by R. J. Lewis
She shook her head slightly, continuing to back up. “Help is for the weak.”
She didn’t even look at him one more time before she stood back up, her backpack flung over one shoulder, that blade still in her grip. He watched her turn and hurry down the sidewalk, practically running, her hair a black wave in the early dawn light.
“Emma Warne,” he whispered to himself for a reason he didn’t understand.
She would be the first and only person Marcus Borden ever wondered about.
*
He pulled out Kate’s number half a dozen times a day throughout the week. He debated long and hard about calling her. He might score another lay, and it might even be better than the first time, but what was the point of it all?
She was the kind of girl he could get dangerously attached to, and the last thing he needed was to get attached to someone. Especially when he was involved with some really shady guys. If he fucked up, they might find his weaknesses and hurt him, and if he had a girl he cared about, she’d be that weakness and she’d get hurt too.
After the hundredth time staring at her number, Marcus fumed and crumpled the paper, throwing it in the nearest bin on his way home from the diner he’d eaten at.
There was no fucking way. She was too good for him.
She belonged in her world, and he belonged in his.
Four
Kate
He didn’t call me.
It’d been nine days and I’d heard nothing from him. I didn’t even see him around.
I thought one night stands were just notches on a bedpost, a moment in time you move on from and never reminisce about again. But I was doing the polar opposite. I’d been obsessing and licking up the festered wounds of rejection. Why would he promise he’d call and then not?
I had gone all bunny boiler. Every day I thought about our conversation together, how genuine he sounded, how good he looked, how well he’d taken care of me. The more I obsessed, the more upset I grew. And then, to my embarrassment, I found myself taking the long drive to his apartment one afternoon. I’d completely lost my mind, and even thinking about it in the present, locked up inside this cellar, I felt mortified by that decision. I don’t know what had come over me, but I was desperate for Marcus Borden. He did things to women that you couldn’t really explain without sounding like a dazed fool.
I parked my blue Corvette on the side of the street in front of the rough building, and then I stepped out and walked to the intercom. I searched for his name, feeling frustrated when I couldn’t find it. It was as though he didn’t exist. I stood there for minutes on end, debating whether I could just pester some resident to let me in, when I heard, “Kate?”
I jumped and turned around. Marcus was standing on the sidewalk, wearing jeans and a plain black tank top, showcasing his tanned arms and all those black and grey shaded tattoos. There was a silver chain around his neck carrying a large cross. And was he always so big? I didn’t remember him being that wide or that intimidating to look at. If my dad was here, he’d have called him a hooligan, and it wasn’t the clothes or the way he looked, but it was the way Marcus carried himself. That “fuck authority” attitude was present in him as ever, and for a moment, I wondered why in the hell I had come here for him in the first place. He was different in a way I would never understand.
I hesitated. What the hell are you doing here, Kate? This was wrong. He was just a stranger, and I’d made a very bad judgment call thinking this guy kept to his promises, or even that he’d been genuine that night. God, I was just a fool. I felt so naïve and stupid.
“What are you doing here?” he asked me, mirroring my inner thoughts, looking bewildered as he glanced at me up and down, taking in my flower summer dress. I felt even more out of place than I already was.
I shook my head. “No reason. I was just going.”
He took a few steps closer to me, his blue eyes cutting into my own. “I don’t understand. You came here for me, right?”
I shook my head adamantly. “No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I was just leaving.”
I made to move when he held his hand out to me.
“No,” he told me, his hard face softening. “Talk to me, Kate. Don’t run.”
I took a few breaths, wondering how the hell I was going to explain that to him without sounding like a crazy person. There was really no way I could pull it off, and my humiliation felt heavy and dirty. You couldn’t wash it off, not for several lifetimes.
Resigned, I looked away and muttered, “You didn’t call.”
He didn’t move or respond for several moments, and I was sure I was red all over. He probably thought I was nuts.
“Look at me,” he suddenly said, his voice low and solemn. When I refused, he drew closer to me, blocking my vision with his frame. “Look at me, Kate,” he repeated.
Slowly, I looked up at him, and in the brilliant sunlight, his gorgeous face reminded me exactly why I was here in the first place.
“I didn’t call you for your own sake,” he explained carefully. “You’re the sun, babe, and I’m the fucking darkness. We come from completely different realities, and you deserve a fucking hell of a lot more than me.”
My chest tightened as I replied, “But that’s not for you to decide.”
He studied me for a few moments, taking in every inch of me. My manicured nails, my straightened smooth blonde hair, my expensive dress and perfectly applied make-up. I suddenly felt like I should have dressed down. Truth was, I went all out to impress him, and now I felt like I was doing the opposite.
He glanced around us, and when he caught my car on the side of the road, he frowned.
“Not a good place to park a car like that,” he mumbled.
“I wasn’t thinking,” I replied, stupidly. “I know I should have. I guess I’ve been a little impulsive.”
And stupid.
“Let me show you something,” he then told me, turning back to me.
“Okay.”
He took my hand, which was a good sign in my books, and led me up to his apartment. All the while he appeared conflicted, his brow furrowed, his face solemn. When we got there, he dropped my hand and unlocked his door.
“Come in,” he told me, and I followed him into the apartment.
I was confused when he began gaining distance.
“Take a look around,” he said. “I’ve been in here six months, and this is what I am.”
I did as he asked and glanced around his apartment. My heels were loud against the floorboards as I took in the living room and the couch he’d given me the best sexual experience on. It had certainly seen better days. Actually, the entire room was filled with crappy furniture and a bubbly box for a television I hadn’t personally seen in over a decade.
“Go to my bedroom,” he continued, noticing my hesitation. “Go on, beautiful. Take a good look.”
I did.
His bedroom had a double bed, unmade, and a small light brown desk stacked with crap. The kitchen had dishes piled up in the sink, and even the cupboards had yellowed from age. I began to understand what he was trying to do.
“So you’re broke,” I muttered, turning back to him, light-heartedly adding, “And you’re a little messy.”
He had his arms crossed and he was leaning back against the front door, staring at me intently. He was waiting for more, and I sighed. “Do you do drugs too? Is that where the money is going? I thought dealers were flushed with cash, or something.”
“I don’t make a lot of money,” he responded. “I deal for some dangerous people, and they take a huge chunk out of it.”
“Do you like doing it?”
“No. I hate it.”
I shrugged. “So quit.”
“Quit?” He chuckled lightly. “You don’t know my world, beautiful. I didn’t grow up with the same opportunities you did. I grew up around this poison, and I had to make do with what I had. This job, it’s fucked up and it’s bad, but it’s gi
ving me more money than I’d get out there, working some 9-5 job earning pennies. This is what the world is like on this end. You barely survive, so you gotta work. You fight, and you fight hard until the day you die. There’s no easy way out. No help around the corner, no parent to pick up the pieces of your mistakes, and it’s simple why that is. Nobody gives a shit about you here. It’s you against the world, and that’s my life, Kate. It’s fucking ugly, and I’m not going to colour your perfect world with that ugly.”
I considered that for several moments. Continuing to look around his apartment, I understood him perfectly, but I wasn’t really caring about it either. I liked Marcus, and the rest was background noise.
“You won’t colour my world with ugly,” I then told him, looking back at him. “We have a good connection. You made me feel things I never felt before, and I want to have fun with you. I want you to touch me the way you did that night. That’s all I want. It’s all I wanted when I gave you my number. It doesn’t have to be serious. I’m not looking to involve myself in everything you do, in all that ugliness.”
He looked away, a fleeting look of disappointment on his face. “So you want me for sexual purposes.”
“Until you can give me more, yes,” I replied, hopeful.
In all honesty, I wanted more right from the start, but I also knew already that he was a mess. I couldn’t accept all his bad just yet. It wouldn’t work that way. I wouldn’t last. I wanted the good parts of him, and I knew now that it was another reason I wasn’t the one for him. He needed a woman that took the good with the bad. A woman that fought for him to change, to be a better man, even if it meant working a shit job, so long as he was clean and living a legal life, that was all that mattered. I was too scared to do all that. I was being selfish, and I could later justify it was because I was young and trying to prolong that thrill. But to be honest, I was just a selfish person period when it came to him.
I could tell he was cracking, especially when his eyes travelled the length of me. Soon, this addiction would run both ways. He would hunger for me all the time, try to give me more, and I would push it away, unready to accept all sides of him.
Setting my purse down, I moved to him. He watched me cautiously as I went, with this vulnerable look in his eyes. I stopped in front of him, and my hands roamed up his hard chest. His arms dropped to his sides as I did so, and he closed his eyes momentarily, as if savouring my touch. He wanted to be cared for, I could feel that so strongly in him. Whatever trauma he’d endured as a child left him secretly needy, begging to be loved as he carried on his tough façade. Maybe within the soul of a roughened young man, there was an untouched pocket of affection waiting to be shown. It was sort of tragic to think how many people closed themselves off from the world because of a shitty upbringing they had no control over.
It made me want Marcus all the more.
“Say yes,” I whispered to him, shutting out that trembling timid side of me. I wanted to be confident with him. I needed to be to make this work.
He opened his eyes and looked down at me, giving me butterflies with that look. “Yeah,” he whispered back. “I fucking want you. I’ve wanted you the second I saw you, but I’m also not a fantasist. I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing. That’s all.”
My chest tightened. I smiled at him and stroked the side of his face. “I’m sure,” I told him.
It wasn’t a second later before he crashed his mouth to mine. His lips were made for me, I swear it. I felt on fire, longing for more of his touch.
He picked me up in his strong and steady arms and carried me back to his couch. With this look of desperation, he removed every item of clothing on my body, treating me delicately. He kissed me everywhere, savouring every inch of my skin, and I came against his sweet tongue before he took me again.
I was done for.
Without effort, it took him no time at all to steal my heart.
Five
Kate
“So what happened next?” the man asked me.
I stared at him and at the knife he was lazily dangling in his hands.
“With what exactly?” I numbly replied.
“With the two of you, obviously. What the fuck else could I be talking about?”
I flinched at his anger. “Why do you want to know?”
“Like I said, I’m killing time before I get around to killing. Just tell me. It might be good to unload, especially since you’re going to your death and all. Hell, if you humanize yourself enough, I might have you pass on peacefully.”
I shuddered and brought my knees to my chest, holding back the sobs that were bubbling to the surface. “Why do you want to kill me?”
The man leaned forward, his eyes dark and ominous. “Let’s just say my brother is restoring balance. Eye for an eye kind of thing. Your dream boy ripped him off good, and he can’t get away with that. He can’t just show up out of the blue and steal our turf. He has to be scared of crossing us, and what better way to do that than to sort you out?”
“Marcus will find you.”
“No, he won’t. When your body is rotting at the bottom of the New Raven River, he’ll be so consumed in your death, he’ll never think to find us.”
I didn’t respond to that.
The man was crazy, and I was certain then, more than I’d ever been certain about anything else, I truly was going to my death. There were no words to describe the horror of that, but there was also something eerily peaceful about it. I was making amends to myself, forgiving all the wrongs I’d committed, letting go of the problems that now seemed so drastically insignificant.
Life really was short, and had I savoured every minute of it?
My soul consoled me that I’d tried.
I’d tried damn hard to live for myself.
“Talk,” he then demanded. “Tell me about your relationship.”
“I’m not going to give you anymore moments,” I retorted, fighting hard to keep my voice steady. “You won’t steal another one. Now I answered you already. I told you how we met, and I gave you a little more too, but that’s it. No more.”
He stared at me for a solid minute, and the seconds dragged with unease.
“You want to cut to the chase then?” he suddenly asked. “You want me to cut your heart out now instead of later?”
I stared at the knife, shaking like a leaf at the thought of him sticking it in my chest.
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” I cried out in frustration, my teeth chattering. “I’m a good person! I haven’t harmed anybody. I haven’t done anything to deserve this.”
“How long were you with him?” he went on, completely disregarding my words. “If he left four years ago, that means he had one with you. Isn’t that right?”
I just gaped at him, wordless.
“One year with you shouldn’t have impacted him so much, should it?”
“After a few months, we started spending every day together.”
“Were you open lovers? Did the world know?”
“No,” I whispered, vacantly looking past him as I resurfaced those moments in my life I’d never get back. “We were together in secret. We crafted our own world. It didn’t matter Marcus didn’t have money. It didn’t matter what part of town I came from. We left our troubles and our lives behind us when we came together.”
“Was it just sex?”
“No, and yes. It was…everything. Sometimes I was at his place, other times he was at mine.”
“Did he pleasure you every time?”
I overlooked his desperation to know and nodded. “Yes.”
Marcus had explored every inch of me, always pleasing me while he reserved his pleasure until the very end. But… even then, I felt that he had some other side to him sexually. I didn’t know what it was, and he never talked about it, but he held back every time he took me.
“And nobody knew?” my killer pressed.
“Eventually they did. I started to distance myself from every
body and I got careless about hiding my tracks. After I neglected my friends, spent little time talking to my parents, and my grades suffered, people started to get really suspicious.”
“So he became your world.”
“Yeah.”
Nothing thrilled me anymore except the feel of him and what he could do to my body. Or that I could open up to him and tell him every little thing and he would never judge me the way others would.
“Who discovered it?”
I sighed, reliving that horrible memory. “My father.”
And that was when everything changed.
*
Marcus had dropped me off at six in the morning, well aware that my father was due to come pick me up for breakfast at seven. We’d been together for nearly a year at this stage, and it was just as brilliant and addictive as day one. In our own little world, we lived and breathed each other in, and it was always cathartic ending the day in his arms. It balanced me out, made me feel like maybe I could tackle on his ugly life after all. I’d reminisced about it often. In my mind, I saw myself abandoning my studies, forsaking my father’s expectations, moving in with Marcus, both of us getting a job and making it by. It could work, couldn’t it? I didn’t care if that meant being poor or going without. I didn’t care so long as I had those full lips against my own.
“Call me,” I told him, kissing him. “Don’t make me wait around again, Marcus. You take forever.”
“I’ll call you tonight,” he promised, running his fingers through my hair with this look of worship. “I won’t make you wait, beautiful.”
I gave him one more heart melting kiss before breaking it off and rushing into my building. I looked like shit, and the elevator mirrors confirmed my suspicions. My skirt wasn’t in place straight, my hair was frizzy and my make-up was everywhere – the mascara in particular had completely rubbed beneath my eyes, making me look like a raccoon. Yeah, if anyone saw me, they’d know exactly what I’d been up to all night.
My cheeks flushed at the memory. My God, the things that man did with his tongue. I felt an ache again just thinking about it, but I didn’t have time to. I needed to hurry up and shower, look presentable, have my hair in place, and mentally prepare myself for an hour long interrogation about why I wasn’t perfect to my father.