by Cox, Chloe
“All right.” He sat back down and looked at her. She met his gaze. She would. He suddenly realized he had no idea how to conduct this interview, and he was so unaccustomed to simply not knowing that he was now at a loss for words. He felt like almost anything he might say could be a horrible misstep, the kind of thing that would rend Eileen’s wound in two. Or his own.
“Well, aren’t you curious?” she said. She was almost smiling. Almost.
“Yes,” he admitted. “Quite.”
“The anniversary is coming up.”
“I know.”
“I see that you know. You’re preparing all kinds of stuff, it looks like.” She peered at the papers on his desk. “You’ve got quite a good operation going on here. I’m impressed.”
He winced, and she noticed it.
“I meant that, Jacob,” she said, and opened her purse, which he noticed was now a sedate cream color, rather than the lime green he remembered. “You done good.”
When he was sure he could speak normally, he said, “Thank you.”
Eileen lit a cigarette, ignoring the ‘no smoking’ sign, and Jake was almost relieved to see some things hadn’t changed. Maybe that was why he suddenly felt like himself again.
“Eileen, what do you want?”
Now she did smile.
“I want to help out,” she said. “I want to work here. Get involved.”
“No.” The word was out before he could even think it. More followed. “I’m sorry, but I can’t—”
“I have a right,” she said quietly.
He couldn’t argue with that. He couldn’t even put forth an argument as to why he didn’t want her there, besides the fact that it would be a constant reminder that he should feel terrible for the rest of his life. Here, in this place, in his attempt to…
No, he’d never make it right. He knew that; making it right wasn’t the point. The point was to be better and hope it was good enough. And Eileen’s presence might make that harder.
“Can’t there be somewhere else?” he said. “Why here? Why does it have to be here?”
She didn’t answer. Just stared at him. It had been a terrible thing to say.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and watched his hand flex uselessly on the surface of his desk, trying desperately to work off the nervous tension. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her after he’d said that. To his surprise he saw her hand come into his view, almost in slow motion. It came to a rest atop his own, and gently squeezed.
“I don’t hate you, Jakey,” she said.
He was suddenly repelled. It was a familiar feeling, that repulsion to a gesture of affection and intimacy, and then there was another wave of it, close on the crest of the first, at his own reaction to another human being’s attempt to show him kindness, or closeness, or whatever it was normal people had when they reached across a table in a moment of remembered pain to squeeze someone else’s hand.
He pulled his hand away, hating himself and his heartlessness afresh. “I’m sorry, Eileen,” he said, still unable to look at her. Instead, he stared resolutely at a bronze paperweight, some award he’d been given for civic service. The irony burned. “Of course you’re right. I’ll speak with Lina and explain. She’ll put you wherever you’re needed.”
Another plume of smoke was propelled into his field of vision, and he knew she was studying him. It added another level of…something…to his already considerable discomfort. He felt she truly saw, because she knew. She was the only person left alive who really knew.
“Ok, Jake,” she finally said. “I’ll talk to Lina.”
With relief, he let his shoulders relax and watched her back as she walked to the door. She turned and watched him for a moment, her expression sad. Then she said, “See you around,” and closed the door behind her.
After Eileen left, Jake had been fairly useless. He’d tried, for a few hours, to do only the things he could do—calls to licensing boards, politicians, the sort of networking stuff he was uniquely positioned for given his family ties—but it was soon late on a Friday afternoon, and he knew his peers would all be well on their way to their weekend homes. All that was left was what he thought of as actual work, and he simply could not concentrate. After he’d lost the thread in yet another planning conversation, Lina had sent him home.
“That’s an order, boss,” she’d said firmly.
And so once again, his mind was left unoccupied, and once again thoughts of Catie rushed in to fill the vacuum. Only now, the general atmosphere was tainted with the experience of Eileen Corrigan’s visit and all the tired, awful memories that it dredged up.
He thought he’d walk home, which, in retrospect, was ridiculous; it was a long way to his townhouse in the East Fifties. And it did nothing to clear his mind. He finally caught a cab—difficult to do with the light, warm rain, which was unseasonable for January—and brooded until he arrived at his door.
He lived alone. Most men in his position had an assistant or a secretary or something, or what in another age might have been called a ‘valet’ or a ‘manservant’ or even a ‘butler,’ but Jake had never felt comfortable with personal servants. The idea of another person who would be cognizant of every little thing in his life felt unnatural, suffocating. He knew most people wouldn’t have felt that way, but he supposed that the closeness of others was something you had to get used to very young or not at all.
As soon as he’d punched in the security code, he removed his coat and headed straight for the library. It was the only room he hadn’t had redecorated since he’d inherited the house after his mother’s death, and it was the only room his mother had had no use for. It was where Jake had always kept his things.
In particular, it housed the projector and the collection of movies he’d been given, so far back in the hazy reaches of his memory that he could never be sure which distant relative was responsible for the gift. It might have just as easily been a generous friend of his mother’s, though he couldn’t imagine any of that crowd with a particular taste for old Hollywood. Well, perhaps some of the more stylish men. Maybe someone just wanted to share their love of Sunset Boulevard with him.
Well, whoever it was, he was grateful now. He’d been grateful then. There was never anything quite so soothing as losing yourself in those perfectly constructed worlds, no matter what else was going on around you. His first lessons in how to be a man had come from Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant.
But now he didn’t need to be reminded of what it was to be man. He felt that altogether too deeply. Right now, he needed to forget as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Something that fit his mood, that wouldn’t remind him of all the normal, human things he’d proved himself incapable of over the years. Not a romance, then. Not a comedy where everyone ends up in love and happy. He crossed the dark room, navigating the antique furniture from memory, and turned on the standing lamp near his old reels. He’d had the reels updated in the past few years, though it was damned expensive to find some of them in actual film.
The Big Sleep. Perfect. Bogey and Bacall in the film version of Raymond Chandler’s first noir novel, where nothing is as it seems and none of the endings are happy.
He set up the projector, mixed himself a drink, turned off the light, and sat back to forget.
He watched perhaps thirty seconds of the film before he realized his mistake. Lauren Bacall. She walked on screen and there was no point in looking at anyone else. She sparred and fought with Bogey’s Philip Marlowe like she wanted to lose, and there was no help for it: he saw Catie in her.
Catie.
There was no getting away from her. It was his own fault, his own weakness, his own despicable, despicable weakness. He’d simply been overwhelmed. No, there was no “simply”; he was a Dom who’d ceded control of himself to lust. There was nothing more frightening. Nothing less forgivable. He should have been able to resist Catie’s advances, because he knew better, knew the potential complications of personal entanglements between a trainer and
a trainee, and worse, knew his own limitations. And he’d been completely helpless.
Yet wasn’t that in and of itself remarkable? He’d been helpless, overcome by something he wanted. The only other time he was ever overcome was when he was seized by revulsion at some innocently gesture of affection, as he had been when Eileen Corrigan tried to hold his hand.
He was tired of trying to figure that particular puzzle out. He’d been to numerous psychiatrists, and in the end the best he could do was to say those intimacies felt like lies, and he recoiled. It never changed.
The projector continued to roll behind him, the soft thwip thwip of the film barely audible under the dialog. Bacall was dressing Bogey down, reading the poor man like a book from head to toe. Bogey looked like someone who’d been surprised with a cigar and a slap, and was smiling just from confusion.
Jake recognized the look.
There hadn’t been sweet nothings with Catie on that desk, but when he’d looked at her, when she’d been underneath him…he could have sworn that she understood. What he’d wanted was exactly what she’d wanted, reflected from the other side. It wasn’t looking back at it and observing that fact that disturbed him; it was that he had been absolutely sure of it at the time. There hadn’t been an ambiguity, no doubt. Wasn’t that more intimate than anything he’d ever experienced? And yet there’d been no revulsion.
Jake sipped his drink. No wonder he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He was old enough that he didn’t expect to experience many completely new things anymore, short of falling in love, which was impossible for him, or having children, which he thought would be irresponsible and even quite cruel, given his limitations.
Catie had been new.
This was problematic. His job as her trainer, and his obligation, was to explore her. To focus on her needs, her education. To help her. Not himself.
He struggled to think back on their brief interview without his desire getting in the way. He hadn’t wanted someone so badly, so consistently, in his entire life, but damn it, he would do his job. He would help her. Because it was the only way he might begin to make up for losing control, for taking his own interest. And because, as she wavered into focus through his memory and his lust, what he saw was what he had first suspected: beneath it all, she was lost.
There were the lies, first and foremost. She was still lying, he was sure of it, but whether it was deliberate or instinctual, he didn’t know. Jake was only half-watching the film. It was one he’d memorized, but its familiar storyline seeped into his thoughts: Bacall lies to protect her sister, her family, herself. Catie was protecting more than just her secret schoolwork. She was a natural sub, and possibly a masochist, and maybe many other delightful things he would eventually discover. She couldn’t lie about any of that. He’d seen them, felt them. Volare should be a wonderland to her. And yet she’d sat on the sidelines for months, afraid to participate.
Why?
chapter 5
Five minutes before her first scheduled training session, Catie wanted to disappear. She wanted to turn back time, and…what?
What would she change to avoid where she’d ended up? Well, maybe she would have put a lo-jack ankle bracelet on her dad. If she could have prevented him from being, frankly, such a horrible person, maybe she wouldn’t be in this position now. But she couldn’t do any of that. She couldn’t force her dad to be good, she couldn’t force him to care, she couldn’t force fate to give her back her family. So what was the point in wishing?
And now circumstances demanded that Catie be a horrible person, too.
She leaned back against the finely textured Volare wall, clinging to it for comfort, and surveyed the lounge. It was empty, thank God. Apparently Saturday mornings weren’t a hugely popular time for the social areas of the club, though Catie could hear the occasional thwap coming from a private room somewhere nearby.
She didn’t think she could handle having to keep up the charade in public right now. She had no idea how she was going to keep it up with Jake.
God. Jake.
Her belly fluttered, and her shaking hands gripped the wall behind her. Jake had wrecked her. She hadn’t known it at the time; she hadn’t known much of anything while he was inside her, on top of that desk. It really had felt like he’d been inside her head, like they’d known each other beyond words, and it had been…peaceful. Also violent and stormy and overwhelming, but at her core, she’d felt at home. He’d fucked her more thoroughly than any of the men she’d ever been with, mind and body.
She’d stumbled back to her friend Danny’s apartment, where she was subletting his couch, shaken and unsure of what had just happened inside her. She’d tried telling herself that it was just sex. Just great sex. It didn’t necessarily mean anything beyond well-matched pheromones and physical sensibilities. But as the week wore on, the memory of Jake’s touch, of his voice, of his control, had worked its way through her mind like an invasive species. Everything she thought about—everything she tried to distract herself with—somehow led back to him. She’d chat with Danny about his auditions and callbacks and the gossip at the club where he worked as a bouncer, but Jake would be there, always, in the background. It didn’t even make sense. It felt like she was losing her mind. Like she really was completely under his control, helpless to think about anything else.
And now she had to continue to lie to him.
She didn’t know how she was going to do it. Obviously she’d lied to him the whole time she’d known him, but it was different now. It was like he’d discovered some part of her she hadn’t even known existed, and yet she had deceived him about the most basic things. She didn’t know if she could still do it.
Even if she did have a way out, even if she won the lottery—and she had bought an actual scratch ticket, in the kind of desperation you never want to tell anyone about, but she’d lost—she couldn’t stop lying, could she? If she came clean, they would all hate her. She would deserve for them to all hate her. Jake would hate her.
Oh God, she thought, closing her eyes. What am I going to do?
Her phone buzzed madly inside her purse, like an answering call from the universe at large. Startled, she rummaged around until she found the thing, more to quiet her nerves than anything else.
It was a text from Brazzer.
Catie stopped breathing for a long, long moment. The intrusion of Brazzer into this place, into Volare itself, even if it was by text message…
Christ, what if someone had seen it?
She turned instinctively toward the wall, as if she needed the privacy, and feverishly mashed at the buttons of her phone.
More interest in this.Ur not only one on it. I NEED A MEMBER LIST. Biographic deets, shit they r into. Dont fuck up. Big $.
Catie’s stomach flipped over. A member list. Biographical details. What people are into. Basically the worst privacy violation she could imagine, and someone else was “on it?”
Well, what did you expect?
Her dismay increased incrementally, like notes on a terribly discordant scale. She really hadn’t thought this through. She’d only ever envisioned herself writing some sort of poetically philosophical think piece, with pseudonyms for all the members. Something literary. The kind of thing that communicated what Volare was really about, how it helped people, the sexy mystery of a secret society. Something classy. But then she’d taken it to freaking Brazzer, the guy who ran the worst tabloid in the country.
Because she knew he would pay.
And now there was someone else on it.
“Oh, Catie,” she whispered to herself. “What have you done?”
With a sudden burst of energy, she looked around for the exit, as if reassuring herself that she could leave. She could run away. But even as she retraced the steps to the elevator that led back down to the normal world in her mind, she knew she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She couldn’t run away from these people, from Volare; they’d been kind to her, the closest thing she’d imagined to a family.<
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And, truthfully, she didn’t think she was strong enough to run away from Jake. After just one time. One time, and months of wondering about it. One perfect time.
She never would have guessed that being dragged up on a desk by her hair would feel “perfect,” but that hadn’t been the only surprise. It was insane, but as terrified as she was of being found out, when Jake was inside her, it had felt like he’d seen right through her. And he’d still wanted her.
Jake. Jake what? She didn’t even know his last name. Didn’t know the “biographical details,” as Brazzer had put it. And Jake's warning—that he didn’t grow attached, that he wasn’t built that way—loomed in the background of her mind. So what that he wouldn’t be attached—she couldn’t allow herself to become attached, either. And she definitely couldn’t afford to let him get close, or anywhere near the inside of her head, ever again. After all, she had no one else to rely on. It was all up to her.
“Oh, fuck me,” she muttered.
“You can be sure of that.”
Jake’s voice slid across the room, smooth and slick, like spilled oil, and she could tell before she even saw him that he was be smiling. She saw him then, leaning against a far wall with his arms crossed, watching her from the shadows at the end of the bar. She was used to seeing him there at night, tending bar, chatting with people, holding court in his strange, guarded, gentlemanly way, watching over the whole club. She wasn’t used to seeing him look back at her.
He looked good. Better than good. His physique was very noticeable under that finely cut suit, and the shadows accentuated the angles of his face. Catie began to feel her pulse throb in very unusual places.
“You’re late,” she said. He raised an eyebrow, and she realized her mistake. “No, you’re not. I’m sorry.”
The eyebrow stayed up.
“Sir,” she added.
“You’ll learn better than that,” he said quietly.
The smile had faded from his face, replaced now by a look that might almost be concern. He pushed himself off the wall, and gestured towards the phone she still had in her hand.
