by Christa Wick
His fingers brushed the side veil of hair from my face. He smoothed the strands over my ear and behind my shoulder. "You can't keep your eyes closed forever, Alexa."
I answered with another barking laugh. He was right, I would need to open them when it was time to walk out of his life forever.
"If you won't look at me," he continued, his tone becoming more stern, "then tell me why you had to change your name."
Tears leaked from behind my sealed eyelids. Jake grunted and then his arm slid around the back of my shoulders. I felt his head press against mine and then his lips brushed my cheek.
"You don't have to tell me the story, Alexa," he whispered. "Just don't leave."
I shook my head. Jake didn't wear his money like his brother did. He wouldn't care that I had lived most of my life at or below the poverty level. He wouldn't care if my crazy, born again mother had been a teen-aged "ho" before meeting her husband.
But that was just an extremely small slice of the secret I had kept hidden for so long.
Pushing my body as close to the table as I could, I opened my eyes and stared at the opposite wall as I continued resumed the story.
"By the time I was three, her lover was in jail for the long haul as a habitual offender. With the dope money gone, she spent another three years leeching off her relatives and his. After that, she went around to all the churches -- one for rent, another for utilities, a third for groceries."
Pausing, I sucked in a deep breath. I hadn't been a very happy child most of my first six years, but they had been paradise compared to what had followed.
"It was at the third church she met 'Deacon Don.'" I wrapped my arms my stomach, my need to throw up increasing with every word I spit out. "Eventually, he divorced his wife, married Ruth, got an even better job at some marketing firm in Dallas, moved us to some McMansion in Westlake..."
I buried my face in my hands in a futile attempt to stop the flood of memories. The first three years of their marriage, Don had ignored my existence and Ruth had been just as happy to pretend I didn't exist. When we moved to Westlake, she couldn't ignore her overly round daughter who was the last tie to her trailer park origins and youthful indiscretions. My very existence embarrassed and offended her.
As cruel as she had been, my life remained tolerable -- until I turned twelve and started menstruating.
Ready to puke, I tried to push onto my feet. Jake forced me to remain in the chair.
"Tell me what happened," he growled. "What did they do to make you leave?"
I shook my head. I didn't want to tell Jake, but I didn't know how else to make him go away.
"Don started to show an interest in me."
Jake's arms flexed around me, his fingertips digging into my shoulders. I needed out of the room but couldn't move an inch because of how tightly he held me. He turned me toward him. Since I couldn't look at him and couldn't escape, I buried my face against his chest.
"He would grope me," I continued at last in an attempt to stop the restless movement of Jake's hands against my back. "And he drilled a whole in my bathroom wall..."
I hiccupped once, bile filling my mouth until I forced it back down my throat.
"When I finally told Ruth -- showed her the damn hole -- she denied it was even possible."
I squirmed against Jake's chest, searching for someplace I could plant my palms against his chest and push until he had to release me. What I had told him should have been enough. He should have released me already, told me I could go. It was cruel to keep me here, to make me relive a past I only wanted to forget.
"We're not done, Alexa," he said, his voice as hard and cold as steel.
Relenting, I stopped fighting and let him crush me to him again.
"They were going to put me in some school, the kind that medicates the kids until they're zombies. When I told the woman who showed up to transport me to the facility what was going on, she stopped...to renegotiate the price."
The truth of that final betrayal twisted in my gut. Even with my accusation against Donald and evidence that I wasn't truly a problem child, the institute had been willing to lock me away, but only at a higher cost.
"Ruth sent me to my room while they haggled," I continued. "I grabbed my bag and her purse and crawled out the window. I was going to run away to Canada but the money only lasted as far as Chicago."
"I was fourteen," I finished. I pushed at Jake's chest again, lightly this time.
He pulled back, his face unreadable as he stared at me. I brushed my hands against my cheeks, my knuckles stained by mascara from all the crying I had done. Rolling one of my sleeves up to my elbow, I gestured at the tattoos.
"This isn't evidence of some self-destructive streak," I accused as I remembered some of his comments to me that first night at the club. "It was camouflage. But the only way I could survive was to display myself, so a lot of fucking good that did."
Jake reached out and slowly rolled the sleeve back down. Whether or not the gesture was meant to comfort me, I only felt sick and cold inside.
"I made one friend in Chicago," I said, an image of Charlie Warren surfacing before I could shoot it down. "He helped me get identification so I could work, helped me invent a fake history."
I shut off the information spigot. My life with Charlie was the only thing I had done that I truly regretted. I hadn't loved him, but I had been grateful. Before he knew how young I was, I gave him what Donald had been trying for years to get from me. When the truth came out, he had set me up with an ID saying I was eighteen and a social security number. He had even secured my first modeling gig and let me live with him a few more months, on his couch, until I could afford my own place. All without ever touching me again.
"How old are you?" Jake asked at last.
Lifting my head, I met his gaze and answered. "Twenty-four."
Until that second, he thought I was twenty-six. Now he had enough information to know that I had left home at fourteen and started modeling with Razor Dolls when I was only sixteen.
I watched emotions and thoughts flicker across his face but couldn't deduce just what they were. I thought I saw glimmers of anger, flashes of sadness, more than a little revulsion.
"High school--"
"Ninth grade," I snapped before he could finish. I absolutely refused to be embarrassed over my lack of formal education. "Next question."
"The institute--" he started.
I interrupted again. "Shut down, its directors indicted a few years after they tried to lock me up."
"You could have gone to the police at..."
Something in my face must have frozen his tongue.
I yanked up my sleeve a second time and gestured at my skin and over-generous flesh. "You really think anyone wants to listen to someone like me accusing Ozzy and Harriet?"
"I didn't mean--"
"Yeah," I bit out, "you did."
It always came down to blaming the victim because the truth was too uncomfortable.
Shoving the table away from me, I stood up. Anger, hurt and hate filled me. I pointed my finger at him, my hand shaking wildly from all the adrenaline coursing through my body. "I'm going and I only told you all this so that you know, whatever trouble you want to send my way about my legal name or the contracts, I don't deserve it."
He stood and I circled the table as fast as my plump thighs and high heels would allow. I held my palm up, hoping to stop his approach.
"I have almost every dollar you gave me because I knew this would end badly one way or another. So you'll have your money back, just don't call the cops..."
Jake came to a sudden stop, the only motion in his body the slow blink of his eyes.
"Just what are you saying, Alexa?"
Damn, the man was dense! How many times did I have to repeat myself before he understood?
"I'm done, I'm going home."
"I'm your home," he said simply.
I reeled backward, feeling like I'd just had a sack of rocks smashed into my face. R
ecovering, I shook my head.
"No," I accused. "You're the jerk who was too polite to tell his baby sister and sweet little friend in front of the woman he's been fucking for the last month that they'll ruin their reputations by posing in a fetish catalog."
"Alexa..."
He growled my name and I saw a flash of dominance in his gaze. Fear flooded me. For some reason, Jake thought he wanted me to stay. All the sordid details hadn't penetrated his thick head yet. My past was a ticking time bomb for him, his family, his company. When he realized that, the disgust I had anticipated would begin to emerge. He would see me for the soiled baggage I had become.
Until then, he thought he could make me stay.
"No!" I held up my hand again as he started toward me. "I may have submitted to you in bed, but that's as far as it goes. We are done and, if you can't see that, I'm certain Dylan will help you figure it out."
My threat seemed to stun him into some kind of compliance. He stopped advancing, even allowed me to skirt his imposing body and snatch up my purse. If only he had stayed frozen long enough that I could leave the building. Instead, he followed me out to the manufacturing floor where Riona and Marjolein huddled along a bench in just their kimonos and curlers and a dozen or more staff members looking on.
Both women jumped to their feet, but only Jo-Jo approached me.
"You look set on leaving," she said.
I answered with a curt nod. Behind me, Jake's strangled voice begged her to stop my leaving.
Hearing the hurt in his words, I slowed. My eyes teared up once more. I shook my head, scolded myself against being foolish enough to believe his feelings for me would last much longer. It was only a matter of time, a very short amount of it, before my past was smeared all over television and the internet. The past was a poison that would kill off everything good around me. I needed to get away before that happened. The company could issue some kind of statement about dropping me.
And maybe I would hold a little of the money back -- just enough to finally sneak across the border into Canada and pray another decade would pass before anyone realized I was illegal.
"The photographers are still out there," Marjolein said as she stepped a few feet in front of me. When I froze in place, she dared to come close enough to lightly grip my shoulders. "Whoever that awful woman was, she might be out there, too. We can only legally force them off the property."
I hadn't considered that possibility. I had done the perp walk past the paparazzi at least a dozen times the past few weeks. I could handle them -- or so I thought. Maybe I would disintegrate if Ruth and Donald had said anything on their way in or out. I doubted they had -- Ruth seemed to want nothing more for me to disappear from the world so her friends would remain clueless about our shared past. But I had heard the level of crazy in her voice. Who knew what she had told the press after she had been kicked out of the building.
Folding her hand around mine, Marjolein led me toward the office she and Riona shared. We stopped at the room's threshold. She kept rubbing my hands like I was a little kid who had spent too much time out in the snow without any mittens.
"Believe me," she said, dipping slightly to look up into my eyes. "I've spent the last two years helping the Kehoes dodge the cameras. If they don't catch you outside, they'll have people at the airport, here or in Chicago."
"I have to go," I whispered. My eyes begged her for a solution I couldn't ask for. It had been hard enough to retain any composure telling my story to Jake. If I had to repeat it to Marjolein to get her help, I would break down completely. There was just too much caring and sympathy in her gaze. With Jake, I had forced myself to get mad, to anticipate his eventual rejection so I could stay strong. With Marjolein, I knew there would only be understanding.
As crazy as it was with her only being a few years older than me, when I looked at her, I saw the kind of woman I had always dreamed to have as a mother.
"I have to go," I repeated and tugged my hand from hers.
"Yes," she agreed and quickly reclaimed my hand. "But you don't have to do it this second. I can sneak you back to my apartment. I'll hide you out for a few days and we can make arrangements for wherever you want to go."
Listening to her, I relaxed a little. I anticipated a few problems with her plan, namely Jake, but there was also the promise of a solution to the larger trouble surrounding my legal name and need for a passport. Jake had already boasted that Marjolein was a miracle worker. Maybe it was time to see if he was correct.
"I can't expect Jake to allow such accommodations," I said, lightly testing her resolve to help me.
She laughed and brushed the idea away with her hand. "You can't see it, but that man loves you. He won't like it, but if it means keeping the thinnest line open to you, he will move heaven and earth."
I shook my head. "You don't know the conversation that just went on between us."
Whatever he had felt for me -- and I doubted it was love -- his affection couldn't possibly survive the truth.
Marjolein rolled her eyes. "Well, if he won't, I will quit and apparently his dumb ass brother would be upset."
Threading our arms together, she lightly knocked her head against mine. "You and me, Alexa, we're going to get through this together."
"Don't quit on my account," I said and offered my own gentle head bump. "But if you can convince Jake, then I'll stay at your place a few days."
Smiling, she released me with a short kiss against my cheek then marched in Jake's direction. By the time she reached her boss, he had his thick arms folded across his chest and his head down like a bull ready to charge.
I didn't know what his posture meant, but I was certain it didn't bode well for the success of Marjolein's plans.. No matter how sweet and passionate he had been the last month, I couldn't shake the memory of how quickly he had turned cold during our first few encounters, tossing me aside in such a manner that I had felt as used as the condom he had worn while fucking me.
For all I knew, he had already come to his senses and decided to kick me to the curb.
Tension spreading through my body, I watched Jake and Marjolein arguing. At least their faces looked like they were arguing. I couldn't hear them and Jo-Jo had to chase after Jake every few seconds as he paced the length of wall that ran from the studio door to the first manufacturing station.
As he prowled back and forth, his gaze returned again and again to where I stood.
Sensing Marjolein was fighting a lost cause, I wanted to bolt. But Riona seemed to have posted herself at the only door that offered a quick escape. She, too, refused to take her eyes off me.
Feeling thoroughly defeated, I sagged against the door to the studio and waited until Jake stormed off and Marjolein returned, an ear-to-ear grin plastered across her beautiful face.
"All set," she said, hooking my arm and leading me into the studio to reclaim our regular street clothes.
********************
Despite promising myself on the long, circuitous drive to Marjolein's apartment that I would only divulge enough information about my past to see if she had a solution to my current legal dilemma, I wound up spilling my guts shortly after eleven that night. I told her in far greater detail than I had offered Jake. Together we went through several boxes of tissues and stayed up past two a.m. watching a sappy comedy before falling asleep in her bed.
When her cell phone chimed shortly after eight a.m., neither of us was ready for what happened next.
"Riona," Marjolein groaned, reading the display as she sat up and pressed the call accept icon. She yawned her way through a morning greeting, switching hands mid-way as she wrapped her robe around her body.
Cautiously, I followed after her. My luggage had been delivered from the hotel last night. I grabbed a set of clothes and tried not to listen to the phone conversation.
"What do you mean, Dylan's on his way here?"
That stopped me cold as I headed toward the bathroom. No doubt news had reached Big Brother about th
e blow-up at the studio yesterday and my leaving with Marjolein instead of Jake.
"Why on earth would Rick do that?"
My heart beating like a jackhammer, I turned back to Marjolein. Looking at her expression, I had the feeling Dylan's arrival was more about his feelings for Jo-Jo than his blatant disapproval of me. But how did Rick play into that?
Or was this about Rick and Riona's agreement?
Unable to stop myself, I laughed. It was too funny not to. This was like the soap operas Ruth had watched constantly before she married Donald. Only, instead of The Young and the Restless, it was The Rich and the Restless, with big girls and billionaires instead of department store mannequins.
Marjolein offered Riona a quick good-bye then ended the call.
"So what did Rick do?" I asked with a bemused shake of my head.
"Sent the test shots of me and Riona to Dylan. So now that meathead is on his way to Dallas. First for a nice long talk with his 'blond buttercup' and then with his baby sister." She marched into her room, her face scrunched like when a cartoon character has steam coming out of its ears.
I followed her as far as the room's threshold and watched her flinging clothes around in her closet. From what I understood, her wardrobe had changed drastically now that she was working directly with Riona on the fashion side. Apparently, she still had a couple of her long, dark skirts tucked away, because she pulled one out and then a pure white blouse with French sleeves.
"I have no intention of opening the door to him," she insisted as she moved to her dresser and pulled out a pair of silk stockings. "But it's best not to be in our robes if he makes such a fuss that the building manager shows up."
"Right," I nodded and waved the top and pants I had already pulled out of my luggage. "I'll just pop into the guest bathroom and change."
Once we were dressed and the last traces of yesterday's crying jag, hers and mine, were erased or camouflaged, we sat down at her kitchen table and discussed the merits of an impromptu drive. Before we could decide if we felt brave enough to make a dash for her car, voices on the walkway outside ended the possibility.