The Sordid Promise

by Courtney Lane

“Yeah, baby, you say that in the moment, but I don’t think that’s true. Turns out there was an easier way to kill her. Tamala would’ve done anything for me; including put a belt around her neck and hang it from the door to show me how much she loved me. Fuck!” He looked up to the ceiling with a broad grin. “She was the stupidest whore I’d ever encountered. I still don’t know how I managed to let her hang around me for so long.”

  As his head dropped so did his expression. “Estelle made you believe things about me that weren’t true. Made you think you were just another whore. She almost cost me you, just like she wanted. She wanted to hurt me by getting to you. She knew it was the only way she could screw with me.” He sighed and sank against the door. “She nearly succeeded in taking away the only thing that matters to me in this screwed up world. You. I wish I could've been there to see it, but it would've been a liability...and I had other things to do. I didn't need the unwanted attention.”

  “What about Melonie?”

  His eyes lifted in surprise. “What about her?” he asked with his voice lowering a few octaves. “Did she do something?”

  “No…because at the parking lot—” My hands trembled as I realized, if I said anything about Melonie, she would join the others. She was too good of a person for that.

  “I’m a very forgiving man,” he said nonchalantly. “But if she fucks up again, and tries to put a wedge between us.” He shrugged. “Accidents happen, right?”

  “You’re…sick.”

  “Oh come on, Nik.” His eyes trailed up to mine as the tears continued to flow down my cheeks. “I know that you lied to me about what occurred when your father died. It wasn’t as pretty as you made it seem. I do know that you did what you had to do, just like I did what I had to do with my so-called family. That’s right. I know the truth. Your mother told me. You killed him to save her. To save her from the nasty things he was going to do to her. Bribe her. Take away everything she worked for. Everything she loved. He was going to use you as the bribe, wasn’t he? He was going to send you away for a very long time, for all the things he thought were wrong with you—the things I think make you perfect.”

  I blinked as his words hit me even deeper than they already had. I shook my head vehemently. I didn’t want what I’d done to be closely associated with his monstrous deeds. They weren’t the same. It could never be anything close to his brand of evil.

  “Shh,” he shushed me before I could rebuttal. “It’s okay. I know. I know everything, baby. You did what you had to do to make sure no one harmed her. She knew you would do it. She wanted you to do it. You didn’t kill him because he was beating your mother. No. His mistake was turning his back on you. I know your pain lies in the fact that you don’t feel guilty about it. To deal with your lack of guilt, you reacted with conditions that you didn’t really have. Nik? He deserved to die.”

  Cotton formed in my throat, preventing a coherent response. My erratically beating heart migrated again, choking me. I retreated while shaking my head with a persistent conviction.

  He shushed me again, and tried to near me. “To answer the last question I know I’ve made you too speechless to ask. Yes, your mother knew the truth about me. Maybe not all of it at first, not until the very last moment we shared in the hospital. Your mother was a different kind of women, Nik. You know what she said to me? She said, ‘I knew you would be perfect. Protect her. Take care of her. By…any…means…necessary.’”

  I sank on the floor because my legs lost the will to hold me up. The tears clouded my vision. His confessions jammed inside my brain and cycled on a constant repeat.

  He sauntered over to me and crouched down with his legs spread and his knees bent. He clasped his hands over his lap in prayer position as he regarded me. “So the question in front of us is, where do we go from here, my twisted angel?” He ran the back of his finger along my tear-streamed cheek.

  I trembled at his touch. “W-what i-if I ran?” I sniffled. “What if I told the authorities about what you just told me?”

  His voided eyes searched my face. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I would die for you. I wasn’t kidding when I said I couldn’t do another day without you. You would die in my arms, and I would die right alongside you before you ever stepped foot outside this house without me. I’m not letting you go again. Not ever. Can’t say you weren’t warned.” He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. As he thumbed his lips, his eyes began to smolder. “Right now, I want to say screw everything and take you inside the shower. You’ll need to be there, because the things I want to do to you….are so very fucking dirty. I want a second—third—maybe fourth chance in case I missed the mark first time.” He titled his chin up as an insidious smile crept across his lips. “Nik? We’re still going to have our happy ending—whether in life or death. I can’t see it happening any other way. Don’t you see? That’s why your mother picked me. She knew no one else would understand you like I could. She knew all the things I was going to tell her before I did. This—” He gesticulated between the two of us. “—was her dream for you.”

  “Why did you have your cousin marry Angie?”

  “Of all the questions right now?” He rolled his eyes. “I needed her under control. I wanted to be the diplomatic about it, because I knew if I hurt her, I might hurt you. She crossed the line just as your mother predicted. I should’ve listened to her and killed Angie the first night she came into town. Neither here nor there. She’s dead now.

  “I didn’t want to let you go, but after you tried to kill yourself…it had to be done. It was hell, Nikki. If I had to do with one more day without you I was going to go crazy. You kept—keep me grounded, but if you stayed away any longer, the mask the world placed on my face was going to be snatched away, and I would’ve shown them the monster they pretend they can’t see beyond the pretty face. It’s so funny, Nik, isn’t it? People like us don’t need to hide. We are too fucking good to hide. But people see what they want to see, and look away from what they don’t. It’s the curse and advantage of being beautiful.”

  “I’m not like you,” I snarled. “I’m nothing like you.”

  “You’re in denial, baby. I may be a few years ahead of you. But don’t kid yourself; we’re one in the same. We both killed our parents, didn’t we?”

  “No! No. That’s not what I did. My answer to a threat and your answer are vastly different.”

  “Are they now?” he asked through a slightly amused expression. “So your father was…a happy accident? And correct me if I’m wrong, Nik, but weren’t you the one who injected your mother with poison? Tell me again how we’re so fucking different.”

  “No…but I would never do it again. I don’t think you can stop. Your problem is you’re addicted to hurting people. Is your answer to everyone who threatens you or me to kill them?” I asked through a sob.

  “Yeah,” he said flippantly with a slight shrug.

  “You’re going to get caught one day.”

  “I haven’t so far. I guess that’s why I like this town so much, reminds me so much of home. Just like there, the police force here is full of a bunch of idiots.”

  He moved to touch me. “Don’t…you dare.” I stood strong and headed for the door. Beating me to the door before I could open it, he slammed it shut. He painfully pried my hands from the doorknob. “Let me go,” I quavered.

  “Can’t….do that.”

  I turned around with my aunt’s gift in hand and pressed it against his neck.

  “Actually, if you want me to bleed out fast…” He moved my hand over to the right side of his neck. “You should cut the carotid artery here.”

  “I would do it,” I gritted through my teeth.

  “And I would let you, because that’s the only way I’d ever let you go.” He leaned against me. I kept the knife steady, piercing his flesh. He lightly winced, but it didn’t stop him from resting his forehead against mine. “I’m so deep inside your mind that I know you wouldn’t make it very long without me. I know that
if you did kill me, I would see you in hell very soon after I got there.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  “If I’m a monster, then I’m your monster. You made me this way. You made me kill for you. You…” He stroked my hair. “…altered me. You make me do things to keep you near. You could’ve stayed in that place for six months, like you were supposed to—like your aunt wanted you to—I’m the reason you were released early. You owe me...again.”

  The knife trembled in my hand as I cried harder.

  “I know you want to hate me,” he sneered, “but you can’t. You still can’t.”

  My hold on the knife firmed, and I moved to do more than pierce skin.

  “It’s so much harder when you have to look the person in the eye, isn’t it, baby? Why don’t you stop playing around and give me the knife. You know you don’t want to do it. You can’t. You know that I’m right about everything when it comes to you.”

  My hand trembled as I pulled the knife down, giving him a shallow cut on his neck.

  Barely wincing, he grabbed my hand when I withdrew. Squeezing the tendons in my hand, he made it impossible to maintain my grip on the knife. I squealed and let it go. It dropped directly into his hands. He threw me to the ground so hard, I bit my tongue and my head began to pound from the blunt impact. With the knife in his hand, he constrained my struggling wrists. I continued to thrash against him, attempting aimlessly to fight him off. He pressed his body on top of me and bit my lips hard enough to pierce flesh. I yelped and turned compliant.

  “Fuck. Nikki, you turn me on.” He leaned forward and ran his tongue thickly up the side of my cheek. “Even when you’re so pissed at me you can’t see reason. Stop fighting me, baby. I’m going to make you come very fucking hard in few moments…don’t fuck it up by fighting me.” He placed the hilt of the blade in his mouth, searching my eyes for permission. I let go of my struggle and slowly nodded. He removed the knife from his mouth, biting into his devilish smile and cut off my panties and bra. He returned the hilt of the blade to his mouth and tugged the front portion of his pants down. Fisting his erection, he entered me completely.

  I jerked and winced, crying out. The pain tenfold over what I felt on top of the car. Gripping the knife in his hand, he continued to pump inside me with a rough sharp force. He kissed my tears as he reignited the restraint of my arms with one hand. The familiar sharp pinch of a blade burned into the flesh of my forearms as it sliced me clean. “This makes you cream, doesn’t it, baby?” He pushed his tongue between my lips forcing them to part, and licked the roof of my mouth. He moved the blade up from the previous cut and sliced my tender skin quickly and shallowly. The pain furthered a different sensation, weakening me. I slowly blinked, before gazing directly into Eric’s darkening light brown eyes. His thrusts continued their vicious assault. When I felt the pinch in my forearms again, my eyes rolled back and my body quaked.

  “Are you going to come hard for me, baby?” he asked through a sensuous growl.

  “Yes,” I groaned faintly.

  He sliced me again, deeper, as he thrust inside me with violently strong strokes.

  My back arched as my eyes closed tight. The rush hit my spine so hard, I felt vertigo. I lay there, limply underneath him as the sensation overloaded my body and debilitated me.

  The first fit of my withdrawal hit me hard without prejudice through my fitful sleep. The sheets nearly clung to my naked body.

  I tried to move my arms, but my movements were a little too slow. Both of my arms were bandaged from the cuts Eric placed on my arms, and my core was completely shredded. When I looked over to his side, Eric was gone. Panic slightly set in as I slid out of bed. I wrapped the sheet around my body and ventured down the stairs.

  In the dark illuminated by the full moon peering through the window, Eric sat at the dining room table. Completely nude, he seemed to be enamored with something invisible. I slowly moved to the dining room table and sat down in front of him.

  He slowly gazed up at me. I studied him, because he seemed completely different from the man he showed me last night. He was stuck deeply inside melancholy.

  “I don’t know who the fuck I am,” he whispered as he nearly lost my eye contact. “You did this to me and it’s fucking me up. I didn’t want to keep things from you anymore. Shit. I didn’t even tell you all there is to my fucked up life. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t. I think—Did I…lose you, Nik?”

  Stunned, I wasn’t sure how to respond. His eyes pleaded. His posture wasn’t as confident as it normally was. It almost seemed as if…I was the one who broke him. I took quite a while to respond to him. “What happened between yesterday and today—”

  “You…shrank away from me,” he swallowed hard, seeming to choke on the emotion. “I tried to touch you in your sleep, and you were…revolted by me.”

  I held the sheet to my chest before it unfurled. “W-would you really kill me if I wanted to leave?”

  He lowered his lids and shook his head. “I would want to….but if it really came down to it—no. But don’t think that if I lost you, it wouldn’t end in some sort of tragedy. Nothing has changed; I’d never willingly let you go.”

  I knew clearly what he meant. Somehow, so easily, Eric made the descent into becoming Trent. Fragile. Vulnerable.

  “I thought I could get better with you. I thought I would be better. You whirled into my life like a cool breeze and turned into an all consuming tornado. You brought me back to a place I didn’t want to be in. You’ve broken me,” I sobbed. “Wasn’t that your whole point? You’ve completed your sick little fantasy. The sick fantasy in which you manipulated situations to make sure I fell for you. To make sure I had no one else left in my life but you. If you’re crazy enough to come all the way to Pullman to stalk me, to do all the things you’ve done…I know you followed me in the park the first time we met. You threw that obnoxious party to draw me out. You set Maisha free to get my attention. You got it. You got everything you wanted. You won. Just….let me go. Because, I won’t be Estelle for you. I will never be her for you.” I looked pointedly at my ring, wondering if the proposal was just the start of his new cycle.

  His eyes lifted at me and shook his head. Leaning forward, he palmed his face as he took in deep, short inhalations. “Fuck, Nikki. What else am I supposed to do to show you? Yes, I did some things to get your attention, but they weren’t for selfish reasons. Nothing I’ve ever done for you—with you—was selfish. I wanted you…because I wanted to be with you. I wanted to show you that I could be the perfect man for you and you alone. I can’t break someone who’s already been broken. Don’t you understand? That’s why I was drawn to you. You understand me just as much as I understand you.” His demeanor transformed back into a sullen state. His head was bowed as he looked up at me, there were tears in his eyes. It was a stark difference from the man I met on the trail who dominated me. He was figuratively on his knees to me, begging for me. Begging to be mine and me his. It was then I realized who exactly I saw in the photograph. It wasn’t Eric. It couldn’t have been Eric. “I need something from you,” I stated with quiet effusion.

  “Anything, Nikki,” he gasped.

  “I need you to be Ethan right now. I need you to be Ethan and tell me something that will make me stay. Something that will tell me that everything between us was as genuine as you claimed it was. That nothing you did for me was selfish, deeming you as that one noun you claim you aren’t—can’t be. A sociopath. I can look beyond the monster. I can…forgive the monster your parents and your stepbrother created, if you give me the one thing I need. The one thing you haven’t given me.” I swallowed. “I think that’s what I need.” I sauntered towards him, leaving only inches between us. I unwrapped the sheet from my body, standing completely naked in front of him. He quietly stirred as his eyes contemplated my body. He moved to touch me and I withdrew. I slid my palm along the stubble on his face and lifted his chin. “No,” I said firmly but quietly. “Earn it back.”

 
; He closed his eyes for quite a while. He kept his head bowed as he slid down to his knees. He seemed to waver as he slowly lifted his head to look at me. He took in a deep inhale, before he revealed his light brown hues to me. The moonlight shone on them so perfectly, I could see everything.

  I immediately closed my eyes in reaction to the glimpse of a different person staring back at me. I didn’t know what I was asking for, and now that I’d received it, I didn’t know how to react.

  “Nikki, I’m giving you what you want, can you at least extend me the fucking courtesy of looking at me?” There wasn’t anger in his words, but something else. Something he’d never shown me before.

  I shook my head vehemently. “No,” I wailed.

  “Look. At. Me,” he bellowed.

  I slowly opened my eyes. What I saw staring back at me, made me surrender the fight. The man I longed to see from my favorite photograph looked fixedly at me. The man full of sincerity, torment, and heartbreak. I was looking at…Ethan.

  “I….love…you, Diouana.”

  I squinted and quietly wept, because the four words were said with so much emotion and reverence, my trepidation waned.

  “Can I touch you?” he asked with a broken sadness.

  “Yes,” I choked.

  He grazed his lips across my navel before placing a kiss on my abdomen. His hands crept up the back of my legs and surrounded the curvature of my behind, causing my body to shiver. He continued to move his hands up my body until they settled on the small of my back. Drawing me closer, he pulled me forward by wrapping his arms around my hips and pressed the side of his face against my stomach.

  Thrown into a tailspin, I cried profusely. The pounding became worse before it got better. Contradicting thoughts overcrowded my mind, erecting a mind-numbing headache. Instead of coming forth with an intoning volume, my disparaging thoughts against Eric grew quiet. Suddenly….everything stilled.

  Sometimes you're so in love with a dream, you believe you're in heaven. When you finally realize you're dreaming, you open your eyes and see that you're really in hell. I’m not a dreamer, and most people’s ideas of utopia ring as my idea of hell. I wanted the sordid creature I could relate to. I wanted him. I could deny it, but deep down I knew the truth. I knew what I felt when I killed my father. I knew that Eric’s summation about me was strikingly correct. I’d been hiding for too long.