The Ex (7 page)
I didn’t know the specific details about what had happened. If Neil wanted to tell me, I would listen. But I wouldn’t press him, right now.
At a loss, I asked, “Do you want a hug?”
That was my default comforting move, but he flinched at the very mention. “No. Please, just…don’t touch me. Until I calm down.”
Whatever that asshole had done to Neil to make him like this, I wanted to track him down and squeeze the air out of his throat. I was killing mad. My usually unshakeable Neil was fractured and falling now. Because of Stephen, because of Neil’s memories of him, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I had to watch helplessly as the damage the asshole had inflicted continued to victimize the man I loved more than anyone else in the world.
“Can I do anything for you?” I asked.
“You can let me drink myself into a stupor,” he snapped. “Without judgment or lectures about my supposed problem.”
While one part of me thought it was totally reasonable for someone to have a drink in this situation, another part recoiled at his defensiveness. It meant he knew his behavior was self-destructive, he just didn’t care.
He took the bottle and left the glass, stalking from the kitchen in a huff. His anger was only directed at me, I knew, because if he were angry at Stephen, he would have to remember everything that had been done to him.
I followed him. “I know you want to be alone, right now. But I can’t let you.”
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Don’t be histrionic, Sophie. I’m not going to harm myself. I’m angry, not suicidal.”
“You shouldn’t have to be angry by yourself,” I insisted, walking up behind him. “Neil, just let me help you.”
“You can’t help!” he shouted. “Can you change the past? Can you stop this book from releasing?”
I was glad Emma and Michael had gone to the airport to see Runólf and Geir off. They didn’t need to hear us having a shouting match on the stairs. Especially not about this.
“Obviously, I can’t.” I tried to keep my voice down, but it was hard. I wanted to scream, but I wanted to scream at Stephen, not Neil. It helped to remember that.
“Then, you can’t help, can you?” At the top of the stairs, he turned for his den. Once he was in that sanctuary, it would be impossible to get him out.
“Maybe not help, but I can be with you so that you don’t go through this alone,” I argued.
“I did go through it alone!” He threw the wine bottle against the pristine white wall, and the loud pop of shattering glass startled me less than the sudden violence of the act itself. I’d never seen Neil so out of control. He was breathing heavily, staring in shock at the red liquid trickling down the wall and soaking into the carpet. He hadn’t just frightened me. He’d frightened himself.
“At least you’re not drinking it, I guess,” I said, just to break up the horrified silence between us.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a long time. “That was completely unnecessary.”
“Did it make you feel better?” I asked quietly.
He nodded, but said, “No.”
I stepped closer to him, wary. Never once, even in our hardest play sessions, had I ever thought Neil would actually hurt me. I didn’t believe he would now. But he wasn’t prone to such destructive outbursts, and I didn’t know how to handle him like this. I didn’t want to make it worse for him, or make him feel guiltier. If someone had done to me what Stephen had put Neil through, I would want to throw more than a wine bottle. I would want to throw furniture.
When he turned to me, his eyes were full of tears. “I’m so sorry, Sophie. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I think you scared yourself more than you did me.” I tried to laugh. It neither worked, nor helped.
“I hope that’s true.” The shame in his expression crushed my heart.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I told him, and I held out my arms. He didn’t reject my offer the way he had in the kitchen. He wrapped his arms around me, and I squeezed him tight. I’d get someone to clean up the broken bottle later. Right now, I needed clean up the mess with Neil.
“I’m going to call Doctor Harris the moment we return,” he swore against the top of my head. “I’m so sorry for my behavior this week.”
I leaned back to look him in the eye. “Neil, your mother just died, and you’ve just found out that the man who hurt you is going to write a book as though he’s the leading expert on your personal experience. All of this is happening within the span of a few days. So, you had an outburst and fucked up our wall. At least, this time, you didn’t take a bunch of drugs or contemplate suicide.”
He didn’t argue with me, though I knew he wanted to.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” I’d never asked him for the explicit details of what Stephen had done to him. All I knew was that Neil had been bound, and he’d panicked. He’d forgotten his safe word, and Stephen had claimed he didn’t know Neil wanted him to stop. Neil had hurt himself struggling. That was enough for me, but if Neil needed to unburden himself, I could be the one to listen. “I meant it when I said you don’t have to do this by yourself.”
Though he didn’t answer me, we moved with the same intention into the den. He shut the door, even though we were alone. I sat on the couch as he paced around the billiard table, tapping his fingers nervously on the rail. For a very long time, he didn’t say anything. It was utterly silent, and unnerving.
Finally, he started talking. “I met Stephen at the campus kink club. It was an unofficial gathering. Everyone invited came by word of mouth. Really just a chance for the same kids to get together and talk about sex every Saturday.”
It sounded like he had fond memories of the club, if not the man he’d met there.
Neil picked up a cube of chalk from the table and juggled it like dice in his hand. “I knew Domination was something I was interested in exploring, and Stephen was very sure of himself and his skills. Naturally, I was flattered that he wanted to train me. He was so good-looking.”
“Yeah, I bet. Look at his sister.” I could admit that Valerie was objectively attractive, even if I didn’t care for her personality.
Wisely, Neil did not overtly agree with my sentiment. He went on, “He was knowledgeable about some things, to his credit. He knew the tools, the differences between types of rope, the wrong places to hit, those basics. We started sleeping together, and I liked him very much. Perhaps too much. I think I fell for him a bit, and I believe he fell for me, too. So, when he suggested that, as part of my training, I should sub for him, I trusted him.
“I didn’t like having my arms tied back then, either, but he convinced me that it was important to know what it felt like. He had this antique wrought iron bed—the first time I slept with him, I thought, ‘that would be good for tying someone up.’” Neil chuckled quietly at the memory, and my heart twisted, because it wasn’t a sound of mirth. “He knelt me in front of the headboard and tied my wrists, and he flogged me. It wasn’t the pain of the flogging so much as my fear of being tied up, but I couldn’t remember my safe word. To this day, I can’t remember what we’d set—this was before I learned about the red, yellow, green method. He…um…”
I patted the couch beside me. “You can sit here, if you want.”
He nodded and gave me a small, grateful bend of his lips. When he sat beside me, I took his hands in mine, stroking my thumbs across the backs. He looked down at them, and in a very soft voice, he said, “He… Christ, I’m so embarrassed.”
I didn’t push him.
Eventually, he said, “He fucked me. And he wasn’t careful. It wasn’t something we’d agreed upon beforehand. Perhaps because we’d done it before, he thought… I was…” His breath shuddered from him. “I begged him. And he didn’t stop. I was so desperate to get away, Sophie. I can’t begin to describe to you how terrifying it was. Sometimes, I think he knew that I was in distress and he was just a sadistic bastard. Other times, I wonder if he was just so inexperienced, he didn’t know better.”
I knew which one I believed, but it wasn’t up to me to convince Neil either way.
He sat up and pulled his hands back, rubbing them on his thighs as though he would wipe away the bad memory. “The rest you know. I fought the ropes and separated my shoulder. I was in agony. It was only after he finished that he realized I’d hurt myself.”
You weren’t the one who hurt you, Neil
, I thought, and my mouth moved to say so, but I stopped myself in the nick of time. It wasn’t my place to tell him what he probably already knew. He was sharing one of the most horrible experiences of his life with me, and I wanted to jump in and correct him?
“When I asked him why he would do that to me…” Neil shook his head. “As I said, I don’t know whether he was lying or inexperienced.”
My helplessness choked me. I didn’t want him to have gone through that, but there was nothing, no force on Earth, that could erase that part of his life. He’d been irreparably cut apart; though he’d stitched himself together, the scar would remain. No matter how much I loved him, no matter how unfair it was for him to have to carry this around in his head, it couldn’t be changed.
I felt like smashing a wine bottle of my own.
He didn’t cry. He didn’t express anything, really. He just shrugged. “That’s what happened. Now, I need you to tell me that knowing all of this doesn’t lessen your opinion of me.”
“Neil! Of course—”
“I know it doesn’t,” he interrupted me. “I just need to hear it.”
“Okay.” I took his hands again and held them over my heart. “Neil Elwood. My opinion of you is not at all lessened from knowing this about you. This doesn’t change the way I feel about you. Nothing like that ever would.”
He folded me into a hug and whispered, “Thank you,” beside my ear.
The relief in him was palpable; he was almost dead weight in my arms. I think I had assumed some of his tension, because the only thought in my head was that Stephen’s book had to be stopped. I refused to let that man hurt Neil again. If there was a way to stop it, we would.
CHAPTER FIVE
We flew into JFK and briefly considered just going to the Fifth Avenue apartment, but I wanted badly to be back in our own bed, and Neil agreed. I called Deja and told her I wouldn’t be coming back to work until Wednesday. I’d planned to return on Monday, and I hated missing more work after a week away, but with the other development, I wanted more time with Neil, just to be sure he was all right.
I could tell that he was coming around a little when I woke up beside him on Monday and found him staring at the ceiling.
“I think I’ll go to the track today.”
There are no words to express how grateful I was that he was pulling himself out of the sad, stressed funk that had surrounded him since we’d gotten home. I leaned up on my elbows. “That’s great, baby. I think it would do you a lot of good.”
“You should come with me,” he said, and my stomach dropped. I hated the thought of hurtling around a track in an overpriced supercar just about as much as I hated the thought of Neil hurtling around a track in an overpriced supercar. It was so reckless and scary. I didn’t really know what he got out of it. He’d never asked me to be interested in it before.
“I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” I said, sitting up and swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “I get car sick when faced with certain death.”
“I haven’t killed myself or anyone else yet,” he reminded me, as he often did to defend his frequent visits. “One ride, Sophie. Just to cheer me up.”
He knew exactly how to appeal to my goodness. Of course I had to agree; I wanted to cheer him up, didn’t I?
With a resigned sigh, I rolled my head on my neck and paused to crack it. “If I go and I don’t like it, you can never, ever ask me to go again.”
“Agreed.” He grinned up at me and stretched his long arms. He looked so warm and inviting, I wanted to climb back in with him. But he shooed me toward the bathroom. “Go on, get ready. Wear something tight, make my friends jealous.”
I uttered an outraged “Uh!” but I not-so-secretly loved it when Neil wanted me dolled up so he could show me off. It was the shallow, appearance-obsessed side of me that made me so good at my job. I hurried through my shower, took my time with my hair and makeup, and selected my outfit carefully. When Neil saw the finished product—my hair curled and teased to porn-star volume, my dark, smoky eye makeup, the low-cut, long-sleeved black knit top I’d paired with black skinny jeans that were just a little slinkier than I was usually comfortable with—I got the reaction I wanted.
“We don’t have to go to the track.” Fresh from his shower, he tossed his towel aside. “We can stay right here, and I can do unspeakable things to you.”
I backed away slowly. “Hold it right there, wet naked man. I did not get this made up so you could undo it all. Besides, wasn’t this about showing off your hot young mid-life crisis trophy?”
He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head to the side. “All right. Let me get dressed, and we’ll go.”
While Neil got ready, I selected a burgundy leather jacket that would be utterly useless against the cold, but was cropped high enough that it didn’t hide my great ass. Deja had once asked why it didn’t bother me when Neil made comments about showing me off, but I didn’t see how it could when half the time I was dressing up to show
myself
off.
I was zipping up my calf-high, leather, high-heeled boots when Neil emerged from the closet. He wore a gray sweater over a white t-shirt, faded jeans and black sneakers. A beaten up brown leather jacket was folded over his arm.
“Oh my, now that is really special,” he said as I lifted my head, still fiddling with my boot. I looked down and caught my pushed up cleavage practically falling out.
“Dirty old man.” I stood pulled my shirt back into place. “Okay. I promised you I’ll go around the track one time. But you can’t go fast.”
He rolled his eyes and sighed at my hopelessness. “It’s a race track, Sophie. You’re supposed to go fast.”
“Right, but we’re not racing.” I paused. “You guys don’t race each other, do you?”
He looked down and scratched the back of his neck.
“Neil!” I barked. “What if you wrecked one of those expensive cars? What if you got hurt? Or killed?”
“That sentence seems to be out of order,” he groused.
“You’re out of order!” I put my hands on my hips. “I thought you were just hanging out with your similarly middle-aged car enthusiasts at the track. Now you’re what, racing for pink slips like in
Grease
?”
“No, we don’t race for pink slips. We race for bragging rights. And, occasionally, thousands of dollars.” His lips quirked in amusement. “Come now, Sophie, you have to let me have a little fun.”
“Was it fun being in the hospital for as long as you were before? Because if your Zogani Panda or whatever bursts into flames—”
“My what?”
“Your Zogani Panda. That car that looks like a bug from the front.”
“The Pagani Zonda,” he corrected me, even more amused at my anger now.
“Whatever! Neil, I don’t want you to get hurt!” Panic clutched my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I teetered on my heels to slump down on the edge of the bed.
He came to sit beside me and put his arms around me. “Sophie, I won’t get hurt.”
“You can’t promise me that,” I reminded him. I leaned my cheek against his shoulder and hoped I wouldn’t get my foundation on him. “You just think you can because you’re an egotistical control freak.”
“I’m a good driver, and I don’t take unnecessary risks,” he promised. “You’re coming out to the track today. You can see for yourself.”
“Okay, but no races.” It was immature of me, but if he was going to do something dangerous, I didn’t want to hear about it or be near when he did it. Denial was the only thing that would keep me sane. “Just take me out, impress me with your fast, fancy car, and don’t die or kill me while you do it.”
The track where Neil drove—and housed some of his car collection—was a private facility in Connecticut. To drive there, you had to have the money to pay your share of the state-of-the-art track’s upkeep and cover garage fees, and membership was by invitation only. It was a rich guy club with life-sized toy cars.
Neil drove us there in his Hennessey Venom GT Spyder. It was the most expensive of all his male ego validation vehicles, and I was always afraid he’d take it out on the street and get into a fender bender. Not to mention the fact that the seats were about as comfortable as an ergonomic chair designed by someone with backwards knees. My ass was thoroughly asleep by the time we reached our destination after two and a half hours.
I fluffed my hair—though it didn’t need it, after all the hairspray I’d used—and reapplied my lip gloss. “Okay, so what am I doing here? Mostly silent arm candy?”
“Never! Besides, we won’t spend much time socializing. I just want to show you around the place. Acquaint you with the safety regulations and protocols—”
“I get it,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “How can you guys even drive out here in the winter?”
“Heated track,” he said, as though it were the easiest answer in the world. “The cars handle differently in the cold, obviously, but there isn’t ice or snow to worry about.”
I was expecting a hangar with wide-open garage doors and guys in NASCAR suits running around pushing tires. Instead, we pulled up outside a building that was part car dealership, part country club. Neil tossed his keys to a valet and said, “I have a two o’clock slot reserved.” To me, he added, “All four miles.”
“Four miles?” I gaped at him as we walked toward the doors. “I was imagining a little oval.”
He laughed, an “Oh, you,” kind of laugh. “No, I would not pay these yearly membership dues for ‘a little oval’. It’s four miles, a few curves, with long straight sections and no speed limits. The Hennessey is the fastest street legal car in the world. Do you fancy going two-hundred and seventy miles per hour?”
“No!” I shrieked, and my voice was a bit too loud as we stepped through the doors and into the building.
There was a showroom aspect of the main building that was impossible to miss; cars parked behind velvet ropes lined the path to a reception desk, where Neil flashed a membership card. The blonde girl behind the counter smiled wide and nodded to me, and as we passed, she said, “I like your boots!”
“Thanks!” I called back as we walked. Then, to Neil, I said, “Where are we going? Why did we leave the car with a valet? What are we going to drive? Can I just stay here and hang out with the girl who has good taste?”
“They’ll take the car and give it a look over; check the tires and the fluid levels—”
“The brakes?” I interrupted hopefully.
“Yes, and the brakes,” he told me. “Right now, we need to get you into a helmet.”
There was a room at the back with huge windows that looked out on the track. The white metal framing around them broke up the sunlight into long squares on the black-and-white checked carpet.
“So, this place fulfills all your little boy Formula One fantasies, does it?” I teased. Two giant televisions broadcast the news on one screen, a car channel on the other.
“Says the woman who actually cried on her first shopping excursion to Barney’s,” he shot back. Damn, I really wished I hadn’t told him about that.
There were wide lockers across the back of the room. I counted them. “Hey, are there only thirty-six members?” I asked, counting them again, because I was sure I’d missed a couple.
“Thirty-six who use the lockers.” He nodded toward the windows. “There are overnight accommodations for out-of-town members who only pop by once or twice a year. And there are members who live in the area and just bring all of their gear with them.” He typed in a four-digit code—I assumed it was 6969—and pulled the handle, opening the door between us. “I have something for you.”
“You do?” I wasn’t going to turn down a present, but it seemed weird that he had one here, when we didn’t know I’d be coming along. When he emerged with a sheet of paper, my present hopes were dashed.
He smirked at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “It’s a waiver.”
I scanned the paper with a frown. “Jerk. I thought you were giving me something.”
“Oh, I’ll give you something, if that’s what you—”
“Stop,” I cut him off and held up a hand. “I’m seeing a lot of references to ‘accidental injury, death or dismemberment’ here, and it’s not turning me on.”
“Don’t worry about any of that. It only applies if you’re accidentally injured, killed, or dismembered,” he assured me with morbid good cheer. “Just sign the thing, and then, we can go really fast.”
The man might be fifty, but he was five if he was a day. “After this are we going to go look at a fire truck, too?”
“That’s a thought. I could buy one of them, see how it handles out here…” He scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“Forget I mentioned it. Please.” I sighed and signed the paper against the door of the locker. “If you dismember me, I dismember you, got it?”
“I promise, there will be no loss of life or limb on this drive,” he vowed solemnly. He took a pastel purple helmet from the locker and handed it to me. “It was the prettiest one I could find.”
I shoved the waiver at him and held up the helmet. Across the curve of the lilac plastic, pink Swarovski crystals spelled out “Sophie” in graceful cursive loops. “You did have a present for me!”
“I did. It’s been here for…oh, six months now? I knew I’d get you out here eventually.” He glanced at the top of my head. “Although, it will muss your hair somewhat.”
“With this amount of hairspray in it?” I shook my head, and it all swayed as one piece. “It’ll bounce right back.”
We rejoined the car out on the track. It was a short walk from the club lounge to the starting line, but most of it was through a heated walkway. Outside, it was super cold, but for some reason, I was sweating buckets.
Okay, I knew the reason. While Neil had never once died doing this, I was convinced this would be the time, and he would take me with him. Logically, I knew he was a good driver. I’d ridden in cars with him loads of times, and he was always confident and hyper-focused. But this seemed so risky.
The engine was running, and I pulled on my helmet while Neil exchanged some good-natured banter with one of the technicians. My hands were shaking as I buckled up.
Neil got in, most of his face obscured by his helmet. “You look terrified.”
Our voices were coming across all muffled. I scowled at him. “You think?”
“You’re going to love it, you’ll see,” he tried to assure me. With a tilt of his head, he added, “Unless you’re too afraid.”