TAINTED: THE COMPLETE DUET

by Jenner, Carmen

  “Jesus.” Levi scrubs a hand over his face. He is clumsy, and pathetic, and I want so badly to hurt him the way he’s hurt me, but I walk back to the counter and finish making tea, because if I don’t, I’ll probably stab him with his kitchen knives. “Do you hear yourself? Who died and made you so fucking self-righteous?” He laughs “Oh yeah, Ash died. My best friend, my brother. You didn’t give a fuck about him.”

  “And you did? Goddamit, Levi, he came to visit you two weeks before he died, and you had your head buried so far up your arse you couldn’t even see there was something majorly wrong.”

  “Did you? Did you stop for once this last damn week to let him rest?” he roars. “We all knew he was sick as a dog. Maybe we didn’t know he had AIDS, but you probably ran him into the fucking ground with your precious practice schedule.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Ali says. “We’re leaving. Brie, if you don’t feel safe here, you can come with us.”

  I wrap my arms around myself and shiver. I don’t want to stay with him when he is like this, but I’m more afraid of the idiot swine hurting himself when left to his own devices.

  “I’m fine,” I say with courage I don’t feel. “He won’t hurt me.”

  Ali and Cooper exchange a look, and I’m suddenly not so certain of the truth in my words. “Well, you call us if you need to.”

  “She doesn’t need a fucking babysitter. She’s a big girl. Aren’t you, AFG?” He flops down on the couch, swigging alcohol directly from the bottle as if he were a toddler sucking on juice. “You take care of everyone ... but yourself, that is.”

  I ignore Levi and stalk through the lounge to see Cooper and Ali out. When the door closes behind them, he sighs. “Thank fuck the fun police are gone.”

  “Non. Do not talk to me until you are sober.”

  “Babe—”

  “Don’t you fucking dare ‘babe’ me. We were worried sick about you. You disappear off the face of the earth, and come back twelve hours later high as a kite? Non. I will not talk to you tonight until the liquor and drugs are out of your system.”

  “Brie ...” he whines. I have no sympathy. I storm into the bedroom and shut the door, locking it behind me. He pounds on the wood, and a few moments later, I hear him slump against it as I sit down heavily on the bed and cry. I don’t know if they are tears of frustration or heartbreak, all I know is this is not the man I travelled seventeen thousand kilometres for. I don’t even know this man, and I don’t want to.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  WAIT AND BLEED

  LEVI

  When I open my eyes, Brie stares down at me, a look of hatred and pure unadulterated disappointment on her pretty face. She’s so good at that, looking down her nose at me.

  My head pounds as I roll over. My stomach lurches. I feel like shit.

  “You need to shower and get ready. Ali said they were expecting us at the funeral home an hour before everyone else. To support the family.”

  “We were his family. Ash’s parents didn’t give two shits about him because he didn’t want to be a mathematician like his dad, or a fucking teacher like his mum. He was a rock star, and they had no time for that. Much like your dad, I guess. Bet they would have gotten along famously.”

  “You did not know my father, and you do not get to be an arse because you are in pain. We’re all in pain, Levi.”

  “What the fuck do you know about it?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she says in a smarmy tone of voice. For a beat, I entertain shoving my cock down her throat to shut her up, but I hurt all over, and I have no intention of moving from this couch. “Apparently, I felt absolutely nothing when my father died.”

  “I forgot the two of you were so close. He fucking abused you. He beat your knuckles with a stick until you played faster.”

  Those deep chocolate eyes fill with ire. “He was making me better.”

  “No, that’s fucking child abuse.” I sit up, because I can’t fight with her lying down. It’s no fun that way. “You hit a kid over the knuckles until they bleed, that’s fucking jail time here in Australia.”

  “I will not fight with you, not today. I am here to support you. I am here because I love you, but you do not get to be a prick. If you’re angry, good, use it later to write music that will make Ash weep from the heavens, but do not take it out on me. I am not your punching bag.”

  “Ah, but that’s my gift, Brie.” I grab the bottle off the table and swig from it, wincing as it burns my gullet. “Using people. Using women until they are all used up.”

  “Not me.”

  “Not even if I beg?” I whisper and take another sip. It’s nearly empty and one long pull sees all the Jack in my bottle gone. When I raise my eyes to look at her, she’s livid.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “I just told you, I’m an arsehole. It’s what we do.”

  “Tu n'es qu'un lâche. Je ne te reconnais plus.” Brie stalks away into the bathroom and slams the door behind her.

  “I told you I don’t speak French.” I shove my hand in my pocket and pull the little baggie I scored last night free. I flick it a few times, waiting for the dust to settle like sediment at the bottom of a river. Then I grab the silver tray and straw, and tap a little of coke onto the smooth surface, because I can’t deal with this shit right now.

  I can’t deal with the fact that soon my best friend will be buried in the ground. No longer here, just a rotting corpse. Worm food. And all because of a fucking blood disease that should have been curable. I can’t do anything about Ash being dead, but I can get so goddamn wasted that I don’t have to deal with it today.

  “Non. You think you can push me away because you are hurting, but ...” I feel her eyes on me as I pull the credit card from off the table and begin cutting the coke into a much finer powder, ordering it into straight little lines. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting high.”

  “An hour before your best friend’s funeral?”

  “I already told you, I’m not going.”

  “Levi—”

  “Jesus fuck, Brie. Don’t you get it? I don’t want you here! France was great, babe. The fucking was spectacular. A-grade pussy, and boy, do you know how to use it. But you shouldn’t have come all this way, because we’re done. It’s done. It was a fucking fling.” My voice is choked with emotion as I say it. Too much emotion. And fuck me, my eyes are stinging, my throat hurts as I scream.

  “You don’t mean that.” Her mascara is running now in thick black streaks down her face. “I can see you don’t mean it.”

  “Sweetheart,” I falter over the word, but steel my voice, look her dead in the eye, and say, “I’ve never meant anything more.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  “BINGO! She’s finally seeing the fucking light.”

  “Fuck you!” She shoves at my chest. It hurts after last night’s abuse of my body, but I don’t give a shit about the pain. All I care about is the fact that my coke has been upended, and that it’s now all over my goddamn couch.

  “What the fuck!” I roar, getting to my feet. Brie doesn’t stop her assault. She beats at my chest, my face, hitting me square in the cheek. I grab her arms and attempt to pry her off me, but she’s stronger than she looks.

  “Je te hais, je te hais! Tu n'es qu'un bâtard doublé d'un égoiste!” She’s screaming now, at the top of her lungs. A long stream of French that I don’t understand at all, and yet, it feels like I know every word by heart, because I’m no stranger to being called a bastard. I’m no stranger to making women feel like shit. It’s what I do. “Tes drogues et ton alcool comptent plus pour toi que tout autre chose et tu les aimes comme tu ne pourras jamais aimer une femme, comme tu ne pourras jamais m'aimer.”

  “Get the fuck out! Go home, Brie.” I turn and walk away, but she launches herself at my back and we go down in a heap.

  “Tu n'es qu'un putain de lâche!”

  “I told you I don’t speak French,” I say through my teeth as
we grapple on the floor. Our bodies roll across the hardwood until I pin her underneath me. “Fucking stop, Brie. Just stop.”

  “Fuck you,” she spits in my face, and I see red. I thrust her hands up above her head. She thrashes, trying to free herself from my grasp. A feral, wild thing.

  “Stop!”

  She glares up at me, her breath coming fast, a sneer marring her lips, and then she kisses me. Maybe that’s not the right word. She bites me, sucks my bottom lip into her mouth and bites hard enough to draw blood. I reel back, pressing my hand to my bleeding lip. Brie sits up and shoves at me. I attempt to move away, but she keeps coming, climbing into my lap and pushing me back down. I don’t react, I just lay there, taking the beating she dishes out. When she’s frustrated and angrier than I’ve ever seen her, she straddles my hips, kisses my lips. I don’t kiss her back. Instead, I thread my fingers in her hair and yank her head back.

  “What the fuck do you want, Brie?”

  We’re both panting hard, and she looks on me with loathing in her eyes. She makes to get up and I grab her wrist and pull her down to me. Kissing her lips, forcing my mouth hard against hers, my tongue lashes hers, until she responds by tearing and clawing at my chest. I grunt in pain. She grunts back, and I shove her dress up, exposing her creamy thighs covered by stockings and sexy black garters. I grab her hand and slide it between us as I grip my semi-hard cock, tugging it brutally with both of our hands, ensuring I get the rest of the way there in seconds. She positions herself at the end of my dick and lowers her hips. With a loud groan, I slide into her. I can tell it hurts, and I don’t fucking care, because it feels so good. Brie fucks me like a pro, bouncing up and down on my dick, punishing us both. I sink the fingers of one hand into her thighs, tearing her smooth silk stockings, the other hand grips her hips as I slam into her over and over, until tears stream down her face and she’s screaming, “Oh, fuck. Oui. Oui.”

  I rake my hands up her body, squeezing her tits, pinching swollen, tender nipples until they turn the prettiest shade of red, and when we come, it’s hard, punishing, euphoric, and it’s together.

  I jerk inside her, spilling the last of my cum. I expect her to collapse forward into my arms, but she doesn’t. On shaking legs, Brie stands. My cock slips out of her tight cunt, and I lie still, lamenting the loss of her warm pussy no longer wrapped around me.

  “You’re a monster, and worse still, you make one of me.”

  She turns and walks into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. I lay on the floor and stare up at the ceiling. I don’t know what the hell that was. I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do now, so I do nothing but lie with cum dripping down my side, pooling on the floor. When she opens the door, she’s fully dressed in her clothes again. Her long hair pulled back in a severe no-nonsense ponytail, but her mascara is still smudged underneath her eyes, and her tears won’t stop.

  I am the world’s biggest arsehole.

  “Brie—”

  “No, fuck you!” she sneers, stepping over me. She slips into her heels. “I hate you.”

  “I think you said that already.”

  “I thought you didn’t speak French?”

  “I don’t, but you were screaming loud enough for me the catch your motherfucking drift.”

  She grabs her coat from off the hook near the door and puts it on. “You do not deserve me. You do not deserve anyone, but your liquor and your drugs, so I hope you three will be happy together for a long time.”

  She leaves, slamming my front door so hard it rattles on its hinges, and a fine mist of plaster dust falls in her wake.

  I don’t know how long I lie here, but when I start to tremble, either from the cold or the comedown, I get up, grab another bottle of whisky from the kitchen and head into the bathroom to wash up. I run a bath, and set my bottle on the counter, pissed that I have no coke left. I splash water on my face, and put my fist through the bathroom cabinet.

  My hand is bleeding, and it stings like a bitch. I grab a tissue from off the vanity and wipe the blood away, but when I go to toss it in the garbage, I pause. With my uninjured hand, I pull out her black silk stockings, now ruined with holes from my fingers and covered in cum.

  I don’t deserve her. I never did.

  I pry open the broken cabinet and search the contents, pushing aside boxes of pills until I find the oxy I keep in here for emergencies—like when some livid French woman upends my coke, or when I can’t sleep after pumping my body full of uppers while in the studio.

  I fish out the bottle and pop the lid off. Then I toss a couple into my palm and swallow them back, but these are slow release, and fuck that shit. I take my bottle to the bath along with my whisky and decide it’s not working quick enough, so I tip out several more pills and chew. They taste like chalk and aren’t easy to swallow because it doesn’t dissolve as quickly as I’d like. I wash it down with the whisky, and then I climb into the bath. It’s cold, too cold for winter, and all my senses tell me to flee the second I’m immersed, but I sink further down, because I don’t care. My head hums, my mouth feels slack, and my chest is suddenly tight. I can’t breathe. It’s just stress. Anxiety. Or maybe my heart is finally cracking open because the best thing that ever happened to me just walked out of my life, and my best friend is dead. Guilt and shame wash over me, wave after wave of it threatens to pull me under.

  I should never have touched her like that.

  I should be at the funeral.

  I should have gone after her.

  I should have known he had AIDS.

  In the end, the feelings don’t pull me under. The drugs finally kick in, and I feel nothing, because I float.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  DEAD WEIGHT

  BRIELLE

  I’m shaking with rage as I step out onto the street and begin walking away from Levi’s apartment. People stare as they walk by. I probably look like a crazy person with my mascara running down my face, half mad with ire, love, and lust. I think about calling Piaf, because though I left without my purse, at least I was smart enough to stow my phone in my jacket pocket, but I have no words to say right now. I have only fury, shock, bruises on my body, and an ache in my chest that I’m not sure will ever go away. I have never loved any man the way I love Levi, and I hate myself for it, because I’ve become what I despise most—a love-sick girl who would do anything to protect the man she adores, even if it comes at a great detriment to herself.

  I have no idea where I’m going, and now I’m standing on the street in a foreign country, with no wallet, and no passport, freezing my arse off. I don’t want to go back there, but I have no choice. I can’t just leave all my belongings behind. Taking several deep breaths, I lean against a storefront and clutch my hand to my chest to ease the ache. The tears won’t stop, which is annoying because in this cold, snot is bubbling out of my nose and I wipe it away with my sleeve like a small child might.

  I don’t know what I was thinking attacking him like that. I’ve never hit anyone. My whole life I’ve been stoic, controlled, but everything about this man turns me inside out. Everything about him drives me crazy. He makes an insane person out of me to the point where I think I should be committed, but more than that, he makes me feel. Right now, I do not want to feel. I know he didn’t mean what he said about not wanting me here. You don’t say those words with tears in your eyes if you mean them. And still, for a brief moment, I believed them. I believed him. I know all of this, the anger, the drugs, the alcohol are more than likely his grief talking. For the record, his grief is an arsehole.

  Despite not wanting to go back to the apartment, my feet lead me there anyway, because I can do nothing without my wallet and passport. I don’t even know for sure what I want to do. I miss Paris. I miss Maman, Piaf, and Monsieur Chat. And I miss the woman I used to be before I ever took that stupid job at his chateau. Once inside the building, I take the lift to the top. The door at the end of the hall opens freely, and I have to wonder if he’s still lying on the flo
or where I left him, but he’s not. The tap in the bathroom is running though, and there’s a sound like water spilling over a waterfall. I turn the music off.

  “Levi?”

  No answer. I walk slowly through the lounge, taking in the debris from our scuffle, and then into the bathroom. Levi is in the tub. My brain tells me he is asleep, but my heart screams that this is wrong. His body is too fluid, his face too relaxed, his mouth not gently closed against the intrusion of water, but open, slack. A bottle of pills bobs on the surface, and he is still not moving.

  “No!” I run toward the bath, slipping in my heels with the water pooling on the floor. I go down in a heap, pain radiating off my muscles, my bones clanging together. My head aches from where I struck the slick tiles. I push through the blackness of unconsciousness and come to my knees, wincing as my head swims and the edges and grooves of the uneven tile sting my flesh.

  “Levi, no!” I sob. “No! No!”

  I grab his shoulder and shake him. I don’t know why. Then I stand and attempt to pull him from the bath. He’s dead weight. Dead. This is my fault. I should never have left him. I slip but try again to pull him from the water. He weighs a tonne. I get an arm under his back, and my other around his chest and pull. I topple again. This time with Levi’s body on top of me. Gasping for breath and pleading with him as I push him off and get to my knees, hovering over him. I turn him on his side, opening his mouth as liquid pours out. I’ve never given CPR before. I’ve never seen it done in real life. Only on TV, but I roll him on his back again and tilt his head, covering his nose and breathing into his mouth. I can hear water sloshing in his belly, or perhaps it is his lungs. I do not know. But I place the pads of my fingers to his neck. No pulse. I splay my hands over where I think his heart should be and begin compressions. Tears stream down my face. My whole body shakes. Not trembling a little, but violent, shaking so hard I have to concentrate on where to position my hands. I don’t know how many compressions I’ve made, or if I’m doing it correctly, or if I’m supposed to breathe more for him. I don’t know what I’m doing.