Chapter 18 Karma #2
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I was in utter disbelief, but he didn’t blink.
“She’s been in my life for a long time, and I’m not ever going to be without her.
She’s my trick. You know, like the ones you have,” he said, gaslighting me.
“So if you want to be with me, you have to accept both of us. But we don’t even have sex—I’m just using her for money, baby.
Help me out and let me keep her around.”
How the fuck was I supposed to argue with that?
He ran complete game on me. But, as I saw it, Karma was no different from me.
I still had my sugar daddies funding my life, so I looked at Cindy as a mousy sugar mama—and let’s not forget that the lust I had for this man far outweighed any rational thinking.
Because any normal woman would have hightailed it out of there immediately.
But not I, Popeye! Fuck it—why not? Normal relationships never worked out for me, so maybe this lifestyle would.
If only I knew how much leading with my vagina instead of my mind was going to cost me.
* * *
ONE NIGHT, WE MET UP with a bunch of his friends in a parking lot. We were shooting the shit and drinking and trying to figure out what to do with the night.
“Let’s go to a strip club,” one of his dudes yelled.
“Fuck yeah. Let’s do it,” I said joyfully.
I looked over at Karma for approval without realizing I had done something that could be considered disrespectful. He was glaring.
“Don’t you ever fucking get excited when one of my friends mentions going to a strip club,” he growled at me.
I didn’t know what he was so upset about.
Going to the clubs was a super-normal thing, especially in Vegas.
And he’d just disrespected me in front of everyone by getting mad for no reason.
I popped off and he wasn’t having it. So we started fighting, yelling at each other, and we kept on yelling at each other all the way back to his house.
It was the first real argument we had ever had. And I was going to stand my ground. No one can tell me who I can and can’t talk to.
He went on and on. Don’t act like that. Don’t say shit like that. You don’t even look my friends in the eyes, bitch. Keep your head down when they’re around.
I lost it. I went straight for the jugular with my insults.
“You know what? Me and fucking Cindy deserve better than you,” I screamed in his face.
I didn’t even see the punch coming, but I felt the impact straight to my ribs.
I dropped to my knees. I had never felt pain like that.
I was on the ground, trying with everything in me to breathe, but I couldn’t get any air.
I couldn’t move. My ears were ringing, and I just kept trying to figure out what the fuck had happened.
Any sane human would have said fuck this dude and gotten the hell out.
But the sucker for pain that I am, I crawled into bed with him like a wounded puppy.
I lay next to him and cried myself to sleep.
It hurt so fucking bad, but part of me felt like it was my fault.
I’d been verbally attacking him, after all.
I shouldn’t have said what I said. It was my job to make him feel better.
In the morning, we woke up and had the best sex, even if I couldn’t move much. He did everything to take away the pain. He apologized and said he’d never do it again.
Lies, lies, lies.
* * *
AFTER THAT NIGHT, HE WAS on his best behavior for a few weeks—at least when it came to putting his hands on me—but there were other things I started noticing that I wasn’t sure how to handle. His jealousy was outrageous—and his moods were all over the place.
I’d never seen his kind of jealousy before.
And even though it would piss me off, I secretly liked it.
It felt like he really loved me and wanted me all to himself.
There were also times it got to be too much and I just needed air to breathe—like a long line of men before him, his love was so intense it would be suffocating—but man, the sex was phenomenal.
It’s what kept me coming back for more. I relished the fact that he couldn’t live without me—he told me every damn night that he’d die if he lost me. No one had ever loved me so hard.
We had become kind of the “it” couple around town.
He paraded me around like some show pony.
I hid behind him and felt invincible when he was next to me.
I was his beauty, he was my beast, and I had no problem siccing him on people who threatened me.
There were plenty of nights when we had to run out of bars because he knocked someone out.
We didn’t care what damage we caused—we fed each other’s dark sides.
The monsters came out to play and then we’d tuck them into bed for the night—only to let them back out of the cage again the next day.
It was a vicious cycle of fuckery—my specialty.
If you had asked us we would have called it fun. At least it was familiar.
I was making a ton of money still working and doing calls, and he would go with me.
In the beginning, we had fun and felt like a team.
Had I finally found someone who accepted my lifestyle fully?
We would gamble at the casinos or bars until seven or eight a.m. every day, blowing the money I’d made that night for the sake of “having fun” together.
Snorting eight balls off each other’s bodies and banging in every public restroom we could find.
We didn’t realize we were chasing the high from when we first met.
Each time, we would have to outdo ourselves just to raise the bar.
Our intensity threshold became too hard to reach.
I wasn’t scared of him yet. I would poke and poke and poke him to get reactions and to see that side.
And he would tell me straight up, “Bunnie, you don’t want that side of me to come out.
” It only made me trigger him more. Call me crazy—I wouldn’t blame you.
But maybe that kind of terror felt like home.
Or love. That kind of chaos felt exciting, and the intensity made it feel important.
Maybe the fact that I could drive him to the edge gave me some kind of control, and it made me feel safe.
Maybe that death wish was still alive inside me, and I wanted to see just how close I could take us to the darkness.
With the exception of that first rib hit, he held it together pretty well—until one night when I went too far.
* * *
I STILL LIVED IN THAT house I’d kicked Paulie and his family out of. Karma had begged me to move in with Cindy and him, but I wanted my own space. Their relationship didn’t bother me, but it still weirded me out. If I piss on a patch of grass, that patch of grass is mine.
I used his lying and the cracked rib as excuses to create distance between us when I need to catch my breath from the smothering romance.
By then, I knew how to trigger him. He had a list a mile long of things I could and couldn’t do, and sometimes I just wanted to rebel for the hell of it. I wanted space.
I’d run off to my house and disappear for a few days until I missed him.
Then I’d resurface, which only triggered his abandonment issues.
This particular night, I was on the phone with a friend of Karma’s, and I was fucking mad.
I was texting Karma all kinds of shit: Fuck you.
You’re a bitch. Fuck you. I was at my house, and he was at his.
I didn’t think anything of it. I sure didn’t think he’d come over to my house.
I didn’t think he’d be able to break in.
I was getting heated on the phone, listening to his friend tell me all the shit that Karma had been doing behind my back.
It was all gossip and definitely breaking the guy code, but he told me anyway.
Next thing you know Karma kicked in my bedroom door.
He had been sitting outside my bedroom door for God knows how long, listening to his friend’s voice on speakerphone telling me everything.
He grabbed my phone and started screaming.
“You’re a fucking bitch. You’re over here talking to my girl. I’m going to fuck you up when I see you.”
He hung up the phone and threw me on the bed—not in a sexy way.
He tossed me like a rag doll. Then he climbed on top of me so my arms were pinned to the bed with his knees, and stuck his gun in my mouth.
I looked up at him, trying to figure out what the hell to do.
He jammed the gun farther into my mouth, so hard he split my lip.
“I should fucking kill you right now, you stupid bitch. You want to fucking disrespect me?”
I couldn’t say a word. I was just sitting there with his gun in my mouth, afraid my head was about to get blown off. All I could do was whimper in fear. One wrong move and I knew I’d be gone.
He finally stopped screaming, got off me, and walked downstairs. I lay in bed sobbing and scared out of my fucking mind. I wanted to run, to go anywhere but my house. I heard him walk toward the front door and then stop.
“Bunnie. Are you fucking coming with me or not?” he yelled.
I sat up in bed, wiped the tears from my eyes, and realized that I did want to go with him. I wanted his approval and to make him not mad at me. As insane as that sounds.