by Shen, L. J.
I didn’t necessarily speak the truth, but my wounded pride wouldn’t let me yield to my heart’s desire.
He stepped forward, his heat radiating through me. I took a step back toward the bannisters.
“Why do I have a feeling you are playing me, Aisling?” he asked.
Low. Calmly. Deadly.
I swallowed, stepping backward for the millionth time. “Who said I wasn’t?”
“Your doe-like, please-don’t-eat-me eyes. But I’m starting to see there’s much more to you than I initially thought.”
“Your opinion of me wasn’t very high in the first place, so that’s not saying much.”
I retreated again. He advanced toward me. This terrible tango of wills.
“I checked your IRS file. You don’t have an income. Whatever you do is either voluntary or paid under the table. With your family going through audits every single year, I doubt you are stupid enough to meddle with money.”
“What?” I gasped, scandalized. “How dare you—”
“Easily. That’s how. Now it’s your turn to answer a question. What is it that you do in this clinic, Nix?”
I felt my back hitting the edge of the bannister, the stone digging into my spine.
I lost my balance and tipped over, my arms thrashing in the air. My torso flew right over the balcony, but Sam grabbed me by the waist, the only thing to keep me suspended in the air, six floors above ground, from sure death.
A thin crust of ice covered the stone, making it even more slippery.
My heart lurched, beating wildly and hysterically.
“Pull me back!” I cried out, my hands desperately trying to clutch onto his tux. “Please!”
He dodged my attempts, pinning my waist harder against the stone but not letting me touch any part of him.
“I don’t think so, sweetheart. First, you owe me a few truths. You’ll start by telling me what you did outside my apartment a week ago. Because looking back, you couldn’t have come there just because you needed a shoulder to cry on.”
“I did!” I gasped, swallowing air. “I—”
“You took one of my bullets,” he snapped, loosening his grip on my waist. My body dangled between life and death, hanging on the balance between his fingers fluttering against my middle.
He did this on purpose.
The realization hit me more violently than any slap would.
He cornered me, made me walk backward to try to get away from him, and got me right where he wanted me. At his mercy. Now he was threatening to kill me if I didn’t tell him the truth.
The worst part was he could get away with it, too. It was going to look like a sure accident. I had more than a few drinks throughout the night, and Sam could easily slip out of here undetected.
“Let me go!” I wheezed.
“You sure about that?” I heard his grave chuckle. I couldn’t see anything other than the black velvet sky above me, the stars shimmering like fairy dust, watching intently to see how my night played out. “Why did you take the bullet, Nix?”
“Sam, please—”
“Answer me.”
“I’m scared,” I whispered, my voice cold and low.
“Tell me the truth and you’ll have no reason to be.”
“Because I knew it was from the man you killed at the carnival!” I screamed, getting it out of my system. “My obsession with you started right after that damned carnival. I checked the news to see who was killed there, guessing correctly that they’d found the body. I found his name—Mason Kipling—and read that he was a human trafficker who had been wanted by the FBI. I put two and two together. Realized you had some beef with the guy. When I saw the bullet, M.K., I couldn’t help myself. I took it. Happy?”
He was quiet for a few seconds. I was scared he’d get tired of holding my waist and would let go. A shiver ran through my body from head to toe. My tears flew downward, trickling from my forehead, as they landed somewhere under the ballroom. Probably in the empty hotel pool.
“Now tell me why you came to my apartment.” His voice was silk and leather, traveling over my skin like a whip, promising both pain and pleasure.
“No.”
“Tell me what you do in that clinic.”
“No.”
“Aisling …” He began to loosen his grip on my waist even more, and I sucked in a sharp breath, telling myself that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—let me die. Not because he had a conscience but because I meant something to him.
That was why he couldn’t touch other women and not for lack of trying.
That was why we kept coming back to each other over and over again, drawn together like magnets.
Whatever we had, it was screwed-up and poisonous and destructive, but it was there, and it was ours. It had a pulse and a breath and a soul.
We couldn’t walk away from it, and it was too late to pretend as if nothing happened, but at the same time, we both had no clue where to go to from here.
“You’re going to fall,” he whispered, his hot breath wafting over the column of my throat, causing goose bumps to rise on my skin. On instinct, I wrapped my legs around his waist, my limbs everywhere, folding myself around him like I wanted to swallow him whole.
My mouth found his ear. “So are you. I’ll be taking you with me, Monster.”
“I’m not afraid of falling, Nix.” His teeth dragged along my neck, nibbling at the sensitive hollow along my shoulder blade.
“Yes, you are. That’s why you’re torturing me. That’s why you’re here.”
Suddenly, his mouth was on mine, hot and hungry and demanding, and he pulled us backward, stumbling unevenly as he pried my mouth with his tongue, thrusting it inside harshly. I kissed him back, deep and raw, his scent dripping into my body. Cigarettes and man and expensive clothes. Not a trace of Becca in his system. My mouth was full of his kiss, and my bones felt brittle and hot as I murmured, “Next time you pull a Becca stunt on me, I will cut your balls off.”
“I’d like to see you try.” His fingers dug into my ass roughly, and I moaned, desperately rubbing against his erection. “Fuck,” he growled. “Why can’t I stay away from you?”
I licked a path down his throat, and he yanked my head back by my hair, peppering the edge of my cleavage with intoxicating kisses.
“You really need to quit smoking. You smell horrible,” I taunted.
“Never heard any complaints before.”
“They were all scared of you.” I sucked on his throat while he mauled the edge of my breasts. I was desperate to leave a love bite. To make him think of me tomorrow morning. And the mornings after that.
Because who knew when would be the next time we’d see each other? A week? Two weeks? A month? For all I knew, Sam could die in one of his street fights tomorrow. This could be the last time I saw him, touched him, felt him.
It was true for any person you were in love with, but especially for Sam, which made him even more precious to me. I was always on the verge of losing him, and sometimes at night, when I thought about what kind of dangers he was exposed to out there, I could barely breathe.
“No one wants to put a mirror to your face because they know you won’t like what you see there. Everyone is afraid of your wrath,” I continued.
“And you?” He pulled his lips from my breasts, glaring at me intensely. We were hidden by the wall next to the glass door, but I knew we needed to stop this sooner rather than later before anyone saw us. “Are you scared of me?”
“I was never truly scared of you.” I rolled my thumb along his jaw, feeling blush creeping to my cheeks. “Not when I was seventeen and not a decade later. To me you’ll always be beautifully misunderstood. And maybe I’m an idiot to care, Sam. In fact, I probably am, but I still want you to quit smoking because I want you to grow old and gray and be healthy. Even if I can never have you.”
His eyes narrowed and something passed between us. I shuddered uncontrollably in his arms, like he’d managed to put something inside me with this one
look.
“Aisling, I—” Sam started.
A blood-chilling shriek pierced through the ballroom just then, making him stop midsentence, followed by a commotion, the sound of breaking glass, and hysterical crying.
“Someone call 9-1-1!”
“We need an ambulance!”
“Oh, dear God! What’s happening?”
I broke free from Sam’s arms. We both rushed into the ballroom.
I stopped dead when I realized what the spectacle was all about.
In the middle of the room was my father, Gerald Fitzpatrick, dressed in his flannel pajamas and a house robe, looking like a homeless person with his hair wild and his eyes bloodshot. He held my mother by the throat, shaking her, looking drunk and out of focus, in front of an audience consisting of the cleaning crew, waitresses, and a few odd guests who still hadn’t left.
“The family heirloom!” he raged. “Where is it, Jane? Tell me now. I know that it’s you who stole it. You who sent those threatening letters.”
My mother fainted in his arms, just as my brothers jumped in to pry him away from her.
Cillian dragged a kicking and screaming Gerald off of Jane while Hunter scooped his limp mother in his arms, shouldering past people as he rushed her out of the limelight.
British Clark Kent, AKA Devon Whitehall, appeared out of nowhere, making a beeline straight to the doors, having security close them as he demanded the staff to dispose of their phones so he could delete any sensitive material that might be leaked. The night had tapered off and only a handful of guests and the cleaning crew remained.
Aisling trembled next to me like a leaf, watching her family go down in flames.
Gerald had finally realized the cufflinks I took were missing, and he was blaming Jane for it.
His sanity was evaporating into thin air, along with his common sense.
The crazy hair. The pajamas and robe. The drastic weight loss. The drunkenness.
In public.
I imagined he had his driver bring him in, mumbling incoherently the whole way here. Poor asshole was probably going to get fired by Jane.
He was on the fast track to oblivion. Everything was going according to plan.
At some point, Aisling sneaked away from next to me, catching Cillian’s steps, pushing Gerald out of the ballroom while people around them gossiped and gasped.
Her face was tight with emotions, her eyes glassy with concern.
Suddenly, I grappled with a feeling completely foreign to me. I never felt it before, so I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was. It was a mixture of nausea and dread with some anger thrown into the mix.
Had I been poisoned?
Funny, because I couldn’t find two fucks to give about Cillian and Hunter crapping bricks right now, even if I looked for said fucks with a search unit. I couldn’t bring myself to care about Becca, for that matter, who was currently tucked in an Uber, heading back to wherever-the-hell she came from, probably cursing me all the way to next Tuesday for bailing on her ass as soon as Aisling showed up in the cloakroom.
Guilt.
That was what was seeping its way through me like poison.
After all this time, and all the sins I’d committed, it had finally wormed its way through my exterior.
It was new.
And it felt like shit.
At the same time, I knew backing down wasn’t an option. Not like this. Not right now. Gerald had ruined my life. He had to pay.
He killed my fucking unborn brother.
Drove my mother away.
Then had me do all his dirty work—his arm bending, his illegal dabbling—all while throwing in fat bonuses to make sure I didn’t touch and sully his precious princess.
“Give us a ride home.” Someone clapped my shoulder from behind. When I turned around to inform them I wasn’t a fucking Uber driver, I was surprised to see Troy and Sparrow, hand in hand.
“Didn’t know you were here.”
Troy tucked his free hand into his front pocket, glancing around the apocalyptic scene in front of us with indifference.
“Got here ten minutes ago from dinner with friends just to drop off the check. We stayed for the entertainment. Our taxi driver has left.”
Sparrow smacked wet, lipstick-stained kisses on both my cheeks. She stopped, hovering an inch over my mouth, smelling Aisling. A private smirk marred her face.
“No heavy petting in the backseat,” I quipped, taking out my car keys and flipping them in my hand.
“Can’t promise anything,” Troy deadpanned.
“Well, I can. I’ll push you out on the highway without even blinking,” I reminded him, meaning every word. I hated public displays of affection. “Your wife, I’ll spare.”
In the car, Troy asked from the passenger seat, “So, when are you going to quit your blood-thirsty vendetta?”
My eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, searching for Sparrow’s reaction. She sat in the backseat, looking at me pointedly without offering her words.
Did she know? Of course she did. Fucker told her the aroma and frequency of his farts, not to mention all of his secrets. Mine too.
“I’ll stop when he comes clean.”
“That might never happen,” Troy pointed out.
“Then I might never stop,” I volleyed back.
“Are you planning to kill him?”
I opened my mouth to say yes but stopped short when I thought about Aisling.
Her unexplainable love for her shitty parents grated on my nerves. Developing sentiments for people just because they gave you their shitty DNA was a concept I would never understand. I settled for a brash, “I don’t know.”
“That’s a first, smartass,” Troy groaned.
“Huh?”
“You. Not knowing shit. You’ve always been like this.” Troy sat back, stroking his chin, half-entertained. “Took what you wanted, even if you had to set the world on fire in the process.”
“It’s called being a go-getter. Not a bad thing,” I pointed out, stopping in front of their place and killing the engine.
“That depends on how you look at it,” Sparrow offered from behind. “It might be a very bad thing for you.”
“Cut the riddles, Dr. Seuss.” I turned around, scowling at her. “If you have something to say, say it, and be fast about it. I outgrew tonight about three days ago.”
“What your mother is saying, and you are too stubborn to comprehend,” Troy ground out slowly, the edge of his tone warning me not to give his wife lip, “is that what you want might end up not wanting you back if you slaughter everything on your way to get to it.”
“Do you know what you want?” Sparrow leaned forward, her face almost touching mine, her green eyes dark and intense.
“Yes,” I hissed slowly, holding her gaze. “I want you both to fuck off.”
“No, Sam. You think you want revenge. But what you want…” she trailed off, shaking her head “…what you really want is completely different.”
“Even if I wanted the things you think I want, getting them would ruin everything. I’m a monster,” I growled, feeling the invisible chain to my resolve tightening, ready to snap, unleashing all my pent-up anger.
Sparrow palmed my cheek, flashing me a sad smile. “If a monster can be made, it can be unmade, too. Good night, my darling boy.” She kissed my nose and slid out of the car.
Troy followed her.
For a few seconds, it was just me and the car and the silence, punctuated by the wails of an ambulance a good few yards away.
Then I started laughing.
A good, deep laugh.
One that rumbled through my whole body.
“I don’t want Aisling, you fools.” I kicked my car into drive. “But I will have her.”
It was time to take what Aisling had offered me so freely.
First, I would have what I’d deprived myself of for so long. An American Princess.
Then I would ruin her father.
It would piss h
im off more anyway.
“He is gone!” Mother burst through my bedroom door, looking like a demon right out of a horror flick—a second before it crawled its way out of a pond. “His things are gone. Suits. Clothes. Laptops. Briefcase. The only thing he left is his wedding band, the bastard!”
I sat upright in my bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. The world blurred into focus slowly. It was a Thursday. A few days after the charity ball. Da hadn’t been back in the house since. He stayed with Cillian and Persephone until things cooled down. Or so we thought until three seconds ago.
“Mother, I—”
“I didn’t do it!” she howled, pounding a fist against her chest. “You believe me, don’t you? It wasn’t me. I swear. Not the poisoning. Not the cufflinks. I mean, heavens, Aisling, we both know how obsessed he is with those cufflinks. I would never!”
“I believe you,” I said and meant it. I got out of the bed, still dizzy, and walked over to her, putting a hand on her shoulder and rubbing slowly. “But I’m going to need some time to get to the bottom of all this. Okay?”
“You must help me, Aisling. You must.” She dropped down to her knees, hugging my midsection. I stared at her in disbelief mixed with annoyance. I’d never seen her so desperate in my life. I was growing more and more suspicious, especially after the cufflinks, that whoever was doing this wanted to hurt my father specifically, not my parents as a unit. But in their quest to ruin my father’s life, they also terrorized my mother, who was beyond frail and brittle and already had her own demons to battle.
Just a few weeks ago, I found fresh cuts above her wrists.
“Get up, Mother.” I patted her head awkwardly, glancing around to ensure we didn’t have an audience. She folded into two, doubling down by collapsing on the floor.
“I can’t,” she wailed. “Oh, Aisling, this is such a nightmare. I need something for my nerves.” She clutched my bare toes, and I felt her tears wetting them. My stomach turned and twisted. I wanted to run away.
“I’m not prescribing you anything, Mother. I’m not a psychiatrist. You need to see a professional who will assess you. Besides, you should adopt some coping mechanisms. Bad things happen to everyone. Life is about rising to the occasion, any occasion. Think of life as a garden. You don’t choose where to be planted, but you can only choose whether to bloom or wither.”