Oblivious Omissions
Unasked questions, splurged on his doubt
The query in her silence sought him to end the drought
As the feeling within dragged him back in the past
The future demanded answers to the questions never asked
Kingston
Pain.
Glorious, relaxing pain.
My muscles ached as I extended my arms in smooth strokes, pushing my body into another ordeal.
Swimming centered me. The splash of the water on my muscles was the perfect relaxant after a long day.
I rose up to take a breath and continued the lap. The sounds of the waves right below the hill my Malibu home sat on added a calming orchestra to my ears as I washed away all the craziness of the day.
I swam every day, no matter the time. It was my go-to exercise on days when I was too tired to turn to the gym and push my muscles in a strenuous workout. It was something I’d continued after my days as a national swimmer in high school.
Finally, after two more laps, I stopped. Grabbing the rim of my infinity pool, I pushed up a little and took a sip from my water bottle.
Thoughts of what had transpired today started to rush forward, but I ignored them, staring at the clear night sky.
Quiet spread around me, the moon and the stars my only companions. For a moment, I stayed there in the pool, breathing in the night, enjoying the calm, hoping to feel the same within.
It was already two in the morning and I had a long day ahead tomorrow, but I couldn’t leave yet. I wasn’t ready to deal with thoughts I’d barely managed to push aside.
Events from earlier had kept replaying in my mind, torturing me through the day. Questions and confusions waxed and waned in my mind, messing up my focus.
Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t shake that feeling off.
Vienna’s blatant avoidance of acknowledging our past kept gnawing at me. Despite the anger that followed at the way she’d reacted, a part of me kept asking why, kept wondering if there was more to her than I knew.
I wanted to forget her now and forever, but it was futile. She was like a drug. I could still feel her fragile body in my arms; her scent still raised havoc in my soul. She still had the power to incapacitate me.
At that moment, when I’d held her in my arms, I’d forgotten everything that had mattered to me in the past five years.
My anger had become inconsequential; my pain lost its edge.
I’d forgotten her betrayal as I drowned in those warm eyes.
All I’d wanted to do was fuck her.
I wanted to pour all my anger into her body and drag her down to hell with me. I wanted to scar her with my lips and leave marks of battle on her skin, just like she had this afternoon and in the past, so she would be forced to acknowledge what we’d had.
My feelings for her swayed from rage and revenge to lust and passion.
Having her close to me after so long had been the worst kind of torture. Controlling my natural urges an even more laborious task.
She had ruined me.
And I wanted to ruin her back.
Had it not been for my iron-fisted control, I would have. Vienna was a plague. She had the power to rip apart my life.
Even now, with her new personality, split between confident and confused, she intrigued me, excited me, and challenged me all over again. Her docile façade drew me in with morbid curiosity. What had happened to her? How had the past five years changed her so drastically?
She was so unlike the Vienna I’d known five years ago, yet still so similar.
I could still see the glimmer of her old self between the cracks of her faltering demeanor, but she was guarded, cautious, and anxious. She weighed her words before she spoke, didn’t take risks, and never acted the way she had in my office today.
Nothing about the Vienna today resembled the girl I’d known, and yet, every time she was challenged, she rose from the ashes of her sorry present self and showed me a glimpse of a girl I used to love.
My phone buzzed with a text. I pulled out of the swimming pool and walked up to the pool chair to see Alex’s message on my phone.
Unease rose in my throat, and instantly my thoughts warped into pain.
Alex and I hadn’t seen eye to eye for years. Our relationship barely hung by a thread, and the only reason we were still somewhat on speaking terms was because of our mother and work. We ran the company our father had left behind together, and that was the only thing we ever talked about anymore.
I grabbed a towel from the table by the chair.
Alex: Hey. Back in ten days. Mom invited us to Thousand Oaks next Saturday.
I texted back,
Me: Yes, Mom wants to meet Chloe. Your engagement surprised her.
Alex: Yes, she told me. We’ll be there.
Me: Great. We’ll leave Saturday morning and will drive back on Sunday.
I walked into my house, Spade and Sasha, my Weimaraners, following suit.
Alex: Chloe and I will see you there. How’s the planning for the expansion going? Got the team ready?
I hesitated, the pain of Alex’s distant behavior eclipsed by my growing guilt.
Part of the reason for not wanting Vienna in my team was Alex.
I’d already anticipated the drama that would follow. But I’d made my choice, and I would deal with the consequences. All I could do was hope everything went smoothly, that the past that had ruined three lives didn’t repeat itself.
Me: Yes, all set and ready to go.
I got a quick thumbs-up and good night from Alex.
I switched off the phone and let out a breath. What had life become?
I headed up to my bedroom, my dogs settling into their beds by my side. The voices of the past kept blaring in my mind.
They stole away the peace I’d worked so hard on. I tried, and failed, finally giving in. I just lay there and let my mind bleed.
Loss and betrayal tore apart each cell of my sanity.
Vienna. Vienna. Vienna. Vienna, chanted my inner monologue.
Why did you have to come back in my life?
Why?
Why did you have to walk in on me that night in the greenhouse seven years ago and corrupt my mind?
I still couldn’t forget the look in her eyes as she’d hidden in the corner, watching me screw another girl. It was the first time I’d seen her, seven years ago. I’d never been so turned on in my life before that night; Alex’s graduation party, when I’d fucked my high school ex, all the time imagining fucking the curly-haired girl who was prying on our private moment.
My cock twitched.
I’d just broken an engagement a few months before and had barely managed to get home after two years to celebrate Alex going away to Princeton.
I’d been a wreck then, fucking my way around just to suppress the pain of a broken heart.
Josie, my high school ex, happened to be at the party and we ended up fucking in the greenhouse. Halfway through, I’d caught a movement in the glass panel in front of me.
Someone was behind us.
I tried to see clearer, almost stopped.
But Josie had other plans.
She’d started to scream, “More, I want more. I want it harder. Fuck me hard. Fuck me like I’m a bad girl.”
My attention went back to her words, making me snap. I shouted at her, “Shut up and let me fuck you.” I thrust harder to make her stop, my mind still stuck on the possibility of an audience.
A slight movement of the leaves on the glass locked my eyes to the head of curly hair.
My eyes followed the path, and a slim, slender figure of a girl came into view.
A short turquoise dress hugged a soft feminine body. Her legs were long and shapely, toned. Her skin was the most beautiful shade, a warm tan.
I thrust harder, my eyes gleaming with excitement as I stared at the reflection. The stranger was completely unaware of me.
She moved ever so slightly, giving me a side view of her oval face.
My breath hitched, my cock hardened, and I thrust harder into Josie.
If the stranger’s side profile was any indication of what her face would be, she would be breathtaking.
Wide eyes, high cheekbones, full, pouty lips, and a strong chin.
The idea of her beauty turned me on; the awareness of her watching me fuck Josie made me even harder.
The woman looked divine in her daze. Her lips parted as she swayed in her arousal, long fingers timidly caressing her neck and breasts.
She was fucking killing me, and I loved it. I hadn’t felt so alive in over two months.
“Please. I beg you please,” Josie screamed. Pulling at my hair, kissing me with hunger, diverting my attention from the girl in front of me.
Josie’s desperation pissed me off, and I thrust harder into her, punishing her for distracting me.
She screamed, I fucked, all the time imagining fucking the girl in the shadows.
“Say my name. Say it when you come.”
I wanted that girl to know my name. I wanted her to touch herself every night thinking about me. I wanted to ruin her.
Fire surged through me at the thought, and I thrust hard into Josie.
“Ah, Kingston,” she screamed in her release and I followed, momentarily forgetting about the girl in the shadows as I came.
She was gone when I opened my eyes, only to come back into my life two years later and ruin me.
I never told her I’d seen her in the greenhouse that night.
And I was glad I hadn’t.
I woke up to the aftermath of those memories, pissed and disoriented as I went and got ready. Vienna lingered in my mind. I fucking hated the power she still had over me.
I grabbed the keys to my Tesla S and walked up to the garage. I needed some fresh air before I got to work. I couldn’t afford to be distracted. I needed my focus.
Twenty minutes later, I drove into the parking lot, the drive by the coast already improving my mood.
I checked my emails as I took the elevator to the top floor where my office was.
The doors opened, and I couldn’t help but feel a little proud to have taken my father’s legacy, his company, to such heights.
Something that had started as a small architectural firm back in the sixties when my father was barely out of college was now the number one design and construction company in the world. We were everywhere, our firms employing over two million employees worldwide.
Alex had joined me to run the company a year-and-a-half ago, right after he finished his MBA. We ran the company in smooth tandem. That was the one thing where we didn’t clash, our vision for the company being the same. But before he came, it had been a hard few years as I busted my ass to keep the company afloat alone after my father’s stroke seven years ago.
In my last year of my MBA, and with a multimillion dollar company to handle, I’d had the most substantial responsibility on my shoulders.
I’d faltered and failed, almost bringing the company to the verge of bankruptcy, and had it not been for my father’s words playing in my head, I would’ve given up. Day by day, I’d reinvented the company, slowly starting to see progress. As my father’s health improved, so had the state of the company. I’d waited in anticipation for my dad to recover and take over. But that had never happened.
He passed away due to a second stroke, two years later, and I’d inherited it, keeping Alex’s part of the inheritance well managed so that he could finish his studies.
With hard work and unyielding diligence, I pushed the company ahead. I drove new strategies, challenged old schools of thought, and applied my knowledge and instincts, and in less than five years turned it into one of the top companies in the world.
But none of that mattered.
Because while, on the one hand, I’d gained so much, becoming a successful man by the age of thirty, I’d lost a lot in the process.
Lost in my thoughts, I greeted a few people on the way to my office.
Over the years I’d learned to accept the way my life had turned out. I chose to appreciate what I still had.
But some days it was harder than others.
I walked into my office and locked the door, turning to see all the pictures of different architecture from around the world. These were the pictures my father had taken through his life. I kept them here to keep me inspired and walking the right path. I also kept them to keep my passion for architecture alive and to remind myself I was first and foremost an artist who loved making buildings.
A strong sense of nostalgia filled my senses as a desire to draw took over. Stepping behind my desk, I unlocked the bottom drawer and pulled out a model of a building I’d created when I was in high school.
It was the very project that had ignited my passion for architecture.
I sat and observed the model, seeing it with fresh eyes.
I grabbed a mechanical pencil from my pen stand and drew a rough sketch of what I wanted the next building we were starting in Dubai to look like.
I wanted to design it. I rarely did that now. I had a team of experts who took care of it, while I took care of them. But this very building I wanted to design in honor of my father on what would’ve been his sixty-fifth birthday.
It was a project I’d been working on for the past six months. We were building a residential building facing the Persian Gulf, right on the palm in Dubai.
It meant a lot to me, and I couldn’t afford any mistakes.
A passing thought of Vienna put a seed of doubt in my head.
I couldn’t afford for her to ruin it. What was she playing at?
Was she truly capable of doing this job?
I pressed the button on my desk phone and called HR. “Good morning, Linda. Can you grab me all the information you have on Ms. Roy from finance? Her work history, qualifications, priors, anything and everything.”
I waited for the next ten minutes for the documents, quickly responding to my emails and checking my calendar for today’s schedule. Glad that I had the next two hours free, I opened the folder with the blueprints of the building I was starting to design.
I was playing around with it when someone knocked on my door. “Come in.”
A middle-aged lady walked in with a few files. “This is all we have on Ms. Roy. Let me know if you need anything else, Mr. Sharp.”
I nodded. “Put it on the couch.”
She did so and left the room.
I unbuttoned my coat and placed it on my chair.
I called Linda and informed her not to disturb me for the next hour.
I got comfortable and grabbed the first file. It had all the information about Ms. Roy’s hiring and work history at my company. I skimmed through it, awed and confused. I grabbed another file.
Nothing negative against Ms. Roy had ever been documented.
In fact, she was the poster child for a perfect employee.
Her educational credentials impressed me: she’d been an A Grad student and had been offered a job at a renowned insurance company straight out of her internship.
There was nothing.
Taking a sip of water, I almost closed the last file when I noticed she’d dropped out of journalism in her second year, despite being one of the top students.
Why had she dropped out?
What had happened to make her change her career?
What happened to her after our summer in England?