But it was all real, and a reconciliation would never happen. He hadn’t left a note to say goodbye like he did the first time when I was able to save him. It was as though he was so angry at me, he felt no need to explain.
The fact that I wasn’t there to save him would torment me for eternity. I had abandoned him. I did everything he warned me against because my heart began speaking to me in a volume louder than his words ever had.
I wouldn’t allow myself to feel his loss. The same way I wouldn’t allow myself to feel the loss of my mother. Frankie. My mother. Holden was right. I disconnected the two after the accident. My mother died, but Frankie lived on through the help of machines.
I was wrong. I’d lost my mother, Frankie, a long time ago and I never mourned her.
The last time my father attempted his own life it was—what I now know to be—the day after Frankie was disconnected from the machines. I remained strong for him and kept his attempt a secret by never taking him to the hospital and never disclosing to any curious person why his voice sounded the way it did, or what the marks on his neck were. Because I kept it a secret, his successful attempt was on my conscious. I should’ve gotten him help, and I didn’t.
His death was my fault.
TWENTY-NINE
I WAS ABLE TO return to work the very next day after giving Claudia my sob story. It could’ve been she felt guilty, or it could’ve been she was scared of the repercussions—if any remained—of firing me. Either way, she allowed me to work again. I filled my days with working at La Dentelle and packing up what was left of my belongings in the rental house to send them off to storage.
I hadn’t slept in days, coffee was my fuel, and mindless reality show binge-watching kept my mind off Elias and my father’s death for more than one second at a time.
After doing a walk-through and spending my entire Sunday cleaning the house, I realized I had nothing else to do and nowhere to go. The day was especially hard because I caught Jaco following me around, watching me work in the mall again. When I confronted him on the way to my car after closing, what he had to say was unexpected.
“You broke his heart, you know.” He sucked his teeth and looked suddenly guilty as though he told me more than he should have.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“We never mean to do dirty shit like that unless we’re heartless dicks. I didn’t think you were one. Fucking him up something serious, yeah. But never an evil bitch who wanted to wreck his world.”
“I deserve that.”
“Yeah…maybe you did before your father died. But, you don’t now. He wanted to be there. He just can’t.”
“It would be nice if he would come around. I…”
“You what?”
“Never mind.” Shaking my head, I dismissed the thought. “Are you going to follow me home?”
“Nah. Not this time.” He opened my car door for me, hesitating before he closed it. “He misses you, too. He won’t say it, but I know he does. He’s not right when you’re not around.”
I didn’t get a chance to respond. He was several car lengths from me by the time I could.
Blinking out of my daze and bringing myself back to the present, I picked up my phone intending to call the cheapest hotel I could find and make reservations. But, I was faced with what I tried to ignore—another call from the crematorium, wondering when I was going to pick up my father’s ashes. I let the call go to voicemail.
Standing in front of the open front door, I stared down at my phone. My hand hovered over the number for the facility. I was torn between confirming a time for pick up and avoiding it altogether.
The slamming of a car door, shocked me out of my reverie. The solar powered street lights were on, setting a strange glow on the night. Red cars appeared a greenish-brown and blue cars appeared black instead. The noisy sprinkler system created a mist and a fog over the yard.
I looked across the sprinkler-soaked yard with a lone palm tree to a car parked in front of the house along the drive—a Nova. Elias stood at the end of the drive, waiting.
When he decided to move up the walk, his movements toward me were a blur.
He stood on the bottom of step in front of me, looking at me with the same empty eyes my father had the last time I saw him.
I stepped down to greet him at the step as though I was reluctantly pushed. I leveled my eyes at him, unsure of what I should say. I often felt like I was shadow boxing with him. I thought I could at least keep up a few more rounds, even with the emotional exhaustion I pretended wasn’t there having an effect on me. There was barely anything left of the stronger version of myself to continue to endure in Elias’s ring.
We stood there, silently staring at each other.
“I guess you’re here because you heard about my father?” I asked, partially wondering why it took him nine days since my father died—and twelve days since the last time we saw each other—before he could come around.
“I really don’t know why I’m here,” he stated reticently. “It might be that I do know, and it’s not a reason I want to share with you.” Glancing beyond me, he looked at the barebones interior of the house. “Are you moving?”
I shrugged, because I really wasn’t sure what my next move was. “Do I have a reason to skip town as soon as your back is turned? Or did you come here to…finish the job yourself?”
Through a glare, he squinted at me as if I held a gun to his head while daring to ask him for peace. “Why the fuck would you ask me something like that, Leina?” Exasperated, he pinched the bridge of his nose.
I cringed at the name he called me. He might as well have said it while stabbing me directly in the chest. “I don’t know what else to think,” I said apologetically.
Dropping his hand from his face, he expelled a long stream of air through his mouth. “My need to protect you hasn’t magically gone away.”
In a pensive state, I watched his shiny black shoes. With his right hand twitching, he took one small step forward. I knew what he wanted to do, but for some reason or another held back from doing it. I made sure he didn’t need to continue to torment himself by giving him eye contact. “How long have you known the truth about me?”
“The night we went to the gallery”—he set his gaze away from me as he recalled something visibly painful for him to remember—“shortly after you left, I was told the truth from someone who has known about you for a very long time.”
“It wasn’t Natanael, was it?” I asked, my voice quiet in an attempt to hide my sudden panic.
“It wasn’t,” he responded, his tone less than assuring. Every word he spoke was said with such a stark coldness it affected the weather somehow. The sun struggled to peek from the clouds as it prepared to set and the wind kicked up a chilling breeze, whipping the fine hairs fallen from my ponytail down around my face.
His right hand twitched again, and this time, he balled it into a fist, draining the color from his knuckles.
“I wish you would just touch me,” I whispered, almost a pleading with him. “And I really wish you would fuck me.”
His chin pointed in the other direction, staring at my neighbor’s house as he mumbled, “O que me estás a fazer, Leina?” under his breath.
“I’m sorry,” I added without having the slightest idea of what he’d just said to me. But my apology might as well have been kept to myself. It did nothing to move him, and I wasn’t sorry for what I said. It was the truth.
But his admission—that he’d known for a while what I was doing and who I was—it was something I should’ve realized before. Some of the things Elias did to me were some semblance of the things I did to Roth. I manipulated him, hurt him, abused his small moments of kindness by being distant when he opened up to me. I thought I was blinded by revenge, but seeing him now, I knew I was really unable to see because I’d been blinded by something more powerful than my need for revenge.
“Whatever that person said to you when they told you the truth about me,” I began
, “you should know it was never about the money. I only wanted what was taken from my family and to get my father the help he needed. He wanted me to do things to you that I couldn’t agree with.”
“What was the end game, Leina?” His head snapped back to me, his mood turned from somber to irritable.
“If it was a game, I lost and you won.”
“Won?” he asked, his laugh short and dry. “What exactly did I win?”
“You won me, and I lost you.”
Smirking and narrowing his eyes, he shook his head at me, reprimanding me.
I couldn’t help myself. The world stopped spinning and it wouldn’t spin again until he forgave me.
“What did your father want you to do?”
“He”—I paused, choosing my words carefully—“in a roundabout way, said that he wanted you to die after you willed everything you had to me.”
“Why didn’t you agree?” He took a step back, his fists tightening, his shoulders broadening.
“My father has asked me to do a lot for him in the past. I drew the line. I know I’m a horrible person, but I’m not evil. I wouldn’t let him make me evil.”
“Had the situation been reversed”—he released his hands from their tense position and appeared to relax—“I can’t say that I wouldn’t have tried to do the same things you did.”
“The situation reversed the moment you knew the truth, Elias.”
Silence fell thickly between us, with neither one of us able to look at each other. I looked at my hands as they began to tremble.
I could smell him and it rendered my senses and my strength useless. I wished he would put his arms around me. I wished for it with such determination I could almost feel him holding me. In his arms, I felt safe and protected. In his eyes, I could see that I was the only thing that existed to him from the moment I walked into a room. He gave me a type of affection I never really experienced with anyone else.
Although I’d had other relationships, it was always the same. They broke up with me because of the distance I placed between them and me. I was too afraid to get close. With Elias, there was no holding back. I gave him so much of me that I did everything he asked, kidding myself into thinking I was doing it to make him love me and, as an after effect, convince him to do what I wanted him to do to his family. But, in reality, I wanted him to love me, because I was falling for him. Here. Now. I was too far gone. I was already there. It profoundly hurt to know I might’ve permanently pushed him away.
Stunning me, he stepped forward, trapping my body against the closed side of the double door. He held my face in either of his hands and jerked my head up to look up at him. His chin slanted down. His lips were only a mere breath away from my face. My bottom lip detached from my teeth, opening my mouth and inviting him to kiss me.
As he stared down at me, his eyes simmered with wanton desire. He bit his lip hard enough to drain the color. The rapidly dissolving thin wall keeping us from falling into one another began to disappear.
I tilted my head back and stepped up on my tiptoes to caress his lips with mine. Moving my hands down his form, I slowly explored the ripples and skips of his body underneath his black button down. Reaching his groin, I found his hardening cock pressed against the material of his slacks, and stroked it up and down, manipulating him to rise under my touch. The hold he had on my cheeks began to firm to the point of hurting me.
Taking one large step forward, he crushed me between his body and the door, impeding my ability to breathe. “You don’t deserve what I want to do to you,” he hissed, keeping his lips mere centimeters from mine.
“But, I need it.” Slipping my hands down the tight space between us, I found the zipper to his pants. I tugged, unzipping his pants and unbuckling his belt. The harsh hold he had on me began to slip the moment I had his throbbing cock in my hands.
He inhaled sharply, his posture faltering. His forehead met mine as he closed his eyes. I circled my hand up to tease the soft head, provoking a clear drop of liquid to coat the head.
I dropped to my knees. Sticking out my tongue, I lapped the head, savoring the taste. Staring down at me with his eyes merely slits, he cursed me and put his hands up against the wall. I opened my mouth, allowing him to feel the heat of my breath before I tucked my lips around my front teeth and slid him inside my mouth.
The paint on the door was scraped with the intensity at which he drew his nails down the surface. I kept my tease slow and purposeful. Taking inch after inch of his hardness a little farther down my throat every time my lips slid down his cock to fill my mouth. I hastened my speed until my lips met his pubic hair. Gradually taking him deeper, I opened my throat to prevent gagging. I retracted completely and swirled my tongue around and over the thick tip. It pulsed under my tongue, releasing another drop of liquid. I looked up at him, taking note of the way he continued to visibly fight against showing me the way I made him feel.
Reaching down, he jammed one hand in my hair, ripped the rubber-band from my ponytail, and let it fall the ground. He wrapped my hair around his fist and jerked my head back until my neck craned. His expression was more tormented than it was before, teetering between remaining frigid and an ardent desire. He pulled my hair again, pulling me up to stand.
“Twelve days.” The two words held a warning and revealed fatal cracks in his frigid front. “Twelve long days. I’ve never wanted to have someone as badly as I wanted to have you. I’ve never wanted more from someone as I did with you. No matter what you gave me, it wasn’t enough. I didn’t understand why I was never satisfied…until now. All I wanted to do was to protect you and make you happy. I didn’t know it was impossible to make you happy and that I really needed to protect myself from you.”
His words hit me like a serrated blade, piercing me in the areas that were the most defenseless and sensitive.
An apology was barely on the tip of my tongue, when he repositioned me. Using my hair, he spun me around. Pushing down on my spine, he forced me to fall forward with my cheek against the door. My hands reached out to brace myself. He quickly removed them, putting them behind my back with one of his hands.
The pants I had worn were tugged roughly down, taking my underwear with them. The touch of his hand on my sex made me jump. All four fingers rubbed the slit back and forth, spreading my arousal on the lips of my labia. He pushed down on my back again until my pelvis tilted. His feet shifted against the ground as he neared me. The trimmed hair at his groin tickled my behind, provoking tiny shudders from my body. The pulse of his cock’s head was felt for a mere second before his hips angled and he pushed himself full force inside me.
I squealed, “Elias,” against the door in time with his erection reaching the end of my core.
The strength of his hold tightened, creating a wince-inducing tension at my scalp. He began to ride me hard and fast, slapping his groin violently against my ass.
I bit into my lip, stifling the involuntary cries of pleasure and pain—becoming one and the same—that he elicited from my body.
My hips fit perfectly in his grip as he turned me to face him, and shoved me hard against the door. My balance went awry, the scenery began to blur. The burning grasp he held on the back of thighs burned and cut off my circulation. After removing my pants from around my ankles, he pushed me up, leaving me airborne with my back against the door.
I entangled my arms around his neck and crossed my legs at my ankles behind him. I moved forward to kiss him, only to be stopped by an abrupt tug of my hair. Glaring at me, he flexed his hips and slammed inside of me, making the lips of my pussy sting and sending a searing pain to my sex. I held onto his shoulders tightly, guiding myself for the volatile ride.
My head fell forward to kiss him, but he stopped me again. Placing his palm across my throat, he pushed and forced the back of my head to meet the door. My back slammed up against the heavy wood door with every hurried and brutal thrust. My core was overloaded with the insane momentum of his strokes, creating an unrelenting fric
tion that made my body swim in exultation and left my mind stupefied.
I no longer cared we were still outside, and I cared even less that the neighbors could see us.
He still had a way of reaching inside my body, knowing what I wanted and giving it to me in order to bring me to an orgasm like I had never experienced before.
My body bounced against the movement of his intense pace, making my back feel a latent pain with the hard and repetitious way it made contact with the door. A slow-building pressure wrapped me inside his expert and domineering coercion of my body’s senses.
My mouth opened to express my pending climax and he covered it. His head slanted forward, and his lips kissed my collarbone. His breath was hot and ragged as it danced up my neck. He lifted his head to stare into my watering eyes. The look held behind his gaze was full of a lasciviousness so palpable I could feel it like chilling shocks on my skin.
My wet walls clenched around his hardness, hindering his forceful and fast strokes. I dug my nails into the material of his shirt at his shoulders as the fire roared inside me, stealing what little hold I had on the ability to be coherent. My entire body arched hard and awkwardly. I convulsed against him, loosening my grip.
He quickly wrapped his arms around my waist, his forearms serving as a buffer between my back and the door. My body continued to jar up and down as he fucked me, making me shudder in the peak of my climax.
With a low, breathy groan, his cock pulsed inside me, flooding my pussy with his arousal.
Immediately after, he released me. I wobbled, steadying myself with the door. My legs tingled, not yet used to being vertical and lacked the strength to keep me upright. I leaned back against the door, eventually sliding down to the concrete step. As I felt his cum begin to slide out of me, I hastily pulled on my underwear along with my pants on the way down.
Elias shoved his erection back in his pants and adjusted his clothes. He, like me, seemed to recall we were outside and surveyed the neighborhood, making sure we weren’t on the verge of being arrested for lewd conduct.
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