Evil Love

by Ella Fields

  I smiled, sad and short-lived. “Instead, you got a broken spirit and me.”

  Jude sniffed, his eyes glimmering as they smiled back at me. “You were everything I hated because you’re everything I want and nothing I could survive losing. I’d pick you over anything, Fern. Everything.”

  The rough conviction to those words slammed me in the chest. I steered back to the topic I wanted to know more about. The one I knew he needed to talk more about. “So you failed, they eventually found out, and here we are…”

  This is where we are…

  “Here we are,” he repeated, then his voice quietened. “She’s… I can’t make her come home. She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t seem to care that we need her, or that I’m sorry. She wants to make pottery and read a million books, maybe write one herself.”

  The water in his eyes crested, spilling onto his cheeks. I clasped his head, gathering him to me and hugging him tight.

  “I did this,” he said. “I took away the light in her dark, and now she’s stuck in that fucking place, and she doesn’t want to try again. She’s given up.”

  That place being Old Isle. A ferry ride across the bay. The only buildings there were a small jail, a church, and a mental institution.

  “She hasn’t given up, Jude. She’s just taking a time-out. You’ll see.” I kissed his hair. “You’ll see, I promise. We’ll help her. Together, we’ll visit and help her.”

  I didn’t know if he believed me, but I knew he wanted to, and I was achingly aware of how that felt.

  He didn’t need me to talk anymore. He shook in my arms, his tears dampening my sleep shirt, and he held me so tight, I could hardly breathe.

  Still, I held him back. My head laid over his, my hand rubbing up and down his back until eventually, he drifted off to sleep, and I did too.

  I woke some time later to soft kisses on my forehead, my cheeks, and whispering.

  Jude lifted my shirt, murmuring to my chest. “Forgive me,” he pleaded to my skin, to my mouth, to my heart, lips pressing over my breast. He pulled off my sleep shirt, and breathless, I pushed at his jeans. “Forgive me for hurting you when I was hurting.”

  His shirt joined mine on the floor, his jeans somewhere in the bedding with his briefs. “Forgive me for scaring you away, time and time again, due to my own fears.” Warm fingers climbed down my stomach and tore down my panties. I kicked them off, and his touch returned to slide through my excitement. One thick digit entered. I moaned, needing more, and his thumb brushed over me, his finger hooking but otherwise unmoving.

  “Forgive me for seeing you as a threat to my fucked-up life. Forgive me for knowing that with just one kiss, there was a chance I might never get my old self back if I let you in.”

  “Jude…” I writhed a little, forever unable to control myself with him. “You got what you wanted. This world, the power, my broken heart, and her…” I couldn’t finish, couldn’t think, his worshipping fingers, that sinful mouth on my chest—too much and not enough at the same time.

  “You know what they say about wanting.” I did. I knew just as well as he did where it so often led us. “And you… I couldn’t place that much importance on something again. So I chose her. Easier to stick with comfort, with the familiar, than to risk finding yourself swimming alone in the dark all over again.”

  Tears filled my eyes, dried up my throat, and stole my voice.

  “But I give in. I fucking surrender, Fern. I’ll drown in the dark forever if it means I get you.”

  Our mouths joined once more when our bodies did, slow and torturous, every panted breath shared. My back arched as he filled me, my nails scoring down his back.

  He kissed my throat, staying so perfectly still as I adjusted to him and absorbed everything he’d confessed. His lips skimmed my jaw, and I stared back up at him. “There’s no such thing as true dark, Jude.” I kissed each side of his mouth, then whispered against it, “For no matter how little of itself it gives, the moon will always shine.”

  A throaty groan entered my mouth, and then his tongue did. “Forgive me,” he rasped. “Forgive me for falling in love with you the wrong way.” His hips moved, careful and determined to destroy me.

  Staring into those earnest green eyes, feeling him shudder with every touch of my fingers, I wondered if perhaps this time, it was safe to let him.

  Fern

  The sun had climbed high into the sky when I left Jude in bed the following day.

  He’d called me six times, but I couldn’t talk to him right now. Right now, the one person I needed to see wasn’t home yet, but I was in no hurry. I’d wait.

  “College isn’t doing your complexion any favors.” Ricky waved a wooden spoon at me. “You look pale.”

  “Thanks,” I said, uncaring. “Haven’t exactly had the time to skip around outside like I used to.” Too much had changed, had happened—and not just with my education.

  “I’m just saying that it wouldn’t hurt to get a little vitamin D.” He returned to the dinner he was preparing, and I returned to watching the news on TV and munching on popcorn.

  Forgive me for falling in love with you the wrong way.

  He’d meant every whispered word. I saw the vehemence in his eyes, felt the message in the slide of his skin over mine. Against every odd we’d thrown at one another, he’d fallen in love with me.

  And I’d raced out of there the moment my eyes had opened and all that he’d said crashed into me.

  Self-preservation had been at war with potential happiness since I’d learned the raw truth of infatuation and falling. Since I’d discovered that love wasn’t what I’d once dreamed it to be.

  Love was evil.

  It stole, and it harmed, and it left you with your bleeding remains flayed wide for the world to dissect.

  It left you to run and hide as though you’d done something shameful. For many of us were ashamed when our hearts were no longer our own, and the thieves refused to give them back.

  We were hurt. We were embarrassed. We were disappointed in ourselves for entrusting someone with something they’d never earned in the first place.

  He was earning it now.

  But I was still struggling with then.

  Ricky entered the living room with his motorcycle jacket slung over his arm. “Dinner is in the oven, and I dug out some of your mother’s multivitamins.” He opened the curtains, the late afternoon sun racing in to smack me in the face. “Take them.”

  He walked out as I was still cussing, my bowl of popcorn on its side on the couch.

  Grumbling, I plucked up all the pieces and tossed them into the bowl, then headed into the kitchen. Two fat tablets sat on the countertop. I dumped the popcorn into the trash and the bowl into the sink.

  “That boy must be good for something if you’re actually bringing your soiled dishes back to the kitchen.”

  I almost choked on the vitamins, banging my chest before grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge.

  Mom sorted through the mail, her hair out and framing her face in soft curls. “Don’t die. I just got here.” She restacked the mail and dropped it to the counter. “And it would seem we have much to talk about, my dear.”

  I sipped from the bottle, then recapped it and left it on the counter. “Elijah told you.”

  “Of course, he did.” She eyed me, her lips twitching. “You used my credit card, Fern. Did you really think just because I’m busy as fuck that I don’t keep a subtle eye on you?”

  It was official—I was a lovestruck moron.

  I moved out of the way as she checked on dinner and lowered the temperature of the oven, then I followed her to the living room.

  Her heels were kicked off, landing side by side neatly on the rug. “How is Daryl?”

  “Fine,” I said, knowing I’d said the same thing to him about her.

  She hummed. “Girlfriend or wife?” At my crinkled expression, she tittered. “I could look into it, but I don’t care to. All I know is that man can’t stand being alone
. So which is it?”

  “Girlfriend. Works in a call center.”

  “Cute,” she said, checking her phone with a scowl and crossing her legs.

  Annoyance thundered through me, too fast for me to stop myself from blurting, “What happened to my grandparents?”

  If she thought she could just sit there and return emails while I simmered in all I’d uncovered, she was wrong.

  Mom didn’t pause, fingers flying over her screen. “They’re dead. You attended their funeral.”

  “How?”

  She blinked and slowly looked up. “How?”

  “Yes,” I said. “How.”

  She powered off her phone and tossed it to the couch, then leaned forward. “What did he tell you?”

  “Not nearly enough, so don’t worry.” Struggling to hold that dark gaze, I repeated myself, “I want you to tell me how they died. I know it wasn’t an accident.”

  My grandfather had owned his fair share of helicopters and small planes. While returning from New York one stormy morning with my grandmother, his favored plane crashed into the sea.

  “It sounds to me like you don’t need me to tell you anything.” She clasped her hands between her stocking covered knees. “You’ve already pieced it together.”

  She’d had his plane tampered with. “Why?”

  “They arranged my marriage. They forced me to bear a child. They never accepted me.” I waited because surely, there was more. “I did everything they ever asked of me to make sure I gained control of what was rightfully mine, but there was always this fear that no matter what I did, I would never be good enough. I’d disgraced them. I’d trusted them with my true self, and they nearly shunned me.”

  I swallowed.

  Mom scratched at her temple, then gazed at the rug. “They’d planned to adopt.” She laughed. “My mother couldn’t have any more children, and in the end, I guess I wasn’t good enough. They were already in the midst of plucking some riffraff kid from a boys’ home on the Lower East Side when I found out.”

  “A teenager?”

  “All the better to be their successor in case they didn’t live long, unbearable lives.”

  “You wouldn’t have the hotel, the brothel—”

  She cut me off. “Excuse me? It’s a men’s shed.”

  “Come on.” I rolled my eyes. “I’ve known for ages.”

  A frustrated noise left her, and she stood, taking a seat next to me on the loveseat. “There’s no nice way to say this. I was promised an empire, to be a ruler of this small kingdom, and when that was threatened…”

  “You attacked.”

  “I also had a child to protect. What’s mine will one day be yours if you want it, but no one was taking the choice away from us. I’ve worked too hard, and I sacrificed so much of myself in the process.” She smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes. “Quit beating around the real reason for your visit, Fern. That pie smells amazing, and I’m starving.”

  Fine. “Did you want me?”

  Rearing back, she balked. “Are you serious?”

  I said nothing, merely waited.

  “Foolish girl, I’ve wanted you from the moment I first heard your heart beating. Yes,” she said, her tone hard. “I wanted you. Just because I like women does not mean that I didn’t want to be a mom.” Sliding closer, she said, “Being part of Nightingale meant I didn’t want to become the type of mom I knew it’d make of me. Someone who forced you to your doom.”

  Relief, rapid and bone-crushing, drenched me. “It’s not all bad,” I said. “Right?” It couldn’t be, or else there wouldn’t be as many members as there were across the globe.

  “No,” Mom said, and she smiled a little. “No, it’s not, but when it’s bad, it’s bad, Fern, and it’s my job to protect you. But how can I protect you when it was me who cursed you?”

  I smiled too and took her hand in mine, my fingers linking with hers. “Like this.”

  I felt her go entirely still.

  I leaned into her, and whispered, “This is all the protection I’ve ever needed.”

  Tears rushed out of her eyes, and she swiped them with her free hand as though she were trying to squash bugs. “I hate you so much right now for fucking up my face.”

  “I love you too.”

  Two days passed, and I still hadn’t left home to return to my new one.

  To my husband.

  I’d tried, but every time I thought about leaving, I then thought about what would happen when I arrived home. It could be the start of something amazing, life-changing in the best way, or it could be the end of a cruel, wounded male’s bad joke.

  Said male had called a couple more times, and I’d watched my phone ring before letting him slide into voicemail.

  He never left one.

  Sitting on the balcony of my old room, I stared at the giant hedge looming below. For long minutes, maybe even hours, I wasn’t quite sure if I could trust myself to look at the balcony opposite mine.

  I wasn’t sure I could trust this feeling that I’d once dived straight into without knowing if the water would catch me or stand back to watch me slam headfirst into hell.

  I wasn’t sure if it was far too late to be worrying about any of that.

  “You know, I thought I’d been in love.” My eyes finally darted to Jude’s balcony. “But then you stampeded into my life and showed me otherwise.”

  I blinked as though that would help me figure out if this was real.

  Taking his time, Jude stepped out from his room. He didn’t smile. Gripping the railing, he looked at me for the longest time, and I looked at him. “I knew you were probably still here, but I’d hoped you’d want to come home by now.”

  “I wanted to,” I admitted. “I do want to.”

  “But I’m an asshole, and just because I told you I love you doesn’t mean you’re going to believe it.” He grinned then and pushed off the railing to retrieve something from the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. “Well, then you leave me no choice.”

  My mouth fell open as he dropped to one knee.

  His smile slipped, his playful tone earning itself a firm edge. “Fern, my Red, my sweetest, most deadliest threat…”

  My lungs shrank. My hands trembled. The sun wasn’t able to dry the water stinging my eyes.

  He presented a red velvet box, and it opened to reveal a silver ring. The sun bounced off the small band of inlaid diamonds. “Will you marry me for real?”

  I laughed, unbidden and uncaring of the blubbering that followed. “You’re serious?”

  “Tasteful ring, and I’ll make a shrine of you and write a million diary entries about you if I have to serious.”

  “Jude,” I croaked.

  He waited, ring poised in the air, unmoving, and I laughed again. “Yes,” I said, wiping at my cheeks. It was pointless for the tears didn’t stop. “Yes, I’ll marry you for real.”

  He was over the hedge and climbing up the steps of my balcony within seconds, and I didn’t wait. I didn’t hesitate. I threw myself at him.

  He caught me, the ring falling to the deck, and kissed away my tears. “I guess that means you’re in love with me, too?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and smooshed my nose into his. “I’m in love with you, too.”

  Fern

  Twelve months later

  The church was tiny and in need of repair, but it didn’t matter.

  Daisies of every color and size had infiltrated the wood and brick building on Old Isle.

  The doors had been left open, allowing the sea breeze and sunlight to climb across the pews to the gentlemen waiting at the dais.

  Dressed in all black, even the dress shirt underneath, with a red daisy pinned to the lapel of his tux, Jude stood with his hands tucked behind his back.

  The priest stood behind him, no doubt confused by our antics but not unhappy. We’d made a handsome donation to have the place to ourselves.

  No one else was here. No one knew we were here—only us.

  Just the w
ay we’d planned it.

  We were renewing vows already made. Only this time, we meant every word exchanged when Jude took my hand, and I stood before him and the rotund middle-aged man with a warm smile.

  “I do,” I said at last.

  Jude’s grin was so wide that I almost laughed, tempted to kiss his face off.

  Luckily for me, I got to do just that. Not just in my dreams, in the wild imaginings of my mind, but right now, and until death did we part.

  My husband gathered me around the waist. As instructed, the priest took photo after photo of us kissing, and we only stopped to smile against one another’s mouths.

  Before we left, we had him take our photo in front of the church doors, the wooden arched entryway lit up from the outside and bathing us in a cocoon of sunlight.

  We ran out of there as though we’d be caught at any moment, which was stupid, considering we weren’t doing anything wrong. Our contracts stated we could divorce, but they said nothing about remarrying.

  We didn’t make it home.

  We made it to an old, dilapidated barn behind the ferry station, my poor lace gown mauled by Jude’s hungry hands. “I got to wear white, after all,” I said between kisses. My dress was an exact replica of the one I’d worn to our first wedding; only it was white instead of black.

  “What do you mean?” He unzipped his pants, then got back to work on peeling the flowing sea of silk and lace up to my stomach. “Tits out.”

  I slipped my arms free of the sleeves, and Jude groaned, tugging the fabric until my strapless bra and wedding dress were bunched around my middle. Picking me up, he dropped his mouth to my breasts, sucking and kissing. “You dreamed of marrying me in a white dress, did you?”

  I nodded, my voice fleeing. The damp wooden wall behind me scratched at my back, and coupled with the swiping heat of Jude’s tongue on my skin, I tensed my thighs around his waist. “Fuck me,” I whispered. “Now.”