Brand Me (Imagine Ink Book 2)

by Verlene Landon

  With every word, there was a relief; every flinch at his posture was a victory over his attacker, but then, his heart would exert control for a flicker, and the pain he was causing to the woman he loved was immeasurable. The harder he tried to gather some semblance of control, the louder the voices became. One was screaming, “Stand up for yourself you fucking pussy!” While another was shouting, “Stop, this is the person you love, she is home.”

  “Michael, I…I don’t understand and you’re terrifying me.” He turned on her in a snap and he knew by the fear on her face and her scrambling off the bed to land in the corner clutching the cover to hide her nudity that he must look pretty damn frightening. Being out of control of his actions and thoughts was a horrible feeling. It was like that bitch continued her assault by ruining the only good thing in his life.

  Turning away once more, he dropped his face to his hands, in disgust, or fear, or mourning, he didn’t know which. The only thing he knew for sure was that Tori had to leave. Not only could he not see her the way he longed to, he couldn’t digest the fear in her eyes, or the pity that would replace it when he told her what was going on in his head.

  He chanced a glance at her as he grasped the other sheet off the bed and threw it around his shoulders before making his way to the back door. “I need you to leave, Tori. I need you to get dressed, take your things, and leave. Go to the main cabin. I’ll drop the Simpkins’ snowmobile off in the morning and you can go to town. Call John and he’ll see you home. I’m sorry.” The last two words were barely spoken aloud.

  Before he could make his exit, he heard her voice, steadier now, but still braided with fear. “Why Michael, what did I do. I…want to make it right, but…”

  Spinning on his heels, he shouted, “It’s not you, Tori!” In a defeated whisper he added, “It’s not you.” He gave her his back again, his hand on the knob, and he heard her noises of confusion. He couldn’t bear to look at her, partially because he still didn’t see only Tori, but mostly, her pain was flaying him alive. Knowing he caused it was beyond agony.

  “It’s her. She was the one on top of me, not you. She was the one I was just with, and as much as I wished it was you, it wasn’t. I don’t know if it ever will be you again, but I know who it is tonight. There, are you happy now? Don’t be here when I get back, if you are, I can’t be responsible for what I might do or say. I’m sorry, but there it is.”

  As he made his way through the door, he mumbled something he wished he’d kept to himself, “Right now, you’re not the woman I love, you’re a broken blood feather and if you stay, I’ll continue to bleed.”

  Walking out onto the ice-covered porch didn’t seem to faze him as much as what he just said. Pacing back and forth, barefoot in the snow and ice gathered on the wooden planks didn’t bother him. Wendy was haunting him, right up until he put that look on Tori’s face; now, that is what would haunt him and stalk him in the dark when he’s alone and hurt. A new demon of torture had been formed tonight, a two-headed demon. One head was a sneering Wendy who morphed into a terrified Tori; the other was him.

  Comparing her to a blood feather was perhaps the worst thing he could have said. All she wanted to do was help him, love him, not hurt him, but it was beyond that. He felt her presence was so torturous it could slowly kill him, like a broken blood feather in a young bird will bleed until stopped.

  Now, she wished she had never looked that up when she first heard the song—blissfully ignorant would be a blessing right now. Add the fact that he said he loved her before that comment and well, the new fragility of the feather applied. It was worse than a backhanded insult to hear the words she craved followed by how bad it was for him to feel it.

  Especially since it was the first time she was positive he said it. She’d thought, hoped, he’d said it once before, but she couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to get her hopes up. This time, even with the low tone it was spoken in, there was no doubt, it was a declaration of love, just not the way she’d imagined. Nor did she want one that was clearly painful to give.

  Watching him pace back and forth like a caged animal along the narrow porch wearing nothing but sweats and wrapped in a sheet was a hellish sight. He was so fucked up right now, she would probably do more harm than good if she tried to help. Not to mention she was scared of this Michael. Even with all Richard’s posturing and verbal volleys, she had never actually been physically scared of him, not until he choked her that day; maybe she was a chronic bad judge of character.

  Richard’s tactic was to break her with words, beat her down by making her think less of herself, so until he got really angry, she wasn’t smart enough to be scared. This man who kept passing past the window in the door? He was terrifying, especially if he saw her and his attacker as one in the same.

  No amount of talking tonight would pull him back from that dark place. A place where his dance card was full, and every demon he’d ever known had signed it—from the earliest to the most recent. He wasn’t capable of reason, even to help himself. Tori realized this might very well be their end—an end that was shitty, at best; shitty because she wasn’t the one he hated, yet she was.

  The human brain is fascinating and mysterious, but sometimes, predictable. Once it assigns extreme emotions to a person or object, it kind of melds them together. That person becomes that emotion or that thing or event triggers it. Even if you can prove definitely that a particular person is not whom they think, they still have difficulty, if it’s even possible, to thoroughly detach that emotion.

  Tori remembered a similar case she consulted on with Dr. Beckett and it filled her chest with a hollow hopelessness. A masked man had assaulted this patient. The police arrested him, brought him to trial, and the evidence was staggering. He was convicted handily. Eight years later, everything changed. A definitive DNA test, a confession from the actual attacker, and a stack of pictures of her after he assaulted her—kept as a trophy—all proved the wrong man was in prison. The innocent man was freed.

  The problem was, the face of her nightmare for eight long years was the man wrongly convicted and sent to prison. Even though her rational mind knew he was not her attacker, when she closed her eyes, it was his face she saw. Dr. Beckett was a miracle worker and was able to lessen her nightmares and confusion, but she still couldn’t look at the innocent man without terror coursing through her veins.

  Selfishly, Tori wondered if this was how Michael saw her now or if it was just a one-time thing brought on by circumstances she didn’t understand. Not so selfishly, she worried about his mental health and, to be honest, every other aspect, too. Knowing she had to leave didn’t make it easier. She was terrified he might be in such a dark place he could hurt himself. But, staying wasn’t an option, he didn’t want her there and her presence might be too much.

  With a heavy heart, she dressed and gathered her things and left a note that quite simply said, “I care.” Looking back through the small space between the curtains on the door, she watched him pass a few more times, committed his face to memory, and turned to leave. She took a quick mental snapshot of the cabin and everything in it, especially the memories and then began her trek to the main cabin.

  Tori had to leave a bag behind; she was strong, but she wasn’t that strong. Two full-sized, packed to the top luggage bags was beyond her limit. The things she left, she didn’t need, or want back, so it was all good. Holding her head high, she kept walking as if it was easy-peasy. Michael wasn’t the type of man to send a woman away on foot to a place where the last time she was there someone tried to kill her. If he thought about it, it would rip him to shreds, so she put on a good game face until she was out of sight of the cabin, just in case he was watching, but she doubted it.

  To admit she had to drop one bag a bit away, and come back for it, dinged her pride a touch more. She thought herself tougher than that. When she broke the seal of the door on the main cabin, her memories smacked her in the face, along with the condition of the downstairs. Richard hadn’t cle
aned or picked up a single thing. He was snowed in for weeks and he didn’t do shit.

  Dried rust-color smears and drops decorated the wood floor and throw rugs. Some of her things that flew from the suitcases when he tossed them downstairs were still sprinkled around. She picked up a tube of lipstick and compression undies and realized she never noticed they were missing. Packing in such haste after almost being murdered by someone you’ve slept with can mush the brain pretty good.

  The kitchen was worse. Old dishes, food containers, and the wrappers from the protein bars they’d left him were strewn about. It looked and smelled like a frat house. The most disturbing discovery so far was blue-wrapped papers—like the legal kind, wills and stuff—stuck to the wall with a kitchen knife. Yanking it free was no easy task. It was embedded in the wall a good two inches.

  Tori opened it just enough to ascertain its ownership without invading privacy and discovered it was a copy of a legal agreement and it belonged to Michael. The parental non-disclosure would be her guess, but she wouldn’t violate him any more than he felt she had already. Folding the paper neatly, she set it on top of the refrigerator until she could clean a place on the counter to leave it for Michael. She wouldn’t risk his mental health to take it to him, and she damn sure wasn’t prepared to risk the fragments of her heart.

  Scrubbing the kitchen gave her a sense of peace, so she didn’t stop there. Running through the downstairs like a female Mr. Clean on meth, she didn’t cease until every drop of blood, every speck of dust, and every crumb was eradicated. It’s what she did when she was super stressed; she cleaned. And not just any level of clean, but some anal type shit. Brain surgery could be performed on the living room floor with zero chance of contamination or infection.

  It felt good to get rid of her attempted murder scene and every trace of Richard, downstairs anyway. Upstairs was a mystery, one she’d have to tackle, simply for the cleaning opportunity, but she couldn’t do it right now. Right now, she needed a run. She donned a sweat suit and plugged in her favorite “New Hits” mix, then took off. She didn’t care that it was dark and freezing. This would be the only thing to bring her to a place she needed to be. Well, not the only thing, but the only one available.

  It was a blessing she had her beanie with a built-in head lamp or she would have busted her ass long before she made it through warm-ups. Deciding it was best to avoid Michael’s area all together, she did partial laps before doing an about-face and retreating—from the main cabin around the lake to about a quarter mile from Michael’s and back again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Tori only stopped after around fifteen miles and when her running mix hit her finish song. Once it started, her heart shattered all over again and she walked the rest of the way crying with it on a loop.

  “Bloodfeather” by Highly Suspect was one of her top ten finish songs and now it was just a painful reminder of whispered words. She would never hear the song again and not have her heart ripped out and tossed in a blender—no matter where she went in life, who she was with, what she accomplished, nothing. It was ruined, like so much else had been these last few months.

  At the door, Tori took a deep breath and hit delete. She’d never be able to listen to it again, and that just drove home the hopelessness that was taking over her spirit. She thought erasing it would somehow ease the pain, but it didn’t. With an even heavier burden on her splintered heart, she entered the cabin.

  Tori decided to boil some water and take a splash bath rather than go to the bathhouse because running into Michael wasn’t worth the big tub and hot water. Plus, she knew if she went upstairs to shower, her stress-induced cleaning bug would make its demands a priority over personal hygiene.

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized that her presence, even here, could only hurt, not help. This far away, if he decided to harm himself, she wouldn’t be able to offer any help, however, him knowing she is right here wouldn’t be comfortable if he felt the way he seemed to about her.

  Decision made and splash bath done, she went upstairs to sanitize that area, because she needed to. Right thing or not, it still hurt like a bitch and she had to scrub something.

  The first trip upstairs since she left was shocking, to say the least. It looked like a natural disaster hit. Richard’s anger was palpable in every piece of broken and overturned furniture, strewn clothing, and spilled bottle.

  If the blood and broken glass was any indication of how angry he was, the human-waste smell was just insult to injury. “Fuck You Bastard, Slut, Enjoy Your Inheritance,” were just some of the things written on the wall in what appeared to be human waste and blood.

  Well, that explains the shit smell. Some of the racial slurs were just too much for her to even digest. Apparently Michael being Native American bothered Richard more than a touch. There was nothing for her to do now but scrub, scrub, scrub. Tori most definitely didn’t want Michael to see this. She would clean and fix what she could and hope he didn’t think she was petty and broke the things she couldn’t repair.

  While cleaning, she came across some stuff she could have lived without ever seeing—Richard’s wedding photo for one. Her guess was since it was in the drawer of an overturned end table, he thought she’d never see it. It made her sick to her stomach to think Richard wanted her in this bed, begged her to move in here. He planned to have sex with her with his wedding photo right there.

  As she righted the table and went to arrange the picture on top, where it most likely was before he hid it, something about the woman’s pose, the angle of her chin, itched at the back of her mind. It was the same nagging recognition that whipped through her head as she watched the video, but it had been whisked away by the overwhelming betrayal.

  Taking the mahogany frame photo in hand, she walked over to the window where the sun was now streaming in, having risen a few hours ago. She angled it this way and that, trying to grasp that familiar thread and follow it to the answer she sought. When the sun glinted off the woman’s wedding ring, the answer snapped into place with an almost-audible click.

  The picture fell to the ground with a thud and broke. The last piece of intact glass upstairs shattered. It was her, Romper Woman from the mall. Instantly, the pieces fit into place, fleshing out a fucking puzzle she didn’t even know she’d been working on. Richard was there at the mall that day. Either he or his wife bought him the watch she was going to buy him. Holy crap, he was shopping for maternity clothes with his pregnant wife the day before the trip.

  Oh, my God, their marriage was never even close to over—not years ago when they met, not months ago when she got pregnant, and not hours before he tried to get Tori back into his bed.

  Tori fell back on to the floor, her ass hitting hard enough to rattle her teeth. There it was, staring up at her through shards of glass…she was the other woman, had been all along. Sure, that realization had mildly hit her when she saw the pregnancy announcement video, but everything else happened so fast, she didn’t have time to comprehend it fully.

  Between Richard’s rage and her time with Michael, she had apparently, albeit subconsciously, convinced herself that he and his wife must have somehow got caught up in the moment one night and it resulted in a baby. The video and everything was just for show, for the kids. But no, it wasn’t, and the plot of her secretly constructed protection story started to unravel as she watched a fast-forwarded version of The Adventures of Romper Woman and Breitling Man play out in her head.

  She was such a fool—a fool to ever believe him, a fool to think she could have a future with Michael, and a fool to think people like her got happily ever afters. They didn’t, and she had to accept it. If this was some cheesy romance novel, she would be the other woman, the one the readers loved to hate, that character only there to create drama for the hero and heroine of the story who fall in love and live happily ever after, while the other woman gets what she deserves…nothing.

  Tori was so filled with emptiness and despair, she didn’t know what to do. Afraid she’d neve
r feel whole again, she numbly got up and finished cleaning the cabin the best she could. It was the least she could do for Michael. Then she’d leave this place, this state, and never look back.

  She heard Michael drop the snowmobile off and hid upstairs, resisting the urge to look at him one last time. She almost jumped out of her own skin when he banged on the door. She wasn’t expecting him to make contact. That was his choice, not hers, last night anyway, now it was hers. Rocking back and forth at the top of the stairs with her arms wrapped around her knees and her tears flowing freely, she watched the door as if it was the only thing protecting the scattered fragments of her.

  Every heartfelt word and plea ricocheted off her ears like a shot report, causing her to jump and cry harder. Michael was begging her forgiveness and begging her not to go, to take the snowmobile to his cabin not to the airstrip, pleading with her to love him and stay with him and help him heal, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t place her heart in his hands and she couldn’t hold his in safekeeping either. Not right now.

  His words ripped at her soul and clawed at her heart. He’d done some major soul-searching, apparently, and claimed he didn’t see her that way and never would again. So many promises and declarations, none of which she was worthy of. Covering her ears failed to keep his voice out of her head. As weak as she was, she was putting one foot in front of the other to descend the stairs and fling open the door before she realized what she was doing. She stopped dead in her tracks, then turned and fled upstairs. To Richard’s room and the wedding picture, to a place and state of mind that could offer her all the reasons she couldn’t open that damned door. With that, she tuned Michael out and focused on Richard’s voice and her own telling her all the reasons not to open it.