Until I Break (23 page)

“You know, of all the things I suspected you
might be, a coward wasn’t one of them.”

I exhale and tighten my grip on my temper. I
don’t respond to her.

“You’re all commanding and in control. You
make demands of other people, but it’s all just an attempt to hide
the fact that you’re afraid. Whatever else can be said about me, at
least I finally took the risk. I had the balls to actually trust
someone with my secrets. I guess it’s just unfortunate that the
person I trusted them with is nothing more than a child in a man’s
clothing. I’d hide, too, if I was nothing but a scared,
little—”

“Enough!” I shout, my voice sounding harsh in
the quiet of the cabin.

“What’s the matter, Alec?
Dr.
Buraquinho
? Did I hit a nerve? Has no one ever called you on
your bullshit before? Were you a bed-wetter? Were you the smelly
kid in class?”

I know she’s hurt and angry, and I know she’s
just lashing out, but for some reason I find her attack
infuriating. I’ve treated her well, been considerate of her fears
and her past, and to have her say these things is…is… Damn, it’s
maddening!

“Be very careful, Samantha,” I warn steadily,
my knuckles aching from holding the steering wheel so tightly.

“Why? What are you gonna do? Tie me to the
bed and spank me? No, you’d like that too much. You’re no better
than—”

“Would you like to know why I am the way I
am? Why I warn girls like you to stay away from me? Because I’m
dangerous, that’s why.” Gripped by rage, but also tired of always
hiding and burying the thing that haunts me most, I pull off the
highway and slam the Range Rover into park. I turn my furious gaze
on Samantha. “You wanna know what happened to the last girl that I
let go with? The last person who saw me when I wasn’t in control?
Well, I would give you her phone number, but she wouldn’t answer.
She’s dead. She’s fuc—”

Samantha’s gasp cuts into my mad tirade. Her
eyes are wide with fear and pain. I look down and realize my
fingers are wound around her upper arms, biting into her flesh.
Like I’ve grabbed something hot, I let her go and push her back
into her seat. My chest is heaving, my breath coming faster in my
anger and emotion. It’s still rolling through me like an
uncontrollable wave, a wave that I’m always fighting. Always.

I force myself to relax into my seat, letting
my head fall back and my eyes drift shut. I concentrate on taking
deep, slow breaths. We sit this way for several minutes before
Samantha dares to speak.

“What happened to her?” Her voice is small,
afraid. As it should be.

“I killed her, Samantha,” I grind between my
gritted teeth. I lift my head and pin her with my disgusted gaze.
“For just a few minutes, I wasn’t in control and I killed my
girlfriend. I didn’t mean to, but do you think that makes me feel
any better about it? Huh?” Samantha is shrinking back in her seat,
against the door, her expression a mixture of emotion. And I hate
every one of them. “What’s the matter? Not the answer you thought
you’d get? You wanted me to tell you all about me. Well, there it
is. So what now? Huh? What now? Where do we go from here? How do
you suggest we proceed,
Dr
. Drake? In all of your infinite
wisdom from writing tall tales about twisted vampires and helpless
maids, what would you suggest I do to rid myself of this
curse?”

Her troubled gray eyes are glistening with
tears as she shakes her head. Her chin trembles, making me even
more furious.

“How are you a…a doctor? Why aren’t you in
prison?” she whispers.

I laugh. It’s a gush of the bitterness that’s
eating at my soul. “Oh, I should be. In prison that is. But what
happens when you’re the seventeen-year-old son of one of the most
influential surgeons in all of Seattle is that you can afford the
best lawyers money can buy. And those lawyers can convince people
to take it easy on such an outstanding student with such a bright
future. Even though it
was
an accident, by all rights, my
life should’ve been ruined. But it wasn’t. Instead, it was all
sealed up in a file when I turned eighteen and I went on with my
plans like it never happened. But Alyssa didn’t. She couldn’t. Her
life was over that night and she
couldn’t
go on. All the
king’s men couldn’t put her back together again.”

I pound the steering wheel and slam my head
back against the head rest, willing myself to calm down. My heart
is jackhammering against my ribs and my skull is throbbing like
something is trying to bust out of it.

“But it was an accident?” she asks quietly
after several minutes, needing reassurance.

“Does it really matter, Samantha? She’s dead.
To her, the circumstances don’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

Why those four words should penetrate the
turmoil roiling in my gut is beyond me. But they do. I lift my head
and look over at Samantha—this woman who I thought might give me
some insight; this woman who I thought, in the deepest, darkest,
most secret parts of my soul, might be able to help
me—
and I
see someone desperate to believe the best in me. Even after all I
just told her, she’s ready to believe something positive. All I
have to do is throw it her way.

“Yes, it was an accident.”

“What happened?”

I feel drained all of a sudden. Tired of
fighting. Tired of hiding. Tired of lying and pretending that I’m
something I’m not. I’m a monster. Plain and simple. There’s
something wrong with me. I’m messed up. Profoundly messed up. Maybe
hiding it was never the answer.

“Alyssa and I started dating when I was a
junior and she was a senior. She was from a well-to-do family, much
like mine. Her father was in politics. And, just like most
families, hers had its fair share of secrets. One was a dirty uncle
that had a fondness for blondes.

“It didn’t take me long to learn what she
liked. At first, I found it kind of strange and off-putting. It
never scared me; I guess I just wasn’t into that kind of thing. At
first. But then, the more she wanted me to do to her, the more I
started to like it. That feeling of power, of domination.

“Even after she went off to college, we kept
seeing each other. By then, we had a…special bond. We shared things
that other people wouldn’t understand.

“One weekend, before I graduated, I went to
stay with her at college. I was thinking about going to medical
school there with her. We went to a couple of parties, had too much
to drink and then went back to her apartment to have sex. On this
particular night, she asked me to choke her. Said she wanted to
feel it when I came, wanted to feel my fingers tighten then relax.
So I did. I did what she wanted. Only I’d had so much to drink, it
took me a little longer. I don’t know if I held on too tight. Or
too long. Or maybe both. But when it was over, I couldn’t wake her
up. I tried for a few minutes then I started CPR. But I just
couldn’t get her back.”

I rub my aching forehead. I rush through the
rest, tired of reliving the pain. “I called my father after that.
And he worked his magic. Of course, it wasn’t too hard when
Alyssa’s family didn’t want the truth known any more than my family
did. It would’ve ruined them. Her fetishes, an abusive relative.
Nasty stuff. So the bad guy got off and lived to fight another day.
The end.”

The silence is deafening. I don’t bother to
look over at Samantha. I don’t want to see the horror, the
judgment, the
revulsion
on her face. Resigned to the damage
that my confession has done, I put the Rover in drive and I pull
back onto the highway.

Neither of us speaks the rest of the way to
Samantha’s. I’m lost in the past and Samantha is…well, I have no
idea what she’s thinking. And at the moment, I can’t manage to
care. I’m consumed with remembered guilt. And fear. And pain. And
regret.

As I’m pulling onto the street in front of
Samantha’s house, she finally breaks the silence. “Is that why you
chose psychiatry?”

I’m weary. I’m tired of answering questions
and revisiting the most horrific time of my life. “No. I chose
psychiatry to understand why I became obsessed with that which had
caused me so much pain. After Alyssa, I sought out women who liked
what she liked. It was all I could think about for years afterward.
I chose psychiatry so I could try and help myself. So I could
understand it and then stop it.”

“And did you?”

“No. I have my theories, and I’m in control,
but there’s no fixing me. At least not that I’ve found. All it’s
taught me is that there’s a monster inside me. And I can’t let him
out.”

I pull to a stop, leaving the engine idling.
I just want Samantha to get out of my vehicle so I can get the hell
out of here. Put this whole night, this whole experience behind me.
It’s just now that I realize I’m in no position to help anyone
else. I’m the most damaged and twisted of all.

I jerk when I feel the touch of Samantha’s
cool, smooth fingers on my cheek. I turn to look at her. Her eyes
are full of both love and pity, neither of which I can stand the
sight of right now.

“That’s all I wanted from you. To know you,
to know the truth.”

I look into her liquid smoke eyes as I reach
for her wrist. I see the hurt register in them when I fling her
hand away. “Congratulations. You got what you wanted. And now you
know why you’ll never be enough for me,” I say harshly, wanting to
make this as painful as I possibly can so that both of us will move
on and never look back. “Now get out.” Her face shows stunned
disbelief. “Out!”

She flinches like I slapped her and it stabs
at my gut. I never wanted to hurt her. That’s why I warned her. I
warned her because this is who I am. It’s what I do. I hurt people.
It’s my curse. And that will never change.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE- Samantha

Mason stares down into my eyes. There’s a
peculiar light in the pale, lime green depths, one I’ve never seen
there before. It makes my heart flutter and my chest ache.

“
You know that when I do this, when I make
you like me, there’s no turning back. This is not the movies. You
can’t kill your maker and become mortal again. You will be like me;
you will be
linked
to me for all the days of
eternity.”

“
I know,” I assure him, biting back the
words that explain how badly I want that, the words that would let
Mason know that he’s all I’ll ever want. No matter how long forever
is.

“
What’s mine is mine. I will never let you
go. And I will never share you.”

I know he’s warning me, trying one last time
to scare me away, but what he doesn’t realize is that it’s no use.
I’ve been his from the first night I saw him. My only hope is that
I can make him all mine. No one else’s.

“
And maybe one day, I won’t have to share
you either.” It slips out before I can stop it, but not before I
can see the sadness come into Mason’s eyes.

“
That’s not the man I am, Daire. I wish I
could be that for you, but it’s not my nature. I’ll love you all
the days of the world, but I can’t promise to love
only
you.”

Tears are coursing down my cheeks. For the
first time since I began writing so many years ago, I can’t find
the happy ending. I can’t show my characters how to make it work
without one of them destroying the other. Despite the hopelessness
of my past, I have always nurtured the tiny seed that, one day,
there would be a happy ending for me, that one day I would find
true love and everything would be all right.

But here I am in “one day.” I’ve found true
love, yes. But everything’s not all right.

Alec’s feelings for me aren’t the same. He
might care about me, deep down in places he won’t even admit to
himself, but he doesn’t feel what I feel. If he did, there’s no way
he could have walked away.

And he did.

Alec Brand simply walked out of my life.

Well, drove. That night, when he drove me
home in his Range Rover and dropped me off, was the last time I saw
him. And that was eight weeks ago. Well almost. Fifty-four long
days and fifty-five even longer nights. Not that I’m counting.

You’re totally counting!

But who could blame him? I was totally out of
line, goading him the way I did. If he’d wanted to tell me, he
would’ve. And I should’ve respected that. He’s obviously tormented
about his past, and forcing him to tell me about it was wrong. Just
wrong.

So am I really surprised that he walked
away?

No. Not really. I’d have done the same thing
if he’d pushed me like that. And my past, though terrible, is
nothing like his. And he’s carrying it around, all that guilt, like
a thousand pound weight.

Every day.

The phone rings. My heart still speeds up
every time I hear it, but not nearly as much as it used to. After a
few weeks of not hearing from Alec, it began to penetrate my stupid
head that he’s not coming back, that he won’t be calling. But
still, I react a little bit even now. And just like always, I’m
filled with disappointment when I see that it’s not him.

This time, it’s Chris.

“Hello?” I try not to sound so mopey, but
there’s very little I can hide from Chris, no matter how hard I
try.

“Still in a funk, huh?”

I sigh. But she sees right through me. As I
suspected.

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Just being polite.”

“Asking someone if they’re in a funk is not
polite.”

“Fine. God, when are you gonna get over this?
You’re as prickly as a porcupine.”

“Then why do you still call me?”

“Because you’re my sister and I love you. I
refuse to abandon you in your hour of need. Even if that hour
extends into months. But I will warn you that my cut-off is
Christmas. You know I can’t have you sulk through the
holidays.”