His mouth pulls tighter, and that asshole actually starts to shut his car door. I catch the handle and grab it further open; then I dart inside it, so I’m standing right between the driver’s seat and the door. I grab his forearm, not because I need to for the sake of balance, but because I want to touch him. I want to make him feel me. Now that I’ve finally found him, I’m not letting him go without a fight.
I shift a little, so my gaze intercepts his downturned one. “I’m going with you.”
“No. You’re not.” He shakes my hand off his arm and reaches around me to push his door open. “Go, Leah. This is over.”
“Fine.” I fold my arms, leaving my bare feet planted firmly on the asphalt. “Then I’ll go there by myself.”
“You’ll be charged with trespassing,” he says firmly.
I stare into his eyes, but I see nothing there. No sympathy. No affection. “So..you’re done with me?”
“You can’t tell?” He sneers at me, and reaches for the gear shift. I’m suddenly upset—finally feeling the surprise and dismay he’s been going for—so I almost turn and go. But there’s a rock stuck between two of my toes, and suddenly all I can think of is him hitting the gas and me not being fast enough to avoid getting caught in his damn door.
The car’s wheels roll a little as he shifts to “reverse,” and I talon-latch onto his shoulder. His eyes connect with mine, and they’re so wide, so warm, so…affected by my hand on him, I feel a rush of power. Headiness so fierce the world around me spins.
He still wants me.
Hansel wants me…
In the punch of one heartbeat, I realize it’s obsession—this warm lump of emotion I’ve been fostering and feeding—and the realization empowers me to hang on. Literally.
I wind my arms around his neck and toss my leg over his hips, settling on his lap as his eyes pop, and his shoulders press against the leather seat. I lean so close that I can smell the sweetness of his breath.
“Shit,” he whispers.
I slide one palm down his chest and let the other one wander down his side. I clutch his thigh, and as I feel the thick muscle, I feel something hard between my legs.
My gaze dips down, and glee sweeps through me as my hand slides over his hip and down…until my trembling fingers are cradling his erection. He hardens still more as I watch, until every line of him is straining through the denim of his pants.
I press my fingers against him and rock my palm against his length. I lean in close as I start stroking, tickling my lips over his throat.
“So I don’t turn you on?” I whisper.
His eyes squeeze shut. His jaw tightens. I watch him clench his fist.
“You’re not looking for anything I’ve got…right?”
I press the base of my palm against the underside of his plump head. His face tenses as I wrap my fingers around it.
“I see,” I whisper, stroking him. “You’re just not attracted to me, are you?”
Looking down again, I can see his jeans are loose enough that I can grasp him through them. I curl my fingers all the way around him and give a little tug. He groans.
“Leah…” His eyelids slowly lift, revealing lust-hazed eyes. “Get out.”
“I don’t think so, Edgar.” I reach behind me to put the car in “park” again, and all the while I’m stroking him, more pleased with myself than I know I should be, considering I pretty much accosted him.
He’s so hard for my hand, and as I play with him, his eyes are looking warmer and warmer, as if the inside of him is melting.
“I like to touch you, and I know you like it, too,” I murmur, pulling his erection up and out and wrapping my hand around his head. “You tried to lie to me. That hurts.”
I say it lightly, whispered, even though it’s true. I press his dick between my legs and rock against the head of him, feeling desperate. He moans, pushing himself against me.
He grits his teeth, and while I watch his mouth for words that will alleviate the sharp pain in my chest, his hands close around my waist and lift me off his lap. He sets me in the passenger’s seat and throws the car back into “reverse.” Without a word, he backs out, shifts roughly into “drive,” and shoots across the parking lot.
“Where are you taking me? To the MGM Grand? You couldn’t take it, could you? You can’t take me.”
My cheeks burn so hot, I worry my head will explode as he pulls onto The Strip. Before this, I was feeling sorry for him, but not now.
“You think about me every time you fuck another woman, don’t you?” My words, and the volume of them, shock me, but I’m pulsing everywhere. In between my legs, inside my chest. He’s got me so worked up, I feel like I might cry. He’s taking me back to the casino. He’s just going to drop me off like garbage.
“Is that how you handle things? Someone is a problem for you, send them away. Someone fucks you their way and not yours, well find a new submissive! Someone wants more of you than you can give without exposing your damn self and that’s the end! See ya later! Change your name.”
My shoulders heave as I drag in a big breath.
All around us, lights blink, buildings glimmer, cars purr in long, congested lines. I feel as if we should be moving fast, but we’re almost at a standstill.
The Range Rover must have thick windows, because the silence in the car is palpable, as is the anguish on his face.
“Damnit, Leah.” He slams his fist against the wheel and looks out his window. His profile looks imposing. Dangerous. “You shouldn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Oh yeah, and why is that?” I hold my breath, waiting for an answer that will explain how he’s been acting. That will explain how the guy who was so kind to me in hell is now the owner of a sex club, whipping not just one woman but two at a time.
His lips twist, like he’s tasting something bitter. “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not who…you remember.”
“So what?” I tug some air into my lungs, because I’m feeling breathless. I angle myself toward him, trying to catch his eye even though I know he’s aiming his gaze everywhere but me. “Do you think you have to be a certain person for me? News flash, Hansel-Edgar-whoever you are. I’m not the same girl I used to be, either.”
He turns the car right, toward the MGM Grand, and my pulse stutters. “Your driver told me you would take me to the airport. If it didn’t work out, I’d be driven to the airport. Not the MGM Grand. I don’t have a reason to go there.”
“I’ll get your taxi to the airport,” he says tautly.
“Fine!” The heat of tears prickles my eyes. “Try to drop me off and then forget me! But I know you get off on me. I know you’re fucked up, just like I am. You think that I don’t know that? We were both there. We’re both hung up there! How could we not be?”
“We are not the same,” he grits. “So stop pretending that we are.”
“I know we’re not.” My heart beats hard and fast as I remember the sound of his footsteps, disappearing down the hall in front of my door. “I know we’re not,” I say more quietly, “but we’re enough the same. I been trying to find you for years, and now that I have, this is just it? You’re not dropping me off at a damn hotel. I won’t get out.” I slump back against my seat, feeling jittery and weak all at once.
My cheeks must be blood red, because they’re hot. My eyes are leaking. I’m such a loser. He makes me pathetic.
I flick a tear off my left cheek so he doesn’t see it and analyze the road. He’s still heading toward the MGM Grand. He’s really doing this.
I don’t mean anything to him. He doesn’t feel the same way I do.
I pin my most accusing stare on him, and even though he’s looking at the road, I know he has to feel it. “Is it the submissive thing? Like how I wasn’t—”
“You’re fine in bed. Better than fine,” he adds in a surly voice.
Good. And bad. “So you lied back in the room. When you were being mean.” I knew it, but it’s nice to hear him say so.
> So pathetic.
His lips flatten as his hand slides around the wheel. He’s turning onto a side street. Maybe turning toward the airport?”
“It’s wrong, the way you’re dumping me like this. When I know you want me. When you know I want you. When we could talk and—”
“Reminisce about the past? Share our funniest home videos?” His voice is low and soft, filled with derision.
An empty feeling fills my stomach, like a cold, inflating balloon. I’m really nothing to him. Nothing but a memory, and, for reasons only known to him, a body he likes to fantasize about.
*
“If we get out of here, you won’t forget me, will you?”
I stroke his knuckles, so much bigger, so much harder-looking than my own. I scoot up a little, moving on my belly, and I press my lips against his hand.
“Do you think that I’d forget you? Never,” I whisper. “You’re like…the center of the universe to me.”
There’s a brief pause. One in which my stomach flip-flops and my fingers on his hand go still. And then his voice, the wonderful rumble that makes me feel all warm.
“I won’t forget you either, Leah.”
*
A runaway tear drops off my chin. I turn my head away from him. “Take me to the airport, at least. Surely you could do that one thing for me,” I say in a thick, embarrassing voice.
I watch him out of the corner of my eye as I sink down into my leather seat. I see a sign for the interstate, and a second later, when we turn onto it, I notice his shoulders deflate as he pushes out a breath.
That’s how much he wants to be rid of me.
I look down at my lap for a few minutes, wondering what I’ll do when we get to the airport. This might be the last time I ever see him. He’s made it clear enough: He doesn’t want anything to do with me. And despite how much I care for him—despite my ridiculous obsession—I’m not going to keep begging. It’s not that I don’t want to. But if I do, and he still dumps me at the airport, I think that it will hurt a hundred times worse.
I allow my eyes to wander his way again. He’s got one hand on the wheel, the other in his lap. He seems to be gripping the wheel tightly. The hand in his lap is balled into a fist. My gaze rolls up to his face. I find his eyes are hard, his face a closed door.
The impulse to pick at a scab rises up in me, and I’m too worked up to ignore it.
“You never really explained why I shouldn’t want anything to do with you, as you said.” Is it because he thinks he would be a bad influence on me? I hope not, because that’s ridiculous. “We’re probably the same,” I tell him. “Both fucked up.”
“You’re not fucked up.” His mouth pulls into a bitter, almost humored twist.
So that’s what he thinks. He thinks I’m some upstanding, never-sexed, straight-laced girl from the suburbs. And that would be true. It might have been. In another universe, maybe that’s exactly who I am. (Minus the never-sexed. I’d totally be sexed in my alternate reality).
“You don’t think so?” I laugh dryly. I reach into my pocket and I stretch my fingers out and rub around the fabric. “Would it surprise you to know I’m an addict? Some people say ‘recovered’ addict, but seriously? That shit’s a lie. That night I saw you up on stage? I still had an emergency oxy I was keeping in my pocket. I swallowed it and threw it up. Then I flushed it, and then a second later, I went back to see if it was still there. You know why I started?”
I move my gaze from the road over to him, and find his eyes on me.
“I would lie awake at night and think about the hole in my wall. Like, really focus on it. And I would think about the door, if it was closed. Like if I was at a hotel or something. On a trip with a friend. If the door got shut somehow or even if it wasn’t shut, if it was open; I would look at it and try to see the hall or whatever was outside it. And then when I closed my eyes, I would picture the ceiling. I hate ceilings. Walls are even worse. So I would think about the ceiling, and the hole in my wall, and in case you couldn’t guess I had a bunch of trouble sleeping. One of my therapists gave me some Xanax, and that’s how it started. It got way out of hand, until I had to go to rehab.”
Another glance at him shows me he’s still flicking his gaze to me, in between watching the road. He’s still listening to me talk about how messed up the grown-up Leah is.
For a long moment, my breath feels like it’s caught inside my throat. I swallow the sensation away before I keep on talking.
“You want to know why I came to see you in a mask? That’s why. Because I’m trying to stay sober. Every little thing that happens…” I shake my head, feeling stupid. Feeling vulnerable. I let a little laugh slip out.
“This is embarrassing,” I say, meeting his eyes for a brief second. I look back at the road. “I don’t know why I thought it would be so easy to tell you things, but—” I exhale slowly. “But I had this whole thing pictured.”
It’s nothing like I thought—this meet-up with him. I can already feel the sadness creeping up on me, grabbing me by the hand and pinching my fingers with a death grip. Tomorrow, I’m going to be a mess. But I’ll be a mess at home, where I can call my AA counselor. Who would probably tell me…to be honest.
I swallow and regain my composure before I say another word. “I needed to talk to you. And now I’m with you. So I’m going to be honest, if it’s no skin off my back and it won’t hurt you: I was afraid of what I would do if I showed up and you didn’t want to see me. I needed to see you again. And before we get to the airport—” I’m already seeing signs letting us know it’s about ten miles away— “I want to know if you remembered last night. Like, this morning. Did you want to call me—Leah—even though you wanted to still pretend that I was Lauren? Or when you called this morning, were you calling Lauren?”
I hold my breath in anticipation of his answer.
“I was blackout drunk. You might remember,” he says. He’s got his eyes trained on the lanes spreading out in front of us. Because, again, he doesn’t want to look at me.
“So you’re saying that you don’t remember last night.”
“I know you shouldn’t have done that.”
“You don’t want anything to do with me, it seems, but you sure want to screw me. Am I like…your fetish? Some kind of re-do of Mother’s house where things are better because we’re having lots of sex? No peep hole? Maybe we’ve got a door, a little trap door we can go through when we’re extra horny? Or is it possible you actually remember being friends with me. You cared about me, too.”
Tears sting my eyes again. I blink, and let them roll down my cheeks. I smile a bitter smile. “I got told that you were fake. A lot. By lots of people. You were some kind of wish-fulfillment.” I say it with a question on the end, even though I’m not asking anything. “You just disappeared, you know. So people didn’t believe me when I told them about the guy who held my hand and told me stories through this little…mouse hole, peephole, and then that person superhero killed our captor with nothing but his bare hands. Yeah. That sounded like some kind of fantasy. But here you are, you’re real. Am I your fantasy? Maybe you spent a lot of time thinking about my body when we were on opposite sides of the damn wall?”
“I think about you when I fuck,” he says.
I look fully at him; raise my eyebrows. “You think of me hurting you?”
“Jesus, Leah. I don’t want to talk about this shit. I don’t want to get to know you. Grown up Leah. I fucked you. You didn’t do it my way. I don’t fucking blame you, but let’s let this die.”
His words hurt me so much, I actually gasp.
Then I take a page from his playbook. I ask the one question I know might really hurt. “Who’s Shelly?”
CHAPTER THREE
Lucas
I’m driving, so I can’t pull over when my legs and arms grow cold and I start seeing spots.
I struggle to suck air into my lungs, but they are frozen.
My fingers feel so…
“Hanse
l? Edgar? Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I whisper, but I’ve started feeling…
Terror.
Can’t breathe. Trying, but I need to…
Stop.
“Stop asking me about her!”
“Edgar?”
I need a fucking exit.
Need to get these restraints off my arms…
“How are you feeling?”
God my heart is going fast.
Gas station sign.
Foot on the brake. Fuck, I can barely steer the car.
“Charged with manslaughter… You weren’t… Tell us that you’re not considered… other family members… Shelly’s family… Right here… Juvenile detention or…”
“Oh God.”
I feel like I’m floating as I park the car.
Bathroom on the side of the building.
Stumbling; the door; open and shut. Blue tile.
“Been in the bathroom for a really long time…”
“…another suicide attempt?”
“Mrs. McKenzie, we wouldn’t recommend…”
“But Shelly cared about him…very much.”
“We have three girls…”
“A brother.”
“Tomorrow.”
“…well enough.”
“Take all the medicine…”
I sink down to the floor and work to get my numb, cold fingers to pull my shirt’s collar over my mouth and nose.
Breathe.
You can fucking breathe.
“Hansel?”
Please don’t call me that.
“Are you okay? Open the door!”
“I didn’t do it. Please believe me, please, I didn’t…”
“Edgar!”
“…you know anything about the plans to murder and…”
“…when did she adopt you?”
I stagger up and smash my fist into the mirror just to make it STOP.
It has to stop.
“Stop!”
“Edgar? What’s the matter?”
I whirl around. She’s there. “Leah…”