I had not been as good at keeping Jamie out. He blamed it on my age, saying that I felt things more passionately because I was twenty-one, and he had more control over what he felt because he was twenty-nine. It was the main reason I hadn’t ventured past kissing with Jens. There were lots of other reasons, like, you know, me not being anything like ready. Jens understood, giving us the time and space to build up our wall for a bit of privacy.
Jamie lied to Britta tonight. He told her the wall was solid, but in his mind, he did his best to destroy it, throwing in my face everything I didn’t want to see my best girlfriend experiencing.
I cried in his mind and begged him to stop so I didn’t have to watch, but he ignored me, not holding back his waves of pleasure for my inexperienced benefit.
I was sick to my stomach as I tried to scrub the images from my mind. Jamie, stop! Please, Jamie! Why are you doing this to me? To Britta? You’re supposed to love me!
You lied to me! I’m done holding back for your benefit. Jamie’s kindness evaporated as that black heaviness filled him and wafted in through the chasm in the mental wall. I felt it in the air around me, so I ran from it, hiding in the corner of the back of my mind near the brick wall. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see the things Britta would never want me to. I conjured up a pillow in my imagination and breathed into it, shielding myself from whatever it was that polluted Jamie’s mind, and now mine.
Then it dawned on me that if Jamie was fighting dirty, I didn’t have to cower. I could fight him with actual Vin Diesel muscles in my mind and not think twice of the guilt. I stopped my freaking out, stomped toward Jamie and punched him in the back of the head, mid-coitus. It seemed like something Vin Diesel would do.
Jamie was so shocked that I’d retaliated, and with violence, no less, that he left the bed in his mind to retaliate. His real body was still getting freaky with Britta, but his imagination body was sneering at me with his fist cocked.
Is this how you want to do things? Is this what I mean to you? I disappoint you once, and you turn?
Jamie took a swing at me, but I ducked and rushed him, tackling him around the middle so I could wail on him a little bit more.
Jamie was bigger, even in my imagination. He wrestled me so that I was pinned underneath him. He seethed against my cheek as I struggled to free myself. You’ll watch it all. You hid from me? Now you’ll never be rid of me!
I looked up and saw a clone of Jamie through the black fog, enacting what was going on in real life one measly floor above me. I screamed before I remembered to fight back. I conjured up a knife, and before I could think on my remorse, I slammed the blade into Jamie’s thigh, giving myself just enough time to escape.
My mind fought to make quick work of getting rid of the black fog, so I imagined a massive fan that blew the haze back out the hole in the wall, down our shared hallway and back into Jamie’s mind. I sobbed through Britta’s breathy moans I could somehow still hear over the fan. I was pretty sure I’d never be able to shake the sound of what I was never supposed to hear.
Apparently my noises of distress weren’t only in my head. In the quiet of the living room in front of the fireplace, Foss put his hand on my back, his anger melting into confusion and concern. “What? Stop rocking like that!” He gripped my shoulders, stilling my back and forth I didn’t even realize I was doing as he knelt next to me.
“Punch me!” I reached out and clung to his shirt as I snapped out of my mind as much as I could. I could still hear Jamie’s exaggerated grunts that sounded much like a rutting pig, which actually wasn’t too far off.
Foss’s face soured at my request. “What? Lucy, what’s wrong?”
I saw glimpses of the man I’d once drawn strength from and tried to ask for what I needed. “Knock me out! Please, Foss! I can’t see this!”
“See what? Your mom in Limbo?” My bleat of agony on top of torture stilled his hatred of me. He wrapped me in his arms, and I breathed, sobbing into his chest the pain that was too great to bear alone. “What, Lucy? What’s wrong?”
“It’s in my head!” I cried, clawing at his shirt, trying to blink the images away as Jamie and Britta’s sheet fell away, revealing more than I ever wanted to see of Jamie’s hairy backside. Though I wished curiosity tinged with lusty fascination did not rise up in me, it did all the same, and I despised Jamie for the shame I felt as I pushed it away as best I could. “I can’t get it out!”
“Can’t get what out?” Foss smoothed my tangles away from my face, grimacing at the tears I knew he despised.
I tapped my temple. “Knock me out, Foss. Just one good punch right here so I can sleep through it. It’s in there!” We’d deserted our fistfight, but Jamie was determined that I should be punished.
Jamie, stop! I can’t watch you! I can’t watch Britta! This should be private! Stop!
Jamie’s response came between moans I could’ve gone my whole life without hearing. I won’t put my life on hold for you any longer. You treated me like a stranger when you lied to me. I owe you nothing.
Please, Jamie! I begged, knowing it would do nothing. Jamie had been the epitome of a gentleman before. Even when we’d switched bodies that one time between Bedra and Elvage, he’d done his best to be respectful of the merchandise until it was returned to me. Though I sometimes heard the occasional lascivious longing for Britta in his errant thoughts, he’d ironed them out as soon as he caught them. I didn’t realize how deeply I’d hurt him by hiding the information, but the kid gloves were off, and he was fighting dirty. I didn’t want to fistfight my big brother.
Foss watched me thrash around in confusion. “Shh. I’m not going to punch you out. I shouldn’t have thrown you around upstairs. You don’t have to be afraid of me.” The regret in Foss’s tone and the concern on his face were marred by Jamie’s deep moans as he narrated in a sexy voice the things they were doing.
“No! It’s too much!” I whimpered. He’d kept the thoughts men think that no woman should ever hear at bay until now, then he unleashed them on me, burying me in the cavalcade of garbage. My perfect gentleman crumbled, and in his wake, I found an angry and dirty-minded boy. It broke my heart on what I was sure was an irreparable level.
“Come here.” Foss stretched out his long, muscular body on the carpet and brought me down beside him, leaving an arm hooked around my waist. “Calm down. Try to sleep.”
I couldn’t tell him what the real problem was – it would rat Jamie out and make him even angrier with me. Then who knew how he would retaliate. He was married, and apparently his never-ending patience had a limit. He’d made love to his wife without me seeing a thing many times before, but this was intentionally cruel. He was using Britta, and if I told her, it would crumble the image of her perfect gentleman, too. She’d given up so much because of the bond. I couldn’t take her idyllic image of Jamie away, too.
Instead I lay on my back next to Foss, eyes open in horror, head thrashing from side to side as I watched what I couldn’t stop. Foss did his best to calm me down, but I was inconsolable, whimpering as my body jerked with discomfort and the urge to run, but knowing I had nowhere to go.
“Lucy, stop!” Foss commanded, worry etched into the handsome face that had hated me a handful of minutes before. “Elsa!” he called up the stairs.
I put my hand over his mouth, shaking my head to keep him from involving anyone else in our dysfunction. “No Huldras. Just stay with me. Please, Foss. Don’t leave me.” Beads of sweat were breaking out on the back of my neck and forehead as Jamie and Britta heightened their acrobatics. I clawed at the air, accidentally ripping at Foss’s shirt.
Foss was beside himself. “I’m not going anywhere, honey. I’ll never leave you,” he pledged, hovering atop my body to cage me in and getting right in my face to focus me. “I’m here.”
I held his impassioned gaze, and slowly nodded. “I can handle it. Just don’t leave me.” I ground my teeth and clenched my eyes shut, quaking in Foss’s arms that radiated confusion. I bit my lip as t
ears streamed down my cheeks. I buried my face in Foss’s shirt, hoping I’d get so tired that I’d pass out before I had to see anything else. I was exhausted, but the TV kept playing a loop of the Jamie/Britta Porn Show. I screamed into Foss’s shirt, and then slumped to a whimper, building back to a scream again when Jamie threw a particularly vindictive jab in my face.
“Lucy, talk to me!” Foss demanded, his concern almost in step with his confusion.
It was then that it hit me that I could fight without fighting. I scooted out from under Foss and bolted upright. I ran to the kitchen, throwing open the cupboards and searching for the brandy Britta had bought for a bread recipe. I twisted off the lid and chugged as much as I could before the fire begged me to stop. I knew it wouldn’t be enough to calm the strength of the bond, so I tipped the bottle again, guzzling more than my comfort level. Though I was twenty-one, I only had the occasional glass of wine now and again. My alcohol tolerance wasn’t all that high, so it didn’t take much for the waves of calm to numb me. I chugged again, just in case. I gripped the counter, eyes shut as I waited for the liquor to claim me. The buzz was a kindness. The buzz loved me more than Jamie did. The buzz would protect me.
“Stop it! You’re better than this.” Foss jerked the bottle away, disappointment and confusion on his face as he looked down on me.
My anger flared up. “Rats are only good enough to sleep on the floor!” I snatched the brandy back and drank more, dodging his grip so I could swallow more of the too-sweet fire I hated to need.
Foss wrestled the bottle away from me and led me back to the fireplace, grateful I was on my way to subdued for the night. “I shouldn’t have made you sleep on the floor,” he admitted. “Take the couch.”
“No. I deserve this,” I spat, lying down on the carpet in front of the hearth. “You’ve all made it clear I’m a second-class citizen here. It’s one strike for Lucy Kincaid, not three.”
Foss held his forehead. “Fine. Then we both deserve it.” He stoked the fire and added another log. Then Foss grabbed a quilt from the closet and wrapped us in it on the soft carpet, pulling my back to his chest so he could spoon me as he had so many times in Undraland.
Jamie and Britta were farther away in my mind now. The alcohol gave me a small veil of distance so the porn wasn’t so in my face. I heaved a sigh of relief, letting a portion of my anxiety deflate in Foss’s capable arms.
“That’s better,” Foss whispered into my ear, bringing out a shiver that started at my tailbone and rippled up my spine. I shifted against him, feeling warmth from the fire and warmth from his bare chest that lulled me to relaxation. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
How I wished that was possible – that he could save me from Jamie. The brandy still stung my mouth with its sugary fire, and I waited for the veil between Jamie and me to thicken. “I miss you!” I admitted in a whisper. I was ashamed to let the words escape from the soft spot I usually kept those kinds of incriminating thoughts buried in.
Foss was quiet a few beats before the mood started to shift from desperate to a low note of seduction in the air. “Do you think about me?”
My nod might as well have been a shouted declaration, for all the guilt I had welling up in me.
Foss planted kisses along my neck, dragging his lips up and down the slope in his slow seduction. “I think about you, too. I think about you in that red dress in Fossegrim.” The fire crackled off its remaining embers, playing with my mind as I debated how far down the hole I could afford to go. “I think about my ring around your neck, and what you’d look like with just the ring and nothing else on.”
“You c-can’t say things like that.” I shivered again when his fingers found their way under the hem of my shirt, teasing my navel so slowly, I thought I might lose my mind. The flames rose and fell, rose and fell, giving me no clear direction on what I should do about the man whose hand was now gripping my hip and stroking down my thigh with too much pressure to be an accident. The seduction was intentional, and I was melting as the fire vacillated between scolding me and goading me on.
Jens was gone. Jens left me. The worst part about it was that it didn’t surprise me one bit.
My hand reached above me to my right and found Foss’s cheek. I traced the side of his face as he sucked on my neck. “We can’t do this,” I breathed, putting my foot down that just because I’d been dumped didn’t mean I was up for grabs.
“Are you sure?” He squeezed my thigh, and I almost caved. Flashes of Jamie and Britta going to town permeated my mind, revving up an engine Foss was only adding fuel to. He kissed a line from my shoulder to my jaw, making me so confused and filling me with things I didn’t want to feel as a foursome.
I spoke through gritted teeth. “I want you so bad, I can hardly see straight, but it’s still a firm no. I’m not totally sober or totally single.” I tried to steady my breathing, but Foss’s breath on my neck wasn’t helping. “It doesn’t matter if Jens is with me or not. I’m in love with him still, and you deserve more than half of me.” The alcohol swept over me as Foss released my thigh and stretched out his arm beneath me to provide a more comfortable pillow.
When my body began to relax against his, he whispered, “That’s the way, honey. Just rest. We’ll find a way to make it better.” He kissed the back of my shoulder and wrapped his arm around my hip to rub my stomach as he’d done when we’d been married in Fossegrim. His fingers grazed my bare flesh, kindling the fire I knew I’d never be able to stamp out completely. “Jens isn’t here, but I am. I’m here. I’m here.”
My thoughts were disjointed as I drifted in his arms. Jamie collapsed on top of Britta, trying his best to fight for his erection through the drunkenness I inflicted upon us both. I was granted a reprieve from my life a few minutes later when Jamie started snoring atop a confused Britta.
Ten.
Checked Out
I’d never had a hangover before, but it was about as painful as the aftereffects of Jens’s venom. My head hurt as I moved around the bathroom, and my stomach was sensitive to movement and smells. I showered and changed into clothes Britta had brought me from my house, but I still felt dirty.
Everyone avoided me like the leper I was, keeping to silent nods and half-glances when my back was turned. My stomach was too sick to eat, so I skipped breakfast in favor of staring out the window at the picket fence I wasn’t allowed to touch anymore, so strict was my house arrest.
Britta tried drawing me into conversation a few times over the lunch I didn’t touch, but I could barely look at her. It wasn’t her fault – I just had a hard time scrubbing out memories of her blissful night with Jamie whenever I caught a glimpse of her. It was the worst kind of punishment, distancing me from my only girlfriend, and Jamie was unapologetic.
I wanted to fight Jamie, as I’d done when he’d first shed his princely white horse and devolved into a smackhole. I wanted to tear him apart, and that bloodlust left me in a pool of shame. I’d fallen far from my Martin Luther King ideals. The violent swings I was entertaining showed me that Jamie had won, whether I fought back or not.
Jens did not come home, and no one expected him to. I didn’t expect him to, and it began to dawn on me that in a real relationship, that bare minimum level of expectation should be there.
The next night was more of the same. The Jamie/Britta Show was tender in its beginning, but Jamie’s thoughts were vindictive as he shoved his lusty desires in my face. I hid in the furthest corner of our shared mind against my brick wall, my hand over my nose and mouth to keep that strange blackness from seeping into my lungs.
I refused to fight this time. I wasn’t afraid to bring it to blows again; the desire was at the brim, ready to burst out of me in a Fists of Fury Bruce Lee-laced ninja action. I wasn’t afraid to fight; I was afraid of losing myself.
I tried rebuilding the wall Jamie had broken, but every time I got just enough spare bricks in place to stack in front of the hole, he knocked them over, parading his relationship in f
ront of me like a peacock showing off his… let’s just call it feathers.
With the wall broken between us and my secret I’d tried to bury exposed, the horrors of Limbo I’d hidden where the other bad things had been stashed bubbled out of the gaping wound, demanding my attention. My mind drifted from Jamie’s antics, to blowing a hole in Tonya’s head, to my mom trying to murder me, to Uncle Rick dying, to Linus fading away in my arms in the hospital bed. Grayson tried to get me to talk, but all that came out were unintelligible tears.
I spent that evening and the next shaking alone in the bathroom, rocking on the beige and rose tiled floor until Foss told me it was time to go to bed.
I would not fight. I would not lose myself. I’d lost so much already.
After an hour of trying to tear myself from Jamie’s torment and the inner turmoil I was inflicting on myself, I finally gave up and drank myself to sleep again, passing out in Foss’s arms. He was still angry with me; they all were. I just wanted it to end, to get to whatever inevitability we were headed toward.
Despite his frustration with me, Foss spooned me at night on the carpet in front of the fireplace. His blade was clutched in the hand that wrapped around me, pressing the steel to my breasts while we slept. It was unsettling, but I knew it was how he protected me, so I appreciated that some small part of him hadn’t thrown in the towel.
Three nights of the same mental anguish and drunken slumber. Then four. Then five.
Eleven.
Lucy at Peace Page 7