Riley had promised her ‘no more games’, but maybe that’s all this was? Games within games, where you said one thing and did something entirely different. Words meant little if they weren’t backed by action, and let’s face it, he wrote ‘words’ for a living. Bitter, angry, twisted words… about her. Currently, she wasn’t sure if the loving words he spoke could ever compensate for the other ones.
His truck was parked outside the school building and it was the only indication Lift was inhabited. Letting Cartman out of the car, Christina tried to collect herself. A part of her wanted to turn back and run, but there was no escape for her. Not really, he’d made sure of that.
Opening the door to the school building quietly, Christina stopped in her tracks. It was a far cry from the well-kept place she remembered. Dirty dishes lay in the sink and bottles of liquor, some empty and some half-finished, lined the place.
Papers were strewn everywhere, but the worst was pinned to the walls. Pictures of her: some flattering and some disturbing. It was his inner conflict laid bare and Christina couldn’t have gotten a better insight into his heart.
This wasn’t love. It was obsession and why he’d ever fixated on her was beyond her comprehension. She knew one thing: coming here was a mistake.
Leaving as quietly as she came, Christina came face to chest with a black sweater on the porch. Tilting her head back, she looked into the grim face of Riley, and the hairs on the back of her neck tingled. He was gaunt and haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. His beard gave him a dangerous appearance, but the look in his eyes scared her. They burned, the golden irises standing out, tigers’ eyes, and he looked predatory.
Christina could hear the thrum of her heart, beating like a cowardly drum in her ears. Before she could move, Riley grabbed her face in a grip hard enough to hurt. Running his nose up her cheek, he smelled her, his beard scratching her skin.
“Stop it,” she winced, pushing him. He released her straight away, breathing heavily, and staring at her as if she was an apparition from his own personal hell. She hardly recognized him and her brain couldn’t quite comprehend what she was seeing.
This man was far removed from the one that had left seven weeks ago. What the hell had happened to him? She reached out to touch him, but he pushed her hand away. He looked at her as if he couldn’t decide whether he loved her or hated her.
**********
Riley, Lift, The Present, Sunday, January 20, 2013
“Come home with me. I’ll take care of you. This is not healthy. Baby, please.”
Riley had no intention of going anywhere with his dark muse. She haunted him in his dreams. He supposed it was only fitting she turned up in the daytime too.
“I’m fine,” he rasped. Sure, he was a little down, but this was his process and he’d never been under such pressure before. Pressure to get back to her and now here she was.
He’d written like a maniac for the first three weeks he was away, tapping into the darker elements of his psyche. It had taken him to his limit, but it was some of the best work he’d ever written. Now, he was struggling to find his equilibrium. He’d hardly slept and alcohol didn’t help him quiet the white noise in his head.
On a whim, he’d returned to Lift ten days ago, planning to see Christina and take her with him. Standing outside the Martin home, Riley realized he wasn’t ready to face people, especially her. He didn’t want her to see him this way because he wasn’t safe to be around.
When Riley was at his most vulnerable, he was also at his most dangerous. There was a certain cruel symmetry. The only time he really needed people was when he couldn’t trust himself to be around them.
Instead of going to Christina, he’d gotten supplies and driven to Lift to hole up, until he could get himself together. Jack turning up to check on the place had disrupted his peace. Riley made him promise to keep his presence quiet, but it looked like the old man had ratted him out.
He didn’t want Christina here, mainly for her own protection. Riley didn’t trust himself with her. The poison wasn’t far away from the surface and he needed her to leave before he vented it all over her.
She was cleaning up, stuffing empty bottles in a bag, and washing dishes. She looked prissy in her outfit and nervous. He felt the anger rise up his spine at her intrusion and snapped, “I’m not going anywhere with you! What are you doing here? Who told you I was here?”
“I came to see you,” she smiled brightly, but there was a look in her eyes. He’d seen it before and he hated it. He didn’t need her pity or her fussing concern.
“Why? I knew where you were, Christina,” Riley sneered. “If I wanted to see you, I would have come to you. Obviously, I didn’t, but here you are anyway, busting into my life once again. Have you come for sex? I’m not sure I’m in the mood, but we could try.”
Her eyes opened wide and she looked hurt. Good. She was getting the message.
Taking a gulp, Christina stood in front of him. “You need to come with me. We need to leave here. Being alone out here isn’t good for you. I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
Riley snorted in response. No one could push his buttons like Christina. She was relentless and the woman refused to break. It was like she had no internal mechanism for danger or self-preservation. She’d put herself in harm’s way without blinking her big dark eyes.
“Why would I want you to take care of me, Christina?” He laughed, the sound horrible even to his own ears. “You can’t even take care of yourself!”
Her eyes darkened and he knew he’d scored a point. A part of him, the vicious part, wondered what it would take to crush her – just for the hell of it? Sure, he’d inflicted damage on her, but the woman got up and moved on. Something he’d never achieved.
Riley stood behind her, brushing the braid away, and kissing her neck. He loved her skin and her smell. The familiar electricity registered and his body stirred.
Christina’s shoulders stiffened, but she suffered his touch. She stood frozen, as he undid her hair, dragging his fingers through it until it was loose. Now, she looked more like her.
“Are we having a baby, Christina?” He murmured. “Is that why you’re here? Have you come to tell me I’m going to be a daddy?”
She shook her head and Riley laughed. “Maybe that’s a good thing? I think the devil has other plans for me and they don’t include you.”
Christina spun around, poking him in the arm. Her eyes flashed and her mouth turned down. “Don’t you say that! Don’t you dare say that! What’s happened to you? What’s wrong with you? Wherever you’ve gone, come back. You need to come back to me!”
There she was. His girl, she was all fire and brimstone. He would never be able to break ice-cold Christina, but he had a chance with this one.
“I haven’t gone anywhere, Christina,” Riley smirked. “I’m standing right here in front of you. You wanted to know all my secrets. Well, be careful what you wish for because this is me with the mask off.”
“Don’t do this,” Christina whispered. “This isn’t you. It’s a part of you, but it’s not all of you.”
Stalking toward her, Riley gripped her by the arms. She flinched, and for a moment, he felt guilt at the fear on her face. “How much do you love me, Christina? Really? You think you know me, but you don’t. My monsters are loose and I don’t think I can get them back under control. I’m not sure if I want to. If I were you, I’d run.”
But he knew she wouldn’t do that. Not yet. First, he had to take everything away and then she’d go. She’d wanted honesty from him and now he was prepared to give it to her in its most brutal form.
**********
Christina
There were times when you pushed and others you pulled back, but Christina didn’t know how to proceed. She’d come to Lift to confront Riley about his lies by omission, and in a way she had. This was the guy that had written “Magnificent” danger emanating from his pores.
She’d met him once before in Seattle, but Bonnie h
ad played umpire. Even then, he was more controlled than this stranger in front of her. This Riley was some kind of raw, primal, terrifying force.
Taking a deep breath, Christina broached the subject that had sent her on this fool’s errand. “I heard you write the lyrics for the band,” she blurted, inwardly cursing herself for being an idiot. She should have talked about rainbows and unicorns, but it was too late now. Her father wasn’t the only one missing ‘get a clue’ chips.
Riley choked out a rusty laugh, the sound making her flinch. “You are so fucking self-absorbed. Is that why you’re here? You find out I write the lyrics for the band and think you’ve discovered my big secret? You’re like a child, Christina.”
Okay, but she was really tired of people making out her concerns were irrelevant and everyone else was oh-so important. “Maybe I am,” Christina pressed on. “But I want to know, are your lyrics based on me?”
Leaning forward, Riley’s eyes glinted and his smile turned predatory. “Yes. They’re based on you. Well, some of them. They’re my coded love letters to you. Tsk, tsk,” he laughed. “All that education and dumb as a bag of hammers.”
Christina understood now. Riley tapped into something dark for inspiration, nursing his anger and pain. Revisiting them as if they were old friends, but they weren’t. They were poison.
Had she coped much better? She’d bottled up her feelings and locked them away. Pretending he hadn’t existed, they never existed, but her pain had seeped out in other ways.
Christina had always imagined Riley was the more explosive of the two, but she was wrong. This was a never-ending, slow burn for him and he was his own worst enemy. He was at war with himself.
She needed to reach her Riley, the one that loved her unconditionally. She knew he was in there, but first, she was going to have to dance with this stranger. “You hurt me a lot,” Christina said quietly. “What hurt the most is that you didn’t tell me. It hurt me more than anything than Beaumont and Palmer could ever do.”
Riley stared at her and for a moment, she glimpsed the man she loved, and then he was gone. “Now, we’re getting somewhere,” he sighed. “I’ve done lots of things to hurt you, Christina. You just never noticed because you’re oblivious. It’s like your superpower. I was like the boy at school inflicting pain on the girl he likes, but she just doesn’t notice.”
“Like what?” She asked, the words leaving her mouth before she could stop them. If he’d done lots of things to hurt her, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but now she’d opened the door.
Riley’s eyes lit up. “Too numerous to count, but how about I tell you my favorite? I’ve got two really. “Magnificent”, you now know about, but the other one? No.”
He rubbed his chin and his smile was chilling. “What was that guy’s name? You know the Poser Dick you were fucking in D.C. when still married to me?”
Christina began to shake. Her eyes flew to his face and she felt nauseous. “No,” she whispered, trying not to hyperventilate. “If you tell me this, there’s no going back. Do you understand?”
“Well,” Riley shrugged. “You’ve got me in the mood for confession. I’m going to tell you a story and you’re going to hate it.”
**********
Riley
“Did you know it took me a year to sleep with another woman after you and I first split up? I had to get blind drunk to do it and I asked her to keep the lights off. I even told her not to look at me, but I still knew it wasn’t you. After the first time, it got easier. I didn’t even have to be drunk.”
Christina’s face was white and it wouldn’t be long now. She was going to break. He was going to confess his worst sin and then all this would be over. She would never be able to look at him the same way again, not when she found out what he had done.
“Riley,” she begged. “Don’t do this. It brings no solace.”
Her words made him laugh. She was so naïve. “Solace? Why do you think I want solace? I find beauty in the chaos of broken things.”
The haunted look in Christina’s eyes irritated him. He didn’t want her little-girl-lost-look. There was no challenge in that. He wanted her rage, pain, and anger. She was going to be one of his beautiful broken things.
“Now, where was I?” He grinned, faux frowning. “Oh, that’s right. I was going to tell you my personal favorite, but first we need to get comfortable.”
Grabbing her arm, Riley dragged her to a chair, pushing her into the seat. He sat opposite her because a) he didn’t want to miss her reaction and b) he wasn’t going to let her escape. “What was that guy’s name, Christina?”
Riley knew the guy’s name. He just wanted to draw out her misery and make her say it. “Ted,” she gulped.
“Right,” he nodded. “Ted. Ted, the guy you were fucking while we were trying to fix our relationship.”
Christina tried to stand, but he stopped her. “Oh, no. You’ll miss the best part,” Riley soothed. “Well, Ted’s a lawyer now in California, or he was about four years ago. Anyway, Mason and I set up a little sting for Ted. We hired his firm as lawyers saying we had business, but the person we asked to represent us was Ted’s beautiful fiancé.”
Christina’s face was an exercise in incremental horror. It went in stages from disbelief to a sense of impending doom. “She looked like you,” he added, enjoying her discomfort. “You could have been sisters. Nothing quite says ‘I’m not over someone’ like fucking a doppelganger. I think,” he wagged his finger mockingly, “that Ted still had feelings!”
“Stop it,” Christina demanded. “I don’t want to hear any more. You’re just being cruel.”
“Finally, she gets it,” Riley deadpanned. “Now, wait. I haven’t finished and this is where it gets good. Mason and I went out to Cali, and met Ted’s fiancé. She was an easy mark. I’m good at that, Dina. I can sense an easy mark a mile away. Anyway, Jasmine, Ted’s fiancé, the easy mark, she was beautiful, bored, wanting excitement, and poor old Ted wasn’t providing any. How could he? He probably cries when he comes.”
Christina was cringing and it was the closest he’d come to happiness in seven weeks. “It took a week,” he laughed. “Just a week… I put on my tortured, broken-hearted, bad boy act because chicks seem to dig that. I think I even said the words ‘a woman like you could save me’. One night, she turned up to my hotel room and I fucked her. I fucked her brains out. She clawed me like a wild animal, and after she’d gone home, I got on the next plane back to Seattle.”
Picking up a bottle of Scotch, Riley took a swig. “I ignored her hundreds of begging ‘I love you’, ‘where are you’ messages. Instead, I placed a call to Ted.”
“Oh my god,” Christina whispered. “Please. Don’t say anymore. I don’t-”
Jabbing a finger in Christina’s face, Riley shouted, “YOU KNOW WHAT I TOLD HIM? NOW WE’RE EVEN! He fucked my wife and I fucked his fiancé. You know what he did? He cried like the spineless piece of shit he is.”
It happened in slow motion. One moment Christina was calm and then she broke. Her face contorted, tears streaming down her cheeks leaving dark marks. He committed the details to memory because when this was done, he wanted to capture the moment in his art. They would be each other’s broken masterpieces.
Christina howled, choking on her sobs. Her mouth opened and closed, gasping for air, and it sounded like song. She was singing the saddest song he’d ever heard and she was beautiful.
“I know your weak spots, honey,” Riley choked out. “I had to know what it would take to break you. I’m an ugly person, Dina. There’s something twisted deep down in my nature. I wanted to protect you from everything sweetheart, but I can’t protect you from myself.”
Riley stared as she cried with her head down, hands clasped together as if she were praying for salvation. He wanted to reach out to her, offering his arms as shelter, but he couldn’t. Somewhere inside he was screaming, but he’d danced too close to the devil, and the devil had won.
**********
&nb
sp; Christina
“What is it about women, Dina? Men like me are dangerous. We’re honest in our danger and when every instinct should tell you to run, you stay. Is it arrogance? Is it the nurturing quality? Or is it something else, something more primal? On some level, do you want us to humiliate and break you?”
Breathe. If Christina breathed slowly it didn’t hurt so much and Riley was still sitting opposite, staring at her as if she was prey. Under normal circumstances, this was the part where Christina unleashed her wrath, but this was what he wanted. If she was ever going to get him back, warring with him wasn’t going to do it.
“I don’t know, Riley,” Christina garbled in a voice that sounded like a strangers. “I can’t speak for the entire female species. I can only speak for myself. Did I know you were dangerous? Yes, I did. I’ve always known what you were potentially capable of, good or bad. I hoped there were some boundaries you wouldn’t cross.”
Ted Bateman. It hurt to think of him: kind, gentle, considerate, romantic, and hopeful Ted. She’d brought carnage to his door and it pained her to think of the misery she’d caused him because he’d made the mistake of caring for her.
“Hope is false, Dina,” Riley sighed. “It’s a heavy weight to carry. Delusional, the real killer, but once you accept the world is a shitty place, it gets easier.”
There were fine lines between love and hate, and Riley had chosen what side he was on. She used to feel guilty about the pain she’d put Riley through, but she didn’t now. He’d gone down this path all on his own.
If life was about choices, she had one of her own to make. It would be easy to give into the bile and venom that was in her throat, but she refused. She wasn’t going to drive out his darkness with more hatred.
“No hope is false, Riley,” Christina smiled. “It’s the opposite. It keeps our dreams alive and makes us human. Without hope, that’s when someone truly dies, but I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”
Ties That Bind Page 39