“Don’t ever use my daughter against me, Mother. Don’t ever do that. I might be a monster or a coward but she’s my daughter and I’ll fucking do anything for her.”
I hung up at her outraged gasp and turned my phone off. My temples were throbbing and the cut on my palm was burning. A sense of lightness took me over. As if I’d finally done something right. Something that pushed me toward being…me.
“Daddy?” Katie said from behind me.
I turned around and kneeled in front of her. “Hey, you okay?”
“Will Mommy be late for real?”
Yes. She’s never coming back.
“Do you remember what Madison said to you the other day?” She frowned and I rubbed my thumb over her forehead to ease it. “When you love someone very much, you can feel them everywhere, okay? Even if they’re not with you. Because they live here.” I tapped my finger over her heart. “I know Mom’s…not here right now but she can still see you.”
“That’s not true, Daddy.” She shook her head, making me smile sadly. “She is all the way over in Florida with the fish and I’m here.”
“Yes, but you know what, you have something in common—the stars. She watches the same stars as you do. So in a way she can see you.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” I kissed her forehead.
Something had to give.
I’d either have to finally tell my daughter and risk her turning into me or this lie would kill me.
Chapter Sixteen
James
It was three forty-two in the morning, and I was still awake. It took me a long, long time to put Katie to sleep. After her talk with my mother, we watched the stars. But she kept waking up with nightmares, looking afraid and frazzled. I had never seen my daughter so devoid of life; it scared the life out of me. Finally, I gave her a couple of spoons of sleeping syrup that I had brought with me just in case, so she could get some rest, and she had been sleeping soundly ever since.
I worked for a couple of hours for the upcoming projects for the kids, but even that didn’t take my mind off the gloomier things. I cut, more than I usually did but to no avail. I felt trapped inside these blue, beach-themed walls. I had to get out of here for a little while.
Outside, the air was stagnant but cooler. The green grounds were a void of silence and darkness. I walked up the running trail and stared at the water through the thick trunks of the trees. It glittered, black and silver. The moon was almost full tonight and its reflection on the lake was so vivid that it appeared as if it rose up from the dark depths of the water itself, where Nat lived.
At the edge of the lake, I dropped down to my knees and leaned in, wanting to touch the water “Can I…can I touch you?”
The water was not Nat, and if someone saw me talking to it, they would write me off as crazy. But I did not care. I wore the role of crazy quite well.
As expected, I got no answer, but still it felt all right to touch. My fingers grazed the surface of the water—cold and slithering and as always, beckoning.
“It feels like you, like your skin. Soft and silky. I never thought anything could be that soft until I touched you that first night at the party.” I dipped my fingers in the water, wetting them. “I never had the courage to tell you then, but I watched you, too. You had…such a distinct voice, an octave above others. I thought it was beautiful, and I knew there was no way you’d even look at me. But you did.”
I sighed, swirling my finger in the water, imagining Nat’s skin. “Do you regret that? Coming up to me, talking to me that first night? I think you do. I never gave you much. Not enough love or companionship. I was there, but I wasn’t. And you put up with everything. I don’t know if you know this but…I saw it. I saw you struggling to live with me. You were dying in our marriage. I was killing you, Nat, but…”
My eyes and nose burned. Sniffling, I rubbed my nose on my arm. “I wish I could’ve stopped. I wish I’d told you that I knew about Garrett. I was angry and…so afraid that you’d leave me. I…I didn’t want to talk about it, make it real. I couldn’t imagine living without you. I know now that I should’ve. I should’ve let you go. I…have too many faults, and somehow you helped me repress them.”
The words were flowing out of me now. I raked my hand over my face as my knees dug into the solid ground. “I’ll tell her. I will tell Katie soon. I won’t ruin her, Nat. She’s…she’s too precious. As soon as I figure out how, I will tell her. We have rituals now, traditions. We eat together every night. I take her swimming. I draw with her. How did you handle it? So much love, tenderness. I used to be afraid of touching her, and now I’m afraid that, once she knows, she won’t ever let me touch her. She’ll hate me as much as you did…you do.”
A current rippled through the water, forming ringlets. I never wanted to stop touching it. In fact, I wanted to immerse myself in it. But not yet. Not until I disclosed everything. Every dirty, unclean thought I’d had since Nat’s death.
“I wanted to say yes,” I confessed, my thoughts going on a different plane now. “When Madison asked me, I wanted to say yes. I wanted it so much that…I… It was terrifying. What’s wrong with me? I wanted to take her against her will. Have I always been like this? Did you see it in me, the violence? I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s…it’s making me crazy. I…I can’t…I can’t stop thinking about her.” I stumbled over words as I spilled my darkest thoughts to my dead wife. “When I’m with her, I change into…an insane person. I want to destroy her, hold her. And…and she wants me to do that. She wants me to do worse, much, much worse. It’s so hard to resist. Sometimes, I think that she was made for me. How messed up is that? I never thought about anyone else but you since the day I met you, and now I can’t drive her out of my head.”
I swallowed as my mouth ran out of words and saliva. I had become parched. “I…I’m sorry. For everything.” I rubbed my nose on my shirt-sleeve again and tugged my hair, shifting on my knees. “I keep saying that. Over and over, thinking that it will change something. It won’t. Nothing will change what I did to you, am still doing to you. But I don’t know what else to say…how to stop. Just…I…don’t…”
Sighing and scrubbing my face to compose myself, I began again. “I’m rambling. I, uh, had no intention to do that. I want you to know, Nat, that I’m going to stop making this about me. About what I did wrong. I…you don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve to be remembered with pain. You were happy once, so happy and…and I’ll remember you that way.”
I came to my feet and shed my clothes on the grass. I had to touch her. I had to touch Nat, show her that despite everything she was the most important person in my life. I jumped into the lake, and the water blanketed me from all sides, cold and wet. I ducked in. Everything was black down here. I could hardly see my own limbs. But I felt them floating, flapping, as if I had turned into nothing. I was without body, without soul, without a broken heart.
It didn’t last long, however. Humans are designed to survive. My body thrust itself up. As I surfaced, sputtering, I half expected Nat to be there, chiding me for my stupidity like she’d done the first time at the swimming pool. I saw her laughter in my mind and smiled at the sound.
Then I heard the crunch of leaves and thudding footsteps on the running trail. A petite figure ran, flashing through the woods in white T-shirt and black shorts. It was the same woman I had seen the first day. Now I knew that it was Madison. I would recognize her, that messy bun and those legs, anywhere. I got out of the water and put on my clothes, still flooded with the drops of Nat.
Without a thought, I took off after Madison. It was a natural instinct.
She was running farther up the trail until she slowed down and detoured, dodging the thick foliage and coming upon a bench hidden between wild and yellowed shrubs. She plopped down on it, panting.
The sky was still dark, but under the moonlight, I could see her slouched frame supported on her arms. She took a deep breath and then looked up toward the sky, tears ru
nning down her face. Soundless and colorless, they streaked her cheeks.
I stood behind the tree, mesmerized.
She looked so small, sitting alone. Why was she crying? What happened to her? Her chest heaved, but no sound came. It would have been better if she did make a sound and let it all out. Crying silently was the loudest and saddest of all cries. It was gut-wrenching, agonizing…beautiful. I was disgusted with myself for thinking that and yet…
I wanted to rock her in my arms, kiss her forehead, wipe her tears off. I wanted her to keep crying.
I began walking toward her, wanting to do just that. She was so distracted by her grief that she did not notice me until I was close enough to touch her. Then her head jerked up, shocked. She had a picture in her hand, her fingers flicking the edge of it.
Kneeling before her, I took the photo. I leaned forward at the same time she did, and somehow, we ended up in an awkward tangle of limbs, hugging each other.
At first, we didn’t know where to put our hands. The very act of it, something so tender, felt wrong. But then she shifted her face and tucked it into my neck. It was vulnerable, something Katie liked to do when she clung to me for comfort. My arms loosened up and came around her waist, holding her to me and the awkwardness melted away.
Over her shoulder, I stared at the frayed photo. It had a vintage sheen. The material had gone yellow over the years. A smiling girl stood wearing a black, ruffled dress. She looked so much like Madison that I knew it had to be her mother. She stood beside a boy, tall and lanky, his brown hair flopping down to his brows and a drunken grin on his lips. Madison’s mother was looking up at the boy with an adoring look on her face. Judging by the discolored balloons in the back and red mugs in their hands, they were at a party. Was he the father?
Madison started playing with my hair, clutching it, curling the strands at the neck. My heart was beating faster by the minute.
Running my finger over the photo, I divulged, “When I was little, I used to dream about my dad. He left us when I was eight. In my dream, I’d…go down to the basement where he played his music. It was filled with his things, guitars, sheet music, drums, wires all over. But in my dream, it was always empty. And cold.” I sighed. “I always touched the walls. I thought that if I found them warm, warmer than the room anyway, then that would mean my dad was once here and…and he’d touched the exact same spot.”
She whispered in my neck, her voice thick with tears, “Did you? Ever find it warm?”
I shut my eyes, hoping to control the raging need in my body. Her vulnerability was playing tricks on my mind. “No. Never.”
She shifted and drew back to look at me. I studied her splotchy face and the dark moons under her eyes. Had she ever looked more beautiful than this? Had anything ever been more painful yet so necessary to me? The answer was an unequivocal no.
“I never knew what my dad looked like until two days ago,” she told me. “Honestly, I never gave him a thought. Which is weird because obviously, I wasn’t an immaculate conception.” She chuckled, her eyes still wet with tears. “I mean, knowing my mom, definitely not. She wasn’t very religious.”
I extracted my arm from around her and brought the photo forward between us. “She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, she is.” Abandoning my hair she had been playing with, Madison flipped the photo over. Alice & Michael, forever. It was written on the back. “They’d been drinking that night. Had sex and then no contact. But my mom thought it was forever like she always did. I guess they weren’t on the same page.” She balled the picture in her palm. “God! I fucking hated her. She was so delusional. So fucking clueless. She had no one except me, and even I hated her.”
Her tears rained down on the ruined photo.
My thumbs drew circles on her thighs. “No. I don’t…I don’t think you hated her. I think you hated yourself for not being what she needed you to be, so she could be what you needed her to be, in turn.”
She looked up, her sad eyes knowing. Like her, I hated myself, too. But right then, it didn’t feel so bad. I didn’t feel so removed from the world. Madison grounded me with her sadness, gave me company.
The heavy blanket of melancholy seemed to have lifted with my confession. An impish glint entered her eyes. She let go of the photo, and it plopped down beside my knees. She encircled my neck with her arms and resumed playing with my hair.
“Why’re you drenched?” she murmured, taking in wet splotches on my shirt. I had forgotten about the lake until she reminded me. It happened every time she was with me. Everything else ceased to exist. Every apology, every promise disintegrated. When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “Have you been skinny dipping?”
“Something like that,” I said. “Would you come with me if I told you I was?”
“How do I know you won’t try to drown me?”
“You don’t. But if you really think about it, drowning can be…fun.”
“Fun? You’re so weird and…sick.” She studied me.
“You’ve already said that,” I reminded her, feeling at peace again, the surge of guilt stomped by her presence.
“I also told you to leave me alone,” she whispered against my lips.
I clenched my jaw as arousal zapped through me, hardening my cock. “I’m beginning to appreciate the appeal of rule breaking.”
Chuckling, she touched the side of my mouth with light fingers. “You know what they say? That people who laugh often have lines here and here?” She traced the spots. “You don’t have any. You’re like a blank slate.”
“Who’s they?”
“People.”
“I thought you didn’t like people.”
“I don’t. I don’t like normal people. I’m a rebel, you know. I like everything twisted. And dark. And sick and weird.”
I squeezed the flesh on her hips, never realizing until then that my hands had come to rest there. “So you like me.”
“You wish.” She smiled, brought one of my hands to her face, and ran my fingers over the wet path left by her tears. “You like my tears.”
I wanted to look away, but I forced myself to stay connected to her. She was right. I liked it, enjoyed it. I wanted more of it. Her wet eyelashes, her red and puffy eyes made me ache, both in a good and a bad way. “Yes.”
“Good.” She nipped my lower lip, causing it to tremble. “Welcome to the dark side, James.”
I yanked her face away by the hair. “I am the dark side, Madison.”
My lips descended on hers…with a gentle kiss. That was not my intention, but somehow I wanted to be tender, soft. Maybe to deny my own words just now. Slowly, I traced the shape of her lips, licked the grooves, tasted her taste. She responded with the same gentility, the same slowness. It was a lazy kiss, a kiss that marked the beginning of things.
But then it was broken. Madison bit my lips.
“Where’s the dark side, huh?” she taunted. “Don’t hold back on me now. Fucking show me.”
She bit my lips again, but I did not give in. I wanted the tender exploration, the lazy strokes where I could just taste her. But Madison was not having it. She moved away and clenched her jaw. “If I wanted soft, I’d go to a woman.”
Jealousy blinded me, drove me mad. She’s mine. Her taste is mine.
I attacked her with my lips, biting, clawing like never before. Our teeth knocked together, my jaw colliding with hers, my stubble scraping her silk skin. A particularly painful moan made me draw back. Tears streamed down her face, her lips swollen and bloody. I tasted the copper-ish tinge of her blood in my mouth and almost groaned.
With quivering lips, she whispered, “Don’t stop.”
I kissed her again. Brutally. And she kissed me back. I applied pressure on her shoulders, standing her up. Her legs came around my waist, and I carried her to the closest tree, without breaking the kiss. There was a sort of comfort in our violent lips.
We clung to each other like desperate creatures. As if the world was coming to an end and we neede
d this.
Before long, I took off her shorts and unzipped my pants. I plunged my cock inside her and started moving. She met my every thrust, moaning, or maybe screaming. I didn’t know which and didn’t care. All I cared about was being inside her—shoving, pushing, stabbing. I grabbed her around the waist, and my hard pelvis crashed against her hips with every ram of my cock. It was painful. So painful but more beautiful than anything. As beautiful as her. Any earlier thoughts of tenderness evaporated as I gave in to my urges. I was a beast. I should simply accept that and move on.
Seconds later, I came with my face tucked in the crook of her neck, my teeth scraping against the bruise and my arms holding her waist. She shifted, sliding her thighs away from my body. I raised my head and looked at her. She kept her eyes averted as she bent down and picked up her discarded shorts. Stepping back, I gave her space to dress, and I straightened my own clothes, still watching her. She was avoiding me.
Once dressed, I placed my palms on the tree, on either side of her face, caging her in. She looked up at me with unshed tears in her eyes. Her pain twisted inside my stomach, knifing and cutting. Arousing.
“I can’t cry. I don’t know how.” I thumbed her tears as they fell from her eyes. “I think it’s…it’s my punishment for destroying everything I touch.”
She blinked. “It doesn’t help. The sadness doesn’t flow out with them. It lives on. You feel it here. Every second of every day.” She placed her palm on my chest, over my beating heart. “Crying is just a distant promised land for people like us. It doesn’t deliver. It doesn’t make you forget. But still I come here every day, thinking today will be different.”
Her devastation hit me in the chest, knocked my deepest thoughts loose. And they said, I’d be here every day being whatever she wanted me to be.
Chapter Seventeen
Madison
I knew James would come the next day. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself. He wanted to see me cry. He wanted me vulnerable. I never thought it was possible, but he made me feel desirable in my pain. The tears that I hid from the world made me beautiful in his eyes.
A War Like Ours Page 20
