by W Winters
“I don’t know what to expect,” she says, and the honesty in her voice is raw and transparent.
“Right now, I want you to stop fighting me.”
She smiles wide for the first time since I’ve walked in, staring down at an owl mug in her hand. It’s a sad, soft smile. “Fighting is what I do best though. Came into the world fighting, I’ll leave it that way.”
I can’t help but return the smile to her. “That’s fine with me, cailín tine. Just don’t fight with me.”
“You okay?” she asks me, setting down the mug and stalking over to me. I lean forward and pull her petite body between my legs, resting my hands on the small of her back before I answer her.
“I had a long day.”
I lower my head to rest in the crook of her neck and she does the same. Her lips leave a small kiss that rouses desire from me.
Just as I’m ready to take her, to lay her on the bed and fuck away my problems, she stops me, pulling away to tell me, “I did nothing today.”
“Some days that’s good to do, to just heal and let the world move around you.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
Every ounce of lust dampens, seeing her lack of life. Fire dies when it’s closed off and not allowed to breathe.
I want her to breathe, but she’s suffocating herself.
“Did you go to the kitchenette?” I ask her and she shakes her head.
“I didn’t leave the bedroom.”
“I need to show you around,” I comment, noting that she’s been like this for a few days. Listless. Depressed. “You can’t just lie around and expect to get better.”
“Get better?” she bites back, her eyes flashing with indignation. “There is no ‘getting better,’ Mr. Cross. I’m simply trying to adapt to my new reality and I don’t have a damn thing to distract me.”
She stands up straighter, squaring her shoulders and leaning closer to me. “I may be taking up residence in your bed. I may do all sorts of shit with you I’d never tell a soul I craved so badly, but you,” she points her finger to my chest and then licks her lower lip. The act distracts me and instantly I want to take her, punish her for tempting me. “You can tell me how you want me in bed. You can boss me around while I crawl on all fours for you, I don’t give a fuck.” She shrugs halfheartedly and her shirt slips off her shoulder. She knows what she’s doing to me. The little smirk on her lips dims though when she looks me in the eyes and tells me, “You don’t get to tell me how to live my life.”
“I wasn’t,” I respond and I’m surprised by the sudden change. The hot and cold between us.
“I want you, I’m not afraid to admit that. Even now, when I’m not able to do what I love, I can’t go into work. I’m afraid to go back to my own home,” she admits and swallows, looking anywhere but at me and crosses her arms. “And I’m coming to terms with the fact that everyone in my family has died tragically and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.” She shakes her head.
“Even now, I want you and I love the distraction of you.” Her fingers linger on my chest and she steals a quick kiss before whispering down my neck as she pulls herself away from me. “But you don’t get to tell me what to do or how to mourn. You’d be wise to remember that, Jase.”
That’s my cailín tine. Not hidden deep down, just failing to find a reason to come out. I’ll give her a reason. I can give her that.
“Tell me something,” she says and takes a seat on the black velvet chair next to the dresser. She lays her head back against the wall and pulls her legs into her chest.
“What do you want to know?”
“Who is Angie? What happened to her?”
Surprise lights inside of me, along with dread. “Why are you asking?”
“One time you said I reminded you of someone. Do I remind you of her?”
“She’s not the one you remind me of.” As I answer her, every muscle in my body tightens.
“Is that where you learned to do those things? The fire? With Angie?”
“No,” I answer her again, feeling my throat go dry.
“Well then who the hell is she?” she questions flatly, shaking her head.
“She’s someone who died a while back.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers and I tell her it’s okay although the tension grows between us.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks and I shake my head no.
“Everyone dies, Jase, that doesn’t define her as to who she was.” I don’t think Bethany’s aware of the magnitude that her words have. “Who was she?”
“A girl who died because of my mistakes.”
“And I don’t remind you of her?” she questions again, a dullness taking over her gaze.
“No.”
As she goes through the things I brought her, I go to the bathroom, placing the pills where they belong. In the same spot Angie left them. The pills were hers and they’ve been there since the day she died. Not this same medicine cabinet, but the same location. Bottom shelf on the right. That’s where she put them.
The irony isn’t lost on me that Bethany took them. I stare back at myself in the mirror after I close the medicine cabinet and wonder if I should’ve left Beth alone. If I never should have tainted her by knocking on her door almost two weeks ago.
“Well,” she says, sitting up straighter and making her way to the bed behind me. “Since it’s already uncomfortable I might as well tell you, I did some math.”
“Go on,” I tell her when she breathes in deep, pulling the comforter all the way up. I suppose she got cold.
“One hundred dollars every ten minutes. That’s fourteen thousand, four hundred every day. Which would mean the debt is paid in twenty-one days. Not months.”
The semblance of a grunt leaves me and I run my thumb along my bottom lip. The only sweet distraction from this conversation is that her eyes lower, lingering on my lips and her own lips part.
“So if you’re wanting me to stay here,” she starts, staring at my lips as she speaks. Standing up, I walk as she talks, so I can stand across from her. “I want it in writing that the debt won’t exist after twenty more days.”
Leaning against the dresser, I cross my arms and gaze down at her. “You think you earned fourteen thousand dollars yesterday?”
Indignation flashes in her eyes. “The deal was time, nothing else. And I gave you all my time and listened to you.” Her throat tightens as she swallows and my gaze falls to her collarbone and then lower.
“You stay with me for twenty days, which I’m doing to protect you-”
“Which I didn’t ask for.” She’s quick to cut me off. “In fact, I think we can both agree I was resistant but did it because it’s what you wanted.”
“No good deed goes unpunished, huh?”
“It was never my debt,” she rebuts.
Time passes with each of us staring at the other, waiting for the other one to give.
“You listen to everything I say for forty days—”
Again she cuts me off. “Twenty.”
“No fucking way,” I answer her, keeping my voice low. “Sleep doesn’t count as listening to me.”
“Thirty max, including yesterday, so twenty-nine days.” Her voice is strong as she negotiates. I have to focus not to glance down at her breasts and the way they peek up from her crossed arms.
“Twenty-nine days of you doing whatever it is that I want?” I ask her, feeling my cock go rigid. I unzip my pants and let them drop to the floor so she can see.
Color rises from her chest to her cheeks. She swallows, watching me stroke myself as she answers. “Twenty-nine days,” she agrees.
“Get over here and get on your knees.” I barely get the words out before she’s moving, kicking the sheets away so they don’t trip her up.
She takes me into her mouth and I shove my cock in deeper, gripping her hair so I can control it.
Before she can choke, I pull her back and listen to her heave in a breath. She stares
up at me with eagerness, her hands grabbing the back of my thighs.
“I’m going to use you and get my money’s worth, cailín tine.”
Sleep’s dragging her under. I can admit I’m exhausted as well. Not in the same way, but I can’t go to sleep. I don’t want tonight to end.
“I can still feel you,” she whimpers. The sheets rustle between her legs as she moans softly, pushing her head into the pillow and letting the pleasure ring in her blood.
Her eyes are half lidded as she peeks up at me. “Does it feel the same for you?” she asks.
I let the tip of my nose play along her cheek and then nip her earlobe. “Does it feel drawn out to you? Like wave after wave and a single touch would make the next crash on the shore?”
Her eyes close as she breathes in deep and steady.
“Sex certainly changes things, doesn’t it?” I ask her, remembering how only hours ago I worried about where her mind was headed. She hums in agreement.
I pull the sheet down from her chest slowly, exposing her all the way down to her waist. A shudder rolls through her and with a single tug on her nipples, they harden for me.
“Jase,” she murmurs my name.
“I’m not done with you yet,” I tell her and her hazel eyes widen.
“I stored the lighter and alcohol pads in the nightstand yesterday, hoping to play with you this morning, but you were asleep.”
She huffs a small playful laugh as I open the drawer, still lying in bed. “Is that why you said sleeping doesn’t count?”
Keeping one small pad folded, I run it along her closest breast and then pluck the other one, letting the moisture cool on her skin and sparking her nerve endings.
Sweet sounds of rapture slip through her lips as her hands make their way between her legs. She doesn’t touch herself though, not until I tell her, “It’s all right to play with yourself, but be still.”
The fire blanket is in the drawer, I remind myself of that as I flick the lighter, staring at the flame and then gently bringing it to where the ethanol is still lingering on her skin. The flame grows along her skin, licking and turning a brighter yellow, but it’s gone just as quickly as it came. By the time her mouth has parted, the evidence of it is all gone.
“Again,” I tell her, sucking the other nipple into my mouth and running my teeth along her tender flesh before moving back to her right side, wiping the alcohol pad around her areola and then lighting it aflame again.
This time she moans louder, her knees pulling up the sheet that’s puddled around her waist.
“Do you know why I enjoy fire?” I ask her, massaging and pinching her left breast once again.
“Because it’s dangerous,” she answers me softly and I shake my head no.
“Because it’s wild,” I correct her and then do it again, a larger portion this time.
Once the fire’s gone, I grip both her breasts in my hands and run my thumbs over both nipples.
“Which one makes you feel more alive, cailín tine?”
Bethany
I suppose I was never under the illusion that it was a tit for tat of information. So long as he answers my questions and keeps searching for answers I’ll never be able to find, I’ll willingly warm his bed.
In fact, I have little to no objection to it at all.
It’s obvious I’m a fool, that I have no grip on reality, let alone my own mind. I feel like I’m losing it to be honest. What’s the point in trying to stay afloat in the middle of the deep dark ocean when there’s no land in sight? I could fight it, and I feel like I have, like I’m exhausted from fighting to stay above water. Or I can fall into Jase’s arms, and let him hold me for a moment.
Fear plays a small part, but it’s shocking how small a part it is.
Someone is after me, and this arrangement prevents them from getting whatever it is they want from me – which can’t be good - and could lead me to information. Although that piece… that last piece about information. I’m starting to lose hope for that to happen.
I’m starting to accept it never happening.
If I think about it like I’m an undercover cop, suddenly it’s all okay in my mind.
That’s what I tell myself anyway. It’s all pretend. My life is turning into a tall tale like Marky used to feed me. And that makes the jagged pill easier to swallow.
These are the thoughts that lead me to biting my thumbnail as I lie in Jase’s bed. The clock on his nightstand, a beautiful contemporary clock with a minimalistic face of sleek marble and only hands to tell the time, must be lying to me because it reads that it’s after noon already.
I sink back under the covers, pulling them up easily since I’m in bed alone and listen to the ticking. My hand splays under the sheets onto the side of the mattress where Jase lay last night. The thought of last night brings a faint kiss of a smile to my lips, but it falls just as quickly as it came, finding the bedsheet cold to the touch.
I called work again when I first woke up, ready to leave a message this time. Half of me wanted to be professional and ask what the phone call regarded, the other half wanted to call my boss an asshole, assuming it was him. Instead of leaving a message, I found myself talking to the lead nurse on Michelle’s case.
“I’m so sorry,” she started and then immediately dove into discussing the restraints they had to use on her arms. “She was eating the gauze, Beth. I have no idea what to do with her other than restrain her. I’ve never had a patient with pica and I don’t know what to do.”
“She loves pickles. So make pickle ice.” I rattled off what I’d been doing with Michelle. She’s a new patient, pregnant and newly diagnosed with pica. It’s a psychological disorder where patients have an appetite for non-nutritive foods, or even harmful objects. “It’ll most likely diminish after the pregnancy.”
“I know, but what am I supposed to do?” The stress and frustration were all too relatable. “She can’t stay restrained for six months.”
“Listen to me,” I said as I gripped the phone tighter. “Mix half pickle juice and half water, add in a soluble supplement, freeze into ice chips and then give them to her throughout the day, constantly.”
“That can’t be it.”
“I’m telling you, you keep that by her bedside and she eats it slowly. Something about the cold makes her pace herself.”
“Okay… okay,” Marilyn sounded hopeful and I felt it too, until I heard someone ask who she was talking to and then the line went dead. When I get back to work, I’m going to kill my boss. I can hear his excuse now, that I’m a workaholic and I wouldn’t be able to help myself, but that they should know better.
That was the only distraction I had.
I’m slow to sit up, forcing myself to rise although I have no plans, no control, nothing at all I want to do… but read I suppose. Thank all that’s holy for books.
The small piece of me that anticipated – and looked forward to a note from Jase – is disappointed when I find his nightstand empty of any slip of paper.
I shouldn’t feel so hollow in my chest. I shouldn’t feel this kind of loss.
Bringing my knees up to my chest, I rest my cheek on my right knee and wonder what happened to me. What the fuck happened to the woman I was? Without work… I’m no one. My life is utterly empty and the one thing that’s filling it shouldn’t be in my life at all.
One breath, and the screaming thoughts quiet. Two breaths and I find it hard to care. This will all be over soon. It’s temporary and nothing more. I’ll be back to work, unraveled or not.
Until then… I’ll read and let Jase fuck me. Maybe one day, I’ll even get out of bed.
The Coverless Book
Three quarters through the book
Emmy
I remember all the times Miss Caroline took me to the appointments. Mother always met me there. It was Miss Caroline who took me on long drives and told me stories the whole way. No matter how many hours it was. That’s all I can remember as we sit outside of the shed. It’s a
large shed, with running water and an outhouse with plumbing around the back.
Jake said it’s his cousin’s place, so it’s okay that we stay here.
I can remember the trips to the hospitals. The long drives we took to get to them. The hotels we stayed in. Miss Caroline always stopped for ice cream on the way to and back. And she let me eat all sorts of things I never had at home.
I remember all those trips… but those are the only trips I’ve ever taken.
Until this one.
“What’s wrong?” Jake’s voice breaks my thoughts. His hand cradles my chin. “You look like you regret this.” I hate how his voice sounds like he really believes that.
My hair tickles my shoulders when I shake my head and tell him, “You’re crazy to think that. I love you, Jake.” He needs to know that. “I was just hoping to go inside. It’s been a few days since we’ve slept on a bed.” I want to give myself to him. But not like this.
His lips part and instead of words coming out, he closes them again, kicking the rubble under his shoes. “We can’t go inside, Em.” He stares off at the large farmhouse. “Your mom filed a report and the sheriff called. We can’t go inside.”
Feeling a wave of nausea, I lower my head to my hands. “Your family doesn’t know we’re here?”
“My cousin does, and he’s bringing us blankets. I’ve got money once we get out of this town. But, for tonight… Our parents are looking for us.”
The crickets from the cornfield get louder as the sun sets deeper behind the crimson sky. It’s nearly dusk already.
“I’m sorry I can’t give you more right now, but soon I can.”
I find his hand in mine, and tell him, “It’s why running away is so scary. The unknown.”
His eyes stare deep into mine as he says, “The only known in my life I need, is you beside me. As long as I have you, nothing else matters.”
He tells me he loves me and I feel that drop in my stomach again, but I make sure I tell him I love him too and that I can’t wait for all of the unknowns I’ll face with him.
