Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three)

by Dunning, Rachel

  Michael: “I’ll tell the world, Tatiana! I’ll tell! I love you, and you love me!”

  Tatiana: “You can’t. Baby, please, you can’t! I’ve changed. Things are different now. I’ll be ruined—”

  “How can you talk like this? What have you become? You loved me!”

  “We’re family, Michael. It’s disgusting! It’s...a sin!”

  “Your mother did this. Your mother made you say this.”

  She had felt the knife in her hand, had let its sharpness cut a small slit down her thumb while she’d stood there talking to him, in that park, in that other state... And why had she brought the knife, at the age of nineteen, to that park, where Michael had asked to meet her?

  Because I’m going to kill him. Simple as that. The plainest truth is the hardest to believe. Michael threatens to embarrass me to the world, and I am simply...going...to murder him.

  And then she did.

  “I love you, Tatiana. I always have.”

  “It’s incest, Michael!”

  “It’s not incest! It’s legal in New York!”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter! It’s against the will of God!” (She had known this was her mother talking through her mouth, but she blamed the Reds for this. They always made her act like someone else.)

  He’d insisted. He’d told her, I am going to tell the world about our love for each other! You are everything I ever wanted, Tatty! You are my light, my soul, my everything!

  Michael had no money. No chance for a college degree. No opportunity to provide for her. And by now she’d had her eyes set on a man called Watkins, an older, up-and-coming lawyer. Not too unattractive but from a good family. It would take several years to rope him, but she could wait. She had other men to entertain her in the meantime. Other wallets that would keep her full...

  But Michael... Michael will destroy that! No man will ever touch me again if he hears of this!

  “Please, Tatty! Please! I—”

  And then she stuck him, with the knife.

  He bled. His blood spewed and poured and squirted and he said, “I love you, Tatty! I’ll forgive—”

  And she stuck him again, in the stomach, the throat, the eyes. Again. And again. She stuck him over and over because the itch wouldn’t go away and she had thoughts and flying witches all over her mind and Yellow Red Yellow Blue Yellow—

  Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab!

  And then he gurgled, just once.

  She kicked him.

  And he died.

  No one fucks with me. I get what I want. I take what I fucking want. And no one. Fucks. With Tatiana Evans!

  -3-

  The blood, his blood, this is what she feels now, all over her skin and her robe and—

  Knock knock knock!

  They’re here to get me! They know. They know about the itch and the need and the Yellows and Reds and—

  “I didn’t do it, I swear! I didn’t do it!”

  The door handle rattles. The woman outside punches and bangs. “Tatiana, it’s OK, I don’t want to hurt you! Just... What’s going on?”

  Tatiana’s voice sounds like an industrial machine grinding to a halt. Spittle falls from her mouth again. It’s over, she thinks. They have me, and it’s over.

  She falls to her knees. “LEAVE ME ALONE!” She starts crying. “JUST LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!”

  “Tat—Tatiana, what’s going on? Are you...are you sure you’re OK?”

  “I’m fine! I didn’t kill him! He wanted me! It was incest! A sin!”

  Silence from outside.

  “I stabbed him, stabbed him over and over, up at Lagstun Hills Park, in Maine! But it wasn’t my fault! It was the meds. I swear it! Oh Michael, baby. Oh my baby, Michael.”

  Silence from outside.

  Tatiana cries. Her head feels emptier now, as if she’s kept this truth hidden for so long, and it just needed to be vomited out and her mind would be clear and she’d be free and God would forgive her.

  And her mother would forgive her!

  “I can tell you where he’s buried! He haunts me! He...”

  Silence from outside.

  “His name was Michael Ulworth. He was my cousin. And I loved him! I was with him! My mother knew! She hid it from the world! She knew! She was too embarrassed! She helped me cover it up! And then, when I wanted to talk, they shocked me! Ramsey shocked me and said it was for my own good and I told him I didn’t want to be shocked again because it hurt my teeth but I was—”

  Silence from outside.

  And then the banging at the door becomes rampant. Someone screams for her to open. Someone shouts that she’s here to help. But the screams might as well be in another, mystical world. They’re ethereal now. Someone’s trying to break the door down, but they can’t...

  Tatiana falls to the carpeted floor. The room spins wildly. As she fades off into the darkness, she wonders again if she did indeed drink alcohol tonight.

  And then it comes to her, a flash of holy, angelic light at the end of one dark and lonely tunnel which is her filthy past: She did. And she took all the Yellows as well. And the Reds.

  As well as the Blues.

  She sees the bottles of liquor, two of them. And she remembers now. And she smiles...

  It’s going to be over soon. No more itch. No more pain. No more colors.

  She smiles, feels the warmth of the carpet against her cheek.

  And her final thought, before she disappears into the eternal bliss which is the Neverafter, she remembers: Blaze. Declan. Love.

  If she couldn’t have it, then neither can they.

  But they do have it. They do. Despite it all, they do.

  Good for them, she thinks. “Good for them,” she says aloud.

  And then, silence. Eternal silence. Silence for a mind that had been rocked by pain, by tragedy, by compulsions, by errors in thinking, by mistakes, but mostly by noise—the attacks, the voices, the memories, the fear. Noise, noise, noise, noise! Cacophonous noise. All her life.

  Except now. Now it’s over. Forever.

  The eternal quiet.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE TRICK

  -1-

  There were things about Tatiana that Blaze and no one else would ever know. Maybe sometimes this is better, because Tatiana was as evil as she was troubled.

  Was one a cause of the other? No one can tell. And sometimes, when a person moves on, it’s simply best to forget, to remember the good, to learn from the bad.

  In the weeks that would follow, Blaze would uncover more about the mysterious disappearance of one Michael Ulworth. Much of it was to no avail, some of it was.

  Mrs. Evans, Tatiana’s mother, had taken her own life already many years prior, consumed by guilt. She’d been found dangling and swinging from the roof by none other than Tatiana herself. (This, no one knew and no one would ever know.) Tatiana had smoked a cigarette in her mother’s befouled presence, and then left her there, only to be “officially” discovered by a neighbor “after the smell became a problem” several days later.

  Someone had mentioned that Tatiana might have been there, but Tatiana fluttered her eyes, scratched the top of her breast, turned on the waterworks, and then later did things with the investigating officer that Father Ramsey only ever did with her in his dreams. No more questions had been asked.

  What was to avail, was the discovery of Michael Ulworth’s body. Through Blaze digging and remembering what Tatiana had told her behind that closed door, phone records were searched more thoroughly, travel records and bookings (especially those of the deceased mother) and a trip to a certain park was uncovered. Booked by one Mrs. Evans for one Miss Evans, around the time of Michael’s disappearance. To Maine.

  The dogs were brought out.

  The body was found (or what was left of it) and his family was finally able to lay their son to rest, in a proper grave, and go through the proper grieving.

  Michael Ulworth’s mother thanked Blaze for this, hugged her, told Blaze she would never be g
rateful enough for what she had done for the family. “A closed chapter,” the mother said.

  Blaze accepted the thank you bitter-sweetly.

  The other aspect that was of some avail was the source of the Yellows, the Reds, and the Blues. (It turns out Tatiana had Pinks as well, but she was so far gone, her mind so utterly fried from the years of abuse of these concoctions, that she’d simply forgotten about them, or, when she did remember, grouped them together with the Reds.)

  The source had been one Dr. Ramsey. Not everything about him would be discovered, but enough would be to send him away. For example, it was not discovered, unfortunately, that Dr. Ramsey had a devious proclivity for running his hands up the thighs of hypnotized women under his care and, depending on his mood, sometimes even higher than that. Much higher. Although, arguably, Tatiana’s escapades with him while she had been under were, in a very loose sense, “consensual,” his activities with most other woman (and a few younger boys) most certainly were not.

  It was also not officially discovered that he coerced three different women, one of them under the legal age, to perform fellatio on him or else he would divulge their “sordid sexual secrets” to the world. All three of these women were “diagnosed” with (depending on which organization or classification system you consult) “Hypersexuality,” “Nymphomania,” “Excessive sexual drive,” or just plain goddamned vanilla horniness.

  That they were or weren’t any number of these things, doesn’t change what liberties he took with them.

  What would be discovered, is the millions of dollars he fraudulently obtained from Medical Aid schemes, and his imaginative evasion of the IRS. What would have occurred (had he gone to trial) is that he would have certainly been sentenced to forty years in prison for a combination of charges including Tax Evasion, Fraud, and Money Laundering.

  However, the case never went to trial. When faced with these charges, much like Tatiana had been faced with the single abhorrent crime of her past, Dr. Ramsey chose another way out. He went into his study which had been paid for by years of malpractice and deceit, sat in his luxurious leather chair, drank a neat shot of rum, then another, and one more for the road. He pulled out his collector’s item revolver, admired it for a second, admired how it glistened and shone under the solitary desk lamp.

  And then he shot himself in the head.

  He will not be missed.

  One might feel, perhaps, a sense of lack of justice here, wishing that Doc Ramsey had, instead, stayed alive and been convicted of his crimes, and then spent his forty years in a jail-cell with a domineering roommate named Bubba.

  But, across America, single girls who had been abused would, on hearing of his far-from-tragic death, finally come out and speak about what was done to them, and what they suffered from (although, not in public, but in support groups, to friends, to family.) And they would be heard. And they would finally be helped. Without Reds. Or Yellows. Or Blues.

  And so, Tatiana’s death, on two counts, tragic and tainted though it were, would not be entirely for nothing.

  As for the priest, the jock, that particular investigating officer, the endless string of lovers she slept with and then ate the heads of like a praying mantis, there would be no justice except for the personal justice imposed on each one by themselves. The justice of personal regret, personal shame. Realizing, perhaps, that they had been fooled, tricked, by a troubled woman. A troubled girl. Perhaps the priest would gain his justice in the hereafter, but that is beyond the scope of this book.

  As for Declan, he would later discover that Tatiana Watkins née Evans, while doing him happily in her bedroom, was simultaneously doing three other men on different days of the week in their bedrooms, or their cars, or anywhere she could squeeze it in. (Mr. Watkins, the husband, was not included in that list of men.)

  It would be Justin Jameson, Jr., the lawyer, who would dig this up after several favors called in from a number of old friends. Justin would further discover that the elusive Mister Watkins had been wanting to divorce his cuckolding wife for almost a year, knowing that he’d made a mistake in marrying her, suspecting that she was embarrassing him behind his back, but never having the evidence to finally end it off with her. They’d signed pre-nups, and in them it had been stated that she would have a right to fifty percent of his fortune (and Mister Watkins is both Old and New Money all the way) if it were proved that she had been faithful to him throughout their marriage.

  Declan Cox, unknown to him until much, much later, had done the man a magnificent favor.

  Mister Watkins, at the time of this tale, is happily married, has two children. And has put together yet another air-tight pre-nup with his current wife.

  It would also be discovered that Tatiana kept a scrapbook, not only of Declan Cox, but of all her other conquests, with dates, times, and other details. Michael Ulworth was not mentioned in the scrapbook.

  Declan, like so many other virile men, had been guilty of one thing and one thing only on the subject of Tatiana: Naïveté. And of succumbing to his raw desires.

  And that lesson he did learn. He learned it good. And, in an extremely loose and convoluted way, he had Tatiana to thank for that lesson, because Declan knew, to his very bones, that he would never fall for that trap again.

  Ever. With anyone.

  So, in a way, Tatiana drove the final nail in the coffin which was The Problems That Could Destroy Declan and Blaze’s Relationship—a third “good” thing which came out of her unexpected death.

  On Blaze’s side, however, the passing of Tatiana Watkins née Evans was an event that would weigh heavily on her mind, much like Xavier’s had weighed on it and, underneath it all, like Savva’s, her eternal best friend, had weighed on her.

  The mind plays tricks: Blaze was there when Tatiana had died. She was across the road when her best friend had died. And she still wondered if she could not have done something to stop Xavier’s life from ending so prematurely.

  The mind plays tricks. And the trick it was playing on her now, the semi-truthful lie it was feeding her, was this: Around you, Blaze Ryleigh, people die.

  Blaze, not knowing what was happening, like a silent smoke that kills you in your sleep, withdrew into herself, started having nightmares, started having Fears.

  And, all over again, in her mind, started to secretly destroy her relationship with Declan Cox, started to question it, started to make excuses as to why it could never be.

  The mind plays tricks.

  And you, Blaze Ryleigh, always LOSE the people you love. You LOSE them. You don’t deserve love. Because, if you love, they die. Declan will die. Leave him now and he won’t. Leave him now and he’ll be safe.

  Her mind, clandestinely, told her these things. But Blaze was not aware of them. It wouldn’t be a trick if she was, now would it?

  TWENTY-THREE

  I KNOW

  ~ JANUARY 5 ~

  -1-

  Declan Cox

  It’s late afternoon, approaching evening. By the color of the clouds I can see a storm is coming, a dark storm.

  I came back today after the first playoff game to hear the “good” news. Lawyer Jameson broke it to me. He was ecstatic. Ecstatic about someone’s death. Ecstatic that The Giants would be spared “the embarrassment.” Ecstatic that someone took her own life. Ecstatic that Brent Coldon wouldn’t have to spin a PR tale to keep the press hounds off my back. Ecstatic that “the problem” had been solved.

  I almost threw him out a window.

  I almost crunched my fist into his pointy nose and had his head go through the office wall behind him.

  He didn’t understand why I didn’t share in his enthusiasm.

  “Deck,” he said. “Deck! It’s over!” He grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me. “It’s over!”

  I shrugged away firmly, lips set. It took all I had not to pull his eyes out.

  Over. It’s over.

  It was heartbreaking. It was a human tragedy. Regardless of what she did, what she’d said
, what she’d threatened me with, the news was not good.

  “And,” Justin continued, “you’re not gonna believe this, Deck. But you know who was right outside her door when it happened? Blaze—”

  Then the earth stopped spinning on its axis. I heard nothing else. He spoke and spat and spewed enthusiasm—

  Did he say Blaze?

  Now I grabbed his shoulders! Squeezed him like he was a Twinkie and the cream was gonna squirm out his head. “What did you say?”

  “I said that the four million—”

  “No! Blaze! You said something about Blaze!”

  “Yeah, yeah. She was there, Deck. She was—”

  I let him go so forcefully that he fell backwards onto his office desk. I heard something falling, maybe a computer, but I was already too far out the door to know what it was. All I heard was Justin shouting with a fading voice behind me, “You should be happy, Deck!”

  I started running down the stairs, twenty-two flights.

  They’d told me to come straight here, that Justin had some important business to talk to me about. I was certain Tatiana had gone ahead and gone public, or that a court-date had been set, or something!

  Blaze had said nothing. All I’d received from her after we’d left for “Boot Camp” was one text on the second of this month saying, I love you. And another saying the same thing on the day of the playoff game, plus, Good luck.

  I’d called her from the airport shuttle. Her phone was off. I figured maybe Blaze had been roped into some sort of media frenzy and they’d gotten her number or something. And that she was supposed to stay quiet...

  Something!

  But none of it had made sense. Until now. Until I got this “important” and nauseating news from Justin Jameson, which he gave me with a toothy smile.

  Running down the stairs I started to feel sick.

  I couldn’t hold it in. At the next landing (floor nine), I rushed out, found a bathroom, and I retched. Violently.

  The face I saw now was the face of death. And it reminded me of a recurring dream that I haven’t had for years, but which I was now certain I would start having again. A dream of watching my pops doing his slag, his eventual murderess, in the tea room, and hearing the mixed groans of my mother dying upstairs, and of the voluptuous murderess downstairs getting pounded from behind by him. And then, in my dream, I’d climb up the stairs, be confronted by an erotic woman of different appearances (most often it was The Virgin) and I’d end up doing her. But when I’d look down, I’d notice she was the deathly face of—