“How soon after did you start to date?” His gritted teeth made his questions sound like growls.
“He took me to dinner that night.” My cheeks filled with heat as I recalled how quickly I’d gone from just Kinley, to Kinley and Denny. Just out of college, broker than ever before, alone in every way—Denny was like an answer to my prayers. So I endured the fighting, the tears, and the emptiness, because without Denny, my life was cancelled credit cards and an empty stomach. It was floating away and never knowing the feeling of my feet touching the ground. I’d wanted so badly to give him what he desired. And when I couldn’t, I felt his disgust. His disappointment. His betrayal.
“And then?” he prompted.
“And then what?”
“You put up with him for four years so you could have your office.”
“You’re jealous.” I settled deeper in his lap. I loved jealousy. I knew it was a disgusting emotion. And trust was beautiful. But jealousy showed emotion, heat—you felt the desire burning on their skin. Trust was fictitious to me. It never lasted. Someone always ruined it.
“I’m not jealous, Kinley. I’m trying to figure out how your pathetic ex could have ties to me. I thought the only one was you. Can you rise? I need to think.” He gave my hips a push.
“I didn’t put up with Denny.” I let him push me away. But I stayed in his office. I dropped my food onto the desk beside his. I had to tell the truth about this. It couldn’t be the way he wanted it. The past happened. He had to accept that the way I had to accept waking up in this tower. “I loved Denny. He saved me. He made it so I wanted nothing.” When he turned his murderous gaze on me, I fought the desire to run. He was burning me, begging me to stop driving the knife in his heart. “But he hurt me. Badly. And I hurt him too. We hurt each other. And so did you. You’re not perfect—”
“Out.” He pointed at the door, daring me to continue.
“My feelings for him weren’t a lie. Just like my feelings for you,” I continued hastily when he rose and stomped over to me.
He grabbed the tops of my shoulders and urged me toward the door. “Don’t compare us.”
“Don’t you get it?” I screamed, losing my cool. It was Raynard, it was Denny, it was trusting the wrong people and not knowing whether to trust these walls. “I’m trying to tell the truth. I loved Denny.” I shoved at his chest when he got me into the hall. The chained door was to his back. The open kingdom was at mine. “Not everything with him was a lie.”
With a growl, he bent down and forced me over his shoulder. I hung down his back as he stomped through his doorway and into the living area. “It’s too late to tell the truth,” he snarled, throwing me on the couch. “I’m the only truth you’ll ever need.”
I fought with the cushions, and managed to get to my feet just in time for his door to slide closed. With a sigh, I settled on the couch upright. Dash couldn’t disregard my past and then demand we both become the truth. He needed to know that I’d loved Denny once, but that I loved him no more. That because Denny destroyed my love for him, I could have it for Dash now.
How romantic.
I glared at the television. I could see myself in it. I looked like me, but not like me. I felt like me, but not like me. I wasn’t being me. Because I was being a version of myself I’d never known.
Unable to stand myself any longer, I pushed to my feet and returned to Dash’s bedroom. I curled up on his sheets, and let the blackness of his room curl around me and my thoughts. His sheets smelled like our bodies. Like sweat and lust, and shifting bindings. I pressed my face into his pillow and let his sheets envelop me.
Why had Denny gotten rid of me?
It should be obvious. I cheated. I couldn’t give him a child. I disappointed him. But I thought these walls had been obvious as well, and now they weren’t nearly as binding as they had been. My mind was on a track, and all the others weren’t within reach. What if the reasons I thought gave Denny the right to get rid of me, were really only the shove he needed?
Dash’s questions whispered in my head. This time I didn’t pretend to have the answers. What was Denny doing on the west side of Chicago that morning? At the time, he’d been my saving grace. I’d gone from splitting quarters for food, to eating lobster omelets in his loft. We were separated, and then we weren’t. It was Denny all day, Denny all night. My feet touched the ground, and I never wanted to fly away again. But his parents pressured us, his friends pressured us, life pressured us, and when we gave in, we quickly learned that I couldn’t give him the children he wanted.
I burrowed deeper in Dash’s sheets, wanting to fade within the dark depths.
Why did I get the feeling that my questions only had answers I wouldn’t want?
18.
Wrong Choice
I stared into the barrel of a gun.
The man holding it was cloaked in shadow, but I could see the crown insignia on the back of his hand. “Pick,” the man growled.
My body trembled uncontrollably. The smell of urine was thick in the air. My heart was shattering for the last time, and all the pieces it had ever been would never be whole again. “Please, no.”
“Pick!” he screamed, aiming the gun at the two men on their knees. They were blindfolded, but I knew. I’d know those men anywhere. “Black, or red?”
“No.”
“Black or red!”
“No!” I screamed, feeling every ounce of control in my body leave. I wanted to run to them—him—but my hands were tied behind my back.
“If you don’t pick, I will.” He walked up to the two men and put the barrel of the gun right to the forehead of the man with the black cloth over his eyes.
“No, no, not him.” I fought harder.
“Him,” the man said, grinning evilly.
The men weren’t looking, weren’t fighting. They were lifeless. But I knew in my heart that this man wasn’t killing them—him—he was killing me.
“Any last words?” he asked. He cocked his gun back before I could answer.
His trigger fingers pressed down.
Fire exploded from the barrel.
And the blood of my heart sprayed on to the wall. The man with the black scarf over his eyes fell to the ground. The gunman bent over, pulled the scarf away from his eyes, and then stepped out of view. Dash’s butterscotch eyes looked back at me. They were empty. They were absent of the part I loved most. The hunger, the desire, the honesty of what he was feeling. My mouth opened in a soundless gasp.
The second man pulled his blindfold off and pushed to his feet. “Wrong choice, Kinley.”
But I hadn’t chosen, I thought numbly, eyes boring into Dash’s.
The man continued to talk. “The moment he made you choose, you didn’t even look at me.”
How could he tell? Tears streamed down my face. My heart shattered for the last time. “Dash,” I whispered, feeling like the earth itself was reaching into my chest and ripping out my heart. Then I looked Denny in the eye and told him the truth. “You’re right. I chose him. I choose him every single time.” And then I ran for the man with the gun. I caught him unaware, and managed to knock the gun from his hand. I cocked it and pointed it. “This is your fault.”
I pulled the trigger.
And all I could think about was the hunger gone from Dash’s eyes.
The lifelessness, his blood dripping down the wall—that was the true nightmare.
My body crumbled to the ground.
19.
Queen’s Don’t Cry
I woke up gasping.
My hand flew to my chest.
Not because I couldn’t breathe, because it was broken. The room was black around me.
“Kinley?”
I hiccupped on my sob. My hands fumbled in the dark with the sheets. My skin connected with his. The moment we touched, I scrambled in the dark to get to him.
“What’s wrong?” His arms folded around me, holding me to his bare chest.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the mem
ory, but my brain had no problem replaying the image of Dash crumpling to the ground. Sweat moistened my flesh, and my heart was pounding in my ears. I shook my head to his question. To all of the questions. To the truth I felt the moment before I drank the poison. That life without Dash would be forever empty. That I didn’t need to live it to know how desolate and pointless it would have been. That when the man made me choose, Dash’s name was in my heart long before I looked at him. I clung to him, holding on so tightly he groaned.
“What is it?”
“I forgive you,” I whispered.
He took a long time to respond. So long, that by the time his deep voice whispered his reply, I was almost half asleep.
“Thank you, my queen.”
I drifted inside of unconsciousness the way one does when they’re afraid of it. Tensed, unrelaxed. My eyes finally opened for good. I felt entirely unrested.
With a groan, I rolled away from the bindings around my body, but they tightened, pulling me back to their prison. Dash was wrapped so tightly around me, there was nothing between his body and my own. I fit perfectly in the curve of his long length. I lay tucked in his arms as he snored softly in my ear for hours, and though my mind was exhausted, it wandered.
Eventually, Dash shifted. His legs unwound from mine and he rolled onto his back. The moment I was free, I bolted from his bed for the bathroom. After relieving myself, I padded curiously over to his sinks. His vanity wasn’t as long as my own, but it had two sinks, and one side was suspiciously empty of use. I engaged the drawers beneath them using the sensors, and found them only filled with male soaps and toiletries. It comforted me. If Dash hadn’t given me a sink in his bathroom, then he hadn’t wanted me to have one. He wasn’t in my bathroom either. I washed my hands and then snuck out of his room for my own bathroom, brushing my teeth as the sun bled thickly into the room.
As I approached the long train of windows, I realized I couldn’t see Raynard’s office from this side of the kingdom. But the windows were still here. So what could I see?
I scanned the buildings below me with renewed interest. There were so many, but not all of them mattered. Only the ones I could see from where I stood. Wanting a closer look, I sunk to my stomach, and watched them from above. Of all the structures in my sights, only two stuck out. One, because of the height, and another because it was positioned in a way the bars weren’t blocking it. I focused on that one.
If I squinted just right I could read three letters. ING. I frowned at the blue and white letters. “I N G? I N G. I N G.” No matter how I said it, it sounded like the end to a word I was missing. The building was nondescript and brick. Older than all the others, and by the looks of it, the entrance was on the other side of the street. So Dash didn’t mind that. He wanted this part of the building to be visible. Why?
It was a large building, but the parts that gave it away were on the other side. I studied the building for a long time. The streets below me weren’t busy like they usually were, and traffic was low. It must be the weekend. But when I rose to my feet, in the distance, the clouds were the color of fear. This gray and black mixture with splashes of purple and silver. The sight of the sky made my stomach drop. It was majestic to the left of me, and terrifying to the right. Sunlight clashed with the silver clouds. When they collided, Chicago would have one of those late winter storms I’d loved growing up. There was nothing like watching the rain pour down as the bright light of day blinded your eyes. It was beauty inside of a downpour, and I’d always appreciated when they both fought to exist.
“Get away from the window.”
I looked over my shoulder to spy Dash in the doorway. He’d put on black jeans and nothing else. His pale muscled chest was stark against his disheveled dark hair. “Why?”
“We’re the tallest building, surrounded by metal and glass, and you are five feet and seven inches of conduction.”
“How do you know my height?”
He stared at me. “I know everything about you, Kinley.”
I stepped away from the window slowly, my gaze locked with his. “You stalked me before you took me.”
“I watched what was mine exist without me. You are my favorite topic.” He shrugged away from the doorway, calling over his shoulder. “Let’s eat.”
When I rounded the corner, he was waiting for me. His eyes were burning. “You’ll never find your way out of here on your own. Stop looking.”
Either my brain was comfortable with these walls, or I was hearing only fear in his voice. Fear that I would find out where the exit was. If he was afraid, then there was a reason. I thought it had to do with the fact that I didn’t think I was trapped anymore. When my perception changed, so did everything else…
“I wasn’t looking. I was enjoying the view.”
He muttered under his breath behind me as we made our way to the kitchen. “You’re never leaving me. Stop pretending you want a life that I’m not in. I’ll never believe you.” He stomped ahead of me, and wrenched the cupboard open, the muscles in his back taut and coiled.
“Did Denny know you were watching me?” I would do what he did. Ignore him when he spoke of things I did not want to hear.
“Apparently, Denny knew of more than I did.”
For some reason, that knocked me off my hunt. “What’s going to happen now?”
He pulled down a box of what looked like pasta, followed by a jar of bottled marinara. “We watch more closely. They don’t know where we are. As long as it stays that way, we’re fine.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“We run or fight. Whatever keeps you alive.”
“Us. Whatever keeps us alive.”
“That’s what I meant.” He caught my gaze fleetingly before ducking to sift through the pots. Coming away with a large pot, he set to making lunch … or dinner. Whatever meal fed us in this time.
“Us,” I stressed, struggling against the memory of his cold golden eyes. Everything inside of me knew that the moment his eyes lost his hunger, my own lost theirs too. What was life without hunger? Without desire? To want nothing and no one ever again? To never be wanted by someone who had only wanted me? Some part of me had learned how to breathe when Dash came into my office that first day. Not because I never had, but because I’d never needed to. I’d never needed breath more than when I was around Dash.
His hands cradled my face tenderly in his grasp, and in his eyes was nothing but fire and thirst. “I mean me too.”
“You have to mean you too.” My fingers gripped his body, digging desperately into his flesh.
His lips came for me, and when they connected, I showed him how much I needed him the only way I knew how. With hunger. With desperation. With my tongue and my heat and everything that made up this want inside of me for this man. I kissed him so hard, the Dash in my nightmare began to fade away. I held onto him and his tongue, until he was pushing me off.
He held me at bay as he caught his breath. “Go sit down.”
“We could have run away together. If you’d tried—”
“I did try.” He stared into my eyes. “You never would have listened to me. It took you weeks to even admit you slept with me. You’re lying even now, Kinley. You’re still thinking of the way out, while you kiss me like you never want to leave. What I should have done is over. This is what I did. Now sit down while I cook, please.”
“Why are you allowed to know where the exit is and I’m not?” I just wanted to hear him say it.
“Because I don’t want to have to spend the rest of my life chasing you. Go.”
“Say it, Dash.”
“Say what?” He sounded tired suddenly.
“That you don’t trust me. That I love you, but you took me, and no matter what, that’s how it’s going to be. That there’s real danger out there, but there’s insanity in here too.”
“Sit down.” His finger pointed, but his eyes did the real ordering. They dared me to continue. “Why must you fight me every second of every day?”
> His question brought me up short. It was so … normal. So like everything every man before him had ever said. Normally I would scream, hurl insults, give those men everything I didn’t want. But that would be a lie, and I was fresh out of those. “It keeps things interesting.”
He stared at me. “Please sit down so I can cook you lunch.”
“Us lunch.”
“It’s always us, Kinley.”
Then why did only ever say me? Why did Dash think this was only about me? Maybe I wasn’t the only one stuck in a sick pattern. With his eyes on what he wanted, he wasn’t thinking about what he might end up with. And there was a chance it wasn’t me. When his eyes pleaded with me to give in, I did so, but inside I made sure I knew I was doing it because I wanted to.
You’re not a prize.
I glared as he heated the water on the stove. He produced a canister of salt, and deposited a handful into the water. As he waited for the water to boil, he stared into the pan. I stared at him from the bar.
Queen.
“Dash?”
“Hmm?” His gaze was stuck on the pot.
“Can I propose something?”
He turned his glassy gaze on me. Suspicion began to unfold in the glowing depths. “No.” He turned back to his pot.
But I knew he was listening. “You want my compliance, and I want your sanity.”
His fists gripped the counters edge. “Kinley,” he muttered dangerously low. “Do not.”
I held myself against his chilly demand. “Think about it. Imagine if I went along with everything you wanted me to.”
“You won’t. I knew this about you, and I know it still.”
“Now imagine how much more willing I’d be if you were somewhat stable.”
“I’ll pour them all down the sink.”
“Damn it, Dash!” I slammed my fist on the bar. “Why can’t you just try it? Try taking your meds and I’ll try to stop figuring out why you have my bathroom facing a building with the words ING on them.”
“I love you,” he continued, in a low threatening tone. “I do not wish to yell at you. I do not want to scream and fight. I do not want to make this any harder for you. Please don’t provoke me.”
A Beautiful Nightmare: A Novel Page 17