by Nivia Borell
“Why now, Bria, after three years, have you decided to come back?”
She tilts her head up and retorts. “Well, I finished my studies, and as you know, working in the company is what we were always supposed to do. I am here to do my part.”
It sounds like a damn interview. My stomach turns with this charade of politeness.
“So, all business?”
“What other motive should I have, then?”
Her hazel eyes bore into me penetrating every chamber of my cold soul as shivers overtake the first layer of my skin. She jumps to her feet, and there is maybe an arm’s length of physical distance between us. She exposes her palms and points in my direction. Her nearness sends electroshocks through my system.
“How should I know when it comes to you? It’s not like you’re trustworthy. I don’t want you to mess up what I’ve accomplished these last years while you were entertaining yourself in America.”
Just for a second, she interrupts our stare contest and gazes over my shoulder overseeing everything and nothing at all and locks her eyes briefly. Her small sigh goes straight to my contracting heart. What the fuck was that?
“You don’t have to worry about your hard work. I’ll do mine, and you’ll keep doing yours. You rule all of it from your throne in England, and I’ll rule over my segment as was settled long ago. I won’t ruin anything.”
“Well, well, the problem is, Bria, we know you have this tendency, though.” She cranes her neck and raises her eyebrows in challenge. For just a moment, I see a spark of the old Bria rise from the depth she buried in her, the one with bite, and it is a brilliant vision.
“Still living so much in the past?”
Does this woman have no self-preservation?
She’s taunting a lion in an open cage, and adds, “It’s long over. Can’t you forget about it?”
I lurch in her space as I tower over her like a vengeful angel. “What should I forget first? The part where you slept with a random guy like a bitch in heat? Or the part where you ran like a coward from your responsibilities leaving a mess behind you? Are you an idiot, Bria, to think people just forget when someone screws them over?”
It feels so wrong to insult her, so unnatural, and still, I couldn’t rein it in. Everything I have kept sealed for so long wants to surface and be set free. To be reassured I don’t have foam in the corners of my mouth, I wipe the imaginary spit with the back of my hand. Just fucking perfect! Her whole face radiates understanding, and rage takes over once again. Just a vicious cycle.
She shrugs her delicate shoulders and says, “Both, I assume. Nothing changes, Damien. I didn’t come home expecting forgiveness or a warm welcome. I don’t even want it. I came for one reason. There is no hidden agenda if that’s what you think.”
I point my finger at her face as I snarl, “What you did is unforgettable, so I’m glad at least you are realistic enough to see it. You are entitled, like any of us, to be a part of the family empire, and the moment I signed your appointment, there was nothing I could do but hand it to you. But, Bria, if you make one mistake, I will destroy you and send you away. You should never have come back. We managed just fine without you.”
I act like a jerk, and I know it, but she uncorked my anger with her arrival, putting me face to face with her—my greatest weakness and my sour spot. I spew my venom at her, and not even her slight tremor ends my tantrum. I submerge in a deep sea of hate, hurt, and agonizing pain, all resurrected by her return.
“Does this help you, Damien? Go on. I mean, you’ve bottled up your wrath for three years, and now you have the perfect occasion to release a bit of the steam. No one is here to witness it. Look around us. We are alone.” To emphasize her words, she draws a circle with her hands and makes a full pirouette.
She provokes me, and I pick at it. “You don’t even deserve it, Bria, because you are nothing to me. You are nothing and no one to me. I release steam by fucking women whose only goal is to please me. Thank you for expanding my horizon. It has kept me quite entertained.”
She winces, her shoulders sink, her eyes widen, and her lower lip quivers. She backtracks two steps, and her bottom knocks the bench spot as her palms grip the sides of it until her knuckles whiten. It shouldn’t bother me, but her pain pulls at mine and wrenches me. In two long strides, I reach her, and lift her chin. Bria eyes me with dull and glossy eyes. It guts me as my hands drop to my side. I don’t take my words back. I am not a good man anymore. She has to acknowledge it. I am offering her a way out, to leave and not come back as I don’t have her best interests at heart, but I know she won’t. I assume she wants to witness where I’ll take us. Our mutual pain would make us root, and there is no escape for either of us.
Feeling calmer than ever with this newfound epiphany, I realize thankfully I didn’t confess that no woman could ever compare to her. She used to be my goddess, and I had worshiped her as she deserved. Then, we both had love in our hearts and made love with our bodies, and it was beautiful. The many women I have been with after her, trying to forget her and me in the process, were just a means to an end. With every one of them, I wanted to achieve only one thing—to erase Bria from my body until my skin couldn’t remember what it felt like to be above her, under her, in her tightness and warmth, and surrounded by her sweet, aphrodisiacal scent. The way my body jolted with how one glance could make me unhinged and keep me satisfied for long enough to never even desire someone else.
But now, she would never know how I truly felt. I have one mission—to make Bria feel the same agonizing pain surging through me, to make her insane with suffering until she begs me for forgiveness, and not even then would I cease. For I am dead inside.
We take advantage of the long pause to backpedal from each other only to levitate toward the other the following instant.
“I am happy for you, and I’m glad you found your completion,” she says, leaving me speechless. I understand she hadn’t come to fight or reason with me but to offer me the closure she denied me three years before. I grab her arms, tilt her chin, and put my forehead over hers. I inhale her sweet and delicate perfume. A single tear slides from my eyes. Our hot breaths mingle as I fight a losing battle as my desire to be near her clouds my mind. I yearn for one moment of something, anything, from her as I cup her face so she detects in my eyes what she has ruptured in me.
She shudders as her eyes fill with moisture, her soft finger brushing the wetness from under my eyes. Whatever transcends between us wrecks me.
“I hate you, Bria du Mont, with the same intensity I once loved you. My hatred is endless as my love for you once was. You shattered me, Bria, and now it is my turn to ruin you, and I will not rest until one day you crumble at my feet in pain and desolation.”
Bria has the look of a woman who knows she caused my downfall and agrees to it with a nod, and I ache to take something away from her. I lean in and do the unthinkable and unimaginable. My control slips as my heart has its own agenda and desires. My trembling fingers encompass the face of my beautiful, dark angel, and my starved mouth finds her full and desirable lips, and I kiss her, sending bolts of light into the universe. I couldn’t think of anything else except how right her wet, candy lips feel on mine. She opens them a second later in invitation, a moan fleeing from her. It fuels me, and I go wild. I take and take until I cage her soul inside my own because it is mine to take. My way of how I prepare her for what’s coming.
My kiss isn’t a sweet, pure, and full-of-love kind of kiss, but a kiss of hatred, destruction, and downfall. I devour her with insatiable greed and masochistic pleasure. It is how I want to end our connection—in ashes.
I lose any feelings of time. I don’t know how long our lips and tongues and conquering hands duel while I press her against the tree as she gasps, and my hungry mouth sucks the sweetness of her tongue. My fingers dig into her waist as she tugs at my hair. Our entire beings battle over a shattered love.
I pull myself from her web of ruin and stop after I make it clear it�
��s me in control. I grin at her widened-eyes expression. There is no point in tormenting me further.
The moment our swollen, hot lips stopped touching, we both look down as if seeking the connection we have just ended. Her pouty lips are void of the gloss I am sure is smeared on my lips. I get my confirmation when Bria’s fingers try to nuzzle it away, and then our heads drop.
“What are you looking for?” I ask in an irritated tone.
“You should know, Damien. You did the same. But I’m sure we were probing for completely different things at our feet.”
“And what would that be?” I challenge.
She peers at me through her curled lashes as if asking herself if she should tell me. But still, she answers, brave as always, the first thing to remind me this stranger in front of me is still Bria.
“It has always been and always will be you. I searched for a time passage, maybe a parallel universe, silly me. And you, Damien, scout for ways to make me bleed because of the pain you think was only one-sided. But all we saw was a connection, a thin and stubborn line we’re incapable of destroying, and this is what you hate the most.” She inches toward me like a lioness, graceful and lethal as I stand there immobilized as she rises on her tiptoes and fires, looking straight in my eyes. “No time, no insults, and no distance could ever alter our bond. So, please, make me burn. Let’s see if my ashes at your feet will please you. I dare you to keep your promise, but don’t hate me when you see the futility in it. Plus, I have no intention in being a part of your fighting.”
Her eyes blaze with a fire that has me rooted in place as her finger drills in my chest.
“Never thought you’d become a quitter.”
She keeps staring me in the eyes, deadly serious, and says bluntly, hand dropping at her side. “You’re too late. Life got here before you. I still won every battle, and when the war ends, I will lose with my head held high because life was truly a worthy opponent. So pardon me if I think there is no need for me to prove my strength to you.”
“Then it’s the beginning of the end for you, Bria.”
She places her hand on my arm as if to keep from scaring me away. “No, Damien. There’s no beginning and no end. There can’t be a beginning or an end in nothingness.”
“And you caused it.”
“And I caused it.”
“Why don’t you try to apologize then, to say you’re sorry or any of the other crap people say in such a situation?” I clasp my hand behind my neck, my eyes fixated on hers.
She sighs before answering, and my fingers rush to cradle her face. “Because, as true as they may be, no words will erase what I did. It will still be there demanding its price in pain all over again. The only difference is it will be yours, not mine.”
My fingers glide over her velvety jaw, the opposite to my harsh words.
“So kind of you to consider my feelings, but all the regrets in the world won’t deter me from the plans I have for you.”
She shakes her head and squeezes my hands in her tiny, soft ones. Warmth spreads through me rocking my entire being.
“Damien, let me give you some friendly advice for the sake of everything we used to have, for the love we used to share. Forget about me and revenge and making me feel anything at all because in the end, you’ll lose. If you want me gone, find your happiness.”
She drops my palms and spins on her heels leaving me standing there like a complete idiot, her long, golden-brown hair fluttering in the breeze as her intoxicating and unique flowery smell lingers around me. She is leaving me again. You might think I’m used to it by now. It is a constant that remains in my hazardous life. I have no idea who this woman is anymore. Her sweetness has changed into harsh edges, and where once her brightness came from her in waves, there is a blankness she embraces full force. I watch her as she strolls back into the house, one foot graciously put in front of the other. I can clearly detect the burned path her steps leave behind her.
Here I stand, dumbfounded and craving one goal, to make the dark queen burn and me along with her. It is my stubborn way of finding a place we might call home, a common ground among deserted pieces of our scattered and shattered love.
ALEXANDER
Present day…
From my spot at the bar, I notice him resurface from a deep reverie. I question what moment or memory put him out of commission as he stares for long minutes at a blank spot on the paneled wall. I don’t inquire but allow him a taste of his preferred poison. Somehow, I catch myself staring at the door more than I wish to. I want this night to be over. I exhale. Soon I’ll find my way through the guests of such a hideous party masking a funeral instead of a birthday, and I will push myself toward an unknown destination.
“Do you know why I tried to stop her from going off alone with you, Damien? You had an expression of retribution mingled with satisfaction stuck on your face when she nodded in agreement. She detected the same, Damien. She accepted your offer out of self-punishment. Bria longed for it, and you delivered it to her with no lack of consideration for what you would cause. True, you have the pathetic excuse for not being aware of her condition, but it doesn’t change the outcome. You dealt the first blow on the day of her return and continued using her as your punching bag for the next years. You did this with every disgusted look you gave her, with every time the corner of your mouth turned into a satisfied smirk, and with every woman you paraded in front of her when your paths crossed until you found the easiest way to crush her, through her cousin. But in the haze of revenge, what you didn’t realize was this is what she hoped you’d do. She wanted you to find happiness at the cost of her destruction. You thought you were in charge when she was manipulating you all along. She thought she deserved it, that it was a way to repay her debt to you. Was it worth it, Damien? Did you gain anything from all your actions?”
He barks his response, “I lost everything of worth a long time ago. Gaining something was never the point. It was what was left for me and of me.”
I shake my head at him and utter, “I’m amazed at the contradictions you represent. Are you sure you don’t have a twin because how can you be the same person who runs a billion-dollar company but has your head in your ass when it comes to your heart?”
His fist bangs with a loud echo on the wood, and his head snaps my way as he raises his eyebrows. “Alexander, Alexander. You should know the answer by now. It’s all because of Bria, the person who motivates me to be the CEO I am today is the same person who can bring out the worst in me. I stopped trying to find a reason a long time ago. I can’t erase her from my mind and heart. Both sides of me know only her. As you have pointed out, the same force governing both the monster in me and the human in me is Bria.”
“Well, then, did you know the day Bria returned and you spoke was the day she began to say goodbye. It was a little bit more every day until tonight. This is her final farewell.” I gesture toward us in a grand gesture. “After that day, she lived even more like a recluse. Every day it was harder for me to reach her. My attempts always failed because of you, Damien. I didn’t take her from you, and I still don’t have her, not even for a minute. You succeeded in making her react, although you did it out of hate, yet, I, with all my love and patience, have achieved nothing.
“You, you, you! It is all because of you. Bria will fade into a corpse, and although it kills me, I know I must grant her last wish. She has kept all the promises and agreements she ever made.”
I pause as I want my next words to crawl inside him until they reach his damn soul and take root. His eyes widen. I know for sure in apprehension. Somehow during this night, he must have realized my threats are anything but empty.
“Now, I made you a promise when we launched this conversation, and I intend to keep it. Do you know what she did when we left the welcome-home gathering? She said she needed some time alone, and I followed her. She went to a tattoo shop. Any idea what she chose for a tattoo and where she put it?” I raise my eyebrows but there’s no answer. “Above her
heart, a tattoo tells a story about everything that went wrong. It is an image of two barn owls forming a heart, one with blue eyes and the other with hazel eyes and enclosing it are two words. Can you guess what the words are?”
“Forever us.”
Pain shoots through me. There’s only one way to know this. Damien saw it. I ball my fists at my side breathing through the pain ripping my heart in two. “Right, forever us.” My voice cracks with my answer. “I was mad at her because I thought she was acting crazy, and I tried to refrain her. Do you know what she said, Damien?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“I asked her why and told her I didn’t understand.
“She said, ‘So I know what we once had was real. When my mind breaks, when my heart abandons me, when the memories are long gone, I want to see this image in the mirror and hear it whisper what Damien and I once felt was real.’
“You see, Damien, the reason I’ve tried so hard to save her is… how on earth can a person with no feelings act like she acted every time you got to her? I can’t accept she’s incapable of feeling and reacting generally, but when it comes to you, she behaves like she feels everything and all at once. She acts like a normal person who’s broken-hearted and never overcame it.”