Chapter 12 #3
Three minutes after she got home, John stormed into Lillith’s apartment like a hurricane.
His eyes looked like blue lightning as he gazed at her.
She didn’t dare tell him she’d read the article.
And then, without a word, he grabbed her and pulled her into the bedroom and nearly tore her clothes off, and he pushed her onto the bed for the most violent sex he’d ever engaged in with her.
At one point, he growled, “I need you.” She had an animal in her arms, a beast who plunged into her and almost through her and he was shaking after he came.
She held him until he quieted, and he seemed to melt into her arms as though all his bones had dissolved.
“Are you okay?” she asked him. She felt as though her lower regions had been beaten with a two-by-four. And she realized as he lay next to her that the article was true. He was capable of rape, and of everything it claimed. It hit her like a bolt of lightning. John was a stranger to her.
“I’m not okay. But I will be. I’m going to the boat to calm down,” he said, sounding more like himself again.
And she also knew that he had just used her to calm his nerves.
The world was closing in on him. “Don’t read the Vanity Fair piece.
Someone must have paid them to lie about me.
Maybe my daughter, or the unions. None of it is true.
I’ll come back when it calms down. There’s no point sitting here while every tabloid in the city picks it up.
They even accused me of rape.” She couldn’t look at him when he said it.
She lay silent on the bed, afraid of him now.
“It’s not true. She was a little prick-tease who changed her mind.
She accused me falsely. She dropped the charges because it was a lie.
I’m going to sue them for it. My lawyers can file the suit while I’m on the boat.
I’ll see you when I get back.” He got out of bed.
Lillith didn’t want to see him again, but she was afraid to say it.
She realized now just how dangerous he was.
She had been in love with her illusions, not with the man he was.
“I need to be alone on the boat and I assume you can’t leave work,” John said as he dressed.
“No, I can’t,” she said in a small voice. All she wanted was for him to leave now before he hurt her again. She was glad he was leaving town.
“I’ll call you from the boat,” he said, and she knew he wouldn’t.
She was going to have her locks changed as soon as he left, and maybe stay with a friend for a while.
The man she had fallen in love with on the boat had never existed.
And she never wanted to see him again. She realized now that she was lucky nothing worse had happened.
She was shaking when he walked out of her room.
She heard the front door close a minute later, and she burst into tears in terror and relief.
Her illusions were shattered, but she was alive.
She had learned a terrifying lesson, and now she knew why his daughter hated him. He was an evil, dangerous man.
After he left her, John went to his own apartment and packed a small bag.
He had everything he needed on the boat.
And then he went to Isabelle’s. She was in triple-time mode, packing several bags at once, calling people on her cellphone and canceling appointments.
She called Lillith’s boss and said she was going out of town.
She told her she had complete confidence in Lillith and she should start the new dressing room project before she got back.
She said she had to leave for an emergency and didn’t say where she was going.
“We got a flight plan for nine p.m. takeoff,” John told her.
“We can fly into St. Barth. The crew will pick us up when we get there. We should leave for Teterboro at seven,” John said calmly.
It was only three by then, and Isabelle had almost finished all her calls.
It took her until nearly seven to finish packing, make her last calls, and dress.
John sat brooding for the rest of the afternoon and she was ready to leave on time.
—
At nine that night, Charlotte left for the airport for the ten o’clock check-in for her midnight flight to Paris.
John’s plane had just taken off from Teterboro promptly at nine.
And Lillith was sitting alone in her apartment, thinking about what had happened, shaken to the core.
The locksmith was coming to change her locks in the morning.
John had come through her apartment like a hurricane that afternoon before he left, and she was still in shock.
She was going to move in with a friend for the next few weeks. She didn’t want to see him again.
Her boss had called her to see how she was and tell her that Isabelle had called to say she had an emergency and was leaving town, and Lillith was to handle the new dressing room without her.
Lillith remembered what her friend at work had said.
She was right, John was a sociopath. She had thought that he would bring love, companionship, and stability into her life, and instead he had brought instability, confusion, disappointment, sadness, and fear.
None of the things he had promised her had materialized.
He had lied to her. He hadn’t asked her to move in with him after all, and she was grateful she hadn’t given up her job or her apartment.
She thought she loved him and she had never even known him.
And all she wanted now was to forget him, and she hoped she’d never see him again.