by Lee, Corri
We circled the couch several times like wild beasts waiting to attack, and not once did his hostile gaze leave mine. Two men had me trapped and wouldn’t let me go no matter how hard I tried, but there was no doubt left in me now. Cole had nothing that I wanted- my happiness laid on the other side of my front door. Unfortunately, he was stood in front of it, blocking my way to it. How poetically metaphorical.
“What do you want from me, Cole? I put out, I defend you when you act like a psycho and I always come back to you. But I’m still not good enough for you.” An appeal to his kinder senses. He wasn’t good enough for me.
“Get rid of Nathaniel, Cecelia. Tell him that you chose me and that if he values your life, he’ll stay the hell away from you.”
My heart stopped beating in my chest and my mind ground to a halt. “My life?”
Cole paced towards me once and I didn’t step back- too paralysed by the implication of his words. “You heard me. He obviously doesn’t value his own life. This-…” he held up the card that arrived with the roses and tore it in half, “this proves that he’d die for you. But would he let you die for him?”
I stared past him, glassy-eyed for a moment, and then nodded and held out my hand. “Okay,” I whispered, trying not to tense as he stepped closer to take my proffered hand in his. “I’ll tell him. He’s not worth dying for.” I smiled weakly and shuffled around with my other hand on his arm so my back was towards the stairs. “Just let me take this case back upstairs and I’ll call him.”
Cole’s face softened slightly and he gave me a tight-lipped victorious smile. “Alright. And then we’ll go out to dinner and put this behind us like we always do, right? Because this is how we roll.” It baffled me that he thought it was that simple.
“Of course.” My smile widened as he released my hand to let me reach for the suitcase. “Cole?”
“Mm-hmm?”
My smile dropped into a scowl. There was only so far I could take a charade, which he should have known after being stripped and tethered, and I always sought refuge when a bridge appeared across a precipice. “Fuck you.” My knee plunged into his groin and drove him to double over, cursing me profusely. I grabbed at the door to make a hasty retreat, but plummeted to the ground as a result of him grabbing both of my ankles and pulling me backwards.
The impact with the floor made my skull judder and my teeth bare down on my lip, and left me winded. My temporary daze blinded me and made my head spin, and when I regained my senses I tasted blood and felt Cole’s weight crushing me down at the waist and neck, my hands pinned to my sides by his knees.
“That fucking hurt, you bitch!” His eyes flared and a rigid hand squeezed at my neck.
I struggled against his grip and laughed sarcastically, hissing “it was supposed to, dick. You deserved it” before spitting in his face. That might possibly have been the worst thing I could have done- he began to practically foam at the mouth and tightened his pincer around my throat. “Get the fuck off me.”
“No,” he growled, “you were running to him.”
“Who would blame me when your kneejerk reaction to rejection is asphyxiation?” I gasped against his choke hold, “Seriously, let the fuck go.”
His hand slackened just slightly when footsteps approached outside, and two familiar voices mocked each other playfully.
“You don’t pay me enough to be a removal man, Nate. I’m not lugging cases.”
“Shut up, Lobke.”
Cole looked sideways at my suitcase and raised an eyebrow. “You were moving in with him.” I ran my tongue across my bottom lip and found the source of the blood, not gracing him with the obvious answer. “You say a single damn word and I’ll drag him in here to watch you breathe your last breath. If I can’t have you, nobody can.” I nodded once and let my head relax back as much as it could with my neck so firmly restrained.
The door pounded for a moment through the laughter outside. And then again.
“Nate, there are no lights on.”
“She should definitely be here by now. Let me call her.” Oh god, no.
Make Me Wanna Die blared loudly and split the tense silence of my lounge.
“Cecelia!” The door rattled in its frame for a while. “She’s in there, Lobke.”
“No kidding, genius. Do you have your key?”
“Uh… no. I didn’t think I’d need it all the way in Arizona.” Cole’s fingers flexed and I struggled to contain a whimper as his fingernails tore into my skin. “Something isn’t right. We’re going to find Bethany. Cecelia, I’ll be back. I love you.”
Tears jerked to my eyes as his footsteps faded away and I let myself wail as soon as I heard the engine roar into life. The voice that had warned me all day began to whisper that, because I hadn’t heeded it’s advice, I would never hear him say those words again. Cole’s fingers tightened to the point of making my temples throb. “You’re in love with him.”
“Yes,” I sobbed. “If you have to be angry at anyone, be angry at me.” I sniffed hard and sucked in as much air as I could. “We kissed on Friday and I realised then. He told me he loved me on Monday and I’ve been batting between you both since then. This isn’t his fault- he hurts as much as you.”
With my chest fit to burst, and my vision starting to blur, I took one last look up at Cole and apologised, confessing all. His face and neck were scarlet blotched and his rage so intense that the veins in his temples protruded and threatened to burst open. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and begged him to make it quick, jaw clenched through the agony of my lungs pleading for air and my muscles cramping.
My concentration began to slip with my consciousness and the only words I could muster were the words I intended to be my last.
“Our Father, thou art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in hea-…”
“Why are you praying?”
I sucked in one last painful breath, my frail atheistic spirit seeking solace in a god I didn’t truly believe in, and wrenched my eyes open to look at the world one last time. “I don’t want to go to Hell.”
The relief I felt was instantaneous- my body was freed and felt weightless. But there were no overwhelming bright lights nor perpetual darkness like I’d expected, no angel escorts or searing pain and sulphur. There was nothing.
I lifted my hands to my tear stained face and tentatively brushed my fingertips down to my neck. My weightlessness vanished, and I felt heavy and disorientated. Nothing made sense, least not the quiet sob I heard nearby.
“Why can’t you love me as much as you love him?”
I sighed and squeezed my forehead in my palm, my fingers snagging in my hair. “I might have if you’d told me the truth about Cherry Vine.”
I was alive, just, and the massive culmination of misfortune and heartache numbed me completely. I wondered if part of my brain had died, because I had nothing left to give. No love, no hate, and no tears to cry.
The door flew open inches from my head and I heard her before I saw her designer heels. “Cici, Nathaniel just hurtled into the bar and said you weren’t answering the door to him. He’s worried and I…” I looked up at her as she looked down at me, and then slid my gaze across to Cole, who sat at my feet staring down at his hands. “What the hell has happened here?”
“Nothing” I lied.
“Nothing? Your chin and lip are bleeding and you’re lying on the floor.”
“I tripped.” I held out my hands in front of me and shoved Cole’s knee with my foot. “Pick me up.” He did so without question and led me around to sit on the couch. I think he may have been shaking more than me. “Coffee.” My single worded demand was correctly interpreted and led to his immediate scramble into the kitchen, as if indulging all my vices would somehow erase his actions.
Bethany stormed around to stand in front of me and crouched down, lifting up my chin with one finger. “Go to Nathaniel.”
“No.” Now I’d seen what Cole was capable of, I didn’t
want Nathaniel to fall foul to the same fate. “I have dinner plans with Cole.”
“Bullshit, you have a packed case by the door and a neck covered in bruises.”
“Love bites.” I sucked on my lip, knowing that the lie wasn’t even slightly convincing. “Tell Nate that I’m sorry, but I can’t go with him. Not now. Not ever.”
Bethany shook her head at me slowly and glanced through the service window at Cole. “You. Out.” He didn’t hesitate, not even slightly. In fact he looked positively grateful for the dismissal. I had evoked something monstrous in him and he was clearly disgusted with himself. He shouldn’t have been- he should have been disgusted with me for pushing him to it.
Though it pained her, Bethany didn’t probe for any details for a while, preferring to fuss around me and run me a bath, calling Nathaniel to tell him I was alright but giving nothing away. I persistently ignored his calls and messages, and spent most of the night fiddling with the wishbone ring, wishing I could feel the way I had that morning.
“I wish you’d tell me what he did to you.” She held her tongue for a marathon four hours before the Bethany Marshall inquisition began. The instant she had found me in trouble, our argument had been pushed aside and labelled ‘Do Not Disturb’. I can’t even begin to imagine what might have happened if she’d arrived a single minute earlier. “Not that I can’t guess from the way you looked when I walked in.”
“I told you, he didn’t do anything.” I pulled my laptop out of its bag and turned it on. My aim was to work tirelessly through the night in the hope of finishing my novel ahead of schedule. That plan was scuppered by the lack of an email from Nathaniel with the earlier changes I’d made. I knew he’d done it on purpose so I’d have to talk to him, but if I did, I’d never let him go. The way our relationship was didn’t work- if he saw me he’d blame himself for my near-death experience and I would always live in fear of the noose Cole had put around my neck for his presence. “I came home, Cole was here, I fell over, we had rough sex and you walked in.”
“What about the demon eyes?” She handed me a compact mirror when I frowned in confusion, and showed me the heavily blood shot sclera of my eyes. I’d only ever seen something as ghastly once before and it had been in the eyes of a man who had been cut down in an attempt to hang himself. “You can lie to yourself all you want, Cici. But you can’t lie to me.” She had no idea how flawed her statement was. “Why are you protecting him?”
“I’m not.” I averted my gaze to my laptop and went out of my way not to look at her again. “So we had a domestic, big deal. It happens all the time in relationships.”
“Except, by your own way of thinking, you don’t have a relationship with him, and how close were you to a permanent lights out situation? Minutes, seconds?”
“Seconds.” I sighed and ran my hand through my hair. “This is my fault for messing them both around.” I fisted the wishbone ring in my palm and kissed it before dropping it into Bethany’s hand. “Please give that back to Nathaniel at work tomorrow. I can’t keep it.”
She stared at me, mouth wide open with the hurt she felt for me. “No,” she whined, grabbing my hand and forcing it back onto my ring finger, “I won’t let you push him away and I sure as hell won’t help you in doing so. If you want to make him blow away like sand, go to his office tomorrow, look him in the eye and tell him yourself.”
She knew that I wouldn’t be able to do it. She knew that I’d crumble the moment I saw him. “Why do you want me to run away with him so badly? Do you want me to end up on my own and destroyed?”
“No!” She gripped my hand and pulled me around to face her, wincing apologetically when the pain in my neck made me whimper. “Cici, I am so sorry about what I said to you, and I have had an almighty bollocking from Shona for being so harsh. I should have spotted the ring and congratulated you because your willingness to commit to that label is… it’s just wonderful! It’s just ripping me apart to see you so unhappy. Cole is gone- I’ll make sure of that. But stop denying yourself of fireworks in the name of chivalry. Nathaniel doesn’t need you to protect him. He wants to protect you.”
She pushed herself up from the sofa and took the laptop away from me, pulling me to my feet and pointing upstairs. “Go to bed, Cici. Turn off your alarm and sleep for as long as you want to. I’ll tell Nathaniel that you’ll come in to see him when you wake up and, I promise, this will all look better in the morning.”
It didn’t. I grimaced at the puce and vermillion contusions across my neck and the five small lesions from Cole’s fingernails while I washed stiffly and dressed myself to visit the publishing house. There was no denying that I’d been manhandled and the small crescent lacerations ensured that I couldn’t even pass it off as a suicide attempt. There was no way I could walk down the street and not be recognised as the victim of a brutal assault, which meant only one thing. Sunglasses and an unseasonably large scarf and coat.
The early afternoon heat hit me like a lightning bolt and everywhere I turned there were cameras. The images of my nubile body haunted me through the streets and reminded me that I’d only gotten there be being sexually precocious and sought fame through ill measures. There was nothing gallant about how I’d skyrocketed to success- no part of my reputation was sweet. The only virtue I held to my name was the donation of my impending ill-gotten gains to charity, and that had been won through under-hand tactics at a croquet game.
The publishing house once again became a place where I didn’t feel welcome. I felt all eyes burning into me like they knew that I’d jilted Nathaniel again and knew about all my indiscretions. My shoes may not have squeaked the way they did twenty days ago, but I was certainly an eyesore.
Bethany jumped up from her desk to greet me and pouted when she peered over the top of my sunglasses and saw that my eyes had worsened through sleep. She held me by my arms, knowing that it was the highest point she could touch with sending the pain coursing through my muscles, and kissed my forehead. “Be honest with him, Cici- tell him what happened. Don’t push him away.”
Her words echoed in my mind all the way to Nathaniel’s office, and I just couldn’t shake them off. But I also couldn’t bear to see him hurt or see the pain in the eyes when he knew that I’d been hurt for him. It was either him or me, and I would choose to save him every time. He had too much to live for- too many prospects. I had a latent drug habit and a tendency to ruin lives.
Nathaniel sprung up from his seat the minute he saw me but stayed firmly planted to his spot. Maybe he was apprehensive because I’d not opened the door to him, or maybe he could see by the grimness in my face that I couldn’t be touched.
His eyes tracked down to my scarf and he shook his head slightly. “Are you alright? Are you ill? Is that why you wouldn’t come to the door?”
“No,” I leaned on the back of the chaise longue and looked just past his shoulder so I could lie without looking him in the eye, “I didn’t come to the door because I don’t love you.”
He opened his mouth to speak and sighed instead. There was a definite look of exhaustion across his features, not just because he looked like he hadn’t slept, but because he looked like he had lost the war. “Tell me that without the sunglasses and look me in the eye.”
“I can’t.” I knew that he couldn’t possibly understand the ambiguity in my answer. “Nathaniel, I-…”
“Come away with me tomorrow.” My eyebrows jerked up at his proclamation, then furrowed into a crease. “Not Arizona, just a holiday. Just us.”
“I can’t, it’s Cole’s birthday.” I laughed at myself in disbelief that I would still honour that commitment. “And I can’t marry you, Nathaniel.” I pulled the wishbone ring from my finger and set it down on the desk in front of me. “I’m sorry.”
His tongue slid across his lip briefly, as though he tasted blood where I did. “What happened to your chin, Cecelia?”
“I tripped.”
“Is that why you didn’t answer the door?” I growled lowly and shook
my head, turning my back to him and focusing my attention on his bookcases. I didn’t know how honesty would be received- I didn’t want to be subjected to two attacks in as many days. I didn’t think that fighting was Nathaniel’s style, but I didn’t think that Cole would try to kill me as a crime of passion either.
I let my head drop, grunting at the discomfort that followed, and turned back to him. “I didn’t answer the door because I was with Cole. I have to be with him now, you don’t understand. He’ll get bored of me- maybe after that we ca-… Don’t look at me like that, Nate.” He was shaking his head at me slowly, brushing off my words like dandelion seeds in a breeze. He didn’t see that this time I was being truthful.
“I would wait for you, Cecelia,” he whispered to me, slowly making his way around the chaise longue to stand at my side, “I wouldn’t want to, but I would. But I have to know what hold he has over you.” His head cocked slightly as he ran his hands up my arms to my face and pulled the sunglasses from behind my ears with his index fingers. I squeezed my eyes shut and turned my face away, feeling the tears burn. “Look at me and tell me you don’t love me.”
“I told you, I can’t.”
“Cecelia, plea-…” his fingers caught my bruised flesh and I recoiled at the contact, inching away from his reach. “Cecelia.” His tone was harsher and determined- the kind of authoritative snap I couldn’t ignore.
“Don’t.” I didn’t resist when he turned me by the shoulders and unwrapped the scarf from around my neck, but I kept my eyes low. When the bruising was exposed, he tilted my chin up gently and ran a finger across the welts, matching his fingers across them as he identified the scratches from Cole’s nails. “I didn’t answer because I couldn’t. He told me he’d make you watch.”
I wiped away a tear as Nathaniel brushed my hair back from my face and tugged at my eyelids, forcing me to show him the red stained pearl that orbited the mercury irises of my eyes. “Fiore.”