“Why did it bother me so much that you didn’t come?” he asked, or rather asked himself.
“James, listen, I—”
He stopped, his nostrils flaring, staring at me with growling breaths. “Then someone knocked on my door. I thought it was you. But it wasn’t you. You never came. It was Julia. She fucking smiled at me. I hate it when she smiles. It makes my skin crawl.” Again, he jerked his head like an out-of-control drunk you’d steer clear of on the street. “I thought…I thought something had happened to you, and Julia was here to tell me you were gone. That I’d never see you again. But do you know what she told me?”
I’d never seen James this unhinged, this unpredictable. I heard Scott’s heaving breaths in my mind.
“She told me to stay away from you, because you’d agreed to marry her. That whatever happened between us didn’t mean anything. She told me she knows what you need. So I should let you have your dream life.” He barked out a laugh. “Your dream life,” he muttered to himself. “But that’s not true, is it? She doesn’t know what you need. She doesn’t know how you spread your legs for me every day. How you run to me, how you seek me out. How I touch your tears and fuck you out in the open. She doesn’t know that I’ve cut you, that I’ve tasted your blood. Do you remember that, Madison? Do you remember how I licked the blood off your skin?”
He loomed over me, blocking the sun, leaving me in darkness. I was terrified of him. He never talked like this, not in such insulting terms. I knew I should push him away, run and hide behind my bedroom door. He was drunk, caught up in the moment.
But the same morbid curiosity that had made me creep out of my room all those years ago and look into the kitchen immobilized me now. His anger held me captive. My jittery legs knocked against the edge of the couch as I whispered, “N…no, I don’t remember.”
Why the fuck would I say that?
With those words, I knew that I’d sealed my fate. James had gone very, very still. Statue still.
With blinding panic, my body jerked into motion, and I tried to bolt away. Before I could even turn, he grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me toward him. He’d done this before, but I’d never felt the real violence of it. My arm was about to split in half.
“Don’t lie to me,” he growled and bit my lip.
It hurt. So bad. It felt like he was tearing off a chunk of my skin with his teeth. I moaned and thrashed against him, but he held on. Tears sprang to my eyes, and with his free hand, he traced away the moisture.
As he studied me, his eyes grew distant, analytical rather than passionate. He muttered, almost to himself, “It shouldn’t matter to me. It shouldn’t matter to me that you’re lying, that you’re marrying someone else. Whatever you do shouldn’t matter to me. But it does. Why does it matter to me so much, Madison? Huh? Why does it hurt so much?”
I felt the hurt he was talking about. It was there because of love. I loved him. And…
James loved me, too.
Holy fucking shit!
He loved me.
I wanted to touch his face, soothe him. Tell him, It’s okay. I feel it, too. We’ve both been played by the same enemy. Stupid love.
But he pulled on my hair, tilting my neck up at an odd angle. I grabbed his assaulting hand on the back of my head.
“What did you do to me? What the fuck did you do to me?” he shouted. “You made me feel these things. You made me betray my wife. You made me betray Nat.”
His accusations crashed against the empty walls. His words pulsed in the air before reaching inside my chest and squeezing my heart. But the only thing I could focus on was the name Nat. That was his wife’s name. James just told me his wife’s name.
Maybe he realized his slip-up, because he twisted his hand in my hair and brought me flush against his body. “Yes, that’s her name. You wanted to know her name, didn’t you? Natalie. But I always called her Nat. We’d been together for six years. Six long, painful years, filled with hate, guilt, anger. Sometimes I’m happy she’s gone. But sometimes I hear her in my head, I see her in the lake. I try to touch her, but she doesn’t let me. She laughs at me for wanting you. She tells me you’re not worth it. But now I’ve betrayed her. You made me feel things I’ve never felt before, even for her. You made me do this.” His nostrils flared. “You won. This was a war, wasn’t it? Congratulations. You just won it.”
It didn’t feel like it. It didn’t feel like I’d won a war. Not when he was like this, haunted with blood-red eyes. I felt sad, torn down when I looked at him. I wanted my James back, beautiful and raw, the one who strove for control when pushed.
The one who hated me.
I jerked in his hold and taunted, “I always knew I’d win, James. It was you who doubted it. I warned you, didn’t I?”
Life sparked in his eyes, making me tremble. He growled, and then all of a sudden, I was pushed back and thrown on the couch. Fear skated down my spine when he jumped on me, trapping me under his weight.
He hovered over me, his alcohol breath making me gag. I tried to push him away, bucked under him, pushed against his shoulders, but he didn’t budge. If anything he came even closer, crushing me with his weight and pinning my arms over my head.
“Why’re you even here? I’m an engaged woman, James. I don’t belong to you. Never have, never will.” I arched my back. “I don’t want you.” Fuck! I want you so much.
His eyes flared, making me flinch. I could feel him vibrating, shaking.
“Did you think that I’d leave everything for you because of a few great orgasms? It was just fucking. I thought you knew. I thought you understood.” I kept rubbing my hips against his rigid ones.
I should have stopped talking now. I really should have. I didn’t even know what I was saying or even why. All I knew was love hurt the both of us. We were both victims. And I wanted it to go away.
James growled, his lips pulled back, his teeth bared. His breathing changed, became heavier, unruly. I could see the pulse on his neck, the rapid throb under his skin. The charge that always surrounded us leapt up, its flames licking the roof of this house, reaching the sky even. I didn’t know whether I was feeling fear or relief when I felt his fingers move and caress my neck. Maybe excitement, too.
I licked my lips. His black eyes zeroed in on them.
“What’re you gonna do, James?”
His fingers stopped caressing and gripped my neck, squeezing. I gasped.
He squeezed and squeezed, choking me, choking the life out of me. I couldn’t breathe. Gurgling sounds bubbled inside my throat. To my eyes, he looked wrapped in wax paper, whitish and blurry but so damn beautiful and free and raw. I love you, I thought but couldn’t say it even if I wanted to. He tore my shorts open without easing his grip on my neck. My pussy flinched. I love you and you love me, too. I thought I was going to die with happiness, with pain, with fear…with sadness.
I shifted closer to him, spurring him, and he unbuckled his pants. In a blink, he pushed inside me, making me arch and moan. Look Mom, I found the man who loves me more than rationality. He loves me like Scott loved you.
But my tears wouldn’t stop coming. I was suffocating under his grip. My heart wouldn’t stop breaking, cracking under his brutal love.
Then the pressure around my throat eased, and James’ weight was gone. I could breathe again. I rolled on my side and coughed.
James stood by the couch, staring down at me. His eyes were wide, wider than I’d ever seen them, and he looked…awake. Alert. As if he’d been sleeping ever since he’d walked in here.
My James was back.
He pulled on his hair, restless. When he noticed me looking at him, he took a step back. Regret brimmed in his eyes. “I don’t know…what I was thinking. I…I shouldn’t have done that. I can’t…” He stared at my neck.
Shaking his head, he muttered to himself again, “I wasn’t thinking. I…shouldn’t have touched you. I shouldn’t have put my hands on you. This is wrong. All of this is wrong. It’s messed up. I don’t�
��I don’t want this.”
With whatever strength I had left, I managed to straighten my clothes and heave myself up on the couch. “J…James, it’s not your fault. I…I provoked you.”
If I wasn’t so miserable and so fucking tired, I’d have laughed at both of us. We definitely were a fucked-up pair.
He was pacing back and forth, scrubbing his face with his hands. Guilt and regret were written on every line of his tall body. He stopped in front of me, panting. His eyes went to the marks on my throat. “No…I, fuck, it’s…I’m losing my mind.”
“No. No, you’re not.” My hoarse voice sanded against my throat.
“I go crazy when I’m with you. I do things that…I don’t want to do. Never in a million years…I could’ve done this and…” He ran his hand through his hair again. “This is madness. All of it.”
“No.” I sprang up from the couch and stood before him. “James, listen to me. It’s not madness or…anything like that. It’s…it’s l—”
“Don’t,” he snapped, his eyes burning me with intensity, a sheen of stubbornness. “Don’t say it. Not with the things I’ve done.”
“You haven’t. You have not done anything.”
But he didn’t look like he heard me; his eyes looked far away “Do you know I drug Katie every night?”
“What?”
“Yes, I—I give her sleeping syrup to keep her nightmares away. And then I sneak out to have sex with you.” He threw out a harsh laugh. “I leave her alone every night. I don’t know why I do it anymore—for her so she could sleep peacefully or for me so I could fuck you. What kind of a father does that to his own child? What kind of a man kills his own wife?”
I had no idea what to say. My heart was breaking as he stood there with a lost look. Like he’d really been defeated. Game over. No more chances left. I wanted to hug him, stroke his face. But…he drugged Katie, that little girl. And I made him. It was because of me that he did it.
Why the fuck were we so fucked up?
“Nat was right,” he mumbled. “I’ll kill you, too.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re not going to kill me.”
“I almost did.”
“N…no. No, you didn’t. I told you—”
“This is over.” He looked me in the eye. This was perhaps the first time he’d looked so lucid and serious ever since he walked in. He was more than awake, if such a thing was possible. “All of it. I’m done.”
Cold panic flooded my chest as he turned around, leaving me discarded all over again. I knew this time it was forever.
“James,” I called out as he reached the door.
He stopped but didn’t turn around. “Goodbye, Madison.” Then he walked out.
“James!” I screamed, standing frozen in place. I should’ve run after him, stopped him, but instead, I walked backward until I hit the empty wall.
Sliding down, I plopped onto the floor. My tears ran down my face as I sobbed. For the first time in years, sounds escaped my mouth. Horrible, gut-wrenching sounds. They surrounded me, made me deaf to everything else. Pictures of my mom lay scattered around me, the glass broken and wrecked. When did that happen? I pressed my palms on the glass, streaking them with blood.
My back thumped against the wall as I rocked. The handprint on my neck burned, throbbed, calling for James. As I closed my eyes and re-ran that night from so long in my head, I realized Scott never loved my mother. He killed her. It wasn’t love. It was never love. He killed my mother, and then he destroyed me. He destroyed Maddy.
The screech of the door opening made me look up with hope. My blurry vision showed Julia, not James. She took in my huddled form and the wreckage around me. Her pretty eyes were foggy with worry, and her lips were turned down. But all I saw was her calculating face the day she brought Alana. The cold gleam in her eyes when she asked me to marry her. Her smooth fingers that felt rough over my skin.
“What happened here?” she asked.
Scott destroyed my mom. I hated him.
I hated Julia, too. She’d been destroying me for the past few days, and I’d been letting her.
And I’d provoked James to do the same. I wanted him to destroy me. But he refused.
He refused because he loved me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
James
I was numb when I left Madison’s house. But my feet seemed to know where I wanted to go, because minutes later, I found myself in my kitchen, staring down at the butcher’s knife. I picked it up and ran the blade over my wrist, lightly.
My eyes fell closed as I felt the cold edge of the knife. The only thing keeping me from collapsing was the sweet, sweet sensation of it. My legs shook as I opened my eyes and watched the edge of the knife bumping against the ridges of my forearm.
I watched the blunt nails of my fingers, fingers that had dug around Madison’s delicate throat and tried to squeeze the life out of her. And then…I tried to fuck her against her will because everything hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to be alive. It hurt to betray my wife.
It hurt to walk away from Madison in the end.
I thought back to all the lies I’d told ever since Nat had died. How I deceived my own flesh and blood. How I took Katie’s trust and broke it, every chance I got. How I’d been drowning in pain ever since Julia came to my door two days ago. Not even cutting could ease my mind, so I’d turned to alcohol last night.
People like me did not deserve to live. There was no redemption for us. People like me were cowards, selfish, weak. I was weak. Weak. Weak. Weak.
Maybe I should end my life, cut my vessels open and die. People said suicide was a sin, the worst act of cowardice. But what did they know? What did they know about me, about the things I’d done? This could be my one act of bravery. A final act of mercy for the people I claimed to love.
I pressed the knife on my forearm. Hard. The blade broke skin and pain radiated up my arm. A single thick stream of blood wrapped around my wrist like a red ribbon. I twisted the knife, gouging the skin out, tearing away at my flesh. Slice it. Slice the fucking vein.
My hand trembled as I stared at the puffy green vein two-thirds up my wrist—the vein I needed to slit in order to die.
Do it. Do it. Do it.
But at the last second, the knife slipped from my shaking hands and fell to the floor with a clatter, spilling droplets of blood. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill myself. I didn’t have it in me. I was selfish.
My legs convulsed violently, and I fell on the ground on my ass. Gripping my injured arm, I picked at the wound with my fingernails. Weak. Weak. Weak. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.
There was a sting behind my eyes, a jagged rock lodged in my throat. I remembered what Madison had told me about the tingling in her nose, the burn in her eyes when she was about to cry. I squeezed my eyes closed, hoping to find some relief in tears. But nothing came.
I screamed.
In the middle of the day, with the sun lighting the whole world, I screamed. I bellowed, lifting my head up, staring at the white ceiling. I gripped my hair, smearing my face with blood. My arm throbbed. My body ached with exhaustion; my shoulders burned.
And I thought that was it. I would scream myself to death.
But death never came. I sat there until my throat grew hoarse. And when I could not scream any more, I gouged at my wound until my fingers went rubbery.
That was how Katie found me, sitting on the kitchen floor, knees drawn up to my chest, face marred with dried blood.
“Daddy?” Katie asked in a small voice. “What’s wrong? Why’s there so much blood? Daddy, are you dying?”
She had been at her baking class for the past two hours. Her gray eyes must have been shining a moment ago before she saw her father broken down like a pathetic monster. She drew closer to me, her eyes wide with worry and fear.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?” Her chin wobbled.
I knew I should pull myself together, tell her that everything was okay. But everything was
not okay. I could never make it okay. And I was so tired.
“Nat’s dead. Your mom is dead, Katie,” I whispered, picking at my wound even as my daughter watched me. “She’s been dead all this time.” I picked at it and picked at it and picked at it, stuck in a trance.
“But you told me she’d like my drawings. I even made a new one for her,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “It has a green octopus and…and a red fish, too. Please Daddy. You told me. Please.”
Katie begged me for something she didn’t even know she wanted. False consolations.
“I lied. She’s not coming back,” I said, sitting there, picking at my wound. A rational part of my mind screamed at me to stop it. Katie would never smile again, but I could not stop the words coming out of my mouth. “I lied. I’m sorry.”
She shook me with her tiny hands. She chanted Daddy, with every breath. And then she began crying. The shrill cries of an infant. Her lips opened in a red-painted O, her face twisted, bunched up like a baby’s. She fell on her knees, sobbing. Her fists flew in the air as she screamed, her face turning an angry red.
Then I heard the most terrifying sound in my life. Choking.
The sound of life being strangled out of a five-year-old. My daughter was choking on her sobs. She wheezed, panted, and her tongue lolled out but she couldn’t breathe.
My trance broke.
I threw my arms around her and thumped her back, hoping to jar her lungs into drawing the air in. I shushed her as I heaved her up in my arms, rocking her, pacing back and forth. She clung to me with all her trust, breaking my heart further. Please don’t kill her. Please. Please. God. Just don’t kill her.
“Shh. Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay. I’m here. I’d never let anything happen to you. I love you so much, sweetheart. I love you,” I whispered, promising her and promising myself that I’d always keep her safe.
She was my everything. Everything. I had to save her somehow. Even from myself.
And just like that I knew what I had to do. It was the only way.
A War Like Ours Page 25