by Artemis Hunt
“One more night,” Warwick promised.
That night, knowing it would be his last with Adie, Brian gave her a night she would never forget. Not only did he do everything a man could do with a woman with her – everything she was comfortable with, of course – but they lay together in bed afterward, cuddling. Almost like a real couple.
Brian stared at the ceiling while Adie fell asleep in his arms, his mind in turmoil.
*
Warwick came in the next morning, looking like a cat which had been through someone else’s cream.
“I take it you got laid,” Brian remarked. He pulled a strand of golden hair off Warwick’s jacket. “Oooh, and what do we have here? Fur of a golden retriever?”
“God, her pussy was so tight,” Warwick breathed.
“Spare me the details. I don’t want to puke my hash browns.” Brian was never one who liked to talk cock. He was into fucking, not talking about it.
“OK, you can lay the April Fools’ joke now on little cousin.” Warwick handed Brian five hundred dollars.
Brian was hesitant. “I think she’s in rather deep.”
Warwick snorted. “Don’t kid yourself. You’re not that hot.”
“It’s not about being hot, although I’m practically at Dante’s Inferno Circle Nine,” Brian grumbled.
“Why the long face? It isn’t as if you haven’t dumped trash before.”
“Hey, watch what you say. She isn’t trash.”
Warwick threw back his head and laughed. “I do believe someone’s got a rash of lurrvvvve.”
“I do not. Shut up.”
Warwick whooped. They were on the Green, and students were milling around, studying on the grass or just making small talk.
“Hey, everyone!” he yelled. “Brian Morton has got the hots for this loser of a girl, and – ”
“Shut up!” Brian pulled him down. “Do you want me to punch you in the face? What’s Goldlilocks going to say about that shiner on your pretty mug then?”
“Then you’re not breaking it off with her.” Warwick’s cheeks dimpled.
“How can I break off something that wasn’t in existence in the first place?” Brian had transited back to his ‘I don’t believe in love, I believe in fucking’ mode. It was easier to be this way than to admit he felt something for somebody. No, it wasn’t love. He wasn’t idiotic enough to ever fall in love with someone – at least, that was what he told himself. But he certainly wore a copious amount of guilt for what he was about to do.
He should have done it that first night.
Shit.
With a real trepidation that he did not want to acknowledge, he made the march to Adie’s room. He did not want to do this anymore than he wanted to take a trip to the dentist, but it was something that had to be done. Why had he ever agreed to this for five hundred measly bucks? Oh yeah. He was Brian Morton, and he had a rep to protect and propagate.
You are Ming the Merciless. Take no prisoners.
Still, his conscience was eating a hole in his guts as he raised his fist to knock. The door opened. It was Goldie. She eyed him with dislike. Why? Because he fucked Adie, her wallflower cousin, and not her?
“Where’s Adie?”
“Adie,” Goldie called a little too loudly for Brian’s taste. “Your Romeo’s here.”
Brian gritted his teeth as Adie bounced up, all inner glow and freshness. His back prickled with a most uncomfortable sensation, as if a vat of ants had been poured over it.
“I need to talk to you.” His face was serious.
She suddenly keyed in on it. Fear flitted across her face. He thought numbly: she knows she’s about to get dumped.
The knowing look on Goldie’s face said it all too. Brian pulled Adie out of the room and took her away. Down, down the stairs they went – passing people who stared at them. They know too, Brian thought. Warwick probably spread the word around. Asshole.
Finally, in a secluded section beneath a flowering tree, he stopped her.
“What is it?” she said, the tension evident in her voice.
“We need to stop seeing each other,” he said flatly.
“Wh-what?”
“I’ve moved on. I’ve had you . . . and now I’m moving on. To someone else.”
The look on her face was one of a deer caught in the headlights. He didn’t expect this. He had expected her to swear at him. Then her face changed, and she looked as if she was dying.
His guts clenched. That was why he never allowed himself to get to know them before and after he had fucked them. It led to inevitably painful scenarios like this. He didn’t know how to cope with something like this, especially since he had the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old.
So he went for the only offensive he knew: to push them off the cliff. Give them no chance whatsoever to recover.
He said, “Look, I only slept with you because Warwick asked me to, and he only asked me to because he wanted to get into your cousin’s pants. It’s an April Fools’ hoax, nothing else. You think a guy like me would ever want to be with a girl like you otherwise?”
She visibly flinched as if he had dealt her with a blow, and he winced at his own cruelty.
He added, “So it’s over. It was a fuck. You lost your virginity, and you should be thanking your stars it was to me.”
He walked off, his heart thudding loudly in his ears. He did not dare look back because he didn’t want to see what he knew he would see – all the angst and anger and hurt played out on her face. He kept walking, and he did not hear any footsteps pad after him.
Perhaps she knew all along, and she was just riding it out – hoping against hope that this was her turn to be queen of the prom.
*
Brian was not to know about the fate of Adele Jankovic until three months later, when the news filtered through that she had left college after a foiled suicide attempt.
He felt as though he had been struck by a baseball bat when he heard it.
“What?” he said.
Warwick did not hook up with Goldie after that one night, nor had he intended to. Guys like him and Brian were just in for the conquest and the fucking, not the ‘happily ever after because we met and married in college’.
“Didn’t you hear?” Warwick said. “Of course, it was very hush hush. She took pills, but they managed to find her in time and they pumped it out of her. Then her parents took her out.”
Brian sat very, very still for a long, long time. Blood rushed in his ears, and it took him a while to register what Warwick was saying.
“Hey, it isn’t about you,” Warwick jabbed, waving his hand in front of Brian’s face. “Not everything is about you, you sanctimonious jerk. She was having problems. Her parents are going through a divorce, from what I heard. She couldn’t keep up with the coursework. She had a zillion and one problems.”
And I was part of those problems, Brian thought. He felt as if the ground would open up and swallow him whole. That’s why it’s important to never, ever get close to anyone if you’re just planning to fool around.
He got up, ignoring Warwick’s pleas of “You’ll forget about it, OK? It’s not that big a deal. She’ll get over it. She’ll just have to be stronger . . . wiser . . . that’s life, all right?”
He just kept on walking until he reached the end of the campus. And then he threw himself onto the ground, and buried his face in his hands.
13
Sam is very, very still as she listens to him tell the story. As still as he was when he heard about Adele Jankovic’s suicide attempt.
Brian closes his eyes. “I did it to her.”
Her mind is whirling round and round with the images he created. Yes. She can well imagine Adele Jankovic – shy young adult that she was – falling in love with this incredibly handsome, cocksure guy who was the toast of campus. Who wouldn’t?
Brian continues, his features ashen, “And now I’ve made you part of it.”
“No, Brian. You didn’t make me do anything I
didn’t want to do. You didn’t even know about it.”
But Brian shakes his head. He gets up from the crowded floor, refusing to meet her eyes. She’s suddenly scared. A premonition hits her, and she’s sure that he’s going to do something awful. Something that would affect the two of them badly. And he’ll be thinking that he would be doing it for her.
“Brian?”
He grabs his jacket and heads for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She makes her leaden feet run after him before he hits the door. She grabs his arm.
“Brian . . . don’t.”
He turns warily. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t do anything rash.” Like I did, she doesn’t say.
“I’m not going to do anything rash,” he says with determination. He softens, and leans over to kiss her lightly on the forehead. “I’ll fix this,” he murmurs.
“Don’t do anything that will get yourself into trouble, please.” Her eyes brim with ready tears. She’s embarrassed that she’s so highly strung, but if you had been thrown into the slammer and questioned unceremoniously by the police, you would be too. And now she’s worried to death as to what he might do.
“I won’t,” he promises.
She doesn’t believe him.
14
If Sam hadn’t been involved, Brian doubts he will be doing this. But then, if Sam hadn’t gotten involved, he wouldn’t know how he landed them in this mess in the first place. So it was a good thing she had gotten involved. Only now she is in hot soup herself.
He can only do one thing.
Well, no. Actually, he can do several things. The other options may not be so legally feasible. But he’s opting for this one right now. It’s the least messy alternative. And it’s something that wouldn’t involve the police. For now.
At least that is what he hopes.
He is taking a big gamble by doing this, but it has got to be done, or he would never know.
He drives into the parking lot of the apartment block and waits. And waits. And waits. His mind runs races around the world and back, going up and down and back and forth the paths of what has been and what might be. All alternatives are bleak. But it’s time to right several wrongs.
When the car he is targeting pulls up, he tenses and sits up. The white Mazda parks in its allocated spot. As its occupant gets out, he opens his car door and lopes towards her.
She looks up and freezes.
Brian holds up his palms. “No. Don’t scream. Adie . . . I remember who you are. I remember everything.”
Delilah Faulkner, the former Adie Jankovic, takes a step back. “Come any closer and I will scream,” she warns. She reaches inside her purse. Possibly for mace. Or to dial 911.
It pains him that she thinks of him in this way – as though he really is a rapist. But he knows better now.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk,” he says.
“I have nothing to say to you.”
His heart is churning like a windmill. Careful, don’t lose her. “Please, I’m here to bargain.”
“Do that in front of the judge.”
“Not for myself . . . but for Samantha. She has done nothing wrong.”
“The surveillance cameras beg to differ.”
“What she did, she did for me. On my behalf. I asked her to do it.” He knows it’s a lie, but anything to protect Sam. “She’s innocent. If you want to blame someone, blame me.”
“I already did.”
He can tell that she’s softening her stance . . . a little. He takes a step forward, and she doesn’t move. “Please, Adie, I manipulated Sam into doing what she did. Just as . . . ”
It hurts him to say it.
“ . . . I manipulated you,” he finishes. “I figured of all people . . . you’d understand that.”
He can see the wheels in Adie’s head turning. God, he still can’t think of this woman before him as sweet, shy Adie – who wore her precious heart on her sleeve, just waiting for someone like him to tear it into a million pieces. They don’t even look alike, except for the height. And even that differed. Adie wore sensible shoes. This woman wears three-inch high pumps, and is every inch the confident barracuda.
I made her this way.
OK, maybe not totally, but I played a major part.
Somehow, conversely, he prefers the old Adie. The one who was shy and sweet and innocent, who looked up at him with loving eyes when he was fucking her. Not this beauteous, buxom, red-haired vixen who had seemed to step out, fully born, from Zeus’s head.
“Let’s talk,” he says again when she didn’t reply. “But not here. Let’s go someplace else.”
“You’re wearing a wire,” she accuses.
“No. I swear it.” He holds up his hands to emphasize the point.
She says calculatedly, “I want you to prove it.”
His heart skips a beat.
“Come with me.” She jerks her head towards the elevator. “Inside.”
It’s as though she were physically holding a gun to his head. In this case, it’s Sam’s freedom. He nods. Without another word, he walks into the open elevator car. She follows him.
The doors slide shut with an ominous clang.
15
They are in Adie’s apartment. The very apartment Sam broke into. Brian surveys it cautiously, resting his eyes on the closed door at the end of the corridor – the one that Sam claimed contained Adie’s spooky shrine to him. He wonders if Adie had taken down the photos now that Sam had divulged their existence.
Doesn’t prove you didn’t rape her.
Yeah, right. Well, it may not be proof for Officer Cutter, but it sure as hell proved something to him. I didn’t do it. This is what he’s here to plea-bargain with Adie.
But first things first.
He’s nervous as hell. He has never done anything like this before. He never had to. More worrying is Adie’s current mental state, the very state he helped create.
Adie closes the door and locks it behind her. He wonders if anyone saw them coming up here. They didn’t meet anyone in the elevator or the corridors outside, but he hopes there are surveillance cameras to capture the moment should he not be coming back. OK, stop being a drama queen. Still, the very atmosphere of oppression in this apartment does not quell his nerves.
He tries to breathe deeply and surely.
“So talk.” She turns to him, completely unafraid, and folds her arms.
He has rehearsed this a hundred times in his car while he was waiting for her. “I would like you to go to the police and drop all your charges against Sam.”
“And why would I want to do that in the midst of all the hard evidence?” Her eyes glint.
“Because I’ll do anything you want.” There, he said it, and the anchor dropped heavily from his chest. “I don’t have much money right now . . . you made sure of that . . . but the gym is doing well, and I’ll have more coming in.”
He’s aware that he’s offering himself up on a silver platter to be blackmailed.
He continues, licking his lower lip, “And there’s more. I have a new apartment right now, but I can sell that.”
She listens to all this, contemplating.
“In short,” she says, “you’re giving me everything you own.”
“Yes.”
“What if that’s not what I want?”
He swallows. “You want to see me humbled in court. You want to see me go to prison.”
It was a fact.
Adie says harshly, her face white in the glare of the overhead lamps, “So that you’d be a piece of meat to be fucked repeatedly by all the hardcore prisoners? Fucked until you are nothing but a shell? You will be, you know, pretty boy.”
A knot tightens his stomach. “I know.”
So that is to be his punishment for doing what he did to her.
He says, “They’re already going to roll me over and fuck me. But you don’t have to bring Sam down in the process. You’re getting what you want. N
ow let her go. Please. Don’t do this for me. Do it because she’s young and innocent and . . . ” he can hazard this “ . . . in love with me, even though I have done nothing to deserve it.”
And maybe I’m in love with Sam too.
If he hopes that this will strike a chord with Adie’s previous plight, she shows no signs of it. His spirits sink. He had been gambling with emotional interplay again, something he’s not good at. Maybe Adie is already so hardened to hard-luck stories that she doesn’t give a damn about a fellow woman’s plight of being screwed over by the infamous Brian Morton.
Adie finally says, very slowly, “I will consider your request. But there is indeed something else that I want.”
Time stands still in the living room. His suspicion antennae are all up.
“What is it that you want?” His throat is dry. To see him humiliated even further? This is humiliating enough – having to stand before her like a serf, pleading for someone else’s life.
She says, “I want to use you . . . the way you use women. You say you’re not wearing a wiretap. Prove it.”
For a moment, he is speechless.
“Take off your clothes,” she orders. “All of them.”
So that’s what she wants? He warily begins to strip, aware of the undercurrents in the room. This is no ordinary request. That’s why he feels uncharacteristically shy. He peels off his jacket, and then his black sleeveless tee. She has seen it all before. Then why does he feel more naked than he ever has before?
You offered to do this. You offered to do anything she wants to get her off Sam’s back.
When he’s naked, he steps out of his shoes and crumpled jeans.
“Come here,” she says.
With trepidation, he goes to her. She doesn’t hold her arms out to him, and so he approaches her with the caution of a snake-baiter. He doesn’t quite know what ground he’s treading upon. What if she yells rape on him again? What if this is another one of her traps? Him in her apartment this time, naked before her – right before the date of the trial. He wants revenge on me, she would cite. He wants to snuff me out before we can go to court.