by Leah Wilde
“But that’s just it,” Fiona said. “I’m not so sure I have made it through every situation. I…I think there’s something wrong with me. I think there’s something really wrong, like I’m dead inside or something.”
“No,” Gage argued, turning on the couch to face her and look into her eyes. He brought a hand up to cup the side of her face, causing her eyes to slide shut as his thumb rubbed her jawline. “That’s not true. You’re fine, baby. You’re perfect.”
“Then how could I do what I did to those boys today?” Fiona asked, and when Gage looked up into her eyes, he saw that they were full of tears, shining and bright. It hurt so much to see her in pain. Gage felt like a piece of his heart was being slowly ripped away from the center of his chest. “How could I scare them like I did? What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing,” Gage said. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You were defending yourself and me too. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But I was…violent,” Fiona said, struggling on the last word, practically choking on it as she forced it out of her mouth. “I was like…him.”
Him. Her kidnapper. The one who’d taken Fiona and killed Abby. Gage felt like flames burst to life in his belly just thinking about that fucker, the man he hated more than any other person on the face of the planet. He reached forward and grabbed Fiona’s face, holding both sides of her head firmly with his hands. “Fi, listen to me. You’re not like him. You could never be like him. You’re too good. You’re too strong. You could never do anything like that.”
“But what if I do? What if he ruined me forever? I’m evil. I’m sick. I’m…” She paused to suck in air, breathing so deeply and raggedly that Gage was a little worried she was having another panic attack. “I’m not a good person, Gage. I’m not good.”
“Why do you say that?” Gage asked, adjusting on the couch so he could shuffle closer to Fiona’s body. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” Fiona said. “As soon as I come back to the city, I’m…” She trailed off again, shaking her head. “It’s stupid and wrong and fucked-up. I’m not good. I’m not pure or perfect or anything that you think I am. I’ve just lied to you all these years, and you’ve fallen for my act.”
“So, what, you want to hurt people, is that it? That just makes you human. That just makes you normal, Fi,” Gage said.
Fiona didn’t say anything for a long moment, but two tears slipped out of her eyes and streaked down her cheeks, so Gage reached out and wiped them away with his fingertips, gently tracing the outline of her face. Fiona closed her eyes and inhaled shakily before reaching up to pull Gage’s hands away. “Stop,” she murmured.
Gage’s heart fell inside him, but he did what she told him, pulling away until they were no longer touching. They sat like that—separated by mere centimeters that felt like miles—for several long minutes, staring at each other, staring at the emptiness of the room, and staring down at their own laps until Fiona finally broke the silence. “I think the city…I think the city doesn’t agree with me,” she said softly.
“What do you mean?” Gage asked.
Fiona bit down on her lower lip, gnawing at it as if it were a chew toy. “I come back here, and then…I’m back to the person I was.”
Gage didn’t know what to say right away. As far as he could tell, Fiona had always been the same person, the same exact beautiful, complicated, broken, scared, and brave person. But of course, he’d never known her before the incident. Maybe before the kidnapping, before that sick fuck had done so many bad things to her, she was somebody else entirely. “Are you different in the countryside?” he asked.
“Very,” Fiona answered. “Very different.” Gage was tempted to cut in again with more questions, burning with curiosity about this alternate life that Fiona had apparently lived while she was gone, but then she spoke again, unleashing a long stream of words in a rush. “I’m this whole other person out there. I’m nice and polite and kind, and I help people. And I’m normal. I don’t have panic attacks. I don’t freak out on people. I don’t ever do anything like I did today.”
Gage nodded slowly to himself, trying to picture this alternate-universe Fiona. It was hard to conjure up a believable image of the person she was describing. In Gage’s mind, she didn’t even look like Fiona. He wondered if Fiona dressed differently, if she carried herself with less force, less power in the country. “Are you happy?” he asked, thinking out loud.
Fiona shifted uncomfortably in the seat next to him. “I…I don’t know,” she finally said after a short pause. “Yes, I guess so. As happy as I’m capable of being.”
“I thought you were happy with me, once,” Gage said, thinking back on a thousand moments where he made Fiona laugh or smile, her bright, gleaming teeth cutting through the darkness of his mind like tiny knives. Those moments hurt him now, slicing him apart inside. But it wasn’t always that way.
At some point, Fiona had started fidgeting with her fingers, picking at her cuticles until blood bloomed up on her thumbs, a bright orange-red color staining her skin. “I think I was, sort of,” Fiona said. “As close to happy as I could possibly be, here in the city.” She sighed deeply and wiped her bloody thumbs on the front of her dress, apparently not caring if it stained. “I don’t know, though. I guess I’m just whining, like everybody else does. I don’t know who I am, and I’m taking it out on other people. So original,” she said with a humorless chuckle.
“You are original,” Gage argued, feeling himself start growing annoyed at how much Fiona was beating herself up. “You’re not like other people.”
Her brow furrowed, but she didn’t look in Gage’s eyes. Instead, she stared down at her own bloodstained fingers, holding them out in front of her like she was just realizing what she’d done to herself. “I don’t know. I guess I can’t win either way. I want to be like everybody else, you know? I want to be normal. I want to just be okay. I don’t want to be fucked-up. But I am. That’s what makes me special, isn’t it? How messed up I am? If I hadn’t been kidnapped and raped and beaten and cut up, you probably would never have loved me. You never would have seen anything special in me,” she rambled, but this time, the words came out slow, like they were fighting through fog just to get out into the open air.
“That’s not true,” Gage whispered. “That’s not true at all.”
“Isn’t it? You only ever knew me after I’d been fucked up. You’ve only ever known me like this. If you met me out in the country, you wouldn’t even like me. You wouldn’t want to be around me. I’d just bore you. I’m only here because I’m sick, because I’m broken. If I were healthy, if I were normal…” She trailed off again, exhaling heavily.
“I don’t love you because you were hurt. I love you because you fought back. You survived. I love you because you’re tough. Because you want to save people,” Gage said, shifting forward on the couch to close the distance between them.
It was only after the words left his mouth that Gage realized he used the present tense. His entire body flushed at once, his blood rushing to the surface of his body as if it wanted to escape.
Once again, Fiona cut through the silence, not elegantly but roughly, her voice coming out in a low, hoarse whisper. “You…you do?”
Gage debated within himself for a long moment, arguing both sides. I do love her. But I don’t. I shouldn’t. I can’t do that anymore. That’s pathetic, weak, ridiculous, loving somebody who left you, he thought. But then the other voice in his head popped up, arguing against his self-protective instincts. She needs love. She needs to feel loved. She needs to remember why she deserves it. She needs you.
He cleared his throat, reaching forward to put his hand on Fiona’s knee. He wasn’t trying to be creepy or invasive. He just needed some contact, however small, to ground himself. He needed to feel her strength. “I do,” he murmured, rubbing his thumb along the sharp outline of her kneecap.
Fiona burst into tears, all at once, as if Gage popped a balloon to release all of
her emotions at the same time. “Fuck,” she groaned, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, but the sobs kept rising out her throat, over and over and over again, one after another after another until she was practically wailing.
“Shh, shh. Come here. Come here. I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry, Fi,” Gage said in a rush, reaching over to pull her into his arms again, crushing her against his body.
Fiona cried into his shirt, probably getting the front of it ridiculously damp, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, not when she needed him so badly. She clutched at his sleeves, tugging them hard within her clenched fists. Gage would let her do whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, as long as she stayed here with him. He’d let her break down, fall apart, or do whatever, as long as he could touch her, feel her strength through her skin. She pulled back a little to look up into his eyes, and even though her face was wet with tears, reddened and splotchy, Gage almost gasped at how beautiful she looked, raw and vulnerable under his gaze for what felt like the first time in their lives.
He didn’t know who started it. Later, when he looked back on it, he’d eventually decide that it didn’t matter. All he knew was that Fiona’s hand was on his thigh and his own hand found its way into her hair, and the rest was history.
Their mouths collided, almost painfully hard. Acting on its own, without help from his brain, Gage’s hand wrapped around the side of Fiona’s neck to tug her in closer, deepening the kiss until their tongues rubbed up against each other, each of them invading the other’s mouth, exploring the familiar territory.
God, yes. God, yes, Gage thought, clawing at Fiona’s back, trying to get her as close to him as possible, trying to join their bodies together after they’d spent so long apart. She felt just like he remembered, just as soft and hard in all the right places. But there was a little nagging thought at the back of his mind, persistently repeating itself until it cut through the fog of lust and love that clouded his brain. She doesn’t want you. She ran away from you. She wants her fiancé now. She just misses him. You’re taking advantage of her.
Gage pulled away from Fiona, ending their kiss without warning, leaving her with her eyes closed and her mouth open, awaiting more of his touch. It was so fucking tempting to just lean in and smash their faces back together, melt with her for as long as he was able to do so. But he fought it, even as Fiona opened her eyes and seemed to nonverbally plead with him to resume kissing her. He held strong, fighting with the lump in his throat before he spoke.
“Do you really want this?” he asked, trying as hard as he could to keep his voice steady and calm. It would be so easy to beg, so easy to plead with her until she gave him the answer he wanted to hear. But he pulled back a little more, abandoning the sweet, seductive heat of Fiona’s body for the chill of physical solitude.
Fiona visibly swallowed, her throat working up and down while her eyes darted from his face to his hands to the space between his legs. “I…I…” Fiona stuttered, shaking her head at herself.
Gage waited for her answer, his heart pounding in his ears. Please, Fiona, he thought, feeling more desperate for this than he’d felt for anything else in his life up to that point. Please.
Chapter Twelve
Gage’s question hung suspended in Fiona’s mind, and she didn’t have a single fucking clue how to answer him. Did she really want this? Her body sure as hell did, that much was certain, at the very least. Her fingers ached to touch Gage’s skin, to feel the familiar bumps and scars and hair against her flesh. Her mouth, abandoned by his, felt freezing cold, practically trembling like she was about to cry again. She felt like she was starving for him, like she’d fasted a thousand and one days and here he was, her reward for all the self-punishment. And he looked delicious, just sitting there with a worried expression on his face. He was worried for her. Somehow, that only caused her to want him even more.
“I need this,” Fiona murmured, the words coming out so soft that she was worried for a second that Gage couldn’t even hear them. Please don’t make me repeat myself, she thought. Please, I don’t have the strength.
“What does that mean?” Gage whispered, and Fiona saw that he was digging his nails into the sides of his jeans. She wondered if he used pain as an anchor the way that she always did. And then she wondered if he’d learned that trick from her. That thought soured her stomach even worse than it already was. She didn’t want to corrupt him with her brokenness. She didn’t want to be diseased.
Fiona let her head fall forward into her hands, feeling her pulse pound within her temples, right next to her eyes. “I need…you,” she forced out, her own hands muffling the sound of her voice so that she was barely audible even to her own ears. She’d have to repeat herself in case Gage couldn’t hear her, and the words left her itchy, dry throat like razors, tearing her apart even as she softly whispered. “I need you, Gage. I really fucking need you. I don’t know what that means. I’m sorry.”
There was silence for a moment, hanging heavily in the room like a shroud over both of their bodies. But then Gage came in and saved her, like he always did back when they were together, rescuing her from her own mind. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m sorry for pushing you.” He paused, reaching forward to grab her face again, this time holding it only by the tips of his fingers. She could have moved at any time if she wanted to. But she didn’t. “I need you, too,” he whispered, right before his lips pressed against hers again, softer this time, gentle, the way fallen leaves brush up against each other during the autumn.
Fiona let Gage lean into her, pushing her head back on the arm of the couch as he straddled her, pushing their pelvises together while his mouth fell from hers down to her neck, dropping soft little kisses against the veins he found there. Her skin felt like it was aflame, burning her from the inside out, but she wanted more of it, more of his sweet touch against her flesh. Even if it hurt her, even if it tore her apart, she wanted it. More than that, she needed it, as much as she needed water or food or air.
“Bite me,” Fiona grunted out through gritted teeth. She needed a little edge of pain to go along with the pleasure of his lips dragging their way across her skin. Maybe that was a bad sign. Maybe that meant she was forever broken, forever damaged, forever repeating events from her past. But it was what she was, and here, with Gage, she no longer felt like running from it.
Gage did as he was instructed, bringing out his teeth to slide against her flesh, at first, just teasing her with the sharpness rather than biting down. But then, right when she got comfortable, he sunk his teeth into the side of her neck, sucking hard, so hard that it was definitely going to leave a deep purple mark on her pale skin. Gage used to love marking her up, claiming her as his with his mouth. Fiona giggled now, pressing against the back of Gage’s skull to encourage him to bite harder. “Do it. Do it to me. Give it to me, yeah,” she groaned out as he complied, pulling at her skin. “Yeah, fuck, that’s good.”
Gage soothed the skin he’d just bitten with his tongue, mouthing at it like her skin was candy. “Mmm, taste so good,” he murmured nudging her head to one side so he could travel up her neck to the skin behind her ear, nibbling a little before biting down again.
“Nnnngh, unnh!” Fiona groaned, jerking her hips around in wide circles to grind against Gage’s crotch. “That feels good…”
“Good,” Gage whispered right into her ear, breathing hotly against her sensitive skin before moving to suck her ear into his mouth.
“Oh, Jesus!” Fiona cried out, her spine involuntarily bending at an unnatural angle as he set more nerve endings on fire with his tongue and teeth and lips. At the same time, Gage’s hand reached under her skirt and found the hemline of her leggings, tugging at them until they fell down to her ankles. Fiona kicked them off, even though the sensation of Gage sucking on her ear had her almost entirely incoherent. “Fuck, goddammit, ugh!” She jerked her hips up, the skirt of her dress getting pushed up between their bodies so that her underwear rubbed against the front of Gage’s
jeans.
Gage pulled back from Fiona’s neck, and she was about to complain about the loss of contact when he spoke up again. “Let’s move to the bed,” Gage whispered, dragging his teeth down from behind her ear to her collarbone.
Fiona nodded, leaning up to kiss Gage’s lips again. When they pulled apart, she tried to struggle out from underneath him in order to walk to the bedroom, but he didn’t let her, swooping her up into his arms instead. Fiona laughed, and the noise was so genuine, so full-throated that it almost scared her. She wasn’t used to feeling this light, this airy. She had forgotten she could feel this way at all.
She wrapped her arms around Gage’s neck and shoulders, feeling perfectly secure in his arms as he hurriedly walked them over to the bedroom, tossing her onto the bed so that she bounced off of the mattress. Fiona giggled, kicking her bare legs in the air like she was a little kid.