Stranger

by Robin Lovett

  I don’t like it, but I need more.

  How can I want something I don’t like?

  The truck’s headlights illuminate him, going to my car and filling the gas tank.

  I’m just watching him stand there, his back to me. His arms flex as he lifts the can, and his back broadens beneath his shirt. He bends as he pours and gives me a spectacular shot of his ass.

  He could’ve been as awful looking as his horrid lies, as ugly as his manipulations. But no. He had to be this hot piece of man sex that makes me want to jump him whether he’s touching me or not, being nasty to me or not. I am weak and susceptible to him in so many ways, I can’t possibly fight him off.

  And he had to also be fascinating—the contrast of his lightness to his darkness. He’ll con me out of money, but he’ll help me with car trouble. He’s the darkest soul I’ve ever met, yet his eyes, his hair, are as light as green grass and sunshine. His endless pique to my curiosity will be my undoing.

  He’s going to burn me to nothing soon. I can feel it.

  I should close my eyes, quit looking. But I can’t. He’s this force that draws me yet repels me—a brutal, bitter man.

  His obsession with his lies can’t continue. I can’t let him keep trashing my father. It’s got to stop.

  I get out of his truck and charge toward him. “It’s impossible,” I yell at him.

  He jerks back. “What?”

  “My father couldn’t be guilty of what you say. He would’ve gone to jail.”

  His body, his shoulders, his neck, stiffen like steel. “He was president of a major university. He could’ve committed murder and gotten away with it.”

  “But he didn’t. He couldn’t.”

  He empties the gas can in the tank and closes it. “You know what’s more interesting?”

  “What?”

  “How you said that.”

  “Said what?”

  He wipes his hands on his shirt. “You didn’t say, ‘he would never do something like that.’ Or ‘my father wasn’t the kind of man who could rape a woman.’”

  I gulp and still. I don’t want him to be right.

  He steps toward me. “Because you know he was capable of horrible things. A man like that leaves signs.”

  “No!” I sputter. “He was a good and decent and—and—” I close my eyes. No. I will not think bad things of my father.

  “There were things he did. Things he said. Strange things that as child you convinced yourself were normal. Growing up, you forced yourself to forget them, but it doesn’t make them go away.”

  Scrambling happens in my brain, memories being prodded, old suspicions I’ve forgotten. “Nothing. There were only good things.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You’re the liar!”

  “I’m right and you know it.”

  “You’re wrong. You spineless, worthless, fiendish—”

  “Call me names all you want. It doesn’t change the truth of what you know.”

  “Stay out of my head!” I push him, willing him to go away as much as my thoughts, all the things wrecking the good memories that are all I have left of my father. “He’s gone. How dare you say bad things about him.”

  “My sister’s been gone for eight years. It was about damn time your waste-of-space father died.”

  Anger, red hot and fiery, explodes in my chest. “Shut up!”

  I charge him. Ramming into him as hard as I can. He pushes back, wins, and presses me against my car. “Easy, sweetheart. Don’t hurt yourself.”

  I kick and scream with all my might, but I’m frozen in place, his body holding me immobile and his legs holding mine still. His hands caging my arms to my sides.

  “Let go of me!”

  “Not while you’re trying to hit me.”

  “You deserve to be hit.” I breathe hard. Being trapped by him . . .

  I like it—the cars passing us on the highway, his truck lights illuminating us.

  Standing against me, I feel more of him than in the truck. His heat, his strength, all of it subduing me, holding me. Then he grinds his hips, and I’m gone.

  He’s hard, and he makes me feel him through his jeans. I’m helpless. Feeling him robs me of protest, steals away my senses, and removes my will to fight him. I don’t want to. Like this, I want to give in to him. To everything he says.

  “You like it, don’t you,” he leers.

  I swallow.

  The tip of his tongue rings my ear. “You like being held down.”

  I shudder, but don’t answer.

  “You can say ‘yes.’” The gravel scraping his voice, the devious intent dripping from his words, it’s like he’s feeding me the response.

  “Yes.” I don’t want to say it, but once out, it’s a relief so strong I want to say it again.

  “You like being afraid.” He runs his nose over my hairline. “You like not knowing if I’ll drag you off the road, whether I’ll fuck you or leave you there.”

  A sound echoes in my throat. I clamp down the urge to beg him for it. My muted existence isn’t keeping me alive anymore. This man, with his threats and his anger, is.

  He presses me harder against the car. “Is that what you want? For me to drag you into the woods?”

  He nips my jaw then bites my pulse with his teeth.

  My skin vibrates with the throbbing of blood in my veins. I am heart and sensation, there is nothing else.

  “Please,” I breathe.

  “You want to feel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Believe the truth and feel the pain.”

  It’s like a shock to my brain. “No!” I squirm and shove at him. “Get off me.”

  He stands back and lets me go. A low sound resonates in his chest. It’s the first time I’ve heard it. I think he’s laughing.

  “What’s funny?” I fume, my blood still heating, my lungs still panting, and me disbelieving how far I’m willing to let him take this.

  “You’d rather be scared than admit the truth.” He cackles more. “And I thought I was fucked up.”

  Is it true? That I’d rather be dead than admit my father was . . . “Stop laughing at me.”

  He whirls on me and fury erupts from him. “It must be nice to be so safe that you need fake fear to feel alive!”

  “What?”

  “Real fear, the kind where people fear for their lives, isn’t fun. You’re a pathetic little bitch for playing with it like it’s a toy. Staying alive isn’t a game.”

  “Asshole! You have no idea what it’s like to be me. Stop pretending you do.”

  “I know you’d rather play in your safe little baby world than step into the real one.”

  “Your ‘real world’ is one of lies created to scare me.”

  He stills, his shoulders collapsing. “If only that were true.” He walks back to his truck and shouts over his shoulder. “Go home.”

  I get into my car and have to focus extra hard to remember how to start it. The lines between denial and truth—they’re blurring. Blurring as hard as my cravings for fear and sex. From him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She bought me clothes.

  And shoes.

  I step out of the bathroom and stare at the bags she put on the table. “I’m not wearing those.”

  “You have to.” She digs in her purse for her car keys. In another minute, she’ll leave for work and I won’t have to see her the rest of the day. “We’re going out with my friends this weekend.”

  “We?”

  “If you want this charade to look real, you have to meet my friends and pretend to be . . .” She finally looks at me, and her eyes go saucer wide.

  I didn’t put on a shirt or shorts. I’m standing in the hall in my boxers.

  Her eyes draw over my chest, tracing my muscles like they’re an image she wants to commit to memory. I seize on her vulnerability and walk toward her. I can send her to work with more memories than the sight of me.

  She backs away and says in war
ning, “Logan.”

  “What?”

  “I have to go to work.”

  “I know.” I move to her, intending to grab her.

  She dodges me. “Leave me alone.”

  I pause, and tilt my head. “Do you mean that?”

  Her breathing is shallow. She doesn’t answer, merely walks the long way around the table so she doesn’t have to touch me.

  “Don’t deny it.” I’m taunting her.

  She grabs her purse.

  I follow with my eyes. “Look at me.” She does as I say, and I walk to her. “I’ll be here when you get home.”

  Her teeth grind and she growls. “I hate you.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  She brushes past me to the door.

  I call after her, “I’m not going.”

  She looks back. “What?”

  “Out with your friends. I won’t go.” Me and people do not mix. There will be nothing pretty about me meeting her friends.

  But in the light of the brutal look she gives me, perhaps I could be persuaded—maybe it’s another opportunity to make her miserable.

  * * *

  I can’t live with him. I can’t.

  Waking up to a picture-perfect man, all shoulders and abs and pecs and hips and . . . Jesus. A girl isn’t supposed to see that, turn it down, and get through her day with any sort of reason intact.

  But my tune changes when I get to lunch—then I’d do anything to be at home with that man made of temptation rather than be here at work.

  Blake bombards me, not even texting first, just showing up.

  “How did you know I was here?” I’m frozen in my chair on the patio. I’ve been enjoying eating alone since I’m not sharing a lunch with Amisha anymore. No people, no questions.

  He pulls off his aviators and stuffs them in his shirt pocket. “I texted Amisha and she told me what time your lunch is.”

  “You could’ve texted me.” I’ve had silence from him since he warned me out of his office.

  He folds his long legs and squeezes into the chair across from me. I do a double take. My brother’s never been a small guy, but his shoulders have definitely gotten wider recently. “You wouldn’t have answered me.”

  “I thought you weren’t speaking to me.”

  A soft growl catches in his throat. “I was angry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You were a jackass.”

  “Yes, I was. But if you didn’t do stupid shit like marry strangers who are after you for your money, then I wouldn’t have to be a jackass.” He glares that big brother glare, but it’s morphed into something else.

  I gasp and cover my mouth.

  “What?” He squints at me and the glare is gone.

  My heart slows again. “You looked so much like Dad for a second.”

  He recoils like I’ve smacked him. “I did?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  He leans on his hand and covers his eyes. “Promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “If I ever hurt you, you’ll call the police and have me arrested.”

  “What? Why would—”

  He slaps the table. “Promise me. Please.” The look in his eyes is equal parts horror and caution.

  “Blake.” I sit forward. “You would never hurt me.”

  “You have no idea what I’m capable of.” He tilts his head and I see it again. In the slope of his brow, the twist of his mouth and in the set of his shoulders, my father is there. And not in a good way, in a fearful-of-what-he’ll-do-next way.

  “I promise,” I whisper.

  He nods and takes a deep breath of relief.

  “Did he ever . . . ?” I try to ask.

  “We’re not talking about him.”

  I don’t want to talk about our father either.

  He points at me. “We’re talking about you.”

  “Oh.” That is not a relief. “What about me?”

  He settles back in his chair. “How’s married life?” His mockery is thick. He doesn’t believe I’ve really married Logan for a second.

  I look at my hands. I still don’t believe it myself.

  “I can get you a divorce.”

  “No!” I blurt too fast. The panic I feel at the thought of him exposing everything is on my face, I’m sure.

  His expression turns anxious. “Penny, let me help you.”

  I have to learn how to lie. I have to find some way to convince him that Logan means something to me. “We’re going out with my friends on Friday. You should come.”

  “And what? Hang with your friends?” He grimaces like I’ve asked him to spend time with screaming children.

  “It’s Amisha and Layla.” I tuck my hair behind my ear. “And Logan.”

  “He worked as a janitor at the university.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your husband. Didn’t he tell you? He cleaned floors where our father used to work.”

  “Oh.” I should hide my surprise better. I stare at my food. “Yeah.”

  “You knew?”

  “Mm-hm.” I take a bite of sandwich. “Is that supposed to be a bad thing?”

  He sputters for words. “You have nothing in common.”

  “Maybe it’s not something you can comprehend.”

  “Don’t try to tell me you’re in love with him. We both know that’s a lie.”

  His insults, his pestering, his treating me like an ignorant girl—it has to stop. “What would you know about love?”

  “Nothing. I’m not pretending to.” His quick answer surprises me. “I’m trying to figure out why you married this bastard. It’s not because he’s a nice guy. I met him.”

  “You have no idea what he’s like in private.” How good his hands are, how much he thrills me. I choke again. I’m defending the master manipulator—holy Stockholm Syndrome.

  “You have no idea how much he’s manipulating you.”

  I do actually. “Because he loves me.” Wow, that lie came easy.

  “He’s convinced you he loves you?”

  My jaw flaps on a non-answer. “You need to come out with us this weekend.” Which, if anything, is going to convince Blake even more that I’m a liar, but it’s the only option I have.

  He sits forward. “He’s using you, Penny. Why can’t you see that?”

  “Why can’t you see I’m not that stupid?” I lean my elbows on the table. “I know when I’m being used.”

  He squints. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m taking care of myself, is all.”

  He turns his chair. “But not enough.”

  He’s leaving and I have the urge to ask him to stay. “I wanted to ask you something.”

  “What?” he growls, not unlike another man I know.

  “Did you—how come—?” We never talk about this. Have never and will never, unless I bring it up.

  “Spit it out.”

  “Why do you hate Father so much?”

  His shoulders slump. “We went over this.”

  “Was it only the trust fund thing or was there something else?” I shouldn’t be asking this. There’s nothing else my father did that would make him hateable. Logan’s lies are infiltrating my head.

  His mouth stretches in a grimace. “You don’t want to know the answer to that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, you don’t!” He snaps it like a whip, the words cracking through the air, drawing gazes from other people.

  “Okay,” I whisper, but my hands tighten on my chair. He’s hiding something, protecting me for a reason I don’t understand.

  But as much as I want to know, a greater part of me does not want to know. A greater part of me fears that what Blake’s hiding might be as bad as, if not worse than, Logan’s lies.

  I can’t handle that.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I’ve been bored out of my mind the last two days. I try to ignore how much I like Penny’s kitchen.

  Nothing to do but cook—the one thing
I’ve always enjoyed doing, the thing I remember Louisa enjoying. Our mom never cooked. Her meals were generally liquid with only a bottle for company.

  If my sister and I wanted food, we had to make it ourselves. She taught me to cook. I don’t know how she learned. Probably YouTube. But it was fun for her, and for me watching her, trying to make what we could afford into something that tasted good. Sometimes it was awful. Sometimes it was great. I would sit and watch her moving around the kitchen, hear her singing to herself, see her smelling the food and telling me how good it would taste.

  I eat, sleep, run, and wait for Penny to come home so I can torture her some more.

  Or more like torture me. This morning I couldn’t keep away from her. I had her flat on her back, underneath me, on the couch, before she even left for work. And she let me. My excuse: so that she won’t be able to focus all day because she’ll be thinking of me.

  It’s not an excuse. It’s a distraction.

  Distraction from what I really want. What I want more than my next breath. What I’ve needed more than my life since I was fifteen—

  For someone to believe me.

  She still doesn’t.

  I don’t know why but all my years of failing to get others to hear me have come down to this one woman. I’m pinning all my hopes on her.

  My gut contorts and lurches with anxiety. I know how to make her believe it. But I don’t know if she can handle it. Which shouldn’t matter but it’s more—

  Can I handle it?

  Sitting around debating, pretending I’m planning when really all I’m doing is putting off the inevitable—it’s got to stop.

  I need something else to do.

  My adult life has been spent searching, seeking, gathering every speck of detail I can on the Vandershalls and on what happened to Louisa.

  There’s nothing else left for me to figure out.

  Except there’s never such a thing as knowing everything.

  I open Penny’s laptop on the desk, and when no password protection pops up, I pull up the browser. Googling the law firm where Blake Vandershall works isn’t the hard part. The hard part is finding out when he’s there.

  Getting a job at his law firm, my usual infiltration method, is a non-option. He already knows who I am. Judging by the sophistication of the website, doing a walk-in with my flip-flops and shorts isn’t an option either.