by Rue Volley
We walked inside and I sat down on the long couch that rested along the wall to the left of the front door. I leaned back and remembered the evenings of playing cards out here with the white lights strung above us. I looked up to see them just as they had always been. It relaxed me more and more as I sank into everything that I knew the best. So familiar, so safe, and comforting.
Mom returned with a wooden tray. It held a glass pitcher of iced green tea and two tall glasses. She loved her tea. Why I don’t drink it more often is a mystery to me. Maybe it only reminded me of home. Sometimes avoiding things like that can help ward off feelings of being homesick, and I had been terribly homesick when I first left. In fact, I wanted to pack up and run back here the first week, but one call home and my mom settled my nerves and reminded me of why I was there.
She placed the tray on the beautiful glass table that sat between the couch and the rocking chair. She sat down in her rocker and leaned up, pouring one glass and setting it down in front of me and then she prepared her own. I picked it up and took a sip. It was incredible, as usual. I leaned back and listened to quiet sounds; a dog barking off in the distance, someone mowing their yard, kids laughing. I let all of the tension leave me. It felt so good just to enjoy the world.
She picked up her drink and sipped it, then placed it back down. She leaned back in her chair and looked me over.
“You’re not eating.”
I grinned as I set my drink down. I pointed at it. “This is fantastic, good job.”
She smiled at me. “That Jedi mind trickery doesn’t work on me my young padawan.”
I laughed as I tilted my head. She loved Star Wars, so did my dad. It was their thing together.
I loved that about the two of them, they had always joked back and forth with a million references to it. I guess that’s where I got my ideal relationship standards from. It made it harder in the long run to try to find something as special as what my parents had together, but in the end I felt like it would be so worth it.
“I do eat.”
She took a breath. “Popcorn and coffee?”
I shook my head as I leaned back and sank into the couch. There was no hiding anything from her at all. She knew me as well as anyone could.
“Okay, I’ll eat more.”
She nodded to me and then decided to get right to the point.
“What happened, Abi?”
I fidgeted with my hands and she let her eyes lower to them and then back to my face. I looked up at her and shook my head. I couldn’t say everything, there was no way that I could talk to her about the sexual aspects of my relationship with Jack, but I could talk about him and how I felt toward him.
“I met someone.”
She placed a hand to her chin and studied my expression. “I guess I should be happy, but by the way you look, I have to ask what’s wrong with him.”
I looked up at her and bit my lip. “He makes me dizzy.”
She laughed as she moved up on her chair and took another drink of her tea.
“Abi, are you in love?”
I swallowed hard, knowing the answer, but afraid to say it out loud. I decided to nod instead, like some child admitting to doing something wrong. She stood up and walked around the table, taking a spot next to me. She touched my chin and made me look at her.
“Then why do you look like you’re going to a funeral?”
I sighed. “Mom. He confuses me. I mean—I try to get close to him, and he lets me, a little bit, and then I feel pushed back. Like he only lets me in so far, but he can’t let me in all of the way.”
“Mmm.”
I looked at her and narrowed my eyes. “What?”
“Sounds like your dad.”
My brow crinkled as she removed her hand from my chin. She looked at the glasses on the tables as the ice shifted and made a tiny bit of noise. I kept my eyes on her; I needed to know what she meant.
“Mom?”
She looked back at me, and her face softened again. “I’m sorry, honey. I just miss him.”
“I know, I miss him too. I miss you. I’m sorry I don’t come home like I should; I suck.”
She tapped me on the knee and then let her hand rest on top of mine. “You do.” She paused and then laughed at me. She went on as I laughed with her. “I understand, your dad was the same way. I wanted to know him and he closed himself off to me. Some men are just like that. It’s almost as if they fear feeling anything.”
I sighed, my voice quieter as I thought about Jack. “How do I change it?”
She looked at me and moved my bangs. She grinned. “You don’t, they do.”
I took a deep breath and nodded to her. She was right. This whole time I was busy strategizing about how I needed to change him and it would never be that way. Jack would have to meet me halfway if we were ever to have anything more than this sexually charged strangeness between us. I didn’t even feel as if his allowing me to see his dad was necessarily truthful on his part. It may have been his last ditch effort to make me run. To push me away from him once and for all.
“So, tell me about this man.”
I leaned back, and my eyes lit up. She leaned back and enjoyed how I suddenly lost my uncomfortable energy. “Well, he is very tall. I thought six-foot-four, but he may be more like six-three. He has dark hair, short on the sides and back and then longer on the top and his eyes—oh my God, so blue. The kind of blue that you can just get lost in.”
She smiled. “So, attractive.”
I nodded as the laughter came out of me. “I know I sound ridiculous, but he is gorgeous.”
“I’m more interested in his personality and what he does for a living—and a name would be great, Abi.”
I took a drink and then set it back down. “Well, he’s charming, intelligent, and wealthy.”
“And…”
I sighed. “He makes me feel like the world has tilted sideways.”
“Oh dear—well, what is this man’s name?”
I looked at her. “Jack. It’s Jack Landon.”
She paused and then stood up. She walked toward the front door as I leaned up to watch her leave me sitting there. “Mom?”
She stopped and looked back at me. “I hear the phone ringing.”
She left me as my brow crinkled in confusion. Something wasn’t right. I walked to the door and stepped in, I didn’t hear her speaking, so I knew that no one had called. My mom wasn’t one to lie about anything, so I knew something had rattled her. I walked until I saw her standing at the large window in the kitchen. Her arms crossed over her chest as she stared out across the field. I stepped in and rubbed my hands on my jeans, and she spoke to me, her voice calm, but laced with a new emotion that I had never heard from her.
“The Landons are not good people, Abi.”
I raised an eyebrow as I stepped forward, but she turned to look at me with tears in her eyes. I stopped and tilted my head. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
She sighed as she rubbed her arms and then walked to the large kitchen table where I used to do my homework. The deep wood still just as beautiful as ever. I pulled a chair out and sat down across from her as she took a seat. She placed her hands on the table before her and looked up. Her eyes heavy, so unlike her.
“Abigail. Your father wasn’t the only man that I ever loved.”
I leaned forward and studied her face as she decided to go on.
“When I was twenty-two, I took a trip to the city. It was something that I had saved up for and I was so excited to go. I had a cousin that lived there—your Aunt Margaret. Anyway, I stayed with her for the summer, and it was…” she trailed off until I spoke to her.
“Mom? What is it?”
“While I was there, I met someone, a man who seduced me. His name was Peter Landon.”
I leaned back as the words washed over me like a shock wave. “What?”
“Yes. And…”
“If you tell me that I am his I will die right here, Mom, I shit you not.”
&nb
sp; She raised an eyebrow at me. Cursing was something we didn’t do. I held my hand up. “Sorry, but…”
“No, Abi. You are your dad’s daughter, but Peter, well. Peter and I—we had a son.”
I stood up. “My brother, the boy who died? Oh my God, Mom. How?” I shook my head. “How could you? I mean—did dad know?”
She nodded to me. “Yes, he knew and he loved me anyway, Abi. He would have raised him as his own because he was that kind of man. Peter pushed me away as if I was nothing at all; I was heartbroken, but that is who they are, Abi. They twist things and use people up. I came home pregnant and scared. Your father, who had always loved me, asked me to marry him. No one knew any better, Abi. The timing helped stop the rumors, but…well, when he died. Oh, Abi. I hated Peter Landon, but I never wished for my son to die. I felt horrible. I felt as if I had cursed that baby with something evil inside of me.”
“No—Mom. You are the kindest person I have ever known. You would never.”
She interrupted me as she wiped a tear from her cheek. “Abi, you have no idea how much I hated that man, to my very core. The way he seduced me, made me do things, he was an animal.”
“Jack is not like his father.”
My mom stood up. “How could that be, Abi? I see it all over your face because it’s like looking in a mirror. He has you mesmerized, I know! I have been there.”
“Oh my God,” I muttered as I looked down at the floor. She stepped toward me. “Abi, honey. I want nothing more in this world but for you to find happiness, but—you have to know that there is nothing but pain when it comes to Peter and his family. They are a poison and you have to stop before it’s too late.”
I looked up at her as the tears streamed down my face.
“I can’t—I love him, Mom.”
She sucked in her breath as she walked toward me and the hug that followed should have helped me, but it didn’t at all. In fact, it felt as if the comfort of home had been stripped away. She whispered into my ear. “I was glad when Peter died, I know it sounds terrible, and it is, Abi, but that’s what they do, that family is a curse on the world.”
I closed my eyes, I couldn’t even mutter the words and tell her that her demon still lived.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE DEVIL’S GATE
I lay in my old bed that night as the race cars sped around the track off in the distance. Our town sat only a couple of miles away from one of the largest outdoor NASCAR tracks in the Midwest. The sound of the engines had put me to sleep on so many nights. I couldn’t even count them all.
It made it easy for me to sleep in the city. The noise was something that I was used to, at least a few months out of the year. It was one of the things that helped me assimilate into my new surroundings when I left here. A reminder of home.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling. It was something that I had done with my dad when I was ten years old. I missed him and all of the moments that had been stolen from us when he died. He missed my graduation, something we had talked about from the time that I was little. We had it all planned out. We would go to the stuffy ceremony and then afterward, we would do the family party thing, but once everything died down, we were going to take a week-long trip and travel to the Grand Canyon.
My dad said that nothing put life into perspective more than standing in front of it. He told me that it could take the darkest things and swallow them whole. I paused in thought as his words rang true with me.
It was the same spot that my parents had visited on their honeymoon and when the stories were told, I never imagined what darkness lay behind them. I didn’t know about my mom and Peter Landon. I didn’t know that he actually fathered the brother I never knew. It weighed heavy on my heart to think about how painful my mom’s expression became when she spoke about him. But I did understand what my dad had meant now. He had laid that to rest in that canyon and I only wish that we would have been given the opportunity to go there together.
Then I thought about Jack and his sad eyes as he recounted the story of his father and how he injured him both physically and mentally. It made me hate Peter more. The harm he had caused to others, the poison that he let seep out into this world. But, he gave me Jack. So—how am I to deal with that?
The words he is his father’s son echoed in my ears. Spoken by Victoria with such disgust for me. All of it swirled in my mind, making me sick to my stomach. I tried to beat it back and allow the cars to help me drift off as I had when I was a child. The thoughts of everything cascading in my mind—and the dreams came.
Something I could have done without, but the invasion was warranted…
I stood on the edge of a cliff. I saw the thin white material float up around me as the wind gently lifted the edges of my dress. My long hair down, floating upward as the gentle breeze rose up from far below me. I stared out at the horizon into the setting sun. That magical time of the day where the clouds start to swallow up the light, streaking the sky in beautiful shades of pink and blue.
I heard my name on the wind and I turned to see Jack standing there. He was wearing the same suit that he had on when we attended the auction. So debonair, so beautiful to me. His lips soft, eyes piercing blue, his hand extended out toward me. I saw the scar on his palm, I remembered feeling it against my lips and wishing that I could absorb the pain and carry it for him.
I walked toward him as the wind continued to lift the edges of my dress up. I looked down as my small, pale feet dug into the luscious grass below me. Then I felt his hand in mine. I looked up as the last bits of the golden light lit up his blue eyes, brighter than anything I had ever seen before in my life. Blue as the deepest ocean and just as mysterious. I could swim into them and never return.
He pulled my hand up to his heart and placed it there. I could feel the strong and steady rhythm that beat behind the material of his jacket. It was as if he had exposed his heart to me and wanted me to become the caregiver for it.
He leaned into my ear and started whispered the words that I had so wanted to here, but just as I prepared my heart to accept them, I heard the truth.
“Abigail, I can never love you.”
I sucked in my breath as I found myself on my knees in a dark room. My arms stretched out to each side; wrists wrapped tightly in red satin. It held my arms up as I tugged on each one, unable to break free. I wore a black mask that had no holes for eyes. It blacked out everything around me. At first, it was if I was looking at myself through someone else’s eyes and then nothingness. I called out into the darkness.
“Hello, is anyone there?”My voice echoed as if it went on forever.
I could hear breathing, footsteps. My heart raced in my chest. Then I heard it, a snap of leather, and I flinched, biting into my lip as the footsteps drew closer. I turned my face to each side and then looked forward as I heard a voice gently whisper into my ear.
“Abigail. Are you ready to step through The Devil’s Gate?”
I swallowed hard as I felt a hand touch my cheek and then gently glide down to my neck. It rested there as the stranger stepped around behind me. I felt my hair pulled as it forced my face upward and lips came down hard on my own. The tongue forced its way into my mouth and I let mine play with it, shocked at how I could allow someone that I could not see do this to me, but it excited me. I needed more; I wanted more.
The lips pulled away from me and they left mine parted. My body trembled as I felt soft leather to my back, it slowly traced my spine and then stopped between my shoulder blades. I felt lips to my ear and the whisper followed.
“Submit to me.”
I nodded to the anonymous man as I heard him step back.
The first hit took me by surprise. The leather straps hit me on my side and I flinched. I cried out as I gripped the red satin tightly in my fingers. He paused as the beautiful pain rolled through me. I sighed as I let my head fall forward. Then the second hit came and I moaned. The moan not so unlike it had been when Jac
k touched me for the first time. The pain was settling into me and finding its rightful place with the pleasure.
The pause aggravated me as I grit my teeth. The sweat rose on the surface of my skin and one beaded trail rolled down the front of me and over my erect nipple. A mouth leaned in and bit at my breast. I flinched. Were there two people here now? I had heard no footsteps. Then the third hit came and I jerked on the red satin straps, my lips parted as the delicious moan escaped them. A smile followed and I let my head fall back. Lips pressed against mine; a tongue played with my own, another hit to my back and a hand slid between my thighs. The mouth lowered; the tongue became rigid as it slowly traced my nipple. Then a small bite made me hiss; I jerked on the satin straps and another hit came from behind me.
My mask was lifted, I tilted my head back and I could see Jack behind me with the leather whip. The next bite to my nipple made me cry out; fingers slowly moved at my clit. Circling it, gently stimulating me to even out the pleasure with the pain as the orgasm started to rise in me. I looked down and Sam leaned up in front of me. His mouth clashed against my own as I let the moan enter into him. The orgasm extended as another hit stung at my back. The fingers slid into my wetness, claiming my virginity; the searing pain jerking me from my sleep. I sat up in the bed and called out to Jack. My body covered in sweat, my heart racing and all I wanted was to return to that beautiful moment of complete surrender at The Devil’s Gate. I leaned back, my chest rose and fell, slowing with each passing moment as I started to calm down. I buried my face into my pillow, the tears followed, but sleep finally claimed me again.
I woke to the smell of breakfast. My mom was notorious for making eggs and bacon every morning. It was something that I had shed when I moved away from home. Coffee was my breakfast now, but I knew that she wouldn’t let me skip it.
