by Amy Faye
But he didn't ask her for it, and he didn't know why, but he didn't change it, either. He couldn't. Something inside his chest told him that the minute that he tried to force things again was the minute that everything would go sideways, and he wanted to at least be able to stay this close to her, even if it was just for a little while.
16
Lara felt like she was an animal stuck in the wrong pen at the zoo. Like she was a heron who had wandered into the lion pen and only now was she realizing what a mistake she'd made.
Paul had never been angry with her before; now he seemed angry at everything. Her chest hurt. It had occurred to her that she might be making a mistake, but it hadn't really processed, and she wasn't really thinking about it very hard.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No," he said, his eyes focused on a point on the divider wall.
What had happened on the other side of that curtain? Something inside her wished she could have spied on her, or something. Lara stood up and took a breath.
"I can at least refill you drink for you on the way back from the bathroom, if you'd like."
He looked at the empty glass in his hand. His fingers, she saw, were white-knuckled in their grip. He had to be glad that he'd managed to keep himself at least under control enough not to smash the thing, if he was that angry. But he didn't know what it was that he was so upset by.
He gave up the glass and she looked back at him as she stepped through the curtain, covering up the mid-ship bathrooms. Whatever he was upset by, whatever he was thinking, Lara didn't want to know. Because if it was something else then he would tell her if he didn't want her not to know.
If he didn't want her to know, then it was something that she needed not to be told, whether she liked it or not.
On the other hand, if it was something to do with her… well, then she definitely didn't want to know, because she didn't know if she could handle that kind of trouble in her life.
She closed her eyes, sat down on the toilet and covered her face with her hands. The room was claustrophobic, but somehow it felt better than that big, spacious cabin with her nice comfortable leather chair and her little table, big enough to play god damn dominoes on it if she'd felt like it.
Lara's head ached. What was she supposed to do now? Well, the first step was obvious, at least. Figure out how to get herself out of the doghouse, or calm Paul down if it wasn't something to do with her.
The thought occurred to her in a flash and hit her where it hurt. What if he had realized? She'd thought her lie was convincing. She'd hoped. But with the money that the Greens had access to, it wasn't hard to hire a professional detective. The math would add up, and there might be someone who remembered her just after. If they'd called Mom, then…
Would Mom have lied, if someone claiming to be the F.B.I. or the police asked about the circumstances ten years ago? Lara knew the answer without having to really worry. She knew instinctively that Mom didn't have a lying bone in her body, and she'd been about the only person Lara saw for the entire summer break.
By the time she'd finally started attending classes again, giving Fall semester a miss entirely, she'd given birth. Mom didn't have all the pieces. Lara had never even said Paul's name to her, so she certainly didn't know who the father was.
But if she were asked what happened with the child, well…
That was a different question entirely, wasn't it? Lara felt sick. That was a real possibility. They'd asked him back to tell him what the private detective had found out about her, and he'd found out that she lied.
She took a deep breath. The room was too small to relax, and too small to get a deep breath in. The air wasn't fresh, it had a septic smell and she needed to get out, but the minute that she left she'd be back under Paul's scrutiny again. She'd be facing him down and she didn't know if she could do it.
It could be anything, she reminded herself. There was no reason to assume that she was in trouble, not yet. That wasn't nearly as convincing as it should have been, though. Not nearly as convincing and not nearly as comforting even if she tried to believe it. A pit opened in her stomach and she finally raised the seat on the toilet to stick her head in.
Her stomach didn't have anything in it to empty, but it did its best. She took a drink from the faucet, forcing her face into the bowl of the sink as much as it would go and took a deep breath. Then she washed her face, and took another deep breath.
She didn't have a brush in the bathroom, so she did her best to tease her hair the way that Paul liked. If she was going to do this, and she had to figure out a way to get out of that bathroom eventually, then she would at least build up as much advantage as she could.
She took another deep breath, put on her war face, and stepped out. The girl waited there, her back pressed against some cabinets, and as soon as Lara stepped out she raised an eyebrow.
"You alright?"
"I'm fine," Lara answered. She tried to sound like she meant it.
"He got you on his leash too?"
"I'm sorry?"
"The old man," she said. She raised her eyebrow again, that same smile. Like they were sharing some kind of secret, but Lara didn't feel like she was remotely part of it.
"I'm sorry, I'm just… I'm not following."
The girl's eyes flicked to the left. Towards the front cabin. "He's good, you know, for an old guy. If he hasn't had you yet, then you're missing out."
The girl was young enough to be… well, to be her, ten years ago. Lara felt sick to her stomach, but she forced herself to hold it together.
"Could you get me some of whatever Paul's drinking?"
"Of course," the girl said. She grabbed a bottle and put it down on the counter. Lara grabbed it herself, afraid that the pilot would pick that exact moment to hit a pocket of turbulence and the bottle would go flying to the ground. "You know, for an older lady, you don't look half bad."
Lara's lips pressed together. "For a little girl, you don't look half bad yourself."
She poured a little too much into the glass on purpose and took a drink herself before she went back. If she were being honest, she could use the whole rest of the bottle to herself, but she tried not to drink to excess any more. It had already gotten her into trouble before. With Paul, no less. She held the next mouthful in her mouth for a moment before swallowing, savoring the burn and the smokey flavor.
Then she headed back through the curtain and hoped to hell that things didn't go half as bad as she thought they might. That, and hoped to hell that she didn't have to talk to that young girl again. But she'd do it a thousand times before she let Paul talk to her again.
It was petty, she knew. She wasn't anyone special, not any more. She never had been, if Lara was being honest with herself. He'd told her that when he sent her away, as loud and as clear as anything.
But that wasn't really enough to get her to not feel bad when someone younger and prettier came along to not mean anything instead of her. Ten years later, Lara knew. Ten years, and a thousand miles, and the instructions to get rid of her unborn child, and all she wanted from Paul was for him to look at her again, one more time.
17
There was something that Paul should have told her, he knew. Lara deserved some kind of heads-up that Helen had the woman in her sights. He didn't want to tell her, though, because the minute that he told Lara what was going on with his wife was the minute that she realized exactly what a big mistake she'd been making with this entire thing.
If she wanted to leave of her own volition then he wasn't going to have a problem with that. She'd done it once before and he respected her right to get the hell away from him if that was what she wanted.
What he didn't respect was his wife's ability to rob him of anything he wanted at any time, just by snapping her fingers, and if there was a way that Paul could avoid that then he was going to do his damnedest to make sure that he didn't let her get her way. If Lara left then his wife was just going to win, and if he told Lara then s
he'd leave.
"Thanks," he said softly. Lara took the seat opposite him; it was a surprise, because as far as he could tell she'd been avoiding him all morning.
"You want to tell me what has you so sour now?"
"No," he repeated. "Trust me, it's nothing you should be worried about."
He could see that she was worried about it, though, right or wrong. How long was he going to keep her in the dark? It wasn't fair to her, he knew. But he wasn't in a position to change it, either. So he would let her worry even if it wasn't fair.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," he said. He took a drink and let out a breath. "It's just, uh… 'marital strife.'"
He swallowed another mouthful. He wasn't taking the time to savor the drink, but his mood wasn't the one that he should have been drinking in anyways. Drinking for the taste of it was one thing. Drinking to try to drown out his anger was something else entirely, and he was supposed to know better.
Lara's expression shifted, and Paul immediately knew the reason. She'd had her fair share of run-ins with Helen, he knew. If he could have avoided it then he would have done it ten years ago.
Keep his work life and his private life separate. Plus, then, when he decided to walk away from it all, and Lara walked away from him first, Helen wouldn't be able to have that smug fucking expression the whole time.
"Helen being her usual self again?"
"More or less," he said. He drank again and tried to push his anger out with his next breath out, but it didn't work. Just spread the heat through his nose and his face and his chest. "Is she some kind of fucking lizard person? Are the tinfoil hat people right about that?"
He snorted at his own joke and pushed his head down deeper into his hands. How could he possibly have fucked up this bad?
"I don't know what I'm going to do, Lara. I don't fucking know what I'm going to do."
"You're smart, you'll figure it out."
"Yeah, I'm sure I will. But the fact is… I don't know."
She looked at him hard. Something in her expression was changing, and he wasn't sure whether he was too drunk or too unsympathetic to know what it was but he didn't recognize what had enjoined it. Could it have been worry? What did she have to worry about?
"You've got it," she repeated. "If you want to talk about it, then I'll be right over here."
"I'm going to check on Tim, if that's alright."
Tim was something very different. The only thing on this God forsaken plane that he could honestly think of as mostly innocent. He was supposed to be in the back going over his lessons. What were kids learning these days, anyways?
Paul stood up and made his way toward the back. Cheryl-or-something stood off to the side, watching him go by with an expression of something like interest that he tried to ignore. He made a mental note to drop her at the next stop, because she was starting to get a little attached and that was the one thing that he couldn't stomach with her.
She'd never meant anything, and he'd never pretended. Something hard-wired into her had apparently interpreted that absolute lack of interest as a signal to pursue harder, and he apparently hadn't been disinterested enough to prove that notion wrong yet. If she hadn't gotten the message already then she wasn't going to figure it out all of a sudden. She was just going to stay this way and he didn't want anything to do with it any more.
The journalists were on their phones, doing who knows what. Texting whoever they texted, or writing articles, or something. They didn't talk much among themselves, as far as he knew.
They certainly didn't talk amongst themselves when he was around, and whatever they talked about, he didn't think it was particularly worth keeping tabs on it to the point that he'd have someone else report back on their activities. If they had a story to discuss with each other then he wasn't going to get in the way of it.
He pushed back a little further. There was another private cabin at the back, and he could hear Tim's voice before he pushed the curtain aside.
"Nine?"
"That's right. Now… hmm…" The tutor's voice was light and playful. He had a certain way with kids, it seemed. It was almost a charming quality. "What about four times five?"
There was a long pause. Long enough for Paul to step through and into the room. Helen sat in one corner, watching the boy silently. His stomach did a flip and it was a serious force of effort not to say something to her. Instead he leaned back against the wall and watched.
"Twenty," Tim said. He wasn't asking, but he didn't sound remotely certain, either.
"Twenty? Final answer?"
Tim's eyes scanned the ceiling as if the answers were written up there. "Um… Yeah. Twenty."
The tutor gave one loud clap and stood up. "That's right!"
Tim's face split into a smile and a breath of relief. Paul stepped up.
"Working hard?"
"Senator," the tutor said, looking at him over the frame of his glasses. "We were just–"
Tim cut in, seemingly oblivious. "I'm learning times tables!"
"Yeah."
"They still do that?"
The tutor shrugged. "Some don't, but then again, some people are saying you don't need to learn to hand-write, either, so…"
Paul was surprised, took another appraising look at the young man. He was young, too. Very young, perhaps twenty. But he'd come highly recommended, and Paul was beginning to suspect why. He was old-school, in ways that most people his age couldn't be expected to be, and that was an endearing quality for someone his age.
"You're the expert," Paul said, trying to make his expression pleased. With Helen around, though, it was harder, like trying to figure out which direction was north by a compass when he was in the middle of a magnetic field.
"Is there anything else, sir?"
"No, I'll leave the two of you to it."
He stepped back and walked back out of the room. Back past the witch in the corner, who looked up at him with one cocked eyebrow but said nothing.
What was she doing back there? Why the sudden interest in Lara's son? Paul let out a breath. If he could do the math, then she could do the math, and she wasn't as likely as he was to take Lara at her word about the timeline.
Which meant that if she was waiting there, it was because she thought she could get something out of the boy. His stomach twisted up in anger and frustration and he made his way to the front of the plane.
They'd be landing in a little bit, and he needed to make sure that he had his temper back under control by the time that they landed. Otherwise he wasn't sure what the hell he was going to do.
18
Lara's lips bruised when they collided with Paul's. What she was thinking, she didn't know. If she was going to be smart, if she was going to be anywhere near the game that Helen had played her entire life, if she was going to be able to really claim Paul as hers in any way then she needed to stake that claim before they went back to the 'negotiating table.' Nobody ever made a profit by giving everything away for free.
She was past that, though, and the worst part was that she hadn't even been talked into it. She was the one doing the talking, now, and she wanted what she wanted whether it was smart or not.
"You fucking asshole," she breathed in his ear, moving herself up to straddle him. The seats were big enough to accommodate both of them. "I can't fucking stand you."
The words came out of her mouth and she wanted to believe them. But they lacked any punch. They lacked truth, and she knew it as well as he did.
"I know," he said. His hand cupped her ass and she hovered over him, her weight pressing him to the chair.
"Then fuck me," she growled, and dipped her head to nip at his neck. She was the one in control now, she told herself. She was the one in charge and she was the one setting the pace. But if he pushed back, she knew that it wouldn't be long before she was the one who was eating out of the palm of his hand, no matter what Lara tried to tell herself.
He pulled her shirt off and threw it aside. She worked
the clasp on her bra easily and as soon as it had slipped from her shoulders he claimed one nipple in between his lips. Her hips ground down into him, feeling his cock stiffening against her.
That was what she wanted. That was what she needed, even after all this time. He held her roughly, forcing her hips down harder. Her skirt had already ridden up around her hips, her stockings and his pants the only things separating them. He moved a hand between them, exploring the outside of her lips with his hand.
"You've been looking forward to this," he accused, and she ground herself against his fingers in answer.
She slipped off his lap and between his knees. She had no trouble with his belt. Ten years hadn't dulled her memories of taking off a belt very much like this, from trousers very much like these. Hadn't dulled the memory of freeing his cock from his trousers.
The smell of sex was heady and immediate and she couldn't help herself from wanting a little bit more. She took him into her mouth without hesitating and moved quickly. There was something inside her that needed it, needed him, and she hated it but she couldn't deny it either. That was her reality now, whether she liked it or not, and she was going to have to accept it.
His fingers dug into her hair taking a fistful and using it to force her head where he wanted it. Lara couldn't help letting her voice out a little bit as he fucked her face, claiming her as his. Some part of her kept repeating in her mind that she should have known better. That she wasn't going to be taken in like she was before. But she was going to be, she knew. That was the reality.
His cock moved into her mouth, entering her throat. She was practically choking on it and she didn't think she could have made him stop if she wanted to. She didn't think that she could have stopped herself if he was trying to stop her, either.
She slurped as he pulled back and then he entered her mouth again. Taking her. If she wasn't going to be his, and he wasn't going to be hers, then she could at least outdo that stupid bitch of a stewardess.