31. Hailey
I meander through the gallery, waiting for the final piece for the gala’s silent auction to be wrapped so I can haul it home. It’s a nice piece by a local artist. Though not as big or as grand as I would have liked, it’s impactful.
Dreamstate by Elizabeth Lennie.
It depicts a woman in bed, entwined with her sheets that look vaguely like the face of a lover. To me, it speaks to the loneliness so many people face in this time of digital connection over the real face-to-face. I’ve never felt that loneliness even though my life has been an emotional desert. Not until Arlo’s presence and now his absence.
I’ve thought about what Astor said over the past three days. Maybe it’s good that he didn’t return last night as expected. It’ll give me more time to figure out what I’m willing to risk for what I want.
The gallery is busy for a Saturday. Which is why I find myself in the back room, seeking solace. My feet root in place in front of a painting that grabs me by the throat.
It’s us.
The negative space painting is by Jarek Puczel. Its background is pink and both the man and woman in the frame have nearly black hair, unlike Arlo and me. They’re leaning in close as if to kiss, eyes level with one another, but they cannot touch, cannot connect because their mouths are not there. They’re lost in that negative space.
I love it and hate it in equal measure.
The longing and the inability to touch perfectly mirror my longing and my inability to connect.
“It looks like us…a few months ago.”
Arlo’s perfect rasp tickles my jaw.
My breath catches.
Have I conjured him? Has my desperation to feel him, to see him, and to hear him manifested into a grand delusion?
“Not us now?” I ask my hallucination.
“I think we’ve come a long way from there, don’t you?”
His arms wrap around my middle, and he pulls my back to his chest. Tears prick my eyes. I turn in his arms and launch myself up. My arms wrap around his neck. I bury my face in his hair and breathe him into my lungs. My legs follow suit, twining around his middle.
The heat of his hand encompasses my nape. His lips pepper my jaw and the shell of my ear while his other hand grips my trousered ass and holds me to him. “See, we’ve come a long way.”
I lever back and kiss him like I’ve never kissed anyone, as though he is my sustenance, my oxygen, my everything. He presses my back against the wall and kisses me the same damn way.
His warm fingers frame my face. His lips eat at mine. His tongue coils, and his mouth sucks.
“I missed you,” I speak my truth against his lips.
He pulls back, and I’m gifted with the intensity of the ocean in his eyes. It’s storming and dangerous, but it is meant for me. It is safe for me.
“My siren, my Hailey. I was ready to sell it all to get back to you.”
“You didn’t.” I grab his lapels and pull him closer.
“No.” He kisses my nose and the squints of my eyes. “But I would, which is why they made the deal and allowed me to leave earlier than I told you last night.”
I blink, just now remembering where I am. “How did you find me?”
He smiles, and his severe jaw turns deadly. “Stalker, remember.”
“Nat?” I giggle.
“Nat.” He sets me on my feet and turns me toward the painting. “Do you really think we’ve made no connection?”
I pull his arms around me and hug them close. We have, but it’s been awfully one-sided. Standing here, looking at what we were and knowing what we could be, I want to change that.
“Both my parents are dead. Like you, mine died when I was thirteen. Both together on the same day, like yours did. Only it wasn’t a freak accident.”
His lips brush my temple, and his arms tighten around me. “You don’t have to do this here or now.”
“I do.”
“Okay.” He loosens his hold, grabs my hand, and tugs me to follow. There’s a bench on the far wall. He sits on it, then pulls me onto his lap. His fingers grip my chin and he shifts my gaze to his.
I grab his hand and hold it in my own so tight that I know it must hurt. He only gives me his most attentive eyes.
“My safe word is Aria.”
He nods. He knows it. Though I’ve never used it with him.
“Not because it’s a particularly safe word for me. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s jarring and traumatizing. It’s my mother’s name.”
His thumb strokes my wrist.
“It was a Friday, my dad’s birthday. I was stuck at school, but we—my mom and I—had planned a party for that evening. We’d gotten balloons and streamers and hung them up the night before. I got up early that morning and cooked him pancakes, and my mom helped with the bacon. We had a great time. We hadn’t had many great times recently.”
I draw a deep breath and press my lips to his forehead to center me.
“I should be grateful for that, but somehow, it’s always made it harder. Why did it have to go from so great to so terrible?”
His brows draw down. His gaze searches mine.
“My parents had been having trouble for a couple of years by that point. They never talked about it with me, but my mom was gone a lot, saying she was going to hang with friends. After a while, we knew it wasn’t true. Still, no one said anything. It was like we all held our breath around each other.” I shrug.
“I was antsy to get home that day since things had gone so well that morning. My stomach had been feeling off all day. I suspected it was from eating too many pancakes, but at lunch, when I stood in front of the entire cafeteria, I found blood in my seat and on my pants.”
He grimaces as though he knows my pain. I’m sure he knows plenty about being embarrassed, humiliated more like it. I hate that he does.
“By the time I had myself situated enough to call home for someone to come get me, there was only an hour until school got out. I thought that was a good thing at the time, that I only had one more hour in the school day because no one answered the phone. I wrapped my jacket around my waist and hid out in the nurse’s office until it was time to get on the bus.”
I look down at my fingers.
“There was this red rim of blood under my fingernails that I couldn’t get out, no matter how many times I washed my hands, like I’d played in it, when in fact, I’d done my best not to touch it at all. I stared at those red rims all the way home. It was the safest place to look when everyone talked about what had happened that day.”
He brings my gaze to his again. His lips graze mine, and then he eases back.
“I turned the knob on the front door with blood under my fingernails and opened it to find two giant pools of blood in the long hallway of our foyer. For several seconds, it didn’t compute. I thought I was going crazy, seeing blood where there wasn’t. Where there shouldn't have been blood.”
I chew the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. I map the slope of his nose and the cut of his jaw, the thicket of his brow, and the pout of his lips to maintain my composure.
“Their bodies, lying twenty feet apart, in the pools of blood told me that this wasn’t an illusion brought on by period pain. My mom was closest to me, just three feet away. Like she’d answered the door and…” I stop and breathe through my nose. “They were staring toward the door, but they didn’t see a thing.” My head shakes. “I must have cried or let out a gasp. The next thing I knew, a man I’d seen talking to my mom in town a few times stepped out of the kitchen, over my dad’s body, and into the hallway.
“He had a knife in one hand and a bloody rag in the other. He’d been cleaning up to make it look like my mom had stabbed my dad fifty-eight times, and then killed herself.” My throat burns. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway. Because…he stabbed her in the chest. Something she physically couldn’t have done.”
Arlo runs a hand up my arm, grounding me to the here and now. To his strength and presence.
“I should have run. I don’t know why I didn’t. Shock, I guess. My feet were glued to the floor. He said…” I stop with my heart clogging my throat. I cough and then stretch my neck. “That bastard said, ‘Aria tried to choose her family, but it was too late. She already chose me. You were trying to take her away from me.’ I couldn't say anything. I couldn’t even make a sound. My body pulsed with rage.”
The echoes of it radiate through me. “She was my mother. She belonged with me. Not him. And he, he was so unstable he couldn’t see anything but his delusion.”
A shiver wracks through me as though I’m still in that narrow room with him. “When he started down the hallway toward me, my anger turned to pure terror. He was coming to kill me. I knew it. My gaze flew right, and I saw it. The shotgun we kept behind the door. I grabbed it, cocked it, took the stance my dad taught me, aimed for center mass, and fired.”
I can see it still, the explosion of his chest, as though it happened eighteen minutes ago instead of eighteen years. Bile rises in my throat.
“He was so close his blood sprayed all over me. I was covered in it. Everything was.”
“Fuck, love.” His abused voice gives me strength.
“That’s what I said.” I press my palm to his cheek and relish the hint of stubble and raw heat. “When all the dust settled, and I was here in New York, I said fuck love because it had given me nothing but raging nightmares and horrible memories for a long, long time.”
“That’s why you chose the bench.” He states it as fact, and I could let him go on believing it was that simple.
“I was a twenty-two-year-old virgin because I wouldn't let anyone get close, emotionally or physically. When some of the guys in the psych department found out, I became a conquest.”
Arlo’s entire body tenses under me.
I pour as much warmth into my gaze as I can. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
He takes a shuddered breath.
“My virginity became this medal that I didn’t want. I didn’t care about it, and I didn’t want whoever got it to think about it as some special prize I was offering. So at a Christmas party, I found a guy I’d never seen before, dragged him into the bathroom, and made him fuck me from behind.”
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t have to force him.”
“No, but I should have had to.” I grimace. “He was Astor’s boyfriend.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit. It was an all-in-all terrible experience, but I liked the sense of freedom it gave me. Everything was lighter and mattered less after that.” I bit my lip. “Then I started fucking in any and every bar or restaurant bathroom in all of Manhattan. No names. No contact before or after. Never from the front.” Disgust twists my stomach. “I always used protection, but still, it was risky as fuck.”
A couple of patrons wander into the room, key in on us, and then backtrack. Arlo runs a hand over my thigh. It urges me on.
“Astor found me in a bathroom after another one of my escapades. That particular time, I was so drunk that I hardly recognized her. Instead of berating or belittling me, which she really could have done without looking like the bad guy, she helped me get home. She got some food in me and stayed overnight to make sure I didn’t die. Over time, she made me realize that I would never be a successful therapist unless I started dealing with some of my trauma. She never asked what it was and never urged me to come clean. So naturally, when she was ready for clients, I became her first one.”
“The next time I see her,” Arlo grins. “I’m going to hug her.”
“She’ll lose her mind in the best possible way.” I smile back at him. “Eventually, I ended up at a sex club for the safety aspect and control it offered. Then years later, I joined Crave. But the bench and the blindfold were my insurance policies for never getting attached.”
My thumbs sweep up his cheekbones and the dips of his temples. “Because of Astor, Nat, and you, I can see that love wasn’t the issue. Not really.” I offer him a more sedate grin.
“Love gave me a great childhood. It gave me parents who believed in me and taught me so much about how to navigate the world. It’s been wrong of me to only focus on the horrific end.”
“It was what you needed to do to get through the trauma. Now, you can learn and grow and do better.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I’m often right.” The rasp rumbles in his wide chest.
“Oh yeah?” I push on his pec over his blue button-down.
“I can prove it.” He leans in, brushing his lips over my jaw. “This very moment you’d love nothing more than for me to take you home, tie you to your bed, and torture you with your drawer full of toys until you’ve come at least five times.”
My pulse skips from my neck all the way down to my clit. I blow a breath out through my lips and grab his tie. I pull him until we’re eye to eye. “Just because you’re right about that doesn’t mean that you’re often right.”
“Guess I’ll just have to keep proving it to you.” He scoops me up into his arm, toddler on the hip style, and walks us through the gallery.
The bulk of patrons stare at us wide-eyed while a couple clap and whoop. An older couple with too much money and not enough joy rolls their eyes, but I don’t care. I wrap my arms around Arlo’s shoulders, cinch my legs, and hold on for the ride.
“Oh, the painting.” I point toward the main desk.
“Already in the trunk,” he says, pushing through to the outside and across the sidewalk.
His driver, not Hotaru, opens the door for us.
“Thank you.” I squeak as Arlo crouches and wedges us through the narrow opening.
“You’re welcome, miss.” I hear his voice and then the close of the door. I can’t say that I’d be able to pick him out of a lineup. My attention is one hundred percent on Arlo.
He sits on the black leather of the Town Car and holds my body to his. The breadth of his hips butts up against my spread thighs. His length and heavy girth press between my swollen lips. The gentle sweep of the hair from my face and his studying gaze have me ready to combust.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Hailey, but I’m so glad you defended yourself.” He kisses a line from my neck to my jaw, then up to my temple. “I can’t imagine the world without you in it. I don’t want to. Not ever.”