Brutally Beautiful

by Christine Zolendz

  Our plates of food were placed in front of us, the smell of delicious greasy diner burger hit my nose like a freight train, and I moaned out loud.

  Kade eyes snapped to mine, and a shiver ran down my spine. I just stared like an idiot back at him, holding my burger in both hands above my plate.

  “But, men do. Take that moan, for instance. That had me thinking of you spread out over this table in nothing but a pair of black lace panties and your legs wrapped around my neck with those old white Converse still on your feet.” His eyes pierced me and he shrugged his shoulders and smirked.

  I froze at the thought, with my mouth just about to take a bite of my burger. “Subtle. Kade. Very subtle. I should give you a taste of your own medicine and go all Harry-Met-Sally on you.”

  A few minutes passed by as we both watched each other and ate, listening to the sounds of the kitchen and the wind whipping against the thick glass of the window next to us.

  “Tell me about your brother,” Kade whispered, low and cautious.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Everything, anything. I don’t know.”

  Staring down at my hands, I began unconsciously folding a napkin and playing with its creases. “Michael was my best friend. He was brilliant, a doctor, funny, and was unbeatable at playing pranks on people. Part of me is still holding onto the small hope that everything that happened was a cruel prank, and he’ll just pop up from behind the bushes somewhere laughing his ass off.”

  A faint smile tugged at his lips. “I think that’s everybody’s default setting on death. Everybody hopes it was just a big sick joke. But, think about it, why would you want a person you love to be that cruel to you?”

  “I wouldn’t care. I’d just give anything for one more of our talks,” I whispered. “Are you and Dylan very close?”

  Glancing up at him, I noticed his face was twisted in grief. His brows creased in the middle of his forehead and he rubbed the back of his neck, “I’m not close with anyone.”

  “Not even Morgan?”

  “Least of all Morgan.”

  The waitress leaned across our table, then gathered our emptied plates and poured us more coffee.

  “Bree mentioned you both lived in Manhattan. Must have been culture shock coming all the way up here from a big city.”

  “Probably just as big as coming here from England. When did your family come to the states?”

  He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “I was seventeen.” His expression darkened and I could visibly see his chest tightening. “So what was it like living in a big city growing up?” he said, struggling to think of anything else to talk about.

  “My father always worked, and my mother was always busy, so my brother and I pretty much had the entire city as a playroom,” I tried to explain without giving too much information about any personal subjects.

  Slipping the check over the table, the waitress winked at me and walked away. Kade grabbed for the check, and I reached into my purse for some cash. When I tried grabbing the check from him to see what to put in, he practically bared his teeth at me and snarled. I watched him leave a hundred dollar bill on the table and he placed his hand on the small of my back and led me to the door.

  “So, what’s your story then, Lainey?”

  “I don’t have any stories you’re going to want to hear, Kade. Do you have stories you want to talk about? Or you want to make this evening light and unheartbreaking?”

  His lips curled up playfully, “Oh Lainey, I have tons of stories…” he said as we climbed into his truck and started the engine. “But my story? Let’s see…my past is heinously horrid. Born with extremely powerful, yet flawed super human powers, I accidently melted my mother into a heaping pile of goo as soon as I fell from her womb. The guilt was unbearable and drove me to wear a mask to hide my deadly grey eyes, deliberately living a life of solitude as I search the world for a cure for my flaws. Everyone thinks I’m not living up to my heroic potential and that I should work for the government, fighting America’s villains, but the reality is that I’m just saving everyone from my hell.” Kade had pulled out of the lot and the dark road was racing under the wheels, and the trees were a blur of tangled blackened branches blocking out the moonless sky. For miles, an awkward heavy silence hung in the air when his story finished, both of us knowing there was some strange truth to his tale. Turning into the trailer park, he slowed the truck down from warp speed, pulled into the dirt road next to the trailer, and turned off the engine.

  “I googled you,” I whispered.

  His eyes nailed me to the seat. Vaporous breath escaped through his lips as his chest rose and fell faster and faster. His eyes flickered and searched my face maniacally; his breathing became more erratic, intense gasps of air. “Goodnight, Lainey,” his voice croaked huskily.

  I leaned forward and laid the palm of my hand over his chest. I felt him tense and strain beneath the tips of my fingers. His eyes searched mine, as my fingers felt for the beat of his heart, listening to it, feeling it as it slowly settled into its regular pace.

  “Kade.”

  “Don’t. Just go, please. I can feel you in my darkness, Lainey, and you’re shining, lighting up my way. Please go. Leave me to my darkness,” he smiled bitterly.

  “Kade, I know the mess you’re dealing with and how it makes you feel. More than you know.”

  “You don’t know anything!” He screamed, nostrils flaring and red-faced. He goes hot and cold like the flip of a switch. On-flip-Off. Hot-flip-Cold. “Yes. I have the characteristics of a real person. Flesh, hair, bones, blood, whatever…but I have nothing on the inside. Empty, devoid of any emotion, dead. Like I did die that day, and only my body remains here. Maybe you could feel flesh and pulse, see my blood and bones and you think I'm just as human as you, but I'm not. I’m fucking empty. There is nothing inside me. Nothing but violent scenes and pleading echoes. Then I saw you, and something small flickered deep inside the dead dark recesses of my mind. I don’t need some stupid little girl like you telling me how you understand me, when you never would be able to conceive the unthinkable shit I’ve lived through. Just fucking leave me here, Lainey. Walk the fuck out and leave me here.”

  “I don’t want to leave you there, Kade. Nobody should be left there.”

  “So, what? You’re going to try to save me, Lainey? Leave me alone. You have no idea who and what I am. Get the fuck out and go back to your little perfect bubble.”

  Ignoring his rouse, I dug into him, “I can see you’re in pain.”

  “My pains are not apparent to the eye,” he muttered.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? They’re as apparent as the nose on your damn face, because you wear them so proudly! You act as if you carry some contagious sickness with you, something that you actually threaten people with. Well, I’m not scared of you and your self-inflicted disease. Especially since I suffer from the same exact one, I just know how to live with it. The first time I saw you - you fucked me like a teenage virgin with your eyes, then when I asked you for your order, you acted like a misogynist. I know, Kade. How about we do this? Why don’t you snap a little picture of me and then later tonight, when I leave the premises and you’re all by your wonderful Wizard of Oz lonesome, you could creep in for some quality time with the still, mindless, silent picture. Or maybe, you could just acknowledge the fact that I might understand what you’re going through and deal with the real life me, the one that you follow around.”

  Why the hell couldn’t this shit be easy, because honestly, I just wanted to be the one that fucking broke through that wall and get to the good shit. There I said it. I wanted to be that one, the special one. Tag me a stupid emotional clichéd girl, but I wanted that man to look at me from between my legs, lick me utterly senseless and to make me forget my name.

  “Get the fuck out.”

  “You need a hardcore fucking detox for assholism. Let’s lay it all out, shall we? Something ho
rrific happened to you. There is no doubt about that. You had innocent children, friends, classmates and teachers slaughtered in front of you. A teacher, whom you admired and loved, who had a husband and children at home, jumped the fuck in front of you while a madman was taking out his sociopathic crazy on you, to shield you and save your fucking life. You suffer from flashbacks, yes? Medically, that’s called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and you can heal. Trust me. If you want to, you can deal with this, deal with it, and I can help you. But to bind yourself to your house, to leave your brother worried and missing you…You hide yourself off from the world, from a woman whom you can’t take your eyes off of, and complain that life has whipped you hard. You don’t know me, Kade. Maybe I’ve danced with the same monsters you have. I know it all. Let me help you.”

  He slammed his fists against the steering wheel, “GET THE FUCK OUT!”

  Shaken, I did what he told me to do.

  He peeled out of the driveway, kicking up dirt and rocks in his haste, and I didn’t see him again.

  Chapter 8

  I spent five days locked inside my den.

  Five days. A great portion of them were spent in the dark, lying face down on the couch with my face pressed into the cold leather cushions, wondering how long it would take for my depression to kill me.

  Monday. Entire day, face down feigning the flu, or plague…maybe a bit of walking corpse syndrome. If I thought hard enough about it, I felt warm, but there was no one there to ask so, yeah, whatever. I ate nothing. There was a half empty bottle of brandy next to me, so at least there was some sort of consumption of something.

  Tuesday. I Googled everything and anything on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Then I inserted myself back on the couch, trying to sink myself deeper into the cushions and springs. I paid $200 for a delivery of chicken soup from the diner. It was ice cold when it arrived.

  Wednesday. I turned over on the couch, lay on my back and watched my ceiling fan oscillate around depressingly. Spinning, spinning, spinning…always in the same exact circles. Just. Like. Me.

  I snapped the blades off.

  Of course, this is my life, so I also sliced my arm open while exacting my rage on the innocent propellers of air. Tore my arm to shreds actually, making me have to use all those pathetic supplies Lainey had me buy at the store weeks ago, because she worried about me getting an infection. The supplies weren’t pathetic, I was.

  Thursday. I was so angry that she was right. Everything she fucking said was right, which led me to punch a hole through the wall in the den.

  Friday. I was back, face down on the couch. Groaning. I missed following her. I missed seeing her smile and hearing her snappy quick comebacks.

  Life had made me really good at being a douche. Since I was sixteen, I’d been on a one-way track to self-destruction, mowing down everyone in my path. Then I met Lainey, who pulled me out of myself and made me feel normal for a few moments in my life, and I had lost it right in front of her.

  She must have felt as if she was pulling my teeth out, trying to get me to make small talk at the diner. My brain was in a fog being so near her. The entirety of the night was spent with me talking myself from sliding my splayed fingers up the back of her neck, fisting them through that silky hair and pressing my lips to hers, savagely. What she said in my truck…how could she know the things inside me? Thinking that someone felt the same as me, understood me, made me want to fuck her and to over indulge myself in her flesh. The need overwhelmed me. There was an overbearing realness to her that lay heavy on my chest, and if I never saw her again, I swore I would succumb to its weight.

  Thrumming softly into my ears, the raspy vocals and music of Simple Kind of Man by Shinedown, held back the phantasms of my horrors, and showed me only my bitter longing to listen to the cadence of Lainey’s soft calm voice and taste the sweetness of her soft pink lips. No matter how badly it was going to hurt, I didn’t want to be anywhere but with Lainey. Let her crush me. Let her destroy me. There wasn’t much good left of me, but I wanted her to take every last bit.

  In those green eyes, yelling at me, holding up that metaphorical mirror that showed me some of my actions against her, I knew I’d come undone. And she was fucking right; I couldn’t do this anymore. I didn’t want to. I knew the true impact of my trauma was me just shutting myself down, quitting life. I stayed up all night, thinking and rethinking if I should ever see her again. Questioning if I could be capable of some sort of normal to offer her. ‘Redefine normal’ was what she told me, such innocent, brilliant words. I stayed up throughout the entire next day and watched the sun sluggishly pass through the sky, as if it was toying with me and wasting and playing with my time.

  Just to torment myself, when the sun finally set, I went to Dylan’s bar.

  One of the guys from the trailer park was giving himself an impromptu bachelor party, bringing along a rowdy crowd of cave dwellers that had my panic set to high alert.

  I wanted to haul Lainey over my shoulder and carry her out of the crowd. The whole time I was watching her as I stood by the entrance, talking myself into going in, she didn’t smile at all.

  Not even once.

  I clenched my jaw and stalked toward Dylan’s office, slamming the door behind me, which caused Bree to fall flat on her ass, right off the desk where she was playing a full contact game of tonsil hockey with my brother. “Coitus Interruptus!” I screamed. “Stop and put your hands where I can see them.”

  Bree stumbled awkwardly to her feet and walked out giggling. “Hello to you too, Kade. Coitus Interruptus, that’s hysterical.”

  Without a thought, I started wearing a hole into my brother’s rug, as he stood there, hands on hips, waiting for me to talk. I felt like a cloud of smoke, just billowing into nothing. My lungs felt like they were tightening and drying out, and I couldn’t inhale enough air. My throat was tight and dry when I finally spit out the words, “I want her.”

  “She’s sort of crazy about me, mate. And personally, I don’t think you’d ever stand a chance with your flagrantly charming demeanor,” he chuckled.

  “I want Lainey, you dolt.” He was just ridiculous thinking I could want the blonde perky one. She was…well, perky.

  “Kade, mate. I think the girl has been through enough hell, okay? Don’t drag her through yours,” Dylan replied.

  “I can’t stay away from her,” I growled, raking my hand across my forehead and back through my hair.

  He looked me dead in the eyes, “Try a bit harder, Kade. It’s what you’re best at.”

  I covered my face with my hands and then ripped them violently through my hair again. “I don’t want to be best at that. I’m sorry, Dylan. I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever put you through.”

  “What about someone like Natalie?” He asked.

  Jerking my head back, I gagged in his direction, almost literally vomiting on him. “She’s fuckable, not datable. There’s a huge difference. I’m tired of fucking women that I have to hide who I really am and what horror lives inside me. I want someone to know me, just fucking understand me, and God…Dylan, I can swear when she looks at me, I think maybe…I don’t know, that maybe she does. The only thing I know right now, is that when she’s near me, I don’t think of the blood that’s been spilled in a classroom, but the rush of pulse from the flush of her cheeks when I look at her.”

  “What’s that even fucking mean?” He asked.

  I ignored the question. “She said I had PTSD.”

  “You do, Kade, face up to it. Get fucking help. I miss my brother.”

  “I want her,” I growled again, as if I was sporting to have a tantrum.

  Dylan leaned forward, talking low, eyes shifting behind me to see the door. “You didn’t see her when she first came here, mate. She could barely walk straight. Bree had a fat lip and a bruise across her face, but Lainey… Lainey needed a hospital and wouldn’t go to one, and it didn’t seem like it was because she was afraid of doctors, Kade. I think she’s afraid of the police. I t
hink something is wrong…the way Bree talks about her…did you know Bree and Lainey’s brother were engaged…” he whispered. He pointed his finger at me. “I’m not going to let you hurt her, because the only reason Bree is here is because Lainey is here, and I’m not ready to give Bree up yet, mate.”

  “Dylan, don’t go getting your silk panties in a twist, yeah? I know she has some sort of wooly situation she’s hiding from, but I want her and I have no clue how to deal with any of these feelings. If anyone is going to be getting hurt, it’s going to be me.”

  “You’re a real dick sometimes. You’re just going to bring her down,” he whispered, shaking his head.

  “Hey, I lived through attempted murder and a massacre, cut me some slack. Aren’t I supposed to get like a ‘get out of jail’ card for it, or some sort of sympathy card?” I smiled pathetically.

  His eyes widened from the carefree lightness of my plea, “Kade, you’re cracking jokes about it? This girl is really changing you, isn’t she?”

  “She’s so different. She doesn’t have to get naked to get a man’s attention. She just has to walk in a room, glide in with her watery movements, and when she speaks, it’s of substance. You fucking want, no…you need to listen. She’s profound. It’s ruthless on my soul. She is a woman who still blushes when a man looks at her. She’s not a child, you know she’s lived some sort of difficult life and the mystery of her is breaking me. I want her to crack and break in my hands. I want to open her up and gut her.”

  “Never thought I’d see the day,” my brother whispered, smiling.

  “The memory of her taste has me crazy,” I added. Every detail of that kiss was still felt; I could still smell her, feel her and taste her. God, thinking about it made my cock ache for her.

  “Taste?” He asked.

  “I fucking kissed her.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” He asked, leaning forward.

  “Tell me I should try, and that I might be able to be good enough for someone...”