by Sienna Blake
It’s everything I want to hear from him. “Why don’t we? We make our own togetherness, remember, Cade?”
“I’m not normal. We aren’t normal and we’ll never be. You, I, individually or together, we’ll never be.”
I squeeze my eyes shut because I know deep down that he’s right. “We could try.”
“It would never work. We’d both know that we were lying.”
“We could trust each other, really and completely trust each other. We could be ‘not normal’ together,” I whisper. I’ll tell him everything. My real name. Who I am. Why I’m running. I will. If he asks me, I’m ready.
I feel him pause, and I pray that it’s because he’s truly considering it, too. My heart begins to flutter anew with hope. We can. Together we can deal with both our demons.
His lips brush against me again. “I’m sorry.”
I hear him gathering up his clothes and he begins to redress himself. I tug against my bonds, trying to look at him over my shoulder. “No, Cade, wait.”
I tug harder as I hear his zip go up. I can’t get loose.
I feel him step behind me and his arms slip around me like a blanket. His warmth is a relief. He hasn’t left.
He pulls at the ties of my left hand and backs away. “Goodbye.”
I turn, reaching my free hand wildly for him and find myself straining against the binds of my other hand. My skin is burning under the pressure of the ties, but I don’t care. I have this feeling. This horrible feeling that if he walks out of this room… Oh God. I might never see him again. Stop. I can’t breathe. I need to get these stupid binds off me. Why won’t they just fucking come off me?
“No. Don’t say ‘goodbye’, say ‘be good, kitten’.”
I tear at the binds of my right hand with my left. My fingers are too frantic and my eyes keep darting back to watch him walk away. The knots are done up in some special way. Some special way so that they can’t be pulled out by the hand in the restraint, but with a tug of the right piece, the whole thing can come apart. I don’t know which part and I can’t see what I am tugging against because it’s dark on this balcony and I keep looking up to watch him leave. He steps inside, closing the balcony door behind him.
I keep yelling, “‘Be good, kitten’. ‘Be good, kitten’, say it!” but he can’t hear me now. Through the glass I see him pause at the suite door and take one last look at me. Before he disappears.
I find the right thing to pull. My binding comes loose. Before the tie has a chance to flutter to the floor I kick off my heels and lunge for the balcony door. I yank my dress down as I bolt through the suite.
I run out the door. I can’t see him in the corridor. The elevator. I speed down the corridor towards it, smacking my hand against the down button as I come to a stop. “Come on, come on, hurry up.”
I glance over to the fire escape. Should I run down? Will the stairs be quicker? Fifteen flights of stairs. Fifteen flights. Which way is quicker? Which way? Shit.
The ding of an elevator arriving takes me out of my indecision. I rush into it, hitting the ground floor button several times. Thank God it’s empty. It seems like it takes forever for this damned elevator to travel to the ground. I’m lucky that no one dares to come on from another floor.
When the doors fully open to the lobby, I tumble out. I can see him through the glass entry doors, getting in the driver’s seat of a black car. No, stop! If Caden leaves, I have no way of finding him. I bolt through the hotel entrance screaming for him to stop. My wrists jar as I slam open the entry doors, startling the doorman. The black car accelerates away from me as I tumble onto the asphalt. The sting of the exhaust in my face is all he leaves behind.
He left.
“Goodbye.”
I can’t believe it. He can’t have gone forever. He’ll be back. He’ll be back, won’t he?
I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the glass doors. I look crazy. Mascara running tracks down my face, shoeless and screaming at the tailgate of a black rental car.
“Madam?” The concierge is staring at me with such concern. “Are you alright?”
“We had a fight. But he’ll be back, right?” I look at his face and my stomach twists when I see pity in his eyes.
“Of course, he’ll be back. You just had a fight.”
I nod. But I don’t believe him. Lies.
“You should get back to your suite. Have a long, hot soak in the tub and a good night’s sleep. Let him blow off some steam and you’ll both feel better in the morning.”
I can’t even imagine sleeping, let alone sleeping in that big empty suite that was meant for both of us. He would be inside me right now if I had just accepted the way things were. Later, I would be sleeping next to him if I hadn’t opened my big stupid mouth. Instead, I tried to change us and I tried to change him. I played this game and I lost.
Oh fuck. I lost.
I feel tears pricking at the backs of my eyelids. The concierge is holding me gently by the arm and is leading me inside. “We’ll just get you back to your suite.”
I don’t want to go back. But my shoes and my bag are still up there.
“I forgot my key when I ran out,” I mumble.
“That’s okay. We can get you in.”
I nod, numbly.
Within minutes we are standing in front of suite #1501 and the concierge is unlocking the door for me. He turns on the light and lets me in. After my reassurances that I will be okay, he leaves.
The door clicks shut behind me and I’m alone.
The suite looks almost untouched. It doesn’t even look like a crime was committed here, but one had been. I died here. I died when you left me, Caden Thaine.
I can’t stay here.
I pick up my bag from the couch. My shoes. Where did I leave my shoes? My underwear? Of course, outside. I swallow and force myself to brave the balcony. A single red silk tie is caught on the railing, fluttering in the breeze like a flag, marking the spot. The other is nowhere to be seen. I pick up my left heel closest to the door. I pick up my underwear and tuck it into my bag. I bend down to pick up my right heel when something small and black catches my eye.
It’s a matchbook. It’s black with gold lettering that says Cha Cha’s. It isn’t mine. It can’t have been left here from the previous guests. The cleaners wouldn’t have let something like this slip their attention.
It must be Caden’s. Fallen out of his pockets maybe? However he dropped it, he didn’t realize it was gone when he left. Caden doesn’t smoke. Does Harper Lexington smoke? An uneasy feeling begins to settle in my stomach. I drop my shoes. When I pick up the matchbook, my fingers are shaking. I open the flap. Inside, all the matches are there, but what has my heart skipping a beat is the phone number written across the cream inner flap in blue ink.
Whose number is this?
Another woman?
Cade would never cheat on me.
You don’t even have a real relationship. It wouldn’t even be cheating.
No, he would never. I can see it in his eyes and the way he touches me and looks at me. He cares about me. Maybe even loves me.
It must be a colleague… Or a new friend? Whoever he or she is, it doesn’t matter.
I should call it.
I shouldn’t. I have already messed things up enough. I can’t keep prying. I trust Cade. I trust he will contact me again once he has had some time to cool off. I trust that it doesn’t matter who this number belongs to and why it is written on a matchbook for a bar. He’ll come back. I know it. He will.
I close the matchbook and brush the smooth surface with my thumb. It makes me feel better having it. It’s my only tangible link to Caden. I slip the item into my bag and slip on my heels. I leave the silk tie on the balcony and I exit the suite without looking back.
7
I can’t sleep. I can’t eat.
It has been three weeks and four days since I left that hotel room and I haven’t heard from Caden. It’s the longest I have gone without hearin
g from him. I check my mailbox several times a day just in case. Yeah, I know. I’m pathetic.
That matchbook has been burning a hole in my nightstand drawer next to my gun and the stack of all his notes that I keep. Sometimes at night I take the matchbook out and just hold it because it’s one of the few things that I have of his. Other times, when I’m feeling especially sadistic, I take out the pile of his notes and read each one and remember each time we met, causing the ache inside my soul to burn. Burn, burn, burn me alive. I’m not afraid of dying anymore – I am already in Hell.
Since Caden left, the only time I cry is after I come. When my body shudders with release it’s like a dam is broken inside me and the tears flow. I’ve stopped touching myself when I miss Caden. This constant ache makes me speedy and jittery like I’m on caffeine, but I’m just so sick of crying that I can no longer handle the repercussions of satisfying the need.
Dixie and the gang at work don’t know anything. I’ve gotten so good at hiding all the crap I feel inside. Mick knows something is up. I have been training almost every chance I get and I smash myself until I am numb and I collapse. Mick doesn’t ask. Sometimes he gives me a small squeeze on my knee. “I’m fine,” I snap at him. He just nods at me. He understands not to ask. His concern should make me feel better, but I hate it. I don’t want anyone’s goddamn pity. I don’t want my own goddamn pity. But damn, do I have it in spades.
Earlier tonight I went out looking for a distraction for the first time in over six months. I slipped on a small red dress and put on one of my old pairs of heels.
Everything felt wrong. The dress felt borrowed and itchy and my heels pinched my feet. I made it just inside the door of Bound. My gaze flicked over to the wall where I first saw Caden. He wasn’t there. I felt sick. I had to turn around and go.
Like I said, pathetic.
Right now, I’m lying on my bed, turning the matchbook over and over in my fingers. I’m glad that I have a shift starting in a few hours as it’ll give me something to take my mind off Cade. All I’m doing is trying to make it through the times when I have nothing to keep my mind off him. The times between sleep and work and working out.
I replay the night he left over and over, wondering if I could have said anything different. Wondering where he is right now. Wondering if he’s hollow like I am without him.
He can’t really be gone. He can’t. We’re bound. We’re tied together forever. But the knot in my gut grows tighter with every second that passes and I don’t receive a note.
I start to flick open and shut the flap of the matchbook. The phone number winks at me like a blue-inked pupil. I decide I’m sick of doing nothing. I have to call this number. It’s my only link to him. I can’t just lie around like this. Perhaps whoever’s phone number it is can tell me a way to reach him.
I have a prepaid cell phone. But I don’t want to call the number from any number that could be traceable to me. I walk a long way to work through an area I never frequent. The matchbook is searing a hole in my palm as I hold it in my hand inside my pocket. I have worn my hair tucked into a dark cap and sunglasses just in case. I’m being paranoid. But paranoid has served me well so far.
I find an empty grey phone booth on a busy street. I close the glass door of the booth and pull out the matchbook. I have stared at this matchbook for so long that I have memorized the number. I hold it now between my fingers just to make sure. I pick up the phone and squeeze it between my head and my shoulder. The sounds of passing cars outside are muffled and all I can hear clearly is the click of the buttons as I press them. The dial tone sounds like a warning toll and my heart starts to speed up.
“Hello, Valentine here?”
My blood freezes. It’s a woman’s voice. A woman. Caden took a woman’s number that he met in a bar. My stomach twists. A woman named Valentine.
“Hello? Who’s this?” she repeats. She sounds sexy and busty. I’ll bet the bitch is blonde. “Hello?” She lets out a sigh. “Whatever, loser.”
And hangs up.
The dull tone of the disconnected line may as well have been the flat line of my heart.
I have never been to Cha Cha’s. I have never been there, but I know from my internet search that it’s on the other side of town from where I live and work. In Little Italy. I usually stay clear of this area of the city. It feels too much like Jacob territory. This time I’m making an exception.
The next day at dusk, I stand on the other side of the street from Cha Cha’s, the sign is large and red across the entrance. On the outside, the walls are painted black and the windows tinted heavily so that I can’t see inside. They can see me, but I can’t see them. This knowledge is the only thing propelling me away from this sidewalk and towards the plain black door entrance. At the door, I fidget at my bottom lip with my teeth and pause for the briefest of moments – will Cade be inside? I’m not sure whether I do or don’t want him to be there. I push the door open.
Inside I’m forced to take off my sunglasses because of the dim light. Cha Cha’s is a restaurant of exposed brick, the kind that has a wrap-around bar in the center and is trimmed with brown leather booths. Downward-facing lights on the walls spotlight off photos of Italian movie stars and famous people who have visited.
“Are you here for dinner?” a maître d’ in a black vest and button-up shirt asks me.
“Just a coffee, thanks. Can I take that corner booth?”
“Of course, madam.” He leads me to a dark booth in the corner to my right which has a good view of the restaurant. I slide into the seat facing the room and order a latte. Only then do I look around properly. At the moment there are few people in here, just an older guy drinking at the bar, a couple gazing over menus, and a booth full of Asian tourists armed with cameras. Apart from the maître d’ there is another man serving and a woman behind the bar.
The woman is blonde. I frown at her. Is she the one who answered the call before? Is that her number on the matchbook? I stare at her as discreetly as I can until my latte arrives.
I stir a sugar into it before taking a sip. Only then is my eye caught by the framed pictures on the wall beside me. The closest is a still of Sophie Loren, a gorgeous Italian movie star, from a movie titled Man of La Mancha, signed across the empty space in black ink. My eyes glance to the next photo.
It’s of three men, a father and his two sons dressed in suits and smiling for the camera. They’re standing behind the yellow ribbon that drapes like a winners line across the front of Cha Cha’s, and the father is holding scissors. This must have been taken when they opened the restaurant. I stare first at the father. Something about his face looks familiar. Something about his eyes. A curl of fear starts to lick at my bones. Oh my God.
My gaze flicks to the face of the son to the right of him. He too looks familiar. My eyes snap to the final face, the son on the left. My heart stops when I recognize him. It’s a face I haven’t seen for almost three years with eyes that still haunt me in my dreams.
Jacob Tyrell.
8
Five years ago
A package arrives at my college dorm from my grandparents. I make the mistake of admitting to Trisha, my nosy roommate, that it’s my birthday this weekend. Trisha and I get along well enough, but we’ve only been living together in our college dorm for seven months or so. I suppose you could call us friends, but we don’t really hang out in the same circles. Which is why I’m a little surprised when she insists that we celebrate. She doesn’t let up until I agree to let her dress me up and take me out. Which is how I end up here.
“It’s your buuuuuuurthday!” Trisha shrieks in my ear. I nod and try to hide my grimace. We’re at the bar of some fancy club and she’s just had her fourth or fifth shot. Her breath now smells like the foul liquid she is drinking. Oh God, that stuff could strip paint. She points to my near-full birthday drink she insisted on buying for me. “Why aren’t you drinking?”
“I am.” I grab the drink. “I’ll be back. Bathroom.”
S
he nods, or is she nodding to the music?
On my way to the toilet I slip my unwanted drink onto a table. I happen to look up and I catch a pair of dark eyes in a booth staring at me. For a moment I stare back. The owner of the eyes reminds me of a panther. Sleek and beautiful but with something inherently deadly about him. The man smirks and raises his glass at me as if he’s amused at my behavior. I keep walking.
On the way back I get lost. Stupid club. Every damn level looks the same – a mass of wriggling bodies and lights that make everything look like an Andy Warhol painting on speed. When I finally get back to the spot near where I had left Trisha she isn’t here. I turn a few times before realizing how lost and vulnerable it makes me look. I straighten myself up and walk with purpose to the bar. I lean against the counter as I gather myself, hoping to look less conspicuous as I glance around.
I can’t see Trisha amongst the faces around the bar nor can I recognize her amidst the bodies on the dance floor. I turn and scan the booths that line the edge of this section of the club. They’re filled with beautiful people wearing suits and skimpy dresses. Ice buckets of large frosted-bellied bottles of booze decorate the tables. I notice one of the guys in a booth looking my way. It’s the same guy from before. I ignore him and keep scanning. I can’t see Trisha there either.
Damn her. I knew coming out with her was a bad idea. I sigh. Leaning against the bar I wave away one of the bartenders and send her a text on my phone.
Where r u?
I look around again and thumb through the cash in my purse, mentally calculating whether it’s enough for a cab. I’m out of luck. Dammit. Trish and I were supposed to split the fare, but now that I’ve lost her I don’t have enough money to get myself back to the dorm alone. These stupid heels that Trish made me wear are already killing me. I can’t walk home unless I want to walk barefoot, risking tetanus, broken glass and needles. Ugh. No thank you. Besides, I don’t really know where the hell I am.