Minute by Minute (Games & Diversions #3)

by Natalie E. Wrye

  I hit it… and nothing happens.

  The light doesn’t come on, and the room remains deeply darkened, the depths of its shadows merely punctuated by lines of street light that filter in from outside.

  Ok, breathe, I tell myself.

  It’s probably by the bed.

  I use the sparse lighting to find my way around, and when my fingers land on my bag on the nightstand, I nearly shout in victory, shaking the heavy purse to make sure all of my jewelry is still inside.

  With that jingling confirmation in hand, I creep back out of the room like an amateur robber—employing only an eighth of the grace of the real James Bond.

  Guess I won’t be quitting my day job.

  And just as soon as a smile finally makes it to my lips for the first time in two days, a noise from downstairs stops me in my tracks.

  A muffled thwack from a level below.

  My eyes shoot wide, my body locking in place. The dormant hands at my side come alive, and the sleepy sensation that settled into my limbs is chased away—hurtled out by curiosity, alertness… adrenaline.

  I’m not alone like I thought I was.

  I don’t turn my head or take a step or even breathe. I listen closer…

  Closer… closer…

  Thump.

  At the sound of the second noise, I put my full weight on the guest bedroom doorway, practically using its steady frame to support my shaking knees.

  I push the guest bedroom door quietly, peering out into the carpeted hallway. I look for obvious signs of life—a light, an open door, sounds of running water even.

  But the silence in the air is thick, almost tangible; each square foot of space is like its own quiet graveyard, and it’s almost as if the sounds were never there. But I know I heard something.

  I incline my head… and hear it again—soft shuffling from the floor beneath me.

  What is down there? Am I hearing the noises of the rainstorm outside?

  I peer down the ends of the hall searching for Lukas’s bedroom, but it’s all closed up. The door to the bedroom is shut, and it’s as if it was never disturbed.

  Or was it?

  I didn’t imagine opening it to check for Lukas. I didn’t imagine shutting it behind me.

  So, who the fuck is downstairs?

  I don’t know… and the realization causes an unfamiliar chill to course through my body—an unwelcome shot of ice that sends shivers down my spine and adrenaline through my veins.

  Fear. Anger.

  I take a healthy swallow of both as I encroach on the landing above the staircase.

  My footfalls are soft as I make my way down the stairs, and with every step that I take, I feel an urgency that I must suppress, an internal fight with the calcified stubbornness that I’ve sculpted to perfection throughout the years.

  Slowly, I tell myself. Slowly.

  Anticipation sets my nerves on fire, and my imagination runs wild with all of the possible scenarios.

  A stranger. A stranger is in the fucking house.

  It can’t be Lukas. I’ve called his name too many times already.

  I count upwards slowly as I place each foot on the next stair, descending at a pace that is uncharacteristically constant and controlled.

  My extremities practically burn with the barely contained itch to rush, and I have to tell myself to stay calm with each breath.

  Do not rush. Do not run. Do not strike.

  Not yet…

  I reach the end of the marble, and now the soles of my shoes find the hardwood beneath, planting heavily on the base of the living room floor.

  I cross the room, and a muffled moan from the den hits my ears.

  But I don’t stop…

  Instead, I advance—like a fool—towards the noise, traversing firmly across the couch towards the second enclosed room. I squeeze my fingernails into my palms.

  And then I step into the room.

  Double Whammy

  In chess one cannot control everything. Sometimes a game takes an unexpected turn, in which beauty begins to emerge. Both players are always instrumental in this.

  –Vladimir Kramnik

  DAY 6—9:13PM

  Casa de Griffin

  LUKAS

  I used to pride myself on being the “composed drunk.”

  When your alcohol tolerance is as high as mine—when you’ve been drinking since you were twelve and exposed to alcoholism since, well… birth—you learn a thing or two about how to keep yourself together.

  I used to be “together.”

  I swear I did.

  But from the moment I started picking up a bottle again, things changed.

  I’d become that sloppy wino that I’d always hated to see—that stupor-laden lush that couldn’t keep his head up no matter how many times you snapped your fingers in front of his face.

  A binge drinker.

  That wasn’t the type of drunk I’d been as a teen; I’d been an all-day sipper, guzzling at breakfast, lunch and dinner—wading my way through school classes undetected.

  Now, at twenty-eight, I’m a lousy drunkard—heavy-handed, out of control.

  Guess I’m just too old to do this shit anymore.

  Still…

  It doesn’t stop me from raising the second vodka bottle to my lips.

  The first one I let slip from my fingers on the couch, knocking its way against the cushions before finally clunking to the floor and rolling away.

  I laughed quietly to myself.

  I’m not a quitter…

  As soon as the first one fell, I reached for the second—twisting the cap off before the first bottle traveled just three feet away.

  Good old Grey Goose Magnum.

  I take a whiff of the vodka from the bottle neck—the same vodka I’d given to Elena at Foxx’s engagement party—and I breathe it in.

  Remembering what it felt like to drink it in my hotel room with her.

  Remembering what it felt like to see her drink it.

  It turned me the fuck on to watch it slide down her delicate throat.

  I wanted to see her taste it.

  I wanted to see her taste me.

  I wipe an exasperated hand across my face, thinking of her vanilla-tasting skin.

  Elena.

  I can smell her. I can taste her. I can hear her.

  “Lukas?”

  The sound of my name vibrates from the doorway to the living room, and I ignore it, wiping the same hand across my face—hoping it will swipe the memory of everything about her away.

  But I hear the sound a second time, anyway.

  “Lukas.”

  I look up.

  The noise is real. She is real… and I can make out the shape of Elena’s body in the dark, her small and shapely form creating a sexy silhouette in the doorway between the den and living room—a silhouette that cannot be fabricated even in my wildest fantasies.

  No vivid dream can live up to the reality that is Elena.

  She steps towards me, and it feels like I’ve been knocked in the solar plexus.

  I can’t breathe.

  I can’t breathe at all.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks softly.

  The intermittent moonlight from the sky illuminates part of the path between us, and she steps into the glow, letting it display her tight blue jeans, her white blouse and the blue blazer that sits over it all.

  She’s as beautiful as ever… and inexplicably, I am angry at her for letting me know it.

  I look away from her, finally speaking.

  “Funny… I thought I lived here.”

  She stops in her trek.

  “Yeah, but… they told me you’d been gone for two days. Everybody thought you were out of town.”

  “Well, it looks like everyone was wrong,” I retort back. “And if that’s all you have to contribute, then you can go back to where you came from and tell everyone that I’m not… but that they can leave me the hell alone just the same.”

  Elena moves f
orward again, and I can practically hear the anger in her step.

  “That’s not what I came for,” she snaps. “I came… to get my bag back.”

  I glance over.

  “Your purse of knick-knacks… I was wondering if you’d come back for it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” I comment firmly. “Now, you can go.”

  The statement is dismissive, but I can’t stop myself from saying it.

  I want her to go.

  I don’t want her to see me like this.

  I hear Elena take a deep breath, and just when I think she is going to turn on her heel—walk away from me just like everyone else in my life… she doesn’t.

  She takes another step towards the couch on which I sit, and she places the black knick-knack bag at her feet.

  She waits, sighing.

  “Lukas,” she says, calling for my attention. When she doesn’t get it, she repeats my name.

  “Lukas… are you ok?”

  “Just peachy,” I answer sarcastically. “Thanks for visiting. In fact…” I comment like a TV commercial actor, twirling the liquor bottle in my hand.

  “Thanks for your stay at the Griffin Inn. We appreciate your business, and we hope that on your next visit in town… you choose another place to stay.”

  I continue spinning the neck of the bottle between my fingers when suddenly it is snatched from my grasp.

  Elena leans forward, whisking the bottle from my clutch, and my reaction time is too slow to do anything.

  I sit—almost dumbfounded—as she twirls back towards the doorway, stomping over into the living room.

  I realize that she’s in the kitchen when I hear the splashing of liquid in my silver-lined sinks.

  She returns without the bottle in her hands, and I realize what she’s done.

  I stand suddenly, towering over her as she marches vehemently toward me.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind? That bottle cost three hundred fucking dollars. Do you know what you’ve done?!”

  “Yes!” she practically screams into my face, her crystalline light blue eyes blazing into mine.

  “I’ve taken the trigger away from a man who’s trying to escape from the world—snatched away the elixir of the Mr. Hyde that I’d heard about but never seen!

  “What are you doing, Lukas?

  “This isn’t you!”

  I glower into her stare.

  “How would you know? You don’t even know me.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Elena growls. “You shut me out all the time!”

  “Because you can’t handle it!” I bellow towards her, nearly bringing us shirt to shirt, chest to chest. “Nobody can!”

  Elena pokes a finger into my chest, stabbing it at my hardened pecs.

  “Well, you’ll never know until you try, will you?”

  Her face is determined, her darkened brows furrowed. She looks at me with slanted eyes filled with anger, and I make a decision that only the drunken Mr. Hyde in me could ever make.

  She wants the truth?

  Oh, I can give her truth—more than she can handle. More than anyone could.

  I’m about to tell her something that will turn her wide eyes into saucers.

  I grit my teeth.

  I’ll give her just what the fuck she thinks she wants.

  ***

  When I sit back down on the couch, the scene before me doesn’t feel real.

  It’s as if someone else is talking, and I am simply listening.

  A broken boy of twelve is telling the story, and Lukas Griffin—the twenty-eight year old man—is idling by in his blue jeans and white t-shirt, his arm twisted into submission, his hands tied behind his back.

  The grown Lukas is no longer in control.

  The child he once was—if he ever really was a child—has taken the podium in his place.

  “My father—my real father—was a drinker and a real ladies’ man.

  “When I was young, he used to entertain women at all hours of the night. In and out.

  “Constantly.

  “‘Gotta bed the broads to keep your whistle wet,” he’d say. And he did just that.

  “He gambled. He hustled. He bartered. He whet every single appetite he had… and then some. Indulged in every habit he liked along with ones he didn’t.

  “He had so many habits. So many hobbies.”

  Elena smoothes out her shirt with shaky fingers, sitting beside me on the sofa. “Sounds like a fun guy.”

  “Yup,” the child in me replies. I toy with the first glass bottle on the floor, kicking it lightly. “Except for the fact that his favorite hobby was beating his son.”

  Elena winces, and the expression gives the young man some subtle sense of pleasure.

  Does it hurt to hear? Good.

  Because it pains the boy to say it… And at her reaction, he feels strangely fulfilled… like a sadomasochist getting his kicks.

  And he doesn’t stop there.

  He keeps going, tumbling out the tale of his life with no regard, no reprieve—no remorse.

  One after the other, he rains blows down on us both, whipping at our skin with his words.

  Drunken beatings from his father.

  Lash.

  Lonely nights without food.

  Thrash.

  He tells her all about the nights the father had stumbled in drunk, looking for someone to take his anger out on—how the father had kept a bevy of women at his disposal, floating in and out of his bedroom while he had siphoned money out of their overflowing purses.

  Money that he sometimes would throw his son’s way when the rumbles of the son’s hungry stomach would interrupt his precious blackout slumber.

  And then the child places the final, bludgeoning cherry on top: his “so-called” mother, an indifferent waif of a woman, who wouldn’t take her only son. Not even when she finally learned of the abuse.

  Not even when she saw the bruises with her own eyes.

  Wham.

  Wham.

  Wham.

  I tell the story of my upbringing to Elena.

  I tell her about the note on my car, the night of the engagement party… Greg Sears showing up at the office… the hack.

  I tell her about every omission, every lie… every secret I’ve let lapse between us.

  I tell her about how this waif-ish woman—who, at some point, must have been a mother—waited fifteen long fucking years to say anything to her son, and how two days ago, she finally had the fucking balls to reach out to him.

  Only to tell him that the only father he’d ever known—the father he’d despised, the man who’d “raised” him and fed him and abused him—was dead—murdered by the same bottles of liquor that had sustained him all those years.

  A predictable—and rightly deserved—alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver.

  Such was the fate of the father.

  Such was the future of the son…

  I tell her about everything I ever was… until I have nothing left…

  Until my psyche and body are beat so badly by my pounding that I don’t have another breath to give.

  I give her the truth—all of it.

  But the truth doesn’t set me free; instead, the truth is pounding and beating the “free” out of me.

  And with this mental whipping comes the release of my perpetual fear—the freedom of the frightened child.

  My secrets are gone, and, with it, go all the fear I’ve ever felt.

  There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.

  And though I’ve exhausted myself from the self-flogging, I may have whipped Elena even harder.

  She seems withered under the beating. Just like I knew she would. Just like any person would.

  I finally let the fear go… and all that is left is the pain.

  The pain of my past. The pain of an incomplete man.

  To know me was to know pain.

  When it came to Elena… I assumed it was simply better for her not to know
me.

  I sigh, feeling wilted.

  Her voice is subdued when she finally responds.

  “Why didn’t you tell me the truth—about… about all of it?”

  “I thought I was protecting you.”

  “From what?”

  I stare openly into her eyes. “From me.”

  Elena’s gaze diverts from mine, and she drops her hands into her lap, staring off into space.

  And within the blink of an eye, her face is in her hands, and she begins to sob—these heartbreaking sounds of grief that shake her shoulders with their intensity, racking her body as she quietly breaks down right in front of my eyes.

  And I am shocked.

  She’s never cried in front of me before.

  Not when we’ve had our worst fighting bouts.

  Not even at the hospital with Ana.

  It seems as if layers of hurt had built up in her heart, and I was the last brick to bring it all down—crashing the wall that she’d built inside of her indomitable soul.

  The sight of her—the sight of this amazing person I’ve come to know and admire—crumbling apart is more than I can bear, and I just don’t know what to do.

  I can’t think of how to show her how her reaction makes me feel.

  So, I kiss her.

  I kiss the perfect woman in front of me—tears and all, not letting the salty streaks on her reddened cheeks get in the way as I search for her lips with mine.

  She responds almost immediately, and I cover her mouth with mine, fisting a hand into her hair to keep her right where I want her—clutched to my body, her lengthy legs trapped between my own.

  The taste of her mouth is indescribable, and like the rest of her body, it has its own distinct flavor, a delectable savor that belongs to her and her alone.

  Combined with all of her other qualities like her scent and her silky skin, it is like napalm to my senses, driving a basic, carnal need in me to the brink and back again.

  Every tear, every expression, every part of her—including that unfiltered mouth—drives me insane.

  I said I wouldn’t fuck her, but fuck, how can I not?

  When she’s sitting there, looking all soft and feeling all supple—when she’s got her hands around my waist and her small tongue at my lower lip—how can I not want to lay her down and do unspeakable things to that supremely fuckable body—that unabashedly honest tongue?