by Sienna Blake
"What is it?" Abbi whispered. Her chest was heaving like mine, the hazel of her irises erased by her large pupils like a lunar eclipse.
"This is a bad idea," I said, my voice like the gravel of the path my feet trod nine years earlier.
I couldn't need her like this. It would destroy my career, my success, my everything. It would destroy me.
Abbi sucked in a shuddering breath and nodded. "We should stop," she whispered.
I stared down at her and she stared up at me. Our ragged breaths filled the narrow hallway. We were sprinting in place, exhausting ourselves, wearing ourselves down. We were hurtling down a mountain road and the longer we rode the brakes, the harder we tried to stop, the faster the brake pads eroded till metal screeched against metal and sparks flew like fireworks in the night and there was no chance of us stopping.
"This is a bad idea," I whispered again, saying what I should like a line in play, stiffly and without conviction even as my white-knuckled fist shook as I held it against the wall next to her head.
"We should stop," Abbi repeated. But they were hollow words. Lip service against a fate inescapable.
We were applying the brakes, but the brakes were gone. There was nothing but sparks like the colours in her hazel eyes in the porch lights—gold, amber, bronze. They flashed in the dark and we were doomed.
My next words were as inevitable as fucking gravity itself. "Where is your bedroom?"
Abbi sucked in a breath, half startled, half relieved, and dragged my lips toward hers, nails digging roughly into the back of my neck.
"It's wherever we fall," she whispered, her mouth hot against mine.
With a growl, I grabbed her hips and lifted her into my arms. Her ankles locked around my back and my fate was sealed as firmly as if the key had turned on my solitary cell in a maximum security prison. I would go mad in the darkness; I would go mad in her arms.
I stumbled blindly through Abbi's apartment, my back and then hers colliding painfully with the walls. We left the square of light from the porch behind us and plunged into the depths of each other's heat, each other's gasping breaths, each other's yearning, desperate clutches.
I held her with one hand and gripped her golden hair with the other, tugging just hard enough to expose her throat to my exploring tongue. Abbi's fingers dug into the muscles of my back as she pulled herself closer to me, pressing her breasts against me, her nipples peaked to hard points.
My shins collided with something hard and Abbi and I went tumbling over onto the couch. She immediately tugged at the hem of my dress shirt, not caring that she was ripping the buttons and tearing the fine silk. I grabbed a handful of the sweet neckline of her dress and tore it easily down the centre. Abbi gasped as I followed my course of destruction with tender kisses along her exposed skin, like razing a city to the ground and planting roses in the ashes.
I tore down the length of her dress all the way to her black stilettos. The thin material spilled like a waterfall at midnight over the side of the couch and her bare skin was like the moon itself. Abbi's sparking eyes were fixed on me as I stood over her at the end of the couch. I slipped the tattered remains of my shirt from my shoulders and kicked off one shoe, then the next as Abbi lay there watching, her long, slender fingers resting on the black lace bra covering the swell of her quivering breast. My pants joined the pile of discarded clothes at my feet in a silence, heavy and thick and sweet. I was left in nothing but my black boxer briefs, my erection strained, the ache nearly painful. My desire for her was swallowing me whole. I needed her and I needed her now.
But when I moved to lean in toward her, to crawl across her prone body like a crashing wave against the shore, Abbi stopped me with a dagger-sharp heel pressed against my chest. I raised a confused eyebrow across the couch at her but remained still, as if frozen by a spell, as Abbi slipped from the couch, stood in her high heels, and walked toward a half-ajar door across the living room. I stood there unmoving as she glanced back over her shoulder and grinned wickedly as she unhooked her bra strap and let it fall to the floor just outside her bedroom before disappearing into the darkness inside.
I followed slowly after her, my steps careful and quiet as if approaching a sacred temple. I slid through the parted door and found Abbi standing completely naked at the base of her bed. She was staring at me in the moonlight that crept through the cracks in her blinds. I drank in the sight of her long limbs, the gentle curve of her hips, the goosebumps that covered the rose petal skin of her breasts.
One thing was certain: I never stood a chance against Abbi Miller. I never stood a fucking chance.
I pushed down my boxer briefs and bit back a groan at the relief in my cock when it sprang free.
"I'm going to fuck you," I said, descending upon Abbi like a hawk on a prairie mouse. “Hard.”
She lifted her chin. "You talk too fucking much."
I pushed Abbi to the bed and fell upon her before she could even hit the sheets, cool in the warm air. I guided my cock to her warm, wet folds and thrust inside of her. Her back arched off the bed and she clung to my back as she hissed through her teeth. I didn't give her a second to catch her breath but instead ploughed into her tight heat again, faster, harder, deeper. Abbi bit my shoulder as her thighs tightened around my hips and I groaned in pain and fucking out-of-this-world pleasure.
We were brutal to each other, there on her bed. We were two fighters in the ring determined not to hold back punches. I left marks on her and she left marks on me, red lines and soft bruises and indentations in the skin. We wanted to hurt each other and love each other and destroy one another. We wanted to win and we wanted to lose. We wanted to fuck so hard we forgot this moment, this mistake, and we wanted to fuck so hard the memory of the other could never be erased from our bodies.
Sweat shone on my brow, on Abbi's bouncing tits, on our stomachs as our muscles twitched. Our moans weaved together into a blanket that covered us, hot and heavy and all-encompassing. We were both close, both because we needed this and because our bodies moved together as if we were one.
Abbi was starting to whimper my name as she thrashed beneath me, fingers grabbing desperately at the damp sheets as she gasped. I buried myself even deeper inside of her and knew it wouldn't be long. But just as I felt Abbi tightening around me, she froze.
Her eyes, pupils still wide and hazy, shot to the door to her bedroom. Her body beneath mine drew as tight as a strung arrow.
"Did you hear that?"
All I heard was my name on her sweet lips. My breath was coming in ragged gasps as I shook my head, biceps quivering on either side of her face.
"No," I said.
But Abbi kept her wide, nervous eyes fixed on the parted door. I remained silent and after a moment or two, we heard a car locking in the parking lot downstairs. Abbi pushed me away from her and scurried off the bed when we heard footsteps on the stairs leading to her front door.
"Shit, shit, shit," she muttered, scooping a pair of sweatpants off the floor.
She darted into the living room in a panic as I stared after her, confused and startled on the bed where she had left me. She hurled our clothes into the room and slipped on a t-shirt as the footsteps drew nearer.
"Stay in here," she hissed, pleading and desperation and something I thought might be anger in her hushed voice. "Do not come outside, Michael."
Abbi didn't give me time to respond before slamming shut the door and plunging me back into darkness. Outside I heard her greet someone, her words muffled and indistinct through the woodgrain of the door.
Noiselessly I tugged up my pants and pulled on my shoes and told myself I had no right to be upset. Abbi already told me she was seeing other people, and I certainly had no exclusive hold on her. Hell, if she had a boyfriend it wouldn't even be any of my business.
But quickly the voices outside were drowned out by the rushing of blood in my ears as my anger nonetheless began to take over my emotions. I was consumed with jealousy and bitterness that she should be
long to another. It was irrational, but goddammit the whole fucking night had been irrational. I'd already leapt off the cliff; I might as well enjoy the view on the way down.
I knew I was crossing a line, a big fucking line, but I suddenly couldn't stop myself. I needed to see this man who came to visit Abbi at nearly one in the morning. I needed to see what he was made of. I needed to see what he had that I didn't.
I flung open the door to Abbi's bedroom before I had the good sense to stop. I stormed out, still deaf from the rage-fuelled rushing of my blood. I was out of control, but I didn't know how to get hold of myself anymore.
"Who the fu—"
My words cut off and it was as if a mute button had been hit on the world. My steps froze halfway across the living room as my eyes fell not on a man, but a woman and a little girl. The little girl had turned to me along with Abbi and the woman and her eyes filled me with fear, confusion, despair.
They were green.
What was worse than me noticing that her eyes were green like mine was watching her notice that my eyes were green like hers.
It wasn't until my voice was to the point of shouting and quivering with every syllable that the sound rushed back, and I realised it was I who was speaking. I had felt my lips moving, repeating the same question over and over again, but it wasn't until the question was loud enough to make the women flinch that I heard it, that I heard the anger, the panic, the denial.
"Abbi," I yelled, "how old is she? How fecking old is she?!"
I dragged my eyes away from the little girl with green eyes and fixed my furious gaze on Abbi. Her arms were crossed over her chest, shaking as tears and guilt pooled in her eyes.
The image of her like that was more powerful an answer than any word she could have uttered.
I fled.
I hurried across the living room, avoided the face of the little girl with green eyes, and slipped out into the night, slamming the door shut behind me. I just started walking. And when walking wasn't enough, I started running.
I had no idea where.
Just far.
As far as I could would have to do.
Abbi
"Zara, go to your room."
My voice sounded distant to my own ears, as if I was only hearing the echo of my words from the bottom of a very deep, very dark, very narrow well.
I was still staring at the place he had been before he’d stormed out and slammed the door like a full stop on our lives. I was still staring at the place he had been when he left my bedroom, when he saw my daughter, when my daughter saw him.
"Zara, go to your room," I repeated when I noticed my daughter was there beside me, also staring at the place he’d been, unblinking.
Zara turned her head toward me with a million questions on her lips. "Mom—"
"Now, Zara," I snapped. "Go to your room now."
Zara seemed about to protest again, but Sandra placed her hands on her narrow, thin shoulders and leaned down to say gently, "Honey, go on to your room, okay? Your mom will be there in a minute."
Sandra's kind voice managed to sting my heart despite it being completely and utterly numb. I wasn't sure which was worse: feeling nothing or feeling that kind of pain. I watched Zara pad quietly to her room, dragging her overnight bag on the floor behind her and glancing back at me till she disappeared down the hall.
When she was out of sight, I covered my face and slid down the wall to sink into a quivering ball on the floor. I rocked back and forth, still in disbelief over what had happened.
"Why is she home?" I wailed into my hands. "Sandra, why the fuck is Zara home?"
Sandra sank to the floor next to me with a sigh. "She wanted to come home," she explained softly. "You know she struggles to feel comfortable with the other girls. She…she just wanted to come home."
I groaned and pressed my palms harder against my eyes as if that might erase the look on Michael's face when he saw her.
"Why didn't she call me?" I asked. "I could have— I wouldn't have—"
Whatever I was trying to say dissolved into frustrated moans. This was my worst nightmare. This was exactly what I vowed would never happen. I never wanted Zara to meet Michael. But now Zara's only memory of her father would be of him leaving, running away.
"Fuck," I said through gritted teeth, my jaw clenched tight. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
I tried to brush off Sandra's first attempt at soothing me, but she persisted and I let her rest a solid hand on my arm.
"Zara tried calling you first, Abbi," she said. "You must not have heard it at the party."
"No," I insisted, shaking my head. "That's impossible."
I uncovered my eyes and found my clutch discarded in the entryway next to me. With shaking fingers, I opened it to retrieve my cell phone.
"If my daughter was trying to reach me, if she needed me, I would have…"
I couldn't continue, because there on my screen were notifications for no less than eleven missed calls from Z. Guilt wrapped its ugly claws around my heart and squeezed till I was gasping for air. I put Michael before my own daughter. I put a weekend fling nine years ago over the love of my life.
No, no.
This had nothing to do with Michael.
I put myself before Zara. I put my needs, my wants, my desires over hers. The truth was plain and simple and so was the knife that twisted in my heart; the pain was complicated, nuanced, hard to unravel. But it was still pain, plain and simple.
Sandra ran her hand in calming circles over my back till I managed to catch some of my breath. "Abbi, you need to go talk to her."
I turned my face toward her, resting a tear-stained cheek on my knee. "Do you think she put it together?" I asked. "Do you think she knows that he's…that he's her…"
I couldn't even bring myself to say it aloud. Sandra smiled sympathetically at me and I knew. Of course I knew. And so did she.
"Just be honest with her," Sandra said, lifting my trembling chin. "Honesty, Abbi. No matter how ugly or complicated or difficult."
She pulled me into her arms and held me for a moment.
"Okay," I whispered, dragging the back of my hand across my nose and sniffling. I sat up and sucked in a deep breath.
"Okay?" Sandra asked, eyes watching me.
I nodded. "Yeah."
I stood and Sandra stood with me. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and focused my determined gaze on the hallway leading toward Zara's bedroom. I took one more deep breath and managed to keep it mostly steady as I exhaled. I went to move forward, but Sandra stopped me briefly with a hand on my arm.
"Honesty," she said when I glanced back at her. "Don't hide yourself from her."
"Thanks for bringing her home," was my only response.
Sandra's smile was small and hesitant before she nodded, gathered her things, and slipped out of the front door. I walked to Zara's bedroom with salt-rimmed eyes and a mechanically beating heart. I rapped my knuckles on the cracked door before stepping inside.
The room was lit a hazy yellow by her nightlight. Zara was in her bed, hidden under the covers with a flashlight and surely a book. I sat on the edge of her bed and waited for her to peek her head from beneath the covers.
"Zara?"
When she remained silent and hidden, I finally lifted the covers and slipped beneath them myself. Her green eyes, those betraying green eyes, were focused on a glossy image of the Grand Canyon in her book.
"Zara," I said with a slow sigh, "Z, that man is your—"
"My father?"
I swallowed heavily and nodded. "Yes."
"What's his name?"
Zara lifted those beautiful green eyes to me, at once lovely and painful. Sandra said to be honest, that that was all that mattered. But I wasn't so sure. My daughter didn't need a full picture of Michael; that would simply make forgetting him harder.
"That doesn't matter," I said. "He's not a part of our lives."
I reached out to brush a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear, but she flinched aw
ay from my touch.
"I just want to know his name," she said.
"Z, baby, he's no one, alright?" I insisted. "I just want you to forget that you saw him here tonight. It will be easier."
"He has the same colour eyes as me." Zara’s eyes searched mine.
I forced a smile. "No one could possibly have eyes as green as yours, baby."
Zara looked at me for a moment longer and then returned her attention to her book.
"You're alright, right?" I asked her. "We're just going to forget about tonight?"
Zara nodded.
"Yeah?" I pressed.
Zara didn't look up at me as she said, "Yeah, Mom."
"You're okay?" I asked, hesitating before leaving.
"I'm fine."
I pressed a kiss to my daughter's forehead and slipped from beneath the covers. This was for the best, I told myself. This was for her own good. She didn't know what kind of pain lay in those green eyes so much like her own.
I lingered in the doorway, glancing back at the faint light of her flashlight beneath the covers. I told myself I was protecting the gentle flame in her heart from the battering winds of the world. With my hands cupped around that little flicker it couldn't grow, it couldn't rise, it couldn't catch the wild grasses and fly.
But it also wouldn't die.
I couldn't let it die, I told myself, trying to reassure myself that I was making the right decision in erecting a wall between my daughter and her father. It was hard now, but she would forget, she would move on, she would be safe.
"Goodnight, baby," I said in the doorway.
Zara did not reply. All I heard was the flipping of a page beneath the covers. I sighed and closed the door gently behind me.
I slept on the couch that night because I wasn't yet ready to face that bed where I'd made the worst decision of my life.
Michael
I walked till blisters formed at the back of my heel, on the bottom of my foot, at the sides of my toes. I walked till there was a hole in each sock. I walked till the craggy peaks of the distant mountains, visible in each intersection I passed, were outlined with a faint ribbon of pale yellow light. I walked and I walked and I walked and I put miles between myself and Abbi and the little girl with green eyes. The little girl I would not let myself call my daughter.
