by Mimi Strong
PART 1: RUNNING AWAY
David Smith Wittingham
He walked up and down the streets of Montreal, looking in reflective surfaces for signs of David.
At a toy store, superimposed over a display of Legos, he saw Davey, age seven.
David Smith Wittingham's life had taken a dramatic turn three times, though the first was the only one not marked by a name change.
He'd been seven when his father's business took off, and the family prepared to move to a new house and neighborhood, for “security reasons” he couldn't wrap his young mind around.
Davey's parents promised amazing improvements, and it was true that the gifts of toys and new bikes didn't stop, but Davey was still unhappy, because soon another boy would be sleeping in the room with the tree mural his mother had painted. Someone else would take his desk at his school, and someone else would become Stuart's best friend.
Davey tried to run away from home, on his new BMX bike, but he only got as far as the outskirts of town. He was cold and hungry when a police car pulled up alongside him.
When the police brought him home, he found that his mother had been so distraught, she'd popped a blood vessel in her eye. Being so young, he couldn't have known the eye would heal over time. As he stared at that cloud of red in his mother's eye, so bloody and raw, he felt the true weight of guilt for the very first time.
It's all your fault, he told himself in bed that night. You're selfish and ungrateful, just like your father says.
The stinging red marks across his buttocks, from his father's belt, were his only comfort. He held his breath and tried not to feel anything.
They moved the next week, and he never saw Stuart or his old classroom again. His teacher hugged him goodbye, but he didn't cry.
At seventeen, a few people were still calling him Davey, but mostly to give him a hard time. There were only two people he'd take it from: his best friend Gunner, and his riding instructor, a woman named Brynn.
Brynn had long, red hair that fell in tight curls that bounced as she rode. When he arrived early for his lesson, which was most of the time, he got to observe Brynn teaching her equestrian vaulting class.
Brynn stood with a long whip in her right hand and a lead line in her left, as a gray Arabian gelding cantered counter-clockwise around her.
The young gymnasts in the club would approach the moving horse along the lead line, match his gait, then grab hold of the surcingle, a padded leather harness buckled tightly behind the horse's front legs. Unlike a saddle, the surcingle had no firm leather seat, but a blanket or pad rested on the horse's mid-back.
With a hop, the girls would fly up onto the horse's back, thanks to the centrifugal force of him cantering in a circle.
Davey's favorite part of watching, though, was when another girl took over keeping the horse on pace and Brynn flew up on the Arabian to demonstrate a scissor-kick or other pose. Once, he'd seen her stand upon the horse's haunches while another girl sat in front for balance.
As the horse circled, its hooves loud upon the dirt ground, and Brynn stood with her arms outstretched, beaming as her red curls bounced, Davey wondered if he'd ever live long enough to see anything more beautiful.
Later that day, when she was giving him his riding lesson, he accidentally hit upon a sore spot in her psyche. Sensing the tug of a bite on his lure, he jiggled the line, pressing Brynn to admit why she'd given up her dream of competing professionally to “babysit a bunch of kids.”
They were in the stables, brushing down the horses, the tangy smell of dried sweat in the air, and she let him have it.
“You're an arrogant little prick,” Brynn said. “Rich kids like you think you have life all figured out. You think your money is going to get you everything you want, but you're still human, and you're going to fuck up every good thing that happens to you because you know you didn't work for it.”
Davey grinned and took it all without a fight, because with the anger making her eyes flash and her cheeks turn pink, Brynn looked more beautiful than ever.
She was twenty-five, eight years older than him, but he was going to seduce her. She wore a ring, from another man, but they weren't yet married.
Homework came easily to Davey, so this would be the first true challenge of his life.
They parried for months, until Davey was eighteen. He was tall and strong, and girls threw themselves at him, but he only wanted Brynn.
She finally gave it up one Saturday, after a riding lesson. He knew from the moment he saw her that day what was going to happen. Instead of her usual loose-fitting, button-down shirt, she wore a scoop-necked top, bright blue, that showed off her freckles and pale skin as it brought out the sky in her eyes.
Brynn took his hand, and he let himself be led, head nodding down like a well-behaved gelding.
They went to a guest cottage on the grounds, where they found their way to a bed.
He made a crass comment about getting charged for an extra lesson.
Brynn pressed her hand to his mouth. “Davey, please don't ruin this with your mouth.”
“Call me David.”
She began unbuttoning his shirt for him. “Make me.”
He pulled her into him, crushing his lips down on hers as he scooped both hands under those round buttocks he'd watched for so long.
She pressed hungrily against him. He'd been hard ever since she'd given him the look back at the stable and taken his hand. Now she pressed against his hardness, and he fought the urge to thrust against her, through their clothes, finishing before they started.
Everything happened so quickly. He wanted to take his time, but she seemed nervous about getting caught, or desperate for him, or both.
She pulled her blue shirt off over her head while ordering him to strip. They had barely kissed, and he held her milky-white breasts in his hands, happy at last.
He kissed her neck as she dug her nails into his bare back, and then they were rolling on the bed.
“Don't look so triumphant,” she murmured as he yanked off her boots and pulled down her tight riding pants.
“I should say the same to you. Tsk tsk. Seducing your innocent, young student.”
He tugged down her flimsy lace panties and thrust his hand between her white thighs, touching her softness.
“Oh, Davey,” she murmured. “I want you so bad. I need you inside me.”
He fumbled with his boxer shorts, pulling them the rest of the way off. He retrieved the condom he'd been carrying in his pocket for such an opportunity, and rolled it on.
Brynn spread her legs wide and beckoned him to her, all pale and pink, her tightly curled red hair shaped like a heart.
She was hot inside, like a fever, and he slid in and out in a mix of pleasure and disbelief.
She writhed beneath him, almost as beautiful as when she was furious. As he pumped, pleasuring himself in her slick flesh, he pinched her ass and then nipples, looking for a reaction. She only panted and moaned, enjoying his touch any way he chose to give it.
He lost focus for one second, distracted by the scent of horses on her skin, and other people on the bed linens, and he came. He bucked and groaned as he released for the first time inside a woman. The orgasm was over too soon, and then he was done.
He pulled away, feeling sheepish. Had she…? She hadn't.
Brynn made eye contact, then glanced down at that sweet place where her thighs met. “David?”
He leaned down on his elbows and got low, kissing that part of her she'd so generously shared. She tasted of sweat, and as he pressed into his work, kissing and licking, the faintly musky scent of her intoxicated him until he was high, so high, and only Brynn calling his name as her muscles pulsed
brought him back to the cottage.
He didn't usually smoke, but when Brynn offered a cigarette, he took it. As she smoothed out the rumpled linens on the bed, he smoked, enjoying the lightness the tobacco gave his head.
From the moment they'd sat upright, he'd felt himself falling down, down, down. Not into love. Not yet. Down into something else. Emptiness.
He'd wanted this, but like a child wants a toy, with no concept of the ripples his desire made around him.
Brynn had a life. A fiance. She had plans, and he'd disrupted them. For what? For two seconds of pleasurable squirting he could have accomplished on his own.
Disgusted, he stood in the tiny bathroom of the cottage, ashing the cigarette into the sink, the way he'd seen his father do it countless times.
He took another long drag, the cherry crackling with his inhalation, the smoke hot in the bottom of his lungs.
Brynn came to stand in the doorway behind him, meeting his gaze in the mirror. She had her shirt back on, and her matching blue eyes seemed brighter now.
While David's eyes looked hollow, his brow furrowed with regret, Brynn looked victorious. Magnificent. The winner.
It was at that moment David experienced a different sensation of falling—falling in love.
She grinned. “Such a shame this is just a one-time deal.”
He crushed the cigarette in the sink, glancing down to avoid her eyes.
“Was I that bad?” he asked, her taste still on his lips.
She laughed. “You think I'm going to believe I was your first? Oh, honey, you don't think I'm stupid, do you? Silly rich boy. Tsk tsk.”
He turned around, anger on his face and in his voice. “Brynn, you can be a real cunt sometimes.”
She slapped him, her fingernails stinging his cheek.
“I'm not stupid,” she said, her cheeks flushed red.
He wanted to take her clothes off again. He wanted to hold her, kiss her, be inside her. All of these feelings confused him.
He growled, “I never said you were stupid, just mean. You act like you're a real tough bitch, but you want the exact same things everyone else wants. That's how goddamn special you really are.”
She patted down her pockets, looking for her cigarettes, which were actually over on the bedside table. With her eyes pointed down at the floor, and so quietly he could barely hear her words, she said, “It's sure nice to hear that what I want is so obvious. Maybe you'll do me the favor one day of explaining it to me, so we can both know.”
Unable to locate a cigarette, her hands got busy twisting the tacky engagement ring on her finger.
“Brynn, you don't have to marry that guy. Not if he doesn't make you happy.”
She snapped, “What's happy got to do with anything?”
“Well…” He rewound the conversation in his head. What were they even talking about? What unmarked detour had they taken to be bottoming out on these washed-out roads?
When he met her blue eyes again, they were twinkling. Mood changed.
She laughed, which made him laugh.
He rubbed his hands over his face, as though just waking up. “I should be getting home,” he said.
“Just like a man,” she said, her tone light yet gently chiding. “You got the strawberry pie and you're done.”
He stepped forward, closing the distance between them. Gently, he pulled her to him and kissed her forehead then lips.
“I'll never be done with you,” he said. “You're in me now, a part of me. Brynn, I close my eyes and feel you in my blood.”
She melted against him, the swirling emotions around them both lifting like fog in the dawn.
“Oh, David,” she said, smattering him with tiny kisses. “You should write poetry.”
“I do.”
“Can I read it?”
“Don't ask me that.”
She pulled back. “This really was a one-time thing. Don't tell anyone, or I could lose my job, and I'll make you sorry if I lose my job.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.” She turned and headed for the cottage door.
Like hell that was their last time.
The next week, David Smith Wittingham chased Brynn to a spare stall filled with hay. As she kissed him, both of them breathless, he pushed his hand down the front of her tight riding pants and found the crux of her, where he slid his finger back and forth between those plump furrows of flesh.
She squirmed on his fingers, telling him they shouldn't, they ought not to, but she never said no.
When she sought his cock, fumbling with his belt, he turned her around and pushed her ahead onto a raised bit of wood on the floor. With her riding pants down at her knees, gathered over her brown leather boots, he bent her forward and took her from behind, his own trousers barely loosened.
At first, the only sound was the buckle on his belt clattering as he pumped against her round buttocks, pale like moons. As his breathing grew ragged and audible, she began to moan and gasp. He clutched at her body, deep inside her, but not fully immersed enough.
He withdrew. “Take off your boots.”
“My boots are so tight. They're impossible. Just fuck me already. Don't be a fucking pussy, David.” She leaned over, grabbing her knees, and peeked around the side of her legs, a twisted smile on her lips to soften her words.
He thought he heard someone outside the stall—another instructor or rider inside the barn. He thought about walking away, of saying he'd had enough as of now.
“I'm cooling down,” she said, sounding annoyed.
He glanced back toward the doorway, then down at that lovely body. Pale, creamy, lightly freckled. The center of her was deep pink and inviting. He fingered the frilly skin and spread her wetness back and forth. With a mind of its own, his cock followed, and he plunged in. He wanted more, but he grabbed onto her hips and took what he could.
If a close friend would have known to ask, David would have said the deal with Brynn was simply sex, no strings attached. In the dark, secret part of his heart, though, he looked forward to one day seeing her left hand without that tacky little diamond ring.
The secret, poetry-writing part of him believed she would one day be his.
In September, he'd just started college, and though his parents had suggested he drop riding to have full focus on his studies, he'd continued the riding lessons, “for stress relief.”
On their final session, he noticed the ring with a dull thudding in his heart—disappointment. She still wore the diamond ring, along with a new, thick band. Brynn, the woman he was fiercely in love with, had married a man whose name David didn't even know.
The ride itself that day was a nightmare. When his horse wasn't stumbling, the gelding was ignoring him, obsessed with a prancing mare in heat, over in another pasture. The poor gelded horse had no idea what he couldn't do to that tantalizing mare.
After the ride, David confronted Brynn in the saddle room.
“How could you go through with it? How could you get married?”
Her lips pulled into that angry rosebud that drove him hard with desire.
She spat, “You don't know anything about my life.”
“I know I love you.”
Her mouth dropped open. There it was. His heart on the floor, in the dirt and the hay and the horse manure.
“I don't love you, David, and I never will.” She twisted her rings and held up her left hand. “I love my husband, Marcus.”
Marcus. The man's name stunk in the air between them.
“I must have been mistaken,” David said coldly, backing away. “I could never love a whore with no loyalty.”
He pushed the door and ran from the saddle room, not slowing until he got to his car, in the open parking lot. The late September sun was relentless overhead, and he'd left his sunglasses in the barn, but he wasn't going back.
Brynn came running, trying to catch him at the gate. Her tightly-curled red ringlets bounced as she ran.
He stopped the car and rolled down t
he window. “Now what?”
“Marcus was in an accident,” she said. “He can walk and everything, but sex is nearly impossible. We have an understanding.”
“Good for you.” He had other words, other feelings fighting to make their way to his lips, but he had a stronger desire to hit the accelerator.
Gravel spat up behind his tires, and he drove away, allowing himself only one glance back in the rear view mirror. Brynn had her face in her hands, and he imagined she was crying. He hoped she was crying.
Without riding lessons and Brynn, David threw himself into studying, and excelled at school, though the science and engineering courses did not evoke any passion. His only act of defiance was to grow out his hair, mostly to annoy his father. His golden locks fell in soft waves to his shoulders, but he mostly wore his hair tied back in an elastic.
He was more careful about the next girl he gave his heart to. She was smart and even-tempered, a brunette with dark skin that always smelled of cinnamon.
He lost himself inside her, and their love was never terrifying.
They were together seven years, much of that living together. She had no issue with his economic status, because she came from Old Money. In fact, before they moved in together, her parents had David sign an agreement to not pursue her assets when they broke up.
They always talked about their breakup as a “when,” not an “if,” and he was fine with that.
She let David be himself, and carried on with her own life when he joined his father at the company. When the patents went through, and the new Wittingham Money made his girlfriend's Old Money look like pocket change, they both laughed and visited the lawyer together to amend the agreement to protect his assets.
The “when” happened one spring, when she moved to France, to “shake up” her life.
“You'll still be you,” David said. “Just with different scenery. The sky is still blue and the trees are still green over there.”
“The pastry is better,” she said, and he couldn't argue with that.
Her eyes were contrary. They asked him to beg her not to go, or to beg her to take him with her.