Burning Choice (Trevor's Harem #3)

by Aubrey Parker

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Bridget

  I close Skype then fold back the easel on the tablet’s rear. As instructed, I tap the red icon on the home screen labeled RETURN then press the sleep button to darken the screen. Not sixty seconds later, a middle-aged woman I’ve never seen arrives at my room door with her hands wordlessly extended. I give her the tablet, and she leaves without sound or gesture.

  For some strange reason, I feel sure they’ll burn the tablet now that I’m done with it. You can’t really burn metal and glass, so it’ll have to be a bitch of a fire. But this feels like a destroy-after-using situation, like something from Mission Impossible.

  I wonder what kind of a risk Daniel is taking, slipping me an Internet-enabled tablet. I think back to the time they let me talk to Jenny and realize my conversations with both Jenny and Brandon just now were probably recorded for later review, but it doesn’t matter. This feels different. Daniel knows I know his tricks, and must assume I’d watch what I said. But even that doesn’t truly feel like a threat. I don’t get the impression he’s trying to snoop on me or play me right now. Everything Daniel’s done since the day in the clearing feels like an attempt at apology.

  I could have held my ground, stomping my foot and not accepting the tablet when he came to my door in offering. But Daniel didn’t linger; he probably correctly assumed that I wouldn’t allow him to talk. He simply handed me the table inside a soft felt-type case and said, “Contact whoever you want in whatever way you’d like. All I ask is that you press the red icon to return it when you’re done.” Then, without waiting for my response, he turned and left.

  So I called Brandon. I told him more of the truth than I had before, and was more coherent because Daniel wasn’t eating me out through the call. I didn’t give him names or tell him exactly where we were, but I shot straight beyond that. I was in a contest. Yes, I was safe. Yes, I was here voluntarily. No, he shouldn’t worry, or contact anyone, or butt his nose into my business. We even have a distress signal, Brandon and me. Inspired by and laughing abundantly at a final-season episode of Friends, our panic word became “Bert.” Brandon asked me if I wanted him to let Bert know, and I said no.

  Are you sure, about Bert?

  I’m sure.

  Meaning: No, I’m not being forced to say these things. All is really, truly well.

  Brandon looked concerned when I hung up, but this is far from the first time I’ve done something he finds incomprehensible. My brother keeps saying I don’t know how men look at me, that I’m naive in my own way. That I don’t know the dangers always circling me inside male minds. But in the end he’s always had to accept my judgment rather than enforcing his because I’m a big girl, naive or not.

  Jenny was so relieved to hear from me, she cried. Then I did too because I realized that Daniel’s timing, with the tablet and its forbidden connection, was too neat for coincidence. Now that I’m in the top four, I’ll be leaving this place with enough to solve my life’s largest problem, and plenty left over.

  When I told Jenny that I had enough money to hire this man, this Onyx that she’d learned about, she cried even harder. I could almost see the years of grief and stress melting from her shoulders in the crystal-clear video. It took her five full minutes before she could speak again, and by that time I’d turned my mascara into a fright mask. I’ve never met Linda or Jenny in person. I don’t know these people, but I share their blood. For a girl who grew up with nothing but a comrade-in-arms masquerading as a brother, it apparently matters. Because solving these troubled women’s problems breaks me as much as it makes my heart soar.

  I realize I don’t have any of the banking information needed to start the wire transfer, but at that moment Jenny clicks at something on her end and tells me she has my email with everything.

  I get an unwanted but reassuring feeling, of Daniel looking over my shoulder. Then, quite distinctly, I feel him retreat, and I’m somehow sure that Jenny and I are back to being alone.

  I give her the go-ahead, knowing that tomorrow or the day after, my bank account will be a hell of a lot lighter. And a week or so after that, Linda and Jenny will both have vanished from their old lives forever, emerging somewhere new, untraceable, with new identities.

  Thank you, thank you, Jenny sobs. How can we thank you for getting us away from him?

  I tell her she’s welcome, but they’re hard words to say. I make polite goodbyes, knowing that Jenny will contact me once things are settled, and that appropriate measures to protect those connections will be invisibly taken as part of our half-million-dollar package deal. But still it’s hard to hear Jenny thank me, over and over and over again. I merely endured. She should be thanking Trevor. And Daniel, who somehow kept me here.

  With my check-ins handled and my illicit tablet spirited away, I lie down to sleep. A thousand thoughts stir in my mind, and for a long time I’m caught in the netherland between consciousness and unconsciousness, unable to tell which is precisely true. Is this what life is like for Ivy? I wonder, and it’s the last thing I remember before a procession of pleasant dreams claim me.

  I dream of Linda, in her new home, Jenny by her side. In the dream, they’re both happy, whole, and undamaged by decades of abuse. They live in a small house in an unknown suburb with a red front door and a white picket fence. Linda wears heels and an apron, a dress with rustling undergarments. I imagine myself coming home from a college I never attended, my hair in prepubescent pigtails, dressed in a starched dress shirt and a plaid skirt, books clasped to my chest. My mother greets me at the door, and I rush forward, into her arms, a warm sun behind me.

  I dream of Brandon, at home with Riley. Mason is retiring, and Riley ascends to head the company. She’s more serious by far than when I met her. I imagine her in a smart suit, pretty and powerful, Brandon in a swiveling boardroom chair behind her, his left hand on a leather blotter, a silver Rolex gleaming on his wrist. He’s smiling, the magical way he seldom does, as he watches her. He hasn’t regrown his beard, and for the first time I notice that his old scar, rather than marring his face, folds perfectly into one of his smile lines, vanishing as if the wound never happened.

  And I dream of Daniel.

  In the dream, I’m no longer angry. I don’t feel manipulated or used or tricked or made to look stupid — all the things, in other words, that have buried my every waking thought of him lately. He apologizes to me, though my mind is never precisely clear how the apology goes or even what he’s apologizing for. It’s easy for dreams; they don’t have reality’s rigid proof-centric nature. Daniel says that he’s sorry for the sun and the moon and the stars and the continents and the oceans and the rain and the way copper greens to exposure over time. He says he’s sorry for me and sorry for himself and sorry for us, and somewhere in the middle I imagine all the endings to romantic movies I’ve ever seen and laughed at even though they weren’t comedies, because I used to be caustic and he’s made me soft. And without ever actually coming closer, suddenly I’m dreaming a kiss.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Bridget

  My eyes flutter open. I see the ornate ceiling and moldings above me. Someone is knocking on my door, so I slide out from under the covers and don my robe. I open up, and see the man of my dreams — in the flesh, if not in spirit.

  “Good morning,” he says.

  I sigh.

  “I brought you juice.”

  I look down. I hadn’t noticed the glass in his hand.

  “I’ll get something when I go down for breakfast.” I don’t take the glass.

  Daniel shuffles uncomfortably. “Can I come in?”

  I sigh again, heavier. I step aside and allow him to enter. But I stay by the door, still open, my hand on the jamb.

  “Can we sit?”

  “Daniel … ”

  “Please,” he says.

  We sit. He takes the bed, so I pull the chair from my vanity.

  “I was wrong to do what I did.”

  “Which
time?” I ask.

  His lips work. I know he’s trying to be honest. Most of his lies were the ones that brought me here. Without most of what he did, I wouldn’t have been able to save my mother and sister. Without what he did, I’d never have known the loser from my youth as the man he’s so ably become.

  “The last time,” he says.

  “Not for ticking me all the way up to that moment, though.”

  “Bridget … ”

  “I don’t like lies. Or people making a fool of me.”

  “I did it for your own good.”

  I nod. “You conditioned me to respond like one of Pavlov’s dogs for my own good. Where the response is wanting you to fuck me.”

  He seems to think again, and I know he’s measuring his next words. He doesn’t want to dig the hole any deeper, but he won’t take back things he did with intention just to make me happy, either.

  “It doesn’t work like that. I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t already want to do. I augmented your natural reactions. Made them stronger.”

  “How selfless of you, to find ways to make me wetter on command.”

  “You don’t understand what’s happening here. Nobody does. Even Trevor doesn’t know it all.”

  “Then tell me.”

  He meets my eyes, saying nothing.

  “Right,” I say, rising. “Well, thanks for the juice.” He’s still holding the glass, and I intend to make him take it with him.

  “I can’t. You have to trust me; there’s a reason.”

  “I tried trusting you, Daniel.”

  “You needed to pass, Bridget. You had to advance. Because … you needed the money to help Linda, and I couldn’t send that much without raising flags.”

  I hear every word, but the pause following “because” is loudest. He’s still not telling me the truth. He’s not keeping me here to help Linda. That might be a reason, but it’s not the reason.

  “I don’t know what happened between you and Trevor when you were in the blind spot — ”

  “Because you trust me,” I say, emphasizing the attribute he’s requested from me.

  He pauses then resumes. “But whatever it was, you left somehow dejected. It was obvious. The algorithm would have never advanced you.”

  “Algorithm?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Too bad a dummy like me can’t understand complicated things.”

  He ignores me and goes on. “The only thing I could do was to force a situation I knew you could master with the right help.”

  “I’m not good enough on my own, huh?”

  “That’s not what I said. There are natural defenses in all of us that — ”

  “What about you, Daniel? Do you have ‘natural defenses’ or just us poor little girls?”

  He takes my hand. Curious despite my anger, I let him. He guides my hand to his forearm, hard and cut from years of diligent training.

  “This is my defense,” he says.

  He extends my finger then guides it to trace the lines of his tattoo.

  “And this is my defense. All of it against someone who hurt me, and I tried to hurt in return.”

  His skin under my finger arouses something inside me. Another switch he’s trying to flip inside me. I snatch my hand away.

  “You need to go,” I say.

  “Just hear me out.”

  “I heard you. Now you need to leave.”

  “I’ve never done anything that’s not for you, to help you.”

  “After you brought me here to punish me for being mean to you as a fat kid, you mean.”

  “It’s far from over. You remember how you learned that Caspian White was coming, when you told everyone about it?”

  “That wasn’t my fault. You know I was set up.”

  “He’s here, Bridget. He’s here and — ”

  I clasp my hands dramatically in front of my chest. “Oh, everyone will be so jealous, me getting to meeting the great Caspian White! Can we get a shot of us together for the cover of People?”

  “This is serious. It was a risk to advance you, but if you do exactly as I say, we can — ”

  I march back to the door. “Okay. Now you have to go.”

  He just sits there staring at me, looking stupid.

  “I’m not an idiot, even if I seem like it compared to my fellow competitors. You’re the one who wanted me advanced, right into whatever ‘danger’ you’re now warning me about. And you couldn’t even get that right, could you? Because you thought I had to slobber all over your knob and bend over to take it every which way if I wanted to advance. I didn’t do anything. And who did Trevor cut? Roxy. Who painted the grounds in body fluids after I left you with blue balls.”

  I can tell there’s something in what I’ve said that hits home because Daniel blinks. He can’t connect the dots either, and it’s like he expected me to miss his argument’s big gaping hole.

  “Trevor doesn’t choose who advances.”

  “I don’t give a shit.” I point out the door. “Get out.”

  “You need my help, Bridget. Trust me. Caspian is — ”

  “I didn’t need your help last time. In fact, if I’d taken your ‘help’” — I say the word with heavy irony — “I’d be at home right now. Your precious test was supposed to reward my being a whore, but this here virginal choir girl beat the fuck out of that gap-toothed bitch instead.”

  “Bridget, just — ”

  “Maybe I’ll make it to the top three, and maybe I’ll be eliminated. I don’t give a shit which it is. I don’t want to marry Trevor or whatever happens at the end anyway. I don’t need any more money. I’ve taken care of what I had to, and still have enough to start building my dream life. Not bad for little ol’ Bridget.”

  “You don’t understand. It’s not just about advancement. There are things you’re not con — ”

  “I’m fine on my own.”

  He looks at me for a long moment then finally rises and leaves. I close the door behind him and lean against it.

  “I’m fine on my own,” I whisper. “I always have been.”

  But at some point, Daniel set the glass of orange juice on my end table, and as I stand with my back to the door, my eye finds it.

  “I’ve always been on my own,” I tell myself, meaning it as a pep talk.

  But as I stare at the juice, I can’t help but feel that the same words work better as an epitaph.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Bridget

  I’m knocking on a door I’ve never been through, thinking of how I don’t need to be alone or with a man. It’s a false dichotomy — one too many women fall into, often acting rashly at logic’s expense. I’ve made mistakes in the past when I feared being alone and thought a man was my only alternative. I have the broken bones and faded bruises to prove it.

  I don’t need Daniel. I have my girls, and now we outnumber the opposition three to one.

  Kat arrives beside me.

  “Sorry for late,” she says. “I was making laundry.”

  I turn. On impulse, I say, “Do you remember Blair, from the first round?”

  “Yes. She is Russian.”

  “Did she own a cat?”

  I hear the knob turn. In the split second before Jessica’s door opens, I realize I’ve insufficiently braced myself for what to expect. Jessica isn’t as bold as Kat and nowhere near as shameless as Roxy, but the girl likes sex. Loves sex. It’s a bit embarrassing to be around naked friends, but the only reason I haven’t seen Jessica in action more is because she knows how uncomfortable it makes me. She really would have sex with me if I wanted to cross that line, and after this last bullshit with Daniel, maybe I should. Kat and I practically got it on a few weeks ago. Why not make a virtuous ring, face to slit? Dicks are nothing but trouble.

  So in that half second I prepare myself for a hedonistic spread to match Kat’s acrobatic fuck pad. She probably has gun racks full of high-powered dildos. Man dolls to ride. Multiscreen porn, maybe.
<
br />   But her room knocks me flat. I’m so shocked, I feel like I might pass out.

  Jessica’s room is almost juvenile. So tame, it must be a joke. Everything is pink, from bedspread to pillow to curtains to area rug. A few stuffed animals on a meticulously made bed, and posters on the walls. There’s a pit in the floor filled with fluffy pillows of all colors. But despite the eerily innocent atmosphere, nothing strikes me as creepy or stunted. The effect is somehow sweet instead. It makes me want to give her a hug, to take Jessica home with me and buy her ice cream.

  “You’re kidding,” I say.

  “What?” Jessica looks at me like she honestly doesn’t understand. There’s a case full of books, and I can spot a few titles. They’ve given her the whole Harry Potter series, along with The Golden Compass and its sequels. I think I see Narnia in there, too.

  Kat flops into the pillow pit. She must have been here before because what the fuck with her non-reaction.

  “Never mind. Should I sit on the Hello Kitty chair or the one upholstered with the fabric made to look like cell phones?”

  “Wherever,” Jessica says, as if I’ve asked a perfectly sensible question.

  I jump into the pit with Kat. Pillows fly like feathers. How deep is this thing? I want to swim down like a diver in a pool.

  We screw around for a bit, sharing gossip we’ve pondered in the outside world, talking about our families and how although we’re coming to like it here, we’re also eager to get home. Jessica must have already shown Kat the pillow-on-face-to-fool-the-microphones trick because she takes to that method of conversing naturally as we relax with each other, making things more casual. There’s no obvious line between the personal stuff any of us share with the listeners and the personal stuff we say into pillows and hide, but after an hour I realize we’re doing nothing but talking into foam and feathers, practically buried in the pit, drunk with the fluffy girlishness of it all. It no longer feels strange to shove my face into something while speaking. We’re all hugging pillows, giggling like girls in middle school. This kind of thing is simply what you do at slumber parties.