by Kellie Hart
“You always know exactly what to say to make me damp, don’t you, Mr. Sherwood?”
“That’s exactly what I came to speak with you about.”
“Oh?”
“I can’t get this afternoon off my mind, so later, I should like to pick up where we left off.”
“Oh.”
“I need to feel myself inside of you, Carey.”
“Oh.”
“I need you to need me inside of you. Do you, Carey?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
“Good,” Atticus says. “I’m glad we’re in agreement then.”
Atticus backs away, yet he doesn’t let my hand go. Our fingers drift apart until only our fingertips touch.
“Until later, Carolina,” he says when he reaches the door, and our connection finally breaks.
“Atty?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, as well, my Carolina.”
“I love your dick, too.”
“As expected.”
“I mean, like I really, really LOVE your cock. I bet you make horses jealous.”
“I did leave behind a few broken broodmare hearts in England.”
My eyes widen, and Atticus bursts into laughter.
“I never fucked a horse,” he continues, “but there was this one occasion at uni with a pig…”
“Atticus!”
“I kid. I kid,” he reassures me, but he has one foot out of the door. “I love you, Carey.”
“I love you, too, Atty.”
And I always will.
***
I would love to be able to recount to you in great detail each and every move I make during my number tonight at Hot Rod, but I can’t. What I do recall is that the scene was perfect—low lighting, a dusky interior smelling of bourbon and rich cigars. When the maestro stroke up Glenn Miller’s “Here We Go Again,” I swayed and sashayed all over the stage, offering the audience titillating views of my body through silk scarves, feather boas, or my own staple linen fans. It was a performance of firsts—the first time I ever showed the world the classic dance I studied until Mike and the first time I ever danced as myself.
My friends huddled in the far right corner of the lounge cheering me on, but as with every dance since he has come into my life, this one was for Atticus. I watched him, memorizing the lust and love both present in his gaze. The rest of me was lost to the night, carried away by the glory of his eyes on me and the fantasy of writhing under his hands as they manipulate my every move.
“Later,” Atticus mouthed a thousand times during my performance.
Later, a thousand times I silently answered.
When the music faded to a close, I took a very final bow before the crowd, ignored their demands for an encore, and scampered to my dressing room. I ripped an oldie-but-goodie from my closet—a fitted A-line dress from the 1950s I haven’t worn in years—and got ready in a hurry. Now, as I stand before my mirror, I am so anxious to look perfect for Atticus that I take my hair down, but I repin it. Then, I take it down to repin it all over again. It’s only when the tiny fucker falls from my head that I realize I am trembling.
“Calm down, Carey. Calm down, Carey. Calm down, Carey,” I chant at my reflection. “It’s only sex.”
“It’s only sex with Atticus,” I counter, “and it will be so much more than only sex. It will be the first time we truly love.”
“Love,” I whisper to myself and touch the small smile growing on my face. “That’s all that needs to be said.”
A slow clap from the side of my dressing room draws my eyes from my reflection. When I expect to find Atticus there, waiting for me, there is literal darkness. Though he says nothing, I stumble back a few steps and fall onto my sofa. I put my hands up as if to protect myself, and when I need to scream, my tongue refuses to move. In the moment, that makes perfect sense to me. What the fuck is there to say when the person in front of you is the last goddamn person you would ever want to speak to again?
With a smirk, Michael Martin pauses his sarcastic applause and crosses arms over his broad chest. He stands still, silent, giving me ample time to notice how our years of separation have changed him very little. He remains tall and tan and stunning. His hair is short now, but his eyes are the same shade of gray. His nose is still slender and pointed over lips that are almost too pretty to belong to a man, and his mouth is just as full of the shit I heard for years.
“I must be a fucking prophet. I always said you were a whore, and now, you’ve turned it into a fucking career. Good for you, Care.”
I wobble to my feet. “How the hell did you get past the bouncers, Mike?”
“No, Hello? No, How have you been, Mike? It’s been almost four years, Carey, for Christ’s sakes. I think I deserve more than a fucking Why you here?”
“You deserve nothing from me. Get the fuck out of my dressing room.”
Mike throws his head back in laughter, and my teeth grind together at the sheer noise of it. When he finally settles, he waves his hands as if they are flags of surrender. “Okay, okay. Maybe I said the wrong thing a second ago. I’m a creature of habit as you well know. I’m only here because you did great up there tonight, Care, and I had to tell you in person.”
“Good. You’ve said it, so you can be on your fucking way.” I step generously backwards and gesture to the door and the clearly empty hallway beyond it.
When Mike makes no move to leave, I decide that if only one of us is getting out of here, it is going to be me.
Atticus. I’ve got to get to Atticus.
I quickly collect my bag, stuff my keys and phone into it, and prepare to make my escape, but Mike grabs my wrist. I look down to where his brown fingers are clamped over my caramel skin, and I literally have to stay the vomit in my throat.
Atticus. Atticus. Atticus.
I rip my hand from his grasp and fumble for my phone, but Mike snatches it and peers down at the screen before glaring at me.
“I’m not entertaining enough for you, so you’re rushing off to find that fucking boy toy of yours. Is that it?”
I swallow hard. “How do you know about him?”
Mike tosses my phone onto the counter and stretches to his full height, at least a full foot taller than me. He takes a step forward, and I freeze as he lifts one of my curls to his nose. His eyes flutter closed as he smells it then allows it to fall back to my chest.
“I knew it. Strawberries,” he says as his gaze returns to mine. “You haven’t changed a fucking bit, Carey.”
His assumption that I am incapable of change emboldens me unlike before.
“How the fuck do you know about Atticus?”
Mike smiles yet again, but this time it’s a satisfied grin, as if he has finally gotten from me what he seeks. “So, that’s the bastard’s name. It’s got a nice, snobby, British-ring to it, but you tell me something now. Does this Atticus really know the trouble he’s fucking when it comes to you?”
I have never wanted to kill a person before, but the sound of Atticus’s name on Mike’s lips makes me want to end him then and there.
I fucking will.
Without another thought, I launch myself at him. Mike captures my wrists between his vise-like fingers before he slams me into the makeup counter, pinning me there with the weight of his heavy body. My ears ring with the impact, and my teeth slice through my cheek, leaving the metallic taste of blood on my tongue. With a triumphant curse, Mike shoves his knee between my thighs. I struggle, trying to break free, but he keeps my hands imprisoned between us. With Mike on one side, my cabinet on the other, and my heart pinned between them, I am fucking terrified. Trapped by the literal manifestation of my past.
“You miss this, don’t you, Carey?” Mike hisses against my ear. “A little pain, a little roughing up? I remember that night I came for you, at your grandma’s place, and your body was so tight like it’d been that first time in my Mustang. Do you remember it, too, Carey—when I came
and found you again? You took everything I had to give, no whining, no bitching. You were fucking perfect. You were finally everything I wanted.”
I twist my head to get away from his voice, but his words only follow.
“That British son of a bitch you’re fucking doesn’t seem like he’s up to the challenge of giving you what you need. Tell me—does he finger-fuck your pussy till you’re ripped and raw? Does he tie you up and whip your body until it is marked by his hands? Is he fucking man enough to spread you open and take what’s his?”
With tears spilling over, I lean away from him as far as I can, but he’s still there. He is still fucking there.
“Let me explain something to you, Carey.” Mike loosens the grip of one of his hands and forces it beneath my dress to cup my mound. “This shit here, this shit, it belongs to me. I fucked it first, and I’ll fuck it last. Do you understand me?”
“No!” I scream, but the sound is all but blocked out as Mike’s mouth falls over mine.
Mike suffocates me with his lips, taking and never giving, hating, punishing, and never loving. His free hand tangles in my hair, and he yanks my head to the side. The move gives Mike better access to part my lips, and I am granted a perfect view of the open door behind us. The very moment Mike’s tongue breaks past my teeth, Atticus walks into my dressing room.
“Carey,” he says lightly as he looks down at his phone, “it’s almost three in the morning, love. Aren’t you ready to get home? I want you fucking naked the instant we walk—”
When Atticus’s blue eyes finally lift to find me, he finds me with Mike instead. The scene before Atticus stops him dead in his tracks, and the scene before me breaks my heart for the second time in one lifetime.
“I can’t—I don’t—What?” Atticus mumbles, panicking. He pats himself down as if he is searching for some hidden meaning in the moment that he can’t find. “I can’t—Carey—How could you? Why, why would you—”
Atticus! I scream within, but Mike has stolen the very breath from my chest.
Over the next few seconds, time slows to a crawl, as if to torture me with bearing witness to a tragedy I cannot stop. Suffering a second glance between Mike and me, Atticus’s expression silently morphs from shocked and confused to utterly betrayed. His cell phone slips from his fingers and shatters against the floor, but he makes no move to collect it. He simply stares at me, touching a pointer finger to his lower lip. Then, Atticus’s hand drops to his side as if the will to carry on has escaped him.
And I can’t fucking blame him.
When all hope is lost, Atticus lunges and rips Mike from my chest. Atticus slings him across the room, and Mike lands inexplicably in a laughing heap upon my sofa. As Atticus prowls forward, shoulders arched and eyes gone black, Mike’s smug face finally falls, and I am struck silent by the sheer look of hatred on Atticus’s beautiful face.
“If you fucking touch her again, I will never let you forget it,” Atticus seethes, a long finger pointed inches from Mike’s chest. “You broke her once, and I’ll be damned if you break her again. Stay away from her. Stay away from us, you fucking son of a bitch. Carolina is mine.”
As I watch Atticus protect me, I also watch him safeguard everything that matters—our commitment, our future, and our love—and I take a tentative step forward. Mike’s eyes sweep dramatically between us as I lay a hand on Atticus’s shoulder. It’s a silent request for him to move aside and let me handle this, once and for all.
Atticus steps away, but he keeps my hand locked within his own. My other hand curls into a fist at my side, and Mike notices.
“So, what? Are you gonna hit me now?”
“No, I am not,” I whisper, but my voice grows stronger with each word that passes through my lips, “yet I should. I should slap that pompous smile right off your fucking face because I have every right to make you feel the pain you caused me time and time again. I could repeat to you those insults that still haunt my fucking dreams, the words that you used to crush my spirit, but I will not. No one ever deserves to hear such cruel language, but what I will tell you is that you made me feel worthless, meaningless, and dirty. You fucking killed me, and in my darkest, sickest, most twisted fantasies, you live what my life was like after you, a fucking aimless path littered with lies—You are not good enough to be loved and No one will ever want you again. Yet, I never want that to be your reality, Mike. Unlike you, I do not manipulate or sabotage or hate. Unlike you, I love, and though it has taken me years to trust in it again, I love now because I must.”
Atticus looks down at me, a small smile on his lips, pride shining brightly in his eyes. As Mike sits in stunned silence, a hand pressed to his mouth, Atticus pulls my hand towards the door. I shake my head, and I let him free, with a little whisper I will be okay. He is obviously hesitant to leave me, but I watch him go. His shadow drifts only a few feet beyond the door; he is not far away, but what I’m about to do is something I must do alone.
I turn around, and Mike glares at me as he rises from the sofa.
“It’s predictable he’d leave,” he says. “We always leave you in the end.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I seethe. “All you ever attempted to do was convince me love is not real, that it’s supposed to hurt, and that’s another fucking lie, Mike. A fucking lie.”
“Who are you right now, someone living in a fucking fantasy? You aren’t a fucking princess, and he’s not some goddamn Prince Charming,” Mike says with a dark laugh. “What shit has he fed you to make you think he’s any different from me? Come on, Carey! We both know you’re a gullible fuck, but I never took you for a complete idiot.”
“Atticus loves me more than anything, so fuck you.”
“There are no happily ever afters, and love doesn’t fucking conquer all, so no. Fuck you, you stupid bitch.”
Before I know what I am doing, I sprint across the few feet between us, and my fist meets Mike’s jaw. The sound of his teeth cracking ricochets around us, and I stumble away, my chest heaving.
“Don’t you fucking dare come near me or Atticus ever again.”
“Oh, go to hell, Carey.” Mike spits blood on the floor. “You better pray that Lover Boy wants to follow you down because God only knows why the fuck he’s stayed around this long.”
As I turn to go, his words stop me, soldering my feet to the ground. The gamut of emotions I have ever felt towards him—luck, love, loss, loathing—finally escape me, to be replaced by something new entirely. Pity? Forgiveness? I am not sure what it is, but when I look back at him, I see Mike for who he is, what he always was—a lost man who damages others because he knows nothing more than being damaged himself.
To break and be broken—it could be his life’s anthem.
“I’m so sorry for you,” I say as I step away.
“Sorry for what?” Mike screams after me. “Carey, what the fuck are you sorry for?”
I do not give him the benefit of an answer because what I regret most is wasting so much of my life giving him power over me he never deserved to have.
AS I STEP OUT OF my dressing room, Atticus waits for me beside the door. We say nothing, but we wrap ourselves up in the arms of the other and stumble onto the main floor of Hot Rod. After we’re engulfed by our group of friends, I explain what happened with Mike. No one, not even the bouncers, can tell me how he made it past them, but my friends, who also love Atticus and I together as much as we do, assure me they will take care of Mike. I don’t care how they do it, but I ask them to guarantee I will never see him again, and they promise me I never will. When the clamor at last dies down, Atticus and I share a glance that quietly speaks one word.
Home.
Hand-in-hand, we make our way the few blocks between Hot Rod and our place as slowly and as uneventfully as we can. Our leisurely pace brings us to our porch many minutes later, and we climb the stairs. I unlock the door and push it open. Within, everything is still and quiet. The lights are out, no music comes from the record player, not even a hint of s
treet noise filters up through the rafters. We take a step inside the silent space and close the door behind us. I take in the reassuring weight of Atticus’s hand in my own and take moment to relish the simple peace of the moment.
Atticus gently leads me into our bedroom. Without another word, he sheds his tuxedo jacket, strewing it across the blanket, and he sets his glasses on the bedside table. Eyes locked with mine, he removes his cufflinks and rolls his sleeves to the elbow, showing off the elaborate ink work on his forearms as I forever ask of him. He stares me down, and some emotion I can’t name burns behind his blue irises, turning them the angry gray of the southern sky before a storm rolls in. When I expect him to reach for me, to pull me between our sheets to finally finish what we began this afternoon, he collapses onto the side of the bed and drops his head into his hands. I swear to God—I have no idea what the hell is happening.