Survival Instinct: Brian Book One (Van Zant Siblings 1)

by Roxy Harte

  Sure, I see myself every day. Quick glance when I brush my hair and teeth, closer focus applying makeup, cellulite update when I climb into the shower…but to see myself like this. Sexy. Yeah, it’s been awhile.

  I lift the original Federal Express packaging to find out the name and address of the correct recipient, expecting it to be for Chianti, the tall, leggy blonde with blue eyes as big as saucers and a tan to die for who lives in the Cape Cod across the road that is a mirror twin of my own, but instead find the addressee to be Cassiopeia. “Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck!”

  I twist fabric, unhook hooks and wrench the bustier off, feeling absolutely ridiculous. Tossing the lush scarlet velvet back into the box, I tuck it in, hide it beneath the tissue.

  I think I threw the packaging across the room because I have to cross the room to retrieve it, knowing my vision is playing tricks on me. Alzheimer’s perhaps? I am, after all, forty-five today. Or an acid trip flashback…though I’ve never experienced such an episode before… I suppose, twenty-seven years post-experimentation, it could happen.

  With a shaking hand, I pick the packaging off the ground and with eyes half-squinted peek again, reading through the blur. Cassiopeia. “Holy mother of god.”

  I quickly sit on the carpeted floor…to keep from falling down.

  “It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be.”

  Really, it couldn’t be. No one has called me Cassiopeia in nineteen years and then, only He called me by my slave name. Master.

  Those days are so long past, another lifetime, it seems unreal. I really was the girl he’d called Cassiopeia, not my real name, Charlotte, or the name the sorority girls lovingly called me, Charley, but my slave name. Had I really called him Master? Had I really been a sex slave?

  God, it seems so incredible…so unlikely…I mean, it happened. I remember those days, have thought about those days in the dark of the night. Less now, than in the beginning, but there were nights…many, many nights…I remembered and masturbated to John’s soft snores when I couldn’t sleep. I don’t even think they can be called memories at this point—nineteen years later—romanticized fantasies of the most exquisite pain and overwhelming pleasure perhaps. God, has it really been that long?

  Yes, I decide, because my twin girls are eighteen.

  I’m suddenly glad they left for a European summer vacation with their grandparents two weeks ago.

  How would I ever explain this?

  I start laughing when I see the itty-bitty piece of velvet on the floor that pretends to be some form of panty, though in my mind a triangle of velvet and strips of elastic do not a pair of panties make.

  Once they did, a voice in my head reminds me. Once you had an entire closet of such deliciously naughty things to wear. Remember?

  I take a deep breath, seeking my girls’ smiling faces framed on the wall, confirmation that yes, I am a mother. I’ve spent eighteen years being Mommy, just Mommy, and I’ve been a great mommy. I went to parent-teacher conferences, PTO meetings, coached their soccer team. I made cookies—not just any cookies, but the best damn chocolate chip espresso cookies known to man, and I can rightfully proclaim so because I won a contest at the state fair three summers ago. I even have a plaque that reads Best Damn Cookies Known to Man—Illinois State Fair.

  I am Mommy.

  I am Charlotte Sullivan, paralegal extraordinaire.

  I am not Cassiopeia.

  Once, not now. The gift was a mistake…or a joke…a damn cruel joke.

  Standing, I wipe my eyes, trying to forget who I once was, trying to forget what I once meant to the man I called Master. He cherished me. Bending to pick up the spent packaging with every intention of re-boxing the birthday gift and returning to sender, I have to wipe my eyes again, unbelieving this scrap of velvet is making me cry.

  The memories flood back with my tears. He’d begged me not to leave, but he didn’t love me enough to keep me. That was my argument. “If you care for me as much as you say you do, you will give me a baby. I’ve never asked anything of you before. Never. I’m asking for this now.”

  He’d refused with no discussion, topic closed, and like a thief in the night, I disappeared, and quickly, very quickly, found a man I deemed good enough to father my child. John Phillips. Remembering it all, I can’t believe I pushed that year from my mind so easily. I’d cried myself senseless missing Master, but with my biological clock ticking, managed to see John through the blur. He’d been my art appreciation professor years before, and I’d bumped into him at a donut shop. We took the time to catch up on each other’s lives and, over a glazed donut and coffee, I decided he would father my child, so I seduced him. It wasn’t difficult…I was wearing a very revealing halter top at the time…and very, very short shorts. Ten months later, I had my twin girls.

  In the time in between meeting and babies, I agreed to marry him. It was the right thing to do even though I didn’t love him. I promised myself I would learn to love him. I never did. I grew quite fond of him, but I honestly never fell in love with him…and he never really fell in love with me either, though he protested he did. I didn’t believe him. The string of coeds in and out of his bed was proof enough he didn’t love me enough. Divorce was easy once we decided we could—it would be okay. It was the right thing to do. Taking back my maiden name was as easy as signing on a line marked with an X.

  If not for the twins, it would be as if the nineteen years between had never been.

  The ringing phone interrupts my thoughts.

  “Hello?”

  “Mommy!”

  “Ellie?” My heart jumps in my chest, hearing my daughter’s voice. I rush to the bed, pushing the opulent bustier deeper into the folds of delicate tissue. I know she can’t see me, definitely can’t see what’s lying on my bed, but I need to hide it. Need to hide myself. Yanking on my shirt, skipping the bra, I ask, “Are you okay? Is anything wrong? My god, it’s the middle of the day here…what time is it?”

  “I dunno…late…I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, baby. Where’s your sister? Sleeping? Is that your radio? Geez, Ellie, you’re going to wake everyone in the hotel. Turn it down so I can hear you.”

  I finish buttoning my blouse and slam the lid down over the tissue paper, fumbling a bit, wondering why things never go back into the box as easily as they come out. I settle for shoving the box under the bed, hands shaking so badly the lid pops off and I don’t even try to fit it back on.

  “You sound weird, Mom. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just fine.” I kick the box farther out of view. “The radio, Ellie, I can barely hear you.”

  “Oh, it’s not the radio. We’re at a disco. Can you believe they really have discothèques here? Amsterdam is so cool,” Ellie gushes, and then I hear her say, “Oh hell” before the phone clatters, leaving me with all manner of awful flying through my brain.

  “Ellie? Ellie! Answer me! You’re at a club?”

  “Mom?”

  “Ellie?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Sorry, I dropped the phone when Bree upchucked all over her dance partner.”

  “Dance partner? Ellie? Where are your grandparents?” I do the quick math in my head, figuring if it is four p.m. here it is one a.m. there. “Get Bree away from that man. I want you back at the hotel right now!”

  “Mom…Mom. It’s cool. She didn’t drink that much. Geez.”

  “Drinking? She’s drinking? As in alcohol? What were you thinking letting your sister drink so much she’s throwing up? She could have alcohol poisoning! She could be dying even as we speak. Are you drinking too? Ellie?”

  “Mom. Stop. Bree is not going to die. She hardly drank anything at all. It’s probably the brownies. I think she ate too many when she went to the café with Grandpa. Geez, she hasn’t stopped eating since. Did you know kids start drinking here about twelve?”

  “Kids do not start drinking at twelve. Maybe sixteen but not twelve and you, young lady, are American, not European, so rules still apply…no drinki
ng.” I realize I’m shouting and then a terrible thought hits me. “Your grandpa took Breeney to a café? What kind of café?”

  “Aw, Mom, you know. Grandpa even told you he was going to check out the Mary J coffee shops when he hit Amsterdam.”

  “Tell me you did not smoke dope!” I shriek.

  “No. And neither did Bree, she just ate brownies. Hell, I didn’t even go. I went with Grandma. You never told me how much fun she is!”

  I don’t dare imagine. I unfortunately know just how fun my hippie mother is, having been born at a music festival in New South Wales, Australia.

  “We went shopping.”

  Thank god. At least one child spent an untainted afternoon.

  “We went to the Red Light District but don’t freak out, we were safe ’cause it was like morning and did you know Amsterdam is rated like one of the safest cities in the world? So don’t worry,” Ellie explains fast, giggling. “Grandma bought a real French maid outfit. Not one of those cheap Halloween costume kind but the real deal. Oh my god, Mom, you will never believe this thing. It’s short. I mean, really, really short, a black dress with white ruffles under the skirt and everything. She even got stockings and a garter belt…and oh my god, a feather duster.” Apparently the feather duster is hilarious because for a moment she can’t speak through her laughter. “You will never guess what the handle doubles as!”

  The vision is clear in my mind. Oh god.

  I listen to my daughter laughing hysterically on the other side of the world, wishing I were there, wishing I knew how much she’d already had to drink and wishing I could kill both of my parents. How dare they? These are my precious babies for crying out loud. I want to think homicidal thoughts but my brain keeps going to the image of my sixty-four-year-old mother dressed in a French maid outfit. I start to laugh, hysterically, because the whole situation is too bizarre. Seeing the edge of the box peeking out from under the bed and knowing what I’m trying to hide, I laugh harder. And I was worried about them seeing that.

  “Mom? Have you been drinking? You sound drunk.”

  Tears stream over my cheeks. I hear Ellie telling Bree to talk because the guy she’s been waiting to dance with all night is waiting for her.

  “Hi-ya, Mom-m-my. It’s Bri-an-na.”

  “Hi, baby.” I sober up hearing her sounding very drunk. I wipe my face on the long sleeve of my shirt. “You shouldn’t drink any more, okay? I want you to promise me you won’t and take your sister back to the hotel. Your grandparents are probably worried sick.”

  “Nah, they’re cool. You never told me what cool parents you have.”

  “I never realized myself.” Oh hell, that’s a lie.

  I distinctly remember being thirteen the first time I stole a toke from one of my parents’ many long-haired, tie-dyed friends’ joints. Our house was always crowded…musicians, artists, antiwar protesters…there was always plenty of beer, pot and space to crash.

  Dear god, whatever made me believe I should let my parents take my children out of the country? Whatever was I thinking? “Where are your grandparents?”

  “They’re here. They’re upstairs in the hotel room.”

  “The discothèque is located in the hotel?”

  “Well, duhhh. You don’t think Grandma and Grandpa would let us roam the streets of an unfamiliar town in a foreign country do you?” Her sarcasm is extra thick as she asks, “Reaaally, Mom?”

  “Of course they wouldn’t. What was I thinking?” I should catch the next plane to Amsterdam…that’s what I’m thinking. “I’m coming to get you. This trip was a bad idea.”

  “Mom. No. We’re fine. Besides, tomorrow is going to be like totally boring. That’s why we’re having a little fun tonight because tomorrow the tour bus goes to like a zillion windmills and a friggin’ tulip farm. Ooh-ee, that’ll be some real excitement. Besides, we’re being good. Grandpa said no absinthe and we haven’t drunk any because he said if we did you’d never forgive him and he didn’t want you to be mad, okay? So we’re being good. Don’t be mad. Look, I gotta go. This is the last dance before they close for the night. I love you. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Bree? Bree. Call me tonight. Call me as soon as you are in the hotel room and safe.”

  A dial tone is my answer.

  Well, hell. Thanks, Dad.

  Pot-loaded brownies are okay but hallucinogenic beverages? No!

  Holy mother of god, I trusted my parents with my babies. Sitting down on my bed, I force myself to stay sitting and not race to the airport as if I were a lunatic.

  “They’re fine,” I tell myself. “They’re with my parents.”

  Funny, that doesn’t make me feel as confident as it should. The phone rings in my hand and I jump, “Breeney?”

  “No,” a man says with a slight accent. “Try again?”

  Frankie? Gorgeous, incredible, charismatic, once-upon-a-time-I-would-have-died-for-one-more-mind-bending-fuck Frankie? Hell, Frankie, as in the other lifetime Frankie better known as Master, Frankie? More precisely the Master I’d deserted in order to marry the Professor.

  “Cassiopeia?”

  “Please don’t call me that, Frankie. That was a long time ago.”

  “Time hasn’t changed the way I feel about you.”

  I am stunned into silence. Is this a cruel joke? After almost twenty years, he decides it is time to get even with me for leaving him? Is he that sadistic? I don’t answer. Once I was bound to this man. Heart, mind, body and soul. Bound more tightly by emotion and sexual need than I could ever have been bound by any physical means—stronger than rope, steel, or leather—and so it was only greater emotion and need that could tear us apart. My biological clock. Late at night, I can still feel the emotion behind the tick-tock, tick-tock as if it was only yesterday.

  He announces, “I saw Paulette.”

  Ah, Paulette. That explains everything. Mutual friend from the old days. Big-mouthed gossip then, bigger-mouthed gossip now. She still runs with the same crowd. I know because at least once a month since my divorce, she’s begged me to return to the scene.

  “How is Paulette?”

  “You should know. You had lunch with her last week.”

  Ouch, terse. Swallowing, I decide silence is the best way to handle this very strange flash from my past life.

  “You and John divorced?”

  “Yes,” I whisper, wondering if this conversation could get any stranger.

  Hell, could this day get any weirder?

  John. I rarely even think about him. Sad, since I once really liked him. He’d guaranteed an intelligent gene pool for making babies with and over our almost two decades of marriage we’d shared two-point-five kids (two of our own and one of his from a previous marriage who stayed with us summers), a dog and a vacation home on the lake. We never grew beyond liking each other though.

  “Paulette showed me pictures of Briana and Elizabeth. They are very beautiful. Votre image exactement.” I close my eyes, imagining Frankie holding the wallet-sized pictures of my daughters.

  I laugh. Yes, they do resemble me a lot…when I was younger…much younger. “They do look a lot like I once did. You’re right about that.”

  He sighs over the phone. “Is your hair still long?”

  “Not as long as it once was, but yes, long and straight.”

  “Mmm.” He makes a sound and I don’t know what I want him to say. He commanded me once that I must always keep my hair long because he loved to brush it for me at night. I chew my bottom lip and wonder what else Paulette shared.

  “Are they having a good time in Europe?”

  Ah hell, Paulette. Is nothing sacred between friends anymore?

  “Too much fun by my barometer.”

  “Yes, Paulette said you’d changed.”

  What?

  “You’re single for the summer. Any wild, crazy plans for you?”

  Snorting, I wonder where on earth this more-peculiar-by-the-second phone conversation is leading. At forty-five I find my wild,
single life is defined by what brand of ice cream is on sale. Like my plans for this evening for example—wild, as in a quart of double-brownie death-by-decadence triple-fudge ice cream; and single, as in sharing said decadence with Jay Leno at midnight. “What do you want, Frankie?”

  “Did you open my gift yet?”

  “Yes. I can’t imagine what you were thinking.”

  I catch my reflection in the mirror and, flip my hair behind my shoulder, look a little harder…sucking in, standing taller. I suck in more, holding my breath.

  “I was thinking it’s your birthday. You are divorced. And you are still mine. I want you home. Now.”

  The breath I’d been holding comes out in a forced rush, my stomach popping back out the two inches I’d almost hidden. I’m left gasping for air, trying to remember how to breathe. A fist in the gut wouldn’t have been so painful.

  “Come to me, Cassiopeia,” Frankie commands in his deep, authoritative Dom voice, and it is as days of old. The memories return in a crazed rush—me, kneeling at his feet, wearing his collar; me, pulling a pony cart at the Slave Games.

  Holy mother, that wasn’t me. Really. It’s my memory, but it couldn’t have been me.

  “Now. Cassiopeia. Come to me, now.”

  I inhale, exhale. Dots form behind my eyes. My phone shakes uncontrollably in my hand.

  Beep. Beep.

  It’s a full second before I realize my call waiting is desperately trying to gain my attention. “Frankie, I couldn’t. It’s been nineteen years.”

  Beep. Beep.

  “Can you hold a minute, please? I have to take this. It’s my daughter. One of my daughters.”

  “Go, go,” he insists. “I’ll wait.”

  I’ve been waiting twenty years, what’s another moment? My mind says the unsaid as I switch over to the other line. “Hello?”

  “Hi-ya, Mommy. It’s Breeeeeee. We’re back in the hotel room all safe and sound, so you can stop worrying now.”

  I hear Ells in the background, “Safe and sound, Mom. Love you.”