“No.” Anya snapped, hands clutching the purse in her lap. It was the first time she had addressed the man like she’d known him. “You should have let me handle it.”
“I didn’t think you knew about Richard,”
“Of course, I knew about Richard, you stupid boy,” Suddenly, she was fighting the urge to club the man over the head with her wallet. Though she knew he’d likely laugh at her. “No mother wants to believe their only son could rape and beat a girl half to death, Vincent.” The man’s face firmed. Eyes cooling so slightly as he straightened in his seat. The mere thought of college alone was enough to strike a cold, primal fear in his gut. The schoolboy Richard who used women as he pleased—the man he had once called a friend. “I took up a second job there as soon as I could, if you just had some patience-”
“You could have told me-”
“You didn’t try to contact you
Blue hadn’t moved since she’d spoken to Anya, sat at the dining table. And as some dark figure danced in the corner of her eye, she hoped it would be her maid again. But hoping had never gotten her far.“Blue?” She turned to meet her father’s voice—though didn’t oblige him the same forced smile she had her maid. She didn’t feel he deserved it quite as much. “I thought you would have been out with Sandra,”“What are you doing here?” The question sounded about as pointed as she had felt it should. No longer did she entertain the obligation to reign in any bitterness. Fortune had treated her rather cruelly of late. Why should she entertain notions of the male gaze and the so-called etiquette it masqueraded as? As far as she was concerned, the notion of femininity she’d been raised to prize had disappeared when her fiancé had cut open her cheek as one would an a
Blue hadn’t so much as glanced from her meal since Vincent sat. Late. Though he struggled to fathom what he would say if she had. Would he dare to ask whether her shoulder had bruised from colliding with a doorway? If he had been right in assuming Richard had been the cause of the gash in her cheek? The scrapings on her elbow he’d gotten a better look at as she slept? Or had she suddenly become exceptionally clumsy? He suspected the man had a part at least in the fact she had become rather entertained by stirring her soup. And as she excused herself for the bathroom, he got the feeling she had hoped he would follow. Though meeting her fiancé’s gaze warned him otherwise. So, he sat quietly. — She had hoped she would run into Vincent on her third loop of the hallways. If only for him to smile at her in passing. Somehow, she had liked Richard better when he was forcing himself on her.
Stepping into the backyard it had been years since she’d ventured into, her childhood somehow had never felt further. Despite the midnight sky bearing down on her with the weight of hot, stifling tar, she never felt more naked than she had stumbling down the sheared grass hill. Part of her was so sure the last few weeks had been a strange hyper-realistic fever dream. That she’d wake in a hot sweat on Vincent’s chest. She would have fallen asleep under the sheets on a particularly hot night. Nightmares had plagued for hours that had felt like days until she finally shook from its fugue… Yet the further she delved into what memories of Michael she had always thought insignificant, the more it made sense. He had been there for all her major events; her first day of school, her social debut, her graduation… he’d congratulated her engagement before her own father had—though Bradley had seemed rather smug in his own way. She’d been far too consumed in her t
She mumbled solemnly. Stared into their twisted hands. Watched his thumbs brush hers absently. His cock straining his trousers. Shallow breaths working his buttoned blouse. “You’ve filed already?” “No.” Her gaze refused his. “Are you going to?” “Richard will work on me until I do—it’s so much more satisfying for him if it’s me to do it,” Finally, her eyes met his. “I told him we’d married during our first fight.” “He hit you because of that?” he looked as solemn as he ever had. Somehow mourning the misfortune of his wife more than he had the fact he was on the very brink of jail time. Again. Yet she smiled. A small, wry smile. “No.” Searched his eyes. “I said he has a god-complex and a tiny dick,” Before he could think any better of it, Vincent took the woman’s face between his two hands. Watched her smile fall. Breathed her anti
Blue had wished silently that her fiancé would scold her for the absence he would have assumed a hook-up, correctly at that. But he hadn’t seemed to notice. And she knew well she would know if he had. She sat patiently in bed with a book whose page she hadn’t turned a whole hour. Staring. Watching the words swirl as her eyes moved in and out of focus. But he came quietly. Shed his coat. Fixed a stiff kiss to her right cheek. Smiled the same way one would at their spanking new car sat in the garage for the first time. Went for his shower. She had feigned sleep when he re-emerged. And she was sure he masturbated quietly beside her.Sat at her mother’s dining table, it was quite easy to imagine her husband in the seat next to her. The earthy scent of damp hair and cologne making a gentle ingress on her self-control. His fingertips inching toward her own beneath the modesty of the dining table. The coolness of his wedding band brushing her k
“It’s funny.” Marian paused. “When I was about your age, I was pregnant, too.” Like Blue needed to be reminded.“By Michael, apparently.” The teenager mumbled. Unsure of whether her mother knew that her husband’s boss was the culprit, she decided it best not to make any rash revelations she’d regret not being able to renege.“I loved him…” Pausing, fingertips drumming the table, Marian cast her eyes to the lip of her daughter’s discarded breakfast plate. In that moment, Blue pitied the older woman. Wondered if things between them hadn’t been quite as fraught as they had seemed. Whether her muddied elitist childhood had narrowed her field of vision; it had. Rather, wondered by how much? Had her mommy issues multiplied into some twisted trauma due to moneyed entitlement? Was she little more than a spoilt brat?She suspect
Though the ignorant bliss would have been rather nice, Blue certainly wasn’t born yesterday. There was nothing particularly legal a corrupt senator paedophile could do with five million smackeroos, though life would have been a great deal easier if there was. Standing in front of the door she had pressed open with her palm how many times, she no longer felt worthy of even knocking. Her husband would be on the couch, she could imagine. In part due to the softly muttering television. Whether he was with another woman was beyond her. A soul so faultless and free of the clutches of greed that had marred him. Only she had become its claws. A baroness of corruption. A product of the greed which she had eluded thus far, though clearly unsuccessfully. She had become that which had ruined this man’s life—though not with the same intentions. Perhaps that was untrue. Had she traded her husband’s innocence for another? For her own? It was a bit
She spoke before she could stop herself. “Would you think any less of me if I got into trouble?” She wondered more if she would think any less of herself. If that was even possible. But the man smiled. A small, soft smile.“If I did, how would I have expected you to do the same?” His stomach flexed as it flattened to hers. The gentle throw of his groin sheathed inside of her was all the comfort she could ever ask for. Yet she begged the man a bit more.“It was never your fault,” If only the police had agreed.“And it wouldn’t be your fault,” He drew away. Sucked in a breath as she tensed on his joystick. Felt his chest tighten with her gasp of quiet encouragement. Shy. Uninhibited.“You don’t know what I did,”“I know you would have done it for me.” Staring