Heart of Gold

by Michaela Haze

  “I paid you.” I said in a low and sure tone.

  Blake, the bouncer's eyes widened and his attention snapped to the man in the chair.

  Davis stood up, he put his hands in his pockets as he rocked on his heels like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Now that’s not very nice. I wanted to ask you if you were okay. Your Mama’s in the hospital, right?” His eyes were round with mock innocence.

  “She’s nothing to me. I don’t want to hear your concern.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Sure you won’t need help with medical bills?” Daniel Davis crooked a brow.

  I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “You don’t get it. That woman isn’t my mother. She's not related to me. And on paper? I don’t exist. I'm not liable for her bills. You have nothing over me anymore.”

  I jutted my chin to the bouncer. “Blake, can you escort Mr Davis out to his car?”

  Daniel put his hands up in a disarming gesture. “If you're sure.” He walked past me. I stepped to the side but not before I got a face full of the smell of cigarette smoke.

  I waited by the back door for Blake to walk me to the line of taxis down the street. As we pushed open the door, I caught the familiar sight of Elliot. Bathed in the dim glow of the street lamp, with his hands in his pocket, his smile lit up his face once he saw me.

  “Do you need a lift?” He asked.

  Blake dipped his head. “You got her from here, Mr Gold?” He asked.

  “Thank you, Blake.” I smiled softly as the teddy bear of a bouncer as he walked back inside.

  “Did you want to come back to mine?” Elliot asked. “I promise to give you Chinese food and my claw-foot tub is big enough for two.”

  I slumped in joy. “That sounds great actually.”

  He slipped his arm over my shoulder we walked to the car. A small smile tilted at the corner of my lips. I was happy. Content.

  26

  The Freemont Hotel was a five-star resort outside of Lafayette. It was also where Sarah and I had agreed to meet. Where she’s put something in my drink and taken advantage of me. I procured the security tape but hadn’t been able to watch it.

  My hands had started shaking when Sarah's name flashed on my screen of my phone; I had decided that I needed to see a shrink.

  “I don’t know what's worse.” I admitted. “That I woke up naked and I knew what had happened but I couldn’t remember what.”

  “Or that it happened.” My therapist Sandra Coats finished, looking up over her half-moon glasses to survey me.

  I slouched down in the deep leather armchair. “I feel so powerless and it’s bleeding into other areas of my life.”

  “That’s natural. Rape is often about power, not about pleasure.” Sandra said.

  “I don’t know what to do.” I replied. Despondent.

  “Have you considered pressing charges? Filing a report?” Sandra crooked a brow.

  “Who would believe me?”

  “I only know a little bit about the laws of sex crimes in Louisiana but your attacker committed what’s called a 'second-degree rape' and she could be put away from anything from five to fifty years if she's found guilty.” Sandra informed me. “There had to be witnesses. Your lawyers will be able to collect the evidence needed.”

  “But she's pregnant.” I pushed my hands through my hair. “I can't do that to a baby.”

  “How do you feel about becoming a father?” Sandra asked, changing the subject.

  “I don’t know.” I admitted. “I always wanted to be a dad. I just expected to be married to the love of my life and happy as shit when it happened, that’s all.”

  “Are you currently in a relationship?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does she feel about the situation?” Sandra asked.

  “Sarah has confronted her. She's targeting Harry and there’s nothing I can do.”

  “You can report Sarah.” Sandra urged. “Whilst I traditionally don’t advise my clients one way or the other, I can sense that intense fear is holding you back from trying to seek retribution for what you have experienced.”

  “Is that a question?” I sat back.

  “My question is, do you fear that no one will believe you?”

  “This doesn’t happen to men.” I said.

  “I wholeheartedly disagree.” Sandra scribbled on her notepad. “I think that something else is bothering you.”

  I flexed my knuckles and stared down at my hands as I dug deeply and confronted what I feared most.

  “I went there to have sex with her. What if I was asking for it?” I croaked.

  “Surely, if you were asking for it, she wouldn’t have had to drug you?” My therapist replied.

  Gio's was one of the three restaurants on Main Street. I hadn’t been since my mother’s birthday two years previously when she insisted on having a meal in Goldryn Bois instead of driving out to Baton Rouge.

  I remembered instantly why I didn’t like to dine out in our small town when I took Harry out for a nice meal to take her mind off of both of our situations. It felt like being inside of a fishbowl.

  Harry fiddled with her napkin and I could tell that she was nervous. She cast a glance at the peanut gallery and then back at me. Her smile was forced and brittle.

  “How’s therapy going?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Tolerable.”

  Harry snorted and lifted her glass of wine to her lips. She raised her brow and made a noncommittal hum.

  “Have they found a donor for Gilly yet?” I asked.

  “They’re contacting distant relatives. Just in case. If not, they're going to have to s-switch off the machine.”

  I ignored the hitch in her voice. The stutter that came out when she held back her tears. I wondered if Harry stuttered as a child. I had started to read about childhood trauma. Worried that I would trigger her, and I saw some of the signs.

  Harry would often go numb and drift away when everything got too much. I had learnt to give her space.

  “I want to ask you a question. And I don’t want you to freak out, okay?” Harry wrinkled her nose but her whisky eyes sparkled. “Would you say that you're my boyfriend?”

  “Boyfriend seems to be a trivial term for what we have.” I shrugged and organised my place setting so that I didn’t lose the nerve to speak my true feelings out loud.

  “I thought that you couldn’t do relationships.” She said, but her voice was amused.

  “And yet you've swallowed me whole.” My lips twitched to the side. “I think I fell in love with you when I caught you sneaking around my parent’s house. The second that you asked me if I always spoke my mind? I don’t, Harry. Only around you.”

  Harry squirmed in her chair but when she met my gaze, the determination in her eyes was unflinching. “Do you think I should go to therapy?”

  My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and it took a second for me to respond. “I think you should do what you need to do.”

  The waiter came and took our order. I resisted the urge to snarl when he noticed my love's breasts in the silk red dress that clung to her body.

  He took our order and left.

  “Why do you strip, Harry?”

  She swallowed and blinked slowly. The answer came out slowly, like it was physically painful for her to say. “Mama... Gilly got in debt. It was about twenty grand. I couldn’t live on my diner wage and pay it off. I asked Julian a favour. I started as a waitress...”

  “But...?” I prompted lightly, sensing that there was more there due to her tone. My fists were clenched but I hit them under the table. I was furious. Burning with rage at her no good whore of a mother. I did not let it show on my face, but inside I was a swirling abyss of promised retribution.

  “Daniel Davis tried to... He asked me to... He suggested that I could pay the debt back with my body.” She spoke quickly. “I decided I needed to earn as much money as possible so I could pay him off quickly.” Harry exhaled and went to wipe her eyes, h
alting at the last second when she remembered she wore a full face of makeup.

  “Is he still bothering you?” I growled.

  “I can handle him.”

  “I know you can. But I want your honesty. I want everything about you.” I said earnestly. I took in the flush on her cheeks and her dazed expression as my words sunk in.

  “Do you think we could cancel our order?” I asked, glancing at the server’s station. “Because I need to be inside you more than I need to eat right now.”

  Her mouth was on mine, soft but demanding. My hands roamed over the curves of her body; my knuckles brushed the underside of her breast and Harry tilted her head back. Her eyes fluttered closed and she moaned. A low and feral sound.

  I used two fingers to absently massage a circle on the inside of her knee as I leant over her in the backseat of the Porsche. The windows were fogged up and it would have been clear to all and sundry what we were doing but I did not care.

  Sometimes I just had to reach out and touch her. To make sure that she was real. To show her that she was mine.

  My fingers trailed up the inside of her thigh and she ground into my straining erection until I almost couldn’t move my hand. I shifted my hips and the tips of my fingers brushed her wetness.

  I felt a devilish smirk play out on my lips. I stroked her from top to bottom and revealed in the feel of her.

  “You’re fucking soaked,” I growled. I plunged on finger inside of her and waited for her tightness to accommodate me. Harry jolted and snarled my name like a wanton animal. I plunged inside, deeper, feeling the wetness on my fingers and imagining what it would feel like on my cock.

  “Tight. Hot. Beautiful. Mine.” I punctuated each word with the deep grinding of my hand on her core. I felt her clit become a hard pebble as it ground against the palm of my hand. I felt her pussy tremble.

  I felt her tighten as she spiralled higher and higher. The only thing that existed was her.

  My trousers were too tight and my hips dipped forward in tiny thrusts in time with my hand. The sound of her wet arousal. My fingers being sucked in by her hungry core. Harry went rigid and came with a husky cry. Her eyes hooded as she looked down at where my hand had flitted up her skirt and where I laid between her legs. Ready to service her like the Queen she was.

  I licked my lips as I watched her ride her orgasm to completion. When she was done, I pulled my hand back and stared at the shiny proof of her arousal and orgasm on my fingers.

  Never taking my eyes from hers, I licked my fingers clean. Her musky sweet taste burst inside of me and awakened every cell.

  I reached down and shucked my trousers off, climbing further up her body until my elbows rested on either side of her head.

  Her knees were bent due to the limited space, but I was able to fit between her hips. My cock brushed silk and then sought her entrance. There was no place that I would rather be than inside of her. The woman I loved.

  Tragically fragile.

  Hauntingly strong.

  Beautiful beyond measure.

  My tip brushed her lips and dipped inside of her heat. Her pussy spasmed and promised to clasp me tightly and not let go until I’d filled her with my cum and watched it drip onto the leather seats.

  The upholstery could fuck itself. It would be worth the memory of my seed overflowing from her tight cunt as I watched.

  My phone started to ring. It was eleven at night. I ignored it and dipped inside again, rolling my hips and searching for the spongy spot that promised a wetter finish if I could work my beautiful girlfriend with just the right amount of skill.

  Harry gripped my shoulders, her eyes flicked to my phone and then to me. It had rolled into the footwell and then screen faced up. Sarah’s name flashed on the screen.

  I reached out to silence it, but Harry stopped my hand.

  “Why would she call so late?” Harry asked.

  I stilled inside her. “I could always answer and let her listen to the sounds our bodies make as I thrust inside you?” I joked and placed a slow and dangerous kiss on the seam of her jaw.

  “I love you.” I said through gritted teeth as sweat trailed down my forehead. Each word was punctuated by a thrust.

  “Me... Too...” She whispered. Disjointed and spiralling out of control.

  We ignored the call and I plunged inside her to the hilt. Harry met me thrust for thrust and the tremors of her own orgasm fuelled mine.

  My phone did not stop ringing the entire ride back to Harry’s apartment. I had put it on vibrate, but the device bounced around the centre console. As we pulled up outside of her apartment block, Harry chewed her lip but remained silent.

  “Are you going to answer it?” She asked, timidly.

  I rolled my eyes. “I really don't want to. I want to take you up to your bed and make love to you. Slow. Fast. As many times as you can take me.”

  Harry’s response was a mixture between a giggle and a whimper. I opened the compartment and dug my phone out.

  I reached for my phone and put it to my ear. “Stop calling.” Before I had a chance to shout my thoughts at her and tell her to fuck off, Sarah's frantic voice filled the car.

  “Elliot! Elliot, the baby. Something's wrong. You need to come over. Please.”

  27

  Harriet had asked if I needed her to come with me. Needed.

  I was too ashamed to admit that a five foot five blonde who weighed one ten soaking wet terrified me.

  I think Harry knew that. But still, I didn’t want her subjected to Sarah's poison.

  Harriet Thompson understood me. She knew that I was barely hanging on. Too raw from therapy where I had bared my worries and fears. Too splayed open from my first confession of love to the girl that meant everything to me.

  Sarah did not live on Goldryn Row. I'd put her address in the satnav when it came through in the form of a text message.

  Unfamiliar fear curled around my heart like a vice. The kind that only comes with the worry of your unborn child.

  It had only been words, even when I’d been told I was going to be a father. I had been divorced from the situation. I knew it was happening, but I was a man. I didn’t have a womb. I didn’t have to grow a child to have one.

  I had heard people say that men didn’t become fathers until they held their child for the first time.

  They were wrong.

  It was the first time you felt the paralyzing terror that something was wrong.

  Like static on the air. Ozone before a storm. I felt it as my foot hit the floor and my sports car screeched to a stop outside of the nondescript house in the not-so-good part of town.

  I slammed my car door and stepped onto the sidewalk. The porch light was on, highlighting the neglected garden and twisting the overgrown hedgerow into hooked talons. I gripped my phone, ready to access the situation and call an ambulance if they were needed. I didn’t question why Sarah hadn’t already done so.

  The door was on the latch when I approached and I pushed it open. “Sarah?” I called out when I couldn’t see her in the hall. Her home was sparsely decorated and there were no photos around. A bra laid abandoned on the banister.

  “In here!” She replied. Her voice sounded stronger than it had on the phone, which already caused the knot of unease in my stomach to fester like an open wound.

  I stepped into the living room; there was no furniture inside. Only blackened lines from cigarette smoke that highlighted where it had once stood. Sarah stood in the centre of the room, shucking off her clothes. Her eyes were wild and manic.

  She stepped forward, reaching out for the collar of my shirt. She clung to me like a monkey. Hanging from the material of my clothes like a dead weight. Sarah's knees buckled and her head lulled backwards. Her giggles echoed around the empty room.

  I clasped the top of her shoulders and held her up. I searched her for signs of problems but the only thing I could see was the wide and bloodshot eyes. A red-rimmed nostril. The highly strung and creating energy that twanged
the air like a high-pitched note.

  “Sarah, what’s wrong?” I asked, my voice calm despite the growing fear in my chest. I was finding it difficult to breathe. “Do you want to go to the hospital? You said that something was wrong with the baby?” I pulled off my jacket and put it over her shoulders. She shrugged it off and the heavy navy material hit the floor with a thunk.

  “Elliooooooooooot,” She elongated my name in a way that grated my fraught nerves. “I’m so happy you're here.”

  “Sarah.” I said through gritted teeth. “What have you taken?”

  She giggled. Fucking giggled. Like a school girl that had been caught cheating.

  Not like someone that had been pumping drugs into my baby's bloodstream.

  I pulled out my phone. “I’m phoning an ambulance.”

  She stilled my hand. “No Elliot,” she smashed her finger against my lips. “You need to come and keep me warm.”

  Despite the fact a nude woman stood in front of me, clinging to me like a koala, I felt nothing for her. Disgust clung to the inside of my throat.

  “I can't be here. I can't watch this.” I stepped back, shaking my head.

  “Come on!” She pouted. “I need you.”

  “No, you don’t. The only part of you that needs me is growing in your womb and you can't even be bothered to keep it safe?!” My voice bordered on a scream. “You’re fucking high!”

  “Elliot, stop being such a pussy. Come over here!” She stamped her bare foot against the dusty floorboards.

  I stepped back. My fists trembled with rage. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be around her. Bile rose in my throat. I did not turn my back as I walked out of the house. I did not trust her not to drag me back.

  She stood in the doorway. Naked as the day she was born. Her fingers curled into a seductive wave.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn't hold back for the sake of my unborn child, not when Sarah was determined to poison the baby from the inside.

  My hands trembled as I drove home. I was done with her shit.