“Good evening,” I said soberly.

“We got a call about a dispute between a man and woman at
this location,” he informed me. “Are you alone ma’am?”

“I—yeah, I’m alone.”

“Can I see some ID please?”

“S-sure.” I plucked my driver’s license from the back pocket
of my pants and handed it to him. “There’s been no dispute here, Officer. I’m
alone.”

He grabbed my ID and shone his light on it. He looked up at
me, then back down at my ID. The lady officer glanced over his shoulder at the
card.

“You live fairly close to here,” she spoke firmly. “What brings
you to this motel, Miss Lenon?”

My hands shook wildly so I crossed my arms to hide them. I
shrugged with feigned casualness. “It’s the weekend—I’m meeting some friends
here and we’re going to watch movies and paint our nails—all that girly stuff.”

The male officer handed my ID back to me, one of his
eyebrows cocked suspiciously.

“Look,” I snapped, “there’s been a misunderstanding. I—”

I was interrupted by a female crying, “Officer! Please,
help!”

Both officer’s spun around and I poked my head out of the
door. I saw a woman, who couldn’t have been any older than thirty, holding a
trembling hand to her bloodied mouth. Tears barreled down her face and she kept
looking behind her.

“Officers,” she cried, “he’s in there. Please, help!” She
pointed to room 318.

Isaac and I occupied room 316. The officers had come to the
wrong door. As much as my heart ached for the abused woman, relief washed
through me at the realization that Isaac would remain free for another day.

“He’s been drinking, and when he drinks he gets abusive. He
punched me in the mouth and he pushed me and—” She choked on a cry.

The male officer looked back at me, apologetically. “I’m
sorry Sophie, we had the wrong room.”

“It’s all right, Officer.”

“You didn’t happen to hear anything that happened tonight,
did you?”

“I’m sorry, Officer, I didn’t hear anything. I had my volume
up pretty loud.”

He nodded. “You have a good night then.”

The female cop was calming the woman down. I couldn’t help
but stare; I’d never seen anything like this before in my life. My stomach
pinched at the thought of a man putting his hands on a woman.

Isaac.

Isaac Darrling.

The Fallen Angel Killer.

Why couldn’t I associate him with his crimes?

Isaac
killed
people, and yet I couldn’t bear the thought
of a man striking a woman.

I felt ill.

I stepped back into the room and shut the door behind me. I
sat down on the edge of the bed and buried my head in my hands. I heard Isaac
open the bathroom door and walk toward me. I felt the mattress sink as he sat
next to me.

“Are you okay?” he asked solemnly.

“Mmm,” was all I managed to get out.

He sighed. “I’m sorry that you almost got put in a really
bad position.”

I lifted my head. “I wasn’t really worried about myself.”

He looked down at the floor. “Well…you shouldn’t worry about
me.”

“It’s not that.” I shrugged. “It’s selfish, but what I’m
worried about is…
losing
you. I worry about when you’re gone. I don’t
even know you, but I feel like I do, and I feel like things are better when I’m
near you.”

He shook his head. “Why is that? I mean, let’s not beat
around the bush anymore; I’m a killer. I get pleasure out of controlling
whether someone lives or dies, from feeling the life dwindle out of human
beings. When I get the itch, I stalk and murder the first person I find
interesting enough.” He paused, brought his hand to my chin and guided it so
that I was facing him. “I could kill you, Sophie. I never, ever want to, but
the fact that it would be so wrong makes the itch stronger. I don’t feel guilt
like normal people do; I don’t feel remorse. I don’t feel anything. And
sometimes I kill people because I think they’d be better off free from all of
this bullshit we call life. I’ve killed people that I cared for.”

I never understood Isaac’s motives, but he had just proven
that he was more confused and more twisted than I could ever possibly understand,
than I would ever be able to wrap my head around. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be
a criminal psychologist after all.

I was drained of words—what do you say when a killer tells
you that the temptation to kill you is stronger because he cares for you?

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry. I won’t hurt you.
I’m too curious about you to hurt you.”

I wasn’t scared.

I was disturbed.

“Look,” I began, my voice hoarse now, “any way you paint it,
what you’ve done is vile, fucked up. You deserve what’s coming to you, I will
never deny that.” I paused, slowed down. I didn’t like getting worked up
because it usually snowballed until I lost my temper. “I can’t deny that, but…I
also can’t deny that I can’t get you out of my head. Haven’t been able to since
the first time I heard about the Fallen Angel K—”

His lips felt like velvet, tasted sweet.

Red velvet.

His tongue traced the curves of my upper lip then he slowly tugged
my lower lip into his mouth. We both pulled back, looked at each other. He
smiled wide and my eyes drifted to the dimple on his right cheek. I leaned
forward and kissed it, then I swept my lips up to his ear.

“Isaac Darrling, why do you make me feel this way?” I
whispered into it.

He pulled me up onto his lap so that I was straddling him.
“I don’t know Sophie Lenon; maybe it has something to do with the fact that
you’re absolutely insane.”

His lips felt cool and smooth as ice as they traced kisses
along my jawline, down my neck, along my shoulder. I shivered at all the
unfamiliar—but euphoric—feelings.

“Isaac?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you know my last name?”

He laughed and I felt his breath breeze across my neck. “I
heard the cop call you Miss Lenon.”

“Mmm.” My back arched as he brushed his tender lips across
the hollow of my neck.

As we kissed, it felt like we were melting into each other,
two halves becoming one. My lips fit his perfectly. My hands fit perfectly into
his, like gliding a key into a lock.

Isaac wasn’t like most boys his age in ways other than his
crimes. He spotted my body with soft, passionate kisses, but he did not try to
go any further. He didn’t try to have sex—he didn’t even try to cop a feel of
my boobs. He kissed me, he hugged me tightly to his chest, and then he laid me
down on his bed and pulled the covers over me and said, “I don’t want you to
get cold.” He slid under the covers next to me. We cuddled and finished
watching Donnie Darko—even though I had no clue what was happening because we
missed the first portion.

I wasn’t paying attention anyway; I was thirstily drinking
in the moment. Isaac’s scent, his touch, his warmth. He kissed the top of my
head every so often, and I felt like I could melt right there into the sheets.

Over the next two weeks I met up
with Isaac almost every night. I told my parents so many fabricated stories, so
many lies, that I’d lost track of them all. I even pretended that my computer
broke down so that I could tell Mom and Michael that I needed to go to the
library to use theirs. I felt awful for lying, but any trace of guilt I felt
melted away the second I saw Isaac. He made everything better.

I was in love.

I was unconditionally in love with a heartless, vile killer.

Isaac and I kind of had a silent agreement that we wouldn’t
talk about his crimes, and I no longer let myself look him up online. The guy
online was Isaac the murderer, he was not the Isaac who I visited almost every
night and watched movies and played games with. He was not the Isaac who I ordered
takeout with, or the Isaac I once had a food fight with. He was not the Isaac
who softly brushed my hair as we watched funny YouTube videos together,
doubling over with laughter.