Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three)

by Dunning, Rachel

  He’s shocked by the question. “No! Not at all!”

  “OK, good, good.”

  So who am I angry at? Him? Or the ex-girlfriend who, the more I hear of her, the more I want to slap her. She sounds to me, now, just like she sounded when Deck had first told me about her: Manipulative. Conniving. She obviously wanted something with him, even tried to kiss him! And then he ensured that he’d never be put in that position again by making sure they were always chaperoned.

  Oh, Deck, don’t you realize that what you’re saying is only making me love you more?

  When he’s done, his face filled with regret, I say, “I’m sorry for pushing you away. I know now that I did it. And I know that I overreacted. I know that things ended between us because I screwed it up—”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Wait!” I tell him about The Fear. I tell him how it ate me up, how it came for me without me knowing it, how Xavier’s brutal murder brought back memories of Savva. How I was afraid of losing anyone after that, but didn’t realize it at the time. I tell him how that irrational fear caused me to push people away, “As if pushing you away myself would somehow control the fear, as if losing you by my control, instead of by some force of fate, would make it easier to deal with. The mind plays tricks, Deck. I know that now.”

  He says nothing. Just looks at me. The storm in his eyes almost louder and more cacophonous than the quickly forming storm outside.

  My body temperature rises with him staring at me, my heart speeds up, my skin feels moist.

  And then, as if no time at all has passed, perhaps even without knowing it, his hand slides onto my knee. Its touch on my skin, even though it’s through jeans, sends electric thrills up the center of my body, moistens me up quickly. I smile at the reaction, and welcome it. If we’re not going out doesn’t mean I can’t get turned on by Deck. I’ll always get turned on by him. I’m glad that I can be turned on by him, because I think it’s a healthy reaction. Better the reaction of sexual excitement when I see him than the reaction of glandular shutdown because of terror.

  I put my hand on his, feel its roughness, hold it, squeeze it. Even his hand has gotten bigger. “Are you on freaking steroids or something?” I ask as a joke.

  He shakes his head, his mind clearly elsewhere, clearly still bothered by this thing with Gina Moretti. A thing so easy to forgive that I wonder why he still holds onto it so ferociously.

  But then he takes his hand away, leaves mine dangling there and waiting. Poetic.

  He puts it back on his lap, takes a deep breath and looks up at his TVs, then out at the window-walls at his terrace, the Manhattan skyline. The downpour has become a vicious hard rock concert, and the erstwhile pitter-patter on the windows has now become a gigantic roar of falling water.

  “There’s more, Blaze.”

  There’s something about the way he says it, about how his eyes are looking away, that makes me realize there really is more. And that the “more” is not going to be quite as innocent as sitting under a tree sharing an apple with a girl who still thinks she’s seventeen and doesn’t realize she’s broken up with the boy in front of her.

  I shiver. Actually shiver.

  He looks me in the eyes, looks away, looks at the double doors of his entrance behind him as if he wants to run away.

  Facing away from me, eyes locked on his penthouse entrance, he tells me. And when I hear it, I really do feel like I’m lying on the floor, and that a truck has just run over me. He says, “I had sex with Tatiana Watkins, and all her friends. Several times.”

  When he looks back at me, I don’t see him, because Mike Tyson has just landed one into my face. I’m staggering, I’m swaying, I’m delirious and going down for the count.

  But not before I can slap him.

  Which I do.

  I slap him hard. And I slap him repeatedly.

  Red rage fills my vision and all I see is blood.

  I slap him over and over. I slap him on his cheeks, his chest, everywhere! I charge into him with hate and fury. Woman scorned, baby. I lay into him with everything I have and he just takes it. Once or twice he holds my wrists weakly but then he just lets me give it to him. A fly to a bull, I think. I’m screaming, hurting, wailing and fighting. I try gouge his eyes out. I howl, stand, jump on him and knee him in the stomach! I kick him, swear at him...hate him!

  By the time I get up, he’s got red marks on his beautiful face, blood trickles down his left cheekbone from where my nails got him. I almost did gouge his eye out.

  But I think I’m worse off than he is, even though he never laid a finger on me. My fingers hurt, my knuckles hurt, my knees and toes hurt. My eyes feel puffy. I’m embarrassed. I’m ashamed. I’m...still angry.

  I stand looking down at him on the couch.

  My chest heaves. Under my fingernails, it burns. My eyes sing with stinging tears.

  I’m too angry to speak, too livid. This...I was not expecting!

  “You disgust me,” I say. “I don’t care if it was ‘after.’” I do the air-quote. “It doesn’t matter! It’s...despicable. It’s like your best friend fucking your girl after you break up with her. It’s...an unspoken rule goddamnit!”

  He leans back, looks up at me with regretful eyes, whispers, “I know.”

  I try think of what else to tell him, what else I could say. Blood rushes to my burning hands, makes them tingle, turns their sensation from dull throbs to a burning hatred. One hand flies up and thwacks him once more across the cheek with a loud clap. Red finger-marks shine brightly on his cheek. He actually grimaces. Good, I think. Good that it hurts.

  Only problem is it hurt my hand as well.

  Then I slap him with the other. Slam! His eyes flash with sudden anger. He clenches his jaw. “Fine, Blaze. I’ve let you hit me enough times now. I’ve let you hit me non-stop for the last”—he looks at his Breitling watch—“five minutes. You’ve had your say, now I will have mine.”

  I start to slam him again but he grips my wrists and holds them hard! It’s clear as ever that Declan really was “letting” me hit him, because his grip paralyzes me completely now, and he’s not even putting any effort into it! “No! Now we can thrash this out all day, all night, all week, whatever! I understand you’re angry and you should be! But if you insist on slapping me then I insist on you listening to me!”

  “You’re hurting my wrists.”

  He loosens up but still holds them. “You gonna hit me?”

  I ponder it for a second... I want to, I really want to. I want to hit those crazy blue eyes because they sting, and every time I think of her... “Fine. No, I won’t hit you. Yet. But if I don’t like your story, I’m coming at you with my knees.”

  He uncurls his fingers from my wrists slowly, hesitantly. It takes all the force of will I can muster to not let that hand go on and land on him again. “I hope she was worth it,” I say. “Did you like it? Did you like the pussy, huh? Were you so desperate to have it? To lick it!” My words are pure acid. Crude and vile, just how I feel about it.

  “You’re right to hate me. And you’re right to think what I did was base and sordid. Because it was. I wasn’t thinking straight back then, Blaze. But you asked me why I got your name tattooed on my back and this is the answer. I never answered you yesterday, and you deserve an answer. So you’re gonna get one. If you hate me, fine. I thought you hated me anyway, so it won’t change much for me. I thought you hated me all these years. I lost you four years ago already. Four years and four months, but who’s counting? That I saw you suddenly yesterday doesn’t mean I now suddenly have you. So I’m gonna to tell you. I’m going to tell you everything. I have nothing to lose. And you deserve your answer.”

  “I think I’ll take that drink now. Irish coffee, or just a straight Bourbon on the rocks.”

  “I think I’ll join you.”

  -4-

  The Bourbon gives me a buzz. I’m taken back—the moment it touches my lips!—to Deck and me, middle of the night, drinking CC Whiskey afte
r he’d lost his father, the night he and I first united and became one.

  The buzz now takes the sting away as he tells me about his clandestine plans with Tatiana Watkins (now Evans since she got divorced.)

  He starts by telling me how he crashed, tells me about the booze, the women. The drugs...

  It’s that part that hurts the most. The drugs. Declan had promised me, many years ago, that so long as he and I “were together” he would never touch the stuff again.

  He kept his promise.

  He tells me how he crashed, how he went to her apartment and she instantly came onto him. Then he tells me how the amount of booze and drugs he was doing before didn’t even compare to what he, Tatiana and the other two women did on an almost daily basis. They were high, almost always high.

  The sex itself became a drug.

  “And I lost myself, Blaze. Lost myself completely. If...she...hadn’t had some...interesting...ideas of sex, I might be dead today, because I would have stayed with them, moved onto coke or maybe even H...and ODed. But she did have these ideas, and I didn’t like them. Kinky is one thing, but ‘playing it rough’ is not my thing. So, that was a wake-up call. It snapped me out of what I was in, at least momentarily, so that I could finally take stock of how far I’d fallen. And then it was over. I lost the drug of sex...but not the other drugs. I drank even more after that. Trev found me...and...well, here I am today.”

  He twirls the drink in his glass. This whole time, an hour of talking, and he’s been on the same drink. I’ve had three. He has it somewhat under control, I consider. At least partly under control.

  It’s a lot to process. But I can’t hate him for it. I can’t. Maybe it’s a blind-spot because I know how deep you can fall when you get onto drugs and coke and that lifestyle. I’ve been there. I was there for years. So, maybe it’s that, maybe it’s because of this that I’m...soft?...on the subject. But I do understand it. I understand the need for a high, for an escape, life being so rough and painful that all you need is one whiff of...something—coke, weed, alcohol, sex—to forget, to make it through the next hour, the next day. The next month.

  I understand it.

  Worst of all, I know I was the one—completely the one!—who put Deck in that position in the first place. What’s that saying about removing the stick from your eye?

  I drain my glass. Deck’s is empty as well.

  He gets up, fills my glass up, bends the bottle to fill his. Pauses. Decides not to. “I’ll need to stick to Gatorade now.” he goes to the kitchen, comes out with a blue Gatorade bottle, starts sipping it.

  He sits back on the couch, places his right arm on the side armrest, eyes locked on the huge multiple-TVs and away from me. “To remind myself, Blaze, of how far south I’d travelled, I put your name on me. So that I would never forget. You were the ultimate in happiness for me. Being with her was the ultimately in lowness. I never wanted to forget that. So, there it is, that’s why I did it.”

  I drain the fourth glass of whiskey, and although I feel the inhibitions leaving me like broken husks around a seed, I’m still in control. I put it down on the marble table. I instinctively scratch my waist on the right side, under the shirt. DECLAN, it says, written in beautiful script. I lean back, lift my shirt slowly at the waist, and wait for him to turn his eyes from the TVs and see it.

  “Deck?”

  He turns, and when his eyes land on it, when they see it, when the momentary look of confusion and shock disappears from his face, replaced by lightning clear understanding, his eyes change. And they become ravenous.

  And they become hungry.

  And before I know it, Deck’s monstrous body is over mine, and his hot lips are touching me, our tongues lashing wildly at each other, launching into each other’s mouths, and I’m widening, suddenly bursting open with need. For my Declan. I love you, baby. I love you so much. And I’m so afraid. I don’t know if I forgive you, but I want you, I want you more than air and life and water...

  Real lightning snaps outside so furiously that the lights buzz in his penthouse. His lips burn on mine. Between my legs, I’m soaking. No matter what he’s told me, what he’s done, he turns me on still. He’ll always turn me on. Maybe that’s not healthy, but it’s a hard, cold fact. He presses his crotch against my center and the sizzle of it makes me utter a low moan.

  Flashes of her hit me, interspersed between flickers of Declan’s face on mine, his voracious eyes...

  His lips crackle on my neck. His hand slides down my sides and...

  ...I’m on my bed, in my loft, he’s kneeling in front of me, his cock hard and shining and erect and gleaming with need and moisture. He pushes me down by the shoulders and glares me deep in the eyes, tells me, “I love you, Blaze Ryleigh. Love you more than air.” And then he moves back, then down, maneuvers the tip of his dripping hard-on into the folds of my swollen lips, and he thrusts. It pushes a whimper out from me. I clutch him, squeeze his butt, trying to pull him far, far, far inside me. My eyes roll in my head, needing him, yearning for this man. Nothing can tear us apart, I think. Nothing can break us. Let the world throw what it has at us...

  ...But we did tear apart, ripped asunder by life, and mind-tricks and...

  ...Her...

  And then my thoughts change:

  ...He’s inside her. In this very condo, perhaps? Perhaps even in this very room? She’s talking with her husky voice at him. “Oh, Mr. NFL, Mr. Sexy Muscle, fuck mama. Fuck this Sugar Mommy, baby. Fuck me hard and fast—”

  I’m instantly repulsed. My skin goes cold. My blood cools.

  The moment is over.

  I thrust him away and kick instinctively, my eyes closed, not being sure of what’s happening but being sure that things are not the same, will never be the same again!

  “Blaze! Blaze! Ouch!” My knee lands on his chest.

  “Deck. I’m sorry. I’m—”

  He gets up off me. The thrill of need is still on me, still between my legs, but it’s physical only, and it’s quickly disappearing. And if it doesn’t go away, I can deal with it. But I can’t deal with...her. I... “Deck...” I stand, grab my clutch purse, stride to the door. “Deck, I’m...I’m sorry. I just...can’t.”

  And then I’m out the door, in the elevator, and I’m flying down and tapping my feet...and realizing, Shit, I can’t drive, because I’m freaking tipsy!

  I call Vikki, ask her frantically if she’ll pick me up because I could catch the train but I don’t want to leave my car here and Vikki you won’t believe what he told me and my head is spinning and oh my god I don’t know what’s—

  “Blaze! Blaze! Stop! You’re rambling!”

  I take a deep breath, tears prickle my eyes and blur my vision. The elevator dings, I go out into the lobby. I see a blond woman. Her! The Bitch! I wipe my eyes...

  No, it’s not her. It’s not her. Oh God, I love him so, I love him with all my heart, and this is all my fault because I pushed him away and then he got onto drugs and drink and...her!

  In a far away distance, somewhere, at the end of a tunnel maybe?, I hear Vikki’s voice, then again. I don’t realize the phone’s still to my ear when I’m outside the building and sheets of cold rain slap me (much like I slapped Deck earlier) and I finally hear her voice and it’s saying “...will get you. He’s almost there!”

  “Sorry, what!?” Rain howls like mad around me, Polar Vortex mad, only it’s rain, not snow. Cold rain. I’m shivering because of my sleeveless jacket and can’t believe I was actually warm at Vikki’s apartment before. I should have brought an extra coat...

  I go back inside through the revolving doors. “Vikki, what?”

  “Skate’s in the area, Blaze. I’ll call him and have him bring you home.”

  Home. Where is that, actually? Is it Berlin? London? NYC? “OK. OK. Thanks. Th-thanks, Vikki.” I’m drenched, the passion so far away now that it might as well be in another world, another planet like one of those sci-fi comic books. I look around me, see the concierge (because Deck�
�s condo building is so posh they actually have a concierge behind the counter), see people milling about, a blond, not her, ...

  The mind plays tricks, Blaze.

  Get a grip, Blaze.

  He was honest with you, Blaze.

  The mind plays tricks, Blaze.

  “And how do you know what’s a trick and what’s not?”

  I don’t realize I’m speaking out loud until a woman says to me, “Excuse me?”

  It sobers me up. Fast. “Uhm, sorry, noth—nothing.”

  “My, you’re positively drenched! Here...” The gray haired lady stromps over to the concierge desk and says, “Jacques, a towel, snap snap snap!” She actually snaps her fingers as she says it.

  “Jacques” brings the aforementioned towel and the lady starts wiping my face with it, then the rest of my body, my colorful arm. “My goodness, you’ll catch cold!” She makes me think of Mamah, of gramps... The woman offers to have me come upstairs with her and change into a clean set of clothes but I explain that someone’s coming to pick me up in...I look at my watch..five or so minutes and she finally, hesitantly, reluctantly (and with a look on her face that says, Oh my, boy trouble, is it?), believes me. She says, “OK, then, fine,” and straightens my soaking jacket, looks out at the revolving doors and at the howling rainshower outside and then turns to “Jacques” and says, “If this young lady is still here in five minutes you ring me pronto!”

  Jacques nods deferentially.

  The woman leaves.

  Skate arrives four minutes and thirteen seconds later. He looks at me once and his eyes go hard. He starts saying, “What has he done—” and strides in the direction of the elevator, chest rising in sudden anger. I put a hand on his chest just as he gets to me, and stop him.

  “No! No, Skate, he hasn’t done anything...”

  Skate ruminates on this, moves his jaw back and forth. He looks back at the elevators, looks at me, then at the elevators again... “Blaze, what happened? I’ll kill him, I swear it—”