I hotfoot it away, skating along corridors and outside into the freezing air. I jump straight into a cab and almost screech the address of Ruben’s house.
I go into shutdown. It’s the only way.
Once we get where we’re going, I pay the cab driver what he’s owed and ask, “Could you wait here? I need to go in and get some stuff, then I need taking to the airport.”
“Sure, cost you though.”
“No problem.”
Indoors, I race upstairs, rip my dress off and pull on jeans and a sweater instead. I push my feet into old trainers and pull on an extra layer, just in case.
I throw open a suitcase and chuck in my favourite things, including all my cosmetics, underwear, comfy clothes and two paintings that have been propped against the closet wall but which I can’t bear to live without.
I get downstairs and check my bag for my passport, which I discovered the other day lying around in his sock drawer. I pull on my coat and check for my phone, bank cards and ID.
I have everything I need.
The cab is still waiting as I get outside and Ruben is nowhere in sight.
He probably has no idea… he was acting like a cock tonight, puffed up around his friends and inebriated.
At the last minute, I decide to leave my phone behind, tossing it onto the hallway table.
It’s time to go.
I shut the door behind me, post the keys and jump into my taxi.
“Heathrow, mate. Any terminal. You pick.”
I’ll grab a burner phone when I get there and book something online.
I did warn him, but he didn’t listen.
Silly boy.
I’m gone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Love and Barbarity
The taxi drops me off and I tug my small suitcase behind me, heading straight for Terminal Four. It’s a biting night but I’m pumped and the cold’s not registering as it usually would. I get inside and look around me but find the place empty. I look down at my watch and discover it’s midnight. How did it get so late? My mind is a riot of chaos and I don’t really know what I’m doing, only that it’s fairly obvious Ruben strung that woman along and it’s clear he’ll do the same to me. That’s what guys do, right? He could’ve told me it had got serious with her… but no. He kept it from me and that makes me smart for getting out now rather than later.
I’m spinning around, looking for somewhere to get a drink… anywhere… but this place is dead and anyway, my plan is to take an Air France flight, but according to the board, there isn’t another one until tomorrow morning at 5.55.
Shit.
What the fuck am I doing?
I need to take a breath and a bench close by catches my eye, drawing me towards it. I plonk myself down and breathe, head in hands… existing.
Between my second or third deep inhale, I feel someone sit down beside me. The bench groans beneath this other person and then I get that familiar whiff of his zesty cologne, his musky shampoo and a slight tang of red wine.
“You’ve been a very bad girl,” he says, almost growling.
I remain with my head in my hands, but something inside me is sitting upright and with her shoulders back, even if outwardly I’m still in turmoil.
I remain silent, pretending I don’t even know he’s here.
How did he find me?
How did he know I’d run?
“Fine. Be immature, then,” he snarls. “I can’t believe you ran off, tonight of all nights.”
I remove my hands from my face but remain hunched over, not looking at him. In the taxi on the way here, I used several wipes to get rid of my make-up and now there’s really no covering up my true feelings—that’s why Ruben prefers me without the slap on my face, he says.
“Let’s talk about Fiona, shall we?” My voice has gone down a few octaves to that scary tone which doesn’t sound like me. He ought to know I’m the scarier of us two. If he doesn’t by now, he probably never will.
“What about her?” he demands, turning his body on the bench to face me, even though I’m still looking down at the floor. He may be trying to come across as open to discussion, but we both know he’s going to lie through his teeth.
“You can lie about it, or you can tell me the truth,” I retort.
“What happened… in the bathroom?”
“How the fuck did you even get here?” I almost yell, but keep my voice down so as not to alert the night guards.
“I said, what happened in the bathroom at the Savoy?” he spits, his aura emitting frustration.
“And I said you can fucking talk about Fiona or I’ll be on a flight in the morning and you’ll never see me again.”
I finally turn my head to look at him and see he’s radiating wrath and confusion. His hair’s a total disaster and his tie has been loosened to the extreme. It looks like he just got into a punch-up. Maybe he did.
I’ve given him a glimpse into my broken soul, while all he’s given me is that attitude of egotistical entitlement, all because we’re allegedly engaged.
What a joke.
I turn back to staring at the floor.
“We were friends with benefits for a few years, I told you, and about six months ago I called it off.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, then we’re pretty fucked if you don’t.”
Something nasty whirls around inside me, making my tongue lash and my fire spill forth. “Why was she crying down the phone to Jessie tonight? And by the way, that cunt was constantly staring at me from across the table and hates my fucking guts. I’m not putting up with this absolute joke of a life you lead. It was rancid watching it all unfold tonight. All that fake fucking charade and… fuck… your life makes me want to puke.”
There’s silence as I shut my mouth, my heart pounding and his teeth gnashing the only two things I can hear as I let my bile hang in the air.
“I don’t know,” he growls, “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you don’t know. There’s no meaning… there’s just boasting and showing off and eating main courses that cost more than the average weekly shop of a normal family. You’re so full of shite, Ruben and I never thought of you like this. Ever. I thought you were real. Well, I tell you now, I don’t want that life. I lived that life and it spat me out.” I’m shaking as I speak, worried how he sees me, but best he knows now rather than later. “So, I’m leaving, and that’s it. For me that’s always been the plan. I’ve got the money to set up my own business and that’s what I’ve been planning for, because unlike some directionless pricks in this world, I know what I want and I’m leaving this hellhole behind.”
He stands up and punches the air, the atmosphere around us shifting uncomfortably against his brute strength. We finally have the attention of airport staff who are whispering into their earpieces and folding their arms, as though we’ve been given a five-minute warning before we end up spending the night in cells.
I’m still staring at the floor when I see his feet, his body looming right over mine.
“How the hell am I meant to know this is the way you feel when it takes a stunt like this for you to actually tell me this stuff?” Exasperated, he walks away and I think he’s actually gone, but when I lift my head he’s stood at a distance, gurning and spitting.
“I told you the other day, but you didn’t listen.” I keep my voice level but forceful. “I said specifically no engagement, no party, none of any of that, it’s not me. I’m not someone who’s gonna shapeshift into this role you’ve kept open for someone to be your willing companion, someone who’s happy to sit by and pretend to be someone I’m not. All night I was bullshitting and you knew I was too, but you seemed so fucking happy to observe me playing this role and it made me feel physically fucking sick to witness you sucking up to a bunch of peers you probably don’t even like.”
“Take that back,” he demands, chewing his lip furiously. “Okay, maybe Jamie and Aaron are twats, but Anthony is my best mate. He
was my confidante when I didn’t have anyone else to turn to. He’s real even if the others aren’t.”
I have to admit, out of the lot of them, Anthony was my favourite. Not only was he beautiful, he was also polite and the only one not to look at me like I was a passing whim. Yes, he was concerned about me and Ruben, but he actually met my eye and didn’t baulk like the others.
“Yeah, if there was anyone there tonight that I liked, it was Anthony, but even he’s invested, right? Paid to keep your secrets. No wonder he wears diamonds. Signed an NDA, I bet. Paid up to the eyeballs to keep your shit battened down.”
“Freya, watch your tongue.”
“You don’t like it because I’m right, Ruben. You always knew this about me. I call a spade a spade.”
His eye twitches for at least thirty seconds before he chomps out some words. “You’re just being a bitch.”
“Honesty! Wow, will wonders never cease?”
He walks two steps forwards, but not close enough that it looks like he’s forgiven me yet. Still, anyone observing us right now would read this instantly: girl ran off to the airport and guy now trying to get her home. They’re just hoping he eventually achieves it.
“Freya, let me take you home. We’ll talk, and if you still feel aggrieved in the morning, I’ll book you a first-class seat to wherever you wanna go, all right? Just know that I’ll be coming too. I’m not going to stop, no matter what you say or do. I see through this.”
“This? This?” I spit, standing up to face him. “This… is me, Ruben. You’re the one who’s still not listening. You think this thing happening right now” —I point between me and him— “is just a woman being difficult or dodging how she really feels because of hormones or some shit like that. You’re the one who’s totally avoiding. This is what I’m like. I’ve seen and done and witnessed too much. You can’t contend with me. I can bullshit as good as the rest of ’em, but at the end of it all when I go home, I leave the bullshit outside the door and return to my true self indoors. Those people, your so-called friends, live rolling around in their own bull crap, foul and stinking of it, wrapping it around themselves. Fuck that nonsense. Fuck you. Piss off back home and go back to screwing Fiona because she’s easy and does exactly what you want. Go on. Fuck off.”
“Let me kiss you, and then I’ll go,” he says, his voice ragged, his shoulders sagging.
I take a deep breath and know what he’s trying to do, but maybe if I agree, he’ll go. Still, the thought of kissing him right now…
…repulses me.
And I no longer do things I don’t want to. I made that promise to myself a long time ago.
“No,” I grunt, pulling my knees up to my chest.
He sits beside me on the bench, but not as close as before. He’s warier now than he was when he first arrived.
“Fiona piped up a few months ago, told me she wanted more, that’s why I ended it. I told her I didn’t feel the same way, that I thought she understood the deal, but all the time she’d been hoping for more. I was dumb not to realise that, yeah, but I never set out to hurt anyone. She refuses to move on and that’s why she’s being like this, calling Jessie and stuff. And by the way, Jessie just wants me and Fiona together because the two girls are mates and if Fiona is pictured on my arm wearing Jessie’s designs, it looks good for them. Aaron doesn’t give a toss about any of it, whether I’m shagging you or ten women. He couldn’t care less about loyalty. He’s shags this hoe he met abroad, every Tuesday afternoon. He loves Jessie but his hoe gives him what he wants. Don’t you think if I wanted an easy life, I would’ve let you fuck off tonight?” I can’t find any response because I don’t believe a word he says. He continues, “You can’t recklessly leave like this. It’s not fair. You’re not giving me a chance.”
“You haven’t given me chance to take a breath since we got together and now, I learn you strung that woman along for months, it doesn’t make sense—”
“I didn’t spend months with her. It was every now and again, never all night either. It usually involved drink. It was an arrangement.”
I throw my head back laughing. “It’s never an arrangement unless money’s involved. Unless, you were paying her? Maybe you have a certain predilection for women like me, huh?”
He says nothing, biting his tongue.
“You’re pushing me all the time, Ruben. It’s not good for me. Introducing me as your fiancée, revelling in photographers taking our picture… all that tonight… and then that bullshit with Jessie. You need your head testing, presuming I’ll take all this lying down. Also, if you think I’m going to marry someone who’s set to inherit a criminal enterprise, you’re sorely mistaken. I don’t need you or any of that. It’s simple. If I’m with you, it’s because I want you, no other reason. I will never need you and I will never play second fiddle. I learnt long ago to look after number one and I’m pretty good at it. Tying me down because you think that’ll secure me is about the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. You won’t ever pin me down. I won’t ever be controlled.”
He takes my hand forcefully and growls, “If you come home with me now, I’ll punish you and fuck you, hard. I won’t hold back. If you only need me like that, then fuck, let’s keep it simple. I’m fucking sick of you not admitting that you need me.”
“I don’t need you,” I fire back.
“But you need it,” he growls.
I have a thousand responses to that, but only one comes out…
“Yes,” I whisper.
He grabs my bag and I shuffle behind him, willingly getting into a cab that seems to have been waiting outside for him all this time.
If there’s anything I know about Ruben already, he’s a glutton for punishment.
When we get home, he tosses his keys on the sideboard next to my abandoned phone and knocks the operate button so the screen lights up, displaying dozens of missed calls—all probably from him.
I still don’t know how he found me so quickly, but maybe that’s not the point—not that he will ever allow me to find out anyway. Whatever he used to track me, he’ll want to keep it in place so that he can track me again.
“Upstairs, now. Wait for me in bed, naked,” he demands, avoiding my eye.
I’m not frightened as I turn and begin walking up the stairs, but I am angry. When I hear him unzipping my case to check the contents, he curses under his breath and hammers his hand against the wall next to him. I packed nothing that would remind me of him—and the art I packed has probably upset him because it’s two paintings, one of a little girl dancing in ballet shoes, the other of a lioness prowling through long grass. The two sides of me: innocent, then in charge—the huntress. Always a reminder to myself that I only got where I am now through learning how to master the pain of those ballet shoes when I was eight. All those lessons… they brought me to this… and to wherever it is I’m going.
He’ll be hurt I didn’t pack any of my new underwear, nor any of my new dresses, but he doesn’t know that the reason I didn’t pack them was because they would have reminded me of him. Maybe I’m overthinking it all; perhaps he’s hurt that I have the great capacity to feel—as evidenced by my love of art—but that I’m also equally as ruthless.
I’m afraid it’s what happens when someone who has a cavernous depth of emotion gets hurt so many times—you end up becoming as good at hurting other people as much as they’ve hurt you. It’s that horrible human defence mechanism… terrible and inconvenient when in the throes of early love.
I crawl into bed naked as he asked and cover myself with the sheets. Not many minutes later, I hear him climb the stairs and walk into the bathroom. He slams the door and I hear his shoes being thrown around and his belt buckle jangling as he removes his trousers.
There’s running water and then silence.
Is he adopting some sort of KGB technique of psyching me out? I don’t know.
By the time he arrives at the doorway, wearing the sexiest underwear I’ve ever seen on a man—plain and s
imple black boxer shorts—I have a thousand retorts ready on my tongue, ready to wind him up.
He considers me for a second before moving his hands from behind his back to reveal what it is he’s carrying: his belt, his tie and a handkerchief.
“Leave the bed and crawl towards me on your hands and knees. Don’t say a word.”
The ragged and bruised tone of his voice has me enthralled immediately. I’ve wounded and scorched him tonight. He is a pricked heart, a bleeding soul… a man unfurled.
Good. He deserves to hurt. Don’t all men?
I’ll play his game because I’m good at that, but I’ll preserve myself all right—like always.
I slide off the bed and crawl on my hands and knees towards him. When I get close, he demands, “Kneel, now. Eyes down. Don’t look at me. You don’t want me to snap. You’ve coiled me up so tight, you’d better behave. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once I’m kneeling, he tosses the handkerchief to my lap. “Stuff that inside your filthy mouth.”
I do as he says without question.
His next task is using the tie as a blindfold, cutting off my sight.
“Stand,” he demands, which I do. “Walk with your hands out until you come to the wall. When you meet the wall, spread your legs and lean into the wall with your hands flat against it.”
I don’t hesitate and within just a few steps, I’m at the wall.
“You don’t deserve a safe word. If you want to stop, you have to fall to your knees. Understand?”
I nod that I understand.
I brace myself against the wall and listen to him following me. I only have that image in my mind of him wearing black boxers against tanned, taut skin. He never wears underwear, but perhaps tonight he knew he’d need to exhibit some control. Pity.
I hear him folding the belt and testing its strength between his hands, psychological mind games which only engage me, not frighten me.
This… I understand.
The first scorching thwack almost makes me fall to my knees. It’s like fire threatening to split open the skin across the backs of my legs, a frenzy of energy burning me up, deep from within my soul. No lover has ever hit me before. They’ve always been too scared to. The reason I ended up in hospital that time… well, it was self-inflicted, but I’ll not tell Ruben about that. He might get scared… do something stupid. He thinks he can cope with me, but really, he can’t. He couldn’t ever cope with the things that go on inside my head.
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