by Lauren Rowe
His face contorts. He shakes his head, but he doesn’t speak. His eyes are moist.
“I’m losing myself, Jonas. I just have to get back to standing on my own two feet.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why?” I open and close my mouth several times, flummoxed. “Why do I have to breathe? Or eat? It’s fundamental.”
“No, it’s not. You don’t have to stand on your own two feet. Not all the time. When you can’t, or even if you just don’t want to sometimes, then I’ll carry you. I want to carry you.”
No one has ever said anything like this to me before. Not even close.
“Estamos de luna de miel,” he says softly in his horrible Americano accent. We’re on our honeymoon. He looks at me hopefully.
For some reason, that phrase doesn’t make me swoon the way it did the first time he said it to me.
“Except we’re not really, are we?” I spit out. “This could all be over next week and where would that leave me? I can’t rely on this and let everything I’ve worked for slip away.”
Oh good Lord, whatever knife I stabbed him with a minute ago, I just turned it.
I soften. “I know I’ll never be able to understand what you went through as a child,” I say. I inhale and exhale slowly, trying to regain control of my voice. “I’ll never be able to fully understand why tonight felt like ‘hell’ for you—but, Jonas, I want to understand.” My lip is trembling. “I just wanted to replace your bad childhood memories with good adult ones. I wanted to give you pleasure—to try to heal you. And you wouldn’t trust me enough to let me try. I’m tired of everything being the Jonas Faraday Club all the time. I just wanted you to join the Sarah Cruz Club for a change.”
“This is all because I wouldn’t stay tied up while I ate you out?” He’s utterly pained.
“No, Jonas. You’re so clueless sometimes. Forget about that. Tonight just made me realize how much you’re holding back and I’m not.”
“Everyone holds back, sometimes.”
“I’m not holding back at all.”
“You’re not holding back at all?” he asks, incredulous.
“Not at all,” I say. And it’s true, other than the fact that I have to bite my tongue every five minutes to keep myself from blurting, “I love you!” at the top of my lungs. But that can’t be helped.
He stares at me, daring me to confess some deep, dark secret I’m keeping from him—as if he’s hoping to prove my fuckeduppedness matches his own.
“Well, okay, one thing,” I confess.
His face lights up with anticipatory vindication.
“I secretly like that One Direction song.”
He laughs, despite the pained look in his eyes.
“A lot,” I add. I put my hands over my face. I can’t stop the tears from coming.
“Sarah, what’s going on?” He puts his arm around me. “Please, please, don’t let this be the part where you say I don’t ‘let you in.’” His face is awash in anxiety. “Please don’t say I’m just too fucked up for you.” He’s holding back tears.
I touch his beautiful face. “No, Jonas. It’s just the opposite. You can never be too fucked up for me, don’t you understand? That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You can never, ever be too fucked up for me, no matter what’s hiding deep down inside of you—so stop being afraid to show me everything. I’m telling you to let your freak flag fly loud and proud. I’m telling you I won’t run away. I won’t reject you. You can trust me.” Tears pour out of my eyes. I’m in danger of losing myself to a bona fide ugly cry.
His relief is palpable. He kisses me. “Don’t leave me.”
I snort. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re the one who’s the flight risk.”
His lips are on mine. His tongue is in my mouth. Even if my brain wanted to leave this man, my body would stage a coup. Tears blur my eyes and run down my cheeks. “I just don’t understand why you hold back like you do. I’m giving you everything, Jonas. I want the same from you.”
“I can’t,” he whispers.
“Yes, you can.”
He shakes his head. “This is all because I wouldn’t stay tied up? I don’t understand—what happened after you untied me was incredible.”
“It’s a metaphor, Jonas. Come on. I know how you love your metaphors.”
“I know it was a metaphor. I’m not stupid. But maybe we enacted a different and even better metaphor than the one you were going for. Sometimes, the best things are unplanned.”
“No, I’m pretty sure a better metaphor is not what just happened—I want my metaphor, Jonas, and what I just discovered is that it’s just not possible for you.” I huff out an exasperated puff of air. “You ready for another Plato quote, hmm? I’ve become somewhat of a Plato aficionado lately.”
His gaze is steady.
“‘You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.’”
He squints at me.
“And I just discovered a lot.”
He glares at me.
“You don’t like having Plato used against you?”
Oh boy, he’s not happy with me.
“I wanted you to take a leap of faith the way I did when I jumped thirty feet into blackness. And you couldn’t do it. Clearly.”
He smashes his lips together. “You don’t understand.”
“Only because you won’t explain it to me!”
He’s about to lose it. “Why are you doing this? Who cares why I didn’t want to be tied up. You untied me and we moved forward and it was fucking amazing. We don’t have to talk about every goddamned thing we feel all the time, do we?”
“Jonas,” I sigh. “I know you’re not familiar with the practice, but what we’re doing right now is this really weird thing adults do sometimes. It’s called talking about our feelings. It’s okay. We’ll survive it, I promise.” What was that psychobabble quote Josh used when they disagreed the other day? Oh yes. “Talking about it doesn’t mean we’re disagreeing.”
“Oh good God, please don’t say that. You know not what you do.”
I smile and touch his cheek.
He rubs his eyes. “You just don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.”
He’s silent.
“This whole time, you’ve been acting like you’re some Kung Fu master and I’m your little Grasshopper in desperate need of enlightenment. But, ironically, here we are: I’ve surrendered to you mind, body and soul—in every way a woman can surrender to a man, sometimes against my natural instincts—and it’s you who’s holding back on me. I can feel it. And the closer and closer I feel to you, the more my heart opens and opens and bleeds—the more I start to need you—it scares me. It’s just starting to feel like there’s this gaping void between us that’s eventually going to swallow me up and crush my heart into a million tiny pieces.”
I’m panting. That speech took a lot out of me.
He rubs his hands over his face. “I told Josh I’m quitting Faraday & Sons. I told him right before I came into the bedroom.”
“Oh, Jonas, that’s amazing news.” I don’t understand the connection between this revelation and what we’ve been talking about, but I’m sure it’s coming. I wait.
He waits a long beat and finally speaks again. “I can finally envision the life I want. I see it. I finally know exactly what it looks like.”
“That’s so good.”
“For the first time in my life, I can finally, clearly visualize the divine original form of Jonas Faraday. I’ve tried to visualize the divine original of myself for so long, Sarah, and I couldn’t see him. Or, on my best days, I could sort of see him—but he was blurry or dark or flickering in and out. But now, he’s finally crystal clear.”
I wait, my pulse pounding in my ears.
His breathing is shaky. “I can see him right in front of me, Sarah.” He swallows hard. “He’s standing next to you, holding your hand.”
My heart leaps. Oh. My. God.
“I
can finally see him because you grabbed his hand and guided him into the light.”
There are no words.
He stifles a soft yelping noise. “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.” His voice brims with emotion. “My song is now complete.”
Oh, holy Baby Jesus in a manger.
The time for thinking is done. My brain can go to hell. My body wants to go to heaven. I grab his face and kiss him deeply and then make love to him tenderly until we both fall soundly asleep in each other’s arms.
Chapter 21
Jonas
I sit at the kitchen table drafting the press release announcing my departure from Faraday & Sons. Each word I type brings me closer to the man I’m meant to be—the divine original form of Jonas Faraday. Genuine happiness is within my grasp.
Sarah enters the kitchen. She’s showered and dressed and ready to kick some ass, as usual. She’s got her laptop tucked under her arm and a book bag over her shoulder.
“Good morning, beautiful. Can I make you an omelet?”
“We need to talk,” she says.
Not my favorite phrase. No pleasant conversation with any woman throughout history has ever started with those words.
“You wanna talk about your Maltese Kiki?” I ask hopefully.
“No,” she answers, unsmiling. She sits down at the table.
I’m filled with unease. My stomach flip-flops.
“I need to stay at my place for a few days, just so I can study and get back on track—”
“No fucking way.”
“Excuse me?” she says, her cheeks instantly turning red.
“No fucking way. First of all, I want you here with me, as you know, so I can ravage you at a moment’s notice, any time of day. But second of all, and more importantly, it’s not safe. I don’t want you to be alone for a single minute until we hear from The Club and get a read on how this is whole thing’s gonna shake out.”
“Well, that’s just crazy. What if we never hear from them? What if they trashed my place and took my computer and that’s the last we’re ever gonna hear from them?”
“I highly doubt it.”
“I have a hunch you’re wrong.”
I let out a long, controlled exhale. This woman is such a pain in the ass, I swear to God. “Let’s just say for the sake of argument your hunch is right and we don’t hear from them. You’re comfortable relying on their silence as some sort of tacit truce? You’ll be able to sleep at night—no looking over your shoulder, no wondering if they’re coming for you?”
She purses her lips, giving the matter due consideration.
“And what happened to defending all the poor saps who joined The Club looking for true love?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that, during the approximately seven minutes I haven’t been having sex with you since we got back from our trip.”
I laugh.
“I think I might have been naïve about that. Maybe that software engineer guy was the exception, not the rule, and the vast majority of guys who join The Club want to ride a Mickey Mouse roller coaster, just like Josh said. Maybe they don’t care, or even want to know, how The Club supplies the fantasy.”
I blink fast a couple times, trying to process what she’s saying. “So you’re saying if they were to leave you alone, you’d really just leave them alone? Live and let live?”
She shrugs. “Yeah, I think the message I gave to Stacy was honest—if they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone. The only part I lied about was having that report. Oh, and mentioning the Secret Service, too, that was just a total bluff. I’ve never seen their membership roster.”
“Utter brilliance.”
“Thank you.” She sighs. “But, yeah, I’ve thought about it, and I’m not sure I care enough to make this the center of my universe. I’ve got a life to live—things I care a helluva lot more about than taking down a prostitution ring. And, anyway, if ninety-nine percent of The Club’s members wouldn’t want to know the truth, who am I to ruin the fantasy for them?”
I stare at her for a long time. “Wow. I never thought I’d see the day.”
“What?”
“Your Hallmark-Lifetime brainwashing has finally succumbed to cynicism and realism. So you don’t believe in fairytales anymore?”
“Oh, I still believe in fairytales, now more than ever.” She levels a smoldering gaze at me that makes my heart explode. “It’s just that I realized something really important about fairytales.”
I wait.
“You can’t take them for granted. They’re precious. Rare. If you’re one of the lucky few who gets to live a fairytale, you best spend your time and energy cherishing it, reveling in it, holding onto it—as opposed to, say, running around trying to take down an Internet sex club.” She gives me a look that makes me want to drop to my knees.
My heart is an old, stiff sponge, long neglected on a sink ledge, and it’s just been dunked into a warm bucket of water. I get up from the table and walk toward her, my heart-sponge absorbing and enlarging and dripping its bounty with each step. I take her in my arms and kiss every inch of her face and she trembles with the pleasure of it. I take her face in my hands and kiss her mouth and she audibly swoons.
This is one of the top ten moments of my entire life. My baby just called me her Prince Charming.
She traces my lips with her fingertip and then kisses me softly.
It takes a moment before my vocal chords work again. “But what if my gut is right, Sarah? What if they’re coming for you?”
“I guess I’ll just have to take my chances.”
I hug her to me. “I’m not willing to do that. I’ve got to do whatever’s necessary to keep you safe.”
She exhales. “What are you gonna do, huh? Go to class with me every day for the next two years, just in case?”
“If necessary, yes.”
“Well that’s not creepy-intense or anything.”
We stare at each other, at an impasse.
“Jonas,” she says. “Sweet Jonas. I’m going crazy. I haven’t had a minute to myself. I have to study. I have to concentrate. I need to get my hair trimmed. I need to go to yoga. And maybe a facial would be nice, too.”
I smile.
“I just need a little space. This has all happened so fast—and, baby, you’re really intense, no offense—I just need a little elbow room.”
“Wait a minute—I’m intense?” I glare at her with my best Charles Manson eyes.
She laughs. “I need time to study. Remember all that delicious anticipation before Belize? It was hot. Time apart can be a very good thing.”
I grab her hand and pull her back to the kitchen table. She sits on my lap.
“Listen to me. If it weren’t for this whole thing with The Club, I’d be semi-normal about time apart. You need time to study? Okay. You want to go to yoga and hang out with Kat? Whatever. I like my alone time, too, believe it or not. All of that’s normal. But put that shit aside. These aren’t normal circumstances, okay? It’s not safe. I don’t want you to be alone until we have a definitive end to all this. That guy who followed you to your class and then showed up at the library wasn’t there to sell you Girl Scout cookies.”
She rolls her eyes.
“What? Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Roll your eyes.”
She doesn’t reply.
“What?”
She’s quiet.
“You don’t believe I saw him?”
She’s still quiet.
“You think I just hallucinated him?”
She flashes me an if-the-shoe-fits look.
“You think I’m crazy?” I ask softly, the hairs on my arms standing on end. My stomach twists even as I say those words.
“No, I don’t think you’re crazy, you big dummy. I think you’re overprotective and hypersensitive in this particular circumstance, given what you’ve been through in your life. I think your mind is playing tricks
on you.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I make a sound somewhere between a grunt and a howl. “I can take that shit from Josh, but not from you. I thought you understood what I’m trying to do here—I thought we were on the same page.”
She laughs. “It’s kinda hard to be on the same page when you don’t share your strategy with me.”
I make an exasperated sound. “Would you just let it rest already with that? Jesus. It was a good strategy and I was just trying to protect you. I thought you might try to hijack things—which you did, by the way.”
“And thank God I did. From where I was standing, your strategy looked pretty effing lame.”
“How would you know? You were peeking through a window. And for your information, it was an excellent strategy. Stacy was just about to give me her boss’s email address when you barged in.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, really. And then you waltzed in and... yes, you made my strategy look like child’s play compared to yours because you’re a fucking genius—damn, baby, you were magnificent, you know that? So sexy. You slayed me.” I shake it off. “But the point is I was just about to get the information I wanted when you came in and—surprise, surprise—hijacked everything with your never-ending bossiness.”
“You are so fucking hot, do you know that, Jonas Faraday?”
My cock tingles.
She smiles at me. “Tell me everything Stacy said before I came in.”
I tell her every last thing I can remember from our conversation.
Sarah’s wheels are turning. God help us all, she’s thinking.
“Well, then,” she finally says. “It’s obvious what we need to do. Let’s go talk to Oksana the Ukrainian in Las Vegas. I’m not gonna just sit around, letting my boyfriend follow me to law school every day, waiting for The Club to contact me. I’m gonna write a kick-ass report that’ll scare the bajeezus out of them and then I’m gonna hand-deliver it to Oksana the Ukrainian Pimpstress personally. Big risk, big reward, right, Jonas? Isn’t that what Professor Faraday preached to my contracts class?”
