by Ella Fields
Each step was a knife to my chest. Each tug at my dress as I lifted it over my head, dropping it to the floor, was a razor blade peeling at my skin. And when he went to lock the door, I shut my eyes and turned to face my window. “Leave it open.”
He didn’t ask why, nor did he protest. I heard the snick of his belt, the buzz of his fly, and then I heard his voice. “That fucking ass,” he said, groaning. “Get on the bed. On all fours this time. I want to see your tits and ass sway as you come on your fingers.”
A tiny shiver assaulted me, but it wasn’t nearly enough to drown out the trepidation and sorrow that fueled me.
After doing as he said, I quickly licked my fingers, imagining the filthy words Lars had said to me last night in this very bed.
“That’s it, lick it. Lick what I do to you from my cock. Choke on it.” He’d rammed himself down my throat, and I’d gagged, my nails digging into the backs of his thighs as he kneeled over my head with his own thrown back. “Fucking yes, squeeze your tits.”
I’d squeezed them, my eyes watering as he’d fucked my mouth with ruthless, unabashed fervor. He didn’t come on my tits. I’d refused to let him leave my mouth, malicious glee pooling between my thighs as the muscles in his thighs seized, and hot liquid burst down my throat.
The memory of his rasped, drawn-out, “Fuuuuck,” had me coming now.
And right on time, judging by the muttered, “The fuck …?”
Ellis didn’t hear him. He was too busy offing his load into his hand to see the six-foot male charging toward him.
I pulled my bedding over me, unable to breathe as they met the floor, and Lars grabbed Ellis by his shirt, buttons popping, expensive fabric tearing, then he paused. “You …” The room swallowed all three of us in a blinding box of flames. “Dad?”
Lars scrambled back on his ass, right into the bed, and when he looked up at me, I saw the expanse of our entire universe in one single look. A universe that exploded into specks of memories as his chest heaved too fast, and he struggled to get to his feet.
Ellis watched Lars move to the door, his face pale, lip bloodied, then stared back at me. “That’s—” He stopped and swallowed, gaze returning to the door. “That’s your boyfriend?”
Not anymore, I felt like saying. Instead, I said, “That’s your son?”
Ellis shook his head. “He …” He pointed after him with a shaking hand. “Fuck.”
Then he stalked out of the room, and I was left to sort through the horror I’d brought crashing into our lives.
When I could finally see enough through the tears that wouldn’t quit drowning my eyes, I forced myself back into my dress, disgusted as I tugged it on, then got in the car.
Ellis was long gone, and I hoped Lars would be home.
The Escalade was parked in his drive, sitting pretty next to Annika’s Skoda.
I jumped out after parking by the curb and crossed the lawn, halting when I saw Lars pacing the porch and smoking a cigarette. “You know,” he said, a sad, horrible laugh following a plume of smoke. “I knew. I had this feeling that you would try to push me away. It’s all you’ve ever done, really.”
“Lars,” I begged. “I didn’t—”
His eyes cut through me. “Shut the fuck up.” He looked away, coughing. “Jesus Christ.” Another low laugh. “You fucking cold bitch.”
His words sliced deep, and I let them. I’d take each one and imbed them inside me if it meant he didn’t have to wear the scars of what I’d done to him for too long.
He would be okay. I had to keep reminding myself that. One day, he’d gaze upon his beautiful daughter, maybe even his son, and he’d look back with gratitude for what I’d done.
His thumb ran across his bottom lip as he continued to pace, his cigarette burning between his cinched fingers. “You did it on purpose. You fucking did it on purpose, and the fuck of it is, is that I know it’s not because you don’t want to be with me.” He stopped, staring down at the grass before my bare feet. “It’s because you want me to be happy.”
I nodded, biting my lips to keep from letting out the wail shaking my lungs.
“Despite the fact that you’re a goddamned idiot, I could’ve maybe forgiven you. One day.” He smiled at me then, insincere and cold. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
He came down the steps, smoke snaking around my face as his shoes reached my toes, and his low voice fissured my heart. “You fucking know that what I feel for you could endure almost anything you try to poison me with, and so you just had to take it a step further by bringing him into it. How did you even …?” He paused then, his eyes widening as he stumbled back.
Fuck. “Lars, it’s …”
“Him.” He laughed out, his cigarette dropping to the grass as his hands tunneled into his hair. “Holy fuck, and it just keeps getting better.” He spread his arms wide and tilted his head back to face the sky. “Are we done kicking the shit out of me yet, huh? Because you know what? It actually really fucking hurts.”
Tears fell from my chin to my chest, sliding inside my dress and soaking into my skin. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He straightened, then cocked his head, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Oh, you didn’t know.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t.”
He came closer, growling into my face. “Even if I believed you, which I fucking don’t, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” He spat at the ground beside my feet, his jaw granite. “Mission accomplished, Cotton. Now get the fuck off my lawn and out of my fucking life.”
He stalked for the house, and I chased after him, desperate as I tugged at his arm. “Wait, no. I didn’t know. I had no idea.” I had no idea what I was even doing. None. All I knew was the splintering taking place inside my chest.
Lars shook me off, not saying a word as he went inside and slammed the door behind him.
“I didn’t fucking know,” I shouted until my lungs felt like they’d bleed, the words becoming a whisper as the moon appeared and Annika quit spying on me through the living room curtains.
“I didn’t know,” I croaked.
I left when one of the neighbors poked their head out.
After pulling over twice, trying to console myself before I arrived home, I gave up and gave in to the torrent of disbelief and regret that poured out of me.
With swollen eyes and my heart disintegrating, I walked into my room just before midnight, and almost screamed at the sight of my dad sitting on the end of my bed, holding a piece of paper in his hands between his knees.
“Eighty grand, Daphne.” Looking up at me with nothing but the moon to light his strained features, he repeated himself. “Eighty fucking grand.”
“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t. I was sorry for so many things but not for that. Never that.
He scrubbed at his cheek. “And where is the car?”
“Lars has it.”
Dad’s laugh was humorless. “Right. So you’re fine with letting your boyfriend practically drain your college fund to drive his new family around in style?”
“He doesn’t know,” I said, the words unbearably quiet. As if my brain, my vocal cords, were sick of their existence after I’d abused them. “And he won’t, please. He thinks he won it. Or there’s no way he’d accept it, and he needs it. He and Glenda need the help.”
“Glenda?” Dad asked. “His mother?”
I nodded, biting my lips.
“Fucking hell, Daphne.” He rose from the bed, staring at me for long seconds. “What’s happened to you?”
Lars Bradby happened to me.
He was everything I’d tried not to let happen to me.
I said none of that, and said again, “I’m sorry.”
“You won’t be attending any of your first choices now. You know that, right?”
I squeezed my eyes shut to keep more tears from escaping. “Okay.” I couldn’t argue about it. It was done and missing out on those schools was the least of my concerns.
Dad released a loud b
reath. “Get some sleep. If you refuse to get the money back, then you’ll need to start thinking about your next move as soon as possible.” Because there was no conceivable way I wasn’t going to attend college.
As soon as the door clicked closed, I tore off my dress and crawled naked beneath the bedding, unable to get warm as ice continued to infiltrate my body.
“I don’t give a shit if she’s going to attend a cheaper college or not, Xander,” Mom screamed. “She stole our fucking money.”
“It wasn’t ours. It was always hers.”
“Did she work for it? No. So it was never hers to give away.”
I cringed and hauled the duvet higher over my head.
“Olivia, you and I both know I worked for it. You never once contributed to her college fund.”
“Oh, great. This shit again.”
Dad’s voice lowered, and then something crashed, and then I rolled over, doing my best to fall back asleep.
Some hours later, the house now silent, I dragged myself to the bathroom to wash the filth I felt invading and clogging every pore.
He wouldn’t forgive me, and I didn’t want him to, which was the whole point. He would never take a chance for his family if I was still in the picture, so even though I’d taken myself out of it in the most unforgiveable way, at least it was done.
The spray of the shower rained over my face, carrying my grief with it down the drain.
I squared my shoulders and toweled off, then rubbed my hand over the fogged mirror and stared at my puffy eyes while I brushed my teeth.
I wrapped my hair, which was pointless. As soon as I opened the bathroom door, a hand slammed into my cheek, knocking my face into the doorframe, the towel unraveling around my shoulders as Mom growled at me.
“You stupid, foolish girl. Who the fuck do you think you are?” Her voice lowered as she crouched down, eyes glowing as she hissed, “And I know all about Ellis, you conniving little whore.” She yanked me by the hair, and I felt something trickle down my cheek from my temple, my head wrenched from the doorframe. Seeing it, Mom’s eyes widened, and she released me. “You had no business playing around with a married man.”
“And you do?”
Her nostrils flared. “You don’t know a damn thing.”
I sat up, wincing as I dabbed at my head, my fingers coming away red with blood. “Don’t worry. I’m done with him.” I grinned, rubbing the blood between the pads of my fingers. “So maybe now he’ll give you the time of day.” I shouldn’t have goaded her, but I was past the point of caring. Past the point of being careful and afraid, especially when it came to her.
She backhanded me, right as Dad rounded the corner, shouting her name.
Then there was a flurry of screaming, the likes of which I’d never heard before. I’d never seen my dad so enraged, his face so mottled, and his frame looming over Mom’s with so much hatred that I thought he might actually hurt her.
He didn’t. But breathing heavy, he backed up a step and gritted, “Get out.”
Mom sent a glare my way, then smoothed her hands over her hair before slipping around him and doing just that.
“I’m fine, really,” I said some minutes later as Dad dabbed a washcloth to the cut at my temple and held an ice pack to my other cheek. “It’s okay.”
His eyes were wet but steady on my injuries while he ignored me. “Has she done this before?”
I didn’t want to answer that. My parents had their problems long before I started messing around with Ellis and spending my college fund recklessly. Yet I knew my dad enough to know he’d see through any lie I told about my mother. “Once or twice but never this bad.”
Dad sat back on his haunches, his back meeting the opposite wall.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“Fuck work.”
I tried to hide my surprise and made sure the towel was tucked over my body. “What are you going to do?”
Dad rubbed at his brow. “I don’t know yet.”
“Well, don’t make any decisions based on me.”
“We’ve had issues before this, and you know it.” The smile he offered was tainted with regret. “But Daph, you are worthy enough to base decisions on.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. “I’m too selfish to live with that kind of guilt. I don’t want it.”
Dad chuckled, then helped me off the ground, fingers gentle as they prodded at my scratch. “Get dressed. We’re heading out for breakfast so we can figure out your next move.”
My eyes, thick with moisture, blinked up at him, and my throat, thick with too much emotion, struggled to swallow as I nodded.
Lars
I rolled out of bed, dry heaving and covered in a thick layer of sweat, and made it to the toilet just in time to hurl the little dinner I’d eaten the night before inside it.
Images, violent and raw and as fresh as the day it’d happened, wouldn’t leave me the hell alone.
My dad.
She’d fucked my dad or fucked around with my dad, I didn’t even know. With the asshole who’d skipped out of my life as soon as it’d begun, only to come waltzing back in with cutthroat timing to obliterate any happiness I’d found.
Did I believe her when she’d said she didn’t know? Yeah, I did. But it didn’t change a damn thing. She’d still done it. She’d still purposely set out to destroy me. She just didn’t realize how lethal the precision of her knife would be.
Mom pushed a bowl and the cereal box over the table to me, a cigarette between her fingers. She was trying not to smoke in the house due to Annika, but Annika was probably still sound asleep, and I was probably giving Mom more gray hairs.
“You drank too much last night.”
I had, so I merely grunted as I filled the bowl halfway and added a few splashes of milk.
“Lars,” she said, her voice breaking. “What’s happened?”
I wanted to scream. To throw the bowl at the wall and watch its contents decorate it.
She wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t quit until I gave her a reason to. So I shoved the spoon into the bowl with a clang and laid it all out for her.
Every last glorious detail because fuck if I felt like sugarcoating a damn thing. They didn’t deserve any such fucking courtesies.
A little guilt crested as I watched Mom’s face pale and the ash fall from her cigarette to the table. She brushed it away, her eyes glazed. “Good God.”
“She …” I puffed out a hoarse exhale, then bit down on my knuckles when the ache in my chest spread everywhere.
“She wouldn’t have known it was him, Lars.”
“That doesn’t fucking matter.”
Mom nodded, stubbing out her cigarette. “I know.”
“What the fuck do I care if she knew or not? She betrayed me, took a shit over everything we had, and then set it on fire.”
Annika’s feet padded into the room, her nose crinkling. “Um, gross.”
Mom pinched the bridge of her nose, and I got up to grab Annika a bowl as she took a seat at the table.
She thanked me, her light brown hair coming loose from the bun atop her head, and began filling it with cereal. “So what happened with Daphne? I’m guessing she messed up in a big way judging by how long she spent out on the front lawn the other night.”
Air shredded my lungs.
Mom’s features creased with displeasure. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
Annika made a face at her bowl, and I took mine to the sink, dumping it inside before heading to the shower.
Heavy with night, the air closed in, threatening to push the hood of my sweatshirt from my head. I didn’t care.
I tilted the can, feeling the essence of its contents hit the tip of my finger, spraying another crater onto the zombie’s patched-up face. I’d begun this design over a year ago, and though it was cool to see how far I’d come in that time, I didn’t much care.
All I wanted was the quiet, the vivid hum of the image I was trying to replicate, filling my mind.
Around and around I went, swapping out blue for red to fill in the puddles and sprays of blood taking place on the metal shipping container before me.
I didn’t fucking know.
The words crept inside the private space I was creating to block them, and I just stopped myself in time from painting them into the star-flecked sky I was creating.
Blinking, I lit a smoke, stepping back to soak it in.
A lone gull’s cry shredded the dark surrounding the docks, and I sucked back three more drags before squashing the butt with my boot and finishing the mess before me.
Fuck it.
On they went, red and dripping with purpose, pressed into the metal dented sky.
I didn’t fucking know.
I didn’t fucking care if she didn’t know.
I knew enough to know that she was never in this. She’d never wanted this. Not like I had.
That knowledge almost hurt worse than what she’d done.
Almost.
Light footsteps. “Hey.”
My hand didn’t still. Whoever it was could arrest me, or attempt to chase me out of here, but they’d have to wait until I was done.
And wait they did.
“What’s your name?”
My eyes widened, and I finished spraying the sentence before turning around.
A man, tall with a brimmed hat and short beard, stood at the other end of the shipping container, his phone light flashing on the graffiti strewn metal. “Who wants to know?”
I had no idea why I was even humoring him. I should’ve been running. I should’ve been gone long ago. I knew better than to try to finish a project like this in one night.
The light moved over the gruesome cartoon faces, still drying but no less confronting. “You know, I could’ve been a cop.”
I capped the can, bending to tuck it inside my backpack. “Lucky me.”
“Are you usually this sarcastic when you’re caught red-handed?” He looked down at my hands. “Rainbow handed.”
I huffed, lighting another cigarette before I stood. “Are you usually one to frequent shipping yards after midnight?”