Chapter 5 Love Stinks #2
“Good. Well, I wonder if maybe it’s good he’s back. It’s putting you in the position to face your demons. We can talk about coping strategies, etc. I’m not saying you’ll be friends again, but you will either have to learn to exist in the same town, or one of you will have to leave.”
I rubbed my thighs impatiently. “He should leave. Why should I leave?”
“You’re within your rights to feel that way. May I ask you something else? Something that may make you uncomfortable.
“Yes,” I said, when I really wanted to say, ‘No.’
She tilted her head. “What does Thaddeus look like? Can you describe him to me?”
I screwed up my face, unsure where this was going. “He’s in all the newspapers. You can do an internet search—”
“Answer the question, please. Humor me. It’s been years since you’ve seen him. What does he look like?”
My coffee aftertaste suddenly turned bitter. “Muscles. Lots of them.”
She peered more closely at me. “Really? Did he have muscles before going away?”
No damn way.
“Thaddeus had a typical chest before, but maybe the state of New York has a weightlifting room in the prison, and he spent every waking hour in there. Thaddeus is built differently now.”
Her pen scribbled across the pad, and I stiffened.
“What else? Is he gray, hair falling out?”
I stared at the pictures on the wall for a moment and then at one of Marni’s framed certificates. “Marni, he hadn’t been in there that long. His hair is still brown. It curls a little on the top of his head.”
Writing quickly, Marni asked a question before I could. “Any facial hair?”
“Yes. He came home with a trimmed beard. Before, he had nothing on his face.”
Lowering her pen and pad, Marni looked at me. “Summer, he sounds handsome.”
I almost choked on my own breath. “What?”
I was poised to give her an earful about how I felt regarding Thaddeus Fitzgerald, but she raised a hand to silence me.
“I know what he did and how much you hate him. I suspect you may have mixed feelings when you see him in person. After all, you were attracted to him once. It wouldn’t be unusual for a person in your position to still have feelings or a level of attraction to him.”
Silence. What did she expect me to say? I find him frustratingly handsome, and his looks should’ve gone to someone who doesn’t shoot people point-blank in the head?
Hell no. He was a killer, smug, and didn’t care about the less fortunate. I had no compliments to spare him.
“Summer, be honest. It’s okay to admit you miss the days before everything fell apart with Thaddeus. You can grieve for the future you thought you had and for the life you used to have. It’s okay to say everything in here. Even if some of your anger is mixed with attraction.”
She did not just throw that at me. My body sprang upright; the leather couch no longer felt familiar.
The room and Marni now felt foreign to me.
How could she ask a question like that? How could she blindside me so viciously?
She’d turned a safe space into something uncomfortable.
I stood, ready to give her a piece of my mind, but nothing came out of my mouth.
I froze and lowered myself back onto the couch.
This was the reason I was so desperate to get here this morning.
The nightmare I had last night; not the one where I watched my dad die, or when I opened the door and learned Gina was dead, not even the one where I was alone in the shower scrubbing Dad’s blood off my face after they had taken away his body.
No, the one where I straddled Thaddeus, panting and screaming, as he lifted me with his muscular arms up and down on his cock. The muscles had been the first sign I wasn’t reminiscing about the past. I was dreaming about screwing my dad’s killer. That was why I wanted the drugs. Damn it.
It took a while to force the words out, and they floated slowly into the air. “Everything was fine until he came back. Now, I hate him, but yes, I did notice he’s still attractive. It makes me feel like a fucking monster.”
Thaddeus
I’m not proud of my behavior this morning.
I held the door out of instinct. Someone was coming, so I just held it without thinking.
Maybe I should’ve told her to step back, but Summer wouldn’t listen to a word from my mouth.
Plus, I wasn’t going to let her ruin my day with the scene she made.
Not after the night I’d had. Shit, this morning was one for the record books too.
I can’t really remember her name, but she picked me up at the bar.
When I say she picked me up, I mean it. She was forward.
Henry and I were eating dinner, and then he left to go home.
I took the woman home and made up for the last ten years.
Thank goodness for Aston. Having him to drive me home meant that my new friend could suck my dick the whole ride up the hill.
It had been too damn long, and I came before we pulled into my driveway.
By the time we went inside, I had regained my energy; so, I lifted her up and carried her to the bedroom.
Then I hiked up her skirt, pulled her thong to one side, and shoved my cock inside of her.
The nameless dark-haired beauty moaned as I found my rhythm. It really was like riding a bike. Ten years or not, I had her clinging to me for dear life. I slammed in and out of her, frenzied, and she encouraged me on. “Kill me, baby,” she kept screaming against my neck.
I thrust into her, harder and faster.
“Oh God. I’m coming,” she warned.
I violently picked up speed until we both erupted.
Still inside of her, I wondered if I should ask for her name when she said, “Now I can say I’ve been fucked by a monster.”
I laughed. Women killed me sometimes. Who’d have thought murderers were a kink? While one hated the person I’d become, plenty more salivated at the fact I was a supposed bad boy.
I’d grinned back at her, my thoughts finally snapping into place. “The monster has to make up for lost time. Get your rest and be ready to go again.”
Unsurprisingly, this morning we enjoyed another round, then I dropped her off near the bar.
After parting with the still nameless beauty, I headed to the coffee shop, then the office.
I felt freer in prison, and I’m only half joking.
There, I was mostly in charge of my own time.
I could workout, nap, watch TV. Now, I sat in an office, spending every free minute looking at the clock, counting down the seconds until 5 PM.
My father had given me the project of overseeing the entire new development once we moved forward with knocking the Starlight building down.
So, in addition to PR, I had that on my plate too.
My architecture degree was something I’d never had the opportunity to use, thanks to spending the last ten years behind bars.
I was both excited and nervous about putting those skills to use.
A lot had changed in the last ten years, but the basic principles were still the same (I hoped).
Despite that, at 4:59 PM, I was out the door.
After work, I’d originally planned to go in search of the unnamed beauty from the bar and spend the night in bed with her, but life had other plans.
My sister Lily had texted to say she was coming home from college for the weekend.
It would be the first time I’d see her outside of prison walls, and an excited grin pulled at my mouth.
I loved my sister. She was all the best parts of my mother.
The second I walked into the house, a wall of Lily greeted me. She body-slammed me and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“Hey, Lil,” I said. A pulse of joy surged through me at the sight of her. She looked well.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you came home,” she replied. “You know how it is. I had exams and Dad . . .” She trailed off.
I kept my voice soft. “I know. You’re here now. Tell me everything about college.”
She didn’t need telling twice, and her eyes shone as she spewed fact after fact from the syllabi of her major (sociology) and her minor (business studies, taken at our dad’s insistence).
My sister could talk a person’s ear off.
And she always got her way. After she finally took a break from ranting about her assignments, she suggested we decorate for Halloween, and I couldn’t say no.
While we strategically placed décor, she talked non-stop about some guy, school, and how her hair was doing something weird.
I allowed myself to bask in the normalcy of what we were doing.
When we had mostly finished the house (I knew Aston would straighten everything up after we’d done it anyway; he couldn’t resist himself), Lily somehow convinced me to join her at the corn maze.
The popularity of Disney among adults is huge, but nobody was more dedicated than those of us who refused to let go of this beloved Halloween holiday.
I drove the four-wheel drive down the hill, and we headed to the Smith’s farm, where the annual corn maze was hosted.
It looked the same as it always had. It was comforting to see that the town hadn’t moved on too much in my absence. When we arrived, Lily wrapped her hands around my arm and pulled me along. It didn’t take long for me to feel uncomfortable. There were stares and whispers.
A real-life killer in the Halloween corn maze.
We paid at the kiosk. I vaguely recognized the guy as the youngest Smith kid. He’d been in middle school when I went away. He looked at me in a way that screamed ‘I need to ask you what it’s like to kill someone!’ It was a look I got a lot.