Forbidden: A Standalone (27 page)

“I don’t know.” Trying not to cry was the most obvious sign something was wrong, and I didn’t want him to know. Not yet. So I didn’t cry. I just knew my limits had shifted from a foggy line miles and miles away to a cinderblock wall I’d just been smashed against.

Two years earlier

fiona

I
 leaned over Amanda and called into the little security mic on the driver’s side. “Fiona Drazen.”

The gate to Maundy Street
[→4]
clicked and opened slowly, and the driveway lights flicked on. Amanda and I were sober. The handsome older guy in the leather jacket had specifically requested sobriety and more. We weren’t permitted to even bring stuff with us.

“This better be good,” Amanda said, turning her Mercedes into the gate. “Or I’m going to Phoebe’s.”

“There’re a hundred paps outside that place. The rest are always pointing and looking away like they don’t care. I’m sick of it already.”

“You love it.”

“You can take the car if you want to bolt,” I replied, checking my face in the visor mirror.

“So you’re staying the night? Jesus. You haven’t even seen his dick.”

“He’s unbelievably sexy. I cannot deal with how wet I am right now.”

She parked beside a Bentley, one of six or seven cars parked along the private street and hardly the most expensive. “Is this number two?”

I pointed at the steel number 2 bolted onto the front of the house. “I don’t hear any music.” I opened the car door.

“Maybe it’s some old fart party.”

We walked up to the door and rang the bell. A woman opened it almost immediately. She was in her mid-twenties, wearing a long silk dress that looked as if it were made of motor oil. Her figure was a perfect hourglass shape, and her posture made her seem taller than she actually was. Raven hair draped her shoulders, and her eyes were a clear blue that just looked clear in the night lights.

“Are you Miss Drazen?” Her voice was silky and lower than I’d thought it would be.

“Yes.” We shook hands.

“And this must be Miss Westin.”

“Hey,” Amanda said, taking the woman’s hand.

“I’m Tiffany. Come on in.”

I glanced at Amanda. She touched her curls. She was so vain. She’d probably leave because Tiffany had better hair.

We followed Tiffany down the long, carpeted hallway. Her shoes were wicked high, explaining the height but not the posture, because they looked like they hurt to wear.

“Did Master Deacon explain what kind of party this is?”

“It’s a kinky BDSM party,” Amanda piped in. “Which is cool. I’ve been to those before. It’s not a big deal.”

I wished she’d shut up.

“It’s a big deal to us,” Tiffany said, stopping at a little wooden table in front of an interior door. “So we do ask that you sign non-disclosure agreements and liability waivers before entering.”

She picked up two leather folders from the table and handed us each one. I opened mine and sifted through the paperwork. Amanda stood there with her folder unopened.

“It looks standard,” I said.

My friend looked a little stricken. “Wait, what if something happens? We can’t tell anyone?”

Amanda, at her core, was a worrier. The weight of every single thing that could happen kept her from doing much of anything, except when she drank or snorted or shot up. Then she didn’t worry, and that was how she liked it. So taking her to a new place sober was already tricky.

“You don’t have to participate your first time,” Tiffany said. “As a matter of fact, we’d prefer you didn’t.”

“So then you don’t need me to sign this.” She handed back the folder.

“Amanda, stop being weird.”

“I have a bad feeling.”

Tiffany took the folder. “It’s important that you be honest with yourself about your limits.”

Limits. I knew mine. I had none.

“I’m honest about my limits.” I signed the paper and snapped the folder closed. I handed it to Tiffany then turned to Amanda. “I’ll find my way home.”

fiona

T
he room was flooded in sunlight, and still I slept. Deacon left and came back a few times. He crawled into bed with me and held me, stroked my hair while a headache raged through me. He gave me water, fed me. He took calls, and I heard him speaking Afrikaans in the other room, using a voice that had brought me to my knees a hundred times. I didn’t realize how fucked up I was, how exhausted from Westonwood even before the events of the last day. But I wouldn’t have slept for twenty-four solid hours if I wasn’t.

In that haze of sleep, with all my filters down, I heard Elliot’s buttercream voice.

Count backward.

Use different words to describe yourself.

Fiona, listen
[→5]
.

In my half-lucid state, I played the scene at the front door of Westonwood differently. I stopped. I listened to him. He said different things every time I rewound it and started again, but it always ended with him asking me to come home with him.

Fiona, listen.

When the fantasy ended well, I did go home with him, and I listened, and I slept until I woke biting back my scream, fogginess gone, too lucid, thoughts like broken glass.

I was alone in my new room, staring out the window at the little stables. I felt as if I were still in Westonwood, in a room someone else had made up for me. A box. A hole. The windows were open to the sounds of the wilderness, but I still felt imprisoned. The rustle of the leaves, the scamper of little night animals, the crickets. The dirt in my fingers. The twisting in my gut. Taking it like a whore, as I’d done a million times already except for the en-oh.

I couldn’t sleep.

I didn’t feel safe.

Warren was locked up, and I wasn’t thinking about him. Or it. Or anything. I was trying to fucking sleep at two in the motherfucking morning.

I got up and walked down the hall. The light under Willem’s door was on. I passed it and knocked lightly on Debbie’s door.

She didn’t answer. I walked in and snapped the door closed.

She turned in the bed. “Fiona?”

“Yes.” I crawled into her bed and put my arms around her.

“You smell like soap.”

I’d scrubbed myself red, drawing blood from my butt cheeks and twisting to scour the places on my back where he’d held me down. But I didn’t mention it, because I was asleep before I was tempted to explain.

***

I woke from bed at dinnertime.

Woke
being a word meaning, “bolted up straight.”

From bed
meaning, “Debbie’s bed in a strange room Deacon owned.”

Dinnertime
meaning, “I was hungry, it was dark, and I didn’t have a watch.”

Outside, I saw the stables. They were the size of a school gym. The smell of horses had been painted over in studio white. The lights were on inside, and Deacon stood atop a ladder, stretching his mighty form to do something to the ceiling. He was shirtless, and from across the yard, his abs were tight enough to kiss.

I heard voices in another room.

A robe and slippers had been laid out for me. I put them on and followed the voices to the kitchen. I’d hoped to see Debbie, but from half a hallway away, I discovered Margie reading a file of some sort on the counter.

“Welcome back.” She didn’t look up from the file.

“Who were you talking to?” I asked.

“I’m really not sure.” She closed the folder and turned to me.

I didn’t realize my arms were folded across my chest until she looked at them, and as if her eyes were hands, she made them uncross.

“Come here,” she said.

Belying her request, she came to me, three steps,
one two three
, and put her arms around me. Again, I had to fight the urge to cry.

“We all want to see you,” she said into my ear.

“Not yet.” I pulled away a little. “Just, can it wait?”

“I talked to Jonathan. He said you were acting strange when you left. And you looked beat up. Is there something you want to tell me?”

“Yes.”

Don’t cry.

You wanted it, whore.

Use different words.

“Okay?” Margie said.

The words were on my lips.
He pushed me down and raped me. He hurt me.
I was still hurt there. I could prove it. They could take pictures and do the kit. Though I’d washed away most of the evidence, I could talk about it. Then everyone would know, and they’d gossip, and it would be in all the papers, and the stink it created would be forgotten and…

“You want to tell me what?”

“Jonathan needs to worry about his own fucked-up ass.”

She let me go. “Ain’t that the truth.” She snapped open her briefcase. “Do you want to talk business? Or Mom’s spiraling nerves?”

“Business please.”

“I’m glad you’re back.”

“That’s not business.”

“It is. But so is this. You’re an outpatient, and you have to be under observation. Five sessions, just to make sure you’re recovering. I got you the therapist you liked.”

I almost breathed his first name, but stopped it in the tangle of longing and regret. “Doctor Chapman?”

I think I squeaked. I didn’t want to see him because I wanted to see him so badly my ribs felt like jelly.

“Yeah. That’s the one.” She put the file in her case.

I felt pulled to the sky with joy and the earth with dread until the middle of me thinned and disappeared like taffy pulled to its breaking point.

“And your friend?” Margie added. “I think her name was Karen Hinnley?”

“Yes?”

“She’s fine. Released this morning. Her lawyer called me and said she was asking for you. You all right?” Margie asked, snapping her briefcase shut.

“Hungry. I’ve been asleep for, like, thirty hours.”

She slid her case off the counter and kissed my cheek tenderly. “Are you all right here? Do you want to come back with me?”

“I’m fine.”

“Will you call me if you need anything?”

“No.”

“Say yes.”

“Yes. I promise. I’ll call you if I need anything. Like a latte or a foot rub.”

“Good girl.” She started out the door but turned. “You can change, sister. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t.”

“What if I told you I don’t want to?”

“You’re a shitty liar.”

She walked out before I could prove what an excellent liar I was.

fiona

D
eacon had left my pager on the nightstand. It was his way of reaching me no matter what. My lifeline. My umbilical cord. I wrapped my fingers around it and checked it.

—I’m in the stables—

Out the door, to the left, in the stables. It would take me moments to get across that strip of yard. And then what?

I regretted getting into his car for the first time since I’d chosen it over Margie’s. I’d needed to feel his protection—from myself and the world—at that moment, but I hadn’t intended to go with him. I hadn’t intended anything but to leave Westonwood, go to my place in Malibu, and not think about anything for a day or a year. I didn’t delude myself into thinking that had been a good plan, but it was something. I felt derailed in that strange white house, with a man I’d tried to kill and no purpose at all except to hide what had happened in the hours before he picked me up.

And Elliot. I had to hide Elliot. He was mine. The memory of his fingers as they aligned the pen with the edge of his blotter, the lips that shaped his voice, they were mine. If I gave them life, my memories would be dismissed as a schoolgirl crush on a man who had helped me.

Now Margie, with the best of intentions, had requested him as my outpatient therapist. I was surprised he’d agreed. I knew he wanted me, and I knew the better part of himself would want to stay away from me.

Did he have a death wish for his career? Did he know how much I wanted to see him? How I looked forward to that first session?

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t let Deacon see how excited I was about another man. He tolerated a lot of shit, but something about Elliot wouldn’t sit well with him. And Elliot and I weren’t going to happen. He was too good to be with me. He wouldn’t let his dick lead him around. Not for long.

And I needed Deacon. I’d spin into crazy without him.

Shit.

I didn’t know what I wanted. What a fuckup I was. What a royal fucking fuckup.

“Use different words to describe yourself.”

“Excuse me?”

I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until Deacon answered from the doorway.

“Oh, nothing. Hi,” I said.

“Come with me.” He held out his hand.

I did what I always did when he told me to do something. I followed instructions. I took his hand, and he led me outside. Crickets scraped their night song, and leaves and needles rustled in the shadows.

Deacon put his hand on the back of my neck and guided me toward the light of the bigger stables. “Maundy was going to have too many memories, so I thought we should start fresh.”

He opened the side door, and light poured out.

The building had been converted into the party room, and a smaller extension into Deacon’s private studio. It looked empty, without a table or a shelf, but the white cabinets built into two of the walls were obvious to me because I knew what was behind them.

“Have you used it yet?” I asked, looking at the thick hooks bolted to the crossbeams.

“I was waiting for you.”

“I’m here.”

“You’re different,” he said.

“That good or bad?”

He looked out the window, moonlight full on his face, glorious golden arms bent over his chest. He wasn’t much of a talker, but he spoke with his lips and his hands.

“Get into position,” he said. “I haven’t changed that much.”

Thank God. At least I knew what that was. I knew where it fit into the scheme of our relationship. I turned away from him and laid my arms together so that the tender insides of my forearms were pressed together.

A cabinet opened behind me, and he began.

deacon

I
 didn’t think this way until I walked out of Westonwood the first time, after you remembered what happened when you stabbed me. Before that, all I was worried about was whether or not you were sick. Or lonely. You don’t like being alone, and I knew they had you in solitary for at least part of that stint.