Untied: A Mastermind Novel

by Lydia Michaels

  His gaze held too much concern and she hated taking responsibility for putting worry there. Before he could voice another offer, she said, “Call me about the dance classes when you figure out a schedule.”

  “I will. And you call me if you need anything.”

  “Thanks, Steve.”

  As she walked across the parkway to the apartments, she ignored the uncomfortable weightlessness she felt. Her life was once nailed down, both feet on the ground, and now she felt utterly untethered—untied—insignificant enough to blow away under the slightest breeze.

  The Maple Crest apartments weren’t glamorous, but they were affordable. She signed a lease for a second story efficiency and wrote a check before the money was in her account to clear it. By the time she made it to the bank, it was dark.

  It seemed like the longest day of her life, and it wasn’t anywhere close to finished. The silver lining was she was finally making productive decisions in her life. They weren’t the best, but they were productive.

  She stopped at a discount store and purchased some necessities along with a few boxed meals. When she got back to the apartment, she switched out a few light bulbs and showered.

  As she wiped the steam away from the mirror, she couldn’t manage a smile. This was her reality and it was just fine. It would afford shelter over her head and food in her belly, and soon enough she’d be back on her feet, able to invest in her dreams once more.

  Unzipping her makeup case, she pulled out her pallet of colors and went heavy, false lashes and smoky shadow. Next was her hair. She used all the volumizing products she owned and blew it out to twice the normal size.

  Rummaging through her bag, she found her nicest lace bra and matching panties. What she put on top didn’t really matter, but she went with her red dress—the one she’d worn the first night she had drinks with Elliot.

  Her motions slowed as she dragged the material through her fingers, her mind turning back to that evening. Things had gone so terrible and then he’d shown up, rescuing her and amusing her with his delightful magic tricks.

  Her lashes flickered, the weight reminding her that her makeup was done and she couldn’t afford to get emotional right now. Sniffing, she lifted her chin and finished getting ready.

  The cab showed up as she slid into her five-inch heels, her legs trembling with uncertainty as she locked the door. Directing the driver was a distraction, but as the taxi neared her destination her nerves returned with a vengeance. What if this was just another mistake?

  You can do this. You can do anything for a little while. Do this now and you’ll be able to afford your pride later.

  Her pep talk was enough to keep the contents of her stomach down, but nothing stopped her palms from sweating. She checked her phone again, disappointed but not surprised Elliot hadn’t called.

  Her biggest problem was waiting for men to save her. She had no hope for little boys. Using the corner of her nail, she switched the ringer to silence and put the phone back in her bag.

  When the cab parked, her breath shook and her fingers trembled as she passed the driver the fare. Maybe she should ask him to wait? Her appointment might tell her to leave the minute he saw her.

  No. She was being stupid. She could do this and she had her phone to call for a ride home once it was over. She thanked the driver and stepped out of the cab.

  Though she never set foot in this establishment before, she’d passed it several times. Its reputation spoke for itself.

  A broad-shouldered man stood beside the interior doors. Bass pumped loud enough to rattle the walls and everything was dim. The doorman arched a brow the moment he noticed her.

  “Do you know where I can find Joey C?” she asked.

  His gaze drifted to her shoes and back to her breasts. “Are you Nadia?”

  “Yes.”

  He pushed open the doors and pointed. “Past the stage, down the hall, last door on the right. I’m Big Z.”

  “Thank you, Big Z.” The stench of booze and lust left a cool sweat on her skin as she took her first step into the next chapter of her life.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.”

  ~Cersei Lannister

  Game of Thrones

  Elliot sat on the bed in the empty guest room, Nadia’s scent lingering in the air and stabbing into him like a rusted blade. His phone rested in his hands as he deliberated over too many uncertainties to manage.

  He’d messed up. And like everything he did in life, he’d messed up so flawlessly, there was no erasing what happened. He couldn’t take away the last twenty-four hours. She was gone and an abyss separated them, so wide and overwhelming no sane person would dare to cross it.

  His thumb brushed the screen of his phone, drawing up her contact information. He should call. Find out where she was, where she’d stayed, if she was safe. It was the right thing to do. It was everything he wanted to do, but fear held him back.

  You’re a fucking coward.

  The words rattled like a broken record in his head, the old tune played out since childhood. When he was younger, he’d dreamed of normal, imagined a simple home with a modest life, but that wasn’t where he ended up. His career had given him other options, and one by one old hopes fell away as new, unexpected opportunities arose. Why could he fearlessly move forward where business ventures were concerned, but anything having to do with the heart utterly paralyzed him?

  He was so fucking lonely, a feeling he hadn’t admitted in a long time. But since Nadia disappeared—no, since he practically chased her away—he felt it like an ax in the center of his chest.

  The mistake was inviting her into his life too soon. He wasn’t ready. He hadn’t prepared. Navigating without a compass or a clue had cost him in ways he might never fully calculate. He’d lost her.

  He overshot and missed the target completely. Over the years he’d pieced together a self-effacing amalgam of what he might achieve in a partner. She’d be shy, well-educated, but not pretentious. Her hair would be ordinary and her body average. Maybe her teeth were a little crooked and her clothes a little frumpy, but she’d still be a little outside of his league, despite those flaws.

  They’d read at night until the bedside lamps turned off, and perhaps discuss children down the line. She might not love him with the fiery passion authors wrote stories about, but she’d like him on some personal level and respect the life he could provide.

  None of that was Nadia.

  Nadia was wild passion and sultry hedonism. She was his darkest fantasies in living flesh. She was kind and funny and agreeable to anything. How did some people manage such emotional flexibility? He envied her resilience and adaptability, the ease at which she greeted each oncoming day. She was everything he didn’t deserve, and nothing he should ever dream of having in real life.

  The other night when she’d played with Anakin, a strange sensation came over him. Seeing that softer side he hadn’t anticipated threw new worry into his life. Where was this leading and would he be able to give her everything she deserved? All the things she might someday request of him? The daunting unknowns were mounting to terrifying heights.

  He loved her and wanted nothing but to please her, yet he’d done the exact opposite and succinctly destroyed all they’d had in one stupid evening. He was beyond angry with himself. One, for mistreating her, but also for hiding like a goddamn coward. And she’d called him out on it.

  Jesus, he fucked up.

  She was the most enchanting woman he’d ever met and the greatest of her beauty hid on the inside. She said she loved him, wanted all of him, desired him completely. Leave it to him to destroy something so irreplaceable. He seemed on a crash course of self-destruction where doubt was the driver and regret his only companion.

  God, what had he done? She deserved better than him, and that was the most honest truth he knew at the moment.

  His stomach knotted, tension twisting up his back until he cou
ld barely stand the indecisiveness smothering him. His thumb tapped her number and the phone dialed, ringing three times then dumping into voicemail.

  He couldn’t blame her for not answering, but he couldn’t leave her thinking she’d done anything wrong longer than he already had. It took him nearly twenty-four hours to find the balls to call, but he had to fix this. This was his doing, his inexperience and fear corroding something beautiful and his actions and self-doubt hurting someone he loved.

  The voicemail beeped, prompting him to leave a message. “Nadia… It’s Elliot. I…”

  I’m sorry. Please come back. Please give me another chance to try harder. I never meant to hurt you.

  “I … found some of your clothes you left behind. If you want them, call me back.”

  He waited a few seconds, willing himself to say more. But deep down he feared if he asked her to come back for him, she wouldn’t and hearing that level of rejection might destroy him in irreparable ways.

  “I hope you’re okay,” he muttered and ended the call.

  Staring at the blank screen, a sort of numbness took hold. “And I’m sorry. I...” He couldn’t bring himself to confess his love to her voicemail. “I hope you can give me another chance.”

  His body fell back on the bed as he shut his eyes, lifting off his glasses and scrubbing his palms over his face. “You’re such a pussy,” he groaned, hating himself to the point that he felt a physical ache in his chest. “You can’t even leave her an honest voicemail, you useless fuck.”

  His fingers loosened and the phone fell to the comforter. Maybe his inability to fix them was for the best. How much longer would she honestly be satisfied with a man like him? She deserved so much better. He didn’t have a clue what he was doing and, as much as he wanted to be the strong hero in her life, that shoe would never fit.

  Reaching for his phone, he scrolled through his apps, searching for a distraction. Nothing held his interest and soon he was staring at her number again, unsure how he’d gone from staring to hearing the phone ring.

  “This is Nadia. Leave me a message and I’ll call you back.” As her voicemail picked up again, his frustration doubled.

  “It’s me again.” He grit his teeth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have acted like that last night. I just … this is a lot for me and I hate having to keep explaining that. I … never meant to hurt you.”

  His eyes closed. What the hell was he doing? He should have rehearsed this, made a list of points to address instead of just rambling like an unstable lunatic. But like a derailed train, he couldn’t stop or get back on track.

  “I’m sure you don’t want to talk to me. I just wanted you to know I’m sorry. For everything.”

  He hung up before the words I love you fell out. Saying such things would only make the situation worse. He needed to fix this, then he’d tell her how much she meant to him.

  Forcing himself off the bed, he shut the door and went to the kitchen. Halfway through making dinner, he was speaking to her voicemail again.

  “Did you ever hear about butterflies, the kind people say they feel in their stomach? I never understood that. Those sort of comparisons always confused me. When I was little, I’d feel snakes in my stomach when I was afraid, which happened to be a lot, but never butterflies. Then… then I met you.”

  His thumb pressed into the prongs of his fork, leaving little divots in the pad of his finger as he rambled and stared at his dinner, wondering why he couldn’t just leave her be. All these messages were probably making things worse.

  “But you didn’t give me butterflies, Nadia. You set off fireworks inside of me. Simply looking at you put me under siege. Cannon fire, that’s what it feels like. Certainly not delicate butterflies.”

  His gaze drifted across the table as he questioned the little he knew about love and all the assumptions that seemed shortsighted to what he felt. “I never felt anything like that for anyone else. Sometimes you scare the hell out of me.”

  His shoulders drooped as he stared at his plate, appetite gone. “I don’t know if I give you snakes, butterflies, fireworks, or something else. I wish I knew, because … maybe then I’d know if this was normal. If I’m normal.”

  His mouth pursed as his voice lowered with each word. “I’m rambling again. Just delete these messages. Sorry to keep bothering you. I’ll leave you alone now.”

  With a sigh, he scraped his plate into a glass container and wedged it on a shelf in the fridge. He was kidding himself if he thought he could swallow one bite. He had no appetite and his stomach was knotted too tight to get a single bite down.

  He went to the den to find a book. Nothing appealed, so he settled on an old favorite, hoping he could pass the hours until he fell asleep. After staring at the same paragraph for a solid ten minutes he tossed the book aside and grabbed his phone. Furious curiosity plagued him when she still didn’t answer.

  “Okay, I get it. You don’t want to talk to me. I’m a complete asshole. Last night, I acted like… I got scared. I lost control and…” He sighed, his eyes closing in shame. “My control’s all I have. I can depend on it and without it…” Memories of screaming in absolute panic raced through his mind and he shuttered. It didn’t matter that those memories were decades old. The sense of no control they stirred was still fresh and excruciating. But he wasn’t only concerned with protecting himself.

  “Nadia, my control... It’s what’s kept me sane most of my life. But when I touch you… The thought of hurting you terrifies me. And I know it’s only a matter of time before I permanently mess this up.”

  Maybe it was already fucked. His gut twisted painfully, those knots tightening until even his breath wheezed out of his lungs. Everything he wanted also happened to be everything he feared.

  “I … I know we’ve only been together a short time, but I don’t remember how to start my day without you. I forget how to think without your presence lacing each thought. It was childish to lock the door and I’m sorry. I wish I could take it back. I’m failing at this and it’s gutting me. I hate to fail, but this is worse than every other failure because I’m failing you.”

  And when things didn’t go his way he made a habit of minimizing their importance, convincing himself he didn’t want what he couldn’t have. But he couldn’t minimize Nadia. He couldn’t even pass a minute without thinking about her.

  “I hate that I’ve screwed this up. I hate that I hurt you. I hate that I don’t know where the hell you are right now or what you’re doing or who you’re with. If you’re okay.”

  “Can we just talk? Please?” He waited as if a response might come. Eventually, the automated voice asked if he was happy with his message and he hung up.

  His head dropped to the back of the couch as he blinked at the ceiling. “I hate that I’m impossible to love when I’m so madly in love with you,” he whispered to himself, wondering how long this unbearable pain and doubt would last.

  As he closed up the house and made his way to bed, the urge to speak to her didn’t fade. If anything, it intensified. He’d purposely left his phone in the den, but climbed out of bed to retrieve it sometime around eleven, worried she might actually call back. She hadn’t, so he called her again.

  “Are you doing this to punish me? I shut you out so now you’re doing the same? I know that’s what I deserve, but it’s not what we need, not if we both want to fix this.”

  His head cocked as the answer slapped him in the face. “But you probably don’t want to fix this.”

  He hung up and took his phone back to his room, swearing that was the last time he’d contact her and knowing his vow was a lie.

  As he lay in the dark his patience disintegrated. He couldn’t take it anymore. He needed to speak to her.

  “Look, you want a man who’s in control? Fine. Answer your phone. We aren’t throwing this away without talking it over first. Pick up the phone, Nadia. I fucked up. I’ll own that, but I’m not a quitter when something is important, and this is important. We are impo
rtant. I don’t want to go back to the way things were before. I … need you.”

  But no matter how persuasive his words, he was speaking to a machine. She might not even listen to his pleas. He didn’t know where she was or how to find her, and these stupid messages were all he could do to reach out to her aside from driving to her studio at this time of night and praying she’d be there.

  She wouldn’t be there...

  He was out of bed and getting dressed two seconds later. He needed to get her to listen. He needed to make this right.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.”

  ~J. K. Rowling

  Nadia stood in the small office, her eyes threatening to water as a haze of cigarette smoke hung beneath the ceiling. She kept her motions loose as she shook the man’s hand, his fingers holding onto hers long enough to cross the line between polite and unnerving.

  “Well, look at you.” Joey C kept his grasp on her fingers and directed her in a slow twirl. “Beautiful. Mexican?”

  Nadia refused the urge to roll her eyes and forced a smile. “Hungarian.”

  He nodded. “Good. Exotic.”

  She pulled her fingers out of his hold and reached into her bag. “I brought my resume. I’ve been teaching dance for many years.”

  He took the slip of paper and placed it on his desk with barely a glance. His gaze weighed on her front, inspecting every curve and dip. “Good. Have you ever performed?”

  “Not outside of recitals, but I’ve taught every sort of dance there is.”

  His gaze dropped to her five-inch pumps. “Any scars or notable birthmarks?”

  The breath in her lungs expanded. “I have a few birthmarks, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

  He rested his hips on the desk, folding his arms over his chest. “Okay. I’ll have to take a look.”

  “O—of course.”

  She turned, her gaze lowering to the outdated loveseat squeezed between a filing cabinet and mini fridge against the wall. She stepped closer to the seat and remained facing the wall as her fingers trembled to untie the belt of her dress.