Captive

by R. J. Lewis

  I felt grossly under dressed as we sat down at a round table. All the girls wore pretty dresses, fine jewellery, had that whole YouTube make-up tutorial look down pat.

  In the meantime, I was still guerrilla styling it.

  As I looked over the menu, Brian leaned into my side, whispering in my ear, “I got the cost, Vicky. You get what you want, alright?”

  My cheeks flushed. “Thank you, Brian,” I said sincerely.

  When he pulled back, Kim was smiling at the two of us. “You guys are cute together.”

  Brian laughed. “Really?”

  “Yeah, I wish Peter whispered in my ear like that.” She shot Peter a glare. “Why the hell don’t you whisper in my ear like that, Pete?”

  Peter didn’t bat her an eye, he was so used to her shit. “I’m such a robot, you should write a manual on how I ought to act, Kim. I’ll study it.”

  She rolled her eyes dramatically. “He never argues back. He just takes my shit.”

  “What other choice do I have?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, you can fight back every once in a while.”

  Peter’s lips flinched up as he looked at her, the love in his eyes so blatant. “You fight enough for the two of us, Kimmy.”

  I noticed the way her cheeks went red. She pretended not to be effected, but I watched her carefully, saw her turn away and glance casually around the room.

  I wondered just then…

  I wondered if that was how I looked like with him.

  Did my cheeks redden? Did he know he’d gotten to me?

  My fingers trembled. A huge wave of emotion hit me. I refocused my sight on the menu, but I could hardly read it through the blur of tears.

  The waitress appeared and we gave our orders. When she left, Peter said, “Tough time to be an officer, Brian, don’t you think?”

  Brian grunted indifferently. “It’ll blow over.”

  “What will?” Kim wondered.

  “The resurgence of gang violence,” Peter explained. “There’ve been bodies all over the show. Apparently, the bikers are retaliating.”

  I looked up, curiously. “What bikers?”

  “The One Percent, they call themselves. They’ve been on the down-low for a few years. They just intercepted a drug run from their opponents, stole their huge loot of cocaine. Been hearing from some of my clients that the bikers are working with a bunch of rogue contractors.”

  “What sort of contractors?” Kim asked, looking enthralled.

  Brian shrugged, answering in a bored voice, “These morons take contracts. They do the dirty for a crime boss that doesn’t want to get blood on their hands.”

  “Hitmen?”

  “Sometimes. Other times, they’ll break into a cash house and clean it out.”

  “And this resurgence is, what, happening now?”

  Peter nodded. “Yeah, came out of nowhere. Makes cases hard to crack when I don’t have faces to work with. It’s tricky defending a victim who doesn’t have a description. Sometimes, it’s so obvious what jackass is behind the crime, but you can’t do a thing about it. People are getting scared again. No one wants to be a rat.”

  “They usually sort it out amongst themselves,” Brian told us, smirking. “They turn on each other, tear one another apart. At the end, they always find a balance.”

  “The strongest come out on top,” Peter added, agreeing with Brian. “Balance will be restored. Just means a lot of bloodshed.”

  Kim made a thoughtful sound. “Funny you should mention all this. There was a shooting a few days ago, and some guy got rushed into the hospital. He was a big guy, had a ski mask on his face. The cops were really keen to speak to him. They were up our asses the second he got wheeled in.”

  “And?” Peter prodded when she took a moment.

  She threw her arms up in the air. “He vanished before we could treat him.”

  “Was he hiding some marred as fuck face under the mask or something?” Brian asked, laughing.

  “No, the nurse tending to him told me he was gorgeous. Bronze skin, big muscles.”

  Staring deeply at her, I asked, “Did he give a name?”

  “It started with an E, I think.”

  “Like Eman?” I blurted out without stopping myself.

  She went still, shooting me a peculiar face. “I don’t know.”

  Brian and Peter stared at me oddly too, but thankfully the waitress intervened with our food. I decided to stop talking after that, though my mind raced with thoughts.

  Contractors.

  Ski mask.

  Bronze skin and gorgeous face.

  It fit Eman to a tee.

  I hid my furtive smile. It was insane being on the other side, seeing people that I knew well strike, leaving everyone else dumbfounded.

  I felt this sharp desire to be part of it all again. To see sensitive Eman, behind his tough as fuck exterior, whine like a baby the way he used to before his bad blood with Nixon.

  Brian held my hand just then, anchoring me back down to the present. He squeezed it dotingly. We smiled at each other just then; his smile was filled with enormous affection, and mine felt…stilted.

  It would feel real with time, I told myself.

  As they spoke about other things, I looked up at the top floor of the restaurant, eyeing the diners I could see. This was the kind of place Nixon would have taken me to. He’d have had his hand pressed against my back, steering me to the top floor, to a quiet area. He would have pulled the chair out for me to sit down on.

  A feeling of melancholy swept through me, and as it ravaged my chest and knocked me breathless, I saw a large figure at the railing of the top floor, his head down, peering at us. The second my eyes found him, his head whipped away, his body twisted to the side, and he stepped away, disappearing from sight.

  For a few moments, I sat frozen. Heat rushed to my face as I tried to remember just what he looked like.

  Big.

  Dark clothing.

  Black hair.

  I shook my head. Nonsense.

  I was losing my mind.

  But my gaze swept the top floor, and I couldn’t remove the niggling feeling in my chest. Without stopping myself, I set my fork down and stood up. Brian asked me where I was going, but I ignored him as I dazedly walked to the staircase and climbed each step.

  Every inch of me twitched with anticipation. I couldn’t even breathe.

  When I reached the top, I stood before a large room, inspecting every single table, searching.

  But what was I searching for?

  I’d seen him bleed out.

  I’d seen the light fade from his eyes.

  I’d seen the pool of blood that poured from his side.

  It was inconceivable.

  Impossible.

  Downright ludicrous.

  I swayed, hardly able to stand upright when arms suddenly wrapped around me. I gasped, squeezing my eyes shut in yearning as a mouth pressed to my ear. “Victoria, are you alright?”

  Brian.

  Of course, it was Brian.

  I nodded numbly. “I thought I saw someone I know.”

  This isn’t fantasy, Victoria.

  This was real life.

  He was gone.

  *

  The rest of the dinner I was distant. I complained about a headache, but I saw the way Kim’s gaze narrowed at me. She knew I was full of shit, but the men were clueless.

  When we stepped out of the restaurant, the cold air felt cathartic. I breathed the icy air in, hugging my arms across my chest as I gazed at the night sky. You couldn’t see many stars, not like you did on the island, or in a cabin on a mountain.

  I smiled at the irony.

  I felt more like a prisoner out here.

  I’d felt more anxiety these past two years of freedom than any other time of my life.

  It was so fucked.

  Just before we departed ways with Kim and Peter, Brian spoke to them, talking endlessly about something I wasn’t paying any attentio
n to.

  Overwhelmed with the figure I’d seen over dinner, I turned away to calm down. I walked slowly in the direction of Brian’s car, trudging through the crowd, my hand rubbing at my jacket where my chest was. I sucked in a breath, whispered to myself that it was going to be okay, that life kept going, the days kept coming and I would get better.

  The snowfall was growing thicker. The wind picked up. People laughed around me, conversations were exchanged. A couple embraced and –

  A shoulder slammed into me. I lost my balance and grabbed at the arm belonging to the person that had practically run me down. The first thing I saw was a suit jacket over dark suit pants. I blinked up, sputtering out, “I’m sorry” just as my eyes connected with the face of my past.

  He looked down at me, his eyes hard and framed behind a thick set of glasses. His familiar glare cut into me, looking at me with not one ounce of recognition.

  My hand immediately dropped, and my vision swam. I shook my head like I was shaking sense into me. “You’re not real,” I whispered.

  He gave me a long look before snapping, “Excuse me, do I know you?”

  I took another step back, perfectly aware I was hallucinating. This wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. But…he stood there, on the sidewalk, with a man next to him, watching our exchange with a curious look.

  I shook my head, feeling spooked, forcing out a quiet, “No.”

  He turned away and resumed walking toward the restaurant.

  I watched his back as he disappeared in the crowd, his head turned in the direction of the man next to him, chatting away like nothing had happened.

  Like I was no one.

  Like I wasn’t Vixen.

  Like he wasn’t Hobbs.

  Like we were strangers.

  47.

  Victoria…

  I didn’t know how I got home in one piece. I couldn’t remember a single moment of it. I felt like I was in a daze. One second I was on that sidewalk, the next, I’d somehow found my way back to the apartment with Brian.

  I wasn’t myself.

  I paced the apartment, digging out cheap wine from my kitchen cupboard. I drank straight from the bottle and Brian watched me like I was crazy. I got loaded, hoping to grow numb, hoping to forget I’d run into Hobbs on the fucking sidewalk less than an hour ago.

  He was real.

  It was all real.

  Sometimes my time on the island felt like a dream.

  Like maybe I’d imagined all of it.

  But it was all real. He was real, and the fucker had looked straight through me, like perhaps I wasn’t real to him.

  I was sure that was what stung the most. I was invisible now. He played it off so well. You couldn’t know he’d had to get drunk just to watch me leave.

  I wandered to the lounge room, watching Brian set my perfectly wrapped present under the tree. I took a swig of my bottle, feeling warmth at the sight of him doing that for me. He got me a present. He had it so nicely wrapped; it made my present look like something a four-year-old had wrapped in the dark.

  I got him cologne at Hudson Bay. It was on special. It smelled manly. I was sure he’d like it.

  But the way Brian held my present made it seem like it was super fragile. Super expensive. What a nice guy.

  This guy wasn’t Nixon, I told myself. The roaring fire I felt for Nixon would never be had again.

  In fact, the flame I felt for Brian was akin to a flame from a standard lighter you bought from the local Dollarama.

  But…it was still a fire at the end of the day.

  And who knows? Maybe it would grow. Maybe I could feed it. Maybe I needed to listen to Kim and just let the guy take me. Maybe he would surprise me.

  I set the bottle down and stumbled to him as he emerged from under the tree. The second he turned to me, I fell into him, kissing him. He immediately kissed me back, wrapping his arms around me. It was sloppy kissing. It felt pretty good. He led me to the couch and dropped me down on it, coming over me with beaming eyes.

  I was so tipsy, my head so cloudy, I felt giddy because maybe – just maybe – I would come. I hadn’t felt an orgasm since Nixon. It was too long, and I needed to move on. I needed to realize there were other men out there – good men, nice guys – and they could give it to me just as good.

  I was deluding myself.

  I was living in complete ignorance.

  But I was desperate to prove to myself that perhaps I was still capable of strong emotion.

  As Brian kissed me, his hands wandered down my body. His touch was too gentle – too soft. This shit wasn’t happening fast enough. “Don’t take your clothes off,” I hissed at him.

  He pulled away to look down at me. “What?”

  “Don’t take them off.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  I glared. “No, I meant take them off.”

  Confused, he began taking his clothes off before bringing his lips back down to mine. I brought his hand to my chest, made him cup my boob, but his grip wasn’t possessive enough, it wasn’t wanting enough. He settled between my legs, hard and ready, his dick still hidden under his briefs. I felt his hand under my skirt. His fingers skirted along the hem of my underwear, and he pulled back to look at me.

  “Is this okay?” he asked.

  “Don’t ask me that,” I returned haughtily.

  His brows came together. “I’m confused.”

  “With what?”

  “Do you want me to take your underwear off?”

  “Why don’t you just do what you want to do?”

  “But what about you?”

  I fumed. “Fuck me, Brian.”

  He slid my underwear off, his face tense. He looked kind of stressed as he moved back over me. He kissed me again, and then winced when I ran my nails down his back. “That really hurts,” he cried out, sounding pained.

  “Good,” I murmured.

  “Good?” he returned, shocked. “You want to hurt me?”

  “I want you to just fuck me.”

  “You said that already, and I’m going to, but I don’t want you to scratch me, or to tell me not to do something and then mean for me to actually do it.”

  Jesus Christ. I pulled away. “Don’t you have the need to just take me?”

  “Of course, I want to make love,” he returned. “Maybe you should have told me what you preferred to do before we got in this situation, because I’m fucking confused now.”

  “I can’t tell you what I want, that defeats the purpose,” I said, irritated.

  “This kind of sounds like a really fucked up game, Victoria.”

  My eyes brightened. “Exactly, Brian! It’s just a game.”

  Now, he moved off me, looking disturbed. “Is this why you’ve been avoiding intimacy?” he asked, staring ahead with a blank expression. “Because you’ve got a weird fucking kink that most people would run the other way from?”

  I felt a sharp sting in my chest. “I didn’t realize most people would run the other way.”

  He shot me a look of disbelief. “I’m not comfortable with touching you and you telling me not to. That shit kind of blurs the lines, don’t you think?”

  “That’s why we’d have a code word.”

  He blinked. “You mean a safe word.”

  “Yeah, sure, call it that.”

  “I’m not…” he stuttered, shaking his head, looking confused. “I think…I think I should go home. My mom’s expecting me to give her a call. She’ll want to know how my police training is going and…Yeah, you know, I think I’ll give her a call.”

  Standing up now, he rushed to put his clothes on. I avoided eye contact – he did too – and he took off out of the apartment, saying nothing.

  That was the most awkward moment of my life.

  Probably his, too.

  I blinked slowly into the nothing around me. Then I burst out into giggles, because I was drunk, and this was so fucked it was funny.

  I giggled until my giggles turned into fat sobs.

>   “I’m damaged goods,” I said out loud. “Who will want me now?”

  No one.

  Oh, my God, I was going to die alone.

  I slid off the couch and crawled to the tree. I plugged the cord into the wall and watched it light up. I looked up at it, smiling as I cried because it was pretty and I was so sad. And when you see things that are pretty when you were sad it was extra pretty for some reason.

  I drank some more wine.

  I didn’t need Brian, I told myself. I had this tree and this apartment and some money in the bank. Life wasn’t so bad.

  I stood up and stumbled to the kitchen. I set the bottle down and turned, tripping over the Christmas tree box. I fell dramatically – truly, the slowest, most pathetic fall ever, landing straight on the box, just under the line written in permanent marker. I traced my finger over my address, analysing the penmanship, wondering if I’d ever seen Hobbs’ handwriting before.

  I had, actually.

  He wrote like a calligraphy artist. The curves of his letters were so elegant.

  These ones were straight and harsh.

  This wasn’t from Hobbs.

  *

  When my head hit the pillow, I fell into a deep sleep.

  I had another dream about Nixon. He’d slid into bed and held me to him, and I’d groggily turned and asked him, “How’d you get here?”

  “I’ve always been here,” he murmured to me, burying his nose between my neck and shoulder.

  “Why don’t you visit me more?” I cried, feeling my heart crack.

  “I visit you as often as I can.”

  I relaxed against him as he kissed along my neck, sucking feverishly at my skin. I felt my body heat beneath his touch. Wetness pooled between my legs. I sucked in a breath, admitting, “Brian didn’t like our game.”

  “That game’s ours,” he growled in my ear.

  “I’m starting to realize that.”

  He held me tighter. “No one will ever get you like I do.”

  I let out a sad sigh. “I know.”

  His stubble skimmed my shoulder, his hand slid between my legs, rubbing at my nub of nerves. “You smell like him,” he seethed in a low voice. “It’s feral. I hate it.”