Something Dad mentioned reminded me of it. He’d said my mother loved reading the great poets. I knew Brynne loved Keats. I’d found the book on the sofa where she’d obviously been reading and asked her about it. Brynne had confessed her love for him and wanted to know why I even had the book in my house. I told her that my dad was always giving me books that people left behind in his cab. He hated to toss them out so he would bring them home whenever he acquired anything decent. When I’d bought my flat, he’d hauled over a few boxes of books to fill the shelves and it must have been in the lot. I truthfully told her I’d never read any Keats.
I was reading now.
Keats had a way with words I was discovering. For a man who died at only twenty five, he sure packed some emotion into his letters to his girlfriend when they were apart. And I could feel his pain like it was my own. It was my own.
I decided to write her a letter using a pen and paper. I found some nice cotton stationary in my office and took the book with me. Simba flickered his fins from the aquarium when I walked up, always expecting a treat. I am a sucker for begging animals so I dropped in a frozen krill and watched him devour it.
“She loves you, Simba. Maybe if I tell her that you are pining and off your feed she’ll come back.” So I was talking to fish now. How in the hell had I got to this lowly point? I ignored the urge for a cigarette, washed my hands and sat down to write.
Brynne,
“I do not know how elastic my spirit might be, what pleasure I might have in living here if the remembrance of you did not weigh so upon me. Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammeled me, so destroyed my freedom.
…All my thoughts, my unhappiest days and nights have, I find not at all cured me of my love of Beauty, but made it so intense that I am miserable that you are not with me…I cannot conceive of any beginning of such love I have for you but Beauty.” July 1819
I know you will recognize the words of Keats. I started reading the book you like. I can say I have an understanding now of what the man was trying to express to Miss Brawne about how she had captured his heart.
Like you’ve captured my heart, Brynne.
I miss you. Thoughts of you never leave me, and if I can say it once more and have you believe me, then I guess there is some comfort in that. I can only try to make you know what I feel.
I am immensely sorry for keeping my knowledge of your past and how I came to notice you a secret, but you need to know something because it’s the brutal truth. I had no intentions of taking the job. I planned to give your father the name of another agency to secure you. I couldn’t do that though, as soon as I met you. I wanted to tell you that night on the street that your father was trying to arrange protection but when I saw how you looked at me, Brynne, I felt something—a connection with you. Things moved inside me and clicked into place. The missing piece of my puzzle? I don’t know what it was, I just know it happened to me the night we met. I tried to keep a distance and let you slip away back into your life, but I couldn’t do it. I was drawn to you from the first moment I saw your portrait. I had to know you. And then to be with you. To have you look at me and really see me. I know now that I fell in love. I fell in love with a beautiful American girl. You, Brynne.
There were many times I wanted to say how I came to find you that night at the gallery. I stopped myself every time because I was afraid of hurting you. I could see how haunted you were when you woke up with the nightmare. I could only guess as to why, but I would do anything to keep you from being hurt. I knew somehow that telling you your dad hired security to protect you from powerful political enemies would scare the hell out of you. It scares the hell out of me to think of anyone targeting you for harm, emotional or otherwise. I know you said I was fired, but if anything happens or somebody frightens you, I want you to call me and I will come to you in a moment. I am deadly serious about this. Call me.
You are someone so very special, Brynne. I feel things with you—emotions and ideas and dreams; a deep understanding that brings me to a place I never thought I’d find with another person. But I have demons too. I am terrified of facing them without you. I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time but I do know how I feel about you. And even if you hate me for what I did, I’ll still love you. If you won’t see me, I’ll still love you. I’ll still love you because you are mine. Mine, Brynne. In my heart you are, and nobody can take that away from me. Not even you.
E
A week passed before I sent Brynne my letter. Longest fucking week of my life.
Not exactly true, but I’d smoked enough Djarum’s to either bankrupt me or give me cancer. I told the florist purple flowers and to include the letter. It was Sunday afternoon when I ordered them and the florist told me they would be delivered on Monday. I had them sent to her at work instead of her flat. I knew she’d been busy with school and wanted to wait until her final exams were over and finished.
Brynne and I are not over and finished. This is the mantra I continued to tell myself during those days because it was the only option I could accept.
3
They make you believe things that are not true. They tell you so many times, you accept what they are telling you is the truth rather than lies. You suffer for it like it’s the truth. The most effective torture is not physical—it is mental of course. The mind can imagine terrors far more horrific than you could ever physically bear, just like the mind will tune out those physical hurts when the pain surpasses what your body can endure.
The nerves in my back screamed like acid had been poured onto the destroyed flesh. The pain took my breath away it was so acute. I wondered how long till I passed out, and if I did, would I wake again in this life. I doubted I could walk more than a few yards. I could barely see from the blood in my eyes and blows to the head. I would die here in this hellhole and probably soon. I hoped it was soon. My dad and Hannah couldn’t see me like this though. I hoped they never found out how I met my end. I prayed there wouldn’t be a video of my execution. Please, Christ, no video of that—
Luck of the draw. I’d had no luck when they ambushed our team. No luck when my weapon jammed. No luck when I didn’t die trying to evade capture. These fuckers learned their techniques from the Russians. They loved to get western prisoners. And British SF? I was a fucking crown jewel. And totally expendable to my country. Luck of the draw. A sacrifice for the greater good, for democracy, for free will.
Fuck free will. I had none.
My tormentor this day loved to talk. He never stopped talking about her. I really wish he would shut his filthy hole. They don’t know where she is…they don’t know how to find her…they don’t even know her name. I kept telling myself these truths because it is all I have at my disposal to work with.
The backhand to my face roused me. And then another woke me fully.
“We will make you watch when we take her. She will scream like the whore she is. An American whore who does naked photographs.” He spit in my face and jerked my head back by the hair. “So disgusting your women…they deserve everything that happens to them. To be used like a dirty whore.” He laughed at me.
I stared at him and memorized his face. I would never forget it and if the opportunity arose I would cut out his tongue first, before I killed him. Even if the killing was simply imagined in my mind. He did not like my reaction. Inside I was frozen with fear. How could I stop her from being taken? I wanted to beg but I didn’t. I just stared and felt my heart thump inside my chest, verifying my status as alive. For now.
“Every guard will have a turn between her thighs. Then when their lust slackens she may watch when we take your head. You know this will be the way you meet your end, don’t you?” He held my neck back and dragged his finger across my throat. “You will be begging for mercy like the pig you are…about to be slaughtered. You won’t be proud then.” He laughed in my face, his yellow teeth flashing under his beard. “And then we will kill your American whore in the same way—”
/>
I bolted up in my bed gasping, my hand on my cock and dripping in sweat. I leaned against the headboard and took stock of where I was…and thankfully where I wasn’t. You aren’t there anymore. It was just a dream. That was a long time ago.
My nightmare was the sort that takes all the bad shit that ever happened to you and stirs it together into a dreadful brew you must bathe in. I closed my eyes in relief. Brynne was not a part of the horror from Afghanistan. She was of the here and now. Brynne lived in London, working and taking her graduate degree. It was just your subconscious mixing together everything that’s bad. Brynne is safe in town.
She just wasn’t with me anymore.
I looked down at my cock, hot and hard and wrapped my fist around the shaft. I closed my eyes and started stroking. If I kept them closed I could remember that day in my office. I needed the release right now. I needed to come so I could stop the bloody shakes invading from that fucked up nightmare. Whatever worked. It’d be a temporary fix but would have to do.
I remembered. The first time she came to see me. She had on red boots and a black skirt. I told her to sit on my lap and made her come with my hand up her quim. So fucking sexy showing up in my office. She looked beautiful falling apart in my arms, from what I did to her, from what I made her feel.
Brynne had tried to pull away from me and I didn’t want her to. I remember she had to tug herself off my lap. But when she slid to her knees and touched me through my trousers, I understood. She told me she wanted to suck me. I knew I loved her in that moment. I knew because she is honest and generous with no artifice. She is real and perfect and mine.
Not now she isn’t. She left you.
I kept my eyes closed and remembered the vision of her beautiful lips closing over the bell end of my cock and taking me in. How wet and warm and exquisite her mouth felt that first time. How beautiful the moment when she swallowed and looked up at me in that sexy, mysterious way she has. I never know what she is thinking. She is a woman after all.
I remembered everything—the sounds she made, her long hair all about her face, the slick slide against her warm lips, the grip on the shaft as she twisted and pulled me deep into her beautiful mouth.
I remembered that special time with Brynne back then, as I jerked myself to an empty climax in my very pathetic and lonely present. I had to remember or I wouldn’t have got off. I cried out as the spunk shot out the top of my cock in a near painful rush, all over the sheets on my bed, shiny white against the black. It should be her! I panted against the headboard and let the release spread throughout my body, angered that I just wanked off to her image like some desperate freak.
I couldn’t care less about the mess. Sheets can be washed. My mind cannot.
I can remember every time I was in her.
The emptiness invading me is something almost cruel, and the climax definitely no substitute for the real thing. Very hollow and utterly useless.
No possible way, Benny! He’s far too beautiful to have to resort to his hand for an orgasm.
Yeah, right. I got up and stripped the sheets from the bed and headed for my shower. Nothing but her will ever be enough.
♥
She rang me that afternoon on my mobile. I missed her call because of an idiot meeting. I wanted to hurt the morons who’d taken my time but I hit voice mail instead.
“Ethan, I—I got your letter.” Her voice sounded thready and the urge to go to her was so great I didn’t know how I would manage to keep away. “Thanks for sending it. The flowers are beautiful too. I—I just wanted you to know that I talked to my dad and he told me some stuff—”
She lost her composure then. I could hear the sounds of muffled crying. I knew she was, and it broke my heart wide open. “I have to go...maybe later we could talk.” She whispered the last. “Bye, Ethan.” And then she hung up.
I thought I would crack the glass in my mobile punching buttons to redial, praying she picked up and would speak to me. Time slowed down interminably while the call connected. Once, twice, three rings. My heart pounded and the need for air increased—
“Hi.” Just one little word. But it was her voice and she was directing it to me. I could hear noises in the background. Like traffic.
“Brynne…how are you? You sounded upset on your message. I was in a meeting…” I trailed off realizing I’d started rambling. I forced my mouth closed and desperately wished for a lovely black clove cigarette.
She breathed heavy into the receiver. “Ethan, you said to call if anything weird happened—”
“What happened? Are you all right? Where are you right now?” I felt my blood run cold at her words and the sound of her voice. “Are you outside?”
“I’m on a run at the moment. I had to get out of my head for a bit and just take a break.”
“I’m coming to you. Tell me where you are.”
She got quiet. I could hear the cars moving around her and I hated being forced to endure the imagined visualization of where she was at the moment. Alone on the street. Vulnerable. Unprotected.
“Will you tell me, please? I have to see you—we need to talk. And I want to hear what worried you enough to ring me and leave that message earlier.” More silence. “Baby, I can’t help if you won’t let me in.”
“Did you see it?” Her voice changed, becoming harsh.
“See what?” I swear I only wanted to go to her and get her in my arms. Her question didn’t register at first. The cold silence on the other end helped me to figure it out real quick though.
“Did you watch it, Ethan? Answer my question.”
“The sex tape of you and Oakley?”
She made a sound of anguish.
“Fuck no! Brynne…” The fact she even asked me such a thing pissed me off. “Why would I do that—”
“It’s hardly a sex tape!” she yelled into my ear. My chest ached like a knife had been shoved in.
“Well, that’s what your dad told me it was!” I yelled back at her, confused by her questioning and utterly at a loss in this fucked up conversation we were having. If I could talk to her in person, get close to her, make her look me in the eye and listen, I might have a chance. But this fractured argument was getting us nowhere fast. I tried again in a more reasonable tone. “Brynne, please let me come to where you are.”
She was crying again. I could hear the soft sound of her against the fainter sounds of traffic. I did not like that she was out running alone either. Cars on the street speeding by her, men looking at her, indigents bothering her for handouts...
“What the hell did he tell you, Ethan? What did my dad say about me?”
“I don’t want to do this on the telephone—”
“Tell. Me.” And then silence.
I closed my eyes in dread, knowing she wouldn’t accept anything but the brutal truth, hating like hell to say it to her, but knowing I had to. How to start? I didn’t know any other way than by just jumping in feet first. I sent up a silent prayer to my mum for strength.
“He told me you and Oakley dated in school. When you were seventeen Oakley made a sex video without your knowledge and spread it around. You dropped out of school and had trouble after that. The senator shipped his son off to Iraq and you came here to study and start afresh. Now the senator is trying to win an election as vice president and wants to make sure nobody ever sees the video…or hears about it. Your dad told me one of Oakley’s mates has died under an unusual circumstance and he’s worried people connected to that video may be targeted...including you. It concerned him enough that he contacted me and asked a favour—that I look after you and watch for anyone who might approach you.”
What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette right now. The silence on the other end was painful to bear but after a few interminable beats I heard the welcome sound of her saying words I wanted to hear. Words I could work with. Something I understood and could do something about. “That scares me.”
Relief washed over me hearing that. Not that she was scared but that s
he sounded like she needed me. Like she would let me back in. “I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you, baby.”
“I got a weird message on my cell phone two days ago. A man. From some newspaper. I didn’t know what to do—and then when I got your letter today I—I read what you said about calling you if anyone did something to bother me.”
The feeling of relief vanished instantly. “Enough of this shit, Brynne! Where are you right now? I’m coming to get you!” I would have crawled though the fucking mobile if the laws of physics allowed it. I needed to get to her and that was all, period. To hell with the bloody yammering, I had to have Brynne next to me in the flesh where I could put my hands on her.
“I’m at the south end of the Waterloo Bridge.”
Of course you are. I rolled my eyes. Just hearing the word Waterloo annoyed me. “I’m leaving now. Can you get over to Victoria Embankment and wait for me there? I can find you quickly that way.”
“Okay. I’ll go to the sphinx.” She sounded better to me. Less afraid and the feeling did wonders for my stress level. I was going to get my girl. She might not know that yet, but it was in fact the reality of what was about to happen.
“That’ll do. If someone approaches you just keep to the open spaces where there are people about.” I kept her on the line as she made her way to Cleopatra’s Needle on foot while I drove like a fiend and avoided London’s Finest.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Are there others around you?”
“Yes. There’s a walking tour and some couples and people with their dogs.”
“Good. I’m parking now. I’ll find you.” We ended the call.
My heart pounded in my chest as I found a place to park and started walking down to the embankment. How would this go? Would she resist me? I didn’t want to pick at our wounds, but fuck if I’d let this bloody mess go on for another day. It ended now. Today. Whatever it took to fix this cock-up got figured out right here, right now.