“Lick my clit,” she told him. “Oh yes, lick it just like that.”
Only it wasn’t in a voice she’d ever heard before. It was breathy and desperate and so horny. Christ, she had no idea she could be this horny—and better yet, he sounded the same. He wanted her to suck harder and press against him more firmly.
“Rub yourself all over my face,” he said, and so she did. She did without thinking twice about it. She opened her legs wider and rocked her hips, and when that wasn’t enough she used her hand. She spread her slippery lips with two urgent fingers, wanting more, wanting him to lick at her faster and more deeply—anything, just anything to get more of this sensation.
It was just like the first time, almost too intense to bear. The buzz of it seemed to set her teeth on edge and dim the world around its edges, but somehow she couldn’t get enough. Her orgasm rose and fell through her body like a tidal wave, and still she wanted to swim through this glorious ocean. He flooded her mouth with his come, and still, and still.
Her first words to him when her breathing calmed enough to speak and he gathered himself enough to sit up were more please.
And he gave it to her. He laughed, of course. But he gave it to her. It occurred to her as he drew her into his arms that he would always give it to her. That she just had to ask and it would be hers. She could see it in his eyes as he took her—first slowly, tenderly, and then with more urgency once he realized.
Urgency was what she needed.
Urgency was what she liked. She didn’t care about bruises or being hurt. She only wanted that sweet ache again—the one that happened when he really fucked without thinking. When he grabbed her hips and grunted and let her have what she knew he longed for too. He longed to lose himself in her, she was sure. Passionate sex wasn’t enough. Only handfuls of her hair and demands he didn’t want to make and falling all the way into her was enough.
Or at least, that was how it felt to her.
Like falling into someone and never wanting to come back out. When he grabbed her, she grabbed him back. When he told her to turn so he could fuck her like that she was already moving before the words were out. And when he gasped out that it felt amazing—to rut like that against her, holding her hips and her hair and feeling her back arch to take more of him—he was only echoing all the things she wanted to say.
It was unbelievable, the difference it made to be taken in that way. Not just because of the shift toward something more greedy and grasping and animalistic, but in the sheer physical sensation of it. The feel of his cock rubbing so insistently over that good, good place inside her...one of his hands pressing between her legs at the same time...
It was barely a minute of this bliss before orgasm pushed and shoved through her. And oh God, did it push and shove. She tried to moan, but her teeth were so tightly clamped together she couldn’t manage it. Instead she just had to hold on as he wrenched her in two.
Then patiently put her back together again. Oh he so patiently put her back together again. As soon as the insane, impossible pleasure was done, he turned her and spread her out on the bed. He cupped her face in his hands. He said her name, so sweet and wondering she had to believe. How could she not? They had lost themselves in each other, and come through to the other side. They had done all those things without shame or worry, and opened up to each other in ways she never thought she could. They could do this, they could really do this. He could be Bernie and she could be Alice and they could live happily ever after, they could. She was sure of it...
And then she went downstairs to get a drink of water, still basking in the afterglow, and saw the shadow just outside the door. She heard an unfamiliar voice calling through it. Holden Stark, this someone called, in that proprietary way of all paparazzi. As if they knew him, as if they were friends. She wanted to shout at them— That’s not even who he is, he’s not really Holden. But of course that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that as soon as he saw her, as soon as he took her picture...
She would not be Alice.
* * * * *
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there when he finally came down to find her. It seemed like just a few moments, though she knew it couldn’t have been. Her leg was aching from holding it in one place for so long, and even if it hadn’t been, there were other clues. The man was gone, for a start. He’d grown tired of banging and hollering through her door at nothing—either that or he’d seen her through the frosted glass and gotten scared.
Normal people didn’t freeze like this. They didn’t act as though life was a big kid’s game, and if they only stood still no one could tag them. No one could say, Hey, Enid, you’re it. You’ve been caught. Now you have to stand by the wall and close your eyes and try to catch all of us.
Now it’s your turn, Enid.
She didn’t want it to be her turn. Was it so bad to not want it to be her turn? It didn’t seem like too much to ask—to just have this, to just go this far, to not have to say anything more. To be Alice, instead of Enid. That wasn’t so bad, was it? She’d paid so much already. It didn’t seem fair to have to pay more.
But when she turned and looked at him, she knew this extra cost was there. He didn’t seem concerned, as she might have hoped. He seemed confused. He seemed like he already had some idea, though she wasn’t sure how. The man hadn’t said her real name—not yet at least. And there were no other signs.
She was sure there weren’t, until she put a hand up to her face.
Her face was wet. Tears were running down her cheeks in great rivers, though she hadn’t felt it happen. She didn’t even know she was shaking until his voice suddenly stopped being all far away. The roar that seemed to be muffling him died down just long enough for him to ask why she was shuddering like that.
And then it rose again, louder than before.
She could hear what it was now. She could hear that strange high-pitched whine in the background of that sound—like a note of panic beneath the thunder of a dragon’s growl. She could see the sidings start to peel away, as though they’d never really been a part of the plane at all. They’d only stayed on because they’d willed it.
Now they did not will it.
They flew off, to the far-off land they lived in.
“Alice,” he was saying. “Alice, can you hear me?”
But how could she answer? She was not Alice.
He must have been talking to someone else.
“Alice, you’re scaring me, honey. What’s wrong? Who was at the door? If it’s someone from your past, you don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of it, okay? You understand that, don’t you? I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Oh, he thought she was Sarah in Sleeping with the Enemy. That was what he believed—maybe that was what he’d always believed. He’d imagined a terrible boyfriend for her, from whom she was running. A terrible man who had hurt her, and that he would now protect her from. And he would have succeeded, of that she had no doubt. He would have wrapped her in his big, strong arms and sheltered her from all harm, and eventually killed her tormentor in a perfectly manly way.
But he could not kill this one.
This one could not be killed.
God knows, she’d tried.
“I am the person from my past.”
“What did you...I don’t...”
“I am the person from my past. It’s me you’re talking about. I’m the thing that will come back to haunt me—or at least I will be, if more photographers come here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Al—”
“My name isn’t Al.”
“Alice then. Alice, I thought—”
“My name isn’t Alice, either. It isn’t Alice at all. I changed it to Alice, because being Alice is easier, okay? Being Alice is better. I like her more than I liked that other girl I was—in fact I like her so much I don’t think I can bear to go back.”
She didn’t like the way her voice was rising and rising with each word, but there was
nothing to be done about it. Her throat was so full of tears and feelings and other foreign things that she had to strain just to keep talking. And then there was the roar to contend with. Oh God, the roar was so loud now. She had to shout in this thin, high way just to hear herself over it.
Much to his apparent consternation.
“Okay, okay, hey it’s okay. You don’t have to go back, all right? I get it, I get it—no matter what the reason for wanting to be someone else, I get it. I want to be someone else too, remember? And even if your reasons are nightmarish, I don’t care. I’m here for you to be who you need to be, honey I—”
“Oh please don’t say any more!”
“But I...I don’t...”
“Don’t say any more, don’t be understanding. That just makes it worse!”
“How? How in God’s name does that make it worse?”
“Because it doesn’t matter, Bernie. It doesn’t fucking matter how understanding you are. It’s torture to know how understanding you’re being. How good you are, how kind, how loving. And all of it irrelevant...all of it meaningless. At the end of all of that some photographer will just take my picture and I’ll be Enid again. That’s the real problem. You can walk a thousand miles for me and at the end I’ll still be Enid. I’ll still be the girl who survived—that’s what they’ll say. They did it before and it was unbearable, it was unbearable. I can’t go back to that. I don’t want to be the girl who survived. Who would want to be the one who survived?”
He was silent then, for a little while. He didn’t need to be, however. She could still hear what was happening inside his head. She could see it in the way his eyes suddenly seemed to be staring at something else—something far-off and frightening. It was there in the way his whole body sagged just a little, like a weight had been put in his shoulders. Like her weight had been put on his shoulders.
He was figuring it out.
He was figuring it out, before she’d even had a chance to properly say. She’d somehow spilled it all in the middle of that big wrenching rant—or at least, she’d spilled enough. Apparently, those few crumbs were all it took to reveal the truth...though she should have known.
Everyone knew. Everyone knew.
That was the problem—everyone knew.
Everyone had heard her name, including him.
“Are you...are you Enid Kazinski?
Now the whine was higher than the roar.
Probably because it was coming from her.
“My God, you are. You’re Enid Kazinski.”
“Don’t say any more. It’s hurting me. Don’t.”
“You’re the sole survivor of Flight 359. The girl who walked through fire—that’s you? All this time, that was you? That can’t be you.”
“Let’s pretend it isn’t—just for five more minutes. Can’t we pretend?”
“Honey, I can’t. I can’t, oh God, you let me go on like this. You let me go on about myself and my stupid problems—you’ve spent all this time taking care of me. You’re the sole survivor of a fucking plane crash and you let me complain about my fucking movie star problems. Why did you let me do that? Why did I do that? Jesus, I wish I hadn’t done that, baby. I’m so sorry.”
He held out his hands to her but she would not take them.
She would not, not ever.
“No, no no no—you take that back. You don’t say that to me. I don’t want you to be sorry. Don’t you ever be sorry for me. Goddamn, Holden, I don’t want fucking sorrys, don’t you get it? That’s the whole point. I want to be the one who cares. I want to be the one who heals. I don’t want to be fucking broken anymore. I don’t want you to look at me with those sad fucking moo eyes like I’m so pathetic. Go look at someone else. Go look at the other three hundred and twelve passengers who died instead of me.”
She was really crying now, and it was awful, it was awful.
But somehow she couldn’t seem to stop. It all just kept coming, one terrible thing after another. He might as well know it all now, she thought, though that hardly helped. Nothing could help her now.
“Why did they die instead of me? I don’t understand. There was a doctor on there who was close to inventing a cure for cancer. A cure for cancer! And I know...I know there was an opera singer too. I looked her up—her name was Maria Entilles. She could do all the notes, she could do the whole scale, she was amazing. I’m not amazing. I can’t even leave my house, in case everyone looks at me like you’re looking at me now.”
“It’s just the shock, honey. It’s the shock, that’s all. It’ll fade.”
“It won’t fade. It never fades. No matter how long I go it doesn’t go away. I thought everyone had forgotten once, sometime after it happened. But then this woman saw me in the grocery store and...and...I just don’t want it to be like that anymore. I want to be normal. I want to be Alice Evans.”
“But that’s who you are to me. I promise, that’s who you are.”
“Not anymore. Now you’ll always see something else instead.”
“I won’t. I won’t. Soon you’ll see. I won’t.”
“And if you don’t? If you just go on believing I’m Alice—if in time you can accept that and the pity leaves your expression...what then? What happens to us then? Do you really think we can be a normal couple? We’re not a normal couple now. I’m so fucked-up I don’t even think I could write an essay about what a normal couple is, let alone be a part of one. I can never be a part of one.”
“You don’t mean that.”
She didn’t entirely, but how could she say now?
It felt so real when she said the words aloud. Everything seemed logical and right, as if she’d just found the pieces to an impossible puzzle and finally made them fit. There was just one piece left, really. One practical point to make.
“No, I don’t. But I mean this—I don’t want to be a part of one with you. I’m only making things worse for you, I know I am. I’m just digging you in deeper—so deep that one day you’ll wake up and wonder how you found yourself in this fucking abyss. This fucking codependent, dysfunctional mess.”
“Is that really what you think we are?”
“Yes. Yes. I do. I wish I didn’t but I do.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have a choice,” she said, then did the worst possible thing she could, a thing she knew she would regret always. They would never come back from this. Once she’d done it that was it, but she went ahead anyway.
She opened the door.
“Goodbye, Holden,” she said.
While in her head her real words sang.
Goodbye, Bernie, my love, my only love.
Chapter Twelve
This time there were no beautiful letters or carefully put together packages. Of course there weren’t. She’d exploded all over him like a nuclear bomb. People who exploded did not get declarations of love. They got a long, aching silence and then nothing, followed by some snide comment in an interview a few months from now.
Yeah, I thought she was cool, he’d probably say. But then it turned out she was an ungrateful, lying maniac who threw my wonderful gesture right back in my face.
Though even as she was imagining the words, she knew how unlike him they sounded. He would never be so indiscreet. He would never talk about her like that. He wasn’t that kind of man, no matter how hard she tried to make him be in her head. He’s probably laughing with his posse about me in some strip joint, she thought, and then wept into her hand. She wept not because it was likely to be true.
But because she knew it wasn’t.
He was a good man. He was such a good man. He was too good for the likes of her, really. He deserved someone better, someone who didn’t hope for beautiful letters again, but instead thought of sending ones to him. She knew he did, the moment she saw him on some late-night talk show.
He didn’t have to say. The sight of him was enough—like an electric shock amidst the numbing flicker of the stuff she was channel-surfing through. It lit
her up, though she tried not to let it. She tried to pretend he just looked like Holden Stark, instead of the man she loved. He was a distant thing again, a once-was crush.
It was no use, however.
He didn’t even look like Holden under the bright studio lights. He looked like Bernie, he talked like Bernie, and finally he said things that Bernie would say. She had turned him away, but he still said them. I met the love of my life, he said, while she did her best to contain the wave of feeling rising inside her. She put a fist to her mouth, as though she could squeeze the tears back.
But they came anyway. They pushed against the press of her hand and forced their way past her tightly closed eyelids. She told herself they were stupid, that he didn’t mean her, that this was all a mistake. Yet still they came. They made rivers down her face and forced her chest to hitch in this terrible, grief-stricken way.
And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
He was still saying things. Each sentence was steadily worse than the last, until finally the interviewer asked him, So when are we going to meet this lady and he replied with the worst possible thing he could have. Worse than, Oh I’m taking a camera crew to her tomorrow! Worse than, Her name is Enid Kazinski. Worse than anything she could have thought of had she lived to be a thousand.
“No, that can’t happen. She doesn’t want anything to do with this kind of thing, you know? I think this kind of thing would hurt her. I think I hurt her, just being who I am. Wanting more from her, thinking she could just accept stuff like this. Hell, I can barely accept stuff like this. I don’t know why...I don’t know why I ever thought it would be easy for her. And I’m sorry for that,” he said.
All of which was insane enough on its own. The interviewer glanced at the camera, as though to ask some unseen presence if this was okay. If this was normal, she thought, because it most certainly wasn’t. During his last interview she’d seen him use the word fun three times in one sentence. He usually had the bored look of a factory worker who does nothing but repeat the same task over and over again.
But he didn’t have it here. He wasn’t saying the right things here.
Beyond Repair (Deeper Than Desire) Page 16
