Loving the Cult

by Nicole Tillman

  I relax my forehead as best as I can, smoothing out the skin as soon as Jameson removes his hand.

  “Honestly, Tess. What's on your mind?”

  “Just home,” I say with a heavy heart. “I miss belonging somewhere.”

  “I thought you didn't have much of a home?”

  “I didn't really. I had an apartment, and a dog. Speaking of which, I really hope the neighbors take him in. He's such a sweet old thing,” I smile, remembering Percy. “But even though I didn't have much, or have a lot of people in my life, it was better than being in this awful state of flux, not knowing what the next day will bring. It was boring and empty, but it was dependable.”

  Jameson's quiet, and I'm scared I've somehow hurt his feelings in a roundabout way, but then he softly nudges my shoulder.

  “Sit up.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Please?”

  Grumbling, I lift my head from his lap, turning to face him with my legs folded under me.

  “Come here.”

  He opens his arms.

  Oh...

  My heart starts thrumming wildly in my chest, like an errant butterfly trying to break out of a mason jar. Jameson and I have grown close in the two weeks I've been here, but not physically. Physically our relationship has stayed the same. We're more comfortable around each other, hence me lying on his lap, but other than that, nothing.

  Carefully, because I'm not completely sure what he wants from me, I inch closer until he places his hands on my hips. My flesh warms through the thin t-shirt material and I know I'm blushing like child.

  As he pulls me closer, my body takes over, recognizing what his own body language is telling me to do. My right leg lifts up and over his lap until I'm straddling his legs.

  Slowly taking my head in his hands, Jameson forces me to face him. His eyes are alive with heat, but behind that heat hides a question. He's hesitant, not sure if he's doing the right thing, unsure of my feelings for him.

  I would think my feelings would be crystal clear. Especially now, since I'm trying like hell to reign myself in, to not give in to temptation. I want to lower my lips to his, wrap my arms around his neck, and not let go until we're both breathless. It's a scary feeling, because it's why I'm here. I don't want to feel something for him, but my heart is beating too loudly for my brain to hear reason. So, right here, right now, all I want to do is give myself to Jameson.

  Whoa...

  I pull my head back a fraction of an inch, realizing that this could be a huge mistake, the biggest I've ever made. I'm in bed with Jameson, our bodies pressed together in an intimate dance, and we're breathing each others air, no doubt imagining where the next move could take us.

  None of that is bad. What's bad is that I was content with just needing Jameson. I needed Jameson's help, his friendship, and his support to make it through this. But now I don't just need Jameson.

  I want him.

  “I could be dependable.”

  “What?” His voice snaps me out of whatever trance I was in, but his words don't make sense.

  “I could be that thing you come home to.”

  “That thing?” A swell of emotion bubbles to life in my gut and I laugh to keep from sobbing. “You want to be a thing I come home to?”

  “Or you could be what I come home to. That works too.”

  This is the last place I expected to have this conversation, and Jameson is the last man I expected to have it with. Yet, the idea is so comforting, his words so convincing, that I can't bring myself to say no.

  “Jameson Foster,” I say. “You don't know what you're getting yourself into.”

  “Maybe not, but I know what I want. You, for starters.” He moves his hands, threading them through my hair, sending goosebumps down my arms. “And then all of it, everything I've sworn off, I want it with you. Exclusively.”

  “You barely know me,” I point out.

  “I know enough. You're strong, you're smart, you're funny as hell, and you get me. That's all I need to know for now. Anything else, I can learn along the way.”

  “Along the way to where?”

  “Doesn't matter,” he says while shaking his head. “I'll go anywhere as long as it's with you.”

  I've never, I repeat, never had a man talk to me like this, like I'm the most important being on the planet, but that's how Jameson makes me feel. Important. It's a foreign feeling.

  Minutes tick by as I weigh the pros and cons, the ups and downs, the ins and outs of what Jameson is offering. I was completely isolated before. He's offering me things I didn't think I wanted, but now, after consulting my inner romantic, I can visualize a life with him. I'm not saying that we'll be picking out rings or bassinets anytime soon, but I think I could be happy with him. And that's a start.

  Jameson has a good read on me and my emotions, so the second I make a decision, he smiles. Thank God he doesn't need a verbal answer, because I'm not sure how to phrase what I'm feeling. The situation is too complicated for petty words.

  He pulls me in close, easing his dark eyes forward, and I meet him halfway. At the meeting of our lips, my breathing begins to stutter and I have to squeeze my eyes shut to keep the tears under control. I've never been an overly-emotional person, so my damp eyes do nothing but piss me off. But even I can see it- the new reality we're building for ourselves.

  The hope Jameson has instilled in me, the lengths he's willing to go for me, and the way our bodies sync together in perfect harmony; it's enough to draw a tear from even the most calloused of hearts.

  I plant my hands firmly on Jameson's shoulders. It's a solid reminder, to myself as much as to Jameson, that whatever heat is building between us, we can't let it blaze out of control.

  Taking the hint, he settles back against the pillow, but doesn't move his hands, doesn't stop his lips, and doesn't push any boundaries.

  We kiss, and I swallow every deep moan that rolls off his lips. He places his hands over mine and our fingers tangle together on their own accord, coming to rest between our bodies.

  Jameson pauses, pulling away for just a second; long enough to open his eyes and take me in. With a deep sigh, he leans his forehead against mine, shaking it back and forth in frustration.

  “I promise.”

  He doesn't have to explain. I know what he's promising.

  Escape.

  Freedom.

  Safety.

  And a better life for both of us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Never before have I laid in bed, indulging in pillow talk, with a man I haven't made love to. Well, I think made love is a bit of a stretch. Any type of connection I've had with anyone else had little to do with love. It was always a basic, primal need for release.

  Although I had expected Jameson to be the type of man seeking that same kind of empty satisfaction, he isn't. Every time his hands begin to wander into unsafe territory, they eventually retreat, irritatingly enough, just as my skin begins to heat with need.

  “Are you trying to torture me?” I tease, laughing as his hands hover on the precipice between sweet caresses and playful tickles.

  “Sorry.” He smiles, making it clear that he's not sorry at all.

  I snuggle closer into his side, careful not to jostle his injury too much.

  “Know what I'll miss about this place?”

  His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.

  “Nothing, I hope.”

  “This. Right here,” I pat the mattress. “My bed feels like a slab of concrete compared to this little slice of heaven.”

  He laughs, a soft but deep rumble in his chest that reverberates against my ear. It's infectious. If Jameson were to laugh more often, every woman within a ten mile radius would be throwing themselves at him. He would have more children here than Robert 'Backup Plan' Perry.

  “You won't miss it. I promise. Sleeping on a bed of nails will be better than being trapped under this roof.”

  No argument there. Although I'm at ease here with Jameson, the
moment I walk through the door more threats appear. Any future we would have here would be bleak. Not only would I be transformed into a baby-making machine, but Jameson would be ripped away from me the instant our child took its first breath.

  It doesn't matter how difficult life will be beyond these gates. It won't matter how little we have, how hard we'll have to work, or how confusing life will be for Jameson. None of that matters. Life will be better once we're on the outside.

  “Can you forgive me?”

  Looking up into his eyes, I see that while I've been lost in thoughts of the future, Jameson has been stewing on the actions of his past.

  “For what?”

  “For everything,” he shrugs. “Everything I've done here.”

  I reach up to caress his cheek and he turns to press his lips against the palm of my hand. He's so tender with me, a fact that's still surprising considering how he was raised- to use and discard women.

  It just goes to show that not everything is learned. Jameson didn't find his compassion from the teachings here, and he sure as hell didn't get it from his mother.

  He was born with a good heart.

  “Leave with me, and consider it forgiven.”

  “Is that your only stipulation?”

  His eyes search mine, waiting for me to change my mind, to tell him that it will take so much more to make me forget. What he doesn't realize is that I've already forgiven him.

  He kept me on the edge for so long, pulling me one way and then the other, until I was so unsure of the direction he wanted me to go. If he would have just let go of his fear and opened up to me in the beginning, we could have avoided so much pain.

  “Yes, Jameson, that's my only stipulation. As soon as we're on the other side of that gate, it's gone. Everything you did before won't matter. It will all stay here where it belongs.”

  “Okay,” he whispers as the ghost of a smile plays on his lips.

  Talking openly like this, even though we're alone, still doesn't feel safe. Jameson has assured me that if they were onto us, they'd have done something by now, but I'm still uneasy. I think I felt better talking with the shower running in the background. Crazier, but better.

  “Have you given it any thought?” I ask.

  “Given what any thought?”

  “How we're getting out of here.”

  He nods. “I have actually.”

  I sit up, excited at the prospect of a plan, but he doesn't seem too enthused. Instead, he looks defeated.

  “Well? What is it?”

  I don't care if it's a shitty plan. Any plan is better than no plan at all.

  “There's a garage under the house,” he begins. “Your car's down there somewhere.”

  Now I understand why he looks so defeated. This isn't as big of a plan as I had hoped he would come up with. What I had in mind was more of an uprising, or a mass exodus.

  “What about everyone else? The other women?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I want you out of here first. Then we can figure out how to get everyone else out.”

  “How? Call the authorities?”

  I layer on the sarcasm. I've had my fair share of dealing with the police and I know that the minute we spill our story, they'll be snapping cuffs around our wrists and having us committed.

  “It could work,” he says lamely.

  “Or it could backfire and make getting them out so much harder.”

  Jameson shoots me a look. His eyes are pleading with me to have faith in him, to trust that he's doing the right thing.

  I do have faith in him, and I do trust him. Even though I know we could find a way to get all the women to safety, I can't disagree that it would take far too long. Time is working against us on this one.

  Whatever ideas I might have, I push them aside. If there's one thing I've learned about trust, it's that giving yourself up to someone is key. You have to know that there's a concrete reason for everything they do. If they take a step back, it's only in preparation for taking two steps forward.

  Leaving Lyla and Daphne behind will kill me. It will break my heart to watch them disappear in the rear-view mirror. But if I stay behind, or try to evacuate them too soon without a foolproof plan, we'll all be doomed.

  “Okay,” I say. “I trust you.”

  The exhaustion in his eyes is evident as he lets out a heavy sigh. I hate that this weighs so heavily on him. He knows he's doing the right thing by leaving, that much is clear. But this will be so much harder on him than it is for me.

  I'm leaving a building; just an empty shell of a place that houses nothing but fear and misery. Jameson, however, is leaving the home he grew up in, as well as the only family he's ever known.

  My heart breaks for him, but he doesn't belong here. He'll be so much happier once he's free from the Children of Neutrality. I know it.

  My guess is that we have maybe a week to plan this out. As soon as he's able to make it through the day without painkillers, they'll put him back to work. Which means that I'll be put to work.

  That can't happen.

  Jameson breaks our comfortable silence minutes later.

  “What's it like?” He asks.

  “What's what like?”

  “Everything. Everything outside these walls.”

  It takes me a second to come up with an answer, because I have no idea where to start. Explaining this to Jameson is about the same as describing the color purple to a blind man.

  “It's... hectic, but beautiful,” I say. “I mean, you've been out there. You haven't been completely isolated here.”

  “I know, but it's not the same. I want to know how people live.”

  “However they want,” I answer, semi-honestly.

  “I want to know what it's like to have a real life, a real job. I want to be surrounded by strangers doing the exact same thing I'm doing. Every day.”

  “That sounds incredibly dull,” I say, laughing at his tame dreams. “There's so much more to look forward to.”

  “I know, but the idea of having a different set of rules to live by, not having 'the cause' drilled into every aspect of the day, that sounds incredible. I want a purpose of my own. I'm tired of being just a cog in a machine.”

  “Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but whatever you decide to do with your life, it will always be part of something bigger. I don't think you can escape that feeling.”

  “No, but if I don't like where I'm at in life, I can always change it. I can't do that here without leaving. I think that's what I'm looking forward to the most. Possibilities.”

  This conversation has brought out a whole new side to Jameson. He's a dreamer. He wants to do something more, be someone better. His aspirations remind me of just how empty my life was before coming here.

  If I had wanted to, I could have bettered my situation. Instead, I pushed everyone away, convinced that if I was alone, nothing bad could happen to me. That was true, but what I didn't realize at the time was that by being secluded, nothing good could happen to me either.

  “Well, Jameson, your life will be filled with possibilities. Scary, exciting, unpredictable possibilities.”

  He pulls me closer, slipping his hand beneath the back of my shirt to trace invisible lines up and down my spine.

  “And what about you? What will your life be filled with?”

  I'd like to think that it will be filled with acceptance, love, and the feeling of contentment that comes with entrusting your heart to someone, but there's no guarantee of that.

  “Life.”

  “You hope your life will be filled with life?” He laughs. “That's vague.”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  I could hope for more, but it's a constant struggle to stay optimistic. I may be strong and stubborn, bullheaded and determined, but I'm not a dreamer. Not like Jameson.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Five days flash by in the blink of an eye and before I know it, Joan is waltzing through our door like she owns the place. Well,
she probably does, but I still don't think that gives her the right to barge in on us.

  “You're needed in a meeting,” she says to Jameson, who's in the process of drinking a bowl of oatmeal.

  “Right now?” He asks, catching a dribble of liquid as it leaks out the corner of his mouth.

  I'm not sure why, but I thought we'd have more time. We aren't ready. Not even close.

  “Yes, right now, and you,” she turns to me, “You'll be meeting with Omar this evening.”

  There goes MY appetite...

  “Yes, Ma'am.” I smile sweetly, even though I'm trembling inside.

  We have a solid plan, but I haven't been able to mentally prepare myself for everything that's bound to go down. Neither has Jameson.

  As soon as Joan shuts the door behind her, Jameson and I both bolt out of our seats. His movements are purposeful and direct as he gets ready to rejoin his people. He's a man on a mission. Me? My movements are more frantic, like a chihuahua, bouncing after Jameson, asking him questions he doesn't have the answers to, and biting my nails down to the quick while pacing the floor.

  After he's showered, shaved, and dressed, Jameson stands in front of the door in silence. I'm still trying to contain my jitters, but I'm curious as to what's going through his head.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I'm okay. Just... nervous. Now that we have an actual plan I feel like I'm betraying them. I've never felt that way before.”

  I wrap my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek to his shoulder blade. The spicy aroma of his soap tickles my nose, but I breath in a lung full, willing it to embed itself in my mind, in my memory. I don't want him to leave. I've grown so accustomed to having him close and now that I'll be spending my day alone, I realize his absence will drive me mad.

  “You're not betraying anyone. Don't think of it like that.”

  Jameson carefully, so as not to hurt my feelings, removes my hands from his waist and turns to kiss my cheek.

  “It's hard not to. I'm leaving my family, Tess. You can't imagine what that feels like.”

  I can't imagine what that feels like?...