April

How doesn’t he hate me? Jesus, I hate me.

I hurt him so badly, and here I am living with him, having sex with him, having meals with his family…Why would I ever let this go? There has to be more to the story. He may not know what the “more” is, since I can’t remember, but I don’t think I’m a bad person. I don’t think I would intentionally use him just to have his father arrested. I mean, am I a bad person?

I wish I could just remember. I want to give him some sort of reason. A justification for why I pretended to be someone else. It has to be something more than—work.

I don’t know what to think, how to act. I do, however, know how I’m feeling. I’m feeling sated. Like the pressure that’s been building and building finally released in a wonderfully fulfilling explosion. I don’t know how June felt, but I know how I feel right now. I feel like something that was off, something that was missing, has now fallen into place. As if all is suddenly right in the world.

It hurts me that I can’t remember how we were when we were together. I can’t imagine that I’m that changed, that different, that I’d have purposely hurt this man. It’s just not in my DNA. It’s unfathomable to me that I didn’t feel regret and guilt when I hurt him. I had to have.

It’s been a week. A week in which we’ve stopped dwelling on the past and have been focused on getting to know each other. We’ve gone out to dinner, we’ve stayed home and watched movies, and we’ve gone on morning jogs (something, apparently, I love to do). It’s been wonderful. That evening we walk into Panic hand in hand. It feels different this time. As if he’s not just taking care of me because of a sense of obligation. He’s with me because he wants to be with me. “There’s something else that may jog your memory,” he tells me as we head to his office.

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. This time I’m going to make you stay,” he teases with a sexy grin.

That comment sounds oddly familiar, but I don’t know why. There’s a niggling sensation in my mind, a hint of a memory I can’t grasp. When we get upstairs, he turns on a speaker that allows the music to pour loudly into his office. He locks the door and pulls me forward.

He takes off his belt and tosses it aside, then pushes his pants down, freeing his cock. “Get naked.”

“Here?”

“Yeah. The music’ll drown us out. But try to not be so loud.”

Wanting him so badly, I do as he says, watching him stroke himself slowly. “That looks good.”

“Looks better when you’re sitting on it.” He sits down on the couch, rips open a condom wrapper, and slides it on. “Ride me. Sit on my cock and ride me.”

Following his directions, I straddle him and slowly sink down with a loud moan. I’m grabbing the back of the couch, and the window is right in front of me. I wonder if they can see me from down there. I don’t think so, but the thought of it makes it that much more erotic. “Harder, baby,” he demands, gripping my waist and pushing me down and helping me up, over and over.

“Do you want to be seen fucking me?” he says when he notices my eyes on the crowd. “If they look up, they can probably see your tits bouncing up and down with each thrust.”

He thrusts his hips up and then flips us over so fast I almost fall. My back is to the couch and he’s on me, pumping fast and hard. “Only I get to see your face when you come. No one else.”

It takes just a few more strokes and he’s slamming his mouth against mine to swallow up my yell when I come.

When we’ve come back down to earth, I stretch; my arms feel languid, like wet noodles. “That was so good. Best sex of my life.”

He laughs, and holds me closer to his sticky body. “How would you know?”

“I don’t know, I just do. Never has there been sex like that by people. It’s the best sex of all the sex.”

He laughs again and kisses the top of my head. “I would have to agree. You wore me out, woman. I have absolutely no desire to get off this couch, ever.”

“Is this how it was?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was it always like this between us?”

“The sex was always great, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not just the sex. Everything seems…intense.”

“It wasn’t. Not really,” he admits. “It was great. Easy. You went along with most things I suggested.” He flips me around so that I’m now straddling him. “It was perfect.” I cringe, knowing that what we have now is not perfect. It’s far from perfect, in fact. “Too perfect. Now I see that.”

“I don’t know—easy and perfect sound pretty great.”

“It wasn’t real. This is the real you.”

“How do you know? I don’t even know the real me.”

“I don’t know. I just do, I guess. There’s no bullshit. No fluff.”

“I guess that’s true,” I say, laying my head on his chest.

I’m feeling wonderfully content, wrapped up in his arms. At this point, I don’t know if I even want to remember. I think I don’t; things are going too perfect to screw it up. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you home. There’s a pint of fresh strawberry ice cream with your name on it, your favorite.”

Sweetheart.

Strawberry ice cream.

That hits me hard, and as he helps me up, things start falling into place. It’s fast and I don’t see it coming. It’s like a train wreck. I look around the room which doesn’t look foreign anymore. “The strawberry ice cream melted. It was everywhere.”

“What?”

“We’ve done it on that desk before,” I say, everything rushing back in all at once like a tsunami. He freezes, his jeans midway up his legs. “And on this sofa, and against that wall,” I continue, looking around. “I had to stay quiet.”

“Hey?” I feel his hand on my arm.

“Jesus, that looks sexy,” he says. We’ve just had crazy rough sex in his office and I’m feeling completely out of sorts. Dean is in a van across the street listening to the audio feed from Panic. It’s become so much more with Matt, and the lines between work and my heart are becoming blurred.

I don’t want to talk, because everything he’s saying is being heard and recorded, and there’s only so much lying and damage control I can do. I’m supposed to be luring him, not screwing him. What the hell is wrong with me? I stand up, but he’s already there with some napkins. “You okay?”

No. I’m not. I don’t tell him. I don’t even talk. I need him to leave. I need to compose myself, and I don’t need the explicit details of what just happened being recorded.

With shaky hands I bend down and grab my clothes and start to dress.

“What’s going on? What do you remember?”

“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. It’s overwhelming. Everything is rushing back. It’s like I need to catalogue it all in order to understand. “We met here at the club.”

“Yeah, but I told you that.”

“But I remember it.” Once dressed, I sit down and try to calm my breathing so that I can think things through.

I watch carefully where we’re going, having already studied the plans of the club a dozen times. I know about the private elevators. He swipes his fingerprint against the button and it opens. “Cool!” I purposely sound ditzy, and when the elevator opens on the second floor, he again uses his prints to unlock a second set of doors. It’s easy to forget that he doesn’t know all the things I already know about him, and I have to remember to ask questions and act surprised—get him talking as much as possible. “So what if you have a broken hand or something? Then you can’t open anything around here, huh?”

“I have a key.” Then he laughs and shows me his other hand. “And a second hand.”

“Well, you could break both hands.”

“Seems like a stretch. And why would my fingerprints be broken too? And if I have two broken hands and ten broken fingers I won’t be able to use the key, either. This is a weird conversation.” I notice he instinctively pats his pocket when he said “keys,” so I assume he has a set of keys with him. Does he have them at all times, I wonder? I scrutinize everything around me.