by Malcom, Anne
He lifted me, and my legs wrapped around him without hesitation, I didn’t stop kissing him as he walked us into the room. The door slammed shut behind us.
One of his hands stayed on my ass, pressing my core into his cock. I bit his lip as he tore his hands through my hair, yanking it.
“You’re changing this back to how it was,” he demanded against my mouth.
“Nothing is how it was,” I breathed.
He threw me down on the bed.
Not softly.
It only turned me on more.
I lay on my back, while the man with the green eyes, the scar, the tattoos and the cut stared at me with a mixture of reverence and hunger. A mixture of Liam and Jagger.
“No. Everything is how it was,” he argued, shedding his tee and cut. He leaned down to rip off my sneakers, my jeans. My panties. All without ceremony.
Then he just stood there, staring at my pussy. Eating with his eyes. He leaned down, pressed his face into it. Inhaled.
I wasn’t even embarrassed with how intimate this was. There was no room for embarrassment with Liam.
“Everything important is exactly how it was,” he murmured, breath hot on my core. He spread me as if he were cataloging every inch of my anatomy with his eyes. Then he cataloged it with his tongue.
Then, after an orgasm, he fucked me. Still wearing his jeans. His boots. Then he fucked me again.
In the shower.
And then he put me to bed. In his arms.
We didn’t speak.
Because we both knew that at some point, before we left Castle Springs, there would be words, too many of them.
So we were silent.
Chapter Seventeen
“Are you sure you can’t stay for just one more dinner?” Mom asked. “Kent and Mary are coming for dinner tonight, they’ve been on vacation in Florida and I know they’d love to see you.”
I steeled myself not to flinch. I couldn’t. I had distanced myself from Liam’s parents too, the best I could. Though they accepted it, they never let me push them out of their lives. They never made me feel like I’d lost them as well as Liam.
But I couldn’t face them.
I could barely face myself.
I hated myself.
Even as I cried out into Liam’s neck this morning, clawing at his back in pleasure, in an attempt to tear the reaper from his skin.
I hated myself and I began to love him instead of hate him.
I couldn’t let myself love him when I didn’t even know the truth.
Which was why I slipped out of the motel room while he was showering. Left a note telling him I’d be back before my deadline. He’d have to believe me. He was all but prisoner here in this shitty and depressing room. I wanted to find satisfaction in that.
I didn’t.
First, I visited Kate and Archie—of course that’s what they’d named him—at the hospital. Checked in on my dad at the shop, and finally, when I didn’t have any other choice, I came home.
“I can’t, Mom, this deadline it’s...” I trailed off. “Important.”
She smiled. “Of course it is, darling.”
There was no venom in the words. It was my mom accepting me. She’d been forced to accept that her younger daughter was not going to marry well, become a housewife, head charities and Sunday at the country club.
I couldn’t help it. I walked over to her and hugged her, breathing in her perfume, the one that hadn’t changed since forever—because a lady always had a signature perfume—and let myself be comforted by someone that loved me for what I was, and for what I wasn’t.
She hugged me back without hesitation, knowing full well such things from me were rare.
Eventually, I let go.
Mom cupped my cheek in her hand regarding me with twinkling, smiling eyes. Despite the fact she was now a grandmother, with gray hair and wrinkles to help cement that fact, she was still incredibly beautiful. There was a timeless elegance etched within her that she’d always had.
I hadn’t seen her eyes twinkle like that when she looked at me, not in a long time. They were always clouded with worry, sadness, pain.
I hated that. Despised that my mother couldn’t look at me and be happy.
And I got it a little bit, Liam’s choice. He couldn’t face what would be tattooed into his parent’s eyes when they had to witness what he’d become. He’d pretend the best he could, but parents always saw pain in their children, no matter what they tried to hide.
Parents were meant to protect their children, good parents. And we both had good parents, when we were old enough to realize that, we understood we needed to protect them right back.
“You seem different,” Mom said. “Better.” Some of that old sadness flickered into this new happiness. “I would keep myself up at night worrying about you. That’s a mother’s job, of course. Especially when something hurts her baby like what happened to you. Especially when I knew there was not a thing on this earth I could do but just watch and hope you recovered.” She sucked in a breath. “And I know your heart. I know that it’s big, it’s special and it is precious. So I knew it wouldn’t fully recover. I understood why you chased all that war and violence and ugliness. I hated it, with every fiber of my being. Your father did too. But we understood.”
They did. As much as they tried to convince me otherwise, tried the best they could to support me.
“And when you came back, I let out some of my worry,” she said. “But I still harbored a lot. Because I could see that you didn’t know where you fit when you weren’t chasing ugliness and wars. I know you couldn’t fit into lives like your sister and brother did. Though I wished for that. Because both of them have beautiful lives.” She paused. “Well, your brother would if he’d open his eyes and stop divorcing his wives,” she muttered.
I smiled.
“All I want for you is beauty,” she whispered. “But life gave you ugly. So you can’t fit into beauty the same way. I was worried you’d never fit anywhere, not without Liam. But now, you seem like you’re more...at peace.”
I wanted to laugh. Almost as badly as I wanted to break down in tears. I wanted to seek solace in my mother. Get her counsel. Tell her the ugly truth that I was dragging around my home.
But I had to protect my mother.
And I had to protect Liam.
But I still wanted to laugh at the fact my mother, who I’d always been sure was a little bit psychic because of her ability to see things in me I never said out loud, said that I was at peace when I was in the middle of a war.
But she was right.
I never fit anywhere. The only places I did feel like I could breathe were warzones. My hometown was too quiet. Too loud.
Cities felt too stifling, busy, asinine.
I could never relate to lifestyles my friends picked.
If I was honest with myself, I had that same fear my mother held. I was terrified I’d be lost my whole life, just pretending to fit. Pretending to be happy. Pretending to be human.
I’d been doing a lot over the past few weeks. But I wasn’t pretending to be anything.
* * *
Before I left, I went to pick up some more clothes out of my old closet, considering I hadn’t exactly packed when I left the compound. And for some reason, I still couldn’t face going to the place that was meant to be my home. Most of the clothes in this closet were from summers that only existed in memories, sundresses from the girl before, colors, happiness.
But there were a handful of jeans and tees belonging to the woman I had been too, from when I’d lived here for a scant week before moving into my apartment.
I don’t even know what I was digging for when I found it.
I didn’t even realize it was still in there, banished at the back of a closet. Did I put it there? Did Mom? With some kind of hope I would recycle a wedding dress like I might be able to recycle my heart after having it thrown back at me with no one for it to belong to anymore.
Or did I put it
there? With some kind of hope of Liam coming back from the dead? In a different way than this, obviously. In the romance novel, beautiful kind of way, where he walks down the street wearing his uniform, sun shining at his back, future in his hands. I’d see him, be wearing a yellow sundress and I’d sprint to him, jump into his arms, he’d catch me.
Instead it was sixteen years later, and I saw him murder someone in an alley, uniform long gone, replaced with a leather cut and a motorcycle club.
Anger that I’d toyed with that first night came back with more fury than ever before. A need to destroy, to hurt, to annihilate came over me and a red film covered my vision as I snatched the white dress still covered in the dry cleaner’s plastic.
* * *
“I know it’s bad luck for a fiancé to see the wedding dress,” I said, not turning as his motorcycle boots thumped against the concrete. I expected him to come. He wasn’t anywhere to be found when I pulled up at the motel. It was getting close to the deadline. “But I figured we’d had all the bad luck in the world, and you’ve been legally declared dead so you’re not my fiancé anymore. But you stopped being that much before the US government recognized your death.”
I flicked on the lighter. My fingers smelled of gasoline.
“Caroline,” Liam choked out as he likely came to the realization of what I was about to do.
He would’ve stopped me if I hesitated.
If I hesitated setting fire to the beautiful, perfect dress I’d planned on marrying him in. If I paused before I let flames engulf the symbol of our past, of hope for us to have any kind of future that had happiness which had once been attached to that dress.
I didn’t hesitate. I threw it into the trash drum I’d dragged from the side of the property.
Heat hit my face the same time Liam snatched me back from the flames. His arms circled my chest as he yanked my back to his front.
I didn’t fight him.
I didn’t need to.
He let me go as the dress burned.
I had needed to hurt him. I wanted to turn him to ash like the fire was turning my dress to a blackened and ruined mess. I wanted to punish him for what he’d done to me, to his family.
But the second the flames caught, I lost it all. All that anger, all that need.
I didn’t want to punish him.
I needed to understand him.
The flames burned too loud for me to speak. They screamed all the things I’d thought I’d wanted them to say, all the accusations and hurt. They screamed until the fire burned itself out.
We both watched it.
It was only then that I found the nerve to look at him. Tears streamed down his face. Lucid agony.
I felt no victory in that.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn’t look at me, even after he tore his eyes away from the charred remains of the dress I’d planned on marrying him in. He half walked, half stumbled to the plastic chair situated outside our motel room.
I followed him, sitting down at the one beside it.
It was sticky.
That didn’t much matter.
I wanted to give him a reprieve. A breath. I didn’t want to hurt him anymore, didn’t want to face those tears trailing down a face already painted, etched with pain.
But I didn’t get a reprieve.
Not in a decade.
And I needed one. I had to have one.
In the form of the truth.
No matter how ugly.
Because the ugly truth was better than all the pretty lies in the world.
“I need to know now,” I said, staring at the murky water of the hotel pool. Looking at the faded and rickety sun loungers, looking at the unattractiveness of our present, maybe I could weather the ugly past here. “I need to know how you came to the conclusion that making everyone believe you were dead was the right decision.” I didn’t look at him. “What was the pitch, the contract?”
He looked me square in the face. “Peaches, the devil doesn’t have a contract. And that’s what it was, that split-second decision made out of shame, cowardice, a misplaced sense of bravery or love, that was me signing whatever was leftover of my soul to the devil.”
I swallowed ash.
It didn’t come from the fire.
It came from the pit.
“I don’t even really know how it happened,” he said, continuing. “Someone fucked up, that much was obvious. But you would not believe the number of fuckups in times of combat.” He paused abruptly. “Or maybe you would, maybe you’ve seen it.”
I nodded, though his words weren’t exactly a question.
“Early on, I kind of fell into a branch of the army that I never planned on seeing. Had a Commander that either liked me or hated me, still to this day can’t decide which one it was for putting me on that team. We were on a mission top secret, total black ops, doing shit we were not meant to be doing, in places we were not meant to be. If we got caught, our commander in chief had plausible deniability. We were told that going in, we knew it. What we were doing would never be sanctioned by the US government. Officially.”
I nodded again. Through my years reporting in times of war, I knew there was a lot the public didn’t know. It was a lot the public didn’t want to know. We wanted plausible deniability too.
“Mission went bad. Either we were fed bad intel or we hit bad luck,” he continued. “War is just a series of bad luck and near misses.” His eyes went glassy, far away. “Everyone died. Everyone apart from me. Still don’t know why they decided to take me prisoner. Minds of men are unstable in times like that. Maybe they thought I was worth something, maybe they thought I knew somethin’.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know shit, and what I did know, I didn’t tell them. And I thought I was worth somethin’, for the longest time.” He looked at me, and I cut my palms with my nails once more. “I thought I was worth something, not because of who I was in the war, it was because of who I was at home. It was because of the promises I made to the girl I loved.” His words were knives, bullets, every sharp object that could draw blood.
He didn’t stop drawing blood. “But there was only so long I could hold onto that. I was already questioning my worth when they took me. I’d already done things that changed me. That took me further away from the man I wanted to be for you,” he said. “But with everything they were doing to me, I still was determined to come home to you. That’s what got me out. Because no way in fuck was it strength on my part. I was half starved, fully beaten, nearer to death than I had the right to be without actually dying. But I got out, some way.”
His eyes touched the smoking barrel that contained my wedding dress, contained our other life.
“The Devil takes care of his disciples, I guess,” he muttered. “Was wandering around the desert when patrols found me. That there was the one bit of good luck I encountered in war.” He laughed. “If we can call it that. By the time they got me back to base, airlifted me to a hospital in Germany and woke me out of the coma I was in, I didn’t know my own name. The fuckers had taken my dog tags, my face was a mess and I wasn’t awake to tell anyone who the fuck I was. I didn’t want to know who I was. Because I knew whoever I was, I’d done something bad. I’d become something bad. I could just fuckin’ feel it. And I couldn’t face it. Sure as shit couldn’t face myself in a mirror. So I forced myself not to remember. Until I forced myself to.”
He paused to reach into his pocket, put a smoke in his mouth and light it. Like he needed the comforting inhale of death to get him through the story.
“By the time I could tell them, uniformed officers had already come to my parents’ door tellin’ them their son was dead,” he said. “And it wasn’t a lie. But my superiors were willing to rectify that fuckup. But they gave me another choice, not because of concern for me, but for their image. I was the soldier that had been on a mission that wasn’t meant to exist, and woke up someone who didn’t.”
He inhaled and exhaled twice before he kept going.
> “I was a liability. It was only in that split second that I made the decision to stay dead. It was not calculated, planned. It came from the core of me, the core that had turned rotten, ugly. And I made that decision, because of who I was to Uncle Sam, who I wasn’t meant to be, they let me. They preferred it that way. They turned a blind eye to me doin’ that, like the way they turned blind eyes to a lot of shit.”
I knew that too. Because I worked for media that was meant to be all about the truth, but they were owned by people who wanted the truth to be relative. So the media turned blind eyes to a lot of shit too.
“It was easier for them for me to be dead,” he rasped, inhaling. “Easier for me too. I wandered around as a dead man for a long time.”
I looked down at my hands as he stopped speaking. They were stained black with ash.
“Your face,” I whispered. “They did that?”
He nodded once. “They got frustrated when I didn’t talk. I suppose they considered themselves masters of such things. They hated me. I don’t know why they didn’t just kill me. But they wanted to destroy me first, I guessed.”
His hand went up to his face.
“They made me watch.”
I flinched.
I wanted to offer him comfort.
I wanted to show him what my family showed me today. Hope. But I couldn’t. Not yet.
“I don’t know what broke me more, burying you, or having to come to the realization that I didn’t lose you to death, but to abandonment,” I admitted, still trying to hurt him, prod at those open wounds he’d just uncovered.
“I didn’t abandon you,” he hissed, face hardening. “I fucking saved you.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed. “You’re the hero of this story.”
He didn’t look at me.
“Met a guy in Iraq,” he said instead of arguing. “He’d been over there much longer than me. He was a badass. Best at what he did. Everyone looked up to him. Not just ‘cause of how brutal he was in battle, but how rational he was. Fair. He was generally a good guy to be around. Had a wife and baby. Talked about them every day. Wasn’t a day where I didn’t see him lookin’ in wonder at the photos he carried around in his pocket. He wasn’t ashamed of it. He was proud as fuck of those two girls.” He ran his gaze over me slowly.
