by Bromberg, K
“That what you want?”
She thought for a moment, gaze cast to where the bag with the pregnancy test rested against my chest. “I have feelings I can’t explain to myself. But we… you and I… we’re too complicated.”
“We are.”
“I’m glad you agree.”
“We only have until Monday morning,” I said. “Want to make the most of it?”
She turned to face the canyon, letting the bag dangle from her fingers. “Visit me across the hall later.”
Chapter 14
OLIVIA
The ocean was half a mile away and a thousand feet below, but that night, with the back patio empty and all the goodnights said, the arrhythmic crashing of the waves ground down the edges of my anxiety.
I was smooth and empty. I thought nothing. Not about the morning. Not about the piss stick on the vanity, nor the hum of it, nor the bleach-bright light it cast. Calling it an elephant in the room was an insult to its size, so I called it nothing. A plastic piece of nothing.
One line is failure.
Two is success.
In a long T-shirt and underwear, I crawled under the fluffy duvet and closed my eyes to wait for Byron’s visit.
If we hadn’t tied our relationship in knots by going from opponents to casual fuckbuddies directly to maybe-baby, what would we be? How would I feel about it?
Bitter, maybe? Annoyed, probably. Resentful of my weakness with him. My submission to his commands would have eaten at me on one hand, and on the other, driven me into his bed as many times as I could bear. I hadn’t bedded that many men but enough to know no one could twist me into a pretzel and make me beg for more the way Byron did.
He’d cut off the sex before I was done with him. He’d get bored or end it before his affection turned into a promise he couldn’t keep. I was sure of it. He would have done it to win the game and to ensure his heart remained locked tight against me.
I’d know he was right. I would have been better off spending years trying to stop that ridiculous house, living my life, picking at him like a scab that forgot the source of its wound.
One line is disappointment.
Two lines is hope.
I didn’t understand him, and I never would, but he was a complex taste I needed on my tongue again before it faded away. There was more to him than one mouthful could savor. His guilt was a bitter bite of humanity, and his poetry was a sweet aftertaste of expressive ambition.
He hadn’t been acting, but I didn’t fool myself into thinking it mattered. We were incompatible. I had to stop turning it over in my head.
Tomorrow.
One line, you’re free.
Two lines, he’s yours.
Tomorrow, no matter what, I’d shut down this nonsense.
But for that night, I’d succumb to every fantasy of us. The one where he was emotionally available and I was capable of giving up a piece of my sovereignty to a partner.
Half-asleep, a rock worn smooth by the currents and the sand, I was unmoved by the cycles of life and death, inert and passive, until I was picked up and held. Gripped in a strong hand that sparked desire where there had been death, cognizance where there had been only drift, I was locked in my final form.
“Shh,” he whispered in my ear. Behind me, with his chest pressed to my back and an arm under my neck, Byron held me tight. He smelled of the ocean. Salt and sand. Coconut oils and sweat. “Open your legs.”
Would I ever be able to resist that command when it came from his mouth?
Not that night. After eons of being thrown around, I was worn smooth and frictionless, parting my knees at his words. His fingers gently came from behind me, stroking inside my thighs.
“Let me tell you a story.” He found where I was already wet for him.
I groaned but wasn’t awake enough for words. I could only listen as he pulled off my underwear.
“There once was a man whose life was a lie.” He worked on my clit from behind. “He had everything he ever wanted because he never wanted enough. When it was taken away, he promised himself he’d only live the truth. Which was he wanted to fight until he had won enough of what he wanted.”
He circled my clit, gently coaxing it to attention. I spread my legs wider and bent my arm behind me, around his neck.
“Then one day, a woman came to fight him, and he wanted her.”
His fingers and my cunt shared the same warmth, the same rhythm. His hand was an extension of me as it flicked, circled, stretched me out as three digits entered me. My mouth opened to let out an involuntary cry, and he covered it with his free hand.
“She was enough,” he said. “But he was too small to hold her.”
I shook my head against his palm because he had it all wrong. He wasn’t small. He was locked up. There was a difference.
“You want to come, Beauty?”
With his hand slipping between my lips, I nodded.
“Do you want me to fuck you?”
I nodded again. His fingers teased me on the edge, and he pressed his mouth against the back of my neck. I knew what to expect, anticipating his bite. The painful erotic suck between his teeth, the spreading, agonizing pleasure as he marked me.
“I have complete control of you. I can do this all night. You’ll cry for me to hurt you if I’ll only let you come. Right?” He moved his spit-covered hand away.
“Please,” I said. “Fuck me all night but let me come now.”
“You’re fucking starving for it. I’ve never wanted to possess a woman’s hunger the way I want yours.” He got out from behind me and kneeled between my legs. He’d gotten into bed naked, and his cock was thick and hard in his fist. “Pull your shirt up over your tits.”
The command. The confidence of it. Tits became just another word. Not lascivious. Just a part of my body he had every right to see. I pulled the shirt over my hard nipples.
“Right here.” He gently took a pinch of my breast. “This is mine.”
Drifting down, he took the nipple between his fingers and pulled. I didn’t think I could get closer to orgasm without going over, but the pain he gave nudged me one step away, then two steps toward the edge.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Take me. Please.”
“How?” he teased, flicking my nipple. “Here?”
“Yes.”
He drifted down my stomach and shoved my legs apart, pulling the skin between my thighs apart to open my folds. He drew his fingers over my clit and inside me. “Here?”
“Yes. Please.”
Removing his wet fingers, he slid them behind, wetting the tightly closed virgin muscle. “What about here?”
He pressed just his fingertip against the entrance, and a new pleasure center opened up. I bit back a scream of overwhelming pleasure and frustration. I never had anal sex before, but I’d give it to him.
“Take it all,” I groaned, clutching for his chest.
He took my hips and flipped me onto my hands and knees, then angled the head of his cock against my pussy.
“I just needed to know you would.” His thumb found the same bit of breast flesh he’d claimed and pressed the bruise. “Whose is this?”
“Yours.”
He entered me deeply in three strokes, burying himself. I’d expected his delicious roughness, but he kept his hips still and kissed the soft muscle of my shoulder before sucking the skin through his teeth so hard I groaned with a pained pleasure. He pushed deep inside me, bending his body over mine to bite the base of my neck again. When he reached around me and touched my clit, the pain turned deliciously excruciating.
When he pulled away, I squeaked and twisted to see him. For a moment, a line of spit connected his lower lip to where he’d marked me. He looked at the mark and groaned, gathering me in his arms. He kissed my face and neck, gently caressed my swollen nub, soothed me and surrounded me. We rolled and shifted, always connected, cocooned in a darkness far away from the consequences of our actions.
I could be with this man. The o
ne whose body perfectly fit around mine. The one with the tender words and soft lips. The purveyor of miracles and impossibilities made true.
The man who made love to me that night lifted me up and made me capable of miracles. I could walk on water. Heal the sick. I could break physics and common sense with shattering, incredible acts that defied logic.
If I could love him, I could do anything.
One line or two, it didn’t matter. Together we were more miraculous than a white, plastic stick.
I could love him.
If I could do that, anything was possible.
* * *
“Beautywalker?” he asked so softly he must have known I was half-asleep.
I would have roused myself for a fourth time. “Hm?”
“Tomorrow, if the test is positive…”
I rolled over to see him. The moon was full on his face, and his eyes were black in the shadows.
“I’ll have your baby.”
“And?”
“And?” I repeated.
“I can’t give you anything,” he said. “Nothing besides money. But I have a lot to give a child.”
“I know.” I caressed his cheek. “And you’d better. Daddy. I’m holding you to that.”
His breath must have been holding him up, because when he exhaled in relief, he collapsed into an embrace of gratitude.
Chapter 15
BYRON
I reached for Olivia when she went to the bathroom, but she closed the door quietly behind her. I usually slept three hours a night, four if I’d had a woman with me the night before. But once Olivia had drifted off beside me, I listened to her breath for a while, watching her lashes flutter and her lips relax. The moonlight through the window shifted as the minutes passed, casting her face in a changing blue glow.
And all that’s best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to the tender light, Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
I had intended to go back to my room, but I fell asleep and stayed that way for six full hours.
We had a strategy to build the mansion in the Bel-Air hills. We were going to slash and burn every obstacle, spend every dollar, and take advantage of every loophole. The house was a statement piece meant to attract the richest of the rich from all over the world. I wouldn’t be stopped for any reason.
But maybe it didn’t have to be that way. Maybe there were ways to get it done without keeping me at odds with the mother of my child. The case could reach beyond her pregnancy, and she shouldn’t be stressed. I had no heart to win a battle with her under these conditions. I wanted to see this over more than I wanted to see myself win.
All this had occurred to me as I’d tried to keep my eyes open to watch how her face would change in the moonlight, and in the first moments of wakefulness, the decision had been made.
What followed was a realization that it was morning.
She was in the bathroom.
I shot out of bed, still naked, and knocked gently on the door. “Olivia?”
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Did you—”
“I did.”
Silence followed. She’d been in there a full two minutes already.
How long did the results take?
“Beauty,” I said, laying my hand on the door.
Nothing. With a gentle pressure, I pushed down the door’s lever to see if it was locked. It wasn’t, but I let it spring back up.
“Olivia.”
Still nothing.
She heard me and was deliberately ignoring me. I should have been irritated. I should have made it clear that the silent treatment wasn’t going to fly, but I couldn’t work up annoyance when all I felt was a need to give her the time she wanted.
“I’m here,” I said. “Right on the other side of the door. When you need me, just—”
“Come in.”
The bathroom was as big as any we had in the house, but I hadn’t felt its size until I saw her naked body crouched on the other side, small in the distance, knees up, back to the white tile wall, arms wrapped around her legs with her hands meeting in the middle. Between them, the white plastic stick I’d given her as a gift.
Closing the door behind me to seal us against the outside world, I kneeled beside her.
Her head was bent down, and I saw the splotchy stain of broken blood vessels and raw skin. That was me. I’d marked her in pain, and the feeling that it was for nothing stabbed me in the chest.
“Well?” I asked.
When she looked at me, her eyes were glazed with tears waiting to drop. “Have you ever wondered why there was something wrong with you?” She continued before I could say that yes, sometimes I did. “Like were you born broken? Or is there something you’re choosing? Your career. Your friends. Where you live. Or is it just who you are?”
She blinked, and the tears fell in a rush. She looked at her hands. Her voice was wet and cracked. I had a compulsion to reach for her, but I knew more than I knew my own name that she didn’t want me to.
“And you think, and you pray to God, telling him, promising, I’ll change. I’ll fix it. I’ll carve that part of myself out, and I swear I’ll burn it to the ground. I’ll do whatever I have to if you just tell me what? What is it about me that’s wrong? Where am I not worthy? But there’s no answer. There’s no end. It’s just this…” She hitched as she tossed the plastic stick away. “This constant wave of disappointment. Time after time. Like I can’t do anything right and I don’t know why. It’s like getting punched in the face, and I just keep going back because I don’t know how to stop.” She looked at me. “I don’t know if I can take it anymore, Byron. I don’t think I can.”
She broke down into body-racking sobs and keened toward me. I took her in my arms and let our legs twine together on the cold tile floor. I kissed her head and stroked her hair. I didn’t tell her it wasn’t her fault. That she wasn’t a failure. That she could take it because she was strong, so strong, so very strong and so very worthy. My encouragement would have been puny against her despair. All I had for her was more comfort and patience than I thought I was capable of. I’d sit on the bathroom floor with her all day if I had to.
I reached for the toilet paper, unspooling a length, gathering it into a handful, and giving her the end without ripping it away. She took the bloom of paper and wiped her face. Blew her nose. Still connected, the tube rattled on the spool when I pulled, giving her an endless supply that gathered at her feet like ocean foam.
“Oh my God. Byron.” She double-hitched. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure you have enough.”
“But… trees.”
“I’ll plant some for you. By that house we’re fighting over.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder. “How many?”
“How many do you want?”
“More than the legal minimum.”
“I’ll double it. Triple it. Big, shady trees.”
“Okay.” She sniffed and took a clean handful from the floor to blow into. “I guess that’s fair.”
“Something good can come from this.”
She huffed a laugh. “You’re not the ‘glass half full’ type.”
“I’m not the ‘glass half empty’ type either.”
“No. I guess not. You’re more the type to drink the water while the rest of us argue.”
“Only if I’m thirsty.” I kissed her head.
The pregnancy test lay against the base of the sink, displaying its single pink line. She shouldn’t have to see that again. I let her go so I could toss it in the trash. I missed, and it clattered to the floor, lines down and out of sight.
“Fuck that thing,” I said when I returned to her side.
She sat straight against the wall, stringing toilet paper as if she were turning the pages of an old book. “Yeah. I’m done.”
Was she done crying or done trying?
“We can try again,” I suggested without thinking about the consequences. Only ge
tting back to the hope I’d had a few hours ago. “I’m more fun than a turkey baster.”
“I want…” She took my wrist, turning it to see my watch before letting it drop. “When can I go home?”
We were supposed to have another night together and leave Monday morning. But she didn’t ask me when we planned on leaving. She asked when she could.
“Yusup can be here in a few hours.”
“How many hours?”
Too many. Her mind was elsewhere, and no matter what I said, it would be too many.
“I can have our helicopter here in an hour.”
“That would be great.” She got her legs under her and stood naked over me. “I should shower.”
Reaching up, I took her hand. “Shower after I take you to bed again.”
“That’s a great offer.” She squeezed my hand and let it go. “But no. I can’t.”
I stood and moved to kiss her. She turned, and my lips landed on her cheek.
“I’ll see you downstairs,” she said.
Like an obedient puppy who only wanted to please his master, I nodded in acquiescence and left, closing the door.
I’d wanted to prove I was worthy, but I had no clue what I’d actually done.
Chapter 16
OLIVIA
Hope was a disease. Hope was a veil that distorted how you saw reality. Hope was a wrecking ball smashing your control to bits. Hope was a siren singing from a faraway rock, calling you from safe shores to brave swelling seas and unbeatable foes only to disappear once you reached it.
Hope was cruel. Hope laughed as you stood on the lonely rock, wounded from battle, starving, staring at nothing… only to start singing her invitation again from the same shore you left.
I’d gone to Santa Barbara because of a broken condom. A mistake. An accident. I was sitting next to a man I’d forgotten to detest on a helicopter home because I’d let myself hope that bargains could be made from mishaps and that my deals with chance had the power of tort law behind them. As if the universe obeyed habeus corpus and not lorem ipsum.