Mind F*ck

by Dawn, Kimber S.

  Anxiety rushes through me when I realize that when I sent that text to her last night, what I was really doing was asking her to freaking marry me.

  Via a damn text.

  I wince when my mind puts the scenario into that logic.

  Shit. No. I didn’t.

  Don’t worry, I’ll fix it. Somehow, I’ll fix it.

  I stretch my quads out and then each arm over the other shoulder, switch the songs on my playlist until I hear the first chords of Holy Grail by Jay-Z and start jumping in place.

  I’m pumped for our date.

  Stoked as shit, really.

  I start jogging back to the pool house, before pushing myself harder and in less than thirty seconds I’m at full speed, running. Thinking…

  God, I hope I do this right. I gotta get this thing with Lexy right. I have to.

  I have to.

  I glance at my Fitbit watch.

  Fuck. I have eight damn hours until three pm. Eight hours before I can see her.

  How the hell am I supposed to lay low if I don’t like the fact that I have eight hours until I can see this girl again?

  I’m so screwed.

  I’m so incredibly mind fucked by miss Lexy Mayer Dean. And I know it.

  And I love it. I think and chuckle to myself.

  I really hope I’m portraying Lexy clearly to you. I want you to fully grasp just how incredible this woman is. The time I have with her, the moments we shared. There’s so much I feel like I’m not telling you.

  Okay—like the time she and I were still in separate rooms after we first moved into the cabin in Andes.

  We’d just got in from our morning run, and I still had my earbuds in. Only cranked full blast, with both earbuds in.

  I usually keep one out when I run with Lex so we can talk.

  Anyway, we’d separated after our five-mile run in the hallway between our rooms and headed into our own.

  We both had our own bathrooms. However, she hadn’t gotten around to telling me that her shower was stopped up. So fortunately, on that day, I’d decided to forego my laps in the stream that runs along the back side of the cabin and take my shower early. And I interrupted her mid-streak sneaking into mine.

  Too make a long story short—she was buck naked, I was buck naked, we both rounded the corner at the same time. Her hands shot up, dropping her towel, to make sure my chin was okay (I smacked it on her poor forehead) and on their way up, they knocked my towel, which was hooked around my hip bone, down.

  So when we ran smack into each other, there was an actual smacking noise that ricocheted down the wood-paneled walls of the hall as her naked front smashed into my naked front.

  And while yes, we had been intimate before at this moment in time—she was still fighting something. It was the last of something, but it was something just the same and it caused her to still hesitate sometimes. I know now though, when she did shit like that, she was just questioning the hell out of herself.

  Crazy woman.

  But it was the look on her face. After her eyes flew to mine and locked…much like our bodies were locked at the time, it was the look on her face when she finally cracked that smile. Her beautiful smile.

  She’s so beautiful. Pure. I remember thinking to myself.

  And in all honesty, I think she only smiled because she felt the tell-tell signs of my ninety percenter.

  God, that woman’s smile could make a man travel seas…

  And I’m supposed to wait? How many hours now? I glance at the clock between cutting one of the sandwiches I’m making in half. Eleven-thirty. About three more hours.

  To say I’m questioning this whole laying low thing at this point, is an understatement. I want three hours gone. But on the cool, I also know I need to freeze time for a second so I can plan my next damn move, too.

  I have the ring, hell I’ve had the ring.

  I’m tempted to take it with me today. Just say fuck it and lay it all out on the line.

  But I don’t want to push her.

  I can’t fix her, I know she’s got to fix herself. And that’s what I’m going to have the hardest time struggling with. Standing by her side and offering help, only when she asks for it.

  And not just snatching her up and hauling ass off to an island somewhere and making this damn thing happen, whether she wants it to or not.

  I want to just shove the damn shoe on her little Cinderella foot and get it over with. That’s what I really want to do.

  But Liam defined too much of her life for too long. He almost had her completely brainwashed before I came into her life. Almost.

  And although she may be well with my soul, I need her well with her own first. Then mine.

  Once I have the fruit and cold sparkling water, Lexy’s favorite, stowed in the picnic basket, I set the sandwiches on top and grab my keys, cell phone, and the basket before heading out the side door. I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket as I slide into my truck and read a text from Lex:

  Don’t respond. Just know this—I can’t wait till three o’clock today. I do love you, Rhett. And I do want to do this. With you. And our child. I’ve just left the docs, Rhett. Congrats. You’re the father. See you at three, under the tree. :* I love you, baby.

  People, I’m flying high as I head out to run some last minute errands. I can’t lay low. Okay, I’ll try. But this baby is mine.

  Holy shit, this baby is mine.

  How does she even know? How do the docs know?

  This thing with Lexy will work out— even if it’s the death of me—it’s working out.

  It only takes me an hour to swing by Smith’s Pharmacy and grab my monthly supply of glucose sticks and insulin for the month of July. I make a last minute decision to stop by a flower shop on the corner of Market and Common Street downtown. It’s sort of out of my way, but they keep Lexy’s favorite tulips in stock.

  And if I’m going to do this date thing, then dammit, I’m going to do it right…

  I get stuck behind an older lady writing a check in line for fifteen minutes, but I utilize the time deciding on which color, lilac or pink.

  I go with lilac because it reminds me of her, and the thought makes me smile.

  I’m stepping from the florist shop when I see Mary, Lexy’s friend, almost a block up from me walking from a little bistro to a taxi. I call out her name and say, “Hi,” trying to get her attention with a wave, but she’s in the taxi and it’s driving away. She never even heard me.

  And I briefly wonder if I’m imagining she was upset.

  I don’t know her and her husband very well yet, but I can read people. And Mary seemed upset, even from a block away.

  It ends up taking almost the whole drive home to lower my raised hackles over the whole half-ass encounter, truthfully.

  Only for them to be raised instantly when I pull along the left side of the property. Pulling into the pool house garage, I see Drake, Liam’s right hand man, parked under some of the lower hanging trees off to the side of the driveway.

  I slam my truck into park and tear my seat belt off before flying from the cab and slamming the door. “What’s up? What the hell are you doing here?” I cut straight to the point.

  No need for pleasantries. We’re well past that.

  “Liam asked that I come by and get a few of Lexy’s things. It seems you owe Mr. Dean a congratulations the next time you see him. As he and Mrs. Dean are expecting their first child, in December, I believe.” His smile is as wicked as his lies.

  I counter, “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. It’s Dean who’ll be handing out congratulations. Not that I’ll be accepting anything from him. Why does he want Lexy’s shit? She’s been staying with me for the last few months, so there’s not much here.” I gesture towards the bigger house, “You’re more than welcome though.” I smirk towards the other man.

  “I’ll take a look around. And her residence over the last few months is the last of Mr. Dean’s worries. He’s been busy in LA.” The pale blond man before me b
uttons his dark suit at the waist before tucking his hands in his pockets and turning towards his Jaguar. “Rebuilding what you tried to destroy. Not that any of that matters anymore though.” He looks over his shoulder before getting into his car. “Liam wanted me to let you know he’ll be calling soon. You’re going to need instructions in order to make it through the next few hours of your life. And he’s kind enough to provide them. He also wanted you to know, he’s willing to settle the score, if you’re willing to settle your loses.”

  And unfortunately, at least for me, as soon as his words were finished being said, the door of the Jaguar was closing, shutting off any retort I had on the tip of my tongue.

  I’m not losing Lexy, though. So I don’t have any loses to cut.

  I glance at the blue picnic basket in the backseat of my truck.

  I’m not losing Lexy.

  Then I glance at my phone and check the time.

  As a matter of fact, I’m about to have my first date with the girl.

  And it’s odd, but right now in this moment, the words of the song ‘My Little Girl’ by Tim McGraw are what I hear as I head into the pool house to get ready for our first date.

  I hear his words before I feel them being whispered across my skin between his kisses. Rhett’s father is supposed to land tomorrow night sometime, but he shouldn’t be actually getting here in Andes until the day after. Which is good, I briefly muse. Because it’ll give me a little more time to decide when to tell him.

  Before or after I know who the father of this child is…more specifically.

  I stretch and smile when I feel the ache in my tender muscles left over from last night.

  And it may be his tender kisses, or it may be when they turn from nibbles to bites, but at some point while my fuzzy brain transitions from sleep to fully awake, I do feel a sort of impending doom lurking around the edges of my consciousness.

  I feel it, but I don’t acknowledge it. Not yet.

  I’m still stuck in time, with Rhett—what, was it three or four days ago, now?

  His hands slid up the back of my thighs between them and the mattress, gripping when he reaches my bottom. His hair falls around us like a curtain as he braces himself over me with his arms hugged tightly around my waist. “Does some of the shit I say to you ever freak you out?” He chuckles as his laughing brown eyes look into mine with a note of seriousness.

  “No. It doesn’t freak me out. It’s kinda romantic. Why? Are you about to say something that’s going to freak me out?” I laugh around my words and link my arms around his bare neck, combing his hair with my fingertips. “You can’t freak me out or scare me off, Rhett. You’re stuck with me. Stuck, buddy.”

  He tucks his head in the crook of my neck and whispers, “I just want to see all your scars, Lex. As crazy as that sounds, and I wanna see where you keep them hidden. When I know how you tick—then I think I’ll know how to take care of you. The way you deserve to be taken care of.”

  I feel his warm lips on my shoulder briefly before I feel them creeping up my neck. “That’s all I ever wanted. You know that? Just to take care of you.” A moan crawls from my throat when his tongue flicks out and licks at my pulse. His hands tighten around my waist, gripping the flesh, hard.

  Too hard.

  Then they tighten around my wrists and ankles, too.

  What the fuck?

  My fuzzy brain tries to count the places I feel his hands tightening around me. 1…2…3…4…

  That can’t be right.

  “Stop.” I turn my face, trying to look at Rhett and make eye contact. But the irises reflecting back at mine aren’t Rhett’s. They aren’t muddy brown.

  “Rhett?” I question Liam like a fucking pathetic idiot.

  “No. No fucking Rhett,” he growls. “How does me taking care of what is mine equate to Rhett fucking Bennett? Or did I just interrupt a little wet dream of yours about our boy in question?”

  I decide when I hear it echo from the dingy hotel walls, that I can die a happy woman if I never hear that fucking maniacal laughter of his again.

  Then and only then, did the recent twenty-four hours of complete and utter hell I’d just lived through, slams into me like a Mack truck coming in off a motherfucking hurricane.

  Oh my GOD. Every muscle wrapped around every bone in my body aches under the skin that’s stretched and wrapped too tight across it.

  “What have you done?” I spit my words at him. Reveling in the fact that they sound as if they’re dripping with distaste. “If you kill this child, you may as well fucking kill me, Liam.” I cut my swollen eyes at him over my shoulder through the sun barely filtering in through the curtains. Then I lick my cracked, dry lips and spit out the rest before conveniently losing my consciousness, yet again. “It may not look like it right now, but I promise—I’m going to fucking kill you. So if you hurt this baby, you better hurry up and beat me to the punch. Do you understand me you crazy fucking bastard?”

  But I don’t get to hear him answer.

  Because just before his forehead connects with the back of my head at the base of my neck, suddenly he’s gone and Rhett is back.

  Bracing himself over me. Rhett’s dark brown irises, looking into my green ones.

  I’m not shoved face first against a mattress under Liam in some Holiday Inn with my wrists and ankles shackled to a bedframe.

  I’m in Andes. I’m in our room at the cabin. I’m lying in bed with Rhett, and we’re discussing which ingredients are our favorite and the differences in spaghetti and lasagna sauce.

  He tickles, I laugh. Then he kisses and I twist his hair around my fingers while we whisper a silly conversation.

  It’s just us, being us—like any other morning.

  It’s just Rhett being his same, funny, irritating as hell, but charming self and me getting all awkward because I can’t find the right damn words.

  He used to tell me I get too caught up in my own head all the time. But all that did was make me get caught up in my head about that, too.

  When he figured that out, he stopped.

  I smile looking up at him.

  I wish I would have told him that morning that I loved him.

  I wish I would have told him to his face that he was the baby’s father and that I loved him, but I never got the damn fucking chance.

  As if I’m watching myself from the corner of the room, Rhett fades out and Liam hovering over my prone, beaten and limp frame draped across the hotel mattress at the Holiday Inn fades in.

  I know I won’t withstand much of this. I think, shuddering as I watch his hands slide up the back of my battered and bruised thighs.

  What is he doing? And why?

  Then I see it.

  Then I fucking see it.

  It’s surveillance monitor, one from the pool house—one Rhett obviously hasn’t found. And Rhett is drawing up his night time dose of insulin.

  It took Liam Dean one glance once when I was fourteen to invade my heart and possess my soul. It took him thirteen years to create my dreams, let me get a fingerbreadth away from them, before decimating them right in front of my eyes. But it only took him one torturous week, keeping me holed up in a guest room of some penthouse in LA before he finally got tired of teasing me.

  Taunting me.

  And torturing me.

  It’s as weightless as it is effortless when your mind finally fractures and you can hand over the control to insanity.

  I can’t say much for certain, so take this how you will, but I can’t remember how many times my sanity fractured during those seven days.

  I remember there being pain.

  And I remember praying.

  But aside from that, aside from those two things—other than the lucid dreams I had of memories with Rhett, that’s all I really recall.

  Thankfully.

  The packaging change in Rhett’s usual brand of insulin was pure coincidence, but I really think it helped things along in the long run. It didn’t take the two doses of insulin I as
sumed it would to throw the bastard into diabetic ketoacidosis. The idiot just drew up the assumed amount of units, without even looking at the doctored labels, and he injected himself.

  The goddamn moron killed himself!

  I just made sure Drake was there to inhibit him from getting the help he sought and medically needed, that’s all. He could have fought harder. But he didn’t.

  The ball was in his court.

  And it wasn’t my fault he had the seizure.

  I could tell early on in the video that he was losing his consciousness. His concentration kept waning. It was like no matter how hard he tried, his eyes kept going blank—mid- sentence. Almost as if he kept losing his train of thought.

  I had Drake set up a camera in the pool house very early on the morning of Rhett’s incident to catch what the surveillance wouldn’t.

  Obviously, you know how much I like to document things.

  Planning and documentation. Documentation and planning. The best strategies, by far. Trends aren’t only important in the stock and business world.

  I’m surprised you haven’t learned this yet.

  Then, as instructed, and out of the cameras range of audio, Drake read to Rhett, whom is the focus of the camera, the words I’d written before I boarded a plane bound for Lexy in Andes, NY.

  I never heard Drake read the words, I only ever saw the video of Rhett hearing them.

  The emotions that flashed across his face as he reacted, were priceless. Each and every one.

  It was like watching the phases of accepting death, cross the face of death, as death dawns. Epically incomparable to any other experience, I’m certain.

  Well, aside from witnessing Lexy watch the video in its entirety of course.

  Which has yet to happen.

  I said, ‘Yet.’

  I’m surprised it only takes me a week to bore with her, in all honesty. She showed such promise and fight in the beginning.

  But she just kept fucking passing out.

  I had it in my mind in Buffalo and the first few days after we got back home to LA, that maybe…if I filled her with enough of my cum, maybe somehow it would leave some sort of impression. That it would make a difference on a cellular level, somehow.