by Natasha West
‘Did you get that out of the bin?!’
‘Hold on a second...’
‘Why did you do that? It’s private!’
‘It’s a novel, not a diary.’
I was ready to throttle him.
‘You know full well what I mean! This is a massive invasion of privacy.’
Luc held up his hands.
‘Alright, yeah, I know I did wrong. My only defense is that I was curious about why you were so angry about it.’
I walked over and grabbed the pages.
‘That’s not much of a defense. I’m going to get rid of these right now! It might not be too late to catch the bin men.’
I headed toward the door. As an afterthought, I turned to Lucas.
‘Oh, and whatever you read in here, I want you to wipe it from your mind. I don’t ever want to know what’s in here, alright?’
He looked at me in astonishment.
‘Are you telling me you haven’t actually read it?’
‘That’s right. And I’ve got no intention of doing so.’
I turned again to leave and I heard a chair scrape. Lucas came bounding up to me.
‘Wait a sec, before you bin it, I think you should reconsider reading it.’
I paused.
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because I’ve been up all night and I just finished it and-’
‘You read the whole thing?’
I was amazed. Lucas wasn’t a reader.
‘Yeah. And I don’t want to give you any spoilers, so I really really think you should read it.’
‘No, I’m not interested. It’ll just make all this worse.’
Lucas grabbed me suddenly by the shoulders, giving me a deeply serious look. I almost dropped the pages. I was amazed at his intensity.
‘Stone! Seriously. I think you need to read it.’
I looked down at the book. It was like a movie monster that wouldn’t die, no matter what I tried. And now Lucas was demanding I read it. So I gave up. So be it, vampire. If a stake to the heart and sunlight can’t kill you, I suppose I’ll just have to accept my fate. I was going to read the book.
Chapter Twenty Five
I was driving home, exhausted. Not just from a long day or even a long week. But from a rapidly dissolving fury. I was experiencing what happens when you let go of an anger that has been driving you, making your decisions, pushing you onward. And now I was running on empty and I was tired. I had no idea how I was supposed to go on from here.
I pulled into my street and parked up in front of the house. Just as I turned the engine off, I glanced at my front garden to see a female figure sitting on the doorstep. I couldn’t tell who it was yet, but I was in no mood for whatever that person wanted from me.
I got out of the car and walked up my path to see a young woman smiling up at me.
‘Hello Julia.’
I was surprised. I really hadn’t expected to see her again.
‘Hello Georgia. How did you know where I live?’
She shrugged and stood. She was wearing short skirt and a low cut top, she looked dressed for an evening out. I wondered how she’d ended up here instead of one of her rich kid hang outs.
‘Wasn’t that hard.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Seriously? You’re not going to invite me in for a hot drink on a cold night?’
‘Georgia…’
I was about to tell her to get lost. But then I looked at her a little more carefully. Her usual cocky leer was present, but I thought I saw something else underneath it. The girl was sad. And she’d come to see me for some reason. I couldn’t refuse her. Still, I really wasn’t in the mood to coddle the girl. It was the wrong day for that.
I walked past her and unlocked the door, leaving it open for her.
I went to the kitchen but I went straight past the kettle. I headed for the cupboard, fishing out a bottle of vodka. Georgia appeared in the kitchen as I poured two shots.
‘Vodka OK with you? If it’s not, tough luck.’
She smiled and took the glass.
‘Works for me.’
I took a sip.
‘So, what do you want?’
‘What makes you think I want anything?’
I smiled bitterly.
‘Everybody wants something. We all want lots of things and we want them all the time.’
She smirked.
‘You’re not going to be all nice to me like last time?’
‘I was nice because I wanted something from you. And I was able to get it because I found the thing you wanted from me. Because that’s how things work.’
She stared at me for a second.
‘You’re just like my mother. Only honest.’
‘Yeah, I’m starting to get that.’
She paused and I could see in her eyes that she was gearing up to whatever she was really here for.
‘Did you tell her that I gave you info?’
So that was it. Georgia had been found out and she’d come for a pound of flesh.
‘No.’
‘Well, she figured it out.’
‘What happened?’
‘She just called me. She said I’d embarrassed the Murphy name, first with all the drinking and now this. I’m being sent to rehab, and when I come out, she’ll decided what to do with me.’
I shook my head. Alex really hadn’t learned a thing from her own family history. Poor Georgia, she was being isolated, just as her mother had been. But it wasn’t just Alex to blame for this. I’d played my part. And now Georgia was yet more wreckage, piling up on the Julia Hawke highway.
‘Do you think she’ll cut you off?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m sorry, Georgia.’
It was the second apology of the day and it was bitter in my mouth. I was truly worn-out with my own fuck ups.
‘She wasn’t angry. I don’t think she really cared. Maybe she’s even glad. She’s been waiting for me to really screw up, so she could finally shove me somewhere she doesn’t have to think about me. Somewhere I can’t embarrass her anymore.’
‘I didn’t mean for that to happen.’
‘If you’d known it would cause me all this trouble, would you have done anything differently?’
It was an interesting question. I would have liked to think it would have swayed me. But who knew? It was easy to paint yourself kindly in retrospect.
‘Honestly, I don’t know.’
She nodded, putting down her glass, and I thought she was going to leave.
But then her arm swung round, cracking me around the face with the flat of her palm. I clutched my cheek, shocked. Georgia stared insolently at me.
‘How did that feel? Did it hurt?’
And her hand flew out again. But this time I was prepared. I grabbed her hand before it could make contact with my face again.
‘Georgia! Stop it!’
‘No!’
And we began to struggle against each other. I had to hold both her wrists to stop her attacking me.
‘Come on!’ she screamed at me. ‘Stop me!’
‘Calm down!’ I shouted. But it was useless, she was like a wild animal. She was fighting my grip with everything she had. Her face was inches from mine as we fought and I saw in her eyes that some switch, long held in check, had flipped.
‘Come on, Julia! Why don’t you stop me?’
I was trying. I was holding her off with every reserve I had as she tried to hit me again, hoping she’d run out of steam eventually. But she couldn’t seem to stop. I began to see she was trying to get something else from me, something I didn’t understand.
‘Georgia, for Christ’s sakes, will you just calm down!’
‘No, I won’t! You’ll have to stop me! You’ll have to punish me!’
And there it was, exactly what she wanted.
I barely thought about it. I simply pushed her forcefully off, and spun her around. I yanked her skirt up sharply, and pulled her pant
ies down. I grabbed hold of a chair and sat on it, dragging Georgia - who had now stopped struggling - over my lap. Her creamy bare bottom was exposed and ready. Like a woman in a dream, I watched my hand come down on her left cheek, hard. She screamed, but she didn’t try to move. I brought my hand down again with a sharp crack.
‘Is this the punishment you want?’
I brought my hand down again harshly and I felt Georgia reach around herself. She began to touch herself between her legs.
‘Yes, please.’
Another crack.
‘Why?’
Her hand began to pump furiously.
‘Because I’ve been bad.’
Smack, smack. Georgia began to moan as she started to climax. Her bottom was turning a deep red.
‘Do you deserve this?’ I demanded.
‘Yes, I do’ she moaned. ‘I really, really do.’
‘Then I want you to thank me for every slap I give you.’
Smack.
‘Thank you.’
Smack.
‘Thank you!’
Smack.
‘THANK YOU!’ she screamed.
Georgia suddenly went limp. She was finished. So was I. We both stayed in our positions for a moment, worn out from exertion. I think both of us were also in some shock at what had happened.
Georgia slid off my lap and climbed to her feet, pulling her panties up and her skirt back down. She didn’t look at me while she did it. She began to walk sorely out of the kitchen.
I stood up as she went, wondering if I should say something. But what on earth could I say?
But as Georgia reached the doorway, she stopped. She looked over her shoulder, not directly at me, but almost.
‘Thank you’ she said quietly. And she left.
Sometime after she’d gone, I was sat with the vodka bottle and my glass, drinking at the kitchen table. My brain had been quiet for a while. And it wasn’t just the alcohol. I had the strangest of sensations. I felt calm. It had been obvious why Georgia needed what she’d gotten. But why had it laid something in me to rest?
Because there had been an answer to a question contained within the incident, one I had never been able to answer before. Because even though I hadn’t taken my clothes off, and Georgia hadn’t touched me, and in fact it hadn’t really been sexual for me, it had the flavour of all the seductions I’d ever carried out. Because it had fed a need. A need I had, I was now realising, for control.
I’d taken charge of Georgia, just like every other person who’d fallen into my web. That’s all it had ever been about with me. That was why I’d reacted so badly to the Alex problem. She’d had power over my life, and that was something I’d found impossible to accept. That was the reason I’d tried to mess with her life in such extreme ways.
And that’s why I’d been good at gossip journalism, comfortable with the power I’d had to affect the course of people’s lives, able to sort through their dirty laundry with a sense of entitlement.
And considering it now, that’s how my relationship with Lauren had been too. It had obviously worked for her up to a point, because she was comfortable letting someone else take the reins. And I’d felt happy to accept them. Taking a mental journey through other earlier relationships, the same patterns popped up time and again. I knew why. It was the only way I could allow them to get a foot in the door, if I knew I could slam that door shut at any time. It was how I protected myself, how I felt safe.
So now I’d had this realisation, what should I do with it? I could run with it, embrace the fact that the imbalance in power in my relationships was a craving that ran deep. But the thought of that made me inexplicably sad. Somehow, now that I knew exactly what game I’d been playing all this time, it seemed tiresome and immature.
And that was because there had been one time that I’d lost a measure of control, let myself be carried away on a tide of emotion. And it had happened because I had actually been happy. I had felt equalled, satisfied. Just one person had ever made me feel that way.
Just one.
I wanted to feel that again. I wanted it more than anything, even more than the comfort of being in command of everything that happened. I felt ready to let go of that life, as scary as that felt. But what I was ready for and what I needed now didn’t matter. The decision was out of my hands. For once in my life, I was not remotely in charge. And then I realised that for the first time ever… I didn’t care. I didn’t care that she didn’t want me. I was going to tell her anyway. I simply couldn’t keep walking around with those words unsaid to her. Not for another day, not for another hour. She was going reject me, I knew that. And it would hurt like the devil. But she had to know. I needed Penny to know. No matter the cost to me.
I got up and walked through the kitchen, down the hall, to the front door, driven no longer by hate, but by the strongest love I’d ever known. I swung the door open violently, ready to run down the street, not stopping until I found her.
But as the door flew open, I halted suddenly. Because there on the doorstep, stood Penny.
Chapter Twenty Six
I’d been reading the book all day. I’d read the whole thing through once and the second I’d finished the last word, I’d turned back to the first. I’d read page turners before, but nothing gets you reading like a story that features you as a central character.
The beginning had been very uncomfortable reading. Julia had laid herself pretty bare and the way she’d treated those girls she’d seduced was as calculated a thing as you could imagine. She’d looked at them like a hunter views its quarry. It made me a little queasy to think that that was how she’d looked at me. But then a character appeared, ‘Alice’. It was quickly obvious that it was me. And it wasn’t like the other girls. Quite the opposite. She’d thought me a mousy little country girl and the description of me was utterly sexless. Thinking back to the eighteen year old version of myself, I had to admit that it was accurate. But even so, I was offended briefly until I remembered that I’d been afraid of her looking at me in the contrasting way. I couldn’t have it both ways, I admonished myself.
But those early passages weren’t uncomplimentary. Although she hadn’t thought of me as someone she wanted to seduce, she had still thought I had something special, that I had potential as a writer. A virginal bumpkin maybe, but not without talent.
And then a change had happened. There was an account of a meeting that had taken place between Alice and ‘Olivia’, the teacher character. And in that meeting, Alice had talked about something she’d written and spoken on the topic of writing with intelligence and insight. I vaguely remembered that meeting. I didn’t recall being quite so eloquent. I’d felt like a crazy mess, sweating over what Julia would think of my work. But in Olivia’s eyes, Alice displayed a sensitivity that had made her completely reassess the outer attractiveness of her student. She’d seen underneath the oversized spectacles and drab cardigan. She’d seen beauty.
I put down the book at that point, scared to keep going, scared to stop. But there was no going back. I kept reading.
The following pages described Olivia’s growing attraction to Alice, and how hard she tries to fight it. And it wasn’t because she was a student, obviously. That had practically been her predilection. No, it was because all her previous selections had been a certain kind of girl. They were highly sexualised types who were playing out their teacher fantasies with a hot and powerful woman, one whom they had no real desire to really know. And the way Olivia saw it, Alice was different. Sweet, layered, mature, decent. She was good in a way Olivia didn’t see herself. Not to mention sexually inexperienced. The fact of her virginity seemed to be quite a big sticking point. Olivia didn’t want to destroy something precious, and I got the impression that that went far beyond sex.
And then they find themselves at a writers retreat together. That I remembered very clearly. It was my first time after all. We’d both seemed to get caught in a swirl of attraction, pulled into a sexual hurricane that swept me awa
y completely.
I hadn’t known how Julia had felt about that time, but the book was clear. She’d felt guilty, she thought she’d played with something special, taken something she shouldn’t have. But she needn’t have felt like that. It had been the most incredible thing that had ever happened to me. It had complicated everything extraordinarily, yes, but it had opened up my life to passion I’d never known. The effect of it had spidered out to all parts of my life, pushing me into places that scared me, but places that I wanted to be.
And after that the book describes an affair between the two. Olivia fights it desperately but finds that it spirals out of her control. The sex was described in words that convey Olivia’s profound desire for Alice. I was shocked. It had been my first love affair and it had been with someone much more experienced than myself, so I’d assumed that although I did my best to learn what pleased her, I probably couldn’t measure up to her past lovers. But this book was telling me that she’d been as fulfilled as I had been. I felt something beyond joy to learn that. But, I reminded myself, the book wasn’t over yet. There was still more on the horizon that I might not be so pleased about.
The affair goes on for several months, and Olivia breaks many of her rules for conquests in that time. It’s clear that this affair isn’t quite the normal way that these type of things have gone for Olivia in the past. She begins to worry that Alice will find out about all the other girls she’s had at the university, she knows she’d be hurt to discover that she was just the latest in a long line. But despite all those concerns for Alice’s happiness, she still considers the relationship a fling, with a sell by date that has to be approaching soon.
Then Olivia finds the net closing in on her. The university finds out what she’s been up to and she’s suspended. Shortly after, Alice meets another of Olivia’s conquests, Scarlett, she’s the person responsible for putting the wheels of Oliva’s destruction in motion with a complaint, a bitter girl who warns her to be careful with Olivia, that she’ll be tossed aside like all the others. Alice confronts Olivia, who finds herself unable to lie, giving her the full story. Alice is hurt, confused and angry and leaves after an angry sexual moment develops that scares them both.
