All The Pieces (Pieces of Lies 3) (3 page)

“Wait Josh, stop. I know the reason. What those boys did to each other with that hit man. The games they played. Their lies. The pain they caused me. This is information I already know. I don’t understand where you are going with this and why you are bringing it up, especially today.”

Just hearing her say that made me know that I was about to turn white with fear. The way she had thought about Clint and Samuel. How she believed they were not right for her because of those actions with the hit man. The actions ‘I’ had put in motion. Her horrible and distasteful perception of them that ‘I’ had created. How would she react when she found out it was ‘I’ that put all those thoughts and feelings in her head? I wouldn’t forgive someone who had done that to me. Why would she do the same?

Even though I wanted to pass out from the pain that was creeping and crawling inside my heart, wanting to constrict and devoid me of breath, I needed to finally be the good guy and do right by Norah. It was time to show her my hand. This wasn’t a game anymore. Our love had to be from truth, from now until forever. I swallowed, leaned in closer and gently kissed her lips. I needed to taste her one more time, as pure and sweet and full of the love for me I’ve always wanted and always hoped for. She returned the gentle kiss, with tenderness, and as she pulled away, she rubbed her nose up against my chin, silently telling me to go on. It was time. I inhaled the sweet smell of her skin, and as I pulled away, I met her eyes, now determined to be open and honest.

“I know you don’t. That’s the problem Norah. You don’t know what I did. You don’t know that I was the one who started that war between Clint and Samuel. I...planted a fake hit on Clint from Samuel. Then Clint naturally retaliated by putting a real hit on Samuel to protect himself and you. I was the one who made them look bad. I started that whole mess. I was the one who arranged for you to find out about the contract on your birthday, and I was the one who knew you would come to me after those two let you down.”

Norah’s eyes froze. She swallowed again and again, trying to mentally register all this new information. But even seeing the darkness loom in her mind, and feeling her body getting even tighter, I couldn’t stop. I had to go on. The truth was spilling out of my mouth.

“It was me Norah. I did it all. I turned them against each other. I made them look like the worst kind of guys in the hope that you would finally see me for me, as the one who is always there for you and the one who loves you above everything and everyone.”

She sat speechless, just watching me. Was she alright? Was she going to explode? I couldn’t tell through the wall she had put up in her expression. It was really lifeless, and oddly numb. I couldn’t read her. I couldn’t see through the gaze she held on me, like it was turning me inside out. I gripped onto her knees harder in the hope she would say something; anything that would give me an insight into what she was feeling and thinking at that moment. When she refused to show any emotion, I continued to ramble with the truth. I didn’t know what else to do.

“I know I had no right to do this to you, but if you ask me if I regret it, I will answer you no. If you ask me if I’d do it again, I’d say yes. I would do it again and again and again. There is a darkness in me that lives and breathes just like yours, except it’s motivated by love, and not by pain.” I grabbed onto Norah’s hands and held onto them. She didn’t push me away but allowed her hands to rest in mine. That was a small sign that there may have been hope for me.

“I took away your choices because I was selfish. I made them look bad because I was willing to do whatever it takes for you to see only me. We had waited such a long time to be together and even though I manipulated how you saw those guys, I still believe that fate and destiny brought you to me, because the last six months being with you, have been the greatest months of my life. I believe that even though I built this from darkness, what we have together is light, all light, and it’s because we are soul mates that our light continues to shine and get brighter. There is nothing more perfect in this world for me than the way your touch makes my whole body feel like it’s home. You are my home Norah. It doesn’t matter where we are in this world; when I’m with you, it’s the past, it’s the future, it’s just this calm and passionate feeling of perfection that rises in my heart every time you are near. And you may hate me forever and never forgive me for doing this, but know I will never stop fighting for you, I will never stop searching for your soul and I will never stop believing in our love.”

I squeezed her hands, hoping she’d respond, but they lay lifeless in mine, cold and unmoving. I kept going, hoping for something, anything that would bring six months of love up to the surface. I needed her to react in some kind of way. I needed a hint to show me she might still care.

“I can’t take back what I did. I can only promise you that from this day forward, our love will be pure and that there is nothing you don’t know about me now that could ever get in our way. I’m so sorry I did this Norah, but I’m not sorry I got to have you and love you, because it is perfect. So perfect. Our imperfection is a surreal state of loving perfection that makes us soar. Please forgive me Norah. Please, oh please, fucking forgive me. Please don’t leave. Please marry me, because even though what I did was despicable, you still love me unconditionally and you can get past my darkness too. Just know what I did; it was because I love you and wanted to take care of you and be your hero forever.”

Norah sucked in a huge gulp of air after listening to everything I had to say. I was still kneeling but now had placed my head in her lap, waiting for her to push it away, waiting for the explosion I knew was imminent. Slowly, very slowly, she lifted my head with one of her fingers so she could look at me. There was a long pause, where our eyes searched into each other’s, right down into the pits of our stomachs and back again. Then, she slapped my right cheek. Hard. Her eyes flaming. Then she proceeded to slap my left cheek with her other hand, with equal force. She went to do it again to my right cheek, so I shut my eyes, waiting for the blow I knew was coming, and that I knew I deserved. I wanted her to beat the ever loving shit out of me if it meant she might be able to forgive me one day. But the blow didn’t come. I opened my eyes to her hand that had stilled above my face, mid-slap. She was breathing incredibly fast. Then Norah did the most unexpected thing I could possibly imagine. She dropped her hands and pulled my body on top of hers, and kissed me. She was kissing me with so much force I couldn’t breathe. Her mouth was filled with a need and want I hadn’t experienced before. She turned our bodies around and climbed on top of me and pushed me back onto the bed.

I couldn’t explain why she was doing this. I didn’t know where it was coming from, but she attacked me with such sexual force I was mentally knocked out. So I just let my body take on a life of its own. I reacted with the same force and the same intensity she was showing me. It was all crazed passion as she straddled me on the bed and reached down to my pants, swiftly unzipping me free for her. I was so fucking hard for her. I was always hard for her. She lifted up her dress and positioned herself above me. I was so scared and so turned on at the same time. She wasn’t wearing any panties underneath her wedding dress, and I moaned as she slid on top of me. She lifted herself up, and slowly, and very purposely, she slid on top of me again, making sure we could feel every inch of pleasure as we became one. And then she quickened her movements.

She was expressing a need I couldn’t put into one word. It was angry, it was sad, it was love and it was lust. It was an emotion I hadn’t seen from Norah before, and as she rode me fast, saying my name over and over under her breath, it dawned on me. This sex wasn’t forgiving. It wasn’t drawing me in and moving forward. It felt final, like Norah was saying good-bye. This was good-bye sex. This is why I had never seen it before. This is why it felt completely different and emotional. She was going to leave the moment this was over and run out of my life.

I felt my heart ache, as her whole body trembled with passion above me. I tried to stop her moving so I could talk and change her mind, but she was like a wild animal. She felt determined to take this to the edge. I grabbed onto her thighs, trying to slow her down, and then suddenly she stopped and stared at how I was gripping both her legs, trying to bring back some kind of control. She gazed down, breathing hard, and said, “Josh, I
really
need to do this.”

I instantly let go of her legs to give her the freedom she needed to lose herself in the moment, in us. I had to give her what she wanted. If this was a good-bye and this was how she needed it, then I would make sure it was everything and more. I lifted my back up so we were now face to face while she was on top of me. I held her gaze and then I saw another tear escape her eye.

Oh God, this is good-bye. I wanted to cry as well. I wanted to pause, and hold her, and beg her to give me another chance. But it was too much. Norah moaned my name loudly, and then I found my release, very hard, as I yelled her name too. It was so unexpected, but I never wanted it to end. I never wanted this feeling of us joined together as one to stop.

But it did.

She slowly climbed off me and stood up, pulling down her dress. I could only stare up at her from the bed as I tried to steady my breathing and the beating of my aching heart. I adjusted myself, zipped up my pants and pushed myself up so I was sitting on the bed, waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, I lifted my hand to her and said, “Norah, I..” She walked over to me and clamped her hand over my mouth forcefully.

“You’ve said enough Joshua. I need a minute, okay. I’m going to go to the bathroom, and when I come back out, we’ll talk. There is something I need to say too.” Norah removed her hand from my mouth, and slowly walked backwards into the bathroom, holding my eyes for a few more seconds before going in and closing the door.

My head was swimming with so much mixed emotion. I had no idea what Norah was going to say when she decided to come back out. Was she going to say good-bye? Was she going to forgive me? Was she going to demand that I take her home as soon as possible?

She had slapped me, and then made love to me. What did that mean? Why would she do that? I couldn’t understand her reaction. I didn’t know what to think. My heart felt like it was stuck in quick sand, unable to find a way to free itself because it was slipping into a dark scary pit of imminent sorrow, the longer I waited for Norah to come back into the room.

I was completely lost in an emotional wasteland. There was no conscious flow. My eyes were transfixed on that bathroom door, waiting...just waiting.

The fact my mind was so consumed with what had just happened on the bed, didn’t allow me to see the shadow sneak in through the window. It failed to acknowledge the sound of footsteps in the still air, and it didn’t allow me to sense the person come right up behind me...and put a gun to my head.

It was just one minute. That’s all I needed. Just one, tiny, little, inconsequential minute. Josh had finally bared his whole self to me, and now, I was about to do the same. I had heard what Josh said, but had not completely processed it. Should I be angry? Should I be sad? Should I be more than this...calm? There was too much else going on inside my brain that it didn’t seem to matter anymore. The path, the process, the lies, the truth. Wherever and however weren’t factors that now affected my thinking or clouded my judgment. His truth had hit me, but with little impact. Well, I guess how I handled it wasn’t what he would call ‘little impact,’ but there was a reason I attacked Josh the way I did. I couldn’t help the way I felt and what I needed to do.

Taking a breather in the bathroom, I thought quickly about Josh’s words as his massive deception moved through me. It simmered in my blood as it tried to react, but I wasn’t building up to explode the way I normally would. I wasn’t feeling the rise of rage or the need to run. Perhaps it was because deep down, I always sensed that Josh was involved in how we got together. Perhaps my subconscious knew it was coming. Something was always ‘coming’ these days.

But Josh was my soul mate because as much as he complemented me, he also had a darkness he had to keep at bay too. I believed it had started to grow inside him on the day he lost his parents. How his sparkly green eyes turned darker with the pain of their loss. Death always changes people, and Josh didn’t just lose his parents but his life too. It was all taken away from him, yet he tried not to let it consume him or destroy our bond. But I know that darkness grows where the light can’t shine. Josh had lost some of his innocence when he lost everything else. When he escaped to Morewell and sent me that letter saying good-bye, I believed, deep down, he fled because he didn’t want me to see what he was already beginning to change into. A darker and more haunted version of the sweet boy I met when I was thirteen. He was protecting me from a side of him he feared I wouldn’t accept or wouldn’t understand. But he was wrong. Very wrong. That was becoming clearer by the second. To me, destiny is destiny, no matter what the course. And now, more than ever, I had found a reason to see through the dark. The light had filtered in and through my heart and into my eyes. It wrapped around my mind and gave me peace I didn’t know I could have. Even if I wanted to be mad, I couldn’t find that burning rage that wanted to ignite. And, even if I wanted to run, my feet were stuck in one spot, somber and still. Everything had already changed.