Hard Time

by McKenna, Cara

  He craved the most intoxicating mix of things—the most romantic, affectionate contact—domestic, even—chased by harsher deeds. Always my pleasure given first, and his earned. His needs sounded more physical and aggressive than mine. Nothing unnerving. Quite the opposite. But that old male-female, rough-gentle dichotomy. After a big, inhibitions-loosening glass of wine, I wrote to dispel this myth.

  Eric, I wrote. I loved your last letter. I love all your letters. Hearing everything you have to say, and everything you want to do. I hope you know I’m excited by the way you talk about sex—about the sex you want, after you’ve made me come. Sometimes I want that so much more than the sweet things you tell me about. If we were ever together, after you got out . . .

  At this, my heart hitched. A child inside me had picked up the book of matches, and her eyes were nailed to the door, nervous at getting caught. Hands itchy, eager to make trouble.

  . . . I’d want to see how badly you wanted me. Needed me. I’d want to see exactly what you were like, after all that waiting. I bet it would be so fierce, and urgent. I’d want your hands all over me. I’d want to feel your lack of control and your need, even if it was clumsy and frantic and nothing like what you’d see in a movie.

  I know you’re worried about what happened to me with that ex, but the way he hurt me, it was never about sex. He would drink too much and turn resentful, push me or give me a smack—he always said he was teasing, and told me I was being too sensitive, but I knew deep down what was coming. I left him the night he struck me in the side of the head. He burst my eardrum and knocked me to the floor. I never saw him again after that. What he did snuck up on me, because he’d led me there, step by step, letting me adjust to whatever he’d done last. A mean poke, then a pinch, a push. They built up gradually, like the way you develop a tolerance for spicy food or alcohol. What I thought I could handle got modified. I’m almost glad he hit me that hard that night. It was so much worse than what had come before, it woke me up.

  It’s not even male aggression that scares me. It’s the hidden stuff. The potential. It’s what a man’s capable of, and being tricked into letting myself get led there.

  Sweet Jesus, I was writing all this to a convicted felon, wasn’t I?

  I love what you say, about the things you want to do for me. But part of me wants to hear what you like. Right up front. I don’t want to be eased into anything. It sounds strange, but trust isn’t a gradual process with me—a slowly, steadily earned privilege. I don’t trust things that build gradually. Like the way he hurt me. I like black and white now. Honesty, even when it’s not that pretty.

  I paused, blinking. Was that why I’d ended up here? In Darren, in such a crippled library system, and at Cousins? This town and those places . . . They didn’t come gift wrapped. They led with their thorns, same as the criminal I was falling for. The first thing I knew about him was that he’d done something awful—why else would he be in Cousins? The wolf had come at me teeth first, and with the danger understood, the fear of a nasty surprise gone, all that was left was soft fur, shining eyes, power, speed.

  So tell me what you want, I wrote. Tell me all the dark things you think about.

  It was cold that next Friday, and I was nervous as I climbed into bed and wrapped the blankets up to my armpits. Not scared like after I’d handed him my first letter, but edgy. I’d told the wolf, don’t hold back. Took the muzzle off him. I couldn’t guess if he’d come at me with his tongue or his fangs.

  Darling, I read.

  I want to fuck your ex up, I really do. But I can’t and I won’t, not even if I was let out tomorrow and he walked past me on the street. It sounds like you took care of it yourself, so I’ll just keep telling myself that’s enough. I’d like to think there’s no worse punishment a man could suffer than losing a woman like you. And if that’s not enough to make him regret what he did and maybe change, then he’s probably too stupid to learn from getting beat down by some angry stranger.

  You want to know all the dark things I think about, huh? Does that mean you like dark stuff? I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’m not into real dark stuff. When you’re a young man and bored and free and figuring everything out about sex, that’s when you get fixated on things. About what the best kind of sex is, the perfect sort of woman, complicated shit like you see in porn maybe. Taboo stuff. It’s like being able to choose any kind of food you want, any time you want. You start to only want one sort of thing. The best, most perfect thing. Does that make sense?

  I’ve been locked up now for five years and a month. I bet you can guess, the food here sucks. If I got out I’d want to taste everything there was. Every flavor and every kind of meat and every sort of sweet or salty or sour. And after five years without touching a woman, when I get out, I want to try all those most simple flavors of what a man and a woman can do together.

  Everything’s so hard in here. And mean and ugly and loud. I know you want to hear dark things, but what I say about the romantic stuff I want to do with you, I want that so bad I can’t tell you. I want to be in a room with you, so quiet I can hear your breathing and your heart. A place so clean I could smell your skin. And with candles, all yellow and soft after the bright white lights they use in here. I want to be with you someplace that’s nothing like my cell. Someplace big and open, with a giant mattress a foot thick and the softest sheets. Someplace cool in the summer and warm in the winter. In a huge bathtub. On the grass somewhere. I want feminine things, because that’s what I miss. Because in here, everything feels hard and sharp and bright. I want to escape and go someplace dark and soft and quiet.

  I want to escape inside you. I want to feel your hands on me, and your eyes, and feel like there’s nobody else for a hundred miles. I want to feel all that, like I’d want to pay close attention to the first few bites of a nice meal in a restaurant. I’d want to savor, at least to start.

  But after that first taste, I could do darker stuff for you. You want to feel how pent up I am, don’t you? You want to feel powerful, offering to end my suffering. It makes me smile to think about that. You seem so sweet and that’s so naughty. You want to watch me lose my mind, so of course I’d let you see that.

  I’d go real slow, to start. For me, not for you. Let me savor, like I said. But it wouldn’t last long, I promise. I’d explore your mouth and your skin first. I need your hands on me, it’s been so long since I’ve been touched in any kind of nice way. I’d want you to touch my cock real slow so I could memorize every second of it. And when I first slide inside you, looking down at you in the candle light, your hair down and spread across those big pillows . . . I’d make that moment last a hundred years.

  I let the hand holding the letter drop to the side, sighing for every corner of the room to hear. “Fuck me, you’re good.”

  But after I got to feel all that again after missing it, then I’d give you the dark stuff you want. I’d be so fucking hard for you. Inside you. I’d want to make you feel it, every inch of my cock. I’d want to say with my body, feel what you do to me. Feel how deep I want to be. Feel how bad I want to come with your wet hot cunt on me after all these years with just my hand. I’d stare down at you and you’d look like an angel smiling up at me. Or maybe not. Maybe you’d look mean. Wild and on fire. Maybe your hands would be on my ass or my hips, and I’d feel them begging me for more. Deeper. Harder. Faster. I’d give you that, and knowing you liked it would get me so hot. I’d do whatever your eyes told me to. Or your mouth, if it said, come for me Eric. I would. Then I’d show you with my mouth or hands how grateful I was.

  “Oh my.”

  All the things I hadn’t thought I wanted to hear from this man—soft sheets and candlelight and tenderness. The things I’d thought he thought I would want to hear. The things girls are told they like, the things men are trained to promise.

  That night I wrote, I was so wrong.

  Wrong about what I’d assumed you
wanted when you said all the gentle ways you planned to be with me. How I’d imagined you were just trying to please me, tell me what you thought I’d like to be told. I’ve never known those words to come from a man’s heart—only his mouth, when he’s trying to get a woman into bed. But you really want all that. I can taste how badly you do, from the way you wrote about it.

  So yes, I’d love for you to be all those ways with me. Everything you’ve been missing, for as long as you wanted. And yes, you’re right—I do want to feel powerful, making you crazy. I hadn’t even realized it myself, but you’re right. You’re so strong and together, and I want to turn you into a pleading mess. I want to feel your muscles moving under my palms, feel your body chasing your pleasure, faster and faster. I want to watch the strongest man I’ve ever laid my eyes on shake and tremble and moan, helpless from needing me . . .

  Chapter Eight

  It was the second Friday in November when everything changed. When the ground opened up, swallowed me whole, shot me out the other side to stare at the universe upside-down.

  Darling, I read that night.

  I got some news and I don’t know how it’ll make you feel.

  I’ve been granted parole.

  My heart stopped.

  Just stopped, suspended like my breath before a plunge into icy water. My fingers shook, my hands, my arms.

  I should have told you about it as soon as I knew. My hearing was in early September and I got the official news three weeks ago. I never expected this to happen. My lawyer told me straight up, I fucked my chances ages ago, the way I told everybody I had no remorse about what I did. How I’d do it again exactly the same way. I didn’t tell you about the hearing because I didn’t like either way you might react. I figured either you’d get your hopes up and I’d probably be denied my first chance at parole, or you’d be scared about me maybe getting released. Then once I knew I was just plain afraid to tell you. I was afraid you’d stop writing to me. I’m still scared of that. I hate writing this. I hate imagining you being afraid, knowing I’m getting out. Maybe I’m wasting my time. Maybe you’re as happy about it as me. But I really have no idea, and I know what this place does to a man’s head, and that it’s foolish to get your hopes up about how things will go.

  At any rate I’m being released the Tuesday after next at eight in the morning, if everything goes the way it’s supposed to.

  “Oh God. Oh God.” My body was confused, feeling too many things, too intensely. The Tuesday after next. Eleven days. Eleven days.

  It’s funny how we never talk about why I’m in here, even after I told you. I guessed you must be okay with it. Or okay enough for us to keep talking the way we do. I’ve only lied to you once ever, that time I got you to write that first letter for me. I want to make sure I stay honest about everything. I know that’s important to you.

  I hope you don’t feel like I lied to you these last three weeks, about my getting out. I wasn’t trying to be dishonest but it was cowardly, not telling you until now. I’ve enjoyed what we have so much. I was selfish and didn’t want it to end.

  But more than that, I want you to know I won’t come after you once I’m out. I’m not stupid and I know this is going to change everything. Most women who write to cons find them through a program for that. On purpose. I know you didn’t get into this on purpose. And I don’t want you to worry about what expectations I might have about you and me. It wasn’t like we were lying to each other, with the things we said. More like we were telling each other bedtime stories. I’m not dumb and I didn’t think you were making me any promises in those letters.

  I think I’ve got a job lined up for when I get out, doing landscaping eventually but at first mostly snow removal and that sort of thing for the city, through the winter. I’m happy about that, since it means I’ll be outside a lot. I’ll be living in Darren.

  “Shi-i-i-t.”

  I know you live there too and if you see me around, it’s not on purpose. My work release supervisor hooked me up with the job, and it’s better than anything I might find on my own, especially back home. If we leave things up in the air by the time I get out, I promise I won’t talk to you unless you talk to me first, if I see you around. I promise I won’t come to the library and look for you. If we run into each other and you want to say hello, or you want to have a drink, or to do anything at all, all you’ve got to do is ask. But if all this has just been for your imagination, I understand. The last thing I want to do is make you scared of me.

  I’ve got no idea what you’re thinking about all this, so I won’t write you a letter for next week. But I’ll make this as easy for you as I can.

  If you already know you don’t want to see me once I’m out, wear black. I won’t be mad, I swear. I know we never expected this to get as deep as it has.

  Or if you do want that and you want me to look for you around town, wear green.

  If you don’t know what you want yet, don’t wear either of those colors. I’ll keep away until I get some sign from you that you made a decision. If I don’t hear anything by January first, I’ll do my best to forget about you. Or at least forget about ever getting to be with you. I’ll probably never forget how you made me feel these last few months. It really was like having a window suddenly open after years without any sunshine or fresh air.

  Anyhow. See you Friday. For the last time inside here, and maybe the last time forever. If you know for sure you don’t ever want to see me, PLEASE wear black. I’d rather get disappointed up front than live in false hope, if your mind is already made up. You seem like the sort of girl who’d hate to hurt a man’s feelings. You can hurt mine though. It’s okay. I’ve been through a lot and I survived all of it so far.

  Respectfully,

  Eric

  I read the pages a second time, then set them down. A car honked outside and I jumped.

  I rubbed my face, hard. “Oh fuck.”

  Was it oh fuck? Was that how I was supposed to feel?

  Who cared what I was supposed to feel—how did I actually feel? I tried to listen to my body, but the adrenaline was deafening, hurricane-force winds.

  I felt scared, for sure. Scared of Eric? Maybe. Or scared because in the span of one letter, my shapeless, pleasurable illusion had solidified and shattered, and all I held now were shards. Scared because my two choices were both perfectly terrifying.

  Wear green, throw myself into his arms. Then find out we really didn’t share anything outside these letters. Or find out he was dangerous to more than just that one man he’d assaulted. Maybe not immediately. Maybe slowly, the way Justin had revealed himself.

  I finally did what I should’ve done back when he’d sent me that first letter. I looked up his crime.

  Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, with intent to maim. Sentenced 5–8 years in Cousins Correctional Facility and fined $5,000.

  Fucking. Fuck.

  Five to eight years? Clearly, Jake had been talking in generalities when he’d told me ten. But the details couldn’t help me now. I’d needed them months ago—needed them, but feared them. Put the pleasure of this crazy fantasy above my own goddamn safety.

  Wear black, and stay away. Then find out he wouldn’t do as he promised and leave me alone. Or find out he would, and then what we’d had would just be . . . over.

  Just gone, like we’d shot it between the eyes? The most vibrant thing I’d known in the past five years, dead, cold, the fire doused even quicker than it had crackled to life.

  Three choices, I reminded myself. Don’t wear green or black, but instead resign myself to the uncertainty. That didn’t feel much different than the black option, aside from offering the both of us the cruel gift of hope.

  I needed answers. And that meant asking questions, ones I’d been determined never to pose to this man.

  * * *

  The next Friday I wore not a stitch of black or green,
and I doubt I’d ever been this nervous, walking through the dayroom behind Shonda. Not even on my first shift. I didn’t seek his eyes, but I sensed him all the same. I’d never felt so awful in my entire life, striding past that man, ignoring him, too scared to see his face, knowing he must have been dying all week, praying to see me in his beloved green. Somewhere in my periphery, a man was aching. A man I’d loved. A man I’d never really known. A man who owed me answers.

  I didn’t look for him in the yard during my lunch break, didn’t spot him during Book Discussion. That should’ve been a relief, shouldn’t it? But I didn’t breathe easier, realizing he wasn’t in the room. His attention had become some strange, dark, private treat to brighten the toughest day of my week, and I’d come to crave it. His absence left a pit in my chest, deep enough to feel even behind my nerves.

  I watched the clock all through the afternoon Resources block, foot tapping, heart lodged in my throat. If he didn’t show, I really was fucked. I’d have no clue what to expect after he got out. I’d have no idea how he felt about my no-black–no-green ambivalence—whether he was sad or angry or perfectly accepting.

  Bad and violent. That’s what his crime had been, in his own words. Were bad, violent crimes only done by bad, violent men? Could a man who was fundamentally bad make a woman feel the way Eric Collier had made me feel, all these weeks?

  Of course they can. Justin had. Millions of bad men made millions of lonely women feel good. Like a drug, pleasurable and reckless, so hard to quit after you start living for the fix. I rubbed my temples, smoothed my ponytail again and again, bit my lip and blew out long, nervous jets of sour breath. I probably looked like a frigging junkie.