24. New Reaper Open Arena #3
“What Deja wants is you,” Esme said. “Look, I was nervous to propose to Renee. I never imagined someone as stunning and brilliant as her would… want someone like me. We’re just so…
different. But I’ve never loved anyone the way I love her.
She doesn’t just make me happy, she soothes my anger, my pain… my trauma…”
Esme sighed as she pulled at her fingers. “She gave me new meaning to life…” Ian looked at Esme fondly. A warmth flooded him at the thought that one of his closest friends had found true happiness and love. “She even got me to speak to my parents again!” Esme blurted.
“Did she?” Ian said, surprised.
“That’s impressive,” Jax said simultaneously.
“I know, right?” Esme sighed. “But she brings it out of me. Loving her just comes so… naturally to me. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a life partner.
Weddings are just symbolism. I proposed.
She said ‘yes’. We got married in a courthouse, and then I whisked her away to Bali for two weeks, where we did many…
many inappropriate things. I can make my wife cum 8 times in a row. Can you?”
“Esme,” Ian sighed as Jax snorted.
“She wrapped a scarf around my eyes. Took my hand. And led me to a private park. When she removed the scarf, we were surrounded by a rainbow of flowers. It was breathtaking. It almost didn’t feel real.
And then, she got down on one knee, and…
I think I cried? No, I definitely cried.
She asked me to marry her, and I couldn’t say ‘yes’ fast enough. ”
Deja’s cheeks puffed from smiling as she watched Renee rock Chloe in her arms. She loved the way Renee’s face would light up anytime she spoke about Esme.
“We went to the courthouse, literally the next day, because she’s so impatient and kept saying, ‘I need you to be my wife like yesterday’,” Renee chuckled.
“And then she took me to one of my bucket list places: Bali.”
“It sounds like she makes you really happy,” Deja said.
Renee sighed. “She really does. I’m so in love, Deja.
I know she talks a lot of shit, especially around the guys, but…
Deja, she’s such a romantic, in every way.
She’s attentive to my needs, emotionally, physically…
sexually. And she’s insanely overprotective.
That’s going to take some getting used to.
She threatens at least 4 men a day just for looking at me. ”
Deja laughed. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“I applied for a teaching role at a research institution, but the hiring managers kept assuming my Ph.D. was fake. So, Esme went in my stead,” Renee recounted.
Deja raised a brow. “And she got the job for you?”
Renee snorted. “No. She decapitated them. And then she bought me my own office building, hired me a team of assistants, and made me the Head of Research. She said I was too brilliant to work for others. That I should be my own boss.”
Deja’s eyes widened. “Holy crap.”
“Yeah… exactly,” Renee sighed. “She’s insane, and I love her. She’s set the bar impossibly high.”
“So, you guys reap together?” Deja asked.
“Not at first,” Renee said, readjusting Chloe. “I wasn’t comfortable with killing. Obviously. But then she… deconstructed me.”
Deja furrowed her brows. “What does that mean?”
Renee looked at her and sighed. “You don’t know Esme like I do. She’s… a prodigy. She knows how to get inside your head, dissect you and unravel you until you’re questioning every decision you’ve ever made in your life.”
“Well, that sounds like Esme,” Deja chuckled.
Renee grinned as she bit her lip pensively.
“She asked me why I didn’t approve of killing.
I said taking someone’s life is wrong. She asked me under whose standards.
I said religion, society, god. She asked me who created this religion, society, god.
From whom had I learned this form of morality?
She told me that capital punishment is considered morally acceptable under the assumption that a man is proven guilty by his peers.
Subjectivity. She said that centuries ago, killing was considered morally acceptable against people like us–Black.
Queer. Women. She pushed me to seriously consider under whose moral code am I holding myself to–the same men who decades ago would find it morally acceptable to kill me for being what I am… ”
Renee looked at Deja as her face turned serious.
“...she taught me to rage, Deja. We made ourselves vulnerable enough to share the traumas of our past. And while I wept for her… she grew angry… for me. As if racism and misogynoir took on an entirely new perspective when it’s done to someone you love.
She told me that I’ve been conditioned to hold all the anger that should rightfully be unleashed on this world.
Just like Roselyn. ‘The average killer is a violent white man, beloved,’” she said to me.
“‘A look at world history shows that goddesses like you are the ones who deserve to rage the most. So, rage, beloved-”
“‘Fucking rage…’” Deja finished as she looked at Renee when it suddenly clicked. Jax’s same words echoing in her mind.