“I tried to keep her talking, but she only got angrier. She said she was your wife and that I was a home wrecker…and a lot of other things.”
I knew. I’d seen it all on her web sites, on the many letters she sent the last several weeks.
“She had her finger on the trigger.” Her voice quavered, and she snuggled closer to me. She nudged her head under my chin. I stroked her hair and thought about how close I’d come to losing her. “She was going to kill me. She just had some things to say first.”
“Thank goodness,” I said. “It bought us some time. She always was very verbose in her ravings.”
“When Kyle knocked, she freaked out. She didn’t know what to do. She started acting really erratic…and when Kyle knocked the second time—”
That part I knew already. Kyle had broken in, and Leslie Gray had shot Kyle as he’d wrestled the gun from her, and then he had shot her. Fatally. Kyle was originally from Texas. He was good with a gun.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” I said as she cried. “Kyle’s going to be okay.”
Kyle’s wound wasn’t life-threatening, but he’d still taken a bullet to the chest. He’d come through surgery and was resting in recovery. Nell knew all this, but she still shook in my arms.
“I thought she killed him. I really thought she killed him.”
“She didn’t, but she might have killed you.” I drew in a deep breath of her hair. Nell, fresh and flowery. Alive. It was redemption. A second chance to do things the right way. “I’m so sorry, Nell. This is all my fault. This is exactly what I was afraid of happening, what’s kept me up at night. If she had killed you—” I stopped speaking. I didn’t really have words for what I might have done if Leslie Gray had killed my Nell.
“It was my fault too,” she said. “If I’d stayed with you… I should have stayed with you. I was being selfish. I was tired—”
“Hush.” Why was she apologizing to me? Selfish? I was the selfish one.
I had been the selfish one all along. For my own purposes, I’d exposed her to this danger, but instead of blaming me, she was apologizing. She should have been throwing hateful accusations in my face.
“Rhiannon,” I said.
“What?”
I looked down at her. “She should have hated her husband for what he did to her, what he put her through. But she forgave him. She still loved him.”
She still loved him. Did she still love me? Had she ever loved me? I thought she had once, but how could she love me anymore?
She shouldn’t love me anymore. I steeled myself to say the words I didn’t want to say.
“You’re like Rhiannon.” I said. “But you shouldn’t forgive me.”
I watched her work that out in her mind. Small lines of tension appeared around her mouth, the mouth I wanted to kiss and soothe but wouldn’t. She knew. My throat tightened to see the stubborn denial in her eyes. She kept her voice light and controlled. “Forgive you? It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my fault. The only reason she wanted to harm you was because of me. I can’t…I can’t live like this anymore. I’ve never been able to live like this. That’s why I don’t let myself love anyone. That way it’s easier not to get upset when the fans and press go after her. And it’s easier to let her go…when I have to…for her own good.”
She always tried not to cry but could never accomplish it. She blinked rapidly, and so did I. Don’t look. Don’t let the tears sway you. Don’t let the pain of this moment keep you from doing what’s right.
“You can’t control who you love,” she said. Her hands twisted in my shirt, and she looked up at me in supplication.
“I have a lot of control when I need to. You should know that by now.”
“Jeremy—”
Steady voice. I had to be her dominant. I had to put the rest of it away and do this now. “Nell, I’m sorry. I just can’t anymore. I can’t chance this happening again. I can’t live with this. Someone like me—my girlfriends will always be a target. And making you my wife? Jesus. I might as well paint a target on your head.”
“Jeremy—”
“No. I want you to start applying to colleges. Let me know how I can help. You can start in the fall, wherever you decide to go. I want you to go wherever you want. I want you to be happy. I want you to be safe.”
I took her hand. She made a little fist that made my heart ache, but I pried it open anyway and slipped the ring off. I pushed her tear-streaked face under my chin so she wouldn’t say anything further.
“I’ll tell my publicist in the morning,” I said, blinking back my own grief. “She’ll make it all make sense.”
*
She’ll make it all make sense.
Nothing ever made sense in my life except for the truths I manufactured. Only they were unchangeable, exact, easy to provide and manipulate as needed.
And of course, the public and the press made their own sense of things no matter what you did. The confrontation in the hotel room turned into some quiet insinuations that Nell and Kyle had been having an affair under my nose that led to our highly publicized “breakup.” Funny how far off and yet how close to the truth the papers got at the same time. But Kyle healed quickly and got back to working for me. Nell stopped working for me for good.
I still paid her, though. I took care of everything. I bought her a beautiful little bungalow in Hollywood Hills and a fuel-efficient Mini Cooper for her to zip around town wherever she needed to go. A nice, practical car for my nice, practical, quiet little student, and a mountain of mythology books that I couldn’t resist sending every week. I found myself inexplicably buying them for myself as well, as though reading them might give me the answers I continued to seek. The answer to why Nell was still so heavy on my mind. The answer to why I couldn’t let her go. What was it about her that had caught me? Why her, the simple, quiet, unassuming girl that she was?
You can’t control who you love.
I heard her words in my mind a hundred times a day. And I think she was partly right, and partly wrong. I could control who I loved. I had the control to keep myself away from her at least. But I loved her still. So in that way, yes, she was right.
But I had control. I had the control not to call her, not to e-mail, not to invite her out to lunch, not to drive over to her little bungalow at three in the morning when I thought I would die if I couldn’t sink between her thighs.
And I had the control not to beg on my hands and knees for her to stay in L.A. when I learned, through Kyle, that she’d be returning to Harvard to complete a program I’d never even known she’d begun.
Chapter Nineteen
Bravery
‡
I sat on my back porch and watched the sun go down. It was so beautiful, but it would have been even more beautiful if I weren’t alone. It was late April, warm spring, but I still felt cold. I thought I would always feel cold from now on.
The doorbell rang. My heart used to leap every time the bell rang, because so often it had been a package of mythology books, an anonymous gift I knew was from Jeremy. But the books had stopped a few weeks ago. I supposed Jeremy had moved on. I tried not to look at the papers, for fear I’d see him with someone new. Of course, what did it matter? More than anyone, I knew it wasn’t real.
I walked to the front door and looked through the peephole. A nervous habit now, one I wish I’d had before, so I could have saved Kyle a hell of a lot of pain.
Speak of the devil.
I opened the door and threw myself in his arms.
“Oh my God! What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to come see you before you took off for the East Coast, you little slut.”
I hadn’t seen Kyle in ages, since the night at the hotel, although we’d e-mailed and spoken a few times on the phone.
“Come in!” I couldn’t believe he was here. Part of me, deep inside, hoped Jeremy had sent him here, but I knew he hadn’t. Even in our phone conversations, Kyle carefully avoided talking about hi
m, I assumed at Jeremy’s command.
“You look great. Wow. Like you never even got shot.”
“Ha-ha,” he said as I got him a beer from the refrigerator. He looked at it suspiciously. “Since when do you drink beer, Nell?”
“I don’t. I just keep it in the fridge because it…it reminds me of him. How he used to come home from work every day and go right to the fridge for a beer. I know, I know,” I said at his derisive look. “I know I’m pathetic. God, sit down. Stay awhile. For real, you look great. And I’ve been meaning to thank you in person all this time. You know, for what you did at the hotel. I can’t believe you took a bullet for me.”
Kyle gave me that same old smirky smile, and it almost made me cry from the memories. “You know, Jeremy would have killed me anyway if I’d let you die. And it had nothing to do with that stupid crush stuff. Jeremy totally made that up.”
“Oh, okay.” I laughed. If that makes you feel better. “He made a lot of stuff up actually, didn’t he?”
Kyle’s smile faded a little. “The thing about Jeremy is that he does what he thinks he needs to do. Even if it hurts him. Even if it hurts people he really loves.”
“Mmm,” I said. “I guess.”
“So you leave next Wednesday?” he asked, sitting back on the couch.
“Yeah, I’m starting summer session to squeeze a few credits in before the fall.”
“You realize there’s no hurry. He’d pay for your college even if you took ten years to get your degree.”
“I know. I know there’s no hurry. I just need… I need the distraction, you know? I haven’t been working, and I can’t really go back to the clubs, thanks to you.”
He looked down at his hands and then back at me.
“You know, Nell, he hasn’t asked me yet to start looking again. For another one.”
My heart leaped to hear that, but I pretended to laugh it off. “You mean he doesn’t have a new girl yet? What has he been doing? That man needs it every day. Every hour.”
“He hasn’t been with anyone else,” Kyle said, still serious. “At least no one I’ve seen. And as you know, I usually see them all.”
I sobered. “Yeah, I know. I remember.”
“Anyway, I’m pretty sure there’s only one girl on this earth who would make him happy, and that’s you.”
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. “I don’t know—I don’t think—I really don’t think he wants me back.”
“I promise you he does, desperately, but he won’t admit it. He wouldn’t know love if it came up and spit in his face, as someone once said.” He paused and thought for a long moment. “He’d never in a million years ask you to come back. So you’re going to have to ask him.”
“Ask him what? How?” I was alarmed by the sudden, new hope rising in my chest. “I can’t. I’m supposed to be leaving for school next week.”
“So what? You think Jeremy can’t set up a house in Cambridge if he wants? Fly back and forth? You’ll be in school for what, two or three years at most?”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. Do you love him or not?”
I was seized by desire and fear. I clutched my hands together. “God, I love him so much. But how…? But what…what do I say to make him see…?”
“I don’t know. But you better figure it out, ‘cause I don’t feel like going back to scoping out BDSM clubs.” He gave me a crooked smile. “You know it’s never been my scene.”
*
Kyle was my personal assistant, but we didn’t do social things often, at least not the vanilla kind. I’d had a long day. I was frustrated and tired. The last thing I felt like doing was going out to a bar and fending off fans, but Kyle had insisted. At least he was pretty good by now at scoping out the empty, out-of-the-way bars so I could get down a couple of drinks and chat with a few women before the cell phones started popping out and the paparazzi amassed outside.
This bar was a dive. There was no nice way to put it, but it was so dark and small and smoky that it was actually easy to hide. I felt myself begin to unwind, begin to feel human again. It was a great feeling, to just relax and go unnoticed, a feeling I so rarely had. I leaned back in the booth and let the pounding music wash over me.
“Great, huh?” said Kyle. “I knew you’d like this place.”
“I’ve needed this,” I said, yelling over the music. “I’ve really needed a night like this.”
I might even get laid. I saw a lot of freaky women walking around. Piercings, thongs rising out of barely covered ass cheeks. Tramp stamps as far as the eye could see. This wasn’t exactly a kink bar, but it wasn’t mainstream. The waitress tottered by in high heels and an obscenely short skirt. It gave me a small thrill, but she wasn’t her. Not even close.
The waitress had long, frizzy black hair extensions, fake boobs, a nice, round ass, tarty lipstick. She might be nice to have for one night. I looked away a moment later. My heart wasn’t in it. Aside from the driving desire to get laid, there was nothing about other women that attracted me anymore.
I probably just needed a little more time.
It had been almost three months since Nell left me. Well. Since I’d sent her away. I hadn’t really given her a choice. I couldn’t have. If I’d given her a choice, I knew she would have stayed. My faithful one.
I took another drink of my beer, watched a few blitzed couples making out on the dance floor. Kyle kept looking around, as if he was waiting for someone.
I realized too late that I’d been set up.
She was there across the bar, and she was alone. She clutched her bag and bit her lip, searching the room.
“Jesus, Jeremy! Look, Nell’s here!”
Great performance. He wouldn’t have convinced a child. But there she was, and he stood and waved his arms to get her attention. She, too, pretended to be shocked to discover us here, as if she would have just shown up at this tiny, hole-in-the-wall bar on the edge of town the exact same night we happened to show up. I would have scowled at Kyle, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her.
She walked over with a lovely, wry, shy smile on her face, the smile I’d seen a thousand times, the smile that haunted my dreams. I drank in every movement, every muscle, every breath she drew in and out. I felt petrified with lust and fear.
Why would Kyle do this? I think he was starting to learn the art of sadism. I’d worked for months now to purge her from my mind. Unsuccessfully, but still. This wasn’t helping. In fact, the ache was already unbearable. No no no, you can’t be mine.
Perhaps Nell was the one who’d asked Kyle to do this. It didn’t matter a moment later. All that mattered was that she was there, right there, close enough to touch. I could smell her faint flower fragrance, pick it out from the smoke and sweaty bar odor around us. I knew it elementally, like I knew everything about her. I stood up, feeling wooden, and embraced her. It hurt to let her go.
She had on a little black dress and textured knit stockings that ended just above her knees. She looked thinner and sadder than she had before.
“How have you been?” I finally managed to say, and it sounded mournful even though I was shouting to be heard over the music.
“I’ve been okay,” I think she said.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
She leaned closer to me, resting her lips against my ear. “I’ve been okay. But God, I’ve missed you so much.”
“You and Kyle engineered this,” I said back to her in her ear, holding her head still with her lovely red hair.
She backed away and searched my eyes for displeasure, a skill all subs refined with their doms. I gave her a dry smile to let her know I wasn’t really angry. Pained, yes. But I couldn’t be angry with her. She dropped her chin and leaned close again. “I’m sorry. But I had to talk to you.”
“About what?”
We sat down and put our heads together. I wanted to throw a grenade into the DJ booth. The music that had relaxed and hidden me before hindered
me now, and I wanted it to stop. I wanted utter silence and stillness so I could hear nothing but the beautiful timbre of her voice.
“Let’s go outside. Do you want to go outside?” I found myself asking. Bad idea, bad idea. Too late. She nodded, and we stood together. I went in front of her, reaching back for her hand. The feel of grasping her familiar little hand in mine almost destroyed me. Fucking Kyle. He was so dead.
“So,” I said briskly, dropping her hand when we got outside. “It was loud in there, yeah? I can hear you now. You look great, by the way.” I talked about inane things to keep myself from saying what I really wanted to say. I need you. I love you. Come back to me! “Is everything okay? Kyle told me you were leaving soon for school.”
“I am.” She looked up at me from under her lashes, another familiar mannerism that gave me pain.
“Harvard. That’s really excellent. Wow. Impressive.”
She laughed softly. “Expensive for you.”
“Oh God, no. That doesn’t matter. I wanted you to go where you wanted to go. Anyway, Kyle said you’d already been there. I had no idea.”
“Your Ivy League submissive.”
“I know. No wonder you were so good at it,” I joked, but what I really ached to do was take her in my arms and kiss her and pull up that little skirt…
“They have a really good folklore and mythology department,” she said, oblivious to the indignities I was visiting on her body in my mind. “One of the best.”
“Well, I’m glad. They’ll be lucky to have you. I’m sure you’ll do my money proud.”
She frowned slightly, and I expected her to say something about how the money never mattered to her, which I’d come to believe looking back at our time together with a clear mind.
But instead she said, “I never told you the story of Svava, did I?”
“I don’t think so.”
“She was an obscure Norse figure, a valkyrie. Her father was a king. Do you know what a valkyrie is?”
I shook my head.
“Valkyries chose which warriors were most worthy to die in battle, and brought them to Valhalla after they died, to serve them mead and provide them…other pleasures.”
Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire Page 183