Fifty Shades Later: An Inevitable Conclusion (Fifty Shades of Neigh Book 3)

by Anna Roberts

  There is blood everywhere. Claudia screams her head off and has to be held back by Bennett and Casper. The commotion is echoed behind the courtroom door, where the judge seems to have stopped yelling but everyone else has started.

  "Let go of me!" shrieks Claudia. "And wipe that smile off your filthy face, you Pennsyltucky slut!"

  "I'm from Philadelphia, actually," says Kate. "And everyone should have a hobby.”

  Bennett and Casper drag Claudia off outside before she can slap anyone else or set off the fire alarms. Kate watches them go with a weird look on her face. I grab her arm and shake her. "Why didn't you say something?" I hiss. "You just stood there and pretty much let Ms. Tits-And-Ass call me an unfit mother!"

  Kate frowns. "Dude, you are an unfit mother. You left your baby in a Versace boutique when she was six months old. There are worse things that could happen to Celestia than being raised by her bio-daddy. I mean, she might turn out to be a hipster, but..."

  "Okay, first things first,” I interrupt. "I did not leave my baby in a Versace boutique.”

  “You totally did.”

  “It was Ralph Lauren, you liar. Anyway, she’s mine.”

  Kate shakes her head. "Mine?"

  "Mine!"

  "And that's it, is it? You get custody because she's 'yours'?"

  "Yes!"

  "You don't even know her."

  "What's to know? She's a baby."

  Kate rakes her fingers through her hair and sighs. "She took her first steps when she was eleven months and fifteen days. Her first full word was 'fart' - and yeah, I'll cop to that being kinda my fault. She likes Gangnam Style, parakeets and juiceboxes, and she hates broccoli in all its forms, almost as much as she hates having her hair combed. She's a person, Hanna. Okay, she's not finished yet - there's a reason we don't let them vote until they're eighteen - but you see where I'm going with this?"

  I shake my head. "I'll just have to get a new attorney."

  "Hanna, you'll be lucky not to go to prison."

  "Prison?" I gasp. "I can't go to prison. I'm white. And rich!"

  She groans. "Have you learned nothing? Crispian was white and rich - and he went to prison."

  "Crispian was a known sexual deviant who drew dirty pictures of My Little Pony. I just tried to get my daughter back..."

  "...by dressing up in a gimp mask and walking into a bank with a gun. Yeah. Can't you even figure out how that would look bad?" She rubs her forehead. "What am I talking about? Of course you can't. I've owned socks with more self-awareness."

  There's a crash at the end of the hallway and some paramedics come charging towards us. "Oh my God," says Kate, flattening herself against the wall. "Did she call you guys out for a nose-bleed?"

  "Heart attack," says the woman paramedic, and they rush past us into the courtroom.

  I gape and stumble back into a chair. Oh my God - they're charging paddles in there. Kate goes to look, but I can't - I'm far too sensitive. Eventually there's a long silence and Kate wanders out. "Welp," she says. "Looks like Casper killed the judge."

  Holy shit. It takes me a moment to realise what she's said. Only I barely have time to process this information, because one of Crispian's guards comes out, looking hunted.

  "Dude, I'm sorry," says Kate.

  He shakes his head. "De nada. And it's much worse than that."

  "Not for the judge. He's boned."

  "Yeah, and so am I. Have you ladies seen a...you know...um...felon come this way? Orange jumpsuit, handcuffs, stupid hat?"

  Kate stares at him. "You're shitting me. He's done it again, hasn't he?"

  The guard nods. "Yeah. It got kind of confusing in there and..."

  "What do you mean?" I gasp. "What are you talking about?"

  "Crispian's escaped, Hanna," says Kate, in a loud and slow voice. She turns back to the guard. "I'm sorry - you have to spell things out for her. She's kinda stupid."

  "Crispian's escaped?" I murmur, the world reeling around me in a way that can only mean it's time for a section break.

  "That's what I said. No, goddamit, Hanna - don't pass out again..."

  The room turns fifty shades of grey around me, and I feel myself start to sink...voices...voices...ellipses...ellipses...

  "...is she drunk?"

  "...I don't know. What time is it?"

  "Eleven fifteen."

  "...yeah. Not yet."

  Chapter Nineteen

  My Little Brony: The Final Reckoning

  The penthouse is silent, but for the roars and screams of Aslan burning unbelievers behind the spare-room door. I sit in the dark, beside the drawing board, clutching a spatula. They took my guns away and I have no other weapons.

  He will come.

  He has to come.

  Our fates are inextricably entwined. There's no getting away from him - I know that now. Even if I ran off to cook meth in Alaska he would find me and follow me, and bring me home bound and gagged in a crate.

  Well, that's kind of fucked up.

  - I know, but it was in the original books.

  Are you serious?

  - Totally. Except about the meth part.

  Huh. Figured she'd miss a trick. I hear Alaska is famous for its thriving methamphetamine industry. That and barely literate beauty queens who fail upwards on an international scale. Hey - you should go. Run for governor or something.

  - Forget it. Even I believe in evolution.

  Ouch.

  My Inner Goddess takes a seat on the dais next to me and lazily inspects her fingernails. "So," she says. "This is it, is it?"

  "Looks that way, doesn't it?" It figures she'd be blonde.

  "What are you going to do, exactly? Smack him with a spatula until he agrees to leave you alone and stop coming back from the dead?"

  I shrug. "I don't know. Sometimes I think there's a part of me that still...loves him."

  My Inner Goddess laughs. "Don't be ridiculous."

  "I'm not being ridiculous. He was my first. Don't all women love their first...lovers?"

  She curls her lip and looks me up and down. "No. Not outside of whatever badly written romance novel you've mistaken for Tess of the D'Urbervilles this week. Besides, you don't love him. You're a sociopath - you're incapable of love."

  I stare at her, open mouthed. She smiles back. She's awful - I hate her.

  "I liked you a lot better when you were just a figment of my imagination," I say.

  "How do you know I'm not now?"

  "Because I can see you. If you weren't real I'd be crazy, wouldn't I?"

  "Oh Hanna," she says, shaking her head. "That ship sailed a long, long time ago."

  I thwack the spatula against my palm and sigh. "Well, you're wrong. I do feel love."

  My Inner Goddess snorts. "Name me one thing you love. Really love."

  I hesitate for a moment, searching my soul for the thing that has always made my heart soar - the thing I have consistently cherished above everything else. The one thing - the love of which - has made me who I am. And in a flash of extraordinary and unparalleled clarity, it comes to me.

  "Books," I murmur. "Classic British novels."

  My Inner Goddess laughs. "Yeah. You're dead inside."

  "I am not!"

  "You so are. You even had to think about it. Your sad, cold, empty little heart may as well be a rock for all the depth of feeling you ever experience towards anything that's not a direct reflection on yourself."

  I glare at her. "You know what? I don't even give a shit anymore. I don't care if you don't like me. You've always been rude, unhelpful and a total bitch. And annoying. Don't even get me started on the annoying part."

  She shrugs. "What do you expect? It serves you right for anthropomorphising your own thought processes in such an incredibly irritating way."

  I don't like her. I scowl harder for a couple of minutes, but she sits there, maliciously whistling the My Little Pony theme tune. You can't say she wasn't asking for it. "You know what?" I murmur. "You can't be my Inner Go
ddess. Because you wouldn't fit inside of me."

  She stops whistling and frowns. Goddamit - is she being deliberately obtuse?

  "There wouldn't be room," I say.

  She blinks.

  "I'm saying you're fucking fat, you bitch-troll."

  My Inner Goddess laughs and gets to her feet. "Hanna, you think everyone over a size four is a suppurating ball of lard. Just like you think everyone who isn't a billionaire is poor."

  She picks up her coat from the back of the couch and puts it on. "Well," she says, pulling her split-ends free of her collar. "It's been interesting. I won't lie about that."

  I gape at her. "So what? You're just leaving me? Now? In my hour of need?"

  "God yes," says my Inner Goddess. "Like I always said - I kind of hate you." She wiggles her fingers in an annoying little wave. "See ya. Wouldn't want to be ya," she sing-songs, and vanishes in a puff of meta.

  And that's it. I'm alone. Completely alone. I don't think I've really been alone before. There's nobody here - no Inner Goddess, no Subconscious, no Libido. I strain to hear the tiny under-the-breath voice of my Conscience, but it's like my head is totally empty. Holy crap - is this what ordinary people feel like?

  The clock strikes midnight. The lion roars. The sinners scream.

  Over the echoing silence inside my head, I hear the click of a key in the door. I hear the jingle as he puts them back in his pocket, his footsteps drawing closer. He steps into the room. His fedora is pulled down low and he raises his head slowly, his face shadowed by the brim.

  "Hello again, Mrs. Neigh," he says, tipping his hat.

  "Crispian," I gasp.

  He puts the hat back on. "Did that look cool? Because it felt cool. I don't think I've ever felt cooler in my life. Do it again - stand up and say my name and I'll like, walk out of the shadows. That was fucking awesome."

  Goddamit - he hasn't changed.

  "I knew you'd come back," I say, adjusting my grip on the spatula.

  "Yeah baby," he says, stepping closer. "For you. My Serendipity."

  I shake my head, sadly. "No, Crispian. Not for me. I know what you came back here for. And it wasn't me, was it?"

  "Come on, Hanna - don't be like that," he says, but even as he says it his eyes look right through me to what's behind me. The drawing board. I know he has the key. And I know it's full of underage horse porn. And I know, as sure as I know that my nipples point north, that he's never going to stop yanking it to My Little Pony.

  "Take your things," I say, stepping away from the board. "Take them and get out of my life."

  Crispian shakes his head and rakes his fingers through his unruly hair. I never noticed before, but the way his glasses hang from his ears is oddly beguiling. "Hanna, you're just tired and emotional," he says. "You can't leave me."

  "I'm not leaving you," I murmur. "I'm throwing you out. I'm asking you to leave me."

  He folds his arms and sighs. "And how does that work, exactly? You know how the story goes - dumb girl with no self-esteem meets perverted billionaire, he makes her an indecent proposal, blah blah, lots of sex, lots of crying and they live happily ever after."

  Oh, this hurts. It's like a worse pain than that time I had really bad gas and they had to cut me op...oh wait, no that was when I had a baby. Yeah. It's probably worse than that. He's right about one thing - I am kinda tired and emotional. I probably shouldn't have had that second bottle of Sancerre while I was waiting for him to show up.

  I stare down at my fingers, knotted around the handle of the spatula. "But Crispian," I mutter. "You're not a billionaire any more."

  He stares at me in horror. "Hanna," he gasps. "I thought you understood me. I thought you could see past my enormous wealth into the beauty of my soul."

  "Well..." I murmur. "Initially...yeah..."

  I think back to our good days, those first perfect days when we were so in love. I remember his smile, his eyes and the car he bought me. Oh, memories - the time we had lunch on his luxury yacht and when he came for dinner that evening he bought a whole case of champagne.

  But sometimes I guess you just can’t go back.

  He shoves me roughly out of the way. I stumble and fall to the floor. He stands, bathed in moonlight, as he unlocks the drawing board and removes his pictures. For a moment he glares down at me and I know he's looking down my blouse, because frankly, who wouldn't?

  "Was it always the money, Hanna?" he says.

  "No," I whisper, and it's the truest thing I've ever said in my life.

  His eyes shine out from under the brim of his fedora. In certain lights he's kind of hot, even if he does have a tragically undersized you-know-what. "No?" he murmurs.

  "No," I say, meaningfully. "I thought you were broken. And I thought I could fix you. I thought I could turn you into someone you're not."

  Crispian stares at me, his face impassive, his glasses hanging from his ears in that way. I think of the little orange crescents beneath his fingernails and my eyes ache with the effort of holding in the tears.

  "But I can't," I whisper. "Can I? Because you're always going to be a pervert who whacks it to My Little Pony."

  He shakes his head and walks away. The realisation is liberating. Holy crap - I think I learned a thing. I think I may have actually had some kind of revelation here.

  "Oh my God," I gasp, getting to my feet. "Do you know what this means, Crispian?"

  He keeps walking towards the elevator. I race after him and grab his shoulders, turning him round to face me.

  "It's like a bolt from the blue or something," I tell him, excitedly. "Like a stunning moment of perfect clarity. Oh my God - I think I'm experiencing something nobody else has ever experienced before..."

  He shakes his head and turns away, but by then it's too late.

  "...Crispian, you don't understand. Oh wait - don't use that elevator. That's the one with the sandw..."

  Epilogue

  All through the funeral, I can feel Jesús simmering away like a pressure cooker. It’s only when we’re walking away from the graveside that he finally cracks and says what’s on his mind.

  “Do you think he’s definitely dead this time?”

  I shake my head. “Dude, a sandworm bit his head off. Why do you think it wasn’t an open casket viewing?”

  It was a grim enough viewing. There’s something deeply macabre about a pink coffin covered in My Little Pony decals. Worse, a bunch of people from different viewings kept drifting through the funeral home and telling everyone how sorry they were, and how the death of a child is always the most poignant. Nobody wanted to explain that we were here because of the death of a manchild, and Hanna didn’t exactly help with this impression with her constant wailings about her poor baby girl.

  The custody case didn’t go well.

  The cemetery trees are turning red and gold. Once more round the sun, I guess. The grass is wet underfoot and both me and Jesús walk on the balls of our feet to keep our heels from sinking. He offered to just be Jesús for the funeral, but I said I didn’t mind him being Jessica. After all, it’s no secret that Jessica Waters bought RIP Publishing from the Neighs. And he looks disturbingly good in a little black dress.

  Ahead of us, half of the Neigh family are arguing about who is most the grief-stricken among them, while the other half are skipping crazily around in cat/folf ears. When I say the custody case didn’t go well I mean it went badly for them. It went pretty well from Celestia’s point of view. Her dad doesn’t seem like the sort to mislay his children in Ralph Lauren boutiques.

  “You wanna go onto the wake?” asks Jesús, as we step onto the path. A jogger bounces past us.

  “Meh. Not really.”

  “Yeah,” says Jesús, peering over at the Neighs. “I can think of about a dozen other people I’d rather get hammered with.”

  “A dozen?”

  “Well,” he says. “You know. One.”

  I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. Hanna and her money and her incredible stupidity have a way
of taking you away from reality, the kind of reality where you might well get your heart broken all over again. But I do it anyway and kiss him.

  The jogger comes back round for a second look.

  “Take a fucking picture,” says Jesús. “It lasts longer.”

  “Okay,” says the jogger, and gets out his phone.

  I can’t help it – I laugh. We watch him go. “Dude,” I say. “Now everyone will know you’re a lesbian.”

  Jesús shakes his head. “Oh my God. I’m a closeted heterosexual.”

  “I guess. Until you come out and admit you’re a man.”

  He looks me up and down for a moment. “Do you want me to do that?”

  I shrug. “Wouldn’t that be really bad for Jessica’s career?”

  “I have no idea. I honestly don’t have a clue how that would play out with the fans.”

  “Well, you know what they say – if it ain’t broke. And I don’t mind being a lesbian.”

  He grins. “You make a lovely lesbian.”

  “Thank you. So do you.”

  Jesús holds out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go. I want to show you something.”

  He leads me down the path to a waiting car. We drive through the city, past the apartment building where Crispian met his almost-definitely permanent death. The building is covered in crime scene tape and nobody seems to know whether they should attempt to fumigate it or just demolish it, burn the rubble and plow the ground with salt.

  Eventually we arrive at RIP Publishing, where the receptionist greets Jesús as we come through the door.

  “Ms. Waters – I didn’t realise you’d be in today. How was the funeral?”

  “Oh, you know,” he says, in ‘Jessica’s voice – lighter and more Latin than his own. “Surprisingly dull.”

  “Surprisingly?”

  ‘Jessica’ shrugs. “When a man dies as a result of being decapitated by a hungry sandworm, I guess it follows that his funeral is always going to be kind of an anticlimax.”

  “That’s very philosophical, Ms. Waters.”

  “Thank you. Maybe I should diversify into cross-stitch samplers.”

  “It’s worth thinking about.”