Debt, page 13
Logan doesn’t answer, and already I’m regretting the question. I know something hurt him, but who am I to ask him about it so soon? I’m breaking my rule, I want to know him, I want to know everything about him.
He shifts his arm so that my head is no longer resting on it, leans forward.
I did overstep it, but I don’t care. Maybe this is the last time I’ll ever see him again, and I want to get everything I can out of it, not only the sex I’ll demand later.
He looks down at his feet, then at me.
He inhales a deep breath, and then he says something to me that will forever change the way I think about the world. He tells me a story that puts my own life in perspective, and makes me question what I’ve held dear, and what’s really important in life.
He tells me about how he lost his father. And his mother.
And why he fights.
And why he continues to fight. And what he really sees when he’s in that cage, the hate, the fury, the pain.
By the end of it all, my world is shattered, the floor is shaking, I have no stability.
By the end of it, I know one thing, and I know it to my core, my very fiber. And I don’t care if it’s too soon, I believe in intuition, I believe in it more now than ever.
The thing I know is this:
I love this man. I love him irrevocably. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone.
And I know I will lose him.
I know it. More intuition.
But I love his very soul.
I want to spend every aching moment with him, to breathe my last breath with him.
I put my arm around his neck, and bring my lips to his ear. “Logan, take me to bed.”
-2-
In the hotel room, his movements are darker this time. And when he takes my shirt off and brings his lips to my clavicle, I’m filled with a deep, poignant sadness. I have not felt this precise emotion in years. I have not felt this emotion since I was seventeen.
Logan’s hands curl around my lower back as he presses me up against the wall and grazes my skin with his teeth. His kisses are slow, needful, as if nothing exists in his world right now but me.
I feel the same. My mind and soul are engrossed by the power radiating off of him.
I opened up a coffin for him, and I can feel his pain as if it were my own.
“Don’t hold back,” I tell him. “Don’t hold back.”
My hands graze his short hair while his lips travel a fiery path down toward my breast. My bra is off in a snap, and when my breasts spill out, Logan’s hot mouth covers my nipple with such violence that I let out an involuntary whimper.
And then my jeans, his hands grappling, fighting with them, ripping the snap open and yanking them down until my entire body is abuzz with lightning fire.
Logan’s lips travel lower to my belly button...and then he’s on his knees.
He yanks my underwear down and puts his tongue inside my center almost in one motion.
I yelp, tremble, my legs losing vigor and force as my hands slide and roll over his head and he kisses me below to the point where every muscle in my body feels like a steel bar.
I rock into him, pressing down, not wanting him to stop, but preferring to have his cock inside me when I burst.
But he’s in control. If he takes me over the edge now I’ll let him.
I gasp, whimper, moan.
Logan stands, yanks his belt off, crushes my body against the wall with his.
The mixture of pain and love inside him is palpable.
He pulls his pants down, and soon his cock is pushing against my stomach and the need to have him inside me is maddening.
He glares me deep in the eyes, waits. “I don’t want it like this,” he says. “Not with you.”
“How?”
“A fuck. I don’t want that. Not...with you.”
Oh, man, Logan, Logan, Logan, Logan... My eyes close involuntarily. I cup my hands around his neck, my nether lips screaming.
The only words sounding in my head are I love you I love you I love you I love you. But it would sound ridiculous to verbalize them now.
I do love him.
But I won’t tell him.
“How do you want it?” I ask him.
“Long,” he says. “Long...and forever.”
I can’t answer. Can’t.
My head sags onto his shoulder. I could stay with him like this, just like this, the head of his cock pushing against me below, our bodies pressed together, and nothing else happening.
I could stay like this.
Logan’s hands wrap around the buns of my ass, and he pulls me up, drowning me in a kiss that has me lightheaded. “Don’t move,” he says. “Don’t move.” He reaches down for his pants, pulls out a rubber, doesn’t let his eyes drift from mine while he’s doing it.
I hear the crisp of the packet opening, and I gush with anticipation, every muscle tightening in my stomach to the point where I think I will break out in cramps if he doesn’t put his cock inside me immediately.
He presses both hands against the wall next to my head. “Ready?” he says.
No. “Yes.”
I don’t know what hits me.
I’m howling with ecstasy and juddering over the edge at his first long, slow, impaling thrust.
The climax is a supernova.
-3-
I scream and burst and howl and crash. My legs curl around his lower back and then my feet are off the ground and he’s holding me up against the wall which hurts like a bitch but I just can’t keep my legs straight. My head bangs against the plaster.
But Logan didn’t burst, and when my feet finally find the ground again, he rolls into me long and slow, his eyes fixed on mine—beautiful, sad, aching blue eyes. There’s a fury in his gaze, a rage that’s not aimed at me but which is almost divine in its force.
His energy rocks me to my very core, and whereas I thought I was spent, his thrusts have me singing again within minutes.
Logan’s jaw tightens. He lets out a strained moan as he starts approaching climax himself. His thrusts grow faster, harder, more desperate, but his eyes never leave mine. I stroke his hair, my heart breaking and regrouping more times than I can count. I love you, Logan. I love your soul. I repeat these words in my head to myself, feeling them, feeling them more than for anyone I’ve ever felt them before. Feeling them, perhaps, for the first time in my life.
Logan’s neck muscles tense. “Oh,” he growls. “Ohhhhhhh.”
Faster.
Harder.
Faster.
Harder.
The world pauses.
Logan’s eyes turn into something savage, something primal, something heavenly.
The next three words out of his mouth change me forever. They’re said slow, they’re said gently, they’re said almost in the throes of agony: “Oh...yes...Kyla.”
And then he shatters.
-4-
Logan slides out of me and catches his breath, pushes me against the wall.
His breathing is ragged, labored, his muscles pumped and red from exertion.
“I need to know something from you, Kyla.” His tone is serious. “And when you answer, no hedging, just this once. No fear. None. Please. I need to know this. I need the truth, OK?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Answer quick. Answer the first thing that comes to your mind. No judgment. I won’t judge you. I won’t hurt you. I will respect what you say.”
“Yes.”
“Instant answer, please. Please.”
“Yes.”
“You ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t get fooled by the muscles, Kyla. You’ll break me if you lie. You’ll break me.”
My hand goes to his cheek, I give him a small kiss on the lips, the most loving kiss I could ever give anyone. “I promise you I will be honest, no matter what you ask.”
“OK. OK.” He heaves in a deep breath. “No bullshit.”
“No bullshit.”
“Do you feel something for me, Kyla? Do you? Honestly.”
My answer is so fast I even have to repeat it because it tumbles out quicker than the protections of my mind allow me to hold it back. “Yes,” I say. And then again: “Yes.” My hand caresses his cheek. The protective mechanisms of my mind come crashing down. Yes, no bullshit, I feel something for you, more than I’ve felt for anyone.
Logan’s shoulders sag. He exhales as if he’d been holding his breath for an hour. “OK,” he says. “OK.”
“I want the same answer from you, Logan. No bullshit.”
“Ask me.”
“No bullshit.”
“Ask me.”
“Promise me.”
“You’re afraid to ask, Kyla. Just ask. Ask.”
“Do you...feel something for me?”
“More than I’ve ever felt for anyone. And I’m scared shitless about it.”
Our lips entangle.
He throws me onto the bed.
He gets on top of me.
And then he’s inside me again.
Where he should be.
A tear breaks in my eye as he rides me. I have no explanation for it, but memories are resurfacing. Not memories, emotions. Things I haven’t felt in years. And where do these feelings come from? Where? Not Matt. No. I never felt this for him. Someone else. Someone else. But who?
I hold on to Logan with all the strength I can muster.
Somehow, if I let him go, I think I’ll drown.
-5-
At night, the dream hits me like a fist, and the worst part about it is that it doesn’t feel like a dream, more like an interspersal of memories that might or might not be real combined with things that definitely aren’t real. Or are they?
...I’m somewhere foggy. Maybe a boat. I hear the water lapping underneath me. I get the idea that something howls in the distance, but I’m not sure if it’s my mind playing tricks on me.
Matt is steering the boat, standing on the end of it with a big stick which means we’re probably in a gondola.
Even though Matt is only three feet away from me, there’s an invisible barrier between me and him, a wall of no substance that I can’t get through.
And then I remember my once-best-friend Madelyn, and I almost expect to see a second vision of Matt’s clenching ass and her in-the-sky legs with red heels on her feet while Matt juts his cock inside her.
But she isn’t here.
No one’s here except me and him.
Just the lapping water, a possible howl in the distance (still not sure) and fog, so much fog, so much endless fog that I start to fear what might lie behind that fog...which is when I look down, and which is when the dream, uncertain as to its course at first, now is clearly becoming a nightmare.
There is redness in the water. Not crimson red or blood red, just a redness, an uncertain possibility of blood but my mind tells me it’s not blood, it’s a reflection of the red moon...but there is no moon.
Matt, I want to say, but no words come out, and when I look to my right, to where Matt had been steering the boat, he too is covered by fog. “Matt, are you there?”
He doesn’t answer, and the red seems to reach out toward me, stretching its fingers as if it is a person in the water but I dare not look at it, dare not, not at all.
“Matt?”
I’m somehow aware that the redness has an arm and fingers and those fingers are stretching out, wanting to touch my skin and make it cold and drag me down into the lake...
I ignore it.
And, in that way of dreams, the redness disappears, and the idea that the redness is an actual thing disappears...but in the back of my mind I know it’s still there.
Matt?
But it’s not Matt that suddenly appears at my left, it’s Vince, and Vince’s big bodybuilder body and his proximity makes me gasp and makes me want to scream but, again, in that way of dreams, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. And Vince’s body, suddenly so huge, so massive, so overwhelming and powerful holds me down and his hands clutch my arms and I don’t want to be like the woman in the water—
Woman in the water?
Which is when I recall her face, I recall seeing her, drowning, and I know this happened but I can’t remember when it happened and I know now that the redness was blood, real blood, her blood and the woman was looking up at me, her black hair floating around her, and she had a smile. A smile, goddamnit, and that smile was looking up at me, and I was saying, “Mommy? Mommy? Mommy, are you OK? Are you OK?” and my hand reached down and tried to grab the smiling dead woman—
“I’m gonna show you what a woman deserves,” Vince says.
No. No. No. No.
Matt. Goddamnit, Matt, where are you when I need you?
Which is when I hear Madelyn, groaning, screeching, “Oh, Matt, baby. Oh yes, baby. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Oh, godamnit yes yes yes yes yes.”
“You’re a fucking teasing whore,” Vince growls.
Matt, Jesus Christ, Matt, I need help here. I need help, damn it.
Madelyn: “Mmmmm, baby. Oh yeah, baby. Oh yeah, oh yeah I love the way you fuck me.”
Vince: “You’re a fucking teasing whore.”
My mind whirls. I don’t know if it’s Matt above me or Vince or, damn it, Dave or any of the other pricks I let inside me.
“I’m gonna—”
What I attempt as a scream comes out as nothing but a low moan, a desperate howl inside my chest that nevertheless can’t find escape.
Multiple hands cover me.
Vince is gone, and I’m swinging, swinging, swinging. Someone has my hands and my legs, and they’re swinging me...into the water.
Every time I swing over the edge of the gondola, I see her, I see her for real and now I know it is a memory and she died, she died, that’s why she said sorry. She killed herself, didn’t she? Mom, mom killed herself. Why would there be blood?
I hear myself screaming, but it sounds like someone else’s screams. A third woman. There was a third woman. No, a second one.
I’m confused.
No, the screaming is mine, yes, it’s mine.
I’m now on a pier, away from the vision of the woman in the water and I think she’s following me, chasing after me, climbing out of the water like some zombie—
Swing. Swing. Swing.
They’re going to throw me in, I realize. They’re going to throw me into the water with the dead woman inside it.
They’re going to—
The screaming hits a shrill pitch, but no one realizes it’s me, they just keep swinging me over the pier now.
I swing over the edge of it.
They let me go.
And I fall.
Just before I hit the water, just before the woman underneath it grabs me in her dead hands...
I wake up.
-6-
I don’t realize my body is crushed under Logan’s arms until I hear his voice.
I’m fighting him, surrounded by fog, surrounded by water, surrounded by—
“Get off me, get off! Get off! Get off!”
“Ky. Ky. Ky, it was a dream, Kyla. Just a dream, you’re OK. You’re—”
“Get off!”
Logan releases his grip...and I snatch it back.
I realize where I am. In his hotel room. Dark. Too dark. “Lights. Lights, please, the lights.”
He stretches over, one of his hands gripped tightly in mine, puts on the light.
I look around, gathering my wits, trying to be sure there really isn’t a lake and that I’m really not inside it... “Shit.”
My hand grips Logan’s fingers until I think they’re about to snap.
He doesn’t ask, doesn’t say anything.
He pulls me down to the bed, holds me, holds me tight.
The images don’t go away.
The light stays on.
I stare at the curtains, unable to sleep.
“What was it about?” he asks.
I try and think back to it, try and remember, but the dream disappears. “I have no idea.”
As the night rolls by, my eyes droop, tiredness takes me. I dream again, but not so badly. And in the new dreams, I’m asking questions about the water, the woman. The questions are answered. I don’t know by whom. But answered.
The answer is that it was just a dream, just a dream, Kyla.
But I know they’re lying.
-7-
It’s Logan who’s on the one-seater this time when I wake up, no shirt, just jeans.
His face is serious.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He tenses his jaw. “I have to leave today.”
My chest collapses in on itself. I sit up, pulling a sheet over my breasts for no logical reason. “So soon?”
“Yeah. Two-day drive. And I need some time to recover when I get there. I can’t lose another fight. I was counting on that winner’s prize. The next bouts don’t pay so much.”
“Right. Right.” I look down at my legs.
“You’ll come to Derby, won’t you?”
“Of course I will.”
“And what about your friend?”
“She’ll come gladly. You still want me there?”
Logan’s eyes narrow. “Of course I want you there. I want you here, too. We’re gonna take this as it comes, Kyla. You and me.”
“Uhm, yeah.”
“No, listen to me. I told you yesterday I had feelings for you. I wasn’t lying.”
God, that only makes it worse. “Good.” I feel a twang of pain shoot through my jaw.
“How do you wanna play this?” he asks.
“Huh?”
“Us.”
Us. “Wow. I...”
“I know you’re not a relationship girl, or you try not to be. And that wasn’t the agreement when we first started this whirlwind. But I’m not letting you go, not yet. And if I follow certain rules, I expect you to follow them as well until one of us gives up. If one of us gives up. I won’t go near another woman if you won’t go near another man. At least until Derby is over, then we see where we’re at.”
“OK.”
“If you don’t give up on me, Kyla, I won’t give up on you.”
I think I see him smile, but I’m not sure.
He shifts his arm so that my head is no longer resting on it, leans forward.
I did overstep it, but I don’t care. Maybe this is the last time I’ll ever see him again, and I want to get everything I can out of it, not only the sex I’ll demand later.
He looks down at his feet, then at me.
He inhales a deep breath, and then he says something to me that will forever change the way I think about the world. He tells me a story that puts my own life in perspective, and makes me question what I’ve held dear, and what’s really important in life.
He tells me about how he lost his father. And his mother.
And why he fights.
And why he continues to fight. And what he really sees when he’s in that cage, the hate, the fury, the pain.
By the end of it all, my world is shattered, the floor is shaking, I have no stability.
By the end of it, I know one thing, and I know it to my core, my very fiber. And I don’t care if it’s too soon, I believe in intuition, I believe in it more now than ever.
The thing I know is this:
I love this man. I love him irrevocably. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone.
And I know I will lose him.
I know it. More intuition.
But I love his very soul.
I want to spend every aching moment with him, to breathe my last breath with him.
I put my arm around his neck, and bring my lips to his ear. “Logan, take me to bed.”
-2-
In the hotel room, his movements are darker this time. And when he takes my shirt off and brings his lips to my clavicle, I’m filled with a deep, poignant sadness. I have not felt this precise emotion in years. I have not felt this emotion since I was seventeen.
Logan’s hands curl around my lower back as he presses me up against the wall and grazes my skin with his teeth. His kisses are slow, needful, as if nothing exists in his world right now but me.
I feel the same. My mind and soul are engrossed by the power radiating off of him.
I opened up a coffin for him, and I can feel his pain as if it were my own.
“Don’t hold back,” I tell him. “Don’t hold back.”
My hands graze his short hair while his lips travel a fiery path down toward my breast. My bra is off in a snap, and when my breasts spill out, Logan’s hot mouth covers my nipple with such violence that I let out an involuntary whimper.
And then my jeans, his hands grappling, fighting with them, ripping the snap open and yanking them down until my entire body is abuzz with lightning fire.
Logan’s lips travel lower to my belly button...and then he’s on his knees.
He yanks my underwear down and puts his tongue inside my center almost in one motion.
I yelp, tremble, my legs losing vigor and force as my hands slide and roll over his head and he kisses me below to the point where every muscle in my body feels like a steel bar.
I rock into him, pressing down, not wanting him to stop, but preferring to have his cock inside me when I burst.
But he’s in control. If he takes me over the edge now I’ll let him.
I gasp, whimper, moan.
Logan stands, yanks his belt off, crushes my body against the wall with his.
The mixture of pain and love inside him is palpable.
He pulls his pants down, and soon his cock is pushing against my stomach and the need to have him inside me is maddening.
He glares me deep in the eyes, waits. “I don’t want it like this,” he says. “Not with you.”
“How?”
“A fuck. I don’t want that. Not...with you.”
Oh, man, Logan, Logan, Logan, Logan... My eyes close involuntarily. I cup my hands around his neck, my nether lips screaming.
The only words sounding in my head are I love you I love you I love you I love you. But it would sound ridiculous to verbalize them now.
I do love him.
But I won’t tell him.
“How do you want it?” I ask him.
“Long,” he says. “Long...and forever.”
I can’t answer. Can’t.
My head sags onto his shoulder. I could stay with him like this, just like this, the head of his cock pushing against me below, our bodies pressed together, and nothing else happening.
I could stay like this.
Logan’s hands wrap around the buns of my ass, and he pulls me up, drowning me in a kiss that has me lightheaded. “Don’t move,” he says. “Don’t move.” He reaches down for his pants, pulls out a rubber, doesn’t let his eyes drift from mine while he’s doing it.
I hear the crisp of the packet opening, and I gush with anticipation, every muscle tightening in my stomach to the point where I think I will break out in cramps if he doesn’t put his cock inside me immediately.
He presses both hands against the wall next to my head. “Ready?” he says.
No. “Yes.”
I don’t know what hits me.
I’m howling with ecstasy and juddering over the edge at his first long, slow, impaling thrust.
The climax is a supernova.
-3-
I scream and burst and howl and crash. My legs curl around his lower back and then my feet are off the ground and he’s holding me up against the wall which hurts like a bitch but I just can’t keep my legs straight. My head bangs against the plaster.
But Logan didn’t burst, and when my feet finally find the ground again, he rolls into me long and slow, his eyes fixed on mine—beautiful, sad, aching blue eyes. There’s a fury in his gaze, a rage that’s not aimed at me but which is almost divine in its force.
His energy rocks me to my very core, and whereas I thought I was spent, his thrusts have me singing again within minutes.
Logan’s jaw tightens. He lets out a strained moan as he starts approaching climax himself. His thrusts grow faster, harder, more desperate, but his eyes never leave mine. I stroke his hair, my heart breaking and regrouping more times than I can count. I love you, Logan. I love your soul. I repeat these words in my head to myself, feeling them, feeling them more than for anyone I’ve ever felt them before. Feeling them, perhaps, for the first time in my life.
Logan’s neck muscles tense. “Oh,” he growls. “Ohhhhhhh.”
Faster.
Harder.
Faster.
Harder.
The world pauses.
Logan’s eyes turn into something savage, something primal, something heavenly.
The next three words out of his mouth change me forever. They’re said slow, they’re said gently, they’re said almost in the throes of agony: “Oh...yes...Kyla.”
And then he shatters.
-4-
Logan slides out of me and catches his breath, pushes me against the wall.
His breathing is ragged, labored, his muscles pumped and red from exertion.
“I need to know something from you, Kyla.” His tone is serious. “And when you answer, no hedging, just this once. No fear. None. Please. I need to know this. I need the truth, OK?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Answer quick. Answer the first thing that comes to your mind. No judgment. I won’t judge you. I won’t hurt you. I will respect what you say.”
“Yes.”
“Instant answer, please. Please.”
“Yes.”
“You ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t get fooled by the muscles, Kyla. You’ll break me if you lie. You’ll break me.”
My hand goes to his cheek, I give him a small kiss on the lips, the most loving kiss I could ever give anyone. “I promise you I will be honest, no matter what you ask.”
“OK. OK.” He heaves in a deep breath. “No bullshit.”
“No bullshit.”
“Do you feel something for me, Kyla? Do you? Honestly.”
My answer is so fast I even have to repeat it because it tumbles out quicker than the protections of my mind allow me to hold it back. “Yes,” I say. And then again: “Yes.” My hand caresses his cheek. The protective mechanisms of my mind come crashing down. Yes, no bullshit, I feel something for you, more than I’ve felt for anyone.
Logan’s shoulders sag. He exhales as if he’d been holding his breath for an hour. “OK,” he says. “OK.”
“I want the same answer from you, Logan. No bullshit.”
“Ask me.”
“No bullshit.”
“Ask me.”
“Promise me.”
“You’re afraid to ask, Kyla. Just ask. Ask.”
“Do you...feel something for me?”
“More than I’ve ever felt for anyone. And I’m scared shitless about it.”
Our lips entangle.
He throws me onto the bed.
He gets on top of me.
And then he’s inside me again.
Where he should be.
A tear breaks in my eye as he rides me. I have no explanation for it, but memories are resurfacing. Not memories, emotions. Things I haven’t felt in years. And where do these feelings come from? Where? Not Matt. No. I never felt this for him. Someone else. Someone else. But who?
I hold on to Logan with all the strength I can muster.
Somehow, if I let him go, I think I’ll drown.
-5-
At night, the dream hits me like a fist, and the worst part about it is that it doesn’t feel like a dream, more like an interspersal of memories that might or might not be real combined with things that definitely aren’t real. Or are they?
...I’m somewhere foggy. Maybe a boat. I hear the water lapping underneath me. I get the idea that something howls in the distance, but I’m not sure if it’s my mind playing tricks on me.
Matt is steering the boat, standing on the end of it with a big stick which means we’re probably in a gondola.
Even though Matt is only three feet away from me, there’s an invisible barrier between me and him, a wall of no substance that I can’t get through.
And then I remember my once-best-friend Madelyn, and I almost expect to see a second vision of Matt’s clenching ass and her in-the-sky legs with red heels on her feet while Matt juts his cock inside her.
But she isn’t here.
No one’s here except me and him.
Just the lapping water, a possible howl in the distance (still not sure) and fog, so much fog, so much endless fog that I start to fear what might lie behind that fog...which is when I look down, and which is when the dream, uncertain as to its course at first, now is clearly becoming a nightmare.
There is redness in the water. Not crimson red or blood red, just a redness, an uncertain possibility of blood but my mind tells me it’s not blood, it’s a reflection of the red moon...but there is no moon.
Matt, I want to say, but no words come out, and when I look to my right, to where Matt had been steering the boat, he too is covered by fog. “Matt, are you there?”
He doesn’t answer, and the red seems to reach out toward me, stretching its fingers as if it is a person in the water but I dare not look at it, dare not, not at all.
“Matt?”
I’m somehow aware that the redness has an arm and fingers and those fingers are stretching out, wanting to touch my skin and make it cold and drag me down into the lake...
I ignore it.
And, in that way of dreams, the redness disappears, and the idea that the redness is an actual thing disappears...but in the back of my mind I know it’s still there.
Matt?
But it’s not Matt that suddenly appears at my left, it’s Vince, and Vince’s big bodybuilder body and his proximity makes me gasp and makes me want to scream but, again, in that way of dreams, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. And Vince’s body, suddenly so huge, so massive, so overwhelming and powerful holds me down and his hands clutch my arms and I don’t want to be like the woman in the water—
Woman in the water?
Which is when I recall her face, I recall seeing her, drowning, and I know this happened but I can’t remember when it happened and I know now that the redness was blood, real blood, her blood and the woman was looking up at me, her black hair floating around her, and she had a smile. A smile, goddamnit, and that smile was looking up at me, and I was saying, “Mommy? Mommy? Mommy, are you OK? Are you OK?” and my hand reached down and tried to grab the smiling dead woman—
“I’m gonna show you what a woman deserves,” Vince says.
No. No. No. No.
Matt. Goddamnit, Matt, where are you when I need you?
Which is when I hear Madelyn, groaning, screeching, “Oh, Matt, baby. Oh yes, baby. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Oh, godamnit yes yes yes yes yes.”
“You’re a fucking teasing whore,” Vince growls.
Matt, Jesus Christ, Matt, I need help here. I need help, damn it.
Madelyn: “Mmmmm, baby. Oh yeah, baby. Oh yeah, oh yeah I love the way you fuck me.”
Vince: “You’re a fucking teasing whore.”
My mind whirls. I don’t know if it’s Matt above me or Vince or, damn it, Dave or any of the other pricks I let inside me.
“I’m gonna—”
What I attempt as a scream comes out as nothing but a low moan, a desperate howl inside my chest that nevertheless can’t find escape.
Multiple hands cover me.
Vince is gone, and I’m swinging, swinging, swinging. Someone has my hands and my legs, and they’re swinging me...into the water.
Every time I swing over the edge of the gondola, I see her, I see her for real and now I know it is a memory and she died, she died, that’s why she said sorry. She killed herself, didn’t she? Mom, mom killed herself. Why would there be blood?
I hear myself screaming, but it sounds like someone else’s screams. A third woman. There was a third woman. No, a second one.
I’m confused.
No, the screaming is mine, yes, it’s mine.
I’m now on a pier, away from the vision of the woman in the water and I think she’s following me, chasing after me, climbing out of the water like some zombie—
Swing. Swing. Swing.
They’re going to throw me in, I realize. They’re going to throw me into the water with the dead woman inside it.
They’re going to—
The screaming hits a shrill pitch, but no one realizes it’s me, they just keep swinging me over the pier now.
I swing over the edge of it.
They let me go.
And I fall.
Just before I hit the water, just before the woman underneath it grabs me in her dead hands...
I wake up.
-6-
I don’t realize my body is crushed under Logan’s arms until I hear his voice.
I’m fighting him, surrounded by fog, surrounded by water, surrounded by—
“Get off me, get off! Get off! Get off!”
“Ky. Ky. Ky, it was a dream, Kyla. Just a dream, you’re OK. You’re—”
“Get off!”
Logan releases his grip...and I snatch it back.
I realize where I am. In his hotel room. Dark. Too dark. “Lights. Lights, please, the lights.”
He stretches over, one of his hands gripped tightly in mine, puts on the light.
I look around, gathering my wits, trying to be sure there really isn’t a lake and that I’m really not inside it... “Shit.”
My hand grips Logan’s fingers until I think they’re about to snap.
He doesn’t ask, doesn’t say anything.
He pulls me down to the bed, holds me, holds me tight.
The images don’t go away.
The light stays on.
I stare at the curtains, unable to sleep.
“What was it about?” he asks.
I try and think back to it, try and remember, but the dream disappears. “I have no idea.”
As the night rolls by, my eyes droop, tiredness takes me. I dream again, but not so badly. And in the new dreams, I’m asking questions about the water, the woman. The questions are answered. I don’t know by whom. But answered.
The answer is that it was just a dream, just a dream, Kyla.
But I know they’re lying.
-7-
It’s Logan who’s on the one-seater this time when I wake up, no shirt, just jeans.
His face is serious.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He tenses his jaw. “I have to leave today.”
My chest collapses in on itself. I sit up, pulling a sheet over my breasts for no logical reason. “So soon?”
“Yeah. Two-day drive. And I need some time to recover when I get there. I can’t lose another fight. I was counting on that winner’s prize. The next bouts don’t pay so much.”
“Right. Right.” I look down at my legs.
“You’ll come to Derby, won’t you?”
“Of course I will.”
“And what about your friend?”
“She’ll come gladly. You still want me there?”
Logan’s eyes narrow. “Of course I want you there. I want you here, too. We’re gonna take this as it comes, Kyla. You and me.”
“Uhm, yeah.”
“No, listen to me. I told you yesterday I had feelings for you. I wasn’t lying.”
God, that only makes it worse. “Good.” I feel a twang of pain shoot through my jaw.
“How do you wanna play this?” he asks.
“Huh?”
“Us.”
Us. “Wow. I...”
“I know you’re not a relationship girl, or you try not to be. And that wasn’t the agreement when we first started this whirlwind. But I’m not letting you go, not yet. And if I follow certain rules, I expect you to follow them as well until one of us gives up. If one of us gives up. I won’t go near another woman if you won’t go near another man. At least until Derby is over, then we see where we’re at.”
“OK.”
“If you don’t give up on me, Kyla, I won’t give up on you.”
I think I see him smile, but I’m not sure.
