The End

by Charlotte E Hart

  “No, Lana, you don’t. You proved that by getting in the car with him.”

  I sigh, wondering how the hell I’m going to make this work. They’re poles apart as humans, each with their own way of being themselves.

  “But Bree …” She dumps her bag on the table and glowers at me.

  “I mean, how fucking stupid are you?” Her words make me wince and raise myself back from her as she sits. “The fuck, Lana? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I …”

  “And don’t give me any of that submissive shit.” She glares, her body leaning across the table at me as she snatches my coffee from my hand then starts drinking it. “Jesus Christ, what’s he done to you? It’s not real, Lana. You damn well told me that yourself.” But it is.

  I sigh out again, shaking my head at myself more than her as I stare at the table, near defeat setting in before I’ve even attempted explanation.

  “Bree, you need to let me …”

  “I don’t need to let you say shit,” she snaps, leaning back into her seat and still maintaining her glare of disdain. “I need to get you to a shrink.” I snort, tickled by the thought.

  “Blaine is one.”

  “Great.” The sarcasm in her voice, as I creep my eyes back up, is loud and clear for me to hear. She rolls her eyes in response, huffing a breath from her lungs. “Whippy dick’s a sex god, too, presumably.” Well, yes. I smile a little, letting thoughts that shouldn’t be in this room encroach into my mind. His hands, the way they move across me. The clamps I endured. The rack. She just rolls her eyes again, digging into her bag for something. “Still, the fuck are you thinking? You could have been raped or some shit.” I tilt my head, acknowledging that not only have I just about been anyway, but I actually encouraged the thought in my own mind. How the hell do I explain that to someone, her? “At least tell me where you’ve been before I beat the shit out of you for stupidity.” Where have I been? Down a kinky rabbit hole, that’s where. “And order me a decent fucking drink. This coffee is disgusting.”

  “His house. The beach,” I reply, remembering the sand beneath my feet, wishing I was back there again with him. Preferably not drowning, though. I smirk and raise my hand, signalling for the waiter again. “Then Boston. A latte please for my friend,” I ask him, as he comes over, hoping the sentiment still rings true after what’s about to leave my mouth. He disappears again leaving us to our conversation. “Normal stuff, Bree.” I lean in, my voice dropping to a whisper. “And then I was on a stage in front of a room of Sadists, tied down. I whimpered and moaned, Bree. I gasped and I panted. In fact,” I raise myself back to upright again, suddenly unashamed of what I’m explaining and happy for the world to hear should they choose to eavesdrop. “I was begging to be fucked, from my knees. And after that I crawled after him, desperate for a fucking orgasm he wouldn’t give me.” Both her brows raise as she still hovers over the drink. “And then we went to his parent’s house.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Hardly, they’re both dead,” I reply, remembering the words that came from him in that house and how much they affected our perfect night. I blow a puff of air out of my mouth, wondering how I deliver that next piece of information when I don’t have the facts about it. “We had an argument instead.”

  “Wow, busy few days,” she eventually says, a snort coming from her nose. “Sore are we?” A slow smile breaks across my face. At least she’s smiling again. That’s a route forward I can use, her too.

  I nod at her, barely feeling the welts and bruises that are under these clothes. It’s not them that make me sore, it’s the continued ache that’s under my skin because he’s not here to touch it. I should feel free of him, ready to be who I was before. Instead I feel trapped again, regardless of the open air of the city I’m in. It feels suffocating to me in some way, like the sea isn’t here to open the horizon anymore.

  I stare at her, trying to find more words to help explain the sense of ease with him when we’re together, the application of emptiness maybe.

  “I need him, Bree, and I need you to understand that.” She shakes her head.

  “I don’t.”

  “What do you do when it’s all too much?” I ask. She frowns and takes the coffee that’s offered to her from the waiter, her other hand pushing mine over to me. “You must feel it sometimes, the panic?”

  “I guess I sleep.” She shrugs and sips her drink.

  “You don’t sleep, neither of us do,” I reply.

  “I do, maybe not on the US’s normal time zone but …”

  “I haven’t had any pills for days, Bree. I haven’t wanted to take them. And I sleep and work seamlessly, no concerns. Nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  “He made that happen, don’t you see? He makes so many things happen in my mind. It’s like he changes me into someone else, or maybe a repressed version of who I became.” She stares, less than convinced with anything that’s coming from my mouth. I huff out in exasperation, mainly with myself. This isn’t working. Why can’t I find the right words? “I can just … I see clearly now, Bree. It’s quiet with him.”

  “Right.” She draws the word out, a look of uncertainty on her face. “Because I’m doubting that with the screams that must come from your mouth.” I snort again.

  “The screams are the silence, Bree. They come from a black hole inside me and when they come out, they take everything else with them. All the notifications. All the madness. All the deadlines and unachievable things I’ve placed myself under.” I twist, focusing on her and finally finding some way of relaying this. “Some notion of achievement lead me to this place we’re in, Bree. But some ‘thing’ happened to me along the way. The stories got lost. Or became dead. I don’t want dead stories, Bree. Do you? I want life breathed into them again. I want the ocean and waves. I want the freedom that gives me to let go, not just another story, you know?” She looks confused. I’m not surprised. It’s becoming more and more chaotic in my own head with every next word uttered. “Oh god, I’m failing at this. I need you to get this, Bree. I need your help with something.”

  “What? Sounds like you’ve got it all sussed out in your mind.” She snorts cynically.

  “I need to search for my words again, Bree. Don’t you get that? I need to find them in a fog, not have them leap to me without thought. He gives me that grey area I lost.”

  “By beating you?”

  “No, he .. Yes, he does do that, but it’s not like violence,” regardless of the pressure. It has a foundation beneath it deeper than any normal application of love, giving a sense of purpose maybe to the entirety of being with him.

  I flick my gaze away from her and look out onto the street, hoping for inspiration to help me explain. It’s so murky in his world and yet clear as day in some ways too. Why can’t I get that out?

  A woman walks passed, her face smiling in the window to check her lipstick as she goes. It reminds me of the woman he claims to have killed. “And he’s confused me now with something.” Well, not overly confused. I mean, it’s not like I don’t want to go back. “He’s …” Killed someone by doing the very thing I’m venturing into, wanting? Fuck. I can’t tell her that. Even I don’t know if that’s okay yet. Tears well up at the thought of it all, taking me back to walking that street in Boston and feeling so alone until he arrived behind me again. “Oh god, he’s just so different, Bree.” I swipe at my ridiculous tears. “The other subs were right, the ones I first interviewed,” I continue, still swiping and trying not to look at her. “It’s an inexplicable sensation.” One I can’t get out of my own mouth, let alone tell her. “Life with him would be so altered from what I have been.”

  “Then you stay right where you are, Lana,” she says, her hand reaching over and grabbing mine.

  I look at it, knowing there’s more to the statement than just staying in Manhattan without him. She means her too. She means staying with her and within this life I’ve create for myself. She means going back to the old me.r />
  “I don’t want too, Bree,” I eventually say, still looking at our hands and wondering what I mean. “I don’t want any of that anymore, not unless I can find a way of doing it without going mad anyway. I’m not coping like you are. I’m done with it.” She sighs at the same time as I do, both of us lost with what the hell to say. “I am sorry for what happened by the way. I never meant to ...”

  “I know. I was bitchy.” She cuts in, waving me off from finishing. “He is hot as fuck by the way. Smug fucker.”

  “He kinda has every right to be.”

  “Sounds it. He got any sisters lurking about? We could double up.”

  I laugh, her words breaking my used thoughts on him as I fiddle with my cup. That would be good. Bringing him into normality with average people and their everyday lives might make things seem less removed, maybe joined up somehow.

  “I don’t know. He’s got a brother. I don’t really know anything else about him, but I want too, Bree. I do. I want everything with him.” I shuffle on my seat, strangely unused to the words coming from my mouth. I’ve never had to explain them to anyone before. I’ve only ever thought about them while he does all the things he does. And I’ve never loved before him, never chatted with girlfriends about giggly girly moments, sex, the want or need for more of someone.

  “Does he want you?” She suddenly asks.

  My eyes shoot up to hers, my mind instantly catching up with the fact that I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that lately, not in any real depth. He just told me to think about things, to go home and really think. That must mean he wants something more than just fucking, mustn’t it? He told me about the thing that’s been keeping him distanced from me and then told me we’d need go backwards before we went forward. That he’d do that for me. That must imply trust, love.

  “I …”

  “You don’t know, do you?” she says.

  I stare at her, wondering if he’s at home now ridding himself of me. He could be. He might have sent me here with the intent of never darkening my door again, or brightening it. It could just be his way of finishing us. The thought makes tears come again, which instantly brings on visions of him wiping them away and sucking them into his mouth.

  “I need a drink,” I spit out, my feet having me up and walking to the bar before I’ve had any thought of stopping myself. Perhaps if I get plastered it’ll all make some bloody sense, because this feeling of insecurity is not getting me anywhere at all.

  “Why?” Bree asks, her body sliding up to mine at the bar. She bumps shoulders with me as I look back at her sharply. “Why, Lana? Why would you need a drink if you love him and life is happy?” I scoff, turning away and focusing on the alcohol bottles for direction.

  “You don’t understand, Bree. How could you?” I’m not telling her the whole truth, am I?

  “You’re damn right I don’t. None of this is like you,” she says. “Where has the other you gone to? The one who’s self-assured, forward moving. The one who knocks out books like a fucking queen and doesn’t let anything stand in her way? I’ve never even seen you cry. Didn’t know you could.” I roll my own eyes at her, exhausted with trying to find words I don’t have to give.

  “I can’t explain it, so let’s not bother. We’ll get drunk instead, go dancing. Forget it.”

  “Because that’s going to fix it, isn’t it?” she replies, disdain levying her tone.

  “Fuck you,” I snap. “You’ve no idea what it is to be me. No idea of the pressure or the constancy of it all. You sit there in your office, never meeting anybody, never dealing with having people pressure you for more. You do it because you’ve got nothing else, Bree. No life, no sense of responsibility to huge publishers.” I signal the barman, pointing at the Jamesons and nodding, twice, then turn back to her. “You’ve no right to judge what I do or do not do, or who I do it with. You have nothing but screens and whatever you choose to do with your time, and yet you waste it holed up in your 8x8 box getting lost in other people’s dreams. I want reality, Bree. I want dreams to be real. I’m fucking tired of living everyone else’s. When is it my fucking turn, hey?” She just stares. No emotion. No response. “What?” She raises a brow. “I just want my fucking turn at it. Is that so hard to comprehend? I want to look up at the sky and see a reason for all this. Not rot in a hole pretending I’m happy with everyone else getting their fix of happy ever afters I can’t find myself. You go for it, though, rot away. Hide from the world as much as you like. Carry on pretending you’re straight. How’s that working for you?”

  “Fuck, you’re a bitch sometimes, Lana.”

  “Screw you.” Screw it all.

  “Screw you back.”

  “Whore.”

  “Slut.” My smile creeps back in as two glasses of Jamesons lands in front of us, a puff of air coming from the expulsion of rambled rubbish from my mouth. I don’t even mean it, not some of it, anyway.

  “Cunt,” I snap out, a smirk breaking through.

  “Ooh, good one,” she says, her brows raised as I laugh and watch her smile coming back, a snort following it.

  “Yeah, he taught me that one too,” I say, lifting my glass, clinking it with hers. “Cheers.”

  We both down it, our eyes peering over the glass at each other, until she drops hers and begins to walk away.

  “Let’s go do cocktails and dancing then. Fuck it, yeah?”

  “Good call.” Fucking perfect as far as I’m concerned. I won’t have to think when I’m drunk. I won’t have to acknowledge anything. I can just get hammered, dance, grind on something of use and let myself drift off into any place that’ll attempt the silence he manages. I’ll just get lost for a while and forget.

  Chapter 14

  Alana

  I t’s the beginning of my favourite song. I can hear it in front of me somewhere, or all around me. Who cares? I’m just looking into the vast room of writhing bodies, trying to keep myself from becoming entangled with the next set of waving arms. I’m not even sure I care about that that much, as my hips begin moving. It’s so loud in here, the beat thumping into me, the bass booming. I think we’re in a new high-end club, some place Bree said we had to come to. Or we might have moved on to somewhere else. No matter. It makes little difference to the concoction of drinks inside me, or the way it’s making me forget everything and just feel.

  I don’t know where’s she’s gone, and I don’t care for now. She was with a woman; I know that much, and that’s a good enough reason for me to have left and moved into this thrumming mass of limbs. A body glances off the side of me, her arms locking with mine, fingers mingling for some reason. It’s surreal, making us join in with a rhythm, as the room seems to move up and down. Up and down, my knees pushing me along to the tune, the bounce of them in time with the bass thundering on. Everyone’s moving like a tidal wave, smoke cresting on the top of them, a distant blur of fingers and hands in the air. And the strobe lights. Oh god, they’re so vivid. Greens, blues. Flashes of pink shining onto people’s faces, highlighting their smiles and laughter. It’s turned into fun riding this wave, letting it take me out and away from my thoughts. Forget. No intensity, no orders or instructions. No pain. No love, for now, either. There’s nothing but freedom and music, a sense of not caring for tomorrow or what it brings. I could do anything here.

  Be anyone.

  I close my eyes at some point, listening to the sounds around me and letting them ebb in, my body still moving with little care for what people think. It’s been so long since this feeling was inside me. School days, college maybe. It’s wonderful, uplifting. It makes me raise my arms higher, letting them join in with the others and soar. That’s what it feels like, as her hold on me tightens, like we’re flying, a dreamlike state becoming near orgasmic in this atmosphere. And I’m so aroused. I can feel my insides wanting nothing more than fingers inside them. They ache along with the rest of me for touch, for someone to slide over me. No force, no being held or pushed into position, just a gentle glide of touch
.

  It’s so far removed from what Blaine achieves, but that’s what I need in here. A myriad of my dreams, lifting me into them, reminding me of happily ever afters. I need soft lips and a gentle caress, something to prolong the ache in a different way, making the build less dramatic. These hands in my fingers would do. I could put them on me now, let the world blur into something intriguing and stimulating. A smile grows on my face thinking about it. I don’t even know who they belong to. That might seem odd outside these doors, but in here, now, it feels natural. A progression maybe. I don’t know, and don’t damn well care either.

  I’m aroused, my arse writhing into whatever’s behind me, my breath bouncing back at me from whoever’s in front. It’s all so close, so hot. There’s no space here, no room to escape what my body’s craving. And why should I? I’m different now, aren’t I? Perverted by him. I could just let this happen, make it happen. Use what he’s shown me about myself to learn something new.

  I tug on the fingers, bringing them down around me and putting them onto my hips. They don’t halt for a second as they move from mine and pull me back into them, decreasing the space between us to nothing at all as they grip on. I’d fuck here. I would. I want everything I’ve never felt before. Filth and sex, fucking against toilet walls. I want the grime he’s shown me I can excel in. The garbage bins spring to mind as the fingers start inching closer to the crotch of my jeans, the memory of my mouth around his cock embedding further than it ever has. I want to be slutty again. I need it.

  It makes me grab at the hands wandering my body, teasing me, and pull them to exactly where I want them. My own hand stays on top of hers, guiding it, putting the pressure on the area that I crave. I couldn’t give a damn who it is or even why I’m doing this. It’s what I want and I’m taking it. And the music just keeps up its relentless hum, its thundering bass pulling me in and making me moan as the fingers dig in harder. It’s not going to take much either. I’m close, desperate for an orgasm, but I need the fingers touching skin, not this separation. I want them inside, making the ache disappear entirely.