I tried to ignore the pinch of envy and concentrated on what this might feel like to him—another woman coming in and changing everything up, ruining fond memories, officially ending an era. “Does it bother you a lot? That I changed it?”
He jolted, swinging his head to look at me, his expression telling me I’d surprised him with the question. Shocked him, even, by thinking to ask it.
Quickly he schooled his features, and I expected him to deny or ignore, but he didn’t. He stuck his hands in his suit pockets—he must have flown directly from work again—and stood next to me, gazing out over the room.
“It doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would,” he said thoughtfully. “Perhaps because it’s as stunning as it is.”
His off-hand compliment made my skin as warm as if he’d kissed me.
“Or maybe it’s because I was rarely ever in here anyway. There’s nothing that I should have been attached to. Still...I thought that I might have been.”
It was the most he’d ever shared with me, and the sharing was even better than the compliment. He’d said he would tell me things, that he’d be honest and exposed with me the more that I was with him, but I hadn’t yet seen it, and I’d never quite believed it.
And he might not have let this out purposefully, but he had let something out, and I was startled to find how much I liked it. How I wanted more. How I wanted to collect his bits of honesty and hold them to myself like I’d collected his notes in my drawer.
“Tell me about her?” I asked with quiet hesitation, afraid to spook him.
For a fraction of a second, he seemed he might say something else, something meaningful.
Then he gave me a sharp, “No,” spinning on his dress shoes back toward the door he’d come in. “We’ll meet after dinner for a session. I have things to do in the meantime.”
It was maddening to be so close to him after so long, more maddening that I cared to be close to him at all, and I told myself firmly to let him go, that this was a reminder of what a shithead he was and to stop romanticizing the goddamn asshole who’d kidnapped me and threatened me with death because wanting anything from the monster was the real definition of insanity.
But I did care.
And after weeks of writing about all the ways I cared in the diary that was right this very moment double locked in the writing desk across the room, the intricate details of those feelings were at the surface and ready to launch off my tongue.
“Have there been other women?” I asked, stopping him at the door. If he wouldn’t tell me about his past, fine. But I sure as hell deserved to know about his present. Especially if he expected to take me off to his fuckpad later.
God, I hoped I could call it a fuckpad later.
He didn’t turn around. “Other women since Marion?”
“Since me.” As reasonable as it was for me to need to know, the simple statement felt like I was giving too much away. Revealing too much.
But wasn’t that what he wanted from me? For me to expose and reveal while he gloated in my discomfort of the baring?
He swiveled to face me, a smirk dressing his lips. “I believe you said it wouldn't matter if there were.”
It was a gut punch. Because I hadn’t meant it when I’d said that, and he knew it as well as I did.
But he’d said things too, things that he also hadn’t meant.
“See,” I took a step toward him, “but you said you wouldn't be fucking me. And now you have. And you’ve alluded to doing it again. So, if you're going to be putting a cock that’s recently been exposed to another woman’s pussy anywhere near me, then it does matter.”
Before the words were out of my mouth, I could see his next potential move, could see him taking away sex as an option between us all together, and it would kill me if he did. Literally kill me.
But the jealousy that had taken root inside me was on its way to killing me as well, so the words came out and now I had to face the consequences, whatever they may be.
He assessed me for a beat, his gaze brushing over my features with familiar tendrils. “It's not a concern,” he said finally.
Which wasn’t a fucking answer. He could be saying he hadn’t slept with anyone or that he’d been recently checked for STDs or that he always used a condom or that the sex he’d had didn’t warrant worry or that he just didn’t care about what affect his sex life had on me at all.
“Does that mean—”
He cut me off. “It means it's not a concern. Don't push me further on it right now. I give what and when I’m ready to give. Your job is to give always. Do you understand?”
He expected an answer. He expected respect. “Yes, Edward,” I said.
His smile appeared and vanished so quickly I wasn’t sure if it had existed at all. “I’m having dinner with Joette and Azariah. I’ll set out clothes for our session beforehand. Be ready by the time I return.”
This time I let him leave. I didn’t want to know that I couldn’t stop him again if I tried.
Fourteen
“Whenever you’re ready,” Edward prompted, making himself comfortable on the sofa across from me. He hitched up the leg of his linen pants and crossed his ankle over his knee, draped an arm over the couch back, and took a swallow of his cognac. Except for the more casual attire, he appeared exactly the same as last time.
Everything was the same as last time, actually.
I wore the same white dress, the same boring underwear. He’d walked me down the same path, ushered me into the cabana in the same way. The only difference so far had been that, instead of offering me a drink, he opened a bottle of Petit Verdot and handed me a glass.
It tasted of plums and figs and spice and couldn’t have been a better choice if I’d selected it myself.
He was beginning to know me, really know me. I was already so vulnerable with him, and he wanted to crack me open and bleed me more? I wanted it and I didn’t all at the same time. Parts of me were ready to pour forward, like water through a sieve, but other parts—larger, bulkier pieces of past pain—strained against the netting, dislodged by the movement of the liquid, but unable to follow the same path.
I pinched the skin of my forehead and tried to find my balance. “The same as before, Edward?” I asked, when I felt more solid. “Tell you something that makes me feel exposed?”
“I’m surprised you don’t have several anecdotes at the ready. You’ve had nearly three months to prepare.”
I couldn’t help glaring. “Was that why you stayed away so long? So that I’d have time to decide what to tell you? It would have been nice to know I had homework.”
My irritation slid off him like water. “The length of time wasn’t meant to be anything but time. Distance, I’ve learned, can be very valuable. And homework or not, you can’t tell me you didn’t think about it, that you didn’t peel away layers and find more that you could share.”
I suddenly felt a strange urge to cry.
I rarely cried. For sure I didn’t cry in front of people. Not because I tried not to, but because I just couldn’t. There wasn’t enough emotion inside of me to need to get out.
Until now. Until Edward.
Just as suddenly, the urge went away. I took a sip of wine. “Yes, I did think of things I could tell you. Some of them even true.” I smirked at him like a smartass because I couldn’t help myself, but I quickly dropped the expression because it wasn’t who I wanted to be all the time anymore. Not with him.
“I thought of things,” I said, honestly, “but I didn’t prepare them because I figured there was zero chance in hell that your next session would ask the same thing of me precisely because I had three months. You’ve always preferred to keep me on my toes. Edward.”
My breath shuddered through me as I waited for him to respond. Sincerity was foreign to me, and I didn’t know how to wear it. It felt as unusual on my tongue as the cotton panties felt against my skin. Both should have been more comfortable than they were. I wondered if either would ever
feel natural.
“It seems I’ve kept you on your toes once again, then, doesn’t it?” His tone was authoritative but not malicious. His own brand of sincerity. “Unprepared is exactly as I prefer, but I’m also glad that you’ve let yourself think about things you could talk about. I’m sure the right account will present itself now.”
I already knew which one it was. There was only one that I was even close to being ready to discuss, and it was going to be a bitch to tell. I’d even tried to explore it in my diary, but couldn’t get myself to recount the details—the parts that mattered. But I’d wanted to. For the first time ever, I’d wanted to. And I wanted to now.
God, this was exactly like therapy, wasn’t it? I supposed it was beyond time.
I pulled my knees up and bent them to the side underneath me as I searched for where to start. “After…” I paused, wondering if it was best to stay far away from the story I’d told last time since he hadn’t approved of the ending, but there was no way around it. That ending was this beginning in every way, shape, and form.
I looked Edward directly in the eye. “Okay, it was a shitty thing I did—sleeping with the guy’s dad. It was vengeful and disgusting, and I knew it, even as it was happening. It wasn’t comfortable or even fun. It definitely didn’t make me feel sexy or wanted or like I’d won anything, but I’m not going to expand on that or try to make myself a victim with that part—even though, let’s be real here, the guy had been around me my whole life. I’d been friends with his kids. I should have been like a daughter to him, and when I showed up at his door, it did not take one tiny bit of convincing for him to try to get in my pants.” In fact, Jack probably even thought he’d been the one who seduced me. “Which is kind of disgusting all on its own level and somewhat predatory, but my point is, I was culpable, and I was of age, so it was what it was.”
“Just because you put yourself in the situation doesn’t mean that you have to carry all the blame. It certainly doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be allowed to have feelings about it.”
His words surprised me so much that it had to be written on my face.
Edward dropped his arm from the couch and leaned forward, and I knew it was a cue to listen, to really listen to what followed. “Last time, I didn’t approve because you told me this only to boast,” he explained. “You wanted to shock me. You acted proud, and we both knew that wasn’t honest. This is honest. This is what I want you to talk about.”
Who was this guy?
I stared at him incredulously. “But you think that fucking him made me a slut, right?”
His cheek ticked at the word slut. “It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what you think.”
Classic. Turn it back on me.
“Did you really want to be a psychologist instead of a businessman?”
“No.”
“Could have fooled me.” Not for the first time I wondered what he was getting out of all of this. He wanted to break me, sure, but that was as much a part of his rivalry with my father as it was about me, and he’d suggested he liked to do this with other women too. Did it turn him on to watch women examine their wounds? Because he liked being a sort of hero to them? Or because he wanted to use their pain against them later?
There was a possibility it was both.
It made it hard to want to continue on. What if I bared my soul to him, and all he did was hurt me with whatever he learned? I could feel iron walls threatening to close around everything inside of me, pushing him out.
The thing was, I already expected him to use my pain to hurt me. To break me. He’d not only told me he would, but he'd also admitted to being sadistic. And he’d wanted to kill me. This wasn’t supposed to be an easy alternative—it was supposed to be terrible.
I expected it, and I’d accepted it. And maybe I was a bit of a masochist, because I wasn’t completely opposed to taking the ride.
So, here I was, buckling in, preparing for the roller coaster.
“Well, I did think it made me a slut. I felt dirty and...used...and...stupid.” I’d never articulated the words, and they came slowly as I began to understand the blob of feelings that had painted this time in my life. I had a sudden flash of me on my knees, taking Jack’s cock in my mouth while he spouted on about my lips and my eyes and my breasts. “Cheap. I felt cheap. But also like I deserved it because I’d done it to myself.”
I shook my head, throwing the memories of the night with Jack out of my head. “I carried all of that with me when I went back to Berkeley. Dirk was there, wanting to talk, maybe even get back together, and that just made me feel worse so I—”
“Why?” Edward interrupted.
“Why did it make me feel worse?” It was another blob I had to examine. This one was particularly hard to look at. “Because I didn’t deserve that. I’d dumped him. Over the phone. For no reason other than that I thought my old crush liked me. And then, instead of trying to repair my relationship with him, I went and fucked an old guy. He’d been nothing but decent to me. Decent and kind. The first guy who ever had, really. When I was with him, he’d made me think that maybe I was better than the way other people before him had made me feel, and then one summer away from him, I proved that I was exactly what I’d always been told I was—only worth the value of my body.”
“That wasn’t what the summer proved.” He let that sit in the air for a minute. “I’m curious to know why men before him led you to feel that way, though.”
“I’m sure you are, but that’s not what I’m talking about right now, Edward.” It came out more defensive than needed, but he didn’t call me out.
I thought about the other thing he’d said. “I guess the summer hadn’t proved that. It had been one night, but the baggage from that felt heavy, and I hated it so much—hated myself so much—that I couldn’t even look in the mirror anymore. I certainly couldn’t put that on someone else, someone good. So I avoided him, and threw myself into things that made the self-loathing more tolerable. Random hookups. Drugs. I did a lot of coke. Some ecstasy. I drank. A shit load. I was smashed all the time that semester. I don’t even know how I passed any of my midterms.”
Actually, I did know how I’d passed some of them. I’d paid a girl to write my papers for western civ and I’d let my economics teacher masturbate on my breasts. Thinking about it now made me feel nauseated.
“Anyway, it wasn’t pretty for a good two months or so. And then…” I could still remember the moment I realized it clearly, walking down the Walgreens aisle to grab some condoms and passing the pregnancy tests and coming to a halt because I hadn’t had a period in ages and I knew, I just knew that I was pregnant. I’d bought a box and taken the first test in the store. Then, when it turned positive, I’d taken another one right after.
“And then?” Edward prompted, softly as though he were interested, not as demanding as usual.
“Then I found out I was pregnant.” There was weight to that statement. It was obvious I didn’t have a kid now, and so there’d be assumptions. I imagined Edward was thinking them through, trying to guess—did she have an abortion? Give it up for adoption? Where was the birth control? It was impossible for him not to form a judgment, and I ached to know what he was thinking so I could judge him back.
But he sat silent, waiting for my tale to unfold.
“It’s funny, I’d imagined saying that before. I don’t know when—in my play. In my fantasies. I didn’t even want kids necessarily, but the notion of being pregnant always held drama. ‘I’m pregnant’, I’d say to the imaginary whomever in my head, and damn, did that get the attention I wanted. It’s a heavy phrase, you know? ‘I’m pregnant.’ ‘I was pregnant.’ You immediately know something intimate about the person—that she’s had sex. Sometimes you even know whom with. And when she doesn’t have a husband or a boyfriend, you start wondering who the father could be, and then you also know that she was careless. That she was irresponsible. That she’s easy.”
Edward looked about to say somethin
g, but I waved him away. “Whatever you’re going to say, it’s true. People think those things and sometimes even say them out loud, and it shouldn’t matter what other people think, I know, I know, but those things do matter. Especially when the things they were thinking were true. I was careless. I was irresponsible. I was a slut, and sure, power to a woman if she wants to sleep with lots of men. I’m all for that and fuck everyone who puts her down for that, but that wasn’t who I was in that moment. In that moment, I had carelessly gotten pregnant from something that had made me feel shitty and slutty, and those words people said mattered. Because I was already saying them about myself.”
I’d meandered. None of this was where I’d thought I was headed. The painful part was coming up, but in telling these parts, I remembered they’d been painful too. I remembered it in my muscles, in the way my hip suddenly ached and my shoulders tensed. In the twinge at my neck. These things had lived inside me, stuffed into the fascia of my body, breathing and festering, and all this time I’d thought there was nothing there.
And now? Could I finally let it go?
I’d been silent for several minutes when Edward asked, “Are you sure it was his?”
He didn’t need to frame the question any other way. I knew who he meant, and it was obvious that was where I was going.
“Yes. The dates matched up, and when I did the ultrasound at Planned Parenthood, that matched up too. I’d been on birth control, but I wasn’t always that diligent about taking it, and he was the only one I hadn’t doubled up with a condom.” Which was stupid. Which was why the whole thing had left me feeling stupid.
“Stop judging,” he said, sternly. Also, ironically since that was exactly what I was silently pleading from him. “Stop judging yourself and just let it be what it is.”
“How do you—?”
“It’s written all over your face. I’m not judging you either, for the record, though that shouldn’t matter.”
He’d set his drink down and folded his hands in his lap, and with the way he was angled and the intensity of his stare, I could feel exactly how much of his attention was devoted to me. All of it. Every single speck of focus was on me.
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