by Kingsley Ash
She wears that same pretty white dress that shows off her slender neck. The way she moves is angelic. I’ve watched her sitting on the love seat in the garden, reading her novels. I’ve memorized the way she tilts her head down and moves her fingers over her books.
Memorized the way she looks at people who aren’t me.
She comes closer, down the dark path, while I stand below the building, brooding like a troll under a bridge, waiting for my little goat to come tripping across.
Sometimes I worry she’s turned me into a lap dog. But no, I’m half guard dog, half pit-fight dog. She’s done that to me.
When she goes inside the estate, I wait until she’s done her checks. Then I walk in the air she passed through a few minutes before. There’s still a faint ghost of her smell lingering there and it makes all the blood leap in my veins.
She’s waiting for me outside my room. A halo of light from the window makes her glow.
Devil and the Angel.
‘Look behind you, Amy.’
She doesn’t look behind. Doesn’t turn her head. Doesn’t change the expression on her face. But then she places her hand on my forearm, just for a moment. Strange. She never touches me first.
‘You come here because you want to or because I told you to?’
‘You told me to come.’
I like the game she’s playing. But not as much as I want to play another one. She drops her hand and steps around me with her eyes down. That’s infuriating and alluring. I chuck her under the chin, pull her gaze up to meet mine.
She’s pale, cool to the touch, with her sunshine hair pulled back neatly. All cold except for those wide eyes full of my reflection.
Her eyes unshielded, I can see she carries that piece of my soul where anyone could see it.
‘Thought you weren't afraid of me, Amy.’
‘Hope is scary. Like having something you could take away from me. I’ve been hurt before, Shepherd. You broke my heart.’
There’re no words I can say to make it better, but I know I should fucking say something.
I never hated you. I’m fucking sorry.
Maybe even somewhere in there, something about how we are totally fucked in whatever this relationship is whether love or something damn like it, but right now I’ve got shit. I can only impress one way to Amy how I feel and that I can never hate her.
You’re etched into my heart with a razor blade, Amy. Every beat hurts likes a thousand cuts.
‘Don’t you get it, Amy?’ I growl.
She's gone to that dreamy place I hate, where she isn’t mine, where I can’t get to her. A tiny glass figure trapped inside a snow globe. My excitement, my pleasure at the smell of her, spikes hard to anger.
‘Get what?’
I don't know why, but that's another of her powers. The way she talks to me like she doesn't know me. Some dark stranger instead of her dark stranger.
I take control over my frustrations — that this girl is still fucking clueless about the way I feel — and take her inside. Take her to my bedroom.
In a dark whisper I say, ‘You’re all wrapped up like a present for me.’
With her free hand, she starts unbuttoning her dress. It makes me hesitate, curiosity overtaking greed for just a moment. She fumbles her way down the buttons with trembling hands, pulls the dress off and tosses it away. As quickly, she pulls off the camisole she wears under it. Her bare tits end that moment of hesitation.
When she bends over to take off her shoes, I grab her by the hips, hoist her up, and in three steps toss her down on the bed.
I never sleep here, sleep on the sofa. The bed is for her, about her, because of her.
I lean down, smash my lips against Amy’s. I have her tits in my hands. The urge to worship and the urge to devour, neck and neck.
When she reaches for the button of my trousers, I knock her hands away. Like hell we’re gonna do things her way.
I flip her on her front. To my surprise, she grabs the bars of the headboard. Her hair has come loose. I take a handful of it to hold her while I run a hand up between her thighs. She’s so wet with lust, my fingers slip easily into her.
She’s so lustful, her little moans of pleasure are so sweet, I can’t wait for all the other things I want to do.
I pull down my trousers, just below my hips, and with my boots still on, I enter her tight, hot pussy. She groans out my name, and I sink my teeth into the back of her neck. Every time I drive inside her, she rewards me with a helpless gasp of pleasure.
When I finally reach my climax, it’s so intense, I feel like I’m falling and the only thing to catch me is her. I rest my full weight on her, enjoying the stifled intake of her diaphragm against my belly, each breath a little agony of effort. She moans as I shift my weight off her.
I lift myself on one elbow, look down at her curiously. Two sharp little wounds in her lower lip — she bitten it herself. I lick the blood away, consider her.
Her eyes look wounded but not full of ghosts.
Amy feels so good under me, I reach for the back of my collar and pull my shirt off. Pressing her against my skin, I lap up the salt behind her ears and along her neck. It’s delicious, all the cool length of her pressed up against my bare skin.
It feels so easy being here with her.
I tell her, ‘Your father keeps ringing me, leaving voice messages. He wants me to come and see him at Town Hall.’
When I start working my way down over her collarbones to the valley between her breasts, she puts her hands on my shoulders, pushes at me.
‘Wh-What?’
‘He’s been calling me for the last week. Somebody must’ve told him I’m back. Most likely wants me to leave Greystone — stay away from you. Should pay him a visit soon. Let him know I don’t like being told what to do.’
Her pupils dilate so much that her green eyes look black. I can feel her visibly shake underneath my body. Then I feel the quiet beginnings of my own anger building inside of me.
‘Promise me,’ she says, ‘you won’t ever visit my father. Just ignore his calls. Please. Promise me.’
I give no reaction although that fire building within me is pretty intense at this point.
I don’t doubt Amy. Amy doesn’t doubt me. Amy doesn’t fucking doubt me . . . does she?
Those bossy little hands on my shoulders, I don’t know if I like them or not. Can’t decide if I ought to encourage that or put a stop to it.
‘What does it matter if I do?’ I say.
‘You won’t understand.’
‘I might,’ I say darkly and rise up on my knees. I release her hands from my shoulders. ‘If you just told me the damn truth, I might.’
‘Promise me, please, Shepherd. If something happens to me, or if I go . . . if . . . just please don’t ever go see my father.’
Does she think I’d pack up and leave her behind? That I’d let something bad happen to her? Dead wrong on that one.
I scrape my fingers down the sides of my head. ‘I’m not a quitter, Amy. I’m not about to start losing my guts now. No way in Hell. Not when the prize is you.’
The fire within me grows to a fevered pitch and before either one of us realises it, I’ve grabbed her arm. She tries to break my hold. It’s useless.
‘I’m not promising anything. Now tell me what’s going on —’
Shit.
I can see it now. Her shakes. The weakness in her body. She’s got a fever, her body feels too hot.
‘Amy, why didn’t you tell me you were ill?’
‘I . . . I’ve been unwell for a while now . . . ’
‘Shit. Forgot how breakable you are,’ I say, holding her hand. Almost sheepish. Almost apologetic. ‘Lie back on the bed,’ I say. ‘I’ll get you some medicine.’
I go into the bathroom and retrieve some paracetamol from the cabinet. When I come back from the kitchen, Amy’s sitting on the edge of the bed trying to stand.
‘The hell you doing?’ I say.
‘I need to g
o to the bathroom, I feel sick.’
She sounds so goddamn innocent, looks so helpless, that I offer her my arm.
‘I'll help you.’
She stands up and holds onto me.
I look down at her and fuck, she can barely stand on her legs. Enough, that it kind of troubles me. In the heat of the moment, I wasn’t really thinking about her health. Whenever I see her, my body consumes me. I did that to her. Sick thing is, I already want to do it again.
We go slow, her limping, gasping for air against her ribs. She keeps her hand on my arm, until she lowers herself to the toilet. Then she leans forward, arms on her knees, head on her arm.
I wonder what we're doing, with her just sitting there. She makes this muffled whimpering sound and her shoulders shake.
You’re like a snow globe, Amy. Broken bits inside a perfect world. The little pieces inside too bright for me. So I keep you in the dark, Amy, always in the dark.
‘Sure you're okay?’ I say.
‘It just burns in my head,’ she mumbles into her arms.
Shit, I'm there, I'm a party to it, so I put a hand on her back and she's so thin I can count her vertebrae. I make this noise I've always known, I guess. This sound to comfort animals. Kinda surprises me when she presses her head against my thigh, clasps a hand behind my knee and leans into my hand. Now what's that supposed to mean?
‘Can I do anything for you, baby?’
‘Promise me,’ she says.
‘We're still on that, are we?’
‘Promise me. I'll try to get better. You’ve kept your promise. Daisy and Max are still here, still getting the support they need. So thank you. I'm really grateful for that. But I need your promise.’
I don’t get what the big deal is. So what if I visit her father? Is she afraid he’s gonna tell me something she doesn’t want me to hear?
She’s still holding onto me. Sounds like she's gonna cry, trying to soften me up, trying to persuade me to do the one thing I can’t do.
The thought that even a tiny piece of Amy doubts me, makes me want to fight the whole goddamn world just to prove myself. And sure, the whole lying-to-her car-crash, damn well doesn’t help our already dysfunctional as fuck relationship — that’s a given. But that isn’t it at all. It's just . . . it’s not what I want. If Amy doubts me, doubts my intentions, doubts that I can keep her safe . . . then she sure as hell doesn’t love me.
It’s not what I fucking want.
If her father is the one thing getting between me and my girl, then I don’t have a choice. I need to pay him a visit. He needs to know.
I’m never leaving his daughter again.
No matter the price.
35
YOU
I don’t know who to hate, him or myself, for clinging to his leg, thanking him and asking him for favours. I don’t know who to hate. But it gets a little clearer when he walks away without answering.
When Shepherd comes back for me, he’s wearing his black trousers and boots again. After he helps me limp back to the bed, I hear him running water, washing his hands.
When he returns, drying his hands, I notice he’s got me some clean clothes. Grey tracksuit bottoms and a white T-shirt. He doesn’t want to leave me here alone, and I’m not about to go downstairs.
I’m so frail I can barely stand. He helps me to the bathroom and leaves me to get myself undressed. I dip into the bath he’s run for me. He waits just outside the door, half open. He talks to me while I sit there, shaking, trying not to look at myself. Trying not to look at the scars on my inner thighs and what they mean.
I use Shepherd’s shower gel, my hand shaking so much it spills across my wrist and into the bathwater. I get enough of it to soap my hands and get rid of the smell of sick from my hair and body.
The smell of the shower gel reminds me of the time he rescued me in school.
Thirteen years old. In class. With my hair over my face, shielding my shame and tears. A little pool of blood. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up to find him and his rare smile, holding a pair of trousers from lost property.
I splash cold water on my face and rinse my mouth out with soapy bathwater.
‘I was thinking about that first time I saw you here,’ he says.
His voice is so close and it feels like he’s sitting right next to me. I can see his long legs stretched out in front of him.
‘That prick estate agent just barged in through the door. You must’ve been in the middle of checking. Amy, you gave me such a filthy look. I figured it was because you hated my guts. But now I’m thinking it was a mix of the two.’
‘I don’t remember — did I?’ My teeth are chattering. My throat is sore. Had I been screaming? It feels like I had.
‘You did.’
‘The door was open — they’d left it on the latch.’
He laughs. ‘How’d you ever manage with them leaving the door open? Jesus.’ The tone of his voice changes, then. ‘You were looking at me like I was Freddy Kreuger, somebody who’d crossed the threshold when you were in the middle of checking the door. You were the sexiest ball of fury I’d ever seen.’
I pull at the plug with numb fingers, listening to the sound of the water pouring away. I’d listened to that noise from my bed, in the room below, the swish and gurgle, wondering what he was doing having a bath at three in the morning.
‘I’m not sexy,’ I say, and I look at the scars on the tops of my legs.
‘That’s my call. Are you done?’
I manage to get up and put a towel around me. It’s still a little bit damp from when he showered this morning. I soak into the feel, like it’s cotton wool soaked in goodness. I feel drained of energy, so I sit on the bath, and wait for my skin to dry on its own. I don’t want to touch myself.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ he says. ‘Pass your clothes through, I’ll put them in the laundry room.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, a gravelly whisper.
I dress in the T-shirt and the trousers he left for me. They feel peculiar, so baggy that I have to hold the waistband up as they keep slipping off. I feel half-naked. On the back of the bathroom door is a towelling robe, wintry blue. When I put it on, it goes round me almost twice and reaches to the floor. That will do.
I meet him in his little kitchen. There’s a faint smell of some sort of disinfectant. He puts a cup of tea on the table and I sit there. I rub my bare feet against the rough itch of the wooden floor.
‘I get this feeling that you blame yourself for your sister’s damaged brain,’ he says.
‘Please, I don’t think I can. Not now.’
‘Can you at least tell me who you’re scared of? All this checking if the doors are secure, it’s gotta be because you’re afraid of someone, Amy. Who?’
He says the word ‘who’ as if he’s ready to pummel the perpetrator into the ground with his fist.
He looks at me expectantly. ‘Is it Archer? You mentioned he was gonna get married to Elizabeth but it was a secret. Did he hurt her? Did he do something to you?’
I bite my lip. Swallow. Then think for a little. ‘When I was sixteen, I wanted to borrow Elizabeth’s dress for my friend’s birthday party, so I went into her wardrobe. Rummaging around, I found my sister’s secret wedding dress. It was tucked deep inside, hidden in a small white chest. The label read Oxfam and was priced £14.99. I never understood why she lied to me about her dress. She told me Archer bought her a designer French dress that cost thousands.
‘It always baffled me why she was planning to move into a flat above a chip shop when Archer lives in a luxury apartment by the docks . . . He never bothered to visit her in the hospital when she was in a coma . . . That isn’t love.’
I drink some of my tea. It hurts the back of my throat, but it feels magical. The scent of Shepherd blushing from the robe, wraps around my body, makes me feel warm and protected.
‘Why did Elizabeth keep her relationship a secret for so long?’
‘Our parents were very protec
tive. It’s one reason why it took Elizabeth until she was twenty-nine to decide to leave home. Mum and Dad liked us to be where they could see us. They liked to keep the family close.’
‘Was she scared of your father?’
‘My father was always closer to Elizabeth.’ I look him in the eyes. ‘It hurt me he loved her more.’ I take a deep breath, and then I fall silent.
‘You’re going to be okay,’ he says. ‘You’re safe here. You’ve got me, Amy. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. They’ll have to go through me first. Got it?’
I want to believe him, I want to trust him. No, I do trust him. After all, I’m sitting in his room wearing his clothes. ‘You can’t promise that.’
He considers this, and says, ‘Yeah, I can promise you that. You’re not on your own with this anymore. You got this, Amy. Dig deep, and find the grit in you.’
I’m smiling inside, despite myself.
‘Are you hungry, baby?’
I’m not, but the casserole he brings up from the kitchen tastes delicious.
Shepherd looks bone-tired, his eyes shadowed. I catch his eye for a moment and I feel my heart quicken. If he tries to kiss me now, I’d sell my soul so easily for it.
‘You’re staying here tonight,’ he says, after we finish our meal.
‘Maybe it would be better for me to go back home,’ I say.
‘This is your home.’
Considering that takes me too close to tears, so I close the door on the future. No sense looking in there.
‘Just go back to my bed.’
I slowly lie back on his bed, under the warm soft pile of duvet that smells of lavender and, faintly of his heady aftershave.
He comes into the room and hands me two white pills. ‘What’re you giving me?’ I say.
‘Just something to help with the fever. Your temperature is high.’
I close my eyes for a minute, feel him place a cold pack on my forehead. In the middle of it, a familiar warm hand comes to rest on mine.
‘How are you now?’ Shepherd says. I move my hand and he takes it in his, holds it, running his thumb over my knuckles.
Our eyes lock and for a second, maybe I see a hint of remorse that Shepherd hints at in rare moments. That maybe he didn't want things to end the way they did when we were teenagers. Maybe he is sorry — somewhere in that messed-up psyche of his. Maybe he didn't want to hurt me. Maybe there was a good reason.