Empowered

by Cynthia Dane

  “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

  Natsuko put up a good front. She wasn’t like Jill, who squawked and flapped her arms to make herself look bigger. Natsuko had more class than that. More smarts, too. So even though her face paled in fright over what Sarah might suddenly do, she wouldn’t let it leak into her voice. She would sound like the commanding lady of the house who was in control of every little thing happening beneath her nose.

  Sarah shoved her knife back into her pocket. She spared Russell one last scathing look before walking away with her head held high. She’d keep it that way, too, until she made it to the front hall and realized that her cab was gone.

  Instead, Lucas stood in the driveway, between his car and the front door.

  Sarah stopped at the top of the steps. “Luke… what are you doing here?”

  He came to a halt at the bottom of the same steps. “Sarah! What the hell is going on? I got a call from both Damon and Jill that you’re going around town saying…” He saw the knife poking out of her pocket. “The fuck are you up to, Angel?”

  Angel…

  Sarah made it to the bottom of the stairs before falling to her knees in the dusty driveway. Lucas rushed to her side.

  “Please…” The tears of anger she held back for so long finally came again. “Please, help me. I don’t know what to do! I… I almost…”

  “What?” He shook her shoulders, knocking her wig off-center from the force of his fear.

  “I almost killed him.”

  Sarah clasped her hand over her mouth when she admitted that. I was going to do it. I was going to make him bleed like he made me bleed. Blood for blood. It’s what God wanted, right? It’s what an angel would do, right?

  “For fuck’s sake, Sarah!”

  “Please!” She buried herself in his hold, stuffing her face into his warm, firm chest and squeezing her eyes so tightly that she could no longer cry. “Please, help me! I can’t live like this anymore!”

  Lucas pushed her until her tear-stained face looked him in the eyes again. “What do you want, Sarah? What do you want?”

  Always that question. He kept asking her that, because she never told him the truth.

  Clarity struck her. Above his head, the blue sky shone so brightly that not even the few clouds around could mar the translucent sheen of a beautiful day. What would it be like to fly away? To spread her broken wings and leave all of this behind? To embrace a new life being whoever she wanted to be? A healthier version of herself? Not this Angel bullshit anymore. She wanted the wings of an angel, but she was tired of falling from grace. Every time she fell, she took another man down with her.

  She didn’t want to do that to Lucas. She wanted him to be happy and to have everything he wanted, even if that meant giving her up.

  “I want to fly away,” she said. “I want to forget all of this has ever happened. I want to put it behind me.”

  He kissed her forehead, his hands so firm against her cheeks that she felt every ounce of his strength fueling this hold on her. If there was any man in the world who could help her, surely, it was him. No, no, he needs to stay away from me. If I ask him for help like this, I’ll destroy him!

  “What do you really want, my angel?”

  Her eyes glazed over as she stared into the bright expanse of the big blue sky above them. When she spoke, her voice dissipated on the crisp air like forgotten smoke.

  “Freedom.”

  Chapter 26

  She was still a hollow statue when she walked into Lucas’s apartment. He quietly closed the door behind him, on the phone with his PR agent.

  “Pay them whatever they want to keep it out of the press. Send me the bill and I’ll make sure it’s covered. I don’t want there to be any evidence of what she said earlier today. Hang on. I’ve got another call.” He pulled his phone away from his head and hit a button. “Damon? Yes, yes, I heard. She’s here with me now. I’ll keep an eye on her. I think she’s having some kind of break. Well, can you fucking blame her? Don’t worry about it, okay? She’s not leaving my side until I’m sure she’s better.”

  That’s never going to happen, Luke.

  Sarah stood in front of his penthouse window, wondering what it would be like to jump. Could she spread her wings while she fell?

  Lucas turned off his phone and tossed it onto his coffee table. “Tell me what to do, Angel.”

  She pressed her hands against the glass. How could it be so warm? Was it really that sunny outside? “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been trying to figure that out for over a year now.”

  “I know. I mean, I don’t know exactly, but…” The frustration continued to mount in his voice. Oh, Luke. Sarah tapped her forehead against the window. He was going to drive himself crazy if he continued to freak out over her well-being. When would he learn that it wasn’t his place to fix her? “Why are you telling people that we’re breaking up? That’s news to me, Sarah.”

  She slowly turned around, fingers still pressed against the glass. “We should break up. All I am is a giant liability to you and what you want, Luke. I wish you would understand that.”

  “Pretty sure I’m the only one who gets to decide that.” He scoffed. “Don’t you dare tear yourself down like this. Don’t you get it? I love you, Angel. I love you like crazy.”

  “Crazy is exactly what you’ll get if you keep associating yourself with me. Please, let me go. I don’t do the relationship thing very well. When I hit a low, I fall so far through the Earth that I end up in another dimension.”

  “When you’re high?”

  “It’s not that great, really.”

  “I will go crazy without you.” Lucas dared to put his hand on her shoulder. Sarah jumped, adrenaline infusing into her veins and screaming at her to run to the other side of the room. But she didn’t. Somehow, she was sane enough to control herself. “Maybe I’m a fool for wasting my time on a woman I love, but I’ve done more foolish things in my life.”

  “I’ll hold you back. Victor will…”

  “How many times do I have to tell you to let me worry about my son? Besides, he likes you! It’s almost like loving you is a Blackbourne family trait!”

  “Not to Jill.”

  “Fuck Jill.” Lucas released her and took two steps away from the living room. “You know what? Fuck this whole situation. You think I don’t know what it’s like to love someone who has demons in her closet? If being married to Jill taught me anything, it was that I’m the most patient man in the universe. I don’t care about your flaws, Sarah. I care about how you address them. Jill chose alcohol over our marriage. She made a lot of decisions without my input. The only thing I regret, though, is not being man enough to do better for her. You’re not the only one who stays up late at night wondering how things could’ve been if only I had more foresight.”

  “Please don’t compare our pasts, Luke.” Sarah’s finger twirled around the tip of her blond wig, those synthetic tresses greasy from the humid air outside. Dust. Dirt. Sweat. It’s as unclean as the rest of me. How about that? “You don’t know what it’s like to have your power stripped from you. You don’t know what it’s like to lose your son. You definitely don’t know what it’s like to have every choice you used to freely make suddenly mean nothing, to be yanked from your grasp and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  He was silent for a few seconds. Then, “You’re right, Angel. I don’t know what it’s like.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Is that what this is all about, though? Your choices?”

  Her hands tangled together in front of her chest. “I didn’t get to choose. None of it. Didn’t get to choose what happened to me or my son. Couldn’t even quit my job and get away from those memories because my brother and I needed the money too much.” She continued before Lucas had the chance to interrupt her again. “This was the only way I could reclaim any of it. At least when I was someone else, I had choices again.”

  Lucas leaned against the
back of his couch. “Angel is the one with all of the choices, is that it? And you feel empowered when you’re her?”

  “When we met, that was my choice. I chose to approach you. I chose to have sex with you. I chose what happened after that.”

  “Then your big dumb boyfriend showed up to work the next Monday and threw a fucking wrench into everything.”

  “If that never happened, if we never…” Sarah swallowed. “I would probably be in New York City right now getting whatever I could get.”

  “How long did you think you could keep doing that?”

  “Until I had a compelling reason to stop.”

  “Am I enough reason, Angel?”

  While his voice didn’t sound defeated, per se, she still sensed the panic rising within him. “You don’t understand. It’s not only about being fulfilled. I need to know that something like that is never going to happen again. I have to learn how to trust someone all over again. If you think that’s easy…”

  “You know of my own trust issues. While they may not be on that level, well… we’re both learning how to trust our potential lovers again.”

  Sighing, Sarah turned her whole body toward him, eyes open and wide. “I know you’re a good person, Luke. I know you mean well and that you love me. Theoretically, anyway. I know that. But I’ve forced myself to become so apathetic that I can’t feel it. The only way I can feel anything good is if I dress up like this.”

  “Angel.” When did it stop being her alter-ego and become her true pet name? “I love you. Beyond words. If that means loving both halves of you, then that doesn’t bother me.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It bothers me.”

  “I’m sure it does. I can look at you dressed like this and out of it and know that it’s the same woman. But do you know that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who are you right now?”

  Sarah glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Blond wig. Sultry black jacket. Thick, come-hither makeup and a pair of boots that would get her kicked out of the office. “I’m…”

  “Do you even know?”

  “I’m a mess is what I am.”

  He took her hand, but did not entice her to come closer. That was her choice, wasn’t it? “I don’t want you to be a mess. I want you to be happy and healthy. If it turns out there’s no room for me in that equation, well…” Lucas looked away. “It will break my heart, but I will understand.”

  “You’re too good for me.”

  “Yet you’re the angel here.”

  “When I picked that name,” she began, also looking away, the only thing holding them together their sweaty, linked hands, “I wanted something that was obviously not my real name. Something sexy and innocent, like men were going to get a specific kick out of me. But the joke would be on them. I wasn’t innocent. I knew exactly what I was doing. In a way, I wanted them to use me. I told myself that I was using them, but in those situations, they were still the ones with all the power. Look at that fucking video tape. I never knew about it. It’s been out there this whole time, waiting to be used against me. Powerless to stop it.”

  Lucas squeezed her hand. “I used you too. I admit it.”

  “I know.” Of course he had. Sarah offered no-strings-attached sex. He took it. As much as Sarah wanted to believe she could live in a world where casual sex gave her power, she had to stop thinking of it that way. Maybe it was fun. Maybe nothing bad came out of it. But every time she went out dressed as Angel, determined to get her freak on with the first semi-attractive man looking in her direction, she put herself at risk. Risks those men rarely had to think about.

  She wanted the risks. They made her feel alive. They made her believe she was free from the constraints her brain put on her heart.

  “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to help you.” Lucas gently turned her around to face him again. “What do you want, Sarah?”

  This time she answered without thinking about it.

  “To be whole again.”

  It was the answer she had bitten back every time he asked her that asinine question. The answer she always knew was true but was afraid to admit – because then she was admitting that she had never been whole to begin with. That she didn’t have the power and free-will she craved.

  “I know. I’ve been waiting for you to say it.”

  He pulled her into his embrace. While they didn’t kiss – yet – Sarah felt every ounce of his love coaxing her to trust in him, to believe that he truly wanted the best for her.

  “I love you,” he muttered. “I’m afraid that’s one matter you don’t get a choice in.”

  She rested her cheek upon his broad chest. He was possibly the only man in the world who made her feel safe in his embrace. Too bad she was about to ask him to shatter that illusion.

  ***

  Night had almost fallen by the time Lucas emerged from his bedroom. Sarah sat in the middle of the living room couch, looking past the TV and upon the glistening water weaving between brand-new high-rises and warehouses as old as her mother’s lineage.

  He flipped the light switch connected to the living room lamp. Sarah was thrown into darkness.

  “Come here, Angel.”

  She had spent the past hour readying her mind for what she had asked him to do. Although Lucas sounded as confident as always, she knew him well enough by now to hear that slight tremor implying there was another way to go about this. No. There isn’t.

  The only way Sarah would be whole again was by embracing both sides of herself. She was the one who had willingly split herself into two as an unhealthy way of coping with her trauma. She was the only one who could sew both halves back together – and if some of the bullshit was conveniently left out of the end result? All the better.

  But that didn’t mean she had to do it alone. Having a man who loved her – and she could eventually come to trust – could make all the difference.

  “Angel.”

  It was a command. A soft, stern command. Sarah stood, her aching feet pressing in her boots. She had touched up her makeup and wig while Lucas prepared in the bedroom. What had he done? What was he going to do to her? How deep would her brain be forced to go?

  The moment she approached him, she turned on Angel’s charm. It was as familiar as a splinter that had stabbed her skin for one day too long.

  “Yes, sir?” She drew one finger down his prickly stubble. “What can I do for you?”

  “I didn’t invite you up here to sit on my couch and look pretty.” He pulled away from her, gesturing to his dimly lit bedroom. Candles flickered beyond the doorway. Candles and a neatly made bed, unlike the one she had seen when she first walked into his apartment that day.

  “Of course not, sir.” She opened the front of her jacket, showing off her slinky dress beneath. “Where do you want me?” A giggle. “How do you want me?”

  “You can start by taking off that dress and sitting on my bed.” He went into the master bathroom and rooted through one of his drawers.

  “Hmph.” Sarah dropped her jacket on the floor and unzipped her dress. Getting out of it with a man helping her was far more preferable, but she wasn’t incapable of undressing herself. “Whatever you want, sir.”

  She shimmied out of everything except for her underwear and garter. By the time Lucas returned from the other room, Sarah sat on the edge of his bed with clothes tossed on the other side of the bedroom.

  “You’re confident for someone who’s here to do what I want.”

  Sarah leaned back on her hands, pushing her chest up. That’s what Angel does. She entices, ensnares, and ensures that she’s ultimately the one getting what she wants. Angel knew how to seduce men into bed and leave them absolutely wasted. Lucas was no different when they met, and he would be no different tonight.

  Nobody could eschew Angel’s charms.

  “Even with that wig and makeup on, you’re still the same beautiful Sarah I’ve always loved, aren’t you?”

  She shrugged. “I’m who
ever you want me to be.”

  Lucas rolled up his sleeves. Hair as fine as the rest of him speckled his skin. His watch glistened in the candlelight until he had the sense to unlatch it and toss it onto his dresser. How much did Sarah have to pay to get this guy to unbutton his shirt next? Let me at him. I’ll nuzzle my nose against that chest and feel every breath of strength inside of him. Sarah wanted to draw upon that strength for herself. She’d make sure she wanted for nothing for the next 24 hours.

  “Take off your wig, Angel.”

  Her languid eyes snapped open. “Excuse me?”

  “I told you to take off the wig. I don’t care how you act. Just take off the fake hair and let me see the real thing.”

  She kept her chest puffed out while she pulled the pins from her scalp and left them on the bed. Didn’t take much to dislodge the wig from her scalp after that. Flattened black hair spilled out from the cap and fell limp against her face. Was this what he wanted? To see her post-Angel look?

  “You don’t need this anymore.” Lucas gently took it from her hands and tossed it on top of her clothes. Sarah looked between it and him with a judgmental gaze. Even his hands caressing her face couldn’t ease the tension behind her eyes. “This is the real Sarah right here. And I’m going to treat her like any man would treat Angel.”

  Sarah steeled herself. Those were fighting words to her subconscious.

  “You’re going to see that neither of us need her. We only need each other, Sarah.”

  He lowered his lips and kissed her forehead. Sarah stiffened even more, her legs on the brink of shaking. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. The last thing she would do was let him see a blink of weakness.

  “You only need yourself. You don’t even need me.”

  Lucas combed his fingers through her short hair. When he was satisfied with her appearance, he stood up straight, sincerity never leaving his stoic visage. “You’re not happy.”

  She slowly shook her head.