by Cole McCade
“Rape?” Peaked, over-plucked brows lofted mockingly. “She plays Lolita and then calls it rape.” A short burst of sticky-cold laughter scraped like claws. “You’re lucky I didn’t put you on the street myself.”
“He raped me. I was too fucking young to make any kind of choices about that with a grown man. I was eighteen, Mama!”
Thin fingers flicked. “Old enough to know what you were doing.”
“Old enough to think I knew what I was doing.” Leigh pushed herself up from the wicker chair hard enough to nearly flip it over, slapping her hands down on the table until her palms stung. “I didn’t. I didn’t know at all, and I needed you! I needed you to…to stop being a jealous woman long enough to be my mother.”
Mama studied her with a cool, pointed look. A look that ran over her from head to toe, that found her every flaw with the accuracy of an arrow struck to the heart and drew it out with a mother’s killing power. A look that said she wasn’t good enough. She’d never be good enough, and she’d disappointed her mother the way little girls always disappointed their mothers when they gave their daughters the world and all she wanted was the moon and stars.
“And what would you have had me do, while you were fucking my husband?” Mama asked.
“Realize it wasn’t his love I was begging for,” Leigh bit off, and thrust herself away from the table to jerk the door open and flee inside, with her mother’s condemning eyes following her every step of the way. She knew it was cowardly. She knew it was weak.
But she couldn’t stand for her son to see her cry.
She shut herself in the guest room and curled up on the bed and sobbed into her pillow, until the fine damask was a wet film clinging coldly to her cheek. Crying should have made her feel better, but all she felt was hollow. Drained. As if that hole inside her, that thing that could never be sated, had opened wider and wider, chipping away at the edges until soon she’d be nothing but a hungry husk devouring everything around her into her blackness.
Her mother had been trying to teach her for so long. Teach her how to be her, and Leigh didn’t know if she could. Didn’t know if she could be that woman, fulfilling her place for the sake of a little boy who would grow up to fulfill his place as if everything was preordained. How many women? How many women gave up everything in their lives, everything in their souls, for the lives of their children? How many women kept the peace with men they hated so their children would want for nothing?
And what was the point?
I’ll…I’ll give up anything and everything for Elijah. I will.
But I need to hold on to some piece of myself. Some piece of me that can love him, so he never feels like I don’t.
Not again.
She couldn’t go back out there, not right now. Not with him in the study with Jacob, and her mother looking at her with all the accusation and resentment she’d bottled up for years. All the things Leigh had earned, but didn’t know how to deal with. She fumbled for her backpack and dug inside until she touched worn fabric binding, and the tattered cardboard edges underneath. Propping herself up against the headboard, she tugged out The Witch of Blackbird Pond and opened it to stroke the soft, cool pages, then pressed her nose into the crease between. She imagined, when she breathed in its dusty scent, that she could smell Gabriel too, and the way his scent had fallen down on her like rain when he’d covered her with his body and made himself her world.
She smiled to herself and turned back to the first page, and settled in to read. She missed him, she thought. She might even love him. Or love the idea of him, as she’d loved the idea of so many men. But the idea of Gabriel Hart couldn’t give her son the future he needed, even if it was the idea of Gabriel that made her laugh when she read, She didn’t want to admit how disappointing she found this first glimpse of America.
Yeah, sister, she thought. Me too.
She was nearly to the end when a knock came at the door, sharp and authoritarian enough to jolt her, dragging her out of a Wethersfield that had grown harder and harder to read in the sinking light through the curtains. She hadn’t wanted to stop, but she had no choice now, and let the book fall to rest against her thighs. Jacob’s voice drifted through the door.
“Clarissa? We’re having dinner.”
She bit her lip and pushed herself back against the pillows. “I’m…I’m not hungry.”
She’d thought he would push it. Thought he would tell her to behave herself, to keep up appearances.
But he didn’t say anything at all, and that was almost more worrisome.
She didn’t pick up her book again until the faint sound of his footsteps receded, and the darkness of his shadow disappeared from beneath the door. She flicked the lamp on and read until her eyes grew heavy; until the book’s weight became too much, and it slipped from her lax hands. By the time she woke the light from outside had become a veil of blue shadows through the curtains, shot through by the hard bright rays of street lights. She rubbed her eyes until that strange sideways feeling of waking began to right, wondering what had pulled her out of sleep, until it came again—a knock. Quiet, almost stealthy, and she watched the shadows of feet moving under the door with a sense of déjà vu twisting through her until it sucked the color out of her and threw her into the faded sepia tones of memory. She pulled the blankets up over herself and backed up against the headboard.
“Who is it?” she whispered.
“Me,” Jacob said, and she slumped against the pillows, closing her eyes. Thank God, just Jacob.
“Come in.”
He opened the door with a tentativeness that sat strangely on him, he who walked into every room as if he owned it. The light from the hall framed him in soft halos as he hovered in the doorway, hand on the knob.
“Hey,” he murmured.
“Hi.”
“Can I come in?”
“I…” Did she really want to deal with him tonight? But she nodded, set the book aside, and leaned over to turn the bedside lamp on. “Sure.”
He stepped inside and closed the door with a soft click, then drifted closer to the bed and sat down at the foot. For long moments he just watched her, thoughtful, with something odd and soft in his eyes that made her wonder who this man was, and how things might have been different if he’d looked at her that way years ago.
“Your parents went home,” he said. “They asked why you weren’t at dinner. What happened?”
“Mama and I fought.” She shrugged, though her shoulders were so tight they barely wanted to move. “Old stuff. We never really fixed it and I guess with me being gone so long…” She looked down, fidgeting with the blanket over her lap. “I don’t know. It was like ripping the Band-Aid off, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“They’re very worried about you.”
“I know. It’s just—” She closed her eyes and thunked her head back. “It’s overwhelming. Everyone around me all of a sudden.”
She felt his weight lifting off the bed in a creaking of the mattress, and the zip-hiss of overly-starched khakis with every stride. Then his warmth settled on the bed next to her, hip to hip, his bulk slanting the mattress until gravity pulled her where she didn’t want to go, tumbling her against him. She flinched, but he draped a heavy arm around her and gathered her against his side.
“Here,” he said gently. His hold on her was loose, loose enough that if she really wanted to, she could pull away. He squeezed her carefully, coaxing her against his warmth. “Come here, baby girl. Shh. It’s all right.”
She shuddered. His hold shouldn’t be comforting, shouldn’t be safe, but he was still familiar and she’d known his arms for so many years. She was a horrible person for relaxing, for tucking herself up against him, for curling against his side when it felt like using him.
But when he rested his chin to the top of her head and curled his thick, short fingers in her hair, she let him, and closed her eyes and told herself this was what she wanted. She could live with this.
She had to.
“You going to be okay?” he asked.
“I’m trying to be.” She curled her fingers against his chest, his crisp pressed shirt cool against her palm; under her hand, the thick bristles of his chest hair pushed against the cloth. “I am, Jacob. It’s just such a mess. I’m such a mess.”
“You’re not a mess.”
She laughed bitterly. “I’m such a mess you think I’m on drugs. Don’t—don’t deny it. I know I’m a wreck. And I know I made a wreck of our marriage.”
“I did, too. But wrecks can be fixed. We can fix it together. Come to bed, baby girl.” His voice was low, gently inviting, and he nuzzled her hair, lips hovering near her brow. She smelled the bitter fruity tang of red wine on his breath. “Our bed.”
She stiffened, eyes opening. “No.”
He sighed. “Clarissa—”
“I’m not ready.” She pushed away from him, ducking under his arm to slip free. “I’m not comfortable.”
He made a frustrated noise, eyes pinching at the corners. “Why not?”
“You ask me that, but you never asked why I left in the first place.”
“What?”
“You asked where I’ve been. Not why. And now you want to know why I won’t come to bed with you. But not why I left.” She pulled the blanket up in a protective barrier, bunching it up to her neck. “Do you even care why I left?”
“Of course I care,” he said softly, holding a hand out to her—but that tone was back, that tone that said she was just a little doll and he was trying to find the right words to pose her the way he wanted. “I just…I thought it was because of what happened. What I did. I’ve wanted to make it up to you for so long. I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
But you already did.
“What about Elijah? Would you hurt him? Do you shout at him?”
That extended hand curled into a fist and dropped. His eyes went flat. “Why would you ask me that?”
“I apologized to him for shouting in the car and upsetting him. He said it’s okay. He said Daddy shouts a lot, too.” She glared at him. “Do you shout at our son?”
“You don’t get to judge how I parent,” he hissed. “You weren’t here. You pointed a gun at me, and then you left me here with him!”
“And I came back to find a little boy who’s practically been cowed into silence.” Her lips trembled, but she pressed them together until they stopped; she couldn’t show weakness in front him, not about this. “I see me in that little boy. I see me! I see the me who was raised to stay quiet and be seen but not heard, all to make the family look good. The me who did everything she could to break free from that, and just ended up backed into that same corner.” She gulped in a shaking breath. “I don’t want my son to turn out like me.”
That deadly quiet settled over him. That stillness, brimming and latent and dark. “Our son,” he corrected, almost too quietly. “So is that why you left? You wanted to break free? From me? From everything I gave you?”
“I never wanted the things you gave me.”
“Then what did you want?” He caught her shoulders, jerking her close so suddenly her jaw clacked and her stomach lurched down into her groin. He stared at her, his teeth a hard white line. “What did you want from me, Clarissa? I gave you this house. A son. Anything you wanted. Fuck, this ring—”
His gaze darted to her hand. His teeth bared wider, and he grabbed her wrist, jerking her hand between them and staring at her curled fingers, naked of even the indentation the ring had left when she’d taken it off four long years ago.
“Where’s your ring?”
She wriggled in his grip, but his fingers dug knives into her shoulder, forcing into the soft flesh around her collarbone. She swallowed back a whimper, scowling.
“It doesn’t matter where it is. I never wanted to be bought!”
“Then you shouldn’t have accepted it. Where’s your ring?” he snarled. When she didn’t answer, he deliberately and pointedly tightened his grasp on her wrist until it was ready to snap like a twig, and she couldn’t stop her pained cry. “Where’s your ring?”
“Let go!”
“You sold it for drugs, didn’t you?” He shook her until her head cracked back so hard her skull smacked the back of her neck. Pain whiplashed down her spine. “Didn’t you?”
“No!”
“Then where is it?” he roared.
“Why do you care?!” She kicked out, writhing, shoving her feet against him until his grip relaxed. She scrambled across the bed, pushing herself into the corner next to the wall and clutching her bruised wrist to her chest, while her breaths sucked in and out like a bellows. “It was my ring.”
He stared at her with his lips curled into a grimacing mask and his brows built into bristling crags. “That ring cost nearly twenty million dollars.” His face flushed red, color branching out in thick pulsing veins that stretched up to his temples. He knelt with his thighs spread, fists clenched against them, holding his hands like loaded weapons. “Do you know what people were saying about me after you left? Do you know how bad you made me look? And now I wonder how many people saw you.” He sneered. “Saw you slutting around in that little whore’s skirt, and laughed at me behind their hands.”
“Nobody saw me,” she spat. “You think your kind of people would go anywhere near there?”
“So what kind of people were you with, Clarissa?”
“Stop calling me Clarissa.” She pushed herself farther into the corner, a trapped animal cornered by a wild boar that would charge and gore her open at any moment, his tusks thrusting deep into her quaking gut. “It’s Leigh.”
“I don’t understand this. Who the fuck is Leigh? What are you doing? Changing who you are—your name, your hair, everything! What are you trying to prove?”
“I’m not changing who I am, and I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m just not faking it anymore.”
“So you’re telling me everything you were with me was fake?” His jaw worked from side to side, clicking with every sharp shift. A dark hush filled him like water pushing up against the walls of a dam, but when he spoke again it was almost pleading. “Was it?”
“You don’t want me to answer that.”
Leigh swallowed thickly and averted her eyes, fixing on the door and calculating the distance, calculating how fast Jacob could move to intercept.
Looking away was her biggest mistake.
Thick hands curled against her waist and dragged her across the bed, forcing her onto her back with a yelp. The room whooshed past until she was staring up at the stippled bumps of the ceiling, the golden pools of lamplight, anything but the body moving over her like a black moon eclipsing the sun and cutting off the last of her light, the last bright spark of hope that she might get out of this unscathed.
She didn’t dare breathe. Didn’t dare move, when he looked down at her with his eyes strange and cold and dark, his hair thrusting out like angry spears, and his teeth still showing, all his teeth. It seemed like every time she saw someone’s teeth, it was right before they bit.
“Jacob,” she whispered as his thighs flanked hers and the sweltering thick weight of him pressed her down. Her pulse felt like it would burst through her skin and spill red everywhere, so much red, and a thin yellow taste filled her mouth, like drinking her own fear. “Jacob, don’t…”
“I missed you.” A sweet, beguiling whisper, one that chilled her to the bone. He brushed his fingers down her cheek, the coarse hairs on the backs of his knuckles scraping. She flinched away. “I missed you, and you’re telling me everything I missed was a lie.”
She whimpered and pressed her hands to his chest. “Don’t do that. Please.”
“Didn’t you miss me?” That whisper descended to a harsh rasp. “Did you cheat on me?”
“It’s not cheating when I left you.” She made herself meet his eyes—those too-wide eyes, the whites showing above and below the glazed iris, devoid of anything she knew of the man she’d thought she’d had figured out, insid
e and out. “You had me declared legally dead. I’m pretty sure that annuls our marriage.”
His lips split in a wide, leering grin. “You trashy little whore,” he said—before his knuckles crashed hard across her cheek.
Pain exploded through her in a rolling crash of thunder bouncing and rattling around the inside of her skull, a burning muted throbbing as her vision momentarily went black. She thought she might have screamed, but the sound was lost and dark and small, a faraway thing that seemed to belong to someone else, someone distant and unreal that this could never happen to in a million years.
“Clarissa,” Jacob said thickly, ripping the blanket away, lifting himself up enough to drag it off her body before crashing down on her again. “Clarissa.”
He grabbed the hem of her sundress, fingers disease-hot against her thighs, and shoved it up over her hips with the roughness she’d always wanted but never wanted from him. His hand thrust between her legs, fingers scrabbling heavy and thick against her panties, and she shrieked, slamming her fists against his chest, kicking, twisting away. She managed to squirm onto her stomach and grabbed for the edge of the bed, dragging herself away with desperation twisting her lungs into fast-pumping knots and sick revulsion walking slimy fingers up her spine. This wasn’t happening, he wouldn’t, he wasn’t that kind of person, he—
“Hold. Still.” Coarse fingers snared in her hair and dragged her back, her neck snapping with the strain. He clamped a hand over the back of her head and shoved her down into the pillow until her screams muffled against the sheets, rattling around in her mouth like bitter-tasting pills trapped in place by cotton swabs.
“No—Jacob, no!” she cried.
“You’re my wife. You don’t get to say no.” His weight pinned her again, straddling her hips with his cock a sick-hot slab of meat grinding against her ass. His breaths came hot and wet and sour against the back of her neck. His words were a leer given voice, hissing into her ear. “I know what kind of girl you really are, wearing this dress. You think I didn’t notice?” He exhaled in a shuddering, sibilant rasp. She could feel his anticipation dripping off him like sweat, and wondered with a sinking hollowness how long he’d been aching to do this to her; how long he’d wanted to hold her down and prove that he could hurt her, break her, own her. “C’mon, baby. Let me give you what you want.”
