Girl On the Edge

by CD Reiss

  His thumb ran over my lower lip, and without thinking, I opened my mouth to suck on it. My body obeyed a part of my mind running on fumes and heat.

  “I’ve lost everything,” he said. “My family. My house. My sanity. I’m drawing a line around us, and we’re staying inside it. Outside the wire is madness.”

  I let his thumb go, and he drew a wet line across my cheek as I looked up at him.

  What about that moment convinced me it was time to stop withholding? Was it the sweet scent of coffee beans? The low timbre of his voice? The promise that his humanity breathed because of me? Or was it his eyes, blue as the noon sky when the rest of the world lived in twilight?

  All of it. The package. All the traits that gave me pleasure stood over me, and right then, my body didn’t give a shit about anything else.

  “It’s us, Captain. You and me.”

  “And him.”

  “There is no him.”

  He bent over and put his nose to mine. “As long as you’re having orgasms I don’t remember, there’s a him.”

  “I give myself one every night thinking of you.” Our lips were kiss close, brushing against each other when I spoke. “Our wedding night. I hadn’t seen you in months. You spread my legs like you owned me.” Remembering that moment, I shuddered.

  “I do own you.” He put his hand up my skirt and fingered past my underwear. I was engorged with suppressed needs.

  “Take what’s yours,” I groaned.

  Hooking his fingers on the crotch of my underwear, he pulled them off.

  He kissed me and picked me up before he got on his knees with my legs wrapped around his waist. Placing me on the floor, he ran his head along me and thrust in.

  I was so needy I nearly came, pushing into him as if I could force him through me. Three thrusts, and he was buried inside me. He put his hands on my shoulders, putting his weight on them so he could hold me down and hold himself up at the same time, pumping his hips to mine. Immobilized, legs spread for him, I didn’t need pain when I was this fully dominated. Every muscle submitted to him, relaxing into pleasure.

  “Give it to me.” His words were hard breaths. “Come. It’s mine. Give it.”

  “Take it,” I croaked before going rigid under him. I bent around the orgasm, twisting and crying as he held me still. At the height, my limbs went slack, and my legs bounced with his thrusts.

  “Stay still.” He came with an exhale. His hands slid off my shoulders and he rested on top of me, his orgasm going on as he drove deeper.

  “Thank you,” I said when he picked his head up to kiss me.

  “Sun’s almost down.”

  He was correct. The sky was turning deep orange at the horizon.

  “I don’t want a fight.”

  He looked me in the eye. I was afraid he’d want to get scrappy all over again. Leave a trail of evidence behind to prove his ownership of me. I feared we’d gotten nowhere, and I’d just succumbed to my desires out of weakness.

  “Let’s put everything in its place then,” he said, getting up.

  He held his hand out to me, and I took it. We got dressed as if my parents were pulling into the driveway. I was leaning on the chair again when he tucked in his shirt.

  “Thank you, Greysen.”

  “My pleasure.”

  As the sun disappeared, he picked up the envelope and blew into it, changing with a breath.

  Every day, it was amazing how fast it happened, how subtly, and how definitively. He stood still with the envelope in one hand as he steadied himself with the other.

  “Welcome back,” I said, turning on the lamp.

  “Hi. How are you?”

  “Fine.” I walked to the standing lamp and turned on that one too. “Busy.”

  “What did we decide?” He opened the letter. “About Hawaii?”

  Had we been talking about the vacation? Maybe. I distinctly remembered putting him off, but the Damon side had his own way of being tenacious. He had a pit bull’s tenacity and a dachshund’s bite.

  “How about Christmas break?”

  He read the letter and tossed it in a pile. “Sounds good.”

  I snapped my head around so hard I thought I’d break. He was out the door with his back to me. He stood straight and tall, with an arrogant hauteur a man can acquire when he’s beautiful and brilliant.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  He went upstairs with a deliberate, precise footfall on each step.

  I didn’t chase him. Instead, I picked up the letter. My eyes blurred, and my hand shook as if my body wanted to defend me against what was on that paper.

  —United States Army—

  —report for duty—

  —immediate deployment—

  —rank of O-4 pay grade MAJOR—

  “I knew it,” I hissed, dropping to my knees. “You fuckers.” My voice got louder. “I knew you’d do this.”

  I yelled upward, to the blue-eyed sky, “Caden!” extending the E in a long scream. I called him again, letting the vowels run to every corner and crowd there, until he came to me.

  Not sweet, misguided, impulsive Damon who would get crushed in the military.

  Caden came. The surgeon looked down at me with his emotions signed, sealed, and sent away.

  I called as if he was still far away. “Caden!”

  The last sound ended in a sob, and still, he stood over me.

  “Why are you shouting?”

  “They can’t.”

  “Oh, but they can. And they have.”

  I leaned on his legs, letting my tears fall on his trousers. “We have to fight it,” I sobbed.

  Finally, he got down on his knees with me. “Greysen.” He took my hands, and we looked together at where we touched, at the glimmering gem his love had broken away and purchased. “I can handle it.”

  “No. No, you can’t. It broke you. They broke you, and they’re going to keep breaking you.”

  “I have to pack, Grey. I leave tomorrow.”

  “And if we tell them. If we explain. If we tell them about Damon.”

  “He’s gone.”

  “They don’t want you like this. Do you understand?”

  “I do understand, Major.” He caressed my cheek. “They want me exactly like this.”

  His eyes were distant and cool, yet there was compassion in them. The sky was the same color no matter who cried under it.

  “I can’t…” I was barely coherent through my blubbering. I couldn’t lose him. Not again. Not ever. “I can’t do this. I can’t do it.”

  “Hush.”

  “I won’t. I. Won’t.”

  He shook his head and looked me in the eye with unimpeachable steadiness, taking my face in his hands to share his balance. “It’s time to stop crying.”

  “No,” I whispered, laying my hands over his.

  “Wipe your tears.” He spoke with kindness. “It’s time to grow up.”

  “I won’t let this happen to you.”

  “I love you, Greysen. I love you more than I love anything, but this isn’t about what you want.”

  My husband walked out and back up the stairs with deliberate, almost-surgical precision.

  Part Six

  Chapter Forty-Six

  GREYSEN

  NEW YORK - MARCH 2007

  Before he left, he made sure I was set. Here was the property tax bill. Anthony would pay it when he paid the utilities. Here was the water filter system. It needed to be changed in six weeks. He’d have called Franco to do it, but the number was on the—

  “You can’t go.”

  We were in the laundry room. Its base functionality seemed absurd against the backdrop of my husband going to war. How dare the washing machine be white when this was happening. Fuck you, dryer, for being half an inch higher. The basket of clothespins was a slap in the face, and the steady hush of the water heater was a mockery.

  Caden looked green in the fluorescent light, and his eyes were flat gray. He looked as if he were dead alr
eady. “I knew I could get called.”

  “You were tricked.”

  He smiled ruefully. Even green, he was beautiful. Too brilliant to be conned, too loyal to go back on a promise. He put his hands on my shoulders and slid them down to my biceps. “I’m going to be fine. They’re giving me a nice bonus.”

  “Because I care about money.”

  The smile went from rueful to pleased, and I had to admit he’d been more himself in the past day than he’d been since his alter ego had appeared.

  “Did you tell them about Damon?”

  “I took a battery of tests.”

  “They’d never send you if they knew.”

  “As soon as I read that letter, as soon as he read it, he crawled back into the hole he came from.”

  “He’s gone?”

  “Are you going to miss him?” he teased.

  “Are you?”

  “If I deploy, he’s staying gone.” He gathered my hands in his. “I won’t miss the little chickenshit.”

  “He’s the cowardly side of you.”

  He got close to my face and put up his finger. “I don’t have a cowardly side.”

  The way he looked at me, I could kind of believe it. He was so strong, so clear, so commanding, even with a part of him stuffed into a dark bag. If I hadn’t known better, I would have forgotten to worry about him. I would have overlooked the broken pieces for the sake of seeing the man in front of me.

  “We all have a coward in us,” I said.

  “You don’t.”

  “I do. She’s scared of heights and spiders. And she’s so scared of losing you.”

  He took my chin and pointed it up to face him. “I see that look on your face, Major.”

  “What look, Major?” I had to smile at our equal footing.

  “You are not to walk into the AMEDD recruiter.”

  “I was going to stay in the military for life anyway. It’s easy for me. We can get a dual deployment. They’ll station us together.”

  “Maybe. Or they can put us half a world apart.”

  “It’s a risk, but I’m willing to take it.”

  “I’m not willing.” He put my hands against his chest. “You’re going to run the PTSD unit of Mt. Sinai Hospital. You’re going to do what you were meant to do with your life. Help people after they get back. All you’d do on active duty is manage to get a revolving door of soldiers honorable discharges. They’d come back fucked up with no one to help them because you’re on the other side of the wall.”

  I looked away from him at the way our hands wove together against his chest. “You think a lot of me.”

  “The world needs you.”

  “What about you? Do you need me?”

  He unwove our fingers and put his arms around me, squeezing me so tightly it hurt.

  “I need you,” he said with his mouth pressed to my scalp, inhaling the scent of my panic. “I need you safe. I need you here. I’m a selfish and greedy man. I need you to stay here and do your work so I can keep it together. You’re the only thing in this world saving me from going insane.”

  “What if he comes back?”

  “He won’t.”

  “He will.”

  “Well, then they’ll send me home in disgrace. Maybe he’ll buy a Maserati to make it up to you.” He pulled away enough to meet my gaze. “But if you’re deployed, you won’t be here to make him sell the Ferrari first.”

  I laughed. He smiled with me, brushing a ribbon of hair off my cheek.

  “I’m going to drive it when you’re gone.”

  “Drive it now.” He closed the panel door of the water filtration unit. “It’s got a lot of kick.”

  “You’re almost back to your old self.”

  “I think he needed a shock to the system. He’s terrified of going back, and when the letter came, he wanted no part of it.” Shrug. “War is his limit.”

  “You were forced to face your worst fear.”

  I saw his sharp glance behind me, to the false safe. The door was closed, but behind it was the bottle room and a darkness that had its own density. He looked back at me, his stare hard and locked as if he wanted to make sure I was there.

  “Definitely the worst,” he said, grabbing me and pulling me to him. “I can handle anything now.” He kissed me, and I moved with him as he pressed his growing erection against me.

  “We have about twenty-four hours,” I said. “Can we spend twenty of them fucking?”

  “What are we wasting those four hours on?”

  “Sleep?”

  He picked me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist.

  “You’ll sleep when you’re dead.”

  We kissed as he carried me, clanking and banging ankles and elbows, kissing between ows and ouches, laughing all the way up the stairs. We wound up rolling on the carpet between the back door and the door to my office, peeling off as much of our clothing as we needed to get his dick inside me.

  I braced each foot against an opposing wall as he pushed into me until he hit the end, and with another thrust, he found my limit but kept pushing.

  Yes, it hurt. And yes, he knew it.

  He did it again, and while he was buried deep, he yanked up my shirt and bra.

  “I’m going to miss these tits,” he growled right before getting his mouth under one and sucking the skin, closing his teeth against the flesh in a long, painful bite.

  I fisted his hair, pulling his mouth against me, begging for the hurt. He bit and sucked, thrusting hard and slow, rotating his hips when he was rooted in me.

  “I love you,” I cried when I was close. “Caden, I love you.”

  In response, he bit me harder, and I came right into the pain.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  CADEN

  Greysen passed out at one in the morning after I’d bathed her, laid her on the clean sheets, and taken another of her orgasms. She was sore. I could taste the raw skin when I licked her cunt, sharp with open nerve endings and the threat of blood.

  But I couldn’t sleep for the allotted four hours. There was too much to do. As I went about preparing the house for my absence and making Greysen’s world as easy as possible without me, I felt as right as I had in a while. At least as right as I’d felt since Damon had ruptured my mind.

  He was in the corners again, but I knew what he was now. He was my fear. He’d always been there, and when I faced him, he went away. My relief didn’t last. Neither did my control.

  Damon fled at the thought of war and danger, but something else had been born. It didn’t hum in the white noise. It was a hard buzz, like the approach of hornets. I told myself it was just Damon and I had him in hand, but it wasn’t. I knew it, and I decided not to know it at the same time.

  I went back into the laundry room to check on the circuit breakers. I’d be gone a couple of summers. The HVAC unit that had been installed while Greysen was still deployed was newer than the electrical box.

  With a roll of tape around my wrist and a felt-tip pen behind my ear, I opened the metal panel. The black switches were labeled with masking tape in my father’s handwriting, and since the new unit had been installed, many of them were wrong. I knew which was which and had never bothered correcting them.

  I’d talk her out of selling the house for now. I wanted her to have a place to live in or sell if something happened to me. I’d pitch her the idea that since I wasn’t here, there was no need to worry about me getting triggered by the fucking moldings or whatever she thought had prompted my split. We could sell when I got back.

  Peeling off the first swatch of masking tape, I realized how neat my father’s writing had been. He’d made a lie of the cliché about doctors having sloppy handwriting. He’d made a lie out of a lot of expectations.

  I ripped off a piece of tape and put it by the switch. My edge was straight but ragged from the tear. My father had used scissors, of course. And when I wrote “Dining Room” on the tape and it was a mess, I realized he’d written the label while it was still fl
at on the roll.

  I peeled it off and started over.

  * * *

  CADEN - NEW YORK - 1981

  Two pairs of scissors.

  My favorite T-shirt.

  My most recent algebra test.

  Three pages torn from an old Hustler magazine.

  The shirt was still crisply black, and the three digitally-styled symbols, one for each band member in the Police, were still alarm-clock red. It was laid out on the shiny dining room table without a wrinkle.

  My algebra test was lined up parallel to the edge of the table.

  The Hustler nudes were spread above that, pages creased, with corners curling and the pinkest parts faded with age.

  Dad sat at the head of the table. When I saw my mother kneeling at his feet, I dropped my bag. It was open. A pencil rolled out.

  “How old are you, Caden?” my father asked as if he’d ever forget the day the mess was born.

  “Eleven, sir.” I tried to make eye contact with Mom, but she was bent toward the Persian carpet.

  “Come here.”

  I stepped toward him, close enough to hear my mother’s ragged breaths, and with the new angle, I could see that he held the end of a belt. The other end was looped around Mommy’s neck.

  “Describe what’s on this table.”

  I took my gaze away from my mother and looked at the table. “Two pairs of scissors. My Ghost in the Machine shirt. My algebra test. Three—”

  “More on the test, please. Finish the job.”

  Mom coughed. I started to sweat. He wanted me to be specific, and I needed to pay attention.

  “It’s from last week. Wednesday. There’s an eighty-six in red at the top, and under it is the word ‘good’ in script with an exclamation point. The magazine—”

  “You’re not finished with the test. What’s in the left corner?”

  “Your signature, sir.”

  Mom gasped. I couldn’t look. I couldn’t watch him making the belt tighter, and I knew he wanted me to keep my eyes on the table.