The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (50 page)

“Tell me, Rhett.”

I stared at Faye. She stood just feet away in my living room. We’d just gotten home. The ten minute drive from the bar seeming to last eons. The silence was thick like old milk.

She looked as beautiful as ever right now. Standing there in my living room. My space. My home. Where she’d been all week. Her brown eyes shown in the dim lamplight. I could look into them forever. Of that I was certain. It was the only thing I was certain of.

“We shouldn’t do this.” I ran a hand through my hair glancing down at Badger who sat eagerly at my feet. “Not tonight.”

“Not tonight?” She scoffed. “When then, Rhett?”

I shook my head slowly.
Never.
“I don’t know.”

“It’s time.”

“No.”

“Yes.” There was panic in her voice. “Time’s almost up, so it has to be now.”

“Almost up?” The sound of my voice mirrored hers. It couldn’t be. I wouldn’t accept it. This week had been the best of my whole life. Nothing could compare to the time Faye and I had spent together.

“Yes.” Her voice shook.

“It doesn’t have to be.” I ran a nervous hand down my face. “This week doesn’t have to be it.”

“That’s all we agreed to.”

“So? We can change that.”

She shook her head quickly, the jerky motion almost throwing her off balance. “Stop avoiding my question.” She took a deep breath. “When did you break things off with Sarah?”

“I…”

I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t go back to that place either. I couldn’t let her go. Not this time.

She took a step toward me. Her long dark hair swaying against her shoulders. The strands shone bright when the light touched them.

“Tell me, Rhett.”

“Don’t do this.” My words were a harsh whisper. The sound of a scared, pathetic man. Maybe that’s what I was. Maybe that’s what I would always be when it came to Faye.

She flinched. “Don’t do this? Don’t
do
what, Rhett?” She threw her hands up. “Don’t ask questions? Don’t bring up the past?”

Irritation cut through me. “The past has a place, Faye. And it isn’t here. It’s over. Done. Leave it alone.”

“You know as well as I do that’s a fucking lie.” Something bitter flashed over her face. “We both know that the past is always here. It’s always between us. It’s been here all fucking week. Don’t you even try to deny it!” She pointed her finger at me when I opened my mouth to stop her. “Don’t act like you don’t feel it. Like you can’t see the dead flesh of the past hanging on my skin. Clinging to me. Don’t act like you don’t see your father when you look into my eyes.” Her lips trembled and she took a deep breath.

“Faye—” I made to reach for her, but she jerked backward as if my touch would scald her.

“No. Don’t do that!” she screeched. “Don’t baby me. Don’t act like I can’t take this. Like I can’t handle the truth. I
know
that’s what you see!”

“Faye—”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” She jerked her hands through her hair. “I see it too. Every day when I look in the mirror. I see the things he did to me. I see the scars in my skin. The one’s he gave me.” She ran shaky fingers over her face. “And the ones I gave myself.” She touched her wrist and I flinched. The scar was normal, pink and thick on her arm. Healed flesh.

But the image came back. The one of her sprawled across the bathroom floor, vomit leaking from between her lips. Blood dripping from thick slice on her arm. It was so red. So dark and endless against the white tile of the floor.

Her eyes. The same eyes that stared back at me now. They were glassy, but in a different way. Vacant in that bathroom. Gone. She had been gone when I found her. Barely holding a to the life she hadn’t wanted.

My heart twisted in my chest until I was certain it would rip apart.

“I’m sorry.” I heard myself say the words.

“You’re sorry?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t save you from him.” I didn’t know it until that moment, but I had been waiting to say those words for years. Since I found my father raping her in that bathroom just months after her attempted suicide. Since I knew the truth. I hated myself for that reason. For not being able to save her from him.

“That’s stupid.” She practically spit the words.

“I mean it.”

“Oh sure. Everyone is sorry about the things that are
done
. The things that can’t be changed. I’m really fucking sorry you didn’t save me either, but that doesn’t help anything does it, Rhett? It doesn’t change the fact that it happened. Over and over and
over
. For ten fucking years.”

“Shit, I know, Faye, I know.” I took a step forward, but she backed away from me again. “I hate myself for that. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that those things happened to you. That I could have helped and didn’t.”

“You don’t mean that.” Her cold words were like a slap in the face.

“I mean it.”

“Great.” She mashed her lips together. “Terrific! You’re sorry I was fucked by your father. Thanks.”

“What do you want me to say, Faye?” I walked up to her, moving faster than she anticipated. I grabbed her elbows. “What do you want from me? Do you want to know how much I hate myself? How much I fucking loathe myself. Because I do, Faye. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about you. About the things that happened with my father.”

She stared up at me, her eyes jeweled, tears hiding there ready to spill. “But that’s the problem, Rhett,” she whispered, the words so quiet I could barely hear them. “That’s why we can’t go on pretending it didn’t happen. Because it did happen. Because you will always think about the things he did to me. Every day. Forever. It will never go away. Just like the things you said to me on the day six years ago, when I gave you my heart. When you stomped on it.” She shook her head. “We will always end up here. In the past.”

The tears spilled over onto her cheeks when she blinked. The little orbs were so clear against her skin. I reached up and brushed one away. The warm liquid slipped against my thumb and smeared across her skin. It smeared like her blood had on that tile floor when I found her. Like it smeared across her face in the bathroom at the hotel when I’d found my father raping her. It smeared like all the things I’d wanted to say but never had.

“I came back for you.” The words were thick, like I had a mouth full of cotton. “That day.”

“What day?”

“The last day.” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. To repeat the things I’d said to her. “The day you left.”

“W-why?”

“Because I made a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“Yes.” I brushed my fingers against her face, smearing more tears. “I shouldn’t have left.” I could remember what it felt like when I walked out the door. When I left her standing there in the middle of my apartment with that look on her face. The look that said I ruined everything. That I broke her into a million pieces. I got in my car and drove back to Sarah like a robot, feeling dead inside.

“But you did.” She took a step back and I let her go.

“But I came back. For you. I left Sarah. At dinner. I ended things.”

“You broke up with her that day?” An ashen look fell over her face. “And you came back.”

“Yes. I came back and found your note and your things.”

“I was gone.” Even though she was here with me, her mind was far away.

I nodded. “It was you, Faye. It’s always been you for me.”

Her gaze met mine again, as if my words jerked her back to the present. “Me,” she whispered. “Me? It wasn’t me when you fucked Sarah the same night you fucked me.” She took another step back. “It wasn’t me when you rubbed it in my face that you fucked her.” Her voice was louder. “It wasn’t me when you left me all alone there in your apartment. I was just a nuisance to you and to her. It was never
me
!”

“I came back for you.” My words sounded broken, pathetic. Like a man falling apart.

“Oh, but
you
came back for me! You. Came. Back! Ha!” She threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, you came back all right. That’s why a week ago I saw you for the first time in six years. Six fucking years, Rhett!” She shook her head, a disgusted look on her face. “You’re so full of shit. You never came for me.”

“You were already gone, Faye…and I just couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t what? Come after me. Find me? We both know that’s a lot of bull shit. You’d done it plenty of times prior.”

“This was different.”

“You know what, just spare me.” She turned away, but I saw it in her eyes before she did. It was just a glimpse. A look, a flash of realization in her dark irises.

She’s going to leave me.

Something inside me splintered apart with panic, with desperation.

“No, Faye, no. Wait!” I grabbed her arm and spun her around. “Don’t do this. Don’t leave. I can’t handle it again. I can’t be without you. Not now. Not when I’ve just gotten you back.”

“I can do whatever I want.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” I pleaded. “It doesn’t. It can be different. This week…it’s been amazing. You know it has. You know it. Don’t throw this all away because I was stupid before.”

“Throw this away,” she repeated. A smirk flittered over her features. “This
is
nothing.”

“You know it’s not.” I didn’t care what she said. She knew this was something special. This thing between us. “You know it’s so much more than anything you’ve been a part of in your life. You know it’s not just fucking nothing.”

“It
is
nothing. We’re just two unfortunate people in a fucked up situation.”

My words. She was repeating my words. Words I spoke to her on that day before I walked out. The last day before six years passed.

“A fucked up situation that means nothing,” she said quietly.

I broke. I broke like a fucking flimsy piece of particleboard. The fragmented pieces that had been barely put together inside my chest splintered apart.

“No, Faye. No.” I fell to my knees. “That’s not true.” I grabbed her hand, but she jerked it away.

“It is true.”

“No, it’s not! I came back for you. I loved you then. I fucking loved you.” There they were. The words I had never been able to say. The only truth I had left in me. “But I wasn’t man enough to admit it. I wasn’t good enough for you.” She shook her head, but I didn’t stop. I inched forward on my knees and grabbed her hand again. “I fell apart after you left. I was nothing without you. Nothing.” I could feel them. The tears. They pressed at my eyes. “I always thought you were the broken one back then. That you were the one who needed saving.” Her hand was smooth in mine, small and fragile. “But it was never you. It was me, Faye. It was always me that needed you.”

I can’t lose her. Not again.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

She stared down at me. The most beautiful woman I had ever met. The woman I loved. “I don’t love you.” There was pain in her eyes. But it was far away. Removed, distant. Behind the mask she greeted me with that day in her classroom. “You were right, back then.” She jerked her hand away. Her mask slipping more firmly into place. “I don’t think I ever loved you.”

“No…” My word came out as a choked sob. “No, don’t say that. Don’t…Just don’t say these things. Tell me something else. Something better. Please, Faye, fucking…just please.”

“Better?”

“Just don’t…just don’t say goodbye. Tell me you love me, Faye. Please just…just tell me.” I was someone else. There. On my wood floor on my knees before the woman I loved. I was a broken shell of a man. Desperate for love I didn’t deserve. Desperate for Faye. “Tell me you’ve loved me all along. Lie to me.” The tears came then. Great ugly waves of tears ran dripping down my face. “Don’t-don’t say goodbye.” Snot dripped from my nose. Tears splattered on the dark wood. But none of it mattered. She mattered. She was the only thing that had ever mattered.

“Goodbye, Rhett.” And she turned away and left me. Just like I left her all those years ago.

FOURTEEN

I sat in my apartment. It had been three hours. Three hours since I left Rhett at his home. Three hours since he told me he loved me.

He loves me.

I shook my head. “He doesn’t love me,” I said aloud to my empty apartment. My TV rumbled in the background, what was on, I didn’t know. I’d only been staring at it for the last two hours.

He loves me.

“He doesn’t. He doesn’t even know me. Not really.”

He loves me.

My mind flashed to yesterday morning.

I woke up before him in his big bed. The sheets were dark blue and soft. The softest sheets I’d ever felt.

I laid there staring up at the picture over the bed. The one with him and the manatee. The one that I’d wanted to rip apart a lifetime ago. It had been taken with an underwater camera. The water was so clear. The flippers on Rhett’s feet were black and matched his wet suit. He wasn’t looking at the camera, but at the manatee next to him. I had always thought they were high-fiving. That’s what it appeared to be, but as I laid there looking up at the picture, I realized they weren’t. Rhett’s hand only appeared to be close to the large animal’s fin.

“Are you okay?”