Despite my fears, there she was, in all of her crowning beauty, slightly drunk and awaiting me on the couch.
In any other situation, the writing would have been on the wall. In addition to my hated demeanor, I’d also gained something of a reputation as a lady-killer. Had it been any other pair of legs dangling from my couch, my next move would have been simple. Instinctual even.
Yet, there I was. Trembling in the bathroom mirror like not a thing had changed since my scrawny, scared shitless days. Had I not grown at all? Was there no escape from my heart? My emotions? My baggage?
“Brenton!” She called to me like I was her puppy. “Are you okay in there?”
I had no idea of how long it’d been. All that I knew was that the love of my life was awaiting me just feet away and calling to me like I’d always wanted her to.
Like I’d needed her to, all of those years ago.
“I’m fine,” I answered. “Just trying to get the smell of liquor off of me before we go.”
I had no plans nor a grand design. No conjured scheme had revealed itself to me. Even my darkest thoughts of the ultimate revenge drowned in the seas of fantasy that I’d been consuming like oxygen.
I was stuck.
I was afraid.
I hated every moment of it.
It was then that my chest caught my attention. A year or two after I’d begun training—at a private dojo that cost more every month than most people's mortgage, I'd found myself at a similar low.
At the time, SplitWire was nothing more than a dream, still stagnated in its fetal stages while Ian and I scoured the globe for funding. For months, my life had boiled down to nothing but stress and storing away money for, what we thought, was an inevitable failure.
Despite being comforted by a bevy of job offers, I’d resigned to continue on and spend every cent that I could get my hands-on, funding what little progress the two of us could manage. It was around the same time that I was having a particularly bad string of training. I’d been getting my ass handed to me every single day. It was nearly enough to break me. Nevertheless, I persisted.
When we finally got our angel investor in the form of an anonymous donation, the rest of my life followed suit and snapped into the stream of success that I’d then still been in the midst of. A success that carried me through all other hard times that would follow.
My trainer, who preferred to remain nameless, recommended that I get a token of some kind to remember my struggle. To keep the days of failure close and connected to the weaker impulses that might have led me astray. He told me that “success is often bred of resilience” and I never forgot that.
I made sure that I never would.
“Brenton...” Victoria called to me again and I was filled with flame accompanied by thick clouds of black smoke that smoldered in my belly and told me to act.
“Coming,” I answered.
I opted to leave my shirt off as I entered the living room, my head still spinning and my legs weak.
I figured that, at worst, I could just tell her the story.
“There you are...I thought I’d have to call an ambulance for you.”
Victoria sat on the couch—working on a freshly poured glass that she’d made for herself. On the table, beside the half-empty bottle, was my own glass. It’d been dripping from its sides—sweating like a real-time embodiment of my anxiety. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I answered and headed back toward the couch. I’d been waiting for her to mention the fact that I was shirtless. Based on her gazes and steady glares, I assumed that she’d been enjoying the view.
No amount of training could have prepared me for the moment that had been on my mind since our paths crossed again. No amount mental fortitude or physical prowess could keep my gut from feeling like it’d been ready to jet out of my body.
“...Just a little dizzy,” I continued. “Do you mind hanging out here for little while?”
“Well...” She giggled and took another sip from her glass—an unspoken acknowledgement that she’d long lost the idea of having to return to her desk. She was mine. All that remained was what to do with her now that I had her. Now that she was what I’d always wanted her to be.
A possibility.
“That’s fine, Brenton,” she said and slid her glass onto the table. “By the looks of it, you could probably use a break.”
“I could.”
I sat on the couch beside her and pulled her legs onto my lap. She gave me little resistance. If anything, she’d fallen in line with the idea as if it were her own.
Back when she was a cheerleader, I used to massage her feet after any tough day out on the field—with a gang of people that I’d never dared to reveal my existence to. A part of me felt weak. Like I’d reduced myself right back to nothing.
Nothing but a man who lived for her.
Most of it felt right.
“Do you know that you’re wearing two mismatching shoes?” I asked—half-joking—as I dropped them to the floor beside us. “Running late this morning?” I cradled her right foot in my hand and began my slow kneading. She was picky with things like that, but I’d remembered just how she liked it.
“A little bit...” she answered. “As you could imagine, work has been tough lately.”
“I don’t need to imagine. I’ve seen the books and the news isn’t exactly ignoring Luthor’s offenses.”
“Alleged...” she corrected and cast her gaze to the blank television screen. “...but between you and me, he’s probably going to go down big for it.”
“Rumors say five to ten years.”
“The rumors are exaggerated. Guys like you and him carry favor with the legal system. He'll be back on the streets by next Christmas...If he goes away at all.”
I eased her right foot back into my lap and retrieved the other.
“...And what does that mean for you?” I asked as she was overtaken by the kind of silence that you only ever hear at a funeral. A look of impending doom fixed itself to her lowered eyes and settled at a slight frown.
“It means...” she laid her back on the arm of the couch and stared at the ceiling—following the golden traces throughout the length of the room. “It means, that my life is in your hands, Brenton.”
“Sounds like a big responsibility.”
“More than you know,” she said.
“You sure that I'm up for it?”
She sat up, pulling her legs out of my lap and receding to her corner of the couch. “I’d hoped that you would be,” she said. “But, I could never ask you to do that.”
“To let you keep your job?”
That silence returned—this time sturdy enough to stop a freight-car cold in its tracks. I wondered if it was me.
“Sure...” she muttered as her head slung over the back of the couch. Her fingers had been tapping against her kneecap as it always did when she was nervous. Her frown stiffened into an ambiguous line—the kind of partial smirk that reminded me of the Mona Lisa.
“Brenton,” she said as I began to sip from my own glass. Her head rolled over to my direction as she did her best to keep herself from admiring my body. “I have to tell you something.”
“You can tell me anything”
“Okay… Uhm—I…”
“—As long as you let me go first,” I interrupted. Her verbal stagger was a sign that she could’ve used some conversational saving. “Besides, I don’t want to talk about work right now.”
“So, what do you want to talk about?” Her head lifted from the couch as she gave me her full attention, simultaneously putting a freeze on every thought in my mind that wasn’t her or her body intertwined with mine.
The only topic that I could come up with was the one that had been on my heart for a decade.
With a deep breath and a few more silent sips from my glass, I bled out to her like I’d been shot in the chest. “Where did you go?” I asked and it deflated her. “I waited for you and you never came.” My voice shook like I�
��d left it out in the cold to die.
“Brenton. Listen, I—That was...”
“Where did you go, Victoria...” I shot. “You promised that you’d be there for me. Six weeks.”
“What...” Even her confused gaze was tacked with the kind of guilt that shone in even her subtlest movements. She too had been frozen, fearful of this discussion that she’d hoped to never have.
I continued.
“Six weeks, I spent in that hospital, waiting for the day that you’d arrive. Call. Fuck...I would’ve settled for a text message.”
“I thought you were dead!” she burst, the tears rolling past her bottom eyelids like a salty avalanche. It was everything that I’d ever wanted and at the same time made me feel like the exact kind of monster that she’d just escaped. I wasn’t Luthor—no matter how hard I tried to be.
I couldn’t be that. Not with her.
“Clearly, I wasn’t.” After a few deep breathes and clouded thoughts, I’d eased, but only as much as a broken heart could. “You didn’t bother to check?”
“I did!” She defended. “But. But—I...”
“Didn’t give a fuck...” I completed for her—mostly just to get a reaction other than her spontaneous fits of defensive aggression and the abysmal silence that followed. “You didn’t give a fuck. Just say it.”
“I did!” She jerked backward on the couch as if I’d raised a hand to her. To ensure that she didn’t get the wrong impression, I backed off as well. “I just didn’t think that you’d want to see me.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I,” I barked. “You were the only person that I wanted to see. More than my own mother. More than the doctors. I’d have traded all four of my limbs just to know that you cared. Now, all of a sudden, I’m rich and famous and you’ve got no problem being seen with me.”
“We were just kids, Brenton. I didn’t know what I wanted,” she reached a hand across to me. I shunned it, along with her pitiful tone. “I didn’t know what I needed.” As her fingers grazed the back of my arm, I thought of letting up and changing the subject.
But, I had to know.
“What was it? If you cared so much, what kept you away from me?”
“Malcolm...”
“Excuse me,” I roared. “Malcolm Reed? Heroin addict, Malcolm Reed.”
“He wasn’t an addict back then. He was just...a kid. Like us.”
“And now, he’s buried like the rest of us will be...What’s your point?”
A pale flush devoured her skin, tinting it to a stark white as opposed to the slightly reddish hue that the liquor had adorned our faces with. Her eyes dropped to her knee caps as she answered.
“It was because of me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Malcolm. The lead pipe. The hospital.” Her river of tears transitioned into a waterfall that dripped onto her blouse with the ferocity of a hurricane. Fighting to keep her lips from running off her face, she’d rescinded her professional demeanor in favor of who she really was.
A woman in pain.
Suddenly, I felt like the devil. This wasn’t as sweet as I’d expected it to be.
“Back when we had our fling, I was dating him. As far as most of the campus knew, he and I were an item.”
“...And you didn’t think that was something worth telling me?”
“I was going to. After everything that we’d gone through that semester, I -- I just didn’t know how.”
“You wanted to break it off with me,” I lamented. “To throw me out like some piece of trash.”
“I wanted to be with you, Brenton. I wanted you so badly that I’d broken it off with Malcolm. Handsome as he was, he was a dipshit and dumb as a pile of doorknobs. I hated every second that I’d spent with him. But, it came with—”
“Popularity...” I completed for her again. “And that was more important?”
“No,” she answered. “As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. I’d broken up with him the previous night after a less than consenting, round of—what he called—sex.”
“Too much information, Vicky.”
“No, Brenton. That’s just the thing. I didn’t know what it was that I felt for you, until my soul sang it from my lungs. When I was with him, I called out your name. When he kissed me, I thought of your lips. When he touched me, I missed your skin. I was in love with you. I am in love with you. It took this long for me to say it...but it’s true.”
The question still lingered in my mind—so much so that I could barely process the woman of my dreams throwing herself at my mercy. She wasn’t a monster. She was just lost.
She wanted me to find her. To fix the broken parts of her being. To give me the chance to be the man she saw and not the man that I’d become to survive our past.
Yet and still, the question lingered.
“What are you trying to tell me, Vicky?” This time, I reached out to her and held her hands wholly to let her know that it would be okay.
“Malcolm attacked you because I told him what I’d planned to do. I told him everything that I’ve just told you. He made me promise not to say a word. He told me that you died. When I found out that he was lying, too much time had already passed. So I wrote you that letter. I waited for you to answer...”
“I—I’ve...”
“You never did.” Her droplets of tears had dried into a stream of black lines down her cheeks as her makeup ran from her face and left little colored marks on her clothes.
I pulled her close, welcoming her into my embrace like a lost child. She rested her chin on my shoulder and continued. “I’m so sorry, Brenton.”
“Don’t be,” I answered and wrapped my arms around her back to keep her nestled on my chest. She still smelled the same -- lavender and daydreams. “Thank you for telling me.” I spoke softly, as not to incite further debate between us. In that moment, I already had what I’d come looking for.
“Please forgive me...”
“I do...” I loosened my grip around her just enough for her to notice. “...But I can’t have, whatever this is between us, exist and run a business at the same time. It’s unprofessional.”
“What...” She wiped the tears from her face and looked up at me like the bad news that I was for her. “What are you saying?”
“Victoria...” I pulled away so that she could see the well-practiced look of condescension on my face -- stiff lips, an absent gaze, and a cold delivery. Just like I’d done for myself more times than I could count.
I took it all away from her.
“You’re fired.”
I basked in her bewilderment. I let the fear consume her, as I assumed it had in her worst nightmares. That devastating sensation of freefalling into a pit of fire. I let her imagination grow into a deep trauma that would scar her psyche for as long as she was sane.
I took everything, just like I’d practiced.
But, I’d planned on giving her something better.
14
Victoria
He fired me and wiped the tears from eyes as if someone else had stripped me of my livelihood.
I was lost. I was dumbfounded and taken aback by the idea that my fate had been decided by that man. The one who I’d thought could save me from the depths of myself.
A million questions sauntered through my mind and dissipated at once as the reality settled in. I found myself greeting it with a kind of silent joy. Where I should have been nothing if not furious and miserable, I felt relief. Where I should have felt fear compact, I felt at ease.
When I looked at Brenton, I didn’t see a monster—no matter how badly he’d wanted me to see him that way. Through no intentional fault of his own, I was liberated.
I was free of MossCorp—that soulless hole in the middle of a thriving city. I was free of the early mornings and late nights of stress and anxiety, awaiting yet another shred of news custom-made to break me down.
I was free of it all.
I was free because of him.
“Thank you,” I
uttered as he drew his lips closer to mine. He brushed a small batch of hair that had fallen into my face, behind my ear. Afterward, he wiped the final tear that I shed that day.
“You’re still beautiful when you cry,” he said and cupped my jaw in his palm. “But I prefer a smile.”
I did as he asked, if only to appease him. Despite what he’d done, and for whatever intention that he’d meant it, he deserved what it did for him. Maybe it made him feel victorious, taking away a life from the woman who’d accidently destroyed his.
Maybe it was just impulse, I thought. Maybe a bad joke.
No matter what it was, an epiphany dawned on me as moments passed and he was so close that I could taste the bourbon evaporating from his lips. It was a gift that I’m still not sure he’d meant for to me have. For us to have. Nevertheless, the truth remained.
There was no more conflict of interest.
“What now?” I asked him as a strong gust of wind pressed in on his glass windows. With the wind came a down pour of snow. It looked soft enough to lay a baby on.
Perhaps even to make a baby beside.
He brought his lips in to meet mine in an act that I could hardly separate from my dreams. As he closed in, inches away from my face, he made an eye contact with me.
Those piercing green gems stared me down like I was his supper and he a starving lion. They twitched a bit when I eased in to meet them and closed as our skin connected, soft and moist like a gush-filled candy. They tasted of everything that he’d wanted to say.
Sweet, like his intention.
Sour, like his resolve.
It all rolled together into an irresistible package from which he’d speak the words that I didn’t know I needed to hear. The words that would imprint upon me the possibilities of us, our future, our true selves. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered as his lips parted from mine. He licked them once over just to savor my taste on his tongue.
I glazed an arm around him, leading down his face, off to the muscle that protruded above his shoulders like organic mountains of diamond, up his neck—that sturdy and thick trunk that’d held up his ambitions. I stopped just beneath his hairline so that the prickles of hair tickled my index finger.
Take Me Over: A Protector Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Page 9