The Sordid Promise (42 page)

He slowly gazed up at me. I studied him, because he seemed completely different from the man he showed me last night. He was stuck deeply inside melancholy.

“I don’t know who the fuck I am,” he whispered as he nearly lost my eye contact. “You did this to me and it’s fucking me up. I didn’t want to keep things from you anymore. Shit. I didn’t even tell you all there is to my fucked up life. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t. I think—Did I…lose you, Nik?”

Stunned, I wasn’t sure how to respond. His eyes pleaded. His posture wasn’t as confident as it normally was. It almost seemed as if…I was the one who broke him. I took quite a while to respond to him. “What happened between yesterday and today—”

“You…shrank away from me,” he swallowed hard, seeming to choke on the emotion. “I tried to touch you in your sleep, and you were…revolted by me.”

I held the sheet to my chest before it unfurled. “W-would you really kill me if I wanted to leave?”

He lowered his lids and shook his head. “I would want to….but if it really came down to it—no. But don’t think that if I lost you, it wouldn’t end in some sort of tragedy. Nothing has changed; I’d never willingly let you go.”

I knew clearly what he meant. Somehow, so easily, Eric made the descent into becoming Trent. Fragile. Vulnerable.

“I thought I could get better with you. I thought I
would
be better. You whirled into my life like a cool breeze and turned into an all consuming tornado. You brought me back to a place I didn’t want to be in. You’ve broken me,” I sobbed. “Wasn’t that your whole point? You’ve completed your sick little fantasy. The sick fantasy in which you manipulated situations to make sure I fell for you. To make sure I had no one else left in my life but you. If you’re crazy enough to come all the way to Pullman to stalk me, to do all the things you’ve done…I know you followed me in the park the first time we met. You threw that obnoxious party to draw me out. You set Maisha free to get my attention. You got it. You got everything you wanted. You won. Just….let me go. Because, I won’t be Estelle for you. I will never be her for you.” I looked pointedly at my ring, wondering if the proposal was just the start of his new cycle.

His eyes lifted at me and shook his head. Leaning forward, he palmed his face as he took in deep, short inhalations. “Fuck, Nikki. What else am I supposed to do to show you? Yes, I did some things to get your attention, but they weren’t for selfish reasons. Nothing I’ve ever done for you—with you—was selfish. I wanted you…because I wanted to be with you. I wanted to show you that I could be the perfect man for you and you alone. I can’t break someone who’s already been broken. Don’t you understand? That’s why I was drawn to you. You understand me just as much as I understand you.” His demeanor transformed back into a sullen state. His head was bowed as he looked up at me, there were tears in his eyes. It was a stark difference from the man I met on the trail who dominated me. He was figuratively on his knees to me, begging for me. Begging to be mine and me his. It was then I realized who exactly I saw in the photograph. It wasn’t Eric. It couldn’t have been Eric. “I need something from you,” I stated with quiet effusion.

“Anything, Nikki,” he gasped.

“I need you to be Ethan right now. I need you to be Ethan and tell me something that will make me stay. Something that will tell me that everything between us was as genuine as you claimed it was. That nothing you did for me was selfish, deeming you as that one noun you claim you aren’t—can’t be. A sociopath. I can look beyond the monster. I can…forgive the monster your parents and your stepbrother created, if you give me the one thing I need. The one thing you haven’t given me.” I swallowed. “I think that’s what I need.” I sauntered towards him, leaving only inches between us. I unwrapped the sheet from my body, standing completely naked in front of him. He quietly stirred as his eyes contemplated my body. He moved to touch me and I withdrew. I slid my palm along the stubble on his face and lifted his chin. “No,” I said firmly but quietly. “Earn it back.”

He closed his eyes for quite a while. He kept his head bowed as he slid down to his knees. He seemed to waver as he slowly lifted his head to look at me. He took in a deep inhale, before he revealed his light brown hues to me. The moonlight shone on them so perfectly, I could see everything.

I immediately closed my eyes in reaction to the glimpse of a different person staring back at me. I didn’t know what I was asking for, and now that I’d received it, I didn’t know how to react.

“Nikki, I’m giving you what you want, can you at least extend me the fucking courtesy of looking at me?” There wasn’t anger in his words, but something else. Something he’d never shown me before.

I shook my head vehemently. “No,” I wailed.

“Look. At. Me,” he bellowed.

I slowly opened my eyes. What I saw staring back at me, made me surrender the fight. The man I longed to see from my favorite photograph looked fixedly at me. The man full of sincerity, torment, and heartbreak. I was looking at…Ethan.

“I….love…you, Diouana.”

I squinted and quietly wept, because the four words were said with so much emotion and reverence, my trepidation waned.

“Can I touch you?” he asked with a broken sadness.

“Yes,” I choked.

He grazed his lips across my navel before placing a kiss on my abdomen. His hands crept up the back of my legs and surrounded the curvature of my behind, causing my body to shiver. He continued to move his hands up my body until they settled on the small of my back. Drawing me closer, he pulled me forward by wrapping his arms around my hips and pressed the side of his face against my stomach.

Thrown into a tailspin, I cried profusely. The pounding became worse before it got better. Contradicting thoughts overcrowded my mind, erecting a mind-numbing headache. Instead of coming forth with an intoning volume, my disparaging thoughts against Eric grew quiet. Suddenly….everything stilled.

Sometimes you're so in love with a dream, you believe you're in heaven. When you finally realize you're dreaming, you open your eyes and see that you're really in hell. I’m not a dreamer, and most people’s ideas of utopia ring as my idea of hell. I wanted the sordid creature I could relate to. I wanted him. I could deny it, but deep down I knew the truth. I knew what I felt when I killed my father. I knew that Eric’s summation about me was strikingly correct. I’d been hiding for too long.

People who hid were reluctant to accept the fact that they were broken and could never be pieced back into completion. They pretended to be complacent with their dirty, but deep down, they sought redemption—some way to change who they were at the core. Those people were bound for a collision course, because their denial and unfulfilled redemption sent them on a speedy path, leading to their own end. And I used to be one of those people.

While I think a normal person would want to run, call the authorities—whatever natural reaction an ordinary person, in a similar situation, would have; fight or flight. There is never an in between. In truth, the word ‘normal’ had always rang as a relative term.

I couldn’t run from the person I understood completely, or the person who understood me before I could come to terms with who I really was. I knew about his addiction. I knew the addiction with controlling women began with his stepmother. When he broke someone, he must’ve felt the same vindication I felt every time the blade sliced my flesh. As one in the same, we chased the original feeling, hoping to replicate it each time we indulged in our dirty little secret. Because, when my father took his last breath, and cursed me with the last beat of his heart, I felt…free.

Together, Eric and I created something together that I’m sure we both felt we’d never encounter. Something that moved beyond the sensation erected from our bad addictions. Something rare and genuine. Something uniquely us.

Everything Eric had done for me—sacrificed for me—rang as my idea of romantic. I’d spent so many years medicating my inability to feel guilty over my father’s death. I realized what I did, was what I had to do. Eric had been, and I think he would always be, the embodiment of everything I’d ever wanted.

He became…my angel of catharsis and my new addiction.

I’m hooked on an exclusive prescription; generic substitutes won’t do. The black box warning doesn’t mean a thing, because the benefits outweigh the danger. Because the benefits gave me all the things I needed the most.

Towards her last breath, my mother did me very well.

When I touched the top of his head and affectionately ran my hands through his hair, he clung to me. “Thank you for realizing the source of all that I do,” he whispered.

“Ethan,” I called with a quiet calm.

With hesitation, he turned his head towards my naked stomach. His heavy exhale spread a heat across my abdomen. He lightly grazed his lips against my exposed skin. Shivering, I closed my eyes for a moment as the tears flowed. Very slowly, he tilted his head up to regard at me.

I clasped his prepossessing face in my hands, sweeping my fingertips across the moisture on his cheekbones. “You’ve become a replacement for my razor blades.”

He slid up my body to stand and kissed my forehead. “For you, I’ll become something more. I’ll be
everything
you need. Be patient with me and you’ll see.” He searched my eyes through heavy lids as he thumbed my lips. “Reassure me that we’ll be okay—that you’ll be mine forever.”

Staring at the ring on my finger, I nodded. I tilted my chin up, giving him a sullen smile. “I’m still yours. I can’t belong to anyone else. I…I love you, Ethan.”

It’s crazy what you get away with when you look like a demigod and have a cock that’s the equivalent of heroin. The attitude that screamed, ‘I am the shit and you will agree with me.’ I could have virtually any woman I wanted. I could refrain from the things most guys had to endure just to get a glimpse of a piece of ass. The conversation: Let her drone on about herself as you pretend to be interested. The pomp and circumstance: The wining, dining, the romance, and the excessively expensive purchases to make her touch her ankles. No. I’m exempted from all of it. I could be an absolute asshole while knowing that, regardless, legs will be spread for me by the end of the night—they
always
are.

But I knew something the women I bedded never really find out about. Sure, they may think they’ve seen glimpses of it. But none of them have seen it completely; a mask that serves to hide the full extent of what’s inside. It isn’t by my choosing, mind you. And sure the mask reads; handsome asshole, but what’s inside the handsome shell? No. They had no fucking idea.

Most people purposely wear masks, but I could see through them. Women. When they’re on their knees to me, letting me do things to them they would never tell their friends, coworkers, or mommy and daddy about, I could see everything they’re trying to hide. I could see how truly fucked up they were. I could move the boundaries they thought were firmly mounted. I could make them go further than they planned to go. It’s deemed so very fucking easy. My weapons of choice; my pearly whites, my bedroom voice, and my way with words. I could manipulate any woman into doing anything I wanted. I could manipulate them into thinking anything I wanted them to think. I’m their reeducation. They’re left so open and willing that everything I wanted from them becomes mine for the taking. I liked fucking their minds. I liked pushing the lines so far over the edge, there’s no such thing as blurring the lines. The lines didn’t exist. To me, the lines never fucking existed. I felt accomplished if I made someone question who they were. Eventually they learn; they become whomever I want them to be. It all served one purpose—it made my cock throb.

But one particular woman…I’d laugh at any guy who claimed he might’ve developed feelings for a girl he’d never met. She turned me into a sucker. Why? Because, she literally wore her damage on her sleeve. It’s not because people feel particularly bold online, and speak without a filter because they are too chicken shit to say it in real life. No. She’s different. I knew she wasn’t pretending. I knew she was really like that in reality.

But I might’ve fucked up, because the situation didn’t read as kosher.

I remembered the founder’s brick just by the door before I walked in the door to Harvest Investments. Remembered the name on the door of the office I was forced to wait in like a chump. Distinctly remembered the receptionist, who couldn’t resist fiddling with her pussy because I told her to, refer to my appointment as a meeting with Mrs. Givens. There’s no possibility that I could’ve been communicating with my financial idol for well over a year, while thinking she was someone else. I’m too smart for that. However, I couldn’t fight the nagging feeling that I’m going to be catfished.

And if I am…the bitch is going to pay in ways she never imagined.

The door opened, and because it’s what I do, I checked myself out in the window to make sure everything was meticulously in its place.

“Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Brenton.”

I turned, looking her over. “That’s Dr. Brenton to you, Mrs. Givens.” She’s Diouana’s mother…there’s no question about it. It’s my fucking financial idol, there’s no question about that either. Couldn’t say she hadn’t knocked them dead in her heyday, because right about now, I could forgive her for fucking with me. She was stunning. I’d never done the cougar thing. If she hadn’t been Diouana’s mother, I would’ve done some very dirty things to her finely aged ass tonight. “So,” I drawled, “are we going to play the question game, or are you going to tell me what I’m doing here with you, when I’m supposed to meet with your daughter?”