Kismet

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  The note floats to the floor and Ruben searches my eyes, his hands coming up to my face, his thumbs wiping away my tears.

  I look down at the note, then back up at him, his expression saying it all.

  You were right, you were so right, I wrote.

  It really doesn’t matter what happens next, only that what we feel is the realest thing either of us has ever known, and in a world of suffering, it’s also the one thing that will always ground us, because we’ve known this truth, and it even triumphed over death.

  “You said not to talk, but—”

  “Don’t, Ruben.”

  “Freya—”

  I shake my head, begging him not to speak and shatter this. Don’t. Please. Don’t. Sometimes when I dream at night, it’s of me and Ruben meeting at our pub, talking and chatting and being alleged friends. Sometimes as I’m dreaming, a conscious part of me wills the dream to continue… for us never to have fallen into bed together. The thing is, life happens. It was only a matter of time before we ended up together and fell in love. I wouldn’t swap our time in Paris, London and Florence for anything else in the world, but I wish everything that had happened since could be erased. Also, the day he introduced me to his parents… the stupid meal at the Savoy… losing my mum… his death. As I stand here staring at his forlorn figure, it’s clear a part of him did die the day he chose to leave me for the greater good.

  “You remember that night at Heathrow, Ruben?”

  He takes a deep breath and turns from me, shaking his head. Yes, I’m a woman—yes, I’m going to dredge up the past.

  “You wanted to kiss me and I was so far from wanting that. I had these images in my mind of you loving someone else and I was on a self-destruct mission to escape what we had, but you wanted to kiss me to remind me and bring me back to you, do you remember?”

  “I remember,” he groans soulfully.

  “But it was more than that. It was much more. It wasn’t just that I was self-destructing, although it was a lot of that, it was that I sensed, in my gut, something wasn’t right. I was in the middle of that war with you and I felt trapped and hemmed in.”

  Ruben turns around with tears in his eyes, self-hatred pouring out of his expression. “And then we went home and I spanked you and marked you and I fucking hate myself for that. I hurt you. I was the one lying, and withholding, and I fucking hurt you, Freya. And the next morning, I decided we were getting out because I couldn’t stand the person I was becoming. I made that decision without telling you why. I decided I’d lift us, transpose us, from all that bullshit I was suffering. I dragged you into my bullshit and I will never forgive myself for that. Ever. I wasn’t thinking of you. I was trying to escape what I am, but what I am followed us. I put things in place before we left London that would ensure Dad’s death at the hands of Freddie… and then when I found out I was next, that he’d tortured my mother and made her tell him all our favourite places to stay in Europe, I had to do what I did and get ahead of him. I had to collude and stage my own death.”

  I take a deep breath and sigh. “I think I knew all this, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. After you spanked me, which I agreed to and was fully onboard with, you did finally kiss me and it took all the pain away. I’m asking you, right now, to let me take away your pain, Ruben. And don’t hate yourself for what happened that night. Until I met you, I had been seeking punishment my whole life because I was taught early on that’s what I deserve. I coiled punishment around me, working in that hotel with people who didn’t get me, didn’t get that I had a brain and a penchant for adventure. I fucked men, sometimes married men, because I wanted something to catch up with me and prove me right, that I deserve to be punished and I don’t deserve happiness. What you did that night wasn’t punish me. I wanted it. I wanted for the first time to have someone I loved taint my skin not as part of a punishment, but as part of love. To help me find that centre of myself that’s strong, that’s kept me upright all this time. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, probably, but I’ve never once looked back on that night without fondly thinking of how you were afterwards. You didn’t spit on me after you strapped me. You didn’t leave me alone and wailing in the dark. You didn’t exclude me from family meals for a week after that. No. It was what you did after… you took me in your arms and you made the sweetest love to me. It was the most special sex of my entire life and I won’t ever forget that. That night, and my memories of the things you said to me during our time together, are what rewired me and kept me going these past months. I haven’t spent my mourning period hating or self-harming, I’ve spent it remembering everything you taught me and wrapping myself in love instead of punishment, because that’s what I knew you’d want. I want you to know that you saved me, Ruben. You saved me and I love you. I will never stop loving you.”

  He chases towards me and our bodies slam together. I feel weak as he kisses me, my mouth and my pores and even my atoms opening up to him. Ruben kisses me so deeply, it’s like the pain in his soul is being transferred to me and I’m suffering from head to toe with chills, shivering. He shakes the jacket off his shoulders and carries me to bed, pressing me down into the mattress.

  His kiss is so different without his beard, it feels as though he’s more exposed, pared back emotionally as well as physically.

  I reach for his buckle and zipper and take his erection into my palm, tugging as he breathes heavily into my mouth, groaning at my touch. He unbuttons the top of my dress and kisses my breasts over the lace of my bra, nipping the tips and tugging so gently, my core burns.

  His shoulders are massive as he climbs over me and parts my dress, tugging my lace thong to the side. I wrap my hands around the back of his neck and cry out when he pushes into me, my juices spraying onto my inner thigh. I never thought I’d be with him ever again. He’s the only man I will ever truly love.

  Ruben pulls my bra cup down and suckles my nipple, groaning with every stroke of his cock inside my body. His forehead rolls over mine but his eyes are shut and I can see the restraint he’s having to exhibit, his mouth a tight line, his tension palpable.

  “Come inside me and then keep going,” I beg, and almost the moment I speak, he grabs the headboard behind me and lunges into me hard, just a few times, my body swallowing his huge deposit gratefully. He’s not been with anyone else either, I know it.

  He grunts and withdraws, growling as he pulls away, his cock dripping with cum. I’m about to complain when he sits up and undresses me completely, then himself. He’s a monster of a man now, broken and carved down the middle, reshaped and remodelled into this roughhewn giant, ready to take down anyone who tries to take him first.

  I lick my lips when he leans down and kisses my clit, then scoops up some of our mess into his mouth. He slides two fingers into me, uses the come-hither move and makes me come, my walls squeezing against his fingers.

  I’m still in ecstasy when he begins pushing against my anus, teasing and tonguing, then his fingers dive deep. Suddenly he’s fucking my ass with his hand and I can feel it deep inside me… something crazy good. As he punishes me, faster and faster, the more I feel this sensation, an overwhelming urge to bear down. I ejaculate from my bottom… and I scream so loud, they probably heard it down the coast in Monaco.

  He flips my body over and I’m still groaning loudly as he pushes my knees beneath me and encourages my ass in the air.

  He enters my body through the tightest entrance and I can’t even speak as he surges deep into me, groaning like an animal and cursing as I swallow him up. I’m so wet it’s unspeakable but I’m willing him to go for it.

  Ruben puts his hands around my shoulders and pushes up against my ass, keeping me in place so I can barely move. Then he fucks me wildly, grunting my name and sounding somewhere between the worst agony and the greatest pleasure.

  I rub my clit and he pounds me so hard, I suck him into me and try to break away, but he has me locked tight against him, unable to move with his hands ho
lding my shoulders, pinning my ass to his body. He keeps lunging through the sensations and when he finally comes inside me again, I feel a tremble run right through me, from my scalp to the very tips of my toes, my thighs shaking and my bones non-existent as I flood with pleasure, in every atom of my being. I draw him in so tight it feels as though he’s melting into me, becoming as one with me in a way nobody else ever has or even has the potential to be. We fall into the pillows and Ruben spoons up behind me, kissing my shoulder blades and grasping my tits.

  I’m given ten minutes to recover and relish in his embrace before he rolls me back to him, sucks my nipple and slips his finger back inside me.

  “Let’s go and shower,” he groans. “I want to shave you completely bald, then I want to make you come with my tongue on your clit. I want you to give me a tit wank with baby oil all over them and then I’ll watch as you clean off the cum around your neck. I want to come down your throat and again in your ass and your pussy. We won’t sleep tonight, Freya. I promise.”

  For a fleeting second, it enters my mind that he sounds like a man doomed for the chair in the morning, but as he kisses me on the way to the bathroom, I decide there’s still a chance he’ll stay… there’s always a chance.

  I’m dozing as the sun comes up. I didn’t shut the blinds last night and my full-length windows offer no barrier between the ball of fire in the sky and us. Ruben’s sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to me, but I somehow know he has his eyes closed, the sun spreading over his face and giving him warmth. He’s pulled on his jeans but his glorious back is on show, muscles bulging and veins popping. We’ve barely slept a wink and we did everything he said and more. We even made love a couple of times—once as he sat on a chair with me riding his lap and enjoying his hands all over me, and the other time in the kitchen over the counter, his kisses having covered my body and his cock gentle and tender as I was allowed to kiss and hold him in return. The other times he fucked me, he was like a man depraved and I have the bitemarks, grazes and sore sex organs to prove it. I’ve never felt more satisfied and in love, not at any other time in my whole entire existence. This is it, for me: being with him and never having to say sorry and always being who we really are with each other, no matter the cost.

  I crawl across the bed and push my body against his back, my arms around his neck and shoulders. “Don’t go, Ruben.” My tears are already clogging the back of my throat.

  It hasn’t been said, but I’ve felt it—that he’s not here to stay, but rather to give himself memories to live off for the next who knows how long.

  “I can’t stay. You know I can’t. I’ve done too many things.”

  “This isn’t right. We love one another.”

  “You don’t know everything about me. I’m not good for you, Frey.”

  Not good? Not good? Damn him. “I know everything, all right. Everything. I went to his house and he told me everything.”

  He stands up and backs away slowly, his fists clenched, his whole body betraying his anguish. “What did he do to you?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” I add hastily, “his kids were there. He told me the truth about Gia and that he’d ordered your death after Fred died. He said that Laurent killed himself, that the syringe was still hanging out when they found him and there was a ton left in the tube. Your dad paid people to rule it accidental so your mum wouldn’t have to hear her son took his own life… Fred erased the blame.”

  Ruben takes a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. “He didn’t tell you about Fred and Debbie and the twins, though.”

  I put my hand to my mouth. “What?”

  “I have two more half-siblings,” he says, “more innocents… dragged into all this.” He wipes the back of his hand across his eyes. “I’ve done things, Freya. I’ve done unspeakable things. My own father is dead because I made Freddie angry enough to do it.”

  It feels like he’s slipping away from me… that he’s not the same man I once knew, after all. “That’s why you’ve waited all this time to come back to me? Guilt?”

  He sheds more tears. “I wasn’t going to come back at all. Yesterday I was only at the café because I wanted to see you in the flesh one last time, but the plan was to take off and I don’t know, see if I can’t do more to help people. You don’t deserve to have someone like me. Look at what I come from. I’m trash, Freya. I ought to spend the rest of my days making it up to the world. That’s what I have to do.”

  I walk slowly towards him, as naked as the day I was born, and put my hands gently on his forearms. “I don’t see trash at all. I never did. You know, the night I tried to escape, the first time I mean, it was because I thought your father had told you about my past and I couldn’t stand to have you think of me like that. It made me feel so crappy about myself that the man I loved might possibly know that side of me, and I wanted to run because I wanted to save you from me.”

  “No, Freya,” he cries. “When he told me, I didn’t care. I’d already guessed you’d had a bad experience in your past and I didn’t care!”

  “Well, great,” I exclaim, “because right now, I don’t care about your past, the same as you didn’t care about mine. Even people in sunny Nice have been talking about the drugs bust, it’s the talk of the century. You did shady things to achieve that, I know, but you can move on if you like and leave it behind you.”

  He bites his bottom lip and breathes heavily. “He’ll come for you if he finds out I’m alive. I was going to join you in Canada, but it’s too late for that now. You’ve put down roots here, you’ve got a gallery, a website, a life… a business… a presence. I can’t swoop in, not now. I’m happy for you, really, I am so happy for you, but we cannot be together.”

  “But he’s in prison?” I argue. “And he’s got no chance of parole or being released anytime soon. His wife probably hates him, his kids aren’t even his own and all his friends will have turned their back on him, what with the coverage and all. His assets and his accounts will have been seized, he has no control whatsoever and he may even be underground right now, being questioned about his suppliers and other people in his network. He doesn’t have anyone to help him get to you.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I reckon Debbie has access to a rainy-day fund and I reckon she was only sleeping with Fred at the end because she was frightened of him. What if she’s actually grown to like my stupid brother?”

  “Listen to yourself. You’re talking your way out of being with the woman you love, unless you don’t love me anymore, unless you put me through all this for nothing.” I want to challenge and agitate him. Yes, he hurt me, yes, I’m still in pain, yes it may never heal that he left me when I needed him most, but at least now I know why he did these things—Fred and his evil empire are gone.

  He takes me by the shoulders and looks down into my eyes, our noses pressed together. “That’s not true and you know it, Freya. I’m just scared. I’m scared for you and I’m scared of everything actually.”

  “So am I, but isn’t the whole lesson here that if you deny what’s truth for too long, it eats you up until you can’t take anymore? Did we not make all this happen by meeting and being friends and loving one another? Everything that’s happened is because of us, because we loved enough to say no to their hate and turn our backs on their influence. Once we admitted we loved one another, wasn’t everything instantly better? If Laurent had been able to tell someone that he was carrying an awful secret, wouldn’t things have seemed just that bit more bearable?”

  He leans his head back and looks up at the ceiling with his eyes closed. “We’ll live with so many reminders. They won’t go away.”

  “Here’s a reminder for you, okay. There was once this guy who was living in Paris and he was in love with a girl and tentatively hopeful of a new life and making good on what happened in his childhood, yes his childhood, because he was a child when he was abused and forced to grow up far quicker than he ought to have done. Who knows what might have happened with Gia? Mayb
e she might have got used to the gangster background and stopped cheating on you, but I know at least who that guy was because it’s the same guy standing before me right now. Except you didn’t push me into someone else’s arms and nor did you push her into anyone’s arms, either. She went of her own free will because she was afraid. Well, I’m not afraid, not anymore. Who you are reassured me I wasn’t alone in the world. The way you loved me saved me from myself and healed me in ways that even after you died, helped me overcome grief and disarray and fear. I’m standing here, living this life, because of you. All because of you. Don’t tell me I don’t want you. I want you more than I have ever wanted you and I need you. I can’t fuck again if it’s not with you and that’s the truth.”

  His bottom lip starts and then I take a breath and realise my heart is racing and everything is resting on this. Will he stay and live again, or will he leave me for this self-imposed exile which he need never have forced on himself in the first place? True, his exile did eventually nail Freddie, but did he ever really mean to join me in Canada? Did he try to send me there because he knew I wouldn’t go and it was one more way of convincing himself we’re not meant to be? Is all of this just some elaborate plan to let me go gently, because, deep down, he doesn’t think he deserves me?

  He takes my hands in his and looks down into my eyes with sorrow and anguish in his expression—his entire demeanour, even. “Freya, the one thing I can’t live with is that I lied to you, so many times. I lied because I thought I was protecting you, but I wasn’t. I was protecting myself. The right thing would’ve been to never have strung you along, to have let you go from the beginning—”

  “You haven’t listened to a damn word I’ve said,” I growl, backing away from him. “I’d still be screwing around with deadheads if it weren’t for you.”

  “Okay, well let’s put it like this. So, you talked about Gia, how her cheating on me maybe meant it wouldn’t have worked out anyway. How will we ever know how it may have turned out? She was killed and hadn’t done anything to deserve that. That’s what people like my father and Freddie do… they rip away possibilities and potential and stunt life, just like that” —he clicks his fingers— “but maybe so do I. Maybe if I hadn’t have come along, that guy Mark might have eventually wore you down. You might have grown to like him… love him. He might have really made you happy, shared a home with you and married you, given you children by now.”