This was real. My feelings were real.
And I wasn’t going to let her go. Not without a fight.
I just hadn’t had the nerve go knock on her door yet. I wanted to say all the right things. I didn’t want to go in there and fuck it all up like I had at the house. I didn’t want her to see the sniveling shell of a man I had been reduced to. I wanted her to see the strong Rhett. The man who loved her. The man who wanted to be her future, no matter how fucked up the past was.
I took a deep breath and turned off the car.
I love her. I can do this. I can save us.
My feet moved on the concrete with purpose. I was a man on a mission. I thought about that time, after she came home from the hospital all fucked up from the things my dad had done to her. When I finally knew the truth. I would watch her sleep. It was pathetic, really. She hadn’t known I was there, in her room. That I would sneak in on those nights where the images of my father on top of her body on the bathroom floor plagued me.
I watched her because I was in awe of her. I was baffled by the fact that she had survived something so horrid, for so long. That she had survived it, and yet she could sleep. She found a way to fall into a slumber, when one view of it kept me up for months. I had watched the rise and fall of her chest, the slow movements. They were rhythmic, comforting, proof that strength existed—that she existed.
And when she would wake up with nightmares, the ones where he stalked her, where he raped her over and over again. I was desperate for her to tell me about them. Desperate for them in a way I’d never needed anything else. I had to have that pain, to share it with her. I deserved to live it, if she did. I deserved to be plagued with the images her dreams would conjure.
I had loved her then, I’d just been too stupid to realize it.
I stopped in front of her door. It was just a plain brown door, nothing special, but it was, because it was hers. I lifted my hand to knock and paused.
There were noises. Sounds. Moans. They came from behind that brown door that shouldn’t have been special and was. They belonged to her. Faint. The sound was faint. My cock awoke in my pants, stabbing into my zipper. But then there was something else, a groan. Deeper. It could only belong to a man.
She…
She left me just hours ago.
I looked down at my watch.
4 am.
Rage. That’s what coursed through me. It wasn’t the slow build of anger. It was a flood of rage so thick and deep I seemed to expand with it.
She planned this. She invited him over. She left me to come back to him. Him.
Someone else. Not me.
I banged on the door.
I waited.
I banged harder.
I could hear noises inside. Moaning. Louder.
My head spun. My insides had been run through a meat grinder, ground up and splattered all around me. That’s how it felt in those moments while I waited in the silence of 4 AM, outside Faye’s doorstep.
She’s not fucking him.
I shook my head. But the sound persisted. It seemed to get louder, like there was a speaker in my head and someone had cranked up the volume. I balled up my fists and pounded on the door until my hands and arms throbbed.
But still no one came.
They heard me. They had to have heard me. So why wasn’t she coming to the fucking door?
I took a deep breath, trying to calm down, but the more air I drew in, the more the rage expanded inside me, filling me up.
I stepped back and kicked the door. Nothing happened.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t have to do this. That’s what the rational part of my brain was screaming at me. It told me I could leave. It told me I could pretend like the last week never happened. I could go back to the meaningless existence of a life I had before.
That was a very small part of my brain.
I kicked the door again. It burst open, splintering sideways off a hinge.
“Say it, Casey. Say you fucking hate me,” Faye moaned across the apartment. Bile rose in my throat.
I charged inside and went straight for the bedroom. I found them there. A naked younger man with dark hair. He had her bent over. Faye. My Faye. He had her on her hands and knees on the bed. The same bed where I made love to her just a week ago. The same fucking sheets. Her ass was red from his hand prints.
“I—”
He stopped when he saw me.
“Don’t stop, Casey.” He voice was commanding, dominating. As if she wasn’t the one being fucked, but the one doing the fucking. I met her gaze. She stared at me with those clear brown eyes with such bitterness and knowing. She knew. She probably knew it was me pounding on the door, but she didn’t care.
She would rather be fucked and hated by the piece of shit that had her bent over.
A smile curled her lips up. It was the most calculating look I’d ever seen on another person’s face. There was poison in that smile, a monster.
Red. That’s what colored my vision. A deep dark shade of bitter red.
One of my hands started to tingle with pain and then I realized it was because I had slammed my fist into Casey’s face.
“What the fuck!” He fell off the bed and was on his feet a second later. His lip was bleeding, the blood marring his youthful face. I smiled at the sight of it.
“Leave him alone, Rhett.” Faye’s voice was calm, smooth. As if I hadn’t just broke into her apartment and punched the man she was fucking the face.
“Who the fuck are you?” The question was directed at me from Casey.
“You need to leave. Right. Fucking. Now.”
He held his fists in front of him. The muscles in his chest, flexing. “Fuck you.” He took a swing at me, but I dodged it and punched him in the stomach, but before I could pull back he grabbed my head and slammed his knee into my face. Pain exploded in my head, but I thrived on it. It only made the rage burn deeper, faster.
“Stop,” Faye commanded.
I swung again, catching him in the side.
“Get out, Casey. Go home.” Faye spoke again.
We both turned to her then. Our fight paused.
“What the hell? What do you mean? Who the fuck is this guy?” Casey was nearly doubled over in pain as he spoke.
“None of you business. Now get out.”
“You’re fucked up. You know that?” He grabbed his clothes off the floor and shoved his legs into his pants. “Don’t call me again.”
I didn’t watch him as he moved out of the room. The younger man that was fucking my Faye. I didn’t say anything to him. Nothing else. I kept my eyes on her. She sat naked in the middle of her bed. Her hair was loose and messy.
Probably from Casey yanking on it.
“You’re a fucking bitch.” The fury, the rage. It multiplied more with that smirk on her face. I jerked on my belt buckle. “You know that, Faye?”
Her gaze jumped to my hand movements. To the slide of the leather belt against the denim on my pants as I jerked it free. There was something there in her gaze. Yearning. As if she was desperate, fucking eager just to see what I would do with that belt.
“So what if I am? You don’t know me anymore, Rhett.”
“I don’t know you?” I wrapped the leather around my hand. “I don’t fucking know you?”
She sat up straighter her gaze meeting mine. “I’m not the pathetic, scared little girl who would do anything for your attention. Not anymore.”
“But you’ll fuck that guy?” The anger, the jealousy, it laced my voice with its hideous tenor. I jerked my shirt over my head.
“I can fuck whoever I want.” She got up on her knees, her breasts bounced with the movement. My cock kicked. The stupid traitor. I wanted nothing more than to leave Faye here and never fucking look at her again.
But I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t have it fucking in me. I didn’t have the will power in my body to do the right thing for Faye. Not this time. Not again.
No, this time, we were going to
SIXTEEN
Faye.
Rhett was back. He was here. In my apartment. My front door was probably broken. But he was here. There was blood dripping down his face from where Casey kneed him. He came for me after I left him.
He unbuttoned the top of his jeans, pushed them down and stepped out of them. Naked. That’s what he was. The only thing on his body was the belt wrapped around his hand. The buckle gleamed in the light of my room.
“You should leave.” I heard the words come out of my mouth. It wasn’t what I wanted, but there was a part of me that knew that he should.
“I should leave? I should fucking leave?’ He gripped that belt like it was a lifeline. His knuckles turned white.
For a moment I thought he would. I saw it in his eyes. The indecision. It played there for the briefest moment before it was replaced with something else. It was dark, hideous. The look that covered his vision. It awoke something in me. Something equally as decrepit. He lunged at me, his big body pinning me to the bed.
A hand jerked my head back so hard that tears sprung to my eyes.
“You want me to leave, Faye?” He looked into my eyes and I saw a monster there. A hideous monster. I was mesmerized by it. Captivated. Though I didn’t know if the monster was inside Rhett or if I was just seeing a reflection of myself in his dark pupil. The real monster. “Fucking answer me!” He jerked harder, pulling a whimper from my lips. “Nothing to say now, huh?”
“Fuck you.” I shoved my hands against his chest.
“Oh, I’m gonna fuck you. You don’t have to worry about that.”
I felt his cock twitch against my belly.
“You don’t get to fuck me,” I hissed. “I walked out on you. I left you. It’s over. You don’t get to have me anymore.”
“Is that fucking so?” He released my hair and sat straddling me, his hand still gripping the belt. “But you’ll fuck that piece of shit?”
I let a smirk cover my face. I knew what it looked like it. It was my mask and I wore it well. It was the smirk that said I didn’t give a shit about him or anything else. “Well, you saw his cock didn’t you? It’s so big and—”
“Shut the fuck up.” I heard the crack before I felt the pain in my face. I sucked in a breath and whimpered at the burn on my cheek. The back of Rhett’s hand without the belt was red. Enflamed from hitting me. A shiver of pleasure radiated through my body making my cunt wet.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You want to hear about all the times I came while his cock was inside—”
He slapped me again. The firm smack of his hand stealing the words straight from my lips. My nipples hardened with the throb of the pain in my face.
Hard fingers gripped my chin, forcing me to look back at the monster in his eyes. “This is what you wanted isn’t it, Faye? You wanted my fucking hate, huh?”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
His grip on my chin hardened until I was certain his fingers would snap the bones, but I didn’t move. I didn’t flinch. I just stared at the monster with my cunt dripping down my thighs.
His cock pressed against my belly, enraged, hard against soft.
I hated how much I wanted him. How much I wanted to him to fuck with me that monster in his eyes, with the hate. I was disgusting.
He released my chin and leaned back. I took the opportunity and shoved him with both hands. He wasn’t expecting it this time and started to topple backward on the bed. I shimmied out from under him and darted out of the room. Where I was going, I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
The wood floor was cold on my feet.
Rhett’s hand was hot on my arm when he grabbed me from behind. I’d barely made it into the living room when he caught up to me. It was just like when we were in his living room and I ran from him—except it wasn’t.
Rhett didn’t spin me around and kiss me. I didn’t giggle and feel the need to cling to him with everything I had. Instead he slammed me face first into the wall. Air whooshed from my lips on impact. Discomfort tingled through my body
“You want to run from me, Faye?” He leaned in and pressed his lips against my ear. “I’ll always catch you. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”
Those words. They racketed through my brain. Echoing. Laughter filled the air and for a moment I wondered who was making the dreadful sound, before realizing it was me.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“You sound just like him,” I said as my laughter ebbed. “Your father.” I thought the words would hurt him. I thought he would pull away and be ashamed.
“That’s why you want this. That’s who you’ve wanted me and everyone else to be this whole fucking time, isn’t it?” He pressed his whole body against mine. The sheetrock bit into my skin. “I’ve been so fucking afraid of being him.” His hand slid into my hair. “All these years. All these motherfucking years, Faye.” His grip tightened and his cock kicked against my ass. “And all these years that’s all you’ve fucking wanted.” My scalp screamed in pain. Blood smeared against my shoulder. Blood that dripped from his nose.
“That’s not what I want.”
He pulled my face back and slammed it against the wall. “Lies!”
My head spun. Agony exploded in my cheek.
“Quit fucking lying!” he shouted at my back.
“Go fuck yourself, Rhett!” I screamed back and tried to wriggle away.
“I bet you’re wet, aren’t you? I bet your pussy is dripping, isn’t it?”
Even as he spoke my pussy throbbed in time with the ache in my face.
His fingers slid along the slit, the leather from the belt leaving a tingling trail along my ass. A dark chuckle left his lips. “I’m right. But you knew that.”
“Go home, Rhett.” I choked the words out. “Just go home.” I hated it. I hated that he was right. That right now I was fucking wetter than I had ever been. That my pussy was desperate needy, begging for his cock. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.
His response was to spread my legs and slide his fingers into my pussy from behind. The buckle of his belt pressed against my ass, the metal cold against my skin. I bit down on my lip so I wouldn’t moan. My teeth tore into the soft flesh as he worked his fingers in and out roughly.
“I bet you wanna come don’t you? You little fucking whore.” He moved his fingers faster. Pleasure built deep in my core, thriving on the pain, building on it, turning it into something so bittersweet it made my eyes water. “You wanna scream with it. Don’t you?” he whispered in my ear.
I wanted to say no. To deny him. To tell him I didn’t. That I wasn’t that kind of person. The one that was so fucked in the head that I thrived on everything going on in this moment. But then I tasted it. The blood. My own blood from clamping down on my lip with my teeth. The world seemed to stop as the coppery flavor filled my mouth. A moan tore from my lips as pleasure and pain mingled together in the darkness inside me and sliced through my body like a black dagger of ecstasy.
Before I could come back from the darkness, my back was on the floor and Rhett was inside me, pounding into me. I looked up at him. Blood was smeared across his face and the monster was still there, darkening his green eyes. Clouding them.
My body thrummed, thriving off the hate. Every nerve ending I had stood on end. Ready to get lost in it. I opened my mouth to tell him. To beg him to say the words. Words I’d never heard him say. Words I was desperate for. But he spoke before I could.
“I fucking hate you.” He pounded into me relentlessly. Our bodies slapping against each other. “I have never hated anyone like I hate you.” His gaze focused on mine. The rage and the monster danced there, taunting me. “I hate him too.” He fucked me harder. “But I hate you more. So. Much. More.” He pulled his hand back and slapped the belt against my stomach. The buckle bit into my skin.
That dark pleasure overwhelmed me, sending me hurtling into the black, where all the fucked up memories of my past lingered. Back to the way Taylor’s knife felt on my skin as he cut me open and sliced away all my sanity. Back to gagging on his cock on the dirty floor of the abortion clinic. He was about to kill my baby, but I had been wet for him, even then.
I was torn in two as the pleasure ripped through me again. Only this time it was my soul that cleaved in half. I let that monster tear it apart. The monster in Rhett’s eyes. I stared into those eyes as Rhett jerked out of me and climbed up my body, gripping his cock. He didn’t even have to pry my mouth open to shove his cock down my throat. I opened it willingly. He pumped into me twice before he groaned. His eyes softened and the monster retreated when I swallowed his cum. The salty liquid mixed with the coppery flavor of my blood as it went down my throat.
His softening cock slipped from my lips as I stared up at him. A haze seemed to cover my vision. Rhett seemed far away and close all at once. Like I could reach out and touch him, but he wouldn’t really be there. Like all those years ago in the field I used to call home. When I reached for him, but he hadn’t been there.
That’s what this was. It had to be. I had to be dreaming. The last week—the last hour—it hadn’t really happened. It wasn’t real. I wasn’t lying on my living room floor, my body aching, blood and cum dripping from my lips.
“Faye…” Rhett was talking. His words were soft, soothing. They cocooned me and made me feel safe.
I was exhausted, I realized, as hands lifted me off the floor. And I let the fuzziness in my head take me far away.
SEVENTEEN
Faye.
I woke up to Rhett’s body pressed against my back. The warmth of him couldn’t stop the chill that seemed to grip my soul as I turned to look at him. His mouth was swollen, scabbed over.
He looked like a foreign object next to me. Someone I didn’t recognize.
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