The Sordid Promise (34 page)

He squeezed my hand with such a strength the pain brought me out of the prison otherwise known as my mind. “Maybe you should take a sip.” Looking into his eyes, the pressure began to relent. The patrons in the restaurant no longer read as a million people crushing me, only a few dozen.

I swallowed, hard and brought myself down. With my free hand, I took the wine glass to my lips and slowly sipped. “I think you just want to sedate me again.”

He tossed his eyes to the ceiling and sunk away from me. “Nik? Stop.”

“I don’t know how to be. I don’t know how to do this. I’m not normal. It’s hard to sit here and pretend like I’m normal, pretend like the last few months never happened. I close my eyes and all I see is—I think about my mother. I think about…Trent.” I glanced across the table at a woman’s cherry dessert. “I see his brains scattered across the wall when I close my eyes.” On the cusp of my words, she dropped her fork and turned to glare at me.

“It’s her first day on the planet. Excuse her,” Eric offered her with a wink.

She seemed to relax, giving him a small sheepish grin as she turned back to her dessert. Since he called her attention, she couldn’t stop stealing glances at him—much to her date’s chagrin. “I hate crowds, and I hate people,” I grumbled. I glanced over at the woman, who blushed in response to being caught ogling my boyfriend for the millionth time. “She’s thinking of all the ways she wants you in her bed.” I looked over at her. “Don’t fall for the charm. He’s a phenomenal fuck, but he’s also a very evil man. The charismatic pull is used to seduce his prey. Don’t stare at him for too long, or you’ll be sucked inside his vortex.”

“Goddamn, woman, would you chill out?” he hissed.

“I don’t want to be here,” I said through a sob as my hand hit the table, rattling the tableware atop it. “I can’t be something I’m not. This was silly.”

“Why are you on edge all of the sudden?”

“It’s her damn dessert. It’s the fact that I remember what you wanted me to forget. Do you know what it’s like to watch someone blow their brains out? I’m sure you have. Not because of the E.R., it’s because you watched your stepmother blow her brains out. Did it affect you?”

Disgusted, the woman ejected from the table.

His jaw clenched so tightly, the muscles in his neck pulsed with anger. As he glanced around the restaurant, he reignited a harsh grip on my hand. “Ignoring the fact that you’re beginning to piss me off…can you shut the fuck up? You’re going to get us kicked out.”

“I don’t care. This should be a lesson. You shouldn’t have taken me off my medication. The voices in my head aren’t the only demons pulling me down. They get quiet and others come out to play.”

He blew back and nodded to our waitress. She stopped what she was doing and immediately came over, giving Eric a flirtatious smile.

“He’s not going to screw you. Stop flirting with him.”

“Okay,” he warned with untamed anger. “One more time, and I’m going to send you to the car.”

“Why? Am I embarrassing you?”

“Just a little fucking bit. You want to push me away, because you think you got too close to me? Fine. But do you have to bring other people into this?”

“I’m a black hole of misery. Didn’t you figure it out already? I tried to tell you. You didn’t listen. I now know it was because you are a black hole of misery, too.”

He took a bated breath. “Leave the table and meet me at the car.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’m going to run into traffic?”

He leaned across the table, roughly grabbed my hand to stand and pressed his position forward. “Leave the fucking table, Nikki.” The timbre of his voice startled me and quite a few other people around us.

I no longer had the energy to maintain my need to be a palpable pain. I left the table, taking my leather jacket with me.

He remained silent when we returned to the cabin. He continued to be silent as I went directly upstairs to the master bedroom. I slipped off my coat, leaving it on the floor and fell into bed with my booted feet dangling off the edge. I shut my eyes as the tears stung.

He whipped off his coat, throwing it across the room and took in a deep wavering breath. “You know why I don’t want to fulfill my more severe sexual needs with you?” Eric asked quietly. “I did it with a woman who wasn’t stable. Someone like you, who thought pain was going to cure her. It didn’t. It got to the point where she became so numb, the things I had to do to her where extreme. I degraded her on purpose. Truth is, it didn’t fix her—not that I wanted to. She wound up going off with a man who was brutally abusive to her. A man I lent her to, who wanted to punish her for choosing me over him—Preston. See, you can’t have instability in that type of relationship. To do it to someone who’s fucked up is a no-no.”

“Are you talking about Estelle?” I asked without moving.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “She didn’t make me this way. Long before her, I got off on making women do bad things for me, just for me. I know it’s sick to some. But to me…it was cathartic to watch someone being broken. It always has been. Didn’t care who I fucked over along the way, because it was about me. It was about what I wanted. It’s
always
about what I want.” He drew my interest immediately. I slipped up in bed and gave him my full attention. “Tamala was a traveling fucking doormat. When we got to Ohio she stopped being my entertainment. She fell in with a girl who gave her a voice. She started mouthing off to me in ways she never had before. I set up a situation in order to meet Tamala’s new friend Estelle. I fucked her in front of Tamala. I purposely did things with Estelle in front of Tamala to teach her a lesson. It became a fun little game until I found Estelle to be more interesting. Tamala couldn’t take the hint. What you saw on the DVD was the huge fucking hint she refused to heed.”

He turned from the window to regard me. “I…want you in a different way. Couldn’t explain why before. That nature…gets hard to fight. Sometimes I want you so much—with the combination of you pissing me off all the time—I purposely abandon my need to make you feel the things you need to feel. Always wanted to show you something else. Something gentler. I think with my cock instead, and it leads us to shitty places.”

“Why are you saying all of this?”

“I can’t have you be like them. You’re
not
one of them. My game with Estelle became more beyond making Tamala pay. I helped her get away from her parents. They wanted to throw her in a facility and take control of her money. In being with her, I got control. I didn’t do it to be nice. I did it because I wanted her to be my complete and total possession.

“Preston? Went to med school with him. He had every side business known to man. Spent a summer with him. When I knew he felt something for Estelle…I took it deeper with her, just to piss him off. I never felt anything real for her. She was really no different to me than Tamala was. She was just another fun game to play.

“I remember when I was a resident, watching people suffer. Sometimes you cure. Sometimes you don’t. As a doctor you’re supposed to be able to do more than that, but you can’t cure everything. It’s fucking frustrating. If I can’t cure, I should be able to do something else other than to write out prescriptions to manage the pain. I think people should get a choice in when they die. They should get a choice in how much they have to suffer. When my Uncle Howard….got sick,” he took a deep breath, “he asked me to take care of him. He asked that I be the one to do it. I did it…gladly.

“The Suicide Angels site belonged to one of Howard’s sons. My uncle used to dispense advice, while my cousin did the background work. After my uncle died, I got involved. My cousin and I became a little more active in the suicide assists. Thing about playing God; you can’t keep it up without getting caught. I’d be damned if I lost everything I’d worked twelve years for. Being a doctor makes me feel kind of normal. I fit there.”

He let out a long stream of air, his hands in prayer position across his face. “When Estelle and I became more involved, I withdrew from her completely. Alienation of affection was my greatest weapon. I doled out the punishment and let other men fuck her. Because Preston wanted her before I got to her, he pounced when he had the chance. Not because he was still in love with her. No. He wanted to punish her for being with me instead of him. She could never really have me the way she wanted me, so, she played her games. Every time she did, I’d show her who was in control by fucking with other woman until she came back to her senses. She would get so fucking jealous. Tamala became her punching bag. The altercations between those two, put both in the hospital on numerous occasions. Tamala just didn’t understand that she served as background noise to me. As much as she’s tried, she’ll never have me the way she wants me. We all run in a constant cycle.” He rolled his shoulders back as he stood tall. “Estelle will be back. She thinks she’s in love right now. Thing of it is, she
can’t
love anyone but me. She can only pretend to be in it for so long before she realizes it, over and over again. Same cycle. Different men. Mark my words, she’ll pop up, come back, and try to fuck over my life. It’s usually when I don’t care if she comes back. Not happening this time.”

“Why haven’t you filed a restraining order against Tamala if you don’t want her anymore?”

He ran his hands through his hair, roughing up the perfectly coifed and parted style. He dropped my gaze, physically shutting down. I surmised that he'd met his quota for what he was willing to share with me, and he wasn’t going to share much more.

“Is this what you want to do for the rest of your life?” I asked quietly. “Take care of me? Being a caretaker to someone mentally unstable is draining. You’ll be a shell of skeleton and dead inside by the time you’ve made any leeway, if at all. So, why don’t you just go? Leave me here and just go. Find Estelle. Do whatever it is you do in your odd deal. This won’t have a happily ever after. It—”

He pulled my legs down until I fell back on the bed. Hovering over me, he covered my mouth. “Do you ever shut the fuck up with your stupid ‘woe is me the world sucks’ bullshit?” His eyes glared at me as his hand held strongly across my mouth. “What makes you think that’ll work? Nikki, I am the best fit for you. You’ll never find anyone like me who will understand you and love you the way I do.”

I tried to talk through his hand.

“I said…shut the fuck up.” His eyes pierced into mine, staring me down until I gave in. “When I take my hand away you aren’t going to say anything else unless you’re asked to. This is what you are going to do; you’re going to take off your clothes and stand by the bed. Finally, you’re going to get what you keep begging me for—the fluffy, soft kitten version. Nod your damn head, so I know you get me.”

With my heart suddenly palpitating at the prospect, I slowly nodded.

“Why do I have to be this way with you to get you to cooperate? I want to be nice to you. I don’t want to be the dick all the time. Not with you. Other women? Yeah. But not you. If you’re wondering why you’re getting the soft version, it’s because you’re too damn crazy to get the full throttle. Now, do what I told you to do.” He removed his hand and lifted off me.

I lazily stood, shuffling my feet. I roughly removed my boots and clothing, dropping each piece to the floor. Naked, I stood with my hands on my hips, for the first time, unafraid of my scars.

“Turn around and face the wall.” I turned on my heels and faced the wall. From behind me, his feet shuffled towards the end of the room. I heard something latch and the rustling of items. I kept my eyes on the wall, left to wonder.

He came to me, pressing his body behind me. He pulled my hair up and around, tossing it down the front of my shoulder. He slid a hard leather collar around my neck and buckled it in the back. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I said in breathless anticipation.

He spun me around to face him. He was wearing a black leather mask with lace over the eyes. He clutched the crown of my hair, grazing his lips against the end of my chin. I shuddered in his arms, feeling a mix of feelings I couldn’t directly identify. “Do you trust me even though you know I’m wicked?”

“I trust you,” I rasped.

His hold strengthened on my hair. Abruptly, he jerked my neck back, making me gasp. “Why do you trust me, Nik? I could degrade you. I could hurt you. I could do so many things to you that would scare you—things that would be worse than what you saw in the hotel room. Why would you trust me?”

The troubles in my mind fell away, and I stopped feeling the need for pretension. For a rare occasion, I willfully wanted to speak from the heart. “Because…I believe the man I saw in that photograph has a good heart. I believe he
can
be you again. Knowing that it was you who helped me in Pullman, I no longer doubt that you want to keep me safe.”

His touch wavered for a moment. “Why…didn’t you open your eyes, Nik? Why didn’t you want to see me?”

“I thought I would never see you again.”

“Did you think if you opened your eyes you would feel something?”

“Eric…I thought you were going to kill me. I
wanted
you to kill me. Then…you didn’t. Then you…touched me in a way I’d never been touched before. The way in which you held me made me think I was dreaming,” I whispered. “I thought if I opened my eyes, I would wake up from the dream and see that you never existed. When I finally allowed myself to see, I knew it was real. I cried because I didn’t want you to leave—but we can only dream for so long—so I made you leave. The coffee you left on my doorstep…made me smile for the first time in years. Then…” My lip quivered as my eyes watered. “I…became so upset, because I thought I screwed up my chance with someone who would make me feel like being with him was worth opening myself up to the things I tried to avoid.”