KIFO’S BARK STARTLED me awake. I felt the ache in my neck, reminding me that I should’ve went to bed in lieu of working. Instead, I decided to take a nap on my desk and slept for a little too long. I glanced at the display screens, showcasing a stream of light at the forefront of a black background. I fingered the frames, remembering my time with Eric on Christmas when I was able to escape the darker thoughts in my mind.
Sleepwalking to the back of the house, I opened the door to the back deck to allow Kifo to relieve herself. The high height of the snow kept the men tasked with protecting me from circling the perimeter. It was a comfort to know they were out front, keeping watch. A glimmer from next door caught my eye.
As I scanned the perpetually dark house, I hugged myself from the bitter cold, hoping to get warm and wishing Kifo would hurry up and do her business. She had far too much fun dancing around in the snow, seemingly getting stuck and bouncing around again. The glimmer flashed, drawing my eye again. A light flickered on in the window of what was the living room. When I saw it again, I noticed a figure. The face was clear; it was Janet. I stepped slightly out on the deck, my bare feet hitting the snow, to wave at her. She didn’t appear to be able to see me.
When Kifo was done, I quickly freshened up, slipped on a pair of shoes, and proceeded to march down the snow-plowed sidewalk toward what used to be Eric’s house. I waved at the men in their unmarked cars in front of the house; they immediately exited their vehicles.
One man approached me, keeping his distance.
"I have to do something next door. I saw—” Shaking my head, I drew myself back from an over explanation. “I have my phone on me, and if I don’t call you every hour on the dot, come and get me.”
He gave me a nod and returned to the curb.
I expected a bit more resistance and wasn’t sure how to feel that there wasn’t any.
I entered through the front doors that were strangely left unlocked.
“Janet?”
“I’m in here,” I heard her call out, her voice strained.
Rounding the corner, I found her in the dining room sitting on the floor amidst candlelight on top of a blanket. She continuously stared at the floor with tears streaming down her cheeks.
The internal alarm bells resounded, and I immediately turned around only to run into a wall of flesh.
“You’re breaking the restraining order by being here,” I said, walking backward.
Eric said nothing; instead, he continued to stare at me. The look in his eyes held me under a different regard. I couldn’t quite label it as sympathy, but it was something new, something warmer.
“What do you want, Eric?”
Looking over my head, he nodded to Janet. She quickly scurried up, incapable of giving me her direct attention.
“How long did you give the boys outside to come get you?” Eric questioned me.
“I—I—”
“Nikki?” The broad shouldered cocky panther-like stride made my body awaken with a desire. He gently cupped my face in my hands. Quickly, his lips met mine with an opened-mouth kissed tinged with so much longing and passion my knees buckled. “Answer the question, my twisted angel.”
“An hour.”
“Give Janet your phone.”
Immobile, I simply stared at the nonexistent space between us.
He moved his hands around my body, finding my phone. Tossing it to Janet, he told her. “Be Nikki for the next few hours and do what she won’t be able to do for as many hours as it takes me to fuck the senses back inside her.”
Nodding in fear, she began to leave.
“The backdoor, Janet,” Eric ordered, his tone clipped toward her. “And I don’t have to tell you what will happen if you have a crisis of conscience, do I?”
“No, Dr. Brenton.” Quickly shifting on her feet, she left out of the back.
“Please leave me alone and do what you’re supposed to do.”
As he walked with me in his hold, he forced me backward. I continued to follow his direction, feeling as though my feet were lead bricks. He gently pushed me up against the nearest wall and encaged me in his arms. Leaning down, he brushed his lips across my forehead, slowly releasing a stream of hot air. Grabbing my arms, he forced them up and over his shoulders.
I obliged with very little fight.
“I forgive you for keeping things from me, and do you know why I’ve decided to forgive you?”
Lacking the ability to answer and unable to form a rebuttal, I simply shook my head.
“Nikki? I can’t lose you, especially not now. I need you as much as you need me.” Holding my head, he ran his thumbs across my forehead. “I’m in here, and I will always be in here.” Slowly his hand moved down, kneading my breasts and eliciting a gasp. Tilting his head down, he fingered my sternum with a ticklish touch, “And here.” He kissed me softly, swaying his mouth back and forth across mine. “I know how shitty life has been to you. When I do what needs to be done, we’re getting away from this place, and I am going to show you how beautiful a life with me can be. But the people who are in our way have to disappear. You know that, don’t you, Nikki? I have to protect you by any means necessary.” His hands continued their descent until they reached the waistband of my jeans. “Tell me you understand I do these things because I love you…so much, baby.” His soft words reverberated against my neck.
I sobbed softly. “I don’t understand you,” I said, my words breathy. “How can you—After all you’ve done?”
“It was all for you,” he said, lifting his head away from my neck to look at me.
“And thinking I was lying about Victor and what happened to our baby? What about what I told you about Preston? Was your incredulity all for me, too?”
He began to slowly unbutton my jeans and ease them down. “No. That was me making mistakes because I was angry at you. I needed someone to blame. I believe in you, Nikki. I always have.” His hands slid down the front of my jeans finding the part of me that was sopping wet.
I tried to close my legs but it didn’t matter, when he touched me expertly, I came completely apart.
“I’m not letting you go without a knockdown, drag-out fight. No manipulation. No bullshit. This is me, being the man you want me to be—I’m going to be Ethan for you and stay that way. Tonight, not only am I going to show you the stars, I’m going to bring you the entire fucking galaxy. I need to see your beautiful face—taste those lips while you beg for me…come for me as I make love to you. I want to make you come until your pussy can’t cream on my cock anymore. Can we do that, my twisted angel? Tonight I’ll be whomever you want me to be.”
Unsure what to believe and wanting to believe this version was real pulled me further down into a pool of blackness I was barely able to wade in.
“Do you know what happened to me when you took your love away? I was fucking gutted. Shit. Gutted isn’t the word. Empty shell isn’t the word. I was…gone. I was nothing. You made me be something I may not have wanted to become, but I needed to be him. I keep fighting that guy, but I’m not anymore.” He placed his hands on my stomach. “I’m not losing us.” He motioned between us. “This is more than love. Something that can’t be described or defined. It’s consuming and soul-shattering. You don’t know what you did to me when you rescinded our deal. You broke me.”
His pretty words enveloped me in their warmth. I wanted fiercely to believe they were real, and I had a hard time believing they weren’t. I was dying inside without him. “Because I keep hoping I’ll completely break through to Ethan, and he’ll be here to stay. Is he here to stay?”
He searched my eyes, cupping my face in his hands. “What do you see, my twisted angel?”
“You.” He had successfully cracked through my exterior, and my protection against him came crashing down.
“This man is yours. Do whatever you want to do to him.”
I kissed him hard…strongly, showing my need.
He picked up my thighs and took me down on the blanket on the floor.
WAKING FROM A PEACEFUL slumber I hadn’t experienced in some time, I noticed Eric was no longer sleeping next to me. Sitting up on the floor and wrapping the blanket around me, I went in search of Eric.
With his forehead resting on his forearm, he seemed entranced with looking out the peephole. “Get dressed, I want to show you something.”
“How are you going to get past them?”
He looked over his shoulder at me and winked. “There isn’t a damn thing that can stand in the way of what I’m capable of. Thought you knew that.”
I couldn’t shake the feeling inside my heart. What was expected of me and what I wanted were two completely different things. Nothing inside me was in sync. It was a chaotic mess, continuously stirred up until nothing made much sense anymore.
THE RIDE WAS SILENT. The roads were eerily vacant as he navigated his way to a place I had never been before. He pulled off the road, turned off the vehicle, and quickly exited. Looking around at nothing other than a heavily forested area on a poorly lit street in the dead of night, I was confused about why we were here.
He opened the door for me, took my hand, and led me deeper into the forest. We marched, trekking carefully through the high snow, into the densely packed wooded area. Taking both of my hands in his, he gazed at me with a smile that draped his entire face. The expression was sinister enough to bring shivers down my spine.
The first crackle of the New Year’s Eve fireworks gave me a start. The bright lights illuminated over our heads, though they were obviously being set a fair distance away.
“Look up, Nik.”
The second my eyes gazed upward and caught the sight of dangling feet, one stiletto on, one missing, lit by the stream of colorful lights from the fireworks, I gasped and closed my eyes.
He grabbed my head, thrusting his thumbs up under my chin and forced me to look upward. “It’s beautifully poetic, isn’t it? Happy New Year, baby.”
Her grey face and the awkward slant of her neck haunted me. Her eyes were a sooty, smoky gray, her mouth ajar. Something was attached to her chest. The crude rope around her neck kept her suspended above us and motionless.
“Do you want to read her suicide note? I believe it’s one of the best I’ve ever read. It might take some doing to get it for you.” He looked up at the lifeless body of Cherish Clarke, seemingly proud of the sight. “If you want it badly enough, I can get it down for you. See, Nikki? The things I do for you? Dr. Erin can’t do the things I can. She can only make you worse. I solved your only problem and she didn’t. I’m coming back home to you, and we’ll start over again.”
Shaking in abject terror, I yanked my body away from him and stepped backward, eventually teetering. He caught me before I fell.
“Careful. I was told your pregnancy was completely healthy. Let’s keep it that way.” His cold thumbs wiped away my tears as they guttered my cheeks. He studied my face with an increasingly perplexed expression. “I spent hours reading the notes on your sessions with Dr. Erin. I found the source of what you think is your problem. I don’t blame you, Nikki. What the bitch hanging above us did to you? She gave me so many creative ideas on how to make her pay. The noose she put inside your locker with a doll that looked like you—of all the shitty things she did, that irritated me the most. Look who’s hanging from a noose now.
“I think I broke a record,” he sneered. “It took me less than an hour of speaking to her before she was ready to kill herself. There are two types of bullies in this world: The ones who degrade people to feel better about themselves, and the ones who think highly of themselves and have no patience for the weak. Which side do you think the recently departed Cherish aligned with?”
“I-I want to go home. Take me home, Eric.”
“Why aren’t you enjoying this more? The bitch is the reason you think you aren’t more than you really are. And guess what, Nikki? After the stunt Dr. Erin pulled you into doing at the mall, Cherish had plans to do more to you. She still blames you as the reason her husband wants to fuck every girl in the world.”
“Did you hurt her?”
He looked up at Cherish and began to laugh.
“Dr. Erin? Did you hurt her?”
“Not yet. I am feeling a little bit jumpy. Maybe you should act like you’re a little grateful.” Shoving his hands in his hair, he released an elongated breath. “You are starting to piss me the fuck off, Nikki.”
Clutching my stomach, I looked around. The realization that I was alone in the middle of nowhere with Eric finally hit me. How could I have been so blind? The man was unbelievably talented, but he never would’ve gotten in had I been strong enough to see through him.
“I’m a little shocked, Eric,” I said quietly, giving him a reassuring smile. “I would’ve appreciated a warning.” With my hands shaking, I embraced his face. “Thank you for getting her out of my life.”
“You’re insulting me.” He grabbed my hands from around his face, holding them up, showing me how severely they were shaking. “You really think I’d do something to you?”
“No. Not at all.”
He stared at me and a dark black void clouded his eyes “You were always a bad fucking liar, baby.”
“Can you please take me back?”
“To the assholes who want to keep me from you? No. I’m taking you home. To our home where no one can get to us. I have some things to do, and you will stay there until I’m done.”
I took a chance and believed because he knew I was carrying his baby, he wouldn’t physically hurt me. Channeling all my hurt, anger, and sadness, I balled up my fist and hit him hard enough to make him waver. Screaming and marching—tumbling—in the snow, I tried to escape. The snow crunched and buckled underneath me as he closed in on me. For the first time in my life, I prayed for the ability to escape.
When I reached the road, my prayers were answered. With their guns drawn, my protection was there, ready to usher me in the back of the vehicle and keep Eric away from me.
Without looking back, I quickly got into the back of the car.
In the backseat sat Janet. “I’m sorry, Nikki,” Janet apologized, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I didn’t trust him, and I told the men if you drove off, to follow you.”
Unable to say thank you, I covered my face and cried.
She quickly put her arms around me, and for the first time, I allowed someone other than my mother or Eric to comfort me.
Seeing the person you love capitulate to something he truly isn’t—something you know he was sculpted into becoming by unscrupulous people—forged an indescribable ache. I couldn’t give up. I had no other choice but to keep believing the impossible. But I knew what I had to do; I had to bring him to the lowest bottom in order to make him see his way to the top and begin to climb.