by R. J. Lewis
“You never cared!” he interrupted, shouting down at me as the water trailed down his face. “You made that clear! You spent every night telling me I didn’t matter. I was replaceable! I fought to believe otherwise. But you hopped straight into someone else’s bed, proving me wrong. Two years and you were happy to move the fuck on –”
“I was trying to feel something, you ignorant dickhead!”
“I hope he made you feel good –”
“He did!” I lied. “Brian really did, Nixon. He fucked me so good –”
“You’re a fucking liar.”
“But he did! Oh, my god, he fucked me with his big cock –”
“But he didn’t play our game, you said so –”
“I didn’t need him to!”
“So, he just took you, huh? And you writhed?”
“Yeah, I writhed, but that’s not your business! As if you haven’t jumped into a million beds by now. Doll made it very fucking clear you were a manwhore –”
“That’s right,” he cut in, grinning devilishly at me now. “I fucked so many tight pussies, baby. A new girl every night.”
“Every night?”
“Every night! They fucking bucked beneath my touch, baby. They groaned in my ear –”
I choked back a sob. “I fucking hate you.”
“You’ve made that clear.”
“Well, I’ll keep saying it. I hate you.”
“I’m starting to think you don’t.”
“I do. You’re a fucking poison, Nixon!”
Now he laughed dryly. “What the fuck do you know about poison? You owned me, Vixen, right from the start. You played me like a fiddle. You coursed through my veins like blood. You ate me on the inside. A fucking tapeworm, that’s what you were, growing bigger and bigger. I kept thinking I could keep you. I kept thinking I could make you stay. I was so fucking stupid –”
“I was just a thing to you, Nixon,” I argued, feeling my voice break. “You kept me in a box. YOU DIDN’T LET ME GROW!”
His eyes looked bloodshot. “You’re right. I didn’t.”
“I just wanted the fucking sun!” I screamed. “You never gave me the sun.”
“No, I didn’t.” He agreed.
“And it’s so fucked!”
“What is?”
“That even if I had the choice, I wouldn’t leave just the same.”
“Why?” he demanded desperately. “Why wouldn’t you leave?”
“Because you were my heart.”
I crumbled before him, sobbing. He let me slide down the wall, cradling my knees to my chest. He watched me fall apart, watched me with a raw gaze, and then he dropped down to the floor with me. His arm wrapped around my shoulders. He pulled me to him, resting his forehead against mine. He watched me come undone, and I didn’t care that I was so exposed to him. I’d let the bastard have this moment. Let him see how broken he’d left me. I’d pick myself up again, I would.
When the water began to cool, he lifted his arm up and adjusted the water, keeping it so hot, it was barely tolerable.
We sat there, squished together like sardines under the cascading water, still in our clothes, still saying nothing.
I felt him watching me. I didn’t have the courage to look back.
I’d exposed myself.
Dressed to the nines, I’d come here for him – he knew this – and he’d just torn me to pieces.
Two seconds back into his world and another head had blown apart over me. More blood, more trauma, this was what it was like, what it would always be like.
Why hadn’t I remembered that?
Finally, after what felt like forever, he detached from me and stood up. I hated that I missed him already. That the space he filled next to me felt too good to want gone.
He threw his clothes off and threw them in a sopping pile on the floor beside the toilet. Then he quickly rinsed himself off, washing his skin like he was desperate to finish.
He stepped out when he was done and left the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. I jumped at the sound, staring dejectedly ahead.
What just happened?
On shaky legs, I stood up and removed the dress. I washed myself with weak movements, hardly able to keep myself steady.
I was so hurt.
It wasn’t healthy to feel this sort of pain. To give someone that sort of control over your emotions.
I cleaned myself and stepped out. I wrapped myself in a towel and lingered in the bathroom for a long time. I didn’t know if he was out there waiting for me. I didn’t want to awkwardly confront him, though part of me itched for another round of seething words because it was a rush in my veins.
I hadn’t felt this strongly in so long, and yes, it hurt. It hurt to feel, but it was so much better than not feeling anything at all.
He’d said that to me in the cabin, I recalled.
I hadn’t agreed with him at the time, but now…now it made perfect sense.
Opening the door, I took a hesitant step out. The bedroom was empty, but I could hear the sound of a television on in the lounge room.
I tiptoed quietly out of the room, wanting to catch a peek of him.
I stopped suddenly, feeling stunned at the figure on the couch.
Hearing me, Doll’s head snapped in my direction, and she smiled. “Hey, Vix.”
A huge wave of emotion slammed into me. I felt tears slide down my cheeks. “Doll.”
She appeared concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m just…really happy to see you.”
She looked sceptical. “And I’m a donkey’s uncle.”
“No, for real,” I told her honestly. “I missed you, Doll.”
Her smile softened. “We missed you, too. It hasn’t been the same without your pretty face in the meeting room.”
Still in my towel, I moved to the couch and sat down next to her. “Really?”
She nodded, studying me. “Really, Vix. As Hobbs said once, you elevated the room.”
“You didn’t seem to think so at the time.”
She let out a hard laugh. “It’s alright every now and then for a girl to have a bit of healthy competition.”
I shook my head slowly at her, disbelieving. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
“I have my moments of insecurity.”
“They must be very fleeting.”
“They are,” she acknowledged, running her fingers through her hair. “Anyway, everyone got used to you around. It was really weird when you weren’t.” Her brow furrowed as she thought about it quietly. “It was weird to see Nixon without you, actually. It seemed unnatural.”
“What happened to him on the island, Doll?” I asked, trying to understand. “How did he survive?”
“That redhead doctor that tended to you –”
“Doctor Sullivan.”
“Yeah, she was still kicking around. Hadn’t left when she was supposed to.”
“Why?”
“Her plane had engine problems, and she said she’d wanted to talk to Nixon about his sister.”
I felt a pain in my chest. “Leona.”
“Yeah, she tended to her.” Doll looked sad now. “She wanted to tell Nixon something about it.”
“You knew Leona.”
Doll nodded. “She was very lovely.”
I wondered what Sullivan had to say to him, but it didn’t feel right to pry. “Sullivan saved him?”
“Tyrone said Nixon wanted to die on the island. He’d gone cold, started hallucinating, kept talking to Leona, it was really fucked up, but…Tyrone said he wouldn’t die. He just kept hanging in there. It simply wasn’t his time. Even Sullivan said it defied logic. She’d never seen someone lose so much blood before. He was airlifted to the hospital in the morning.”
My mouth parted. “Morning? He lay there all night?”
“The weather picked up the rest of the night. It wasn’t safe to land. The winds were bad. Tyrone was with him. He was real cut up about it.”
>
Tyrone had always cared so much for Nixon. It would have devastated him to watch his good friend slowly pass.
“When he got to the hospital, it was real touch and go,” she continued. “Sullivan had tended to him until he was admitted, and then the staff took responsibility of him. She was also cut up about it. I think…I think she loved Leona. I never asked Nixon about it personally, but when Leona died, Sullivan grieved hard. Made me real sad for them.”
Sullivan, who had been so professional and expressionless with me, may have been hiding her own hurt this whole time. That rattled me.
“Why didn’t he send for me?” I asked her just then, fighting back tears. “I would have been there for him, Doll.”
“Hobbs said Nixon had decided to let you go the night we were supposed to leave for the job, before Flynn had acted on his fucked up method of revenge.”
That made me confused. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Hobbs just said it was what he wanted, and when Nixon woke up and realized he wasn’t dead, Hobbs said he was still firm about his decision.”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t buy it, Doll. He wouldn’t have let me go before he’d known about Flynn.”
“I disagree,” she replied firmly. “Nixon wasn’t himself toward the end of your relationship, Vix. He behaved erratically. He was…exhausted all the time. If he left you on a job, he twitched and fumed and lost his shit. He was attached to you in a really fucked up way, and he was starting to realize it. He was…empty, Vix. In a way someone who kept trying and failing would be.”
Trying with me and failing when he got nowhere.
Guilt ate away at me.
I thought of so many moments I could have opened up to him, but I was too proud. Too stuck on our dynamic to ever think it could ever evolve.
At the same time, I tried to reason that our relationship was fucked up.
It was volatility and heavy emotion. When he was tender, I was chaos. He pulled and I pushed.
I could have stopped, but I defied him, fighting him when, in actuality, I was fighting against my own nature.
Levelling her with a solemn stare, I asked her bluntly, “Have there been other women, Doll?”
She appeared sympathetic. With a light shrug, she answered, “I don’t know, Vix. He’s been really private, especially about that sort of thing.”
“You’d tell me if there was, though, right?” I implored.
“I would tell you,” she assured me. “I’m being serious, though. If you’re asking about a specific girl, then the answer is no. But if you’re asking if he’s fucked around, I don’t know. I haven’t seen it personally.”
“He told me there’s been a new girl every day.”
Now her face fell. “Jesus.”
Without meeting her eye, I also admitted, “I told him I’ve been fucking a guy with a big dick.”
Her fingers stilled through her hair. “Not sure you should have done that.”
“We were angry,” I pathetically explained. “It seemed like a good move at the time.”
“You’ve got a hickey the size of a golf ball on your neck, I think he would have figured that out on his own. You didn’t have to drive that point home to a guy that literally tore his island apart looking for you.”
I felt my face heat with shame, but I was also annoyed. “No one gave me a hickey.”
“Well, you have one.”
“It’s probably a straightener burn.” That I never recalled hissing over.
She looked at me dryly. “You should take a hard look in the mirror, Vix.”
Yeah, I should.
We sat for a few minutes in silence. I felt utterly shattered. I could hardly keep my eyes open. I needed to get out of here.
Standing up, I made to move to the bedroom when she asked, “Where are you going?”
“I need to go,” I told her, unable to hide the panic in my voice. “If he comes back, it’ll be awkward, and I really need to be on my own right now.”
“You’re not allowed to leave,” she said, standing up. “You were in the middle of something you shouldn’t have been. He told me to keep you right here.”
“With all due respect, Doll, I’m not his prisoner anymore.”
She let out a shocked laugh, shaking her head at me. “The only person imprisoned in your fucked-up relationship was that cocky asshole, and Vix, freedom isn’t looking too good on him.”
I should have felt good to hear that, but I didn’t. I actually felt bad for the asshole that basically told me he’d fucked a girl a day. I did the math in my head.
That was 730 girls.
I tried to be realistic about it. Because that didn’t sound right.
With jobs in between, maybe it was closer to 650, give or take.
No, actually, he would have healed from that bullet wound and that would have taken weeks.
So, it was probably in the 500s.
Want to know the worst bit? Knowing how high his sex drive was, I fucking believed it. The fucker may have realistically banged hundreds of girls in the last two years.
He could fly a kite. I was leaving this place.
I stomped to the bedroom, aware I wasn’t really going to make a dramatic exit. I had nothing to wear. I could raid his wardrobe, but if I left, I would have to walk past the penthouse President Fuckwad had died in. I was sure it was being micromanaged, and I was sure the dozens of cameras that were probably on this floor alone would ping my movement.
I sat on the bed instead, and Doll stood in the doorway, blocking it.
“No need to do that,” I sighed, defeatedly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
52.
Nixon…
He looked out the window of the meeting room, missing the view of the ocean. This cement jungle gnawed at him. The incessant beeping of cars, the constant stream of people and sounds, it was no wonder he was pissed all the time.
“The footage is done,” Tyrone said from behind him. “I think you’ll be impressed.”
Nixon didn’t dart his eyes at Tyrone. He simply asked, “You managed to find a girl?”
“Tiger and Eman picked up a hooker. She was pretty wasted. She had the same build as Vixen. Doll had like a thousand dresses lying around. We found a white one, looked very similar.”
“How’d she look on the screen?”
“We had her marching in and out of there. Made sure she wasn’t showing her face. It’s a hard tell, man. You’d have to take the footage to a fucking lab to spot a difference.”
“She won’t talk?”
“She was drugged out of her mind, Nixon. Eman put her in a motel room. Said he couldn’t stand the thought of her being taken advantage of in the state that she was in.”
“Typical Eman to have a soft spot for these girls.”
“What kind of girls? Hookers?”
Nixon shook his head. “Broken girls.”
Patching shit up with Eman had turned out to be a good move. He was extremely useful, and he had many important contacts. He’d given Nixon the best tax specialist you could ask for. Expensive, but necessary. Now, Nixon was capable of finally funnelling his money through various businesses without worrying about putting his trust in the wrong hands. Too many dirty accountants out there. Too many rats.
This wasn’t like the island where privacy was respected. In the city, the people bit at the rich, demanding transparency. It was fucking annoying.
There was one more job to complete and then Nixon was finally done.
He’d slaved for two years doing job after job. Burying himself in the need to chase the money. He had believed the more he immersed himself in the underbelly, the less he’d feel for that fucking girl.
She was always such a fucking complication.
Nixon fumed, gritting his teeth, feeling rage he hadn’t felt in…ever.
It had been building for a while, but tonight was the tipping point. She’d come to find him – but why? Why did she feel the need to confront him? She could ha
ve let him be.
She should have let him be.
It was painful to admit that he was a weak fuck. That he’d deluded himself into coming here with the objective of starting anew.
He knew very well that the girl – that toxic fucking girl – existed here. He knew very well she’d been living on her own, had a job, had a beta as fuck boyfriend next door. A beta as fuck boy that left her apartment in the early hours of the morning often. A beta as fuck boy that had put the Christmas tree he’d hand delivered to her door together.
Was it wrong that Nixon had often followed her? That even on the job, with a duffle bag in hand, he’d been so close on the bus from her, he could smell the scent of her hair? That…he’d bought the restaurant, wiped the computers and sent that firm a shit ton of seats, knowing very well that girlfriend of the lawyer boy who worked there would tell him to invite Beta Boy and Vixen? He’d just wanted to see her. God, he’d needed to see her happy for himself.
Was it bad that he watched her from the top floor of that restaurant, feeling like his skin had been submerged in acid, as Beta Boy held her hand and whispered in her ear?
Was it bad that he felt the urge to cry?
That he’d killed for her, he’d shed blood to keep her alive, and in the end, it’d made no difference?
He was such a fucking idiot to think that he might return for her, that after setting her free she might come to him.
Wasn’t that the saying these days? If you love something, set it free, and if it was meant to be, it’d come back?
He asked himself how he got to this point, but he knew.
Four months ago, the urges he’d tried to suppress erupted out of the box he’d buried inside him. Overflowing with raw need, incapable of fighting against the voice that warned him he should keep her in the past, that she wanted to be on her own – SHE’D BEGGED FOR IT – he found he simply could not.
He decided he just wanted a little peek.
Just a little taste.
This addiction could be managed with minor doses of the drug – of Vixen. He’d be sane again. He would. As a matter of fact, it would help him; it would reaffirm his decision to leave her be.