Wrecked (The Blackened Window) (46 page)

Chapter Forty-One

Xander

Client,
Here and Now

Leda dropped into sleep quickly, but I was too wound up, jacked up from that kind of fuck. My tension and anger at my family, my life in DC, all of it, was gone. It was just gone. She took all of me and took it all away. I loved her and resolved to tell her in the morning.

I knew I wasn’t going to sleep and started thumbing through websites on my phone. After a few minutes, that bored me and I sent a text to both Christy and Jason’s phones.

Hey kids! Happy New Year!—X

Back at ya. How’s it going up there? Did the party suck?—Christy

Of course it sucked, but Leda is amazing. I’m fucking all in.—X

Yeah. We know. – C + J

Single sign off now?—X

Yep…we’re getting married!—C

Congrats!!!!!!! Finally.—X

Fuck you dude. –J

All right, we’re gonna celebrate when we get back.—X

Shit yeah…but I’m gonna go bed my future wife. ‘nite—J

Before I answered that, another text came through and I laughed.

Yep…I just got slapped a little for that one. LOL—J

Night guys. Love you—X

It was a long time before sleep pulled at the edges of my consciousness, but it did and I let myself go down, content for the first time in a long, long time.

The buzzing of my phone on the bedside table woke me. I thought I had forgotten my alarm or something and swore under my breath as I reached for it. But it wasn’t my alarm and it wasn’t morning. It was only three a.m..
What the fuck?

It was Stacy.

I wasn’t going to answer. I sent it to voicemail. But it started buzzing again before I even put it back down. I knew she’d keep it up all night and eventually it would wake Leda.

I swiped my finger to answer and spoke, barely above a whisper. “What the
fuck
do you want?”

“I found them!” Her voice was loud, full of laughter, didn’t care that I was pissed. “I found them and they totally remember that weekend. Remember things that I don’t. You have to come have a drink with us. Just come up to the suite and say hello!” Her words were a little slurred, but she was so happy. So excited.

“I can’t, Stacy. I’m fucking sleeping.”

“Whatever, pussy. What…are you Coast Guard or something?” She referenced an old military joke.

I sat up, half laughing, “No…and fuck you.”

“I’m serious. Come up and hang out for a bit. Bring Leda if you want. If you want her to know, that is.”

“Leda is sleeping, right next to me. I’m not leaving her.”

“Let me come down to you so you aren’t worrying about waking her up. You’re in room seven twenty seven, right?”

How does she fucking know that?
“Jesus, Stacy. Not now, all right?”

“Yeah…I’ll be right down. You can be waiting or I’ll just pound on the door.” She was laughing as she hung up. She was fucked up and I believed her that she would do that.

I muttered, “Goddamn it” as I got out of bed and went to the closet for a robe. I wasn’t getting dressed for this shit. She’d just take it as a sign that I wanted to go with her. I took a leak and unlocked the door, knowing she’d be there shortly.

After a minute or two more, I opened the door and stepped outside, leaving my fingers on the doorjamb to keep it from closing all the way. I heard the elevator ding at the other end of the hall and Stacy stumbled out, her hair and makeup a little ruined from the party. Her clothes were completely different—a little sparkly tank top and a pair of super short shorts that I’m sure part of her perfectly tanned ass was hanging out of. She had a bottle in her hand and was smiling and laughing as she stumbled toward me.

I gestured for her to quiet down. She laughed again but caught herself with her hand over her mouth, eyes wide but full of mischief. When she got to me, she smelled of liquor. Not even a specific kind…just drunkenness.

“Hey, daddy,” she slurred, trying to sound sexy. She leaned into me and kissed my cheek.

“What the hell, Stacy? It’s the middle of the night and you’re not a teenager anymore.”

“Oooohh. Now you really sound like my daddy.” She drunk-flirted with me, even as I pushed her away from me.

“Look, I’m only out here because I didn’t want you to wake up Leda, and probably half the floor too. Go back to wherever you want to be. It should be your bed.”

“Not till you fucking listen to me, Alex” she said impetuously.

My voice was flat when I answered her, “Fine. What?”

“You don’t have to be a dick about it. Damn.”

I just gave her the look, and all I wanted was to get back to bed with Leda. When I didn’t answer her, or apologize, she went on.

“Look, we’ve been through a lot and I love you.” She waved me off when I would have interjected something to stop her. “Whatever… You don’t think I can love you, but you don’t really get to make that decision. I love you. That’s it. No one in the world knows what makes you tick better than me. No one in the world gets what your life is all about more than I do. We grew up in the same shit storm.”

She put her hand on my chest as tears welled in her eyes. “You were the only thing that saved me. You were the lifeboat. I can’t stand not being with you.”

My heart broke a little for her. Regardless of what we had been through, she was right. We did grow up in a very specific version of hell together. I had seen her missing her front teeth when she was little. I had teased her about her stuffed animals. I had lusted after her when she’d started turning into a woman, in her little cheerleader skirt and ponytail. I had nearly loved her when we were together in our twenties.

My voice softened. “I know. I know. But it’s different now. Look, you’re drunk. Let’s talk later.”

She shook her head and stepped closer to me and, when she looked up at me, her tears broke over her cheeks.

She was angry, broken hearted. Her voice cracked, “Alex
ander
. I’m sorry! I’m so fucking sorry that it happened the way it did and you had to leave. But I never forgot what you did to me and how
intense
it was. I want more. I wanted more then.”

We had never talked about it after that day. I never knew. I had thought it was all about pissing her dad off—and fucking with me. But it wasn’t only those things. My brain didn’t even register the most important part of what she said. I just knew it didn’t matter, I still didn’t want her. “Stacy, that door is closed now.”

She got a sly look on her face and leaned into me, looking up at me. Her mascara was smudged under her eyes and her hair fell around her face in a halo. She purred up at me, “I don’t think it is. I think there is something left between us. I still wonder, every night, what you would have done to me if my dad hadn’t found us. No one else measures up. No one else excites me, twists in me the way you did.”

I gripped her shoulders to push her back from me. “Stacy, I’m falling in love with Leda. Our time passed.”

She turned her shoulders and twisted out of my grip, but then lunged back at me, wrapping her arms around my neck. Her surprise weight pulled me down and she kissed me. Her lips were soft and wet and insistent, her tongue darting out to lick my lips, still slack in shock.

She breathed a moan out on my mouth and that was it. I was fucking done. I went cold, pissed off that she wasn’t listening to me. The irony wasn’t lost on me. “You could barely handle me then. I’m just more of a bastard now. There is
nothing
left between us.”

I pushed her back, but she kept her arms wound around my neck. “I’ve changed too, Xander. I think you’d be surprised. And I never thought you were a bastard.” She leaned forward on me again. “And tell me, does Leda really know all of it? Does she really know you? The way I do. Does anyone know you the way I do, Xander?”

I pushed her back from me harder this time and she stumbled drunkenly, laughing. I couldn’t stop myself from raising my voice, “No, Stacy. Do
not
fuck with this thing I have with Leda.”

“Oh…” she mocked me. “Does it feel bad to have someone ignore you saying no?” She paused, letting that hit home, the bitch. “Shouldn’t I at least warn her? Have you shown her the dark yet? The sadism, the true deep sadistic shit you love. The blood. Does she know, Xander?”

I looked down, the guilt of what had happened with her all those years ago rising up in my chest, mingling with my feelings for Leda, reinforcing the belief that I was going to hurt her in some way that couldn’t be undone. Stacy read it all on my face.

“That’s what I thought. She’s innocent and I know…I know you’re working on corrupting her and making her what you want, but you will destroy her. I’m already broken inside.” She was pleading now. “You were the witness to it. You were the fucking trigger, Xander. You know me. I know you!”

I turned away. Sick of the conversation, knowing she was never going to hear me. She grabbed my arm. “Xander, wait!”

I let my arm go limp and slip through her hands as I pushed the door back open. The light from the hall illuminated a swath of carpet in front of me…that had feet standing in it. I looked up and Leda was standing at the edge of the light, still naked, face white, drawn. Eyes filled with tears.

I hadn’t wanted any of that shit with Stacy to touch her and I was pissed that Stacy’s bullshit had invaded the little cocoon I had with Leda. I displaced my anger and kicked the door shut behind me. Knowing that the shit was just starting. Now, I had to spend the next however long soothing Leda, fixing this. As tired as I was, Leda was everything and I would do anything for her. Anything for her happiness.

I crossed the space to her without hesitation and grabbed her around the waist. “How much of that did you hear?”

She pushed away from me, the opposite of Stacy, echoing my way of pushing Stacy away from me. Her voice was tight, and cold, like I had never heard it before. “Enough to know there’s a lot you haven’t told me.” I tried to hug her close to me, but she resisted and pulled away violently, yelling, “You lied to me! You ask me to trust you with my body, my submission and you
lie to me
!”

Ah fuck. Goddamn it.
She turned away from me, looking around for something.

“Wait, Leda, it’s not like that. Just wait. Let me explain.” I turned on the light, so I could see her face. She was looking for something, picking up pieces of clothes and throwing them away.

She walked past me toward the closet that held our bags and I grabbed her hand, but she yanked it back with a shocked hiss.

“Fucking stop it, Xander.
Red,
goddammit! Red. Stop fucking touching me!”

Holy shit.
I was confused by the strength of her reaction. It seemed like too much. “Jesus Christ, Leda, you’re overreacting a bit, don’t you think?”

She had found her leggings and was sitting on the floor pulling them on. She looked up at me like she might stab me in my sleep. I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to give her space. Trying to understand what the fuck what happening.

She moved to the arm chair across the room and spoke. “You have no idea what I’m thinking right now, so you really don’t know if I’m overreacting, first of all.”

Oh shit, a first of all. This is gonna suck.

“Number two, I cannot believe you didn’t tell me you had a relationship with Stacy. She was the one you lost your Pentagon job over, wasn’t she? What am I supposed to think now? And what the hell is she talking about that you haven’t shown me yet? What more is there, Xander? I mean, fuck, I didn’t even know your real name until this trip. I can’t even look at you right now.” Her face crumpled and she dropped her head into her hands for a moment, until she gathered herself. Then she looked back at me with such malevolence in that I recoiled, but held her gaze.

The tears built and dropped again. She devolved into sobs. I went to her, knelt in front of her. I lifted her chin and brushed her tears off her cheeks. “Leda,” my voice failed me and I whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I said it even though I didn’t know exactly what had hurt her. It didn’t matter. She was hurting. And I was sorry that she felt any pain at all. “What can I do?”

She didn’t answer me and I leaned into her, resting my lips on her soft mouth. She held still for a moment and a fresh waves of tears hit. I spoke against her lips, over her crying. “I love kissing you. Kissing you through your tears. Oh, fuck it. Leda, I love you. I love you, and your tender, kind heart. I love that you’re nothing like her, nothing like any of these people here.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Leda

Bjork,
Army of Me

He loves me?

“Yeah, I know. I heard you tell Stacy before you even told me. And how can you say that but mislead me and lie to me? You don’t trust me at all, do you?”

He looked surprised. “Leda, of course I trust you. But there are things about me, my past, my family, my life, that are ugly and I don’t want you to see them. I don’t want you to know about them.”

“You don’t trust that I would still accept you. So, either you don’t believe in me or there is some seriously dark shit I have the right to know about. Either way, you don’t trust me.” I felt energy coiling in my chest and needed to move. It was a sickening combination of adrenaline and anger, burning through fatigue that made my arms and back ache. I just wanted to get away from him.

I had misgivings, wondered at my response. Maybe it
was
too much. I had only been with him for a few months. Was it really reasonable to think I would know everything about him, that there’d be no surprises anymore? That was ridiculous. Was this some sort of subdrop?

I argued back with myself. This wasn’t like not knowing the name of his childhood pet. This was the fucking bitch that had been making me hate med school, the relationship that had ruined his career. This wasn’t a minor omission. And the inevitable question went through my mind.
What else has he omitted? What will he omit in the future?