“Everything wants to attack you, Alana. Me included.” He reaches down and grabs the thing, his other hand reaching for the fucker’s neck. I stare, bewildered as to what he’s doing, then realise he’s checking the dick’s pulse.
“Really?”
He nods and then puts his foot on the man’s hand, crushing it, seemingly without any care. I wish I could say it bothered me, but it doesn’t. In fact, I will the crunch of the bones, disgusted with the idea of what might have happened. I just clutch this fucking post instead, trying to process what the hell’s happening to me, why Blaine’s here at all, and why the fuck I care so much about the fact that he is.
“Saving your shoes, too,” he says, reaching over the man and picking up my heels, chuckling.
I don’t even know what to say to that. I swipe my eyes again as he stands there, not knowing what to do or say next. I’m terrified of what might come out of my mouth all of a sudden, my heart blustering around the vision of him in front of me again. He’s too handsome. Too big. Too in my face. I can’t function with him here, can’t get my thoughts back together. Not that they were.
“Thank you,” is the only thing I can think of to say. That’s safe. Nothing else has to be said. It’s polite. Sensible. Thank you and goodbye. Nothing else.
“You’re welcome, Alana.” His mouth around my name makes me gaze at him, searching for those fucking stars he just tore from me with his admittance of murder.
“Were you following me?” Why did I say that? No conversation. None. I need to go. He’s making me say these things somehow, probably using his psychology degree to infiltrate my mind again.
I shake my head and tug my coat tighter again as I let go of the lamp post, hopefully shielding myself from any thought of togetherness. There isn’t any. I need to be gone. To leave and process the murderer who’s moving closer to me.
“I let you go, little dove,” he says, more fucking steps headed in my direction, his hand putting my shoes on the floor in front of him. “I’m far from letting you leave, though.”
He just stands there, three feet from me, with his hands in his pockets, forcing me to run my eyes over his face. Oh god, he’s beautiful. Even with the knowledge I now have. It’s dark here and the lamplight just bounces off his cheekbones, somehow softening the fact that he’s killed someone. I want to reach out and touch him, let my fingers wander his body, let him pull me into him again and hold me.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I snap out instead, still trying to fight the thought. I have to.
“Language.” He smirks, the very movement slowly widening into that happy face of his that weakens every resolve I’ve got. It makes me want to do it, too. Makes me ache to walk into him, let him lead me through this.
I don’t.
“I’m still leaving.” I clench my own hands, grasping my shoes from the floor and clinging to my coat in the hope that he stays where he is. “I don’t want to know anymore.”
“Yes you do,” he says instantly, his eyes boring into mine. “Don’t lie to yourself, Alana. You pushed for this.” The fucking smile’s still there as he watches me and then turns his body away to walk to the kerb. “Push, push, push.”
I snatch glances around again, wondering if I should run. But where to? I’m still as lost as I was ten minutes ago, not knowing where to go. It makes me snarl at myself, irritated at my inability here as he nods at something up the road.
The car comes then, the rumble of it approaching down the road highlighting the very real possibility that I’m about to be taken against my will. I see it coming for me and wonder if that would really happen, its black outline an image of the darkness he creates. But he’s never forced anything before, not with any legitimacy anyway. He’s only ever forced something when I needed the extra shove, and he’s always been right. I’ve always enjoyed whatever happened next. Always learnt something about myself because of his guidance. And I’m still in fucking stall as I stand here, flicking my eyes between his back and the car. I’m even chewing my thumb, my heart racing at the impending information that he’ll impart if I get in that car. It’s concerning. I mean, will that make me an accomplice in something? Would I be aiding and abetting in some way? Still, it doesn’t stop this impetus inside me from continually propelling me forward towards him, driving me to the very thing I should be running from.
“Life with me is not the rainbows you’re after, Alana,” he says sharply as the car pulls up alongside him, his errant fingers clicking it open before it even stops. “This mind of mine you want into? You’ll have to follow me further to get it all. I’ll show you when we get there.” Get where? “It’s always been your choice to make.” My feet have stepped forward before I’ve realised it’s happened, making me halt myself from further stupidity and snatch more glances around. For Christ’s sake. What am I doing? “You asked me for this. Come and find out why.” He just stands there again, his back still turned away from me as he holds the door open. It makes me look at the gap between the arm bracing it and his body. There’s just a dark hole waiting for me to enter it, darker than the sky above me, darker even than his sea at night. There aren’t any stars in there, no flickers or glimmers of light. It’s just pitch black, his arm framing the entrance. “Come.”
I chew on my nail again, still deliberating what the hell I’m even thinking about. I should be getting home, writing, doing things to enhance my career. Meeting Bree and apologising again, finding a way to build myself back up on my own. Or I should be screaming at him and running, making sure I don’t vanish into a hole I can’t get out of. Wonderland, that’s what he called it. Alice does not live in that car. And this little dove is becoming frightened of the hole she wants to fall down.
“Not pushing anymore?” he says quietly. “Where’s my brat gone?”
I want to say no. I want to tell him that I’m not doing this, that it’s over, that I need to think and find some sense to all this, but I can’t stop the next footfall in his direction, or the one after that. And I can’t stop looking at him through the fog my breath’s creating in the air, his outline as clear as day regardless of the mist obscuring him. He tilts his head at my advance, his arm crooking a little to give me access.
“Blaine?” I whisper, not sure what it is I want him to say, or even if I want him to say it. He turns slightly, showing me his cheek, but nothing other than that. No contrition, no show of affection, no love to guide me in. He just waits as he always does, waits for me to show my agreement to his forward momentum, the one I asked for. “Is this forward?” The corner of his mouth curves upwards before his face swings away from me again.
“We go backwards before we go forwards, little dove. For you, we go backwards first.”
I walk on, emboldened by the statement, although I don’t know why. Backwards seems dysfunctional, useless to me. My backwards is a mess of chaos and commotion, irrespective of how I portrayed my calm at the time. I know calm now. I know its effects on my skin, on my mind. He’s shown it to me, let me linger in it with no consequence other than pain.
There’s a moment as I duck under his arm and look back at him, a moment I don’t know how to describe. It’s haunting, like I’ve seen him before in another life, dwelt with him somehow. It just hangs me in one place, needing to stay locked right here. It warms me, making some part of me want to let him take over completely. Brown eyes so murky their depths seem fathomless, like his sea. A constant churn of controlled havoc just waiting for the storm to whip them up. Whip me up.
“Get in the car,” he murmurs. It’s so soft now, lulling me quietly, making me forget everything other than the black hole my body seems to lever me into. I don’t even know if I want to get in really. I’m just going, perhaps lacking the ability to stay out. “Good girl.”
I close my eyes to the sound of him and lean onto the door as I sit, not knowing what I’m doing but too exhausted to fight my feelings anymore. I can’t run. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. Every thought I try to employ j
ust makes me turn back to him again, makes me want to fall further into the dark with him. I’m alone without him. Lost. He makes me feel real. He makes Alana feel alive for reasons I can’t compute or organise effectively. He makes me want to dream and find the stars in my words again.
“You’ll hate me before you love me again,” he says as the car pulls away.
Hate him? I couldn’t hate him if I tried. I should maybe. I should be able to sit here and detest this monster he’s told me of, should be able to despise the essence of any human who kills, but I don’t. That fact is proved by my body being in this car with him still, regardless of my shudders at the thought.
I don’t answer his statement or look at him as we begin driving. I can’t. I have nothing to answer that with. I’ve got nothing to tell him yet, regardless of knowing my own feelings on the matter. At this precise moment, and perhaps because of my fear of what I’m about to find out, I need quiet and peace. I need to let my mind wander, hopefully finding some ability to organise myself in the time it’s given to let go of my initial response. That’s one of the main things I’ve learnt since I’ve been near him. My initial response is often not the deep-seated one. It’s not the true Alana from times gone by. The one who breezes and dreams, who lingers in time and finds passion. I need this new ability I’ve found because of him. I need to let myself go.
And that’s what he gives me for the journey as we travel on. We don’t speak as the car arrives back at the hotel lobby we left from. He doesn’t speak as we climb up in the elevator towards the roof. And he doesn’t speak the entire flight back to the abandoned strip of ground we first took off from. He just behaves like the perfect gentleman, as he opens doors and helps me climb into things and climb back out of them. He shows me the Blaine that I danced with earlier, his heart almost on his sleeve as he looks at me and occasionally smiles. It’s become a sad smile, though, one that I can’t stop reflecting back to him. No grinning, no beaming. The glimpse of that I was getting from him now relegated back behind closed borders. I suppose it’s tainted with knowledge now, changed. It’s become something that makes a love derived from filth and learning, appreciation from newfound sensations, now an irrevocable bond of trust. It’s a commitment in some ways, a bonding that’s deeper than the love I was pushing for. It’s something I’ll always know, something I’ll always have to know. And he still shows no repentance for his act as we cross to the car to get in, but he does radiate a sense of discord because of it. He seems uncomfortable as we get closer to his home. His movements become less fluid with every mile we inch through. Perhaps it’s just because I know about it now. Or perhaps he’s anxious about what’s coming.
I chuckle slightly as I watch the now familiar roads go past us on the way, more out of the same sense of dissonance as he shows. Blaine Jacobs in disarray. What a thought. It forces me to imagine what happened to the woman he spoke of, the one he killed.
“Tell me about her,” I mumble, for some reason needing to hear about who she was, what happened to her. Nothing changes in the air around us. No answer. No change in breath as he eases us onwards. I sigh at the dark night, searching the horizon for my stars and not finding any there.
“Not yet,” he eventually replies, quietly. I watch as we turn onto the highway, bypassing the route we should have taken to get back to his house. “First, you go home and you think again.” I frown at him, wondering why he would say that. I mean, I got in the car. I followed him when he asked me to. I don’t need time to think. I need answers to my questions, an explanation. A way of finding a route through this, if there’s a route to find.
“But I—”
“Give me time to do the same,” he mumbles, his head shaking as his hand reaches over and drops my phone into my lap. I look at it lying there, its dull screen reminding me of my life without him. “I need time, Alana. So do you. I didn’t expect this.”
I frown at him again, watching his face turn from passive and calm to something akin to concern or worry, and then that eventually turns to one of depression as we keep driving. I physically see it change. His body language becomes smaller, weaker. He won’t make eye contact as I bore mine into the side of his face, hoping for boldness to make this seem easier to bear. He seems sullen, morose even, sighs leaving him with every corner we round. It becomes worrying at some point. I’ve never seen him like this. It’s unlike him. Strange. And it makes the air around us uncomfortable, more so than the word ‘killer’ does.
Chapter 12
Blaine
M y hand launches the chair at the wall, the other still hauling the table in the same direction. Everything follows, a fucking riot of bedlam and destruction, all thrown at anything it’ll break against. Everything needs to break. Everything always does eventually, no matter what I do. And I don’t fucking care as I heave and tug at a line of more worthless objects, throwing them in the same direction, fury levelling each lob of hatred. No evaluation of the facts. No considered approach or assessment and calculation. For now, it’s just me and these walls of inadequacy, fuelled with a love that screams for acceptance from her. It rakes me in two as I snarl at myself, listening to her words flood my insides.
“Don’t you fucking dare touch me.”
Fuck her. Fuck her to hell and back. She pushed and twisted me, turning the thoughts over in my head until there wasn’t any other answer in here to be found. Now she’s tainted my home, saturating me with reminders of her and her fucking perfection as I scour the walls for clarity without her.
I lob another fuck knows what at the glass doors and pick up the bottle of scotch, glugging it to prove my own fucking point. Nothing’s left here. Fuck all good resides inside of these walls or me. I’m an asshole, one who’s just given her everything she needs to decimate what’s left of me. I might as well fucking top myself now, just wade into my fucking sea and let it do its worst. I’d rather that than the grating pull on my heart that she keeps trampling in.
The final slug of drink has me glaring at the bottle, rage at its shortfall fuelling more fury. It erupts inside me, finding its way straight to a thousand dollar painting that I couldn’t give a fuck about. Fucking money. It’s all worthless and insignificant, barely registering as usable in my life as I lie my way through it, containing my needs for the benefit of others. Fuck that now. Fuck this excuse of a shell I’ve become. Fuck her. I’m nothing but a casing for gunpowder, eternally restricting the flow of its explosion. I’m fucking tired of it. Tired of its continual grate on my mind. Tired of its hesitance. Tired of its pleasantries and niceties for society’s sake.
The painting is lobbed with little fucking precision to its landing, my arm reaching for more to grab at as I storm past the drinks and swipe another bottle. Fuck, it feels good to be drunk. Good to be alive and free for a while. Fucking place. I snarl at it all as I stamp through the hall, bored of its fucking grey interior and its ineffective content. It makes me turn into the den, hoping for fulfilment from its sadistic arsenal, but she’s not in here to brighten it. It’s as fucking empty as the rest of the building, as useless. I glare at its desolation, suddenly unable to stop myself kicking out at the furniture that she lay on. It’s disturbing to me that she’s all I can see or think about. Provoking. So I keep fucking drinking instead and turn back out, content with the thought of just releasing more of my monster at this interior, colouring it with something other than the calm I’ve lived in to cage myself. Fucking caging. I’m sick of it. Sick of its unsettled resonance. Sick of its repression and suffocation around me. Sick of its dishonesty. She’s my fucking honesty. It lives in her, waiting for me breathe life into it again. It rides my skin whenever I’m near her, galling me with the possibilities of love and honesty. Fucking love. Fuck her. Fuck all of it.
My hand launches the bottle at the wall of glass as I walk into the bedroom, fury expelling from me as I imagine her naked body there. It halts me, my mood faltering as I stare at the bed and let this fucking drunken haze gaze at her. Beautiful. Sinful. S
exy as fuck. Her skin covered with my bruises, my stripes, her blood. Fuck, that tastes good. It’s like a fine wine coating my tongue, bringing with it a relief that no drug counters. And her cunt, the same one that envelops me in its heat and promises me release. It’s fucking divine. It tastes of her and her alone. Unique, and only enhanced by the combined taste of my come inside it, leaking out and letting me lave at its nectar. I’d fucking lose myself in there forever, let it guide me home, bring me back from this mayhem into a more manageable version of monsters who lurk in the gloom. I smile at the imagery, picturing her running my fucking beach, fear in her every panted footfall as I chase her down.
And where the fuck is she now I need to expel these thoughts? She’s where I fucking drove her to—back to her lacking life.
Fucking decency.
I crick my neck and turn for the door again, ready to get more drink, but I become distracted by my sea this early in the morning. It’s as beautiful as her, mesmerizing as it laps the edges of my shore gently. I stagger in its direction and aim for the handle, wondering if drowning seems a good idea today. Perhaps it is. She knows about Eloise now, doesn’t she? She won’t come back. No one would with that knowledge inside them. The only fucking reason she got in the car was because she couldn’t get home without me. That was fucking stupid of her. I could have done anything to her in the mood I was in, especially given her foul fucking mouth and its effortless tug on my soul. Fuck knows how I didn’t kill that fucking pervert who was going to attack her.
I should spank her ass for that, for all of it, make her cunt bleed for being so reckless.
The End Page 18
