by Emme Rollins, Julia Kent, Anna Antonia, Helena Newbury, Aubrey Rose
“I’m sorry I pushed.” Under the deep, bass rumble of his voice, I could hear the fear. He knew he’d come within a hair’s breadth of losing me. We were still balanced on the edge of the precipice, stable only because we’d stopped moving. Somehow, we had to claw our way back to safety, and I knew it was going to have to be me who did most of the talking. When he’d tried to guess at the reasons, that had just annoyed me more. I had to explain it to him.
I took a deep breath and looked straight into his eyes, and that seemed to calm me.
“It’s not for attention. It’s not to hurt myself. I mean, it is hurting myself, but that’s not why I do it.” I stopped and thought, and marveled at his self-control. I knew he had a million questions, but he was letting me do it at my own pace. “It’s not about pain—it doesn’t even hurt much. It’s not about damaging myself.” I took another deep, shuddering breath. “It’s...about control, I guess. Having something real that I can hang onto. Something stable and solid that will always be there.”
I stopped for a second because I could see the question in his eyes. “Yes. You’re like that: you’re solid and real. That’s why I’d stopped doing it, but—” My throat tightened up. “I don’t want you to think that—that you have to”—I sniffed—“I don’t want to put that on you and make you feel like—”
Chapter Thirty One
Darrell
I woke up sweating and gasping, the hot desert air still in my lungs. She was asleep next to me, naked—I’d managed to pull the sheets off both of us during my nightmare and she was sleepily protesting at the sudden cold.
I allowed myself one long look at her body’s smooth perfection and then covered her up and sat there for a while, until I was sure she was fully asleep. Then I pulled on some jeans and padded downstairs. I could feel the rage building up inside, but I’d long ago learned how to clamp down on it until I reached the workshop.
When I was safely down there, I turned the music up loud, pulled the sheet off the missile and went to work. I could hear the screams in my head even over the music and smell the sickly scents of the burning wreckage. I moved faster and faster, my fingers barely able to keep up with my brain’s commands. I’d been a fool to even think about going against this, to fight with Carol. However much I loved Natasha, it didn’t change a damn thing that had happened. Mom and Dad were still dead, and I wasn’t going to forget them. I had a job to do.
I’d finally figured it out, the strength of the nightmare forcing my brain to make that last, vital connection. I could see it, as clearly as if I’d already built it. The missile’s internal parts, even its fuel tanks, strung on cables so they could move inside it, allowing it to shift its weight. It would be able to curve and dodge in the air as gracefully as a bird—as gracefully as her.
I thought of her as I worked, and she did a better job than the music or the physical work at pushing the memories back. I’d almost driven her away, with my questions and my need to understand everything, to fix everything. I knew now she was running from something in her past, something that maybe, eventually, she could share with me. Maybe we weren’t so different. I could have easily wound up clinging on to self-harming, or alcohol, or something equally bad. I’d been lucky that I’d found this way of venting my anger—
I froze.
Had I, though? Had I really been lucky? Natasha only hurt herself. How many was I hurting, every time I built something? How many would this new creation kill?
I killed the music and stood there staring at the missile. A month before, I would have been proud of it, reveled in its brutal efficiency. Now it made me sick. I was creating something that couldn’t be undone, something that would destroy cities, orphan children. I was twenty-four and my entire career to date had been spent making things that killed. Was this going to be my life?
Carol’s words in my head. You’re a hero.
Was I? Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure.
Chapter Thirty Two
Natasha
I woke naked and alone in his bed, the pre-dawn light making the curtains glow. I reached out a hand and the sheets where he’d lain were cold. He’d been gone for hours.
My underwear was a sodden pile on the bathroom floor and my dress was out by the hot tub. I wrapped a sheet around me instead and crept downstairs, blinking myself gradually awake. He wasn’t in the kitchen making a snack, or in the lounge watching TV. He wouldn’t leave without saying something...would he?
Then I saw the elevator door. The indicator above it showed that the lift was down at the workshop. I sighed. The work, again—in the middle of the night? I thought about leaving him to it. I didn’t want to seem like I was trying to possess him, and I knew that this was how he lived. I’d been angry when he’d tried to stop me cutting. What right did I have to stop him working, especially if—as I suspected—throwing himself into his work was his way of coping with his demons?
But he’d tried to help me, and I should try to help him. Wasn’t it the duty of the wife or girlfriend to drag her man to bed when he pushed himself too hard?
I rode the elevator down, the trip underground weirdly claustrophobic without him. When the doors opened, he was still in the process of throwing a sheet over his mystery creation. I got just a glimpse of something smooth and white.
“Hi.” He sounded abashed. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
I shook my head. “No, but...it’s nearly morning. How long have you been down here?”
He looked at his feet. “I don’t know. A while.” He sighed. “Sometimes I can’t sleep, you know?” He looked exhausted, and somehow lost.
I knew then that I’d been right—the work was his way of escaping from whatever his dreams unearthed. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I saw him hesitate, and held my breath. But he shook his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
I nodded and held out my hand. “Come back to bed.”
He shook his head. “I’ll just toss and turn and disturb you. I don’t think I could sleep right now. You go ahead.” And he turned away.
I was new to the girlfriend thing, but I was pretty sure what I was meant to do at that point. I let go of the sheet and felt it unwind from my body, dropping to the floor with a soft rustle of fabric. He turned at the sound and gaped at me.
“I didn’t say you had to sleep,” I told him, and held out my hand again. This time, he took it.
* * * *
Back upstairs, it was languid and tender, his body like rock beneath me as I straddled him, his hands on my breasts as he drove his hips up into me.
When I woke again, it was morning and this time he was sleeping soundly, my head on his chest. I lay there for a while, enjoying the moment, but eventually my growling stomach nudged me in the direction of coffee and food. Fortunately I’d thought to leave my panties on the heated towel rail in the bathroom when we’d come back upstairs, and they were just about dry. I teamed them with one of Darrell’s t-shirts, and while the result wasn’t exactly fashionable, it was better than walking around naked.
Downstairs, the morning light was blasting through the windows: when we’d dashed inside, we’d been in too much of a hurry to lower the blinds. I winced at the muddy footprints that led from the front door up the stairs.
In the kitchen, I fumbled around for milk and mugs and figured out the coffee machine, then discovered there was no coffee left. I sighed and rested my forehead against the cupboard door, remembering using the last of it. I needed coffee. I had the second audition at two that afternoon, and classes before that. I had to find something dry to wear, say goodbye to Darrell and get back into the city, fast. The thought of doing all that in my current sleepy state didn’t bear thinking about.
Then I remembered the coffee pot down in the workshop and sighed in relief. I’d make a couple of mugs and we could drink it while we waited for a cab.
I took the milk and mugs downstairs and—yes!—there was coffee. I waited for the machine to do its thing, yawning and glancing idly aro
und. It was a few minutes before my eyes fell on Darrell’s project, hidden beneath its sheet.
Chapter Thirty Three
Darrell
I’ll never be sure what woke me. I’d been in the soundest sleep I’d enjoyed for years, Natasha’s head cradled on my chest. And then suddenly, something was wrong and I was struggling back up to consciousness, my brain still fuddled. She wasn’t there. Okay, no big deal—it looked like it was morning. So why did I feel so unsettled?
The bathroom was empty. I pulled my jeans back on and headed downstairs, calling her name. Had she left already, rushing back to Fenbrook for classes? Wouldn’t she have woken me, or at least left a note?
In the kitchen I saw the cupboard open, the coffee machine standing ready but unused. Why had she—
God, no.
I rushed back into the hallway. We’d taken the elevator back up just a few hours ago, so it should have been right there on the ground floor. But however much I willed it, the indicator above the door said it was down at the workshop.
I thumped the elevator button as hard as I could, as if that would make it come faster.
Chapter Thirty Four
Natasha
It seemed to draw me to it. Partly it was that outburst of Carol’s—I needed to understand what had happened between them to make her so angry. Partly it was jealousy. I knew he struggled to put anything, including me, ahead of his work. What was it that had him so deeply ensnared, and why did he choose it, and not drugs or sex or one of a million other things, to escape into? And partly it was just wanting to see what he did—he got to see my work every day, but aside from the whiteboard I’d never seen the results of his efforts.
I figured I’d take a look and never tell him. A little voice inside me whispered that maybe that’s exactly what he’d thought, when he’d opened the cigarette case. But I squashed that voice—it was just his work, for God’s sake. It wasn’t some deep dark secret. How bad could it be?
I was trying to work out what it was as I approached, and some of my curiosity was because I knew that it was inspired by me—however crazy that sounded.
I tried to think about all the things that a highly-paid designer might design. A car? I’d heard of car designers being inspired by nature and animals. A car inspired by a woman—by how a dancer moved—didn’t sound completely nuts, although I had visions of him pointing to flaring wheel arches, telling me they were based on my hips, and me slapping him. But the thing only looked to be about eight feet long—too small for a car.
Suddenly it clicked. A motorbike! Of course—he was into bikes, after all. I’d seen the Ducati parked outside the mansion, that first time I’d visited. He’d built some sort of super-fast sports bike. And weren’t bikes all about leaning into corners and using your weight to stabilize you? That would make perfect sense.
I smiled to myself. I had a boyfriend who designed cool motorbikes. Maybe he’d take me for a ride on it, when it was finished. Then I caught my breath. Maybe he’d even name it after me! Every dancer knows the story of Ana Pavlova, and how a chef named the dessert after her.
My hand was already lifting the sheet to confirm my guess when I heard the elevator doors open behind me.
“Natasha, no!”
I turned to smile at him and was amazed at how worried he looked. Perhaps he didn’t want me to see it before it was finished, like an artist with a portrait. My smile widened. How like him, to want everything to be perfect. It’s okay, I started to say, I know what it is.
I turned back to the thing as the sheet slid off.
* * * *
When I was six, my dad had taken me on a backwoods hike with the aim of seeing some nature. We’d seen precisely nothing for about three hours and then, just as we were walking back to the car, he’d pointed something out in the sky. A hawk, wheeling and circling effortlessly, heartbreakingly beautiful, its feathers gleaming in the late afternoon sun. And then it had dived with astonishing speed and skimmed the ground not twenty feet from us, and as it rose it had some tiny, helpless animal in its beak, still twitching as it was carried aloft. I’d cried, while my Dad had tried to explain to me about nature, red in tooth and claw.
Now, looking at the thing Darrell had built, I got the same feeling. It was beautiful and utterly horrific.
The casing was snow white and glossy, and every surface on the long body seemed to be a precise, flowing curve leading to the fins at the back. The side of the thing was open, and inside was what looked like the wires of a piano, stretched taut and shining along its length, with gleaming black cylinders strung along them like an abacus. More cylinders were stacked on the floor—he’d been working on that part, I realized, when I dragged him back to bed.
Darrell came to stand behind me. His hands settled on my arms, but my body was tense and unyielding under his touch.
“Tell me it’s something else,” I said.
He stayed silent, and I swallowed.
“It’s only for defense. Right? One of those missiles that shoots down other missiles.” My voice was thin and strained, almost lost in the huge room.
He didn’t speak, didn’t even shake his head. He just rested his brow against the back of my head. I wanted to understand. I wanted to find a way for it to be okay.
“What does it do?” I swallowed. “What does it...destroy?”
He took a deep breath and then let it out. When he spoke, it sounded like each word cut him like a knife. “The nose cone is designed to hold a 300 kiloton warhead.”
I’d heard that word kiloton on old war documentaries. I knew what it meant, but I had to be sure. “What will that do?”
He swallowed. “Destroy a city. This is one of six—we call them MIRVs—that sit inside a....” He broke off and sighed. I knew, somehow, that he’d closed his eyes behind me, unable to look anymore. “Six of these will eventually sit inside the main missile. Six cities.”
I was shaking. I didn’t know when I’d started, but I couldn’t stop. “Tell me...tell me there’s none of me in there.” I tried to swallow. “Tell me you’re working on something else as well. Tell me—” I could feel myself starting to cry, and broke off.
He walked around me and stood next to it, the scientist next to his monster. In his eyes, I could see how much pain this was causing him, but I could see he was desperate to give me the truth, too. He pointed to the guts of it, the black cylinders on their piano wires. “I made it able to shift its weight. It can twist by pulling all the weight suddenly to one side, or change course by pulling all the weight forward or back.”
“Just like me,” I said tightly.
He nodded.
I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks and balled my hands into fists, because I didn’t want him to see me cry. I wanted to be strong, dammit. I wanted him to know how angry I was.
“I don’t...” I shook my head. “I don’t want to be part of...this.”
He put his hands up in defense. “I didn’t mean to hurt you—”
“You lied to me. You got me in here to dance and the whole time you were building this.” I shook my head. “What did you think my reaction was going to be?” I was rewinding in my head through everything that had happened. “This is where all the money comes from? This is what Carol and you fought over?” Suddenly the peacenik comment made sense. “She thought I knew, didn’t she? She thought I was dragging you away from it.”
“We fought because I was having doubts. Ever since you came along.” His voice was tight now, growing angry. He’d stepped between me and the missile, as if to protect it.
“Well, they didn’t stop you, did they?” I could hear the bitterness in my voice and hated it, but at that moment, I hated him for lying to me even more.
“It’s not that simple.”
I thought I’d misheard. “Yes it is, Darrell! God...yes it is! Building this stuff, thinking up ways to destroy cities—yes, that’s wrong! Why is that even a question for you?”
“It isn’t. That. Simple.” He grated
the words out. I could see that vicious anger that I’d glimpsed when he’d had his nightmare clawing its way to the surface, but I was past caring.
“Then tell me!” I was still crying, but the tears were silent and cold now, frozen by the fear that I was about to lose him forever. Because after this, I didn’t see how we could possibly go on. “Tell me! Tell me your good reason for doing this!”
And so, head down and his black hair flopping over his eyes, he told me. He told me about the day he’d watched his parents die. He told me about coming back to the US and embarking on his path of revenge, building something to strike back at the people who’d ripped his mom and dad from him. He told me about Carol, about how she’d told him he was doing the right thing and encouraged him to continue after that first time. She’d even helped him choose the mansion and arranged the contractors to build his workshop.
I stood there listening in growing horror. There were very few people I actually hated, but this woman who’d used and corrupted him, forced his growth in a direction that suited her...I hated her more than anyone I’d ever known.
When I’d demanded an explanation, I hadn’t thought there was anything he could say that would justify what he’d done. I just wanted to hear his side of it—I figured I owed him that. But as he told me, I did understand. I could see exactly why he’d done it. I just had no idea if I could save him.
When he’d finished, we both stood there in silence for a moment. I knew I had to choose my words carefully, even as I reeled in shock. “Darrell...I’m sorry.”
He nodded. I could see he was trying not to cry. I’d just forced him to relive it all.
“But....” I stepped in close and put my hands on his chest. “Darrell, you have to see, she’s using you. She should never have let you get into this.”
“It was my choice. I went to her with my first design.” A defensive note in his voice.
“You were nineteen! And in the middle of grieving! She should have made you get help—counseling, something.”