by Sunniva Dee
I sneak a swift glimpse at my watch. I’m so jittery I half expect Leon to interrogate me about counting hours. I’m glad he doesn’t, because it would be hard to lie. It’s six p.m. In two hours the doors open at Smother, and I can begin the last, fast breakdown of myself in the name of freedom. Of not surrendering to Leon—to anyone—ever again.
36. SUNRISE
DOMINIC
“FUCK!” I boom, projectiling my phone across the room and into the wall. My grandmother yelps like a wounded animal at my response to the conversation with Shannon, but I can’t comfort her right now.
Pandora’s gone. She’s in Deepsilver. Not only that, but she’s fucking shacked up with that domineering piece of shit.
Shannon told me everything. Now, I am floored with the knowledge that Pandora is stuck with someone she’s afraid of. Who knows what he’ll do to her? She’s lost her phone too, and here I thought she’d reverted to ignoring my texts altogether, which is bad enough considering my own stupid-ass feelings.
Above everything else, though, I need Pandora to be. Fucking. Safe!
She’s impossible. Unstable. I can’t even fathom…
SHIT!
I shove my hands into my hair, breathing out through my nostrils like a bull. I barely register my uncle entering Grandma’s new apartment at Sunrise. He stands there with the last moving boxes stacked in his arms.
“Son, are you okay?” he asks, and I just laugh—laugh—like the lunatic I am right now. I know she lost her phone. I still grab mine from the floor. Call Pandora for the thousandth time since she stopped returning even my texts. I growl as it sends me straight to voicemail again. Again.
Again!
Grandma’s scared but lucid. If I weren’t so enraged, I’d be happy that she’s like this while we get her settled into her new pad. Unfortunately, I’m not in a state where I can appreciate it.
“I’m not fucking okay!” I yell as Alan lowers the boxes, hands flopping useless along his body.
“It’s Pandora,” Grandma declares, surprising us both. I swing toward her, because it’s one thing for her to be somewhat herself and a whole other to have a complete overview of an entire situation the way she used to when I was little. Now, my grandma’s eyes survey me, and she—understands.
I let out a guttural sigh that sounds a whole lot like a sob. “She can’t be there alone,” I mumble.
“Where?” Alan asks awkwardly, and my grandma just hushes him. When she walks up to me, it’s with the slow sway of hips I remember from when she babysat the neighborhood kids. She stopped working because she wanted to be at home with me, and the only way to keep a roof over our heads was to supply my grandfather’s income from the slaughterhouse with her nanny services.
I slap my hands over my face. It’s all so much. I need to leave her behind, this woman whose life has revolved around me for the last twenty-six years, ever since my mother ditched me here and never returned. Despite my grandmother’s condition, there’s another woman who needs me more right now.
I don’t notice the tears until Grandma is close enough to dry them. “Remember what I told you, Dominic?” she whispers.
I am shattered.
I bob my head “yes” because how can I forget? Finally, I’m confessing what my body has screamed to me for months that I need. What I have to do.
“How do you know these things?” I begin from inside my own despair. Her advice—she’s right: I do need to try. It’s the solution, the only thing that can make me whole. Who am I if I don’t? Who would I be in the future, and could I reach any goal? “Grandma, how do you know when you’ve only been with Grandpa?”
As her pained gaze meets mine, for the first time from within my small, egocentric world, I realize that I’m wrong.
“I’ve been young too, little boy,” she says, and in her wise eyes I read memories of a passion—the taste of a long-gone love she’s never shared, from before my grandfather.
Despite the decades of life, of experience separating us, we’re not so different. My frustration and my rage, they wilt as I face my grandma’s untold story. Perhaps she gave up her chance. And perhaps I shouldn’t let mine slip away.
“Go get the girl, Dominic.” She supports my thoughts. “Bring her back here, so I can meet the one who has finally stolen my boy’s heart.”
Yes. My little lady always did make things sound simple.
LEON
Tonight I’d rather not have my club be a solid mass of frantic partiers. I don’t have enough staff with most taking the night off so they can rest up and be ready for the New Year’s party tomorrow. And tonight’s my last chance to shape Pandora into my perfect companion.
Pandora. She masters the fine line between fascination and disdain with me. She’s come so far since I met her, and whenever I surprise her with my requests, my demand for obedience, her enormous eyes arch even wider with incredulity. Oh yes, she’s made me smile more than I have in years. She’s made me hornier than I’ve been in months.
But earlier today, we had a setback in her development. Something tells me she’s distancing herself from me, and I don’t like it one bit. I’ve shielded her from outside influences, so I’m not sure what happened.
Despite her childish declaration of love for Dominic, she was giving herself to me. Slowly, she was becoming dependent on me, asking for my decisions, and she’d do it without losing her sass and the sexy-as-hell scorn brightening her gaze. Everything was going so well.
I stare at her now on the barstool Christian’s girlfriend usually occupies. Pandora is nursing two drinks at once, and I frown at the sight. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that she’s working to get shitfaced.
I snap my fingers at Christian and gather my index and thumb into an oval, showing him how little alcohol he is to pour into her drinks from now on.
Tomorrow her friends arrive. Tomorrow I’ll accidentally “find” her iPhone somewhere, probably in the ladies’ room. Which means I have twenty-four hours left to make her unequivocally hooked on me.
37. BROKEN DOLL
PANDORA
The party throbbing inside the club makes my resolve easy to act on.
Leon is spoken for—he’s needed in the patio, up front at the doors, behind the bar, in the back room. But whenever I get a glimpse of him, his shrewd stare takes me in, and he stops by often to give me a squeeze. He kisses me on the mouth as if he’s claiming ownership in front of everyone present. There’s no competition for him here, though—I don’t even feel like looking at anyone else. Heck, I can barely stand one person I don’t love touching me.
Leon doesn’t have a problem with me getting a buzz on, but after he figured out where my limit goes, he demands I stop before I become a blubbering fool. He wants me awake and ready upstairs when the club closes. A bout of nausea runs through me, but I quench it with another swig of my drink.
Tonight, though, Leon’s approach is different. It takes me an hour to figure out that the new drinks don’t work, that he must have asked Christian to water them down. Christian, probably thinking he’s doing me a favor, is happy to follow his boss’ orders.
Outsmarting the two of them isn’t hard. I jokingly bump hips with Arriane as I pass her behind the counter. Christian is out on the floor, cleaning the spilled mess off a table, and Leon’s in the patio. This is the perfect moment to fill up a beer glass with white rum and add ice to give the impression of water.
I swing around fast enough to meet Arriane’s eyes as she shouts, “Can I help you with something, Pandora?” over the music.
“Thanks—yeah, do you have lemon for my water?” I ask, blinking slowly in an effort to appear more inebriated than I am.
She smiles and pops a wedge into my glass, almost splashing some of the alcohol over the edge. “Good choice, water’s the way to go for you, I think. Tomorrow’s the real party, remember?”
&
nbsp; “True.” I smile back. Christian returns as I make my way out on the other side. He’s happy to see the “healthy” beverage in my hand, and helps me claim my chair back from the ogre of a football-player-dude who has perched himself on it in my absence.
“For pretty ladies, anything!” the guy sings gallantly, his voice lighter than I would have guessed for such a big man. He gives the impression of wanting to chat. Instantly, I feel Leon’s arm around my waist. He nods to the ogre and quirks him a polite smile.
“You enjoying your time at Smother so far? You’ve got everything you need?” He tucks me into his side on the chair, pressing a kiss to my head.
“Yeah, great place,” the friendly ogre says, and Leon accepts a manly handshake from him.
“Glad to hear it, man. This is my girlfriend Pandora, and I’m Leon, the owner here.”
“Nice to meet you!” The ogre’s grin widens, like he’s in the presence of celebrities. He just met a real-life small-time club owner and his so-called GF. Wow, right? I roll my eyes and sink back into the rum, which works instantly. I shudder at the flavor and block its sting from slipping into my nose as I suck through the straw.
“Pandora, are you all right?” Leon asks. Frowning, he continues, “Tap water?”
I nod, unable to reply until the afterburn from the booze subsides. He shakes his head at me, not liking what he hears but letting it go. “It’s crazy tonight, but hang in there—I’ll make it worth your wait once we’re back upstairs.”
He leans in, his warm breath sending shivers through me in a mixture of arousal and disgust as he continues: “I promise I’ll give you a night you won’t forget.”
I’m not drunk enough to numb the heat and the fear surging in my stomach. Before he leaves on another Smother mission, Leon’s lips connect with my ear as he enounces his next words one by one. My intoxicated body pulsates with alarm, warning me that he’s not exaggerating:
“I. Will. Ravage. You.”
LEON
“How the hell did this happen?” I scream at Christian. He’s standing there, shaking his head, incredulous as he watches me drape Pandora’s gelatinous form over my shoulder. She’s not conscious anymore, and I’m not even sure what she’s taken. Is it just alcohol? I work hard to keep Smother free of anything else.
“Dude, I have no idea. I swear—a fucking squirrel couldn’t get drunk on the alcohol I’ve put in her drinks tonight.”
It took me a while to find her once the bar closed. She’d been out of my sight for a maximum of ten minutes, though, and Jason had orders to alert me if she tried to leave the bar.
As soon as I realized she was gone, I had every employee drop everything to search for her, and Arriane just found her curled up on a bench in the patio.
“She reeks,” Arriane says, eyeing Christian, who throws his hands in the air. She grabs Pandora’s water by the cash register, sticks her nose into it, and grimaces.
“Rum. She wasn’t drinking water, Leon. No wonder she’s hammered.”
“You served her rum instead of water?” I seethe, my anger spreading until I need all of my self-discipline to keep from smashing Christian’s face in.
“Boss, no.” He’s exasperated. I’m homicidal.
“Guys,” Arriane chimes in. “I saw her. I thought she’d gotten herself some tap water. It seemed a bit strange, though, because Leon, you always insist on bottled water for your girls.”
I can’t stand here anymore with Pandora snoring in my arms, so I stalk up the stairs without another word. “Lock up after yourselves,” I bark before I shut the door.
A light moan slips from Pandora when I carry her to bed and undress her. I’m growling with disappointment. She’s soft, pliable, beautiful, and doesn’t give a flying fuck what I do to her right now. This is not—not—what turns me on.
I position her sideways with one knee lifted so it keeps her from falling to her stomach. She swallows in her sleep, like she’s trying to keep from throwing up.
Those plump lips I want to bite are curled in a light smile, mocking me. Tentatively, I pinch one of her butt cheeks. When I let go, there’s a small, red mark that should have made her yelp. She didn’t.
I get up and pace the room. Now, everything boils down to tomorrow. I have until the afternoon to persuade her. Thankfully, I still have an ace up my sleeve. I’ll be changing my strategy—whip out heavy artillery I’ve never used on someone before. Pandora started out easy, but now look at me: I have never had such a hard time convincing a girl to be mine.
Until the morning, though, I’ll be the jackass with the bucket, the washcloth, and the soapy water who cleans up after her. Oh yes, any moment now, the alcohol will come back up.
38. MORNING
PANDORA
Wow. Did I do a bang-up job getting fucked up or what? I destroyed myself last night, giving Leon a backstage pass to the show. I remember only bits and pieces from when I zigzagged out to the patio, most of those pieces involving rum-flavored stomach fluids I never want to taste again.
Exhausted, I watch as Leon dresses me on the bed. I don’t understand what he’s doing right now. He’s brought out the long, blue dress that slinks along my form without screaming “hawt,” and pushes my feet into the stiletto boots I bought yesterday. Then, he nudges me up into a sitting position and meets my tired gaze.
“I’m taking you out,” he says. No curse words spew from him at the moment—unlike last night. Why isn’t he pissed at me? I would’ve been.
“Sorry, Leon, I can’t. Seriously, I’m dying.”
I blink up at him. My eyeballs must be pink from the intense hangover. “I’m thirsty,” I whisper. Then, I gingerly lower myself to the mattress again, because my brain is imploding.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m wrapped in one of Leon’s black motorcycle jackets, with a black helmet plopped over my head and my arms tense around his waist. We’re winding up a hill, and out of the blue, the road widens into an exotic garden filled with bonsai trees and tiny ponds. In its midst, a sprawling, one-story Japanese restaurant beckons.
Before we left Smother, Leon slipped me some Advil for the headache, and now he helps me off the motorcycle and passes me another batch just in case. I swallow them dry.
“What are we doing here? It’s, like, ten a.m.,” I say.
He releases me from the helmet and studies his own fingers raking through my messy locks. “Eating breakfast.”
“Really? Are they open? There are no cars…” I trail off, admiring our surroundings.
Leon doesn’t respond right away but takes my hand and leads me through the red-lacquered front door. Discretely, I straighten my wrinkled dress. Inside, an enormous space with glass walls gives way to another, and beyond it, a third bright room welcomes sprinkles of sunshine from the glass-and-wood ceiling.
“My great grandfather on my mother’s side was Japanese. This place is my family’s way of honoring his legacy—and they don’t offer breakfast, which is why the kitchen staff prepping lunch are the only ones here.”
Trickling water surrounds us on all sides from the miniature waterfalls gushing down the walls and into the stone floor, where they snake through artificial channels in carp-infested rivulets.
Leon is at home here, and as always he knows exactly where he wants me. This time at a table one step up from the ground against the glass wall. The view is spectacular. The garden lends frothy greenery to my right, and artificial gullies slide into an indoor pond on my left.
While we wait for the food I won’t be keeping down, we sip green tea. I am feeling better, though. So much better that I’m unable to meet Leon’s gaze.
He’s so… normal. Softer, less guarded than I’m used to from him. I don’t believe in this new Leon who made his appearance at the mall yesterday and again this morning. I can’t help wondering if he’s trying to manipulate me. And why would he?
He doesn’t leave me to my own thoughts for long. Instead, he cuts to the chase in a low, smooth voice. “Pandora. You’ve been so distant over the last days. What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”
“That pretty head of yours?” Geez Louise.
“Oh, I just feel like I shouldn’t have bum-rushed you. I’ve been living at your house as if I have a right to be there,” I say, and as I do, I blush with the realization that it’s true. How entitled am I? Despite myself, despite my doubts about Leon, there’s no denying how he opened his doors without a second thought. He’s been so generous with me.
Miso soup and steamed rice appear on the table between us, and it dawns on me why he brought me here; I’m starting to think I can stomach a Japanese breakfast.
“No, Pandora, don’t think that way. I enjoy your company very much. I’d like the opportunity to make you happy,” he states calmly.
The opportunity. He’s aware that I’m holding back. Good.
I sneak a glance at him. Now that I know about his heritage, I understand the subtle slope at the corners of his eyes, the faded tan skin color I’ve been marveling over.
“I’m sorry,” I start. He doesn’t look like a man ready to snap at any moment, so I take my chances. “You’ve been good to me, really, you have, but I can’t do this anymore.”
Leon’s face goes blank with the implications of what I’m saying. “Do what? Aren’t you hungry?” He’s buying time, and we both know it.
“No, Leon, I can’t keep… enacting a relationship we don’t have—”
“No-no. We do have a relationship. I’ve never been more hell-bent on what I want than with you.” His irises frost with determination.
“Leon, please.” A lump ferments in my throat, a pointless, redundant empathy for him.
He’s right, though. The time we’ve spent together equals months of regular dating. This has been nothing short of a relationship, even if it’s a messed-up one. As screwed up as we are. What an intense week.