Make Me Stay: The Panic Series

by Sidney Halston

  As I’m leading them out, Katie walks in. “Hi, guys,” she chirps. Damn, is everyone going to visit me today? “Hey, thought you’d like to take this with you back to the club,” she says to Nick, and hands him a big Tupperware container of food. April’s stomach immediately starts to rumble. Shit, she’s probably hungry.

  “Katie girl, whatcha got there?” I ask.

  “Oh, I made some of Nick’s favorite. Paella.” Katie makes the best paella ever. The woman can cook. “I have more upstairs. Want some?”

  For a moment I’m torn between eating, on the one hand, and getting everyone out of my apartment so that I can continue kissing April, on the other. But the choice is easy: April. In a perfect world, I’d eat April, but I don’t think she’s on the menu. At that moment, however, April’s stomach starts rumbling again, and the decision’s made for us.

  “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Great. Geo’s on her way too. April, I’d love for you two to get to know each other. You’ll love her.”

  For the next hour, I sit across from three chatty chicks. It’s great to see April smiling and loosening up. She seems in her element, even if her eyes find me across the table every few minutes, seeking assurance that this is okay, that getting close to my tribe of people is okay with me. And it is.

  Geo is, as always, hysterically funny. She’s inappropriate, and the craziest things come out of her mouth—you can’t help but fall into her bubble of charm. I’m so happy she seems to be getting back to her old self; with the evidence of the gunshot still marring half her face, it’s hard to forget what she went through. I can’t wait for David and her to finally move down here. It’ll be fun having them around all the time.

  Once we’ve all eaten and the conversation has dwindled, April and I leave, with April promising to return for a girls’ night soon.

  “That was really, really fun,” she tells me.

  “I’m glad. They’re great, and they’ve grown tight these last months.”

  She looks pensive as the elevator door opens and we walk down the hall to my apartment.

  “What’s going on? What are you thinking?”

  “Just that…I’ve never had that, and it’s nice. And soon I’ll be good enough to go home and then what? I really feel lost most days, and thinking of the future…” She presses her temples with her thumbs.

  “Day by day, sweetheart. And just because you live in a different apartment building doesn’t mean you won’t see them.” I open the door. “Or me, for that matter.”

  “And you’re just going to forgive me for what I did?”

  “Listen, April, I’m not gonna lie—it still haunts me all the time. But I’m willing to try to forget all of that. Focus on what I’ve learned and like about you now…if you’re willing to forget things too.” I don’t know what else to say. I mean, there are moments when she’ll say something and it reminds me that she lied and it ticks me off. But then I quickly remember that this is April and I’m making an effort to move forward and forget that ugly part of June. But it’s not easy, and it’ll probably get harder once she starts to remember. Still, I’m willing to try if she is.

  She laughs humorlessly. “Forget? I can’t even remember.”

  “When you do remember, I mean—if there’s something that maybe affects us and our relationship. Maybe something I did or maybe something you did…we’ll move past it. Focus on the present and forget the past.” Even though she fucked up, I’m worried about her remembering the ugly things I said to her. I don’t hate her, I realize now. I never did. And to think that I called her a whore…fuck, that still burns. I want to apologize, but I can’t do that until she remembers.

  “I think I can do that.”

  “Good. So, fresh start?”

  “Fresh start,” she agrees, sounding as hesitant as I feel. As if by just saying the words, everything’ll be okay. But other than try, what else can we do? I like her, I want to be with her, and if I don’t get past this hurdle, it’ll never work. I’m taking a leap of faith. We both are.

  “So, what else has you looking concerned?” I ask. No matter how hard she tries to school her emotions, I see right through her. The thing is, April is all the best parts of June, and I want to get to know her…for real this time.

  “So this thing…the kisses and…I mean, this isn’t just…” She shakes her head, looking lost for words. “I know we’re moving on, but how much, exactly?”

  “We were great together, April. At least for me, it was something I’d hoped would be moving forward. I was hoping you’d move in. I was thinking this was it for me. Then shit went down, but now that you’re back and I’m moving past everything, I still have feelings. I’d like to start over.”

  Her smile is huge, and she gets on the tips of her toes and wraps her arms around my neck. “Me too. I want that too.”

  “Tell me something. Something real. Something you haven’t been able to say because you didn’t think I felt the same way about you.”

  She hesitates for a moment and then she gives me that cheeky confidence I love. “At night, when you pull me to you and hold me, I can feel how hard you are against my back and I fantasize about how it would feel if you were inside of me.”

  My cock immediately hardens, and I squeeze the back of my neck. “Jesus.”

  We’re still in the hall, and I stalk toward her like a predator. We’ve waited long enough. A year without touching her…I’m losing my mind. I attack her mouth. The kiss is not soft. It’s not tentative. It’s a year of frustration, anger, worry, and now relief. And she doesn’t hesitate either. She’s right there with me, giving as hard as she’s taking.

  I lift her in my arms and walk her to my bedroom, where I lay her down and slowly take off her clothes. She’s lost so much weight, but I’m hoping that now that the doctor says she’s in remission, she’ll start gaining some of that back. I miss her round ass; I want to sink my teeth into it. She scoots back as I undress, throwing my clothes on the floor. Without hesitation, I grab both her ankles and pull her forward, making her shriek.

  “It’s a tossup,” I say as I kneel on the floor. “I may have missed your mouth, but I think I missed your little cunt more.” I sink my face between her legs, holding her thighs apart.

  “Ohhh!” she yells.

  “Yes. Be loud, April. You were always loud.” In the back of my mind, even with my face in her pussy, I remember how she didn’t like me calling her June while we had sex. And now that I know why, it bothers me to no end. But I push down the feeling and focus on what I’m doing. Because June’s gone and this is April. And I like April a helluva lot.

  “Matt. Matt!” she moans as the pressure seems to be building. I go to my bedside table and take out a condom, since I’m not sure if she’s still on birth control or if she’s been with anyone since, and I slide it on. In one fast push I’m inside of her. I probably should have prolonged this further, reveling in everything I’ve missed, but I can’t. I have no self-control when it comes to this woman.

  “Get there,” I demand, grunting as I take myself to the edge.

  “Wait. No, not yet. Don’t stop,” she cries out. “Oh God, this feels so good.”

  I bring my thumb to her clit because fuck waiting…I can’t wait. I’ve waited a year. I’m not waiting anymore. I need to come right the fuck now. Two strokes to her clit and she’s off like a rocket, tightening so hard against my dick I think she’ll snap it in two. With that I lose all control.

  A few moments later I roll off her, and we’re both on our backs breathing heavily.

  April

  How doesn’t he hate me? Jesus, I hate me.

  I hurt him so badly, and here I am living with him, having sex with him, having meals with his family…Why would I ever let this go? There has to be more to the story. He may not know what the “more” is, since I can’t remember, but I don’t think I’m a bad person. I don’t think I would intentionally use him just to have his father arrested. I mean, am I a ba
d person?

  I wish I could just remember. I want to give him some sort of reason. A justification for why I pretended to be someone else. It has to be something more than—work.

  I don’t know what to think, how to act. I do, however, know how I’m feeling. I’m feeling sated. Like the pressure that’s been building and building finally released in a wonderfully fulfilling explosion. I don’t know how June felt, but I know how I feel right now. I feel like something that was off, something that was missing, has now fallen into place. As if all is suddenly right in the world.

  It hurts me that I can’t remember how we were when we were together. I can’t imagine that I’m that changed, that different, that I’d have purposely hurt this man. It’s just not in my DNA. It’s unfathomable to me that I didn’t feel regret and guilt when I hurt him. I had to have.

  It’s been a week. A week in which we’ve stopped dwelling on the past and have been focused on getting to know each other. We’ve gone out to dinner, we’ve stayed home and watched movies, and we’ve gone on morning jogs (something, apparently, I love to do). It’s been wonderful. That evening we walk into Panic hand in hand. It feels different this time. As if he’s not just taking care of me because of a sense of obligation. He’s with me because he wants to be with me. “There’s something else that may jog your memory,” he tells me as we head to his office.

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah. This time I’m going to make you stay,” he teases with a sexy grin.

  That comment sounds oddly familiar, but I don’t know why. There’s a niggling sensation in my mind, a hint of a memory I can’t grasp. When we get upstairs, he turns on a speaker that allows the music to pour loudly into his office. He locks the door and pulls me forward.

  He takes off his belt and tosses it aside, then pushes his pants down, freeing his cock. “Get naked.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah. The music’ll drown us out. But try to not be so loud.”

  Wanting him so badly, I do as he says, watching him stroke himself slowly. “That looks good.”

  “Looks better when you’re sitting on it.” He sits down on the couch, rips open a condom wrapper, and slides it on. “Ride me. Sit on my cock and ride me.”

  Following his directions, I straddle him and slowly sink down with a loud moan. I’m grabbing the back of the couch, and the window is right in front of me. I wonder if they can see me from down there. I don’t think so, but the thought of it makes it that much more erotic. “Harder, baby,” he demands, gripping my waist and pushing me down and helping me up, over and over.

  “Do you want to be seen fucking me?” he says when he notices my eyes on the crowd. “If they look up, they can probably see your tits bouncing up and down with each thrust.”

  He thrusts his hips up and then flips us over so fast I almost fall. My back is to the couch and he’s on me, pumping fast and hard. “Only I get to see your face when you come. No one else.”

  It takes just a few more strokes and he’s slamming his mouth against mine to swallow up my yell when I come.

  When we’ve come back down to earth, I stretch; my arms feel languid, like wet noodles. “That was so good. Best sex of my life.”

  He laughs, and holds me closer to his sticky body. “How would you know?”

  “I don’t know, I just do. Never has there been sex like that by people. It’s the best sex of all the sex.”

  He laughs again and kisses the top of my head. “I would have to agree. You wore me out, woman. I have absolutely no desire to get off this couch, ever.”

  “Is this how it was?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was it always like this between us?”

  “The sex was always great, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Not just the sex. Everything seems…intense.”

  “It wasn’t. Not really,” he admits. “It was great. Easy. You went along with most things I suggested.” He flips me around so that I’m now straddling him. “It was perfect.” I cringe, knowing that what we have now is not perfect. It’s far from perfect, in fact. “Too perfect. Now I see that.”

  “I don’t know—easy and perfect sound pretty great.”

  “It wasn’t real. This is the real you.”

  “How do you know? I don’t even know the real me.”

  “I don’t know. I just do, I guess. There’s no bullshit. No fluff.”

  “I guess that’s true,” I say, laying my head on his chest.

  I’m feeling wonderfully content, wrapped up in his arms. At this point, I don’t know if I even want to remember. I think I don’t; things are going too perfect to screw it up. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you home. There’s a pint of fresh strawberry ice cream with your name on it, your favorite.”

  Sweetheart.

  Strawberry ice cream.

  That hits me hard, and as he helps me up, things start falling into place. It’s fast and I don’t see it coming. It’s like a train wreck. I look around the room which doesn’t look foreign anymore. “The strawberry ice cream melted. It was everywhere.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve done it on that desk before,” I say, everything rushing back in all at once like a tsunami. He freezes, his jeans midway up his legs. “And on this sofa, and against that wall,” I continue, looking around. “I had to stay quiet.”

  “Hey?” I feel his hand on my arm.

  “Jesus, that looks sexy,” he says. We’ve just had crazy rough sex in his office and I’m feeling completely out of sorts. Dean is in a van across the street listening to the audio feed from Panic. It’s become so much more with Matt, and the lines between work and my heart are becoming blurred.

  I don’t want to talk, because everything he’s saying is being heard and recorded, and there’s only so much lying and damage control I can do. I’m supposed to be luring him, not screwing him. What the hell is wrong with me? I stand up, but he’s already there with some napkins. “You okay?”

  No. I’m not. I don’t tell him. I don’t even talk. I need him to leave. I need to compose myself, and I don’t need the explicit details of what just happened being recorded.

  With shaky hands I bend down and grab my clothes and start to dress.

  “What’s going on? What do you remember?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. It’s overwhelming. Everything is rushing back. It’s like I need to catalogue it all in order to understand. “We met here at the club.”

  “Yeah, but I told you that.”

  “But I remember it.” Once dressed, I sit down and try to calm my breathing so that I can think things through.

  I watch carefully where we’re going, having already studied the plans of the club a dozen times. I know about the private elevators. He swipes his fingerprint against the button and it opens. “Cool!” I purposely sound ditzy, and when the elevator opens on the second floor, he again uses his prints to unlock a second set of doors. It’s easy to forget that he doesn’t know all the things I already know about him, and I have to remember to ask questions and act surprised—get him talking as much as possible. “So what if you have a broken hand or something? Then you can’t open anything around here, huh?”

  “I have a key.” Then he laughs and shows me his other hand. “And a second hand.”

  “Well, you could break both hands.”

  “Seems like a stretch. And why would my fingerprints be broken too? And if I have two broken hands and ten broken fingers I won’t be able to use the key, either. This is a weird conversation.” I notice he instinctively pats his pocket when he said “keys,” so I assume he has a set of keys with him. Does he have them at all times, I wonder? I scrutinize everything around me.

  Matt

  “It’s okay, just take a breath. You don’t have to think of everything at once,” I tell her, worried. Her entire body is wired and the tension is just radiating off of her.

  “I remember the attack,” she says, looking past me, over my should
er, at nothing.

  I inhale harshly. “He’s in jail. You’re safe.”

  “I thought I’d die. The pain was too much.” She just continues to stare blankly. “I wasn’t sure if I was sticky from blood or the ice cream.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  “Home? I don’t have a home.”

  “You do. You have that apartment.”

  “I lived in it for two days before I was attacked. I haven’t even unpacked.”

  “You have my home. Come home with me—we’ll deal with all of that later.” I try to help her up, but she looks to the side and her eyes narrow. “What?”

  She stands, as if on autopilot, and goes straight to one of my father’s old photos. It’s the one of him and Madonna that she admired back then. She takes it off the wall and starts to feel around the frame until she pulls out a small square thing.

  “What is that?” I ask, walking to her and plucking it from her hand.

  “A bug.”

  I run my palm down my face. “You bugged my office?”

  She throws it down and steps on it with all her might, then runs out of my office and heads to my brother’s office. Without bothering to knock she barges in.

  “What the fu—” my brother yells, startled by her sudden intrusion. She goes behind his wooden desk, forcing him to move over, and starts to feel around the edge of the desk. She takes out another bug and proceeds to destroy it.

  “Matt, what is going on?” Nick asks, standing up, utterly confused. But before I’m able to say anything she leaves and heads to my father’s office, which is locked. We’ve been keeping some of the stock of alcohol there since it’s vacant.

  “Open it,” she demands.

  “April—” I begin. My brother’s right behind me.

  “Open it!” she yells hysterically. Tears are streaming down her face. “Now. Open it!”

  I look over my shoulder at Nick, who shrugs.

  “Open it!” she screeches, and I fumble in my pocket to find the key and open the door for her.

  She goes straight to his landline phone, which has been disconnected for the past year, and like a professional takes the phone apart and takes out a bug. Then she kneels behind the desk and takes out another one and puts it on the desk with the first one. Then she goes to the Picasso, feels the back, and takes out a third. She drops the three small mics on the floor and stomps on them over and over, tears running down her face, grunting as she destroys them.