Nothing. Not even the courtesy of an answer.
“You dropped me off like some discarded pet and then intrude into my life? What is it that you want? If you meant to let me go, then let me go.” I don't mean it, but I know it's the right thing to say.
Silence.
“Damn you,” I growl, just before there's a click on the other line and he's vanished from my world again.
I hang up the phone, wiping my tears with the sleeve of my shirt. I check the bedroom mirror to make sure it's not obvious. Carter will want to know what happened and I don't want to deal with it.
We are seated at Ten 22, a restaurant I used to—and I guess still—love.
Carter is beaming. He thinks this is a breakthrough. I'm trying to be present, but all I can think about is that call. How I hate him and miss our quiet, mad world. How everything around me seems like a prop set. Like I am doll placed in a dollhouse and everything around me feels a little less real than what I had before.
The drive to the restaurant was quiet, but as we're seated, I become aware of all the commotion around me: forks clanking, laughter, plates clapping against tables. Eyes. So many eyes. I feel them staring at me…wondering—
“Do you want something to drink? Vesp?” Carter asks.
I look up and see a half-concerned look on the waiter's face. A waiter I didn't even notice was at the table until that moment.
“Uh…water's fine.”
“We'll also have some chips and guacamole to start.”
I try to drown it all out. But everything is amplified. I have lived in silence for so long, nearly every sound I have heard for the past year the result of a calculated choice.
“You okay?”
“Please don't ask me that. Ask me anything but that,” I groan.
“Um, ok…how was your day?”
I snigger. “Well, I sat in your apartment and watched TV and stared at the walls.”
“Sounds like a fun time,” Carter quips.
“Yeah,” I sigh, running a hand along my face and hair. “How about you?”
As soon as he begins, I check out. The call. What does Sam want? Those fucking women across from us need to shut up. They're so loud. Their laughter, it sounds mocking. Is it about me? Do they know my face from the news?
“Vesp? Vesp?”
Carter's voice lures me back to him.
“Yes?” I ask.
“Are you—” he stops himself. “Sorry. Sorry,” he adds, waving his hands apologetically. “You look beautiful, by the way.”
“Really?” I ask. I don't feel it. I feel hollow and like everyone can see the emptiness on the outside.
“Yes.”
“Have I changed? From the last time you saw me?”
“No, I mean, your hair is longer. But you're you. You still have that smile, those eyes. I used to like looking at you, but now I appreciate it all even more.”
“Thanks.” I let out a gentle smile, but I know that's not true. I have changed. My smile and my eyes haven't. But I have. Carter has to know this. At least somewhere in the back of his mind. I can understand not wanting to admit that the person you loved is in many ways a complete stranger.
“What about me?” he asks.
“No, you're the same. Your hair is shorter though.”
Carter grins. He looks down at the table in a moment of hesitation before looking back at me with determination. “Listen, I don't know if this is good timing. But, I just feel like—Listen, I want to give you something.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a box. I recognize it instantly, his hand holding it just like he did the night I was taken.
“I want you to still have this. I want to pick up where we left off. I don't want some madman to steal this from us. I waited a year and I'll wait however long it takes you until you're ready. The last night I saw you before I almost lost you, it was with the knowledge that you were going to be my wife. And I still feel like that's true.”
He takes my hand, and I don't fight him, letting him slide the ring on the finger that had abandoned it. It fits a little looser now.
“We committed to each other that night and that meant something to me. Still does.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
The women across from us break out into a frenzy of cackles and I startle.
Carter looks worried, but I brush it off and focus my attention back onto him.
“I want this too—”
Another loud eruption from them. It's winding me up, making me anxious. I just need them to shut up. Suddenly trumpets begin to sing. A fucking Mariachi band? I don't remember this place ever having that before. Everything has changed. All these little things. But they aren't so little when you add them up.
My heart thumps against my chest in a futile attempt at escape as all the sounds around me start to blur like movie film gone bad. Then there's a crash, it splits all the sounds apart: the hyena-like laughter of the women, the mariachi crooning away, the rambling voices. I hone in on the crash and see a man helping the waiter with the glasses in a hurry, before heading for the exit.
Is that him? Is that really him?
I mouth his name. Like seeing him is a siren's call, I stand up from the table and follow him towards the door.
“Vesp? Vesp! What are you doing?” Carter asks as he grabs my arm. I look back at Carter and yank it away, by the time I turn back the guy is already gone. I run to the door and push it open but he's gone.
“Dammit!” I snap.
“Vesp!” Carter calls as he joins me outside. “Can you please tell me what's going on?”
“It was him! He was just here!”
“What? Who?” Carter pauses before his moment of realization. “You mean the person who took you?”
I take a frantic breath thinking of an answer that will satisfy all the lies I've told to Carter, but I don't have the energy to keep it up right now. I can barely breathe.
“Did you see where he went?” Carter asks.
“No, you stopped me and I lost him.”
“We should call the cops then.”
“No—no!”
“Why not?”
Because I lied to them about everything. Because now that it's quiet out here and all the noise and music and laughter is gone, I'm not even sure it was him. I didn't even see his face. And even if I did, I told everyone he had a mask on the whole time, so how would I know? And, the most twisted reason of all, I'm not ready to hand him over. He's mine.
“You promised me it would be quiet!” I jab. It's manipulative. It's not me, using his guilt against him, but it's the only way I can stop his prying.
Carter responds with an apologetic stare, his mouth partly agape.
“I—I'm not even sure if it was him. I'm sorry. I think I just had a freak out. Never mind.”
“Hey,” Carter rests his hand on my shoulder. “Let me get the food to go, settle the check, and we'll go home, okay? Why don't you come inside? I can't leave you alone out here.”
I massage my temples, trying to ease the tension between my ears. “I'm fine. It's too loud in there. I'm fine.”
“Okay,” he says softly.
I wait outside in the parking lot observing the occasional person or couple coming or going. It's calm here. Here I can take a breath. I don't think that person I chased after was Sam. I don't even know why I did at the time. My nerves finally settle, the light breeze blowing against me on this warm night aiding in the task. I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a moment. Reminding myself this is just the beginning. Things will get better. They have to.
I open my eyes just as a couple is exiting from their car. The woman is older, maybe mid-forties with leathery skin from too many years sitting out in the sun. The man with her is tall with thin, streaks of bright blond scattered throughout his crown as if he spends his days surfing. He follows her to the walkway that leads to the front door of the restaurant, where I am standing off to the side.
The woman glances up and me, and then she
does it again. Her brow furrowing. She recognizes me. I give her an uncomfortable smile and look off into the distance. She passes me, but just as she's about to go in, she stops.
“Excuse me, but are you the girl from the news? I just had to ask.”
I expected this might happen. My face had been on all the local news for weeks when I was taken, and then again upon my miraculous return. What I didn't expect was how intrusive and violating it would feel for some random person to ask me about it.
What fucking business is it of yours? “No,” I answer.
“Oh, sorry. I just had to ask. You look a lot like her. You know the one that I'm talking about. Right?”
I know. The girl in the pictures. She's gone. She can't even go to a restaurant without seeing him. I look down and fidget with this stupid piece of hair that keeps blowing in my face. “Yeah, I've seen her,” I reply as I tuck the long strand behind my ear.
“It's just amazing she escaped. But poor thing. I can only imagine what she went through.”
Then don't. Anyway, you couldn't possibly. And you have no fucking right to ask.
“Susan,” her husband huffs, a man who is clearly exhausted by his wife's constant need to chat with strangers.
Just then, Carter comes out from the door, observing the scene curiously.
“Come on, Vesp,” he waves at me, trying to bail me out of the conversation he knows I am not interested in having.
The woman's eyes brighten as she hears the name.
“Oh my goodness, you are her.” Her eyes go wide in awe as if she's discovered some rare gem.
“Sue!” her husband calls again, this time holding the door open to express his urgency.
I've run out of the thread of patience. Holding myself together, lying, adjusting to a world that was once familiar but is now a lie. This woman has tugged on a loose thread and has forced my facade to unravel.
How dare she? Doesn't she understand what she's asking? When she asks if I am that girl, she's asking me if I was kidnapped, raped, impregnated. She's asking if I miscarried that man's baby. If I still love my fiancé. If I feel guilt about my brother being stuffed in a home. Why my mother hasn't dropped her trip to come home yet.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” I hiss.
She leans back in disbelief. As if I am the rude one. As if she has the right to be offended.
“Excuse me?” she asks. “I was just trying to wish you well.”
“You have no right to come up to me and ask. My life is none of your business, you blithering dried up piece of jerky.”
Finally, the woman shuts up, frozen in shock as I shoulder past her and towards Carter, who is now close enough to hear my rebuttal.
He's shocked too.
That's not Vesper Rivers. At least not the “before” version. She would have never lost her patience or insulted that woman. She would have gone out of her way to make the blabbing, rude woman feel comfortable, despite how uncomfortable that woman made her feel. She would have made sure everyone was understood around her, because she could absorb the insults, she could handle the hurt feelings, so long as no one else would have to.
I flounce past Carter right to the car. He chases after me, calling my name, but I don't stop until I am at the passenger side door. He gets in and unlocks my door. I sit with a thud, a physical protest to I'm not sure what.
“Vesp, what happened out there? Did she recognize you?” he asks.
“Don't worry about it. I'm fine.”
Carter shakes his head. “You keep telling me not to worry, that you're fine.” He shifts in his seat to lean towards me. “You think I don't know you? That I don't see you're hurting? I know you've been crying in the bathroom. I know you're scared still. But I can't help you if you don't talk to me. I've been giving you space, but I need to understand. What happened to you?”
The question has been lingering in his eyes since I came back. He watches me, as if the story was written on my skin and if he could just study it then he would understand. I haven't told him anything he didn't already know—that I was taken. Because even the version he would expect, the one he would want to hear, it's going to change the way he sees me forever. He'll know that some man fucked me like his personal plaything for months. That he stripped me, tied me up and starved me, so that I had no choice but to give in. That the man in the mask fucked me in places and ways I never let Carter explore. That he came in me just as many times as, if not more, than Carter ever did if I add it all up. Because he was insatiable. He craved me like a starved predator. But I don't even think I can tell that story without the thrill of it all sneaking its way onto my face, making my chest heave with fear and excitement, without getting wet.
And he'll know I grew to crave the man in the mask as much as he craved me. I'll lose Carter because he'll see I'm lost. The hunted is not supposed to yearn for the hunter. What Sam and I have is unnatural. It's aberrant. It's abhorrent.
“You don't want to know…” I rasp.
“Tell me what happened. You can trust me,” he says, brushing away a tear. “You know I am trained to hear this stuff. I can take it. You don't want to see anyone, but you need to talk to someone. You can trust me.” The outside of his hand caresses my cheek, and he finds that strand of hair that keeps escaping and tucks it back for me.
I'm sick. Sam's made me sick. Because just thinking about what I would tell Carter about him—the flashes of his feline eyes, the curves and lines of muscle along his naked body, the scars, like he has been so close to hell that it singed him—I'm throbbing all over; awakened.
I can't tell Carter what happened, not even in curated doses. So I do what I learned from the devil: I lean in and kiss Carter. Not softly, not seeking permission. I take. I won't give him a chance to wonder if this is the right thing. I'll make him feel so good, he'll stop caring about what matters. Just like Sam did to me. I give the affection he has been desperately wishing for when his body stiffens in my presence, holding back the urges to touch me.
I do it to distract him from the questions. To pretend I'm fine. I do it, using Carter as a milquetoast substitute for Sam.
“Stop, Vesp,” he moans, but he doesn't push me away.
I climb on top of Carter, in the driver's seat, and between my legs, I feel that it's working. That he won't ask me any more questions tonight. I just hope I can do this without changing him the way Sam changed me.
Forks and knives clink against burnt orange Fiestaware as we sit in silence around my mother's dinner table. She's back. Finally. We picked her and the doctor up at the airport, where she put on her best show of an emotional reunion. She was so excited to have me back. So excited, in fact, that she made sure to finish out her trip in the Amazon, staying the two extra days after she got word of my return.
She embraced me at the airport, all refreshed and tanned, false tears of joy blurring her eyes. My whole life I thought she cared. I thought she did but just was built from a different material. Maybe, whoever my dad was, I got his painfully strong empathy. But no. I don't think she's capable of it. She's responsible. She would never have left me on someone's porch with a note pinned to me, but that's all I was—am—to her, a responsibility. It's why she put Johnny away. Carter may think it's because it's for the best, but her motivations aren't like Carter's. If it's for the best, that's a convenient side effect.
I let her hug me, I let her fill the car with talk of the trip as I stared out the window and watched the world pass me by. A lump formed in my throat, recalling the way I watched what I could from the windows the day Sam let me go.
Let me go.
Anger has begun to wear off to something else. I could have turned him in. He told me everything about his life. He could have murdered me in that forest and no one would have ever known. But he let me go. I think I am supposed to appreciate that. I'm trying to. But it still feels like he abandoned me.
“Is it not good?” she asks.
“Hmmm?” I look up from the London broil and p
eas I have been scattering along the plate. It's just okay. “It's good,” I answer before she can answer.
“I got it because I know it's your favorite,” she says, like she's trying to prove we have this special bond.
“My favorite is strip steak.” I enjoy the way she uses her napkin to wipe her mouth and shifts in her seat when I say that.
“Well,” she sighs, tilting her head, a little nod to the less than warm greeting I have given her, “I was expecting a little more excitement for us to all be together.”
Ha! Things like this are supposed to bring families together, right? Because I have never felt further from anyone at the table.
“Not everything exists to make your life that much more pleasant,” I snicker.
Her fork and knife crash to the plate in protest.
“That's not what I meant.”
I just keep looking at the limp brown meat and dull peas. Orange is a terrible choice of background for these colors.
“Carter, I picked up some fantastic cigars on the trip. Why don't we share one in the backyard?” Peter, my stepdad, asks.
Carter looks over to me, waiting for a signal. I can feel it, but I don't look up. “Uh, yeah sure,” he accepts hesitantly.
Once the men leave the room, mom dives right in. “Listen, Vesper. I can't imagine what you've gone through but—”
“You haven't even mentioned him. Not once, not his name,” I seethe, still looking at the plate.
“What?”
“Your son.”
She lets out a sigh, like she's been holding this one in all night, wondering when she could let it out.
“Honey, I didn't know how to bring it up. You don't seem in good spirits. I didn't want to upset you.”
I laugh sarcastically, finally meeting her eyes. “You put him away. You got rid of me, and then you were finally able to do the same for him. I bet you were thrilled when you heard I was back.”
“How could you even say such a thing? You really think that? That I didn't want you back?”
“Who the hell waits over a week to come home when they find out their kidnapped, presumed-dead daughter has resurfaced? You think that's normal?”
Take Me With You Page 30