by JA Huss
“And then,” Kiera continues, “after the police left the next day and hauled her off to jail, you came up to me and said, ‘Make sure you go on Saturday. Because if you don’t you’ll be next.’”
“I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt,” I say.
“And that’s when the suggestion box showed up,” Camille adds. “So… fuck it. I was scared. And we had to…” She glances over at Bennett. “We had to do our task on the cold, hard floor. So fuck it. If I was stuck in this stupid game, that was the last time I was going to do anything on the floor. So I asked for a couch.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - KIERA
Task.. It’s a small, four-letter word that is almost never used in a sexual way.
Except when one of us says it.
I hate that word. I’ve never written it in any of my books. Ever. Never uttered it out loud after my last night up in the tower. I hate it.
But here it is again.
Task.
Sofia gets up from her chair and sits down next to Camille, pulling her into a hug. Camille wilts like a too-hot flower, and allows herself to be embraced. They huddle together, entwined arms and crossed legs. One of them sniffles. Sofia pets Camille’s hair. Camille rests her head against Sofia’s shoulder, sighs deeply, then closes her eyes.
And not for the first time I feel jealous for who they are to each other. I picture them in New York City, in their separate but nearby penthouse apartments. How they probably bump into each other at the corner market or coffee shop. How they brunch on Mondays the way most people do on Sundays because they are writers. Authors. And authors do things like that. They have weird quirks, and live in bustling places where a story is born on every block, and collect other strange writer friends who relate to them.
They complain about word count together. They bitch about plot holes, and commiserate over characters they loved but now hate, and sigh over missed opportunities after publication.
It’s true I speak to them, but rarely on the phone and never in person. We bump into each other on Facebook a few times a week, but that’s just typing. Writing is what we do.
I don’t ever go to the city and meet up with them. It’s just too much bustle for me. I like my little cottage. I wish they all lived close by. Even Bennett. I’d even put up with Bennett at Monday brunch.
But they couldn’t get out of Essex fast enough. I left before graduation, but my home was a forty-five-minute ferry ride across the lake. Hell, I can see the damn school from my back yard and I bet, if I climbed up on my roof, I could see the tower.
I wonder if they think I’m weird for staying?
I lived in the main house for several years. And then I started fixing up the cottage, and my mother got sick, and… yeah.
Now I’m alone.
“They sent me a note,” Bennett says, breaking the spell of quiet.
“Who?” Hayes asks.
Bennett shrugs with his hands. His eyes catch mine, then pass over and rest on Connor. “Whoever.”
“What kind of note?” Camille asks.
“It was instructions about what to do if I wanted to get out. Like Emily and you guys.” He juts his chin first to me, then at Hayes.
“They told you to shoot me?”
“No,” Bennett says. But it comes like a moan. “No. They told me to rape you.”
I think the room gasps. Not us. We make no sound at all. But the room exhales something in the shockwave of Bennett’s revelation. Something leaves in that moment. Any leftover childhood innocence, perhaps. Any hope that this might all make sense one day is just… gone.
I look at Camille, picturing her in a new way. Picturing her first as the girl who asked for a couch because all she wanted was to get up off the cold floor, and then as the girl who almost became Bennett’s go-free card, but didn’t.
No wonder she was drunk when we got here.
We should all be drunk. We should all be a mess, like Emily. We should all be locked up in the fucking nuthouse after what happened to us.
But we aren’t, are we?
We are all successful, thriving, happy—as far as I can tell.
Just like they promised we would be.
Camille untangles herself from Sofia and re-tangles herself with Bennett. “You were so nice that night.”
He was, I realize, thinking back. Because I was there. I saw the whole thing. Was forced to write it all down in the book as it happened. He was slow, and never raised his voice above a whisper. It took all night to finish their task. All night lying on that cold, hard floor to convince Camille that they had to do this.
And me, my shoulder aching from the surgery I’d had just one week earlier. High on painkillers, sitting on the cold stone floor, leaning against the jagged stone wall, trying to balance the notebook on one bent leg because I couldn’t use my left hand. Scribbling…
Bennett draws in a deep, deep breath and when he lets it out he says, “I wanted there to be no misinterpretation. I wanted you to feel loved. I wanted to make sure you felt… I don’t know. Not good, because I know you didn’t feel good. You were scared to death. But I wanted you to know that I was being careful. Not for them, either. Not so they’d know my answer. But for you. Because if you were my partner in this nightmare, then fuck them. We were getting out together or not at all.”
Bennett’s place in my friend hierarchy just jumped about ten thousand levels at this admission.
“Sofia and I were up next,” Connor says, glancing at her. She offers him a small smile.
So by this time the room had a couch. I asked for a chair and blankets because I was cold too. I didn’t want to sit on that floor any more than Camille wanted to fuck on it. I think Bennett asked for the bed—or maybe that was just thrown in with my chair. Either way, by the time Sofia and Connor came to the tower it was partially furnished.
Camille definitely had it the worst, I decide.
Well, that’s not true. I did get shot my first time out.
“I got a note as well,” Sofia says in her soft, almost whisper-like voice.
“Shit,” Connor says, raking his fingers through his hair. They lock eyes for a few seconds and everyone can feel Connor’s fear over what that note said.
“It wasn’t about you,” Sofia admits.
“No? Who then?”
Her gaze shifts to me. She sighs. “They told me to make you…”
I wait for it, but she doesn’t finish. “Make me what?”
She swallows, closes her eyes, shakes her head.
“Sofia, spit it out,” Hayes says. “What did it say?”
“They told me to make Kiera join us.”
I furrow my brows. “And what did you get out of that? They were gonna let you go? Because…” I pause to look over at Hayes for some reason. I don’t know why, exactly. But I don’t want him to know what happened between Sofia, and Connor, and me.
Too late now, that little voice in my head sneers. It’s all written in the book.
Right.
“Because,” I continue, “I did join in and you guys still had to show up every month for your night.”
I don’t look at Hayes. I deliberately ignore him.
Sofia is still shaking her head. “No, it wasn’t a get-out deal. It was a let-you-live deal.”
I look at Connor, but he’s looking at Sofia. “What?” he says.
“Don’t you get it? They were going to kill her. And I really thought they would, Con. I did.” Her eyes meet mine again. “I’m not saying those things I said to you were fake, Kiera. I want you to know that. I mean, I didn’t really know you that first night, so maybe some of them were lies. But…”
She doesn’t finish.
Everyone goes silent again. We are stuck in some bizarre alternate reality. One where everything we thought was true isn’t. One where the one thing we all thought we had in common wasn’t even real.
Fake.
Everything about that year was fake.
I stand up.
“Where
are you going?” Connor asks, grabbing my wrist.
But I yank it away and walk over to the windows.
“Kiera,” Hayes says.
But I just shake my head and say, “I thought that was real. I thought I took one thing away from that horrible fucking year. I thought we were real.”
“We were real,” Sofia says.
“Fuck you,” I say, looking out at the trees and the houses that are, in reality, so close to this stupid mansion, but also worlds away.
“I had to. I thought they were gonna kill you. And you were still recovering from a fucking gunshot, Kiera. What else could I do?”
I spin around, angry. “You could’ve told me. I would’ve been fine if I knew. But you kept the lie going. You built on it, for fuck’s sake. You told me you loved me, Sofia. And so did you,” I say, snapping my attention to Connor. “And I believed you both.”
“Kiera,” Connor says. “Everything I ever said to you was real. I didn’t know Sofia was faking it.”
“I wasn’t faking it,” Sofia says, her voice uncharacteristically loud and harsh. “Not at the end.”
“Jesus Christ,” Bennett says. “Hold on here. You guys were having a threesome? The entire year?”
“Who wrote in the book?” Camille asks.
God, I can’t believe that just a few minutes ago I felt sorry for her. “I did,” I say, practically growling out the words.
“I want to read that,” Camille says, getting up and snatching the book off the couch next to Connor.
Hayes intercepts her. Snatches the book from her hands, and points his finger at her. “Don’t be an asshole, Camille. I’m warning you now.”
She laughs. “Oh, we both know you’re going to read those chapters, Hayes. You’ve always had a thing for Kiera. I bet it stings, doesn’t it? Knowing she was with them the entire time.”
“That’s enough,” Connor says, who is standing now, leaning into both their faces. “I’m the reader, remember?” He takes the book from Hayes and sits back down on the couch.
Camille smirks at me from across the room, does this little dance-y wiggle thing with her body—like a shrug, but sassier—then says, “I can’t wait to hear Connor narrate his part in all this,” and takes her seat next to Bennett.
“I think we should take a break and have dinner,” Hayes says, walking over to the phone and picking it up.
“Oh,” Camille cackles. “I bet you do need a break.”
Hayes ignores her, just tells whoever is at the other end of that line to bring dinner up and send up servants to set the table.
“We’re eating in here?” I ask.
There is a table, but it’s meant for looking over books, not dining.
“Emily is still out there in the house somewhere. So unless you want her to join us unexpectedly, yes. We’re eating in here.”
“Is there a menu?” Camille asks.
Hayes glares at her, but doesn’t answer.
“I’d like to use the restroom,” Sofia says. “Can you point me to it?”
“Any of those doors lead to a suite,” Hayes says, pointing around the room at four doors, two on either side of the library. “But use these two by the windows. Because the other ones have doors that lead out into the hallway and they’re locked from this side. I don’t want anyone taking unnecessary risks with Emily.”
Sofia shrugs, then walks over to the door I’m closest to, shoots me a look, and then disappears inside.
She wants me to follow her.
My first reaction is to shake my head in disbelief, but then… ya know what? Fine. Let’s do this. Let’s clear the air.
She leaves the door to the suite open after she enters, but I slam it closed behind me. She walks over to what I presume to be the bathroom and turns, looking at me from across the large, four-poster canopy bed. God, this room is pretentious.
“It wasn’t all lies. That closeness, that… whatever it was—”
“Whatever it was?” I ask, unable to believe she just said that. Then I huff out a laugh.
“You know what I’m talking about, OK? I’m just having trouble finding the right words.”
“Trouble finding words?” I laugh again. “You’re a fucking award-winning writer, Sofia. And you write some of the dirtiest erotica I’ve ever read on the side. You’re not having trouble finding words. You’ve having trouble thinking up lies.”
“You can believe that if you want, but that’s not how I feel. We were more than friends back then. My feelings for you and Connor were real. And most of them haven’t changed.”
“We weren’t friends,” I say. “We were never friends because we never had anything between us but a deal.”
“That’s not true,” she says. “We talk to each other all the time.”
“Online,” I spit.
“So what? It’s still a friendship. You live five hours away, Kiera. It’s not that easy to plan a Saturday night with someone in another state. And anyway, you’re happy up there in your little world.”
“Oh, you did not just—”
“You’ve never said a word about coming to visit me. You never asked me to come visit you. Friendship goes both ways, so if you’re feeling left out you might want to ask yourself what part you played in your own sad demise.”
“There’s the words,” I say. “Found ’em, I guess. Better write all this down so you can use it in your next book.”
“What?” She huffs. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you don’t read my books, but I read yours. And I’ve noticed over the years you quote me quite often.”
“I don’t see how I can quote you if I don’t read you. And so what? You’re butt-hurt because I don’t read you? I’m not into reading erotica.”
“No, you’re just into quoting me in conversation.”
“I don’t know—”
“Don’t insult me, Sofia. Like I said, I read your books. I know I’m your main character every single time.”
“Oh, my God.” She laughs, swiping hair away from her forehead. “For someone who wants to be left alone up in your stupid woods so you can shun society, you sure do have an inflated sense of self-importance when it comes to your influence over other people.”
“Is that right?” I glare at her. “You wrote this book, didn’t you?”
“Fuck you! I didn’t write that book. How would I even know what happened—”
“Obviously,” I cut her off, “you have the original book.”
“You’re the only one who ever saw that fucking book, Kiera.”
I give her one of those tight-lipped smiles. “You and I both know that’s not true. You always made Connor read our previous chapter out loud each week.”
She sighs and looks over her shoulder, wondering if anyone heard that. “What do you want?”
“You’re the one who wanted me to follow you in here. I should be asking you that question.”
“Fine,” she huffs. “I use you, OK? Is that what you want to hear? Feel good now? I model all my stupid female leads after you.”
“Why? Why do you do it?”
“You’re interesting, OK? I think you’re interesting.”
“No, why do you write erotica at all? It makes no sense.”
“It’s therapeutic for me. That’s why I do it.”
“Liar,” I say. “Such a liar. You write it because it sells. You wrote all that women’s lit bullshit hoping people would ‘get you’ and when no one bought it, the awards weren’t enough to fill up your giant ego and you got depressed. You’re no different than any other writer in that respect. So you figure, hey, I’ll write some erotica and then people will see my words, and gush on me in reviews, and I’ll feel good about myself again. And you do use my words! I find them in every single book!”
“Because you’re part of me, Kiera. And I’m part of you. I don’t steal your words, I just borrow parts of you when it’s appropriate.”
“Because you’ve always wanted to be me,” I snap. �
��You hate your stupid princess life, you hate that you never married, you hate that you had to share Connor in the tower—”
“Why are you being such a bitch? I’m standing here telling you my feelings were real. You’re just looking for reasons to hurt me.”
“Because… because… you hurt me first!”
We stare at each other for a few seconds and then we both laugh.
“You stupid whore,” Sofia says. “I’m sorry, OK? Stop being an Emily.”
I laugh again, even though it’s not appropriate.
“When you didn’t come for graduation I figured it was over. And…” She sighs. “That kinda hurt me, Kiera. You never said goodbye.”
“Because I wasn’t leaving you, dumbass. I was leaving Essex.”
“Well, you failed. OK? Because you did leave me and you live right across the goddamned lake from Essex. And I wish you lived in New York. Do you think that Camille and I just… what? Got over what happened and moved on? No. We miss you every week. Not a week goes by that we don’t sigh and say, ‘I wish Kiera was here with us.’”
“Now I know you’re lying.” But I say that softly. And it comes out sad. “Because maybe you do miss me, but Camille—”
“Camille does miss you. We both miss you. We think you stay away because you hate us. And you only talk to us online so we’ll help you market your books.”
I gasp. “Fuck you! I don’t care if you guys push my books! I just don’t like the city, OK? It makes me nervous. That place isn’t my home. Like it or not, where I live is where I belong. I can’t help that.”
We both sigh with frustration. Then, after a few awkward, silent seconds, Sofia says, “It’s not…”
But she stops and I get impatient. “It’s not what?”
“I just… wouldn’t know what to do with you alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Without Connor. I’m… not into you that way, Kiera. So… OK. Maybe I’ve been avoiding you in real life because I didn’t want to have this conversation. I liked what we had. It was fun. And no matter what you believe now, I know I saved your life by following instructions and inviting you in. So when you got him all to yourself that last night I was so fucking jealous. Because I never got him without you. Even that one time we did get together without you, it was written in the book. It was dictated for us. You’re the only one who got something that wasn’t dictated!”
