A.K.A. Read online

  “What?”

  “But it wasn’t you. It was him.”

  “Bri, you’re making no sense.”

  “I didn’t go to the trees to pee. He told me to go to the trees. But I changed my mind and went into the cave. He planned to… But he didn’t because I went to the cave instead.”

  “You’re rambling.”

  I look around my room. Nothing is out of place. Panic rises, taking over. “I… He was here. I swear. I can prove it.”

  “You’re shaking. Let’s get you dressed, and we can talk this through.”

  I don’t argue. I point to the dresser. He gets out a pair of panties, a bra, a T-shirt, and pajama bottoms.

  He sits next to me on the bed.

  “He—Tad took off my clothes. He ripped my sun dress.”

  He frowns as he helps me dress. When he finishes with the bra, he picks up the T-shirt. “This is going to hurt.”

  I nod my understanding.

  He pulls it over my head and I hold my breath as he slides the broken arm through the hole.

  I let out my breath when he’s done.

  He looks at me and wipes my cheek. “Don’t cry, Bri. You never cry.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  He pauses as if thinking. “I don’t know. I just don’t see it, I guess.”

  I didn’t believe him, but I have bigger problems.

  I reach for his hand. “Help me to the kitchen. I’ll prove he was here.”

  When we get to the kitchen, I flip on the lights. “I… I don’t understand.” I walk to the sink and pull the trash out from underneath. “Empty?”

  I then walk to the fridge and open it. I see no Chinese food, no wine, and no sign of dinner. “I don’t understand. How can that be?”

  Ethan walks up behind me. “What are you looking for?”

  I turn and face him. “Tad brought over dinner, Chinese food. He had wine; he put the drugs in the wine.”

  “What drugs?”

  “He said GHB, succinylcholine, and other drugs. He said his dad was a pharmacist and that’s where he got the drugs. He drugged his fiancée April. He killed her, shot her, and made it look like suicide. He said… he said he killed…” I rub my aching head. “I can’t remember. I think he said three women.”

  He runs his fingers through his hair. He’s upset. He thinks I’m crazy.

  I’m beginning to agree. “You don’t believe me?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Bri. There’s nothing here. No dinner. No wine.”

  “Maybe it’s…” I open the side door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To check the trash.” I walk to the carport and pull the light chain. I open the can and look inside. “Empty? That can’t be. It was half full this morning.” I look over at Ethan. “I swear it was.”

  “I believe you.”

  I know he’s lying. “No you don’t. You think I’m taking drugs, or I’ve gone mad, or… I don’t know, maybe both.”

  He pulls me into his arms. “I want to, Bri. I’m trying to.”

  I rest my forehead on his hard chest and close my eyes. I’m in bad shape. My head is split in two, my heart is racing, and my arm is throbbing. But I can’t let it go. I push him and step away. “I’m not crazy. It happened. My cookie said, ‘You learn from your mistakes. You will learn a lot today.’ He asked for the last pot sticker, but I ate it. I shot him!” I walk to the side door and open it.

  “Where are you going?”

  I don’t answer as I walk back to my bedroom and look around.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I shot him in the left bicep. He yelled at me and placed his hand over it. It was bleeding, coming through his fingers.” I kneel and run my hand over the rug. It was dry and there was no sign of blood. “This can’t be. It just can’t be.”

  Ethan kneels next to me. “Bri? You’re shaking. You’re going into shock.”

  I look at him. “I shot him.”

  “If what you’re saying is true, we need to call the police.”

  I shake my head.

  “Bri, let’s call them and let them look around. Maybe they’ll find something, some evidence we can’t.”

  “No! We can’t call them.”

  “What? Why? If you’re saying he drugged you twice, and then you shot him, we need to notify them.”

  I hold my hand over my mouth. I’m going to be sick.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I stand, run to the bathroom, and heave in the toilet.

  Ethan kneels next to me, gathers my hair, and holds it back while I throw up the contents of stomach and more.

  When I’m done, he wipes off my mouth. “It’s going to be okay, Bri.”

  I shake my head. “No, it’s not. I’m losing my mind.”

  “No you’re not. I believe you.”

  I look at him.

  “What’s with…? I think you lost a contact.”

  “What?”

  “Your eye, Bri. It’s stunning. It’s like gold.”

  I stand and look into the mirror. “Oh my God.”

  He stands next to me, looking at my reflection. “It’s only a contact, Bri. Don’t you have others?”

  “Of course I do. It’s…”

  “Why in the hell would you wear colored contacts when you have eyes like that?”

  “Because I have eyes like that!”

  He shakes his head while I get a contact from a drawer. I can’t open the package with one hand. “Please help me.”

  He frowns.

  “I can’t see without them!”

  He holds out his hand. “Okay. I was just saying they’re beautiful, and maybe clear contacts might work just as well.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to yell. I like wearing the brown contacts.”

  “It’s okay, Bri. They’re only contacts.”

  He opens the package and helps me put it in.

  “Thank you.”

  He looks at my arm. “We need to take care of that.”

  I nod.

  “Let me take you to the hospital in Newport.”

  “Okay.”

  He leads me to the bed and helps me put on a pair of runners.

  “Thank you, Ethan.”

  He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He thinks I’m a drug addict and tripping. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t believe me.

  “Are you sure about the police? I’ve worked with some of them. They seem to be good guys, Bri. They could help—”

  “With what?”

  He sighs.

  A lone tear runs down my cheek.

  He reaches to wipe it off.

  I stop him. “Don’t. It’s not for me or for you.”

  “I believe you, Bri.”

  I know he doesn’t, but I’m grateful for the lie.

  He holds out his hand. “We need to get you taken care of.”

  I reach for it, and he pulls me up. “I know you don’t believe any of this. But please believe what I said in the cave.”

  “What you said?”

  “That I wanted you from the moment our eyes meet.”

  He smiles. “Then you have me, Bri, for as long as we have.”

  A PAWN CAN BE TRADED AFTER REACHING THE OTHER SIDE

  I had two crayons in my box, one white and one black. There was no stepping on the line; I stood to the right or to the left. I carried a coin in my pocket, once flipped; I had only two choices, good or evil. This was how I viewed my world and myself. I played for the right team, or I didn’t play at all.

  When Tara was killed, my world spun off course, tilted off its axis. My white and black crayon blended and became gray; I not only stood on that line, I owned it. And every day I spend with him, every moment I lay underneath him, and every minute he’s inside of me that line fades.

  “Damn you, Bri. Look what you do to me.”

  “I’m looking, Ethan. You’re coming undone.”

  He spreads me wide and enters me. “I’m going
to make you forget, Bri. I’m going to unravel you.”

  I moan as he fills me beyond full, only to stretch me further and fill me again and again.

  He finds his rhythm and the chase, the race to find our orgasms, begins.

  He looks into my amber eyes, and I wonder what he sees in them. They are Morgan Steel’s eyes, but Bri is the woman he’s falling in love with. He’s falling for a woman who isn’t real. She’s a script, a character I play. I don’t want to accept this. I want to continue to bathe in my temperate pool of false reality, a false reality within a reality that is beginning to slip away from me.

  He smiles and something stirs behind my left breast. Can it be a small facture in my impenetrable heart? A tear nearly escapes. I reach up and catch it on my finger before it falls.

  He stops. “Am I hurting you?”

  “No. You could never hurt me.”

  His smile floats away and is replaced with a look I know all too well. I should ask what he’s hiding or not saying, but I don’t because I already know, and hearing him say it out loud will push me over the cliff I’m hanging onto with a rope that’s slowly disintegrating.

  He’s told me over and over he believes me; he believes Tad drugged me and tried to rape me. He believes Tad killed his fiancée and I was meant to have been the next tally on his kill sheet. But I know he’s lying; he doesn’t believe any of it.

  He finds his rhythm again, but it’s not the same; it’s punishing and painful. He’s angry with himself for falling for a woman with amber eyes who trips on drugs and is losing her mind. And he’s angry with me for letting him.

  Our relationship is a mess of twisted lies and false realities. I should have ended it before it even started. But I couldn’t. I don’t know if it’s because my prospective, my sense of morality is distorted and tainted because I’ve already committed the unthinkable, unforgivable sin, or if I’m truly losing my mind. Or maybe I’m just the most selfish woman on the planet. Whatever the reason, I won’t let him go. I won’t stop loving him or let him stop loving the false me.

  I reach up, place my hand behind his vein-ribbed neck, and pull him down. He turns his head, and I whisper in his ear, “I need you to be the man you told me you were, the man who can make me lose all thought. The man who can unravel me.”

  He returns to his position and looks down at me. His eyes are filled with love, lies, loathing, lust, and too many regrets to count.

  But on the fringes of regrets and within the chaos of love and loathing, there is something that tugs on my soul. It flashes so quickly across his pupils, it’s a wonder I can see it. But I did. It’s the tether that binds us together. It’s thin and fragile like that disintegrating rope I’m hanging from, yet it bends and stretches like an unbreakable rubber band.

  We’re kindred old souls meant to be together, yet…

  He pulls out, and I moan my displeasure.

  “Did I give you permission to moan?”

  He doesn’t wait for my answer because he knows I won’t.

  He flips me over and his game of being in control, of being my master begins.

  My moan of displeasure is replaced with a groan as a slow burn crawls up my left arm. The cast is off, but it isn’t completely healed.

  He gets off the bed, pulls my backside nearly off the mattress, and penetrates me in one thrust.

  It’s deep, hard, and cruel. It’s what I want. It’s what he needs. It’s who I am. It’s who he wants to be.

  The pain in my arm is forgotten as an orgasm rips through me. His punishing rhythm continues until my second orgasm trips over his, and we fall.

  He collapses on the bed. I join him and pull the blanket over us. No words are spoken for several minutes, and I’m glad of it. It’s a relief, not having to come up with words that in no way can describe my thoughts and feelings.

  I close my eyes, wishing for sleep to take me away. Take me back to a time were a normal relationship could be possible. To a place where a woman named Morgan could freely love the man lying next to her.

  I feel his callused fingers on my cheek.

  I open my eyes.

  “Naptime is over.”

  “Ethan, please. I’m so tired.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s time for round two.”

  He climbs on top of me, and once again spreads me wide before entering me.

  I reach up, so wanting to touch, to feel his hard flesh.

  Before I make contact, he grabs my hands and entwines our fingers.

  “No touching.”

  “Please,” I beg.

  “Did I give you permission to speak?”

  I moan out my displeasure as he presses my hands into the mattress.

  The slow burn returns and I flinch slightly.

  “Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

  “Did I give you permission to speak, Mr. Black?”

  “You keep forgetting who’s in charge, my dear.”

  My dear. I hate those two words. I can feel and taste the bile as it begins to rise.

  “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I surprisingly enjoy his games of dominance. I’m not one to give up control, especially to a man. Hell, I wasn’t one who had the time or the headspace for a relationship. I was in love, married to my career and the pursuit of justice. Putting away a child molester, a rapist, or a murderer was more fulfilling than any relationship I’d ever had or thought I could have.

  A sexual orgasm lasted just seconds. The orgasm, the satisfaction and the high I got from my work, lasted for days. It was my addiction, my drug, and my life for so long, and I missed it.

  “Look at me,” he tells me.

  I open my tired eyes.

  “Keep them open and on me. I want to see your eyes when I come inside you, and I want you to see mine when I do.”

  I nod and force my eyes to stay open.

  The pace quickly becomes brutal, and I no longer have to force my eyes to remain open.

  The veins on his neck begin to pulsate. I run my hand between us and feel his balls tighten and shrink. Right when I think he’s about to come, he pulls out and flips me over.

  I cry out in shock and pain. “Ethan!”

  He says nothing as he pulls me nearly off the bed by my ankles. He then reaches over and opens the drawer of the nightstand. He removes the lube.

  “Ethan. Please not now. I’m still sore.”

  He ignores my plea and lifts my hips up. I feel the burn as a lubed finger stretches my ass. “Just my finger.”

  “Oh thank God.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “No!”

  He chuckles. “You big baby.”

  “I’m not the one who’s big.”

  He enters me and we both sigh. Me in relief. Him, I’m not sure.

  He soon finds a rhythm, and I find mine.

  “Feel good, baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “It could have been better,” he singsongs.

  I ignore him as another finger begins to draw circles over my clit. “Ethan,” I cry.

  “Stay with me. Don’t come until…”

  “You’re such a control freak.”

  “And just for that…,” he says and adds another finger.

  “Ethan,” I cry out as pleasure and pain collide and then explode.

  He finds his own release and then collapses onto my back.

  When he catches his breath, he flops onto the mattress.

  I join him and he pulls the sheet over us.

  Soon he’s breathing heavy, fast asleep.

  I look at the alarm clock. “Shit.” I have to get going. I have a meeting, and I don’t want to miss it like I did last week.

  I slide from his arms and out of bed. I grab my robe off the floor and walk into the bathroom. I look at my refection in the mirror and frown. I look terrible. Dark circles rim my bloodshot eyes.

  I sigh heavily as I turn on the water and step into the shower.

  I close my eyes and let th
e water rain down on me. I try not to think, but it’s useless. Thinking in the shower, planning my day, putting thoughts onto a virtual list, and checking them off is as ingrained as breathing.

  The sex and Ethan’s games of dominance have never been predictable. But in the last few days, something is new to his games, something urgent, disconnected, and raw. It’s as if he’s never satisfied; he has to have more and more.

  I thought this urgency had something to do with Tad, or Gary’s mentioning Tad. No one has heard from him since the day he told everyone at the pub he was driving back to Portland because he needed to fly out the next day. But I’ve spent some time analyzing it, and I realize Ethan’s behavior really changed after he got back from a trip to Seattle.

  It was for a class reunion, and something must’ve happened at the reunion. He returned as a man who seemed desperate to connect. We spend all our free time in bed, or in each other arms. He’s even called in sick a few times, and this isn’t like him. I’m beginning to worry.

  I set my worries aside as I get out of the shower and dress. I quickly dry my hair and write a note for Ethan before I walk out the door and hop into my car.

  I drive the distance between Rocky End and Newport seemingly without thinking, as I find myself pulling into the church parking lot, not knowing how I’ve gotten here.

  I get out of my car and lock it, then run up the back steps and into the church.

  I wave to a few familiar faces as I place my handbag on my chair and join them at the coffee table.

  I fill my cup and look around.

  “Earth to Bri.”

  I blink and come out of my head.

  “Are you okay?” Rob asks as he hands me a sugar packet.

  “Yeah, I’m great,” I reply as I take it.

  I open it and add it to my coffee, then wrap my cold hand around the Styrofoam container.

  He tilts his cup my way. “I really don’t know why we drink this shit. It sucks.”

  I smile. “It does. But don’t tell Brenda. She means well.”

  “I would never tell her,” he says and takes another sip. After he swallows, he unsuccessfully hides his grimace behind a smile.

  I take my own sip and then top it off with more of Brenda’s bitter coffee before sitting at my usual spot in the circle of chairs.

  Rob sits next to me in his usual chair.

  I down the terrible coffee and begin to break the cup into small pieces as everyone sits.