Kismet

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  The light changes green and Ruben hugs the traffic in front of us, cool as a cucumber. However, just as we’re approaching the next set of traffic lights which are about to turn red, he yells, “Hold on!”

  He skids around the cars in front and peels away, gunning the machine midway between an amber and a red, leaving behind the traffic we were just seconds ago held hostage by.

  For a while as he takes the streets at a leisurely pace, it seems as if we’re no longer being pursued. He opens his visor and tells me, “Don’t get comfortable, Freya. My dad’s network is inexhaustible, remember?”

  “Where are we going?” I yell, because I don’t think I could spend long hours stuck on this bike. I want to get wherever it is we’re going—fast.

  “Not far,” he yells, before flipping his visor back down.

  As we approach the outer suburbs of London and the signposts for various motorways become inescapable, there’s another car that catches our attention—this time a sporty vehicle—which swings out of a side street as soon as it spots us. It hangs back three cars behind us but the guy inside is wearing dark shades and has been told to get onto us, or else. I think Ruben’s manoeuvre earlier hasn’t helped our situation; we’re not even out of London yet and he’s made it clear our task today is to get away free and clear.

  “Trust me, Freya,” Ruben growls, and I feel like I need to be prepared… because something’s coming.

  We roll along with the traffic and make it to Wembley, finding ourselves on a congested three-lane carriageway which has houses on either side. Only in London…

  Ruben coasts for a long time, gliding along beside piles of cars on all sides. I’m glad my helmet has a filter or I’d be inhaling litres of carbon dioxide right now.

  We’re coming up to another set of traffic lights when the light turns red, but rather than remain we are, he works his way around the four of five cars in front and places himself at the front of the queue—to the disdain of many around us shouting “wanker” or “cunt” through their windows. I know now that it’s time to prepare myself for whatever masterstroke Ruben has planned, given an empty carriageway lies ahead of us—as if this has all been timed to perfection.

  As soon as the light turns green, we’re dust in the eyes of everyone behind us. It’s exhilarating as the motorcycle engine squeals and growls, its power unleashed. Ruben floors the bike until decelerating just as fast, pulling into a parking bay outside someone’s house that has been cordoned off with cones.

  There are two people waiting by the kerb, dressed just the same as Ruben and I. She even has the same rucksack.

  It all happens so fast.

  A man built like Ruben grabs the handlebars as Ruben slides off the bike, then his hands are on my waist pulling me and my rucksack off.

  My replacement throws herself onto the back and the lookalikes are gone, still ahead of the traffic we left behind only seconds ago and which is now catching up. Ruben carries me and we duck behind some parked cars, just as a sports car comes racing by, a fake police siren having been added to the dashboard since we last saw him.

  He unbuckles his helmet and I do mine at the same time.

  “Good girl,” he says, “let’s get out of here.”

  It’s one thing giving off a demeanour of ‘speed will get us out of here’ but I bet they never anticipated Ruben to have a plan as well.

  He starts tearing at the Velcro of his suit to get it off, all while encouraging me to remain behind the cars just in case there are any stragglers. We’re both out of our leathers when he presses a car key and a beep right next to us lets us know which vehicle is ours to take. Ruben pulls on a baseball cap from his pocket and tosses a woollen hat at me from his other pocket. We throw our stuff onto the backseat of what I realise is an Audi R8. His vehicle? Or one of his friends’? I really don’t care, as long as it takes us out of here.

  “Let’s fuck off, then,” he growls, taking the wheel before pulling out onto the empty road again. By virtue of the complex traffic light system you have to go through before reaching this stretch which leads you to the motorway, it’s probably the only bit of road in London that isn’t constantly congested. How clever he knew of this.

  “Was there nothing in the saddlebags we needed?” I ask him.

  “Just toilet rolls,” he says, giving a chuckle.

  “And what if we were clocked speeding? You were doing a ton then in a 30. Aren’t those two gonna end up pulled over?”

  “It’s not our problem. Besides, they will take it steady now until reaching Heathrow, where they will casually remove their helmets and leave Mr Sports Car severely disappointed,” he tells me. “Let’s just say, I threw a lot of money at it and we’re free now.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Third Date – Two Years Ago

  (RUBEN)

  The first time we met was at Freddie’s wedding, then there was our first date in Soho, then our second where she went all reverse psychology on me. Tonight was our fourth meeting, at the Soho pub again. This time I arrived before her and ordered the drinks, ready and waiting. I’d chosen this meeting place for a reason—there was a back door I favoured that few people used because it meant knowing your way around a warren of tiny alleyways to get there. If someone was following me, I could lose them easily, and so Carver’s on Frith Street was fast becoming mine and Freya’s regular boozer.

  I only started wearing my hair long and grew a beard after quitting football and there was a reason for that—so nobody would recognise me, or if they did, I’d seem familiar but they wouldn’t be able to place me so fast. So far nobody on Carver’s staff had bat an eyelid. Saying that, famous people probably came through here all the time.

  All thoughts evaporated when Freya arrived at our usual table, back to wearing hot clothes and a hotter smile. Like a warm breeze, she brought colour to my cheeks and glorious scents into my nostrils. She was all light to my eyes and succour for the soul. I’d bedded a thousand different women but Freya had a dark sense of humour and the sort of understated style that had my tongue hanging out.

  “Hey,” I greeted her, cupping her elbow and brushing my lips across her cheek, though what I really wanted was to pull her close, feel her breasts against my body and her breath catch in her throat as I tucked my hand under her hair and kissed her plump mouth.

  Shit, I was doomed.

  She glugged a load of wine but this time, I didn’t make a comment about her having had a long day or anything like that. Maybe she was nervous, but if I so much as even brought a thought like that into the equation, I knew I’d never see her again. She was going to run at some point, that was clear. Whether while we remained friends, or in the future when I finally judged it time to make her mine, she’d try to run, I knew she would. In her head, she’d already run away from me a thousand times, but what she didn’t know was that I’d already imagined myself thwarting each and every single attempt.

  It was going to be hard to even speak. Not only was I aware of her analysing every word that came out of my mouth, but I was also straining my jeans. Her top was low cut and she had the most perfect breasts, big and bouncy and… fuck, I imagined myself being drowned by her breasts.

  “Do you wanna talk about Fiona, then?” she challenged, but we both knew she hadn’t trekked out here just to wind me up. She wanted to prove herself right—that I was the same as all the others—but she also enjoyed my company and was here for that, perhaps also because she liked the look of me. Maybe I was the same as every other guy out there, but I had been handed the extraordinary luck of finally finding my perfect muse and I didn’t intend on losing this one. If it hadn’t been football, it certainly would have been life as a penniless artist (apart from handouts from Mum, obviously).

  “I wanna talk about this one I hammered my cock into on the Embankment one dark and dreary winter’s night…”

  She gulped and I saw I had her attention.

  “…we could have been c
aught at any moment but the fog was dense and I had my hand over her mouth. She’d been touching herself underneath the table of the bar we’d just vacated and there was no need for foreplay. She spread her legs so wide, I thought she’d dislocated her hips or something. Her pussy squelched like I was thudding my cock into a big bowl of school-dinner custard.”

  Freya’s eyes widened, and though she would never admit it—not even to herself—she was getting off on my confessions. Whether now or later, they would become fodder for her own imagination to run riot. She could try to kid herself all she wanted, but we both knew she was interested in finding out what kind of lover I would be.

  “Then I came all over her skirt and she had to walk home covered in cum. I made sure she got to her door, but never saw her again,” I admitted, searching Freya’s vacant eyes, though undoubtedly other things were going on beneath the surface.

  “Nice,” she whispered, still as though she were indifferent.

  “And what about you? What did you get up to this week?”

  “Oh,” she said, twirling her fingers in her hair, “I met a man down the pub and fucked him in the loos. Same old. No word from Mark. Think he got the message.”

  Unlike my confessions, hers were never detailed.

  Did she know my admissions were of sexual experiences long ago entertained? Or did she really believe I was fucking around, even now I’d met her?

  Sure, when I got really desperate and just needed to hump another human being, I called Fiona, rolled on a condom, did the business and watched as she left my house satisfied and blissfully pleasured. But that wasn’t anything. It was just sex. I hardly ever even kissed Fiona, unless she was persistent and needed to be kissed to become wet.

  The sad thing was that I had a feeling Freya was deadly serious about her sexual appetites and random men on random nights. I also knew she hadn’t admitted to herself why she’d dumped Mark. It did seem coincidental that she met me, then dumped him.

  This was a girl who was complex, in pain and completely mysterious. Something had to have happened in her past, I could almost taste it whenever she spoke—that bitterness she carried around, such disdain for men—but I also figured she needed company or else why seek out random fucks? It might have been a bad boyfriend or something, but this girl had been traumatised by whatever had gone on in the past. I knew this because our chemistry was through the roof, and even if I wasn’t in a position yet to make a move, she could have but so far, she hadn’t either.

  I could have had her that night—in fact, I should have had her that night as the kismet was screaming in my ear to act on it—but I had so much to consider that lay outside of the context of me and her.

  When I was living in Paris and met a woman I liked, it was glorious because my father wasn’t in my life then and we could go about our business in whatever way we pleased. We didn’t have his interference which was great, but then she was cruelly taken from me and it put everything into perspective. Not long after that, Laurent was taken too and everything started closing in on me. With Laurent dead and our half-brother (the suspect) having been cast out, my father told me in no uncertain terms it was time for me to accept that in time, I would be required to step up to the plate and take over the empire. That’s why I really quit football, to appease my father that I would one day get bored of unemployment and join him. He didn’t know that I was secretly planning a way out. No way would I take up the family business.

  Escaping my inheritance and making it possible for me and Freya to be together were one and the same. My father was determined to pick a bride for me—preferably the daughter of a business partner, someone who could be trusted, someone uncomplicated. Someone like Fiona, who was helpful twofold because she not only gave me a hole or two to use sometimes, but she also kept my father off my back, being the daughter of Joey the Great and all.

  Back to our third date… Freya twirled her hair, staring into space after my confession about the woman on the Embankment.

  “How was work this week, anyway?” she asked, and I immediately went blank.

  Work… work… she wanted to know about my fucking work. It wasn’t the right time yet to tell her anything about my work; in all honesty, I didn’t know if I would ever be able to tell her about my work. If I were to escape my father and take Freya with me, I’d have to keep lying to her because if the past had taught me anything, my father would hurt anyone who stuck their nose in where it wasn’t wanted.

  “Oh, I had this really difficult client this week,” I started to tell her, making something up, “you know, when nothing is ever enough and even when you tell the people above you about your difficulties, they don’t give a shit and tell you to suck it up. That.”

  “Middle management… stinks, right?” Her eyes sparkled and she looked animated, happy to have a chance to offload. “I had almost the exact same thing this week. A customer wouldn’t have it that we didn’t have vegan alternatives for breakfast and when I took it to the kitchen about introducing a bit more variety, I got a blank stare and they turned their back on me. And then at a big management meeting with the people I answer to, it was brought up about our lack of variety on the food front and I got it in the neck when someone showed me a Trip Advisor review which mentioned this and that I, the hotel manager, had apparently apologised and said, ‘Sorry but the kitchen doesn’t cater to vegans.’ Which is true, by the way, but it got twisted as if it’s my fault, when the truth is, they just don’t want to cook vegan food or even attempt it. Seriously, the people I manage are so strange. It’s what you get for working in an old-fashioned hotel, I suppose. Especially when the demand for bacon and sausage seems to outweigh the demand for beetroot strips, but I guess… angry people will vent and I will get it in the neck.” She looked at me with a dark eyebrow raised and grinned. “Fuckers. Just have to try not to care most of the time because everyone needs to vent and it appears to be at us, the people stuck in the middle, absorbing everyone else’s bullshit.”

  “Yeah, there are some cunts out there.”

  We both laughed and I decided I was in love. Her laugh alone had me enthralled, the way she almost cackled, even half-snorted but didn’t care what people around us thought. At work, Freya probably wore a mask of cool, composed and put together, but behind it she really actually cared, and it irritated her that she couldn’t save the world. I wanted to tell her I’d love to save the world for her, but she’d just think I was a giant ninny. What was worse, I wanted to tell her I’d been dreaming about taking her mouth with my cock and watching her beautiful face swallow me, but those were the sorts of admissions that could get a bloke arrested.

  I allowed her to rabbit on about her work that evening, over several glasses of wine and a few whiskeys for me. It spoke volumes that she didn’t much care for telling me about her sex life, but described her work life in great detail, from the many bodily fluids discovered on a mattress by a forensic team who had to visit the hotel when a man died mysteriously on a hotel bed, to the quirky students passing through who worked in the restaurant, in housekeeping or behind the bar. Freya told me she’d taken requests from a fair few famous people wanting to walk in and out of the place anonymously, just so they had a room for the night where they could eat rubbish in their sweats without a PA or trainer or publicist or whoever reminding them of all the hard work they’d put in and not to spoil it with room-service pizza and a bag of skittles.

  The thing I was beginning to like most about Freya was that she saw the world. Akin to Dante’s Inferno, she witnessed the various circles of hell people allowed themselves to be held captive by day after day, and yet she seemed to pity them not condemn them, as if she’d been there herself a time or two before. Something about that told me she really would get where I was coming from in regards to my father, if only I was in a position to tell her without one of us getting our heads blown off.

  I would have to admire her from afar. I wanted her but I had no choice, even though she was the most desirable woma
n I had ever met. Instead of absorbing the stress of people who came through her doors with complaint after complaint, she recognised there was really nothing she could do except be genial and calm and let it all wash over her. A skill like that had to have been developed out of some hardship she’d borne in her life and overcome. This affinity I was growing to believe was between us made me feel so strongly that we were meant for one another.

  God, I wanted to hold her tight and feel her body shiver against mine, taste her skin, her lips, her pussy, her ass… buy her diamonds and satin lingerie and feed her homecooked meals, take baths with her… travel, have kids, get married. I really wanted her. It was months before I even thought about any of this with Gia, but with Freya it was almost instant.

  I needed time, that was all.

  Just time…

  …because he had to die one day, right?

  If he could manipulate her, he would, just to get at me.

  He’d use her to make me do his bidding.

  I’d have to wait until he was out of the way.

  “D’ya know? I don’t even know your last name,” she laughed. “Mine’s Carter, by the way. Freya Carter.”

  It was a good sign that she was asking to know more about me, but shit, my dad knew a few Carters, I was sure of it. I remembered… at the wedding… she told me she’s a distant cousin of Debbie’s.

  “I’m Ruben Kitchener,” I said, extending my hand and doing my best to hide my nerves.

  She shook my hand but didn’t seem to look at me any different, despite my name.

  I knew, though that once she found out the significance of my name, she’d run a mile. Anyone with any sense would.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Mile High

  A couple of hours later, after battling traffic jams on the M25 and stopping at a service station to swap vehicle yet again, we make it to a small private airport in Surrey where a smartly dressed man appears to have been expecting us. We’re led into a small building where Ruben hands over our passports and we’re processed through security before being led back outside. Ruben carries my rucksack over his shoulder but I feel kind of naked without a handbag or anything else at all. We have just these few things between us.