by Pam Godwin
At her nod, he lifted the aquarium of tiaras and chucked it into the fire. The flames crackled and sparked, skittering red-hot embers across the ground. Metal and glass wouldn't disintegrate, but it would certainly fuse into an unrecoverable blob.
A glance over his shoulder rewarded him with a view more magnificent than a million fires, her smile as radiant as the iridescent glow of gems melting in her tiaras.
He reached for the garbage bag he'd sneaked outside, her words floating through his head.
It's just stuff attached to broken memories. Burning it will inspire new ones to grow.
By stuff, she'd meant her crowns, but he had memories, too. He removed the contents, her OhmyGod rippling the air as he fed the blaze with dolls. Two plastic bodies, brown hair, and a red-checkered dress vanished behind a black fog of smoke. It wasn't a cremation. It was simply the end of a life that hadn't been a life at all.
Looping his thumbs in his front pockets, he strode toward her with an easy, unhurried gait. Hope lightened his chest. It had been there for a while, but it strengthened as he took in the promise sparkling in her eyes.
Five days later, Van waited in the kitchen, chewing the ever-loving fuck out of a toothpick. He tossed it in the waste-bin and yanked at the sleeve of his suit. Come on, Amber.
That morning, he'd bought makeup, hairstyling crap, a black dress, and heels. And she'd been holed up in the bathroom with that shit for an hour. They needed to leave immediately to arrive at the restaurant on time.
Deep breath. Fuck, he was wound tight. But he wouldn't rush her.
Still, he hoped she was held up by a curling iron and not a change of heart. How could he not be hopeful about what the night could bring? It could crash through the agoraphobia as well as open a door with Livana.
Or it could end in tearful hyperventilation.
The bathroom door opened with a whoosh that sounded like the air rushing from his lungs. Sweet mother of sin, he'd told her cosmetics would defile the natural perfection of her face, but as she lingered in the doorway, shoulders back, arms at her sides, one long leg bent before the other, he stood tongue-tied and stupefied.
The raw, disheveled knockout he drooled over every waking hour had transformed into an untouchable, world-class beauty queen. It was impossible to keep his cock down while admiring her tight body wrapped in hip-hugging silk. Dark hair curled around her face and chest. Deep crimson painted her lips, and her thick lashes went on forever, highlighting her shining eyes.
Toned legs flaunted delectable flesh from thigh to ankle, her feet arched in the black fuck-me heels he hadn't been able to pass up at the boutique, and her smile... Fuck him.
He wanted to lick along the curves of her tits rising above the low neckline and bite the taut nipples pressing against the silk. The view spoiled him, and there wasn't a man on earth who deserved to look at her. “Let's stay home.” Christ, he needed to be inside of her.
The smile gracing those red lips widened. “You look good, too, Van.” Her gaze roamed his body, turning the stiffness in his pants into a throbbing monster.
Her nostrils flared as if she were trying to smell him from across the room. “So incredibly handsome. Wish I had panties.” She twisted to look at her ass. “When I sit down, I'm going to leave a wet spot.”
Fuck it. A quickie against the wall wouldn't make them too late. He strode toward her and grabbed her hips, leaning in to take her mouth.
His lips crashed into her halting palm. “No kissing.” She pinched his chin. “You'll smudge the makeup.”
Then she definitely wouldn't be down with what he had in mind. He adjusted his erection and straightened his tie. “We better go or we won't be going at all.”
Her easy playfulness vanished instantly, and she cast a fearful look at the front door.
Even a non-agoraphobe would've approached this meeting with a healthy amount of nervousness. Hell, his stomach would be all kinds of fucked up by the time they arrived. With any luck, she would be too anxious about being outside to muster any additional worries about impressing his former slaves. She had enough to focus on.
“Hey.” He cupped her face, turning her eyes to him. “I parked the Mustang right outside the door. Just like we practiced.”
She nodded with an expression so fearfully hopeful, it hurt to see it. They'd driven to the end of the property every day for the past week. Yesterday was the first day she hadn't fainted during the two-minute drive.
He gripped her hand and led her calmly to the front door. “Your steps are mine, Amber. I won't leave your side.”
If they made it out of the driveway, it would be her first time off the property since he'd abducted her two months ago.
Her breath stuttered as they hit the porch. It was spastic by the time they reached the end of the driveway. He rolled to a stop and softened his voice with patience. “How are we doing?”
She popped her knuckles, her eyes squeezed shut, her chest jumping with shallow breaths. “Just keep...going. Don't stop.”
She'd told him once how strangers' eyes felt like loaded guns aimed at her head. She was about to face a firing squad, and she'd bravely demanded that he keep going.
He slid his hand around the back of her neck, beneath her hair, and squeezed. “I love you, you crazy woman.”
Her head nodded with a jerk, her smile quivering the corner of her mouth. “You, too,” she whispered. “Now drive.”
He gripped the wheel and began the painful trek toward downtown Austin.
Thirty minutes later, he parked the car in front of a quaint Italian restaurant, his stomach in knots. The sign read No Parking, but he didn’t give a fuck. The tension in the car had been rolling off her since they'd left, and the combustion was three, maybe four breaths away.
Releasing their seat belts, he twisted toward her and grabbed her ice-cold face. “Amber? Talk to me.”
Her eyes were closed. They had been the duration of the drive. Another wave of tension vibrated off of her. She opened her mouth to speak, and her voice cut off with the wheeze of her lungs.
Goddammit, she wasn't ready for this. But if he drove her home without letting her try, it would steal the decision from her. “Look how far you've come. You can do this, sweetheart.”
Blindly, her hand fumbled for the door handle. It shook so badly, she wouldn't be able to pull the latch even if she found it.
“I'm going to get out and open your door for you.”
She answered with a heart-breaking sob, but he didn't miss the slight nod of her head. With heart-racing strides, he rounded the car in the three seconds. But he was too late.
When he opened the door, the look on her face lanced a new scar, right through his heart. Her eyes were wide and terrified and locked on the restaurant's glass windows, on the patrons inside. Makeup streaked her cheeks, marking the paths of her tears, her complexion ghostly white. Her fingernails dug so deeply into her palms, when he pried them loose, blood smeared over the broken skin.
“I can't...I can't...I can't...” she choked between wheezing breaths.
His blood heated, and his chest tightened. She’d wanted to do this, wanted to be pushed. Well, not like this. No goddamned way. He'd have to carry her inside, and her humiliation from that alone would only cause her more suffering.
He kissed her gasping mouth, hard and angrily, and slammed the door. He'd brought this pain on her. He’d fucking failed her.
On his sprint back to the driver's side, he glanced through the restaurant window. Liv and Joshua sat in a booth in the back corner, heads bowed over a shared menu. His gait slowed, but only for a second. There'd be another time, another chance. And if not, fuck them. He'd find different way, one that didn't destroy Amber.
He climbed behind the wheel and found her slumped over her lap, her head crooked in an awkward angle. The backs of his eyes burned as he reclined her seat back and positioned her limp body beneath the seatbelt. Then he drove his broken doll home.
Hope had a way of leading a gu
y on, offering tantalizing glimpses of possibilities and enticing him to the edge of belief. But it didn't put out. Van had been on the giving end of such things throughout his criminal history, which made it even more harrowing to watch Amber succumb to hope's cruel disappointment.
A month had passed since the drive to the restaurant, and she'd regressed, immediately and spectacularly.
“Get up.” He stood over the bed where she spent the majority of the day, every day.
She rolled to her back, blinking heavy eyelids, and held out her arms. “Make love to me.” She dropped her arms and looked away. “Please?”
His body felt cold, his heart weighted down with the ache it had been carrying for too damned long. Maybe her devastation was partly due to her disappointment in herself. But he knew the bigger part was in her inaccurate belief that she'd disappointed him.
He yanked back the sheets and let his weight press down on her nude body. He could never deny her, not even now in her numb state of existence. With a hand on her face, he held her eyes and gave her the words he repeated daily. “I love you, I want you, and I will never ever be disappointed in you.”
She kissed him. Her usual response, maybe some kind of coping mechanism.
He matched her licks and nibbles then took over, leading her, controlling this. It was what she wanted and what he needed. He released his belt and opened his jeans, her hands already on his cock, stroking it to readiness.
As he worked himself into her wet heat, her eyes glowed. These were the only moments when he saw that light, the only way he seemed to be able to bring her out of her head. Not the belt nor the whip nor his restraints affected her. Not even when he hauled her outside every night. She'd lost interest in everything but him. And his cock.
It wasn't healthy, and it didn't help her. He was a toxin, polluting her mind and making her worse. If he let this go on, he would destroy her.
He brought her to climax, and as he followed her over the brink of momentary bliss, her words rushed in, punching an agonizing hole through his heart.
You're the only person who has ever given enough of a shit about me to shove me out the door.
As he held her limp body in his arms, the vibrancy in her eyes dulled to blankness. She sank into the mattress, her heat pulling away, and a frigid void slipped between them. It was slow and subtle and perhaps unintentional, but her detachment strained and ripped every nerve-ending in his body.
God, he wanted her light back. He would ejaculate inside her over and over if it could fill her with life. But the sex was fleeting. If anything, she was colder and more despondent after they made love.
He wanted to argue that he loved her too much to shove her out the door. Truth was he loved her too much not to. Just like her behavior with the deliverymen, she was only getting by without getting better.
And he’d become another Zachary Kaufman.
Her independence was the key to unlocking the windows and returning the light. Without it, there was no life.
That night, he made the most painful decision he'd ever made. He drugged her dinner, packed up her things, and gave her back her self-sufficiency. He returned her to her house and reinstated her life, a better life, without him.
For hours, he lingered in her bed, wrapped around her unconscious body, immobilized by the gravity of his decision and struggling to breathe through the agony of it. Soon, he would have to rise from her side and give her the only thing he had to offer—life itself.
Death seemed easier than this godawful burden of losing her. But she had a hell of a fight ahead of her, and if she could suffer through that, then he could endure the loneliness that awaited him.
He couldn’t stop the tears burning his eyes as he pressed his lips against her unresponsive mouth. He was numb to the violent tremors wobbling his steps as he staggered down the hall without turning around. He squeezed his eyes shut as he stumbled into the garage, the excruciating pain in his chest eclipsing the crash of the concrete floor against his knees.
He left the door opener on the shelf and forced his legs into the minivan. The he backed it onto the driveway and climbed out. Shades covered every window on Liv’s house, blatantly shutting him out. Not that he was in any state to give a fuck.
He reached inside Amber’s garage and pressed the door button on the wall. His chest burned and his throat ached as he stepped back and wrapped his arms around himself to keep from stopping the doors’ descent.
When the garage doors sealed shut, the silent finality of it ripped out his insides and beckoned the enclosing darkness with the sound of his sobs.
Amber woke with an ear-ringing headache. She hadn't even opened her eyes and her body already ached with grief, sagging into the mattress like a useless weight. She’d gone to bed hating herself for what she was doing to Van, and just like every other night, sleep hadn’t absolved her.
Her hand slapped over the mattress, searching for the warmth of Van's skin, his strength, their connection. Her fingers collided with papers.
She jerked up on her elbows and rubbed her eyes, blinking against the illumination of a nearby lamp. She rubbed and blinked again.
White walls bled into a shadeless window, glowing with sunlight. Her mouth dried as she soaked in the white carpet, white quilt, the duffel bags by the door... Oh God, her bedroom.
Dread iced through her veins, curling frigid fingers around her throat. The house should've been foreclosed, empty, gone. And where the hell were the shades? She sucked in a shaky breath and shouted, “Van? Van, where are you?”
She scrambled off the bed and raised trembling fingers to her lips, straining to hear his footsteps.
The A/C unit hummed outside the window. The shower down the hall dripped. Plop-plip. Plop-plip. The water was on? What the fuck for?
Beside the lamp, the bedside clock glowed 6:19 AM. Electricity, too? Her heart stopped then went ballistic, tightening her skin and firing up her muscles.
She sprinted through the house, searching room by room for answers, for him. Not a single shade on the windows. The fridge and cabinets were filled with food. Food from the cabin. She opened the garage door and shivered at the dark, cavernous space. No Mustang. No Van.
Returning to the kitchen, she gripped the edge of the sink and looked up. The window and backyard stared back. Her heart froze, and she dropped to the floor, out of sight. Was he out there? Was he coming back?
Unbidden, his words came rushing in, stabbing through her heart.
I enslaved her for seven years because I was selfish. That's not love, Amber, which was why I never thought to free her.
“Noooooo.” A roar burst from her throat, heaving her chest and burning her eyes. That couldn't be it. This wasn't freedom. It was some kind of a mistake, a misunderstanding. Oh Jesus, she needed to talk to him.
She reached up to the counter with a blind hand, found her phone, and swiped through the contacts. No calls. No new numbers. She tossed it across the floor and stared at it, helplessly. She'd never seen him use a phone or e-mail. He probably didn't even have those things.
Because I don't exist.
Her heart rate accelerated. Where was the cabin located? Somewhere outside of Austin. With trees. Lots of trees. Fuck! How could she have never thought to ask?
Because she never intended to leave.
She slammed a fist against the cabinet, rattling the doors. The one and only time she'd traveled the route from the cabin while conscious, she'd kept her damned eyes closed.
Her breath caught. Were there papers on the bed? She ran back to the bedroom and crawled over the mattress. The sight of the folded letters turned and twisted her stomach. Her hand flew to her belly, massaging the anguish there, her fingers brushing cotton. She looked down at the cami and panties that covered her body.
Blood drained from her face, her cheeks numb. He'd dressed her and left her. A quiver gripped her chin. She rubbed it roughly away and gathered the papers.
They shook in her hands as she sat on her heels
and flipped through them. The first was a receipt for her mortgage. Zero balance, the house was paid off. A pang rippled through her chest.
Next were printouts of all her credit card statements and utility bills. Zero balances. The ache in her chest swelled to her throat.
The following letter showed an unfamiliar bank account in her name, the balance printed in bold font. $100,000. Enough to live on for years. Burning pinpricks hammered behind her eyes.
She choked, buckling over her knees. Sobs tumbled out, painful and wretched. Oh God, it hurt. He'd left her. Left her without shades on her windows. Left her with a secure and stable and financially-free life.
To free her.
She gritted her teeth, the papers crumpling in her fists. Stupid, stupid, stupid man. Why would she want any of this if she didn't have him?
She opened the last letter, a handwritten note scrawled with loose penmanship.
I will always love you, I will always want you, and I will never ever be disappointed in you. -Van
It was a good-bye. A fist-through-the-fucking-heart goodbye. The tears surged, hard and ugly and agonizing. She flung herself off the bed and staggered through the room with a helpless, rage-filled cry, her arms sweeping everything in her path. The lamp, the TV, and the duffel bags hit the walls and bounced along the floor, thumping and exploding.
Her vision blurred. Her legs crashed into furniture. Her teeth sawed her lips until blood coated her tongue. Her fingernails shredded and ripped in her attack on everything she could destroy.
At 8:27 AM, she sat on the floor with her back against the dresser. Her lungs burned, her cheeks cracked with drying tears, and her heart jabbed at her ribs with each thump of its sharp splintery edges.
“Well done, you crazy fucking bitch.” Her voice scratched her raw throat, but she deserved it. “First prize for world's ugliest temper tantrum. Yay.”
She took in the aftermath with little interest. Pillow stuffing covered the floor. Dents peppered the sheet rock. The small TV lay on its side with cracks spider-webbing over the screen.
