I don’t bother knocking on the door when I get to Gram’s. Sweat is pooling in every crevice of my body. I am trying to catch my breath and slow my pulse rate. I ran the whole way here, but now that I am here, I am not sure what I want—need to say. How am I supposed to put on the charade of attending classes tomorrow with this shit going on?
I find my Gram rocking in the corner of the sitting room in her favorite knitting chair. She is quilting as if nothing has happened today. This is what I don’t understand about her. She always wears a game face, always.
She takes in my disheveled appearance and ragged breathing. “Take a seat, child, your huffing and puffing is irritating my concentration. I was wondering when you’d be back? Alex should be back in a few minutes and then we'll talk.”
Alex? She is on a first name basis with my therapist, what the hell is going on?
I excuse myself to the powder room. My knees are shaky, and I want to hurl. I splash some cold water onto my face and try to calm my nerves. I need a cigarette.
I don’t return to Gram. Instead I go out to the garden for a smoke. Taking my usual seat on the bench a calming sense washes over me. Harlan. I smile feeling the ghost of his embrace.
Two smokes later, my Gram and Dr. Peters join me. “Bella,” Gram says my name, her voice lightly cracking as she speaks. “I am not sure how much of our conversation you heard earlier, but I have some things I need to tell you. I have wanted to tell you for some time, but with everything you have been through, Alex and I never felt the timing was right.” She tries to place a reassuring hand on my knee and I push her hand away.
I am pissed.
I don’t need coddled.
Alex decides it is time for him to join in on this touching family moment. “Bella, I told you I knew your mother and that we had dated.” I nod urging him to get on with it. He explains that my mother was the love of his life. They dated through high school but broke up when they went their separate ways for college.
They kept in touch the first two years of school, but then my mother, Adeline, cut ties with him once she became an actress. He tells me that for six years they had no contact, until he moved back home to do his residency and start his practice.
My mother had recently turned up home after being gone all those years. The show she had been staring on had been cancelled.
Gram had no idea what she had been up to other than that. She just showed up one day pregnant. “I never could get her to tell me who the father was, she only ever gave me the name Rob, no last name, no other information,” my Gram goes on to fill in parts of the story. “My Addy seemed so sad. I called Alex and he agreed to see her.”
As she is rambling on, it dawns on me that they have no clue who my dad is. Gram has still neglected to tell me why she made up a fake son, and why she lied about my mother’s death.
Dr. Peters starts to speak again telling me that he started seeing my mother on a professional level, but he had hopes that they could rekindle their love and raise me together. She was in a manic-depressive state during the pregnancy and there weren’t many medications they could prescribe her, or that she would take due to the side effects. After I was born, she slipped further into her depression and when I was three months old, she hung herself. She took her life and didn’t even bother to leave a note.
Gram pleads with me that lying about my parents seemed right at the time. She wanted me to have a sense of who I was and to feel normal. She was afraid that I would grow up feeling abandoned and unwanted...
News flash.
I still felt those feelings my whole life with her lies.
Alex wanted to take me and raise me as his own, because he loved my mother that much. I wonder if that is why he is still single—because he has never recovered from losing her. He tells me he understands that I have a lot to think about but to please call him if I need to talk before our next appointment.
He leaves Gram and me to talk amongst ourselves.
“The money I receive each month, where does it come from? Since it clearly isn’t coming from my father. And who is my father? I take it that he wasn’t in the CIA and I don’t live off those funds.” I fight the urge to light up another cigarette.
Gram takes her hands nervously into her own lap and looks away from me, trying to hide her shameful tears. “The money,” she starts with a quivering lip, “some comes from insurance from your mother’s death, some is from what was left from her acting career, and the rest comes from Alex. As for you father, your mother never told me anything about him, I just don’t know who he was. I’m sorry, Bella, I wish I had better answers to give you, but I don’t.”
She waits to gauge my response, but I can’t even look at her either right now. My whole life has been a lie. “I need to go.” I slowly stand and walk out the back gate.
“Bella,” I hear her call out to me in a strangled cry.
I want to turn around and go comfort her as much as it hurts—but I can’t do this right now.
The ache in my chest is too strong.
The poison is consuming me.
I can’t take it.
I just can’t.
When I make it to my apartment, Cutter is asleep against my door. He looks like a devil in disguise as he snoozes. I run my finger across the light stubble that is gracing his jawline. My light touch stirs him from his sleep. He takes one look at me and pulls me into his lap. He holds me, not asking any questions, stroking my hair as I cry. He explains that he bumped into Brianna and she told him I was going to need him tonight.
Normally, Brianna getting in my business would upset me, but she is right I do need him tonight. I shouldn’t be alone when the poison has so much control over my emotions.
After my sobbing stops, he presses me to let him take me inside and feed me. He is hungry, and he complains that his ass is numb from sitting on the hard concrete floor of my doorway. He wipes my stray tears with the hem of his shirt.
Stealing a glance of those dangerously delicious abs he is packing, I want to trace my tongue down his happy trail.
I want to escape just for tonight.
I want to forget all I have learned today.
Cutter goes into the kitchen to fix us some canned spaghetti. Hey, we are college kids. I strip down and get into the shower, in an attempt to let the warmth of the water wash my thoughts away, but it isn’t working. I grip the razor lying on the edge of the tub from earlier today between my fingers.
I need it to stop. The darkness.
I can still hear Gram and Alex’s confession echoing through my head. Just one cut, and it can all be over.
I’m not sure how long I have been standing here struggling with my thoughts and my pain, when Cutter pushes the shower curtain back. I haven’t even noticed that I have run all the hot water out.
“No, Bella. No more. You aren’t going to hurt yourself anymore.” He takes the razor from my grasp, tosses it in the garbage, takes my towel from the rack, and wraps it around my shivering body.
“Please, Cutter,” I let out in an exasperated whisper, “cut me. Make it stop, make it all go away.”
He hugs me to his chest. “No,” he grits out firmly between his teeth. “I promised to put you back together, Bella, and I will. But not like this. I gave in last time because I wanted you to trust me. But no more cutting, I won’t be a part of it again. You have to let your wounds heal.” He places a gentle kiss on my cheek and the friction of his facial scruff burns my skin. It makes me tingle. Hooking my arms around his neck I crash my mouth down on his.
“You can’t fix this, Cutter.” I let my towel slide to the floor exposing all my scars for him to see. “But you can fuck me.”
His hard cock presses into my stomach, showing me, he is more than ready to fuck my pain away.
I slide down to my knees and undo his belt. I unzip his jeans as he pushes his pants down until they catch on his knees. I take my hand around his shaft and ease my lips over the tip. I suck down on the head of his dick and swirl my tongue around. Cutter grips my hair and pushes his length further into my mouth
. I peek up at him to see a grin spread across his face, but his eyes are closed.
I stop sucking him and allow him to pop out of my mouth. “Nuh uh, you are going to watch my mouth fuck your perfect cock.” He opens his eyes and stares down at me. His jaw is tense as I take him back into my mouth, letting him probe further, until he hits the back of my throat. I can’t even get all of him in my mouth.
A gritted moan of pleasure passes through his teeth.
“Fuck, Bella, you are going to make me lose it.” His words egg me on. I start bobbing my head faster and faster, and he in turn rocks into my mouth harder. “Are you mine, Bella?”
I wrap my arm around his leg holding him in place as he tries to pull out of my mouth. Oh no you don’t. I smirk to myself milking him completely and licking him clean. Tonight, I don’t have it in me to talk labels, to define what I am to him, or who he is to me.
Cutter then takes me into my bed to return the orgasm. I’m telling you the guy seriously has a magic tongue. The thing she can do should be against the law.
He could use it as a weapon against me. I’d do anything he ever wanted if he promised to love me with his tongue like he just did every night.
I’ve never felt anything like it in my life. He used his tongue like he is an expert at oral sex. I swear the guy could charge for lessons. Believe me people would pay to have the kind of orgasm I just had, multiple ones at that.
*—*
I wake to the blaring of my alarm clock. I glance at the time. Ugh. How long has it been going off? I shake Cutter. “Ass. Up. Now. Need. Coffee.” He groans and mumbles, rolling away from me. Okay, a new tactic is needed. I pull the covers off and pinch his ass hard.
“Ow—the fuck, Bella!” he reaches over and pulls me into a hug. “You owe me, my tongue is sore. I don’t know how I am going to make it through the day, it’s swollen.”
“Awe, poor baby. It was worth it though wasn’t it. I see you hiding your shit-eating grin. Let me make it up to you.” I pull his boxers down and give him a good morning blowjob to jump-start his day.
“Now that’s how you wake a man up.” He kisses my forehead and rolls out of my bed.
“Yeah, and now we are even. My jaws hurt.” I hope no one expects me to talk much today. Have you ever had lockjaw from chewing too much bubble gum, well that is how I feel right now. But it was worth it to please Cutter.
There my job is done.
Classes start today, and I refuse to be late. Cutter goes to his apartment to get ready for our big first day on campus. We don’t have any classes together, so we agree to meet at the picnic tables near the tennis courts for lunch.
My first class is at ten then my second is at three. My first class is a dull English class. The time seems to creep by. I can’t concentrate. How am I supposed to continue as Alex Peter’s patient knowing what I know now.
Lunch goes by quick. Cutter and I are joined by Hurley and Brianna. I think they are a thing now, but I am never sure of anything when it comes to Brianna. She talks to me about general topics and relief washes over me when she doesn’t bring up the library and what we both now know about my mother. This town is great at keeping secrets.
I dread my second class of the day, photography.
My adviser has spoken with my professors about my issues and they have all agreed to work with me as much as they can. I look over the first assignment for the class. Great she wants us to capture a photo of an object that we can identify the most. I wasn’t prepared to actually have to use my camera so soon into the course.
Gram has tried me on my cell a few times today, but I am not ready to talk to her.
Bella: I need time and space. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.
I am angry with her, but I don’t want her to worry.
I will have to face her in a few days. I plan on taking pictures of her garden for my project. Then I get a fantastic idea. I have memory cards full of her flowers. I will just pick one of the many for the assignment. There I killed two birds with one stone.
I am aimlessly walking through the rows of picture paper at the local office supply store, when Nolan approaches me.
“Hello, Bells. How do you like college so far?” He is being a little too nice. His demeanor sort of freaks me out. Nolan is never this polite unless he wants something.
“So, have you seen Brianna around lately, she isn’t taking my calls.”
So that is what he is after, but how does he know we are sort of friends now. I give him a vague answer about bumping into her from time to time. I do not want him thinking he can pump me for information.
My jaws are still hurting. Talking isn’t a strong point for me today.
*—*
It is the day of my tattoo appointment and I am so excited. Brianna and Hurley have tagged along with Cutter and me. We have become quite the foursome this week. It feels pretty good to be honest. I haven’t been able to go to the falls any more this week. They say it could be weeks before the work on the bridge is complete. It feels a little weird not having my thoughts of Harlan consuming my every waking moment. My thoughts are filled more with Cutter with each passing day.
I thought nothing, or no one could ever compare to Harlan, but Cutter is influencing my happiness. I still can’t let him in fully, but I am trying, and I am not even sure why.
Cutter holds my hand as the artist starts the outline of my rose tattoo. Brianna watches nervously. Hurley has to take her outside. She was about to faint at the sight of the light bleeding. Two hours later, I am tatted, and it is beautiful. The roses are gorgeous, wrapping around my body’s small curves perfectly.
The girl at the front desk gives me some cream and instructions on how to care for it as I pay.
Brianna chickens out of getting a tattoo, but she gets her belly button pierced. Hurley gets a new tattoo as well. He goes for a generic tribal tattoo on his upper left arm, but it does look good. Cutter says he plans on getting another tattoo at some point, but he isn’t sure what he wants yet, so he decides to wait.
I tease him, “You should have put Bella’s bitch on your ass.”
He snorts and shoves me away.
*—*
The first few weeks of classes pass in a blur. I haven’t showed to my appointments with Doc. He left me a voicemail that if I miss one more appointment he will make me go see my doctors at the hospital. He knows how to play hardball. I call his secretary and schedule an appointment the first week of October, which happens to be next week. There is no way I am going to see those quacks. Fucking dope pushers is more like it. I have no desire to go back and endure their form of thera-rape-me.
I have managed to avoid my Gram as well. I dodge her calls and send her texts that I still need time to process everything. She needs to realize I will come around once I’m ready to forgive her, and today just isn’t that day. Thinking about it all makes me crave a cigarette.