by Tiya Rayne
However, lying here in this bed, my body still tingling from how good Lucien sexed me last night, I am truly happy. So happy I don’t even remember feeling sad anymore.
Simply thinking about him has me craving more. A thought crosses my mind and I leap out of bed. On my tiptoes, I head to the bathroom down the hall. I smile when I get to the door and hear Lucien singing Queen’s, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”
Slipping into the bathroom undetected, I quietly close the door. I spin around only to scream when I realize it isn’t Lucien in the shower, it’s Seth.
I cover my eyes. “Oh. My. God, Seth. I’m sorry.”
“Malia, what are you doing in here?” Seth says, but that’s not right.
I’ve been around Seth for six months and not once has he ever called me Malia. He calls me Lia, like I told him to do when we were kids, or Candy Girl. Only Lucien calls me Malia.
Removing my hands from my eyes, I stare into the face of the man in the shower. He looks like Seth with the tattoos on his arms and fingers and the one on his neck, but other than that, all the other tattoos are exactly like Lucien’s. Even the black raven on his shoulder I used to think had only one wing. I realize the metal looking wing that run up Seth’s neck is actually connected to Lucien’s bird.
Everything looks the same. However, like the day Seth walked into that grocery store and I could immediately tell it wasn’t Lucien, I can tell you right now this isn’t Seth.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my voice sounding foreign to my ears.
My mind starts to fill with things that begin to click into place. They’re never together. In fact, I have never talked to both of them at the same time.
Whenever Seth is with me, I can’t get in touch with Lucien and vice versa. My head starts to pound and my heart beats so rapidly, I get lightheaded. What I’m thinking isn’t real, it can’t be.
I fumble over to the sink as if I’m drunk. In a daze, I grab the black tube off the counter and read the label, Dermablend leg and body makeup. Like running water crashing over a dam, another realization hits.
The makeup covers the tattoos, like the one on his neck. The neck he never lets me touch. Glancing over the rest of his body and all the tattoos, even down to his fingers, it makes sense why he didn’t like for me to touch him during sex.
It also clears up why hand holding has been so limited. I toss the makeup on the sink down beside a contact case. My breath starts to come labored. I place my hands on the sink and drop my head between my shoulders, fighting to not pass out.
Other things start to become clearer now, like why he had a fit about me showering with him. Even the night Seth slept over and I thought how much he resembled Lucien when he wasn’t so intense. In the distance, I can hear Lucien calling me. It takes a moment for my breathing to regulate in order for me to hear him.
“Malia look at me, please.”
At some point Lucien turned off the water and got out of the shower. A towel is around his waist and he has his glasses on. He grabs my arms.
I pull away from him, and he lets me go. I don’t care that my actions seem to hurt his feelings. I grab the first thing I see off the bathroom sink, which happens to only be a toothbrush, but I wield it between us like a knife.
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
“No, I don’t,” I bellow, making the pounding in my head worse. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Lucien.”
I shake my head, still trying to fight off what my brain is screaming at me. “No,” I deny, waving the toothbrush back and forth. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” He sighs before running a tattooed hand through his wet hair. “My full name is Luciano Seth Gramble.”
I don’t want to hear anymore. If I want to keep my sanity, which I feel slowly slipping away, I have to get out of here. I storm out of the bathroom toward the bedroom, my weapon still in hand.
“Malia. Please wait.” The sound of his pounding footsteps follows behind me. As I enter the bedroom, he grabs my shoulder, but I again jerk away pointing my weapon at him.
“Let me explain.”
“Explain what, Lucien? That you’ve been lying to me for the last six months?”
“I haven’t been lying.”
“That’s what you’re sticking with?” I scoff. “So you didn’t make me believe you were two completely different people?”
“Okay, yes,” he starts but I don’t want to hear anymore. I turn away from him, going for my clothes. He grabs my arm again and this time I turn around and shove him.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I shout.
He grunts, pulling at his hair. Closing his eyes, he breathes heavily a few times. I notice his fingers start to tap against his head, something I’ve seen him do quite a few times.
“She’s going to leave us,” he says in a voice I’ve come to know as Seth’s. I gasp and take a step back.
“I know, I’m trying, Seth.”
“You’re fucking this up. Let me talk to her.”
“No, I need to do this,” Lucien pleads with himself.
“I said move,” he rages, and his fingers stop tapping.
He drops his hands from his head. When he opens his eyes, my world freezes. Standing before me is no longer my sweet Lucien, but instead Seth.
It’s frightening standing here and seeing the transformation. Even with Lucien’s glasses, I can still see the difference in the eyes. Nothing else about him changes, but he is a totally different person.
There was never any need to cover the tattoos or put on the glasses. The difference is all in the eyes and the demeanor. Like a switch being flipped.
“Candy Girl, you have to listen to us. You’re upset, I know it, but we need you to listen.”
I don’t even know what to say? This almost feels unreal, like I’m trapped in some kind of fucked up reality. Moments ago, I lied in bed happier than I’d ever been and like shattered glass, it’s all in pieces at my feet.
“You’re crazy.” The words are nearly a whisper out of my mouth.
Seth goes completely still, and for the first time, I see the danger Lucien always talked about.
“Don’t call me crazy.”
“Okay, how about psychopath, lunatic, fucking nuts,” I shout the words at him. “Does any one of those suit you better?”
He smiles, he flipping smiles at me with that insane grin. Done with this bullshit, I go to walk away, but he grabs the back of my neck, spinning me around and shoves me up against the wall. I bring up the toothbrush to use as a weapon, but he easily snatches it out of my hand, tossing it to the floor before caging me in.
“Was Lucien crazy when he made you come seven times in a day?” he growls down at me. “Was he crazy when he fucked you to sleep and woke you up with his tongue buried between your thighs? Was he crazy when you told him you loved him?” he yells the words so loud as the vein in his forehead throbs.
I don’t turn away from him, I don’t back down or get frightened. I look him dead in his eyes when I reply. “Yes, you were.”
Seth seems stunned by my words. He shakes his head and backs away from me. His shoulders slump and he turns away, walking to the bed he sits down. Without him saying a word, I know I’m dealing with Lucien again.
“You have no idea what it’s like living with this demon inside me. This innate need and urge for destruction.” He looks up at me with unshed tears in his eyes. “When I was a little boy, I was bullied beyond belief.
“The vilest things you could do to a child were done to me. I told any adult who would listen, and they all failed me. They didn’t care that the little nerdy kid who didn’t have parents couldn’t take up for himself. The very last time I was attacked, they held me down while they took turns sodomizing me with anything they could find.”
“Oh my God, Luc, I’m so sorry.” My heart breaks hearing him tell his story, I can’t imagine how he lived through it.
He continues on as
if he didn’t hear my words. “As I laid there in excruciating pain on the bathroom floor where they left me, Seth was born.”
I shake my head, trying to wrap my mind around what he’s saying. “How was he born?”
He looks up at me and a single tear falls before he turns away again. “Do you know what pent up anger, loneliness, desperation, and fear feels like when it courses through your body?”
“No,” I answer in a whisper.
“It feels like your blood is being replaced with lava, leaving you numb and cold. It’s painful the first time, which is why I blacked out. I don’t remember much, just waking up and feeling detached from the things I’d done. So detached it didn’t even feel like it was me.”
“What did you do?”
“I killed them. All eight of those boys. I slaughtered them one by one with a garden hand fork.”
I cover my mouth with my hand as a gasp leaves my lips. Something else registers at that moment.
“You told me that you spent time in the hospital, what kind of hospital?”
He looks up at me. “Psychiatric. That’s where Priest found me.”
Tears fall from my eyes as I look back at him.
“For years,” he goes on to say. “I have felt like two people. Lucien the nerd, the guy who hates blood and loves computers and fantasy books. And then Seth, the being who was created that night. The one who thrives off inflicting pain and has no empathy. We were so different. I hated him for what he was, and he despised me for being weak.
“Then one day, when I was nine, we saw a girl on a playground being bullied. I connected with her immediately. I saw her bravery, standing up to her bullies and not backing down like I did.
“And it was in that moment he saw her too. The being who I created full of anger and pain who lacked emotion, took notice of a girl for the first time. It wasn’t to hurt her, but to protect her.
“He cared. Something he had yet to do with anyone outside of me and our brothers. It was the only time we ever agreed on anything.” He stands to face me. “I knew when I was nine-years-old I would someday have to have you. I didn’t know how back then because I had no control over Seth.”
“And you do now?” I ask skeptically.
“Yes,” he says, taking a cautious step toward me, but I back away. He stops in his pursuit. “Back then I still believed we were two completely separate beings, but they tried to tell me, Priest and Angel.”
“Lucien what are you talking about?”
“I’m saying I get it now. We aren’t separate, we’re the same. The moment I embraced him and accepted him, I learned to control him. I don’t fear me blacking out or not being able to pull him back in.
“We’re the same person, when I need him, he will come and when I don’t, he doesn’t. He is I and I am him. And at this moment, I stand before you as a whole man, the ugly and the broken pieces all together, telling you I love you. Every part of me loves you. I can’t live without you and I’m supposed to, but I can’t let you go.”
I cover my ears to fight off his words. My heart is torn. Here is a man, a very imperfect man who is showing me his broken pieces and he’s not asking me to fix them or make them perfect.
He wants me to love and accept them. And though my heart is willing, my head isn’t. I drop my arms down at my sides and look him in the face.
“I can’t.” The words take a lot to come out, but they escape my lips as if they fought to get there.
I watch as the man I love—despite all that has happened this morning, I still do love him—fall to pieces in front of me. His shoulders sag and his head drops. I can’t stay to see the rest. I grab my shoes and my clothes and rush out of the bedroom.
For a moment, I think he will follow, but he doesn’t. When I get to the bottom of the steps his roar echoes, followed by the sound of breaking glass. I don’t look back.
Chapter 46
Playtime is Over
Malia
* * *
By the time I get home, I can barely see. Only God knows how I made it here. I climb out of my car and race into the house.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Not for the first time, I wish Grams wasn’t so perceptive.
“Uh, I’m going to go lie down,” I say with my back to her.
I shoot up the stairs. Making it to my room, I shut the door and crawl into my bed to cry. In no time, I feel my daughter’s small body climb up behind me and hold me tight. I cry harder.
“You found out, didn’t you?” Grams asks from my doorway a little while later.
My tears have dried a little, thanks to my baby girl loaning me her strength and reminding me why I have to be strong. I push up from the bed, Emory letting me go. She sits up with me.
“What are you talking about?”
Grams smiles before having a seat at the foot of my bed. “That your boyfriend and his brother are the same person.”
Shocked doesn’t qualify for what I am. How the hell could she tell it? Look, I’m not stupid, they looked exactly alike, but I was with both of them and it never crossed my mind.
“How did you figure it out?”
She shrugs. “Actually, Munchkin figured it out. You know she has a thing for puzzles.”
My baby has never met a puzzle she couldn’t solve. I don’t care if it’s crosswords, Sudoku, or jigsaw.
“And neither of you thought to tell me?”
“No,” Grams says as if it’s the logical answer.
“Am I the only one not crazy around here?”
“That’s why we didn’t tell you. I knew you were going to overreact and break up with him.”
“He lied to me about being two people.”
“But to him, he is,” the computerized voice of my daughter’s tablet says. I look over at her and she’s writing again. “I looked it up. He has a depersonalization disorder. That’s what Seth called it.” She continues to type on her tablet.
Yet, I’m still stuck on Seth talking to her about it and not me. Which reminds me, Lucien said that Seth has never cared for anyone but me, outside of him and his brothers. However, he bonded with Emory from the start. Even went as far as to protect her and stand up for her without me asking him to.
“I like Seth and Lucien,” her computer says. “And they like you. Can’t that be enough?”
“It’s more complicated than that, sweetheart.”
Grams snorts. “Only if you make it.”
“I don’t get you?” I huff. “All my life you’ve been finding asinine faults in my boyfriends. He’s too smiley, he has long fingernails, he has loose laces in his shoes,” I say, repeating some of her reasons she didn’t like my boyfriends.
“Now I give you a legitimate issue and you’re telling me I’m making a big deal out of nothing. I understand your desire for me to find love, but don’t you want it to be with the right man.”
“And he isn’t?” she tosses back at me. “You ask why I’m not making a big deal out of this? Because I’m telling you I see more than you ever will.
“I saw that smiley was a liar. He smiled to cover up the fact he had two girlfriends and some boy down south he kissed one summer. Long nails from college had sticky fingers and a coke habit he couldn’t shake. Loose laces, well, the damn boy wasn’t even smart enough to keep his shoes tied, let alone count money or pay a bill.”
I sit there completely floored. I had no idea about any of this. Well, I did suspect the sticky fingers thing. I believe he stole two dollars out of my purse one time and loose laces was a little slow.
Grams keeps going in. “I read those boys from the moment I first saw them. Same way I read your friend.
“He’s got shit going on in his head, but none of that would’ve ever caused him to hurt you like those other boys. In the end, the choice is always yours, but if you want my opinion, you’ve picked a lot worse before than a man with two personalities.”
I laugh a good deep laugh and Grams and Emory join me. We laugh until we have nothing else in us, but
I don’t think I’m ready to make any decisions on Luc. I still needed time. This is too much for me.
“Who wants chocolate chip cookies and ice cream?” I ask.
Emory’s hand goes up quickly.
“All right, my mini baker, let’s go make some cookies.” She leaps off the bed, grabbing her rabbit with her and barrels down the stairs.
“Come on, Grams,” I say, climbing to my feet. “You can help us like you always do by yelling at all the things we’re doing wrong.”
Grams gets up a lot slower than usual. Today is another reminder of why this woman means so much to me. Only she can get me to see reason as fast as she can. I’m thankful for all the years I’ve had her in my life and I’m going to cherish the years I have left.
We make it down the stairs as the doorbell rings.
“You expecting company?” I ask as I make my way to the front door. Emory rushes into the living room with a hopeful look on her face and her rabbit still in her hands.
“No, probably your Doublemint twins coming to apologize.”
“Not funny, Grams.”
My stomach does a somersault as I think of Lucien showing up and it isn’t because I don’t want to see him. When I peek out the door, however, it isn’t Lucien standing on my step, but FedEx.
“What have you ordered now, Old Lady?” I tease Grams.
As soon as I open the door, I hear my Grams scream no, but it’s too late. Sharp pain hits me in the stomach and I’m knocked onto the ground. My vision blurs from being winded.
“Emory, protect your mom,” Grams barks as she turns over the side table and pulls out a huge black gun.
She fires twice, taking out two of the men who enter the door. She takes cover, ducking into the bathroom as shots pour into the house. Two more guys walk through the door and they go straight for my daughter.
Grams is still picking men off from behind the bathroom wall as they enter, while dodging bullets flying at her. I try to get up to help my daughter.