18. Reid
REID
PLAYLIST: JOURNEY (READY TO FLY) – NATASHA BLUME
Iunlock the door to my apartment and enter. I am as tired as a person can be, and when I close the door behind me, I lean against it for a moment with my eyes shut.
Too much happened today.
What went down with Avery and Hedda, the administrative nightmare Hedda has caused, not to forget the extended hold protection, the search for Avery, and all the covering I had to do to protect her from being prosecuted immediately.
I lied.
I lied for her.
I lied because she stopped.
I lied so she has a way back.
Because some completely stupid part of me thinks she can be saved.
I take a deep breath in, drop my bag onto the floor, and walk through the corridor to my kitchen.
I see it from the corner of my eye, and draw my gun without hesitation and point it into the dark living room to my left, only illuminated by the street lights outside.
She turns on the lamp next to the armchair she sits in.
She leans back, a bottle of whiskey in her hand.
“What are you doing in here?” I ask her, not lowering the gun, because something is not right with her.
She looks at me with pursed lips and disgust in her expression.
“You,” she breathes out and shakes her head. She is fighting with something.
“You!”
“Me what?” I ask her.
“I wanted to do the heist of the millennium tonight,” she says in a derogatory tone and gets up.
“Wanted to steal the thing I have been after for years. To get back at you and everything. Because I need to feel something. Something other than pain and guilt and all the other horrid things you make me feel.”
She walks up and down in front of me, wildly gesturing and glaring at me.
“Then why didn’t you do it?”
“I was alright until I met you,” she says, not answering my question, still pacing up and down my living room.
“I had the most amazing life. Built from scratch into what I know I am. The most notable thief. Known for my skill, living a life beyond what others hold possible. And then, you happened. You come into my life and call me names and kiss me in one breath, make me feel things and do things I don’t want to do,” she says in such a threatening tone that the hair on my neck stands up.
“And now…now, I am a thief who can’t steal and a liar who has broken the most honorable promise.”
“Why are you here?” I ask her confrontationally.
She stops in her tracks and stares at me.
“Because—“
She shakes her head slowly as she stares at me, the whiskey bottle dangling down on her side.
The bottle falls to the floor and shatters on the wood.
One moment.
One infinite second.
Before she walks up through the cracking pieces of glass.
Pushes my hands with the gun in them down.
Grabs my face.
“Because I want to do this,” she breathes out before her lips meet mine.
A rush of carnal desire runs straight down my spine into a place so deep within me that goosebumps spread on my arms.
I have never been kissed like this before, and I fall into the demanding desire that consumes me whole.
She enters my mouth with her tongue, and it steals my breath as she simply takes what she wants.
I am nothing right now.
Not existing.
Just being.
And then she brings the kiss to an end, leaning with her forehead against mine, still grasping my face.
I don’t want her to stop.
Please don’t stop.
She stares into my eyes.
“I am here because I cannot be selfish with you,” she whispers against my lips with her whiskey-scented breath.
“If I were, I would have walked away; I would have killed Hedda, and you’d have never seen me again.
But I can’t. Because I care. I care about you.
And it hurts. It hurts so much I want to slice open my chest and rip out my heart, because I don’t want to feel anything for you. You are everything I despise.”
Her voice shakes, showing the pain I see on her face.
“I need you to make me stop feeling,” she says.
“I can’t do that,” I say silently.
“Yes, you can,” she says.
There is a long moment of silence between us, where we just stare into each other’s eyes.
Goosebumps on my arms simply from her touch.
A pull in my chest that draws me to her.
Fired by the desire to become one with her.
I could do so forever.
“I promised never to love again,” she whispers.
The broken promise.
“And then I heard you laugh, saw you flash your eyes at me, and felt your soft moan vibrating in my soul when we kissed…and now—“ she says, lets go of me and sinks to her knees in front of me. “Now, I am here, begging you on my knees, to liberate me from this torture.”
My lips part.
I am rendered speechless.
The way she kneels.
The way she looks up at me.
The way she makes a surge of desire consume my insides.
I am grasping her chin with one hand as I step into the role she pushes me into.
A role of dominance that I am not used to in a personal situation, but right this moment, I feel so empowered by her submission that I can’t do anything else but step into it.
“Please,” she begs as she closes her eyes.
“What you feel isn’t torture,” I say as I lift up her chin, still holding my gun in the other hand. “What you feel is…love.”
A single tear runs down her cheek.
“I cannot love you,” she whispers, her voice shaky.
Her head twitches. The shoulders roll back—her strategy for removing sensation.
“You will not push the feeling away,” I order her. “You will feel. You will feel all of it. You will feel the pain of loss. The grief. The guilt. I am here with you, and you will do as I say. Do you understand?”
Her eyes flash at me. They shimmer, and another tear runs down her cheek.
She nods.
“Good,” I say. “Because after you feel all that’s chewing on your insides, you will be able to feel the joy. The love. The desire. The beauty. Feel, Avery. Feel it all.”
A scream explodes out of her as she removes herself from my grip and crouches onto the floor. It touches me somewhere so deep that I have to fight back tears. It rips my chest apart seeing her like this.
Of all the things that I believed possible, if someone had told me that Avery Zayne would be kneeling in front of me one day, I would have declared that person completely crazy.
A shiver runs through her as she crouches on the floor, sobbing heavily with her face hidden in her hands
“What do you need?” I ask her. Because, while I do know her, I don’t know this version of her. Maybe she doesn’t even know it herself.
She stops sobbing.
Comes back up.
Her mascara is smeared underneath her eyes.
“Fuck me,” she says.
I stare into her eyes.
The way she looks at me.
She is trying to numb the pain with the only strategy she has and knows.
“No,” I say. “Not like this.”
“Please,” she begs me.
“No,” I say again, place the gun on the sideboard next to me, and then squat down to be on eye level with her.
I grasp her face.
“I want you to trust me first,” I say.
“I trust you,” she says.
“No, you don’t,” I say. “You don’t even trust yourself right now.”
She sucks in her lips as more tears flood her eyes.
“Come,” I tell her, get up and pull her up with me.
I guide her into the bedroom.
Make her sit on the bed.
Remove her shoes, then mine, and then I lie down, pulling her into my arms.
She is reluctant at first.
Then, sobs follow.
I caress through her hair.
And I just hold her.
Without a word passing between us.
Her sobs die.
Her breathing calms.
And so does mine.