“Who do you think it was?”
“I thought — I hoped — Lyla. We used to fantasize about traveling, but after the year was up and I no longer got any postcards, I figured it was a weird admirer. I don’t see why she would have just stopped like that. Like I said, she wouldn’t just leave us like that. I thought about going to the last state to search, but where would I even start?”
She hands over the old, discolored postcards, held together by a rubberband. The only text is typewritten and addressed to Marie Portero. “Marie Portero?” It was the name Mr. MacAllister found in the old articles about the suicide.
“That’s my real maiden name.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course, Ball was completely made up, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Is Auntie Gigi really even your sister?”
“Of course, but she knew. I ran away from my family to join C.O.S and she welcomed me back. She agreed we should not tell you about all of this unless it was necessary.”
“So your maiden name is not Kyle, your married name is not Ball.” Just like that, my name feels artificial, without history or roots.
“So I am really Shyla Peters.”
“You are whoever you want to be.”
“This is so bizarre. Can I keep these?”
“It’s all yours. The whole box” I scan them and find the last postcard was from Iowa about 24 years ago. This might be the break Mr. MacAllister needs.
“I have to get ready to go to work, mom.”
“Sure. I’m heading out this afternoon. I figured you would want some time alone to work all this out. Whenever Taylor is ready to meet, I am too.”
“I need time mom. This is going to take me a while,” I say through a frown.
“I understand, but please remember we did what we thought was best at the time.”
I know she wants me to hug her, to make her feel like she did the right thing, but I can’t allow her to believe decades of lies can be forgiven in one night.
***
The office is empty when I arrive early in the morning, hoping to ride my second wind before the inevitable crash from lack of sleep. After unsuccessfully attempting to concentrate on my work, I text Taylor.
Shyla:
Got to work early, but I can’t focus.
Mr. Sexypants:
I don’t blame you.
Shyla:
My mom wants to meet you. She’s pressuring me.
Mr. Sexypants:
No.
Shyla:
She says there are thing she wants to tell you, face to face.
Mr. Sexypants:
I told you, it’s pointless. This is between you and her.
Shyla:
You were so young, you couldn’t possibly have remembered everything. Memories change. Shit, I’m not the person who we thought I was.
Mr. Sexypants:
You’re still you. I’m not going to discuss this over a text. When will I see you?
Shyla:
My mother is leaving this afternoon. I’ll come over after work.
Over lunch, I meet MacAllister at a deli, and give him the postcards explaining to him that these were sent to a friend of Lyla’s years ago and may possibly trace back to her. The lead reinvigorated the grizzled P.I., and he seemed eager to follow this new trail. I don’t tell him that my mother is Marie, though he’ll likely find out himself if he keeps digging around. I haven’t properly wrapped my own mind around my newfound identity, let alone disclosed it to someone I barely know.
I drag ass at work all day, trying not to nod off at my desk, simmering with a plethora of feelings I am unable to vent. Again, I am forced to keep the news from Kristin until I can craft a way to tell her without spilling Taylor’s part of the story. While I have gained so much from my relationship with Taylor, I feel as though I am slipping away from the world. His pull is so strong, that as I become closer and closer to him, I slowly drift away from everyone else around me. I am still very close to Kristin, but small things have changed. My relationship with her is more contrived as I have to navigate the bits of information I can divulge to her in a way I have never had to before. Like Taylor, I am carefully beginning to mold an exterior image of myself that is far different from the person I actually am.
I doze off in the back of the car as Harrison drives me home. I was never one who could pull an all-nighter and operate like a normal human being the next day. The back seat of a vehicle has never felt so comfortable. The car stops, but since Harrison doesn’t mention we’re back, I assume we are at a stop sign or light. When the back door opens, I startle.
“Shhh…” Taylor leans in, taking my arm and wrapping it around his neck. He carries me into the house as I nuzzle my face into the warm crook under his jaw. It brings to heart warm feelings of being carried to my bedroom as a child; those were much simpler days. Or so I thought.
When I wake up alone in the bedroom, it is pitch dark. I feel around for Taylor and find I am alone. I shake my head to rid myself of the drowsiness and blurred vision and see it’s 10:34pm; my head is engulfed in that disoriented feeling one gets from a really hard nap. The house is dark except for a light on in the great room, where I find Taylor reading a book.
“I thought you’d sleep through the morning.”
“Then I’d miss out on seeing you tonight,” I say groggily.
“Well, here I am,” he says, throwing his arms up.
Taylor wears a pair of thin rimmed glasses, and a white t-shirt over a pair of navy lounge pants. I find the mix of sophistication and casual to be especially appealing. “How did the rest of the time with your mother go?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know what to tell her. It’s like a I am feeling every emotion at once. Not just mad, or sad, or even forgiving. I don’t know what to feel. What am I supposed to do now? Change my name?”
“It’s just a name.”
“But it’s fake. Ball doesn’t exist.”
“Every family name started somewhere. So what did you think your dad’s name was?”
“Desmond Ball.”
“Desmond? Interesting.”
“Yeah, I know. Desmond the crackhead. It sounds so fake now that I know it is.”
“Wait — Desmond. Des. Desi…Ball. Was your mom a fan of I Love Lucy?”
“You don’t think? No!”
“I think she sort of used I Love Lucy to rename you.”
“Oh my god, she did!” We both laugh, finally adding some levity to the weight of things. “Speaking of names…my first name…”
Should I tell him?
“Go on.”
“Nevermind.”
“You think I could figure out that she named your fake father after Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, but I can’t put together the fact that you’re named after my mother?” My mind wanders for a moment to our discussion in Costa Rica about children.
We will never have children, he will never allow Peter’s legacy to live on.
“Come. I need to show you something.”
He slides on a pair of shoes and instructs me to do the same. We take the elevator to the garage level, the same elevator where we had sex the night I found the journal. I scan the floor and find one of my buttons in the corner.
“Looks like Irma missed a spot.”
“I told her to leave it there,” he says with a wicked smirk.
“She must think you are so weird.”
“She got over my bullshit a long time ago.”
We exit at the garage, rows of fluorescent lights turn on sequentially when we step out. He leads me past all of his cars to a door with a keypad on it.
After punching a few numbers, he opens the doors and flips on a light switch. In front of me is a two-lane shooting range
.
To
my left is a cabinet containing several pistols and revolvers.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“
It’s time you learned how to protect yourself.”
“Can’t I take tae kwon do or something?”
“Come on, you’re like 80 pounds soaking wet.”
“I wish. Not even close to 80, but like 5 pounds less what I am now would be great.”
“Shut up.”
“Okay.”
“Seriously, I don’t want you depending on anyone else. If you ever find yourself in a bind, you’re going to learn how to bust a cap in someone’s ass.”
“Bust a cap?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Why now?”
Taylor thinks to himself for a moment. “Because I’ve failed once. And I am going to do everything in my power to make sure you have everything you need to be safe. They’ll have to get through me and Harrison, but I want you to empower yourself.”
“You didn’t fail. There’s nothing you could have done. Eric is gone. Plus, I’m really scared of guns.”
“You won’t be after I teach you. And I know Eric is gone, but apparently there is a lot we don’t know.”
“I don’t know. You know how to shoot?”
“Yup. My father used to hunt and now I keep guns in the house for personal safety. With all of these new developments…more than ever, I don’t trust anyone. I think the timing is right. I know you feel like things are out of control. I want you to feel in control; I think this will help.”
He pulls out several handguns and boxes of bullets.
“You should become a secret agent. You race cars, you’re a marksman. Do you know how to jump out of airplanes?”
“Anyone can jump. The question is: do you know how to land?” Taylor asks slyly. He takes me through how to load and empty the gun, how to flip the safety, and all of the general precautions. “Alright, this is a small caliber pistol, so you won’t have to worry so much about recoil. I think this is the one I want you to keep in your condo.”
“You want me to keep a gun in my condo?” I whisper as if anyone could hear us.
“Well, it wouldn’t make sense for me to teach you without giving you one.” He clips up a target sheet of a zombie, which is unusually tongue-in-cheek of Taylor, and presses a button that zips it away. “Here.” He hands me goggles and earmuffs. “Now relax your shoulders and hold firm, but take a deep breath before you squeeze — don’t pull — the trigger.”
“I’m going to kill us.”
“You’ll be fine. Now I am going to stand over here,” he says, backing away to the corner.
“Taylor!”
“I’m kidding!”
“Okay, here I go.” I take a long, drawn breath out and try to squeeze — not pull — the trigger. Honestly, I don’t know the difference. A shot rings out and I hit the very bottom corner of the target. “Woohoo!”
“Woah there! Gun down during celebration dances. We’re not the Taliban here.”
“It looks like I have successfully shot that motherfucker in the thigh,” I gloat.
“Okay, go at it. You want to aim for the center of mass — gives you the best chance of hitting your target.”
I start to let loose, feeling more in control and powerful with each squeeze of the trigger. Taylor’s right, this might be just what I needed to snap me out of the jumble of scattered thoughts brought on
by the most recent news
. My shots don’t land perfectly, but they move closer to the center with each attempt.
Occasionally, I go to the head for fun and even land one. Whenever I look over, I see Taylor leaning against the wall to my side with his arms crossed, a look of amusement on his face.
“Your turn. I wanna see you shoot this thing.”
“You sure? You seem to be having fun.”
“Yeah. I like to watch,” I say flirtatiously.
“Put that one down there. I’m going to grab another one.”
I lay down the gun and switch places with Taylor. He grabs a larger gun, slides a magazine
in
the handle and pushes it in forcefully with a loud click.
Watching him so intently prep the weapon, his muscles contracting and relaxing as he moves, his taut ass under the navy lounge pants, his intense and masculine focus, makes me really horny.
Holy shit he looks so fucking hot right now.
“Stand back Shy, the shells go flying around with this one.” He raises his arms with the gun in hand, the lines of muscles in his arms and shoulders clearly defined, and pulls the trigger. This gun is much louder than the one I was shooting. He unloads his gun on the target, forming a small circle of bullet holes in the chest of the very unlucky zombie. When he puts the gun down, I can’t resist; watching him hold the gun and just fucking own it like that makes me want to get on him right in the range. My desire surprises me, as I have never found guns particularly interesting or appealing. Slowly I walk up to him from behind and wrap my arms around his hips, sliding them down his frontside onto his penis. I rub my hands over the soft fabric of his pants as it stiffens underneath my touch. He turns around.
“Does Ms. Scared of Guns want to fuck in here?”
“Something about that was really hot.”
He picks me up and sits me in the other empty shooting lane, whipping off my shirt, massaging my breasts and sucking on my nipples. “Fuck, Taylor.” I whip off his shirt to reveal his strong, lean torso. He pulls my hair back, so that my chin tilts up.
“You want to do something dangerous?” He asks, the flecks of green in his eyes seem to glow devilishly.
“Uh huh,” I gulp, both terrified and exhilarated by the proposal.
“No questions then. You’re gonna do what I say.”
I nod and he walks out of my line of vision. I swear I hear him mess with the guns, making my heart race in anticipation. I haven’t the slightest idea what he has planned for us and the idea it involves a gun only confounds me more. He returns with a large revolver that we hadn’t used. Its barrel is long and not too slender, but not too thick. The look on his face is dark and mischievous. He glares at me with his smoky stare, his nostrils flaring.
“Don’t say a word,” he commands. We’re not in the darkroom, but he is that man right now. He is Master Holden. He slides the gun in his mouth, and I sit on edge, wanting to rip it out of his hands. The sight is terrifying, for a split second I think I could lose him. But what is even more terrifying is the look in his eyes: wild and unafraid. It’s like he has a death wish. I obey and remain silent as he slowly guides the long barrel out of his mouth, a crooked smirk peeking through. He takes the gun and holds it against my face, grazing the cold, wet barrel down my cheek, then across my chest to my left breast, circling my nipple, then down my stomach. My reaction is to suck in, try to keep away from it, but my anxiety only serves to entertain him. He slides it down my legs, stopping right between my thighs.
He presses his left hand on the front of my neck, pushing up against my chin forcefully so I lay back, my head hanging upside down off of the edge. He slides my pants off, then my panties.
“I saw you watching me. You’re turned on by my bad side, aren’t you? You like a bad boy, don’t you?”
“I’m with you, aren’t I?”
“You have no idea how bad I can get,” he says, rubbing the gun between my legs.
“I think I have an idea.”
He whips me back up. “No you don’t. Suck on it,” he says pressing the gun to my lips. I stare down the silver barrel of the gun, trusting that Taylor has removed the bullets, but that doesn’t make me feel any safer.
“I can’t.”
Taylor cocks his eyebrow, and then bites his lip, containing his dissatisfaction. He dangles the gun by a finger in front of me, signaling he can wait here for as long as it takes me to obey.
I can say the safe word. I can say it. But I don’t want to make him stop, I want him to make me do it. He makes me do things I would never have the balls to do otherwise.
He stares expectantly. He won’t beg and he won’t ask me again.
Hesitantly, I purse my lips around it; it’s cold and firm. At any moment something could go terribly wrong.
What if he forgot to remove a bullet?
But it’s that danger, that moment of facing something that could kill me that reminds me how badly I want to be alive: to fuck, to scream, to laugh, to cry, to feel butterflies in my stomach. Every cell inside of me brews with nervous energy; it’s probably terror, but I think Taylor and I both have something inside of us, something broken that turns those heightened feelings of anger and pain and fear into unmitigated libido.
Once that initial fear of death subsides, it converts into sexual energy in the way an atom under the right circumstances can trigger
the oblivion of
an entire city
.
And now, I understand that look in his eyes when the gun was in his mouth
.
I
t’s that moment when you realize that the thing that makes others squirm is the thing that takes you to your height.
It makes you come out of yourself and be free in a way you could never be otherwise. And somehow, it makes you feel powerful.
I gain confidence, I start to suck on it, not like some foreign piece of metal, but like a phallus. “Yeah, baby, suck it like a cock.” The look in his darkened eyes tempts me suck on it harder as I maintain eye contact with him. “You’re a bad girl too. Very fucking bad.”
I pull the gun out of my mouth, smirking as I then push it down back between my legs. I barely cock my eyebrow, almost daring him, but inside, I am terrified. I have pushed things up another level. I am not sure if it’s to test Taylor or myself.
Why the fuck are you tempting him?
“If you don’t think I’ll do it, that only means I’ve been much too gentle with you.” He pulls my hips closer to give me more room to lie back and then before I know it, he is sliding the cold, wet barrel inside of me. I gasp in a mixture of disbelief and excitement. I should tell him to stop, but I can’t, because I don’t want him to. He purses his lips around my clit as I moan in a mixture of ecstasy and horror. The thrill of death and sex, those opposing forces coming so close together in one moment make it hard to breathe.
“You are much fucking nastier than I could have ever hoped for,” he says, sliding it in deep,“and that’s a good thing.”
He bites my inner thigh and I let out a yelp. He does it again, harder than the last time. “Taylor!” I pull on his hair. He slides out the gun, puts it down and pulls out his hard dick. Watching him hold it in his hand is one of my favorite sights, as he teases me with it, rubbing it on my labia and clit.
“Your pussy is one of my favorite spots in the world. Warm, soft, wet, creamy…I love feeling it clench around my cock, your tight little pussy.” He takes both of his hands and rubs inward circles on my inner thighs as he bites his full lower lip. “I’m going to slide it in slow, I want to savor every last inch of me going inside, of hearing your cute little gasp as I enter you and make you mine all over again.”
“I’m already yours.”
“But every time I come inside of you, another part of you becomes mine,” he whispers.
He keeps his promise, sliding so slowly just so he can tease me. I watch his thickness go in, millimeter by millimeter, it is a thing of beauty. He begins to move his hips rhythmically as I lie all the way back, my head hanging off the edge, upside down. His lips smack as he sucks on his tip of the barrel to moisten it for my clit. As he massages it, he pulls in and out of me. “Tell me you’re mine. Tell me I own you.” I brace the two panels to either side of me as I come telling Taylor exactly what he commanded me to. As I do so, he leans in, bracing my face with the gun still in his hand, and whispers in my ear. “It was loaded, baby.”
And while I should be infuriated, I should smack him right across the face, I don’t know what I am. I just feel a surge of something unfamiliar and strong rise inside of me. I tempted death and fucked its brains out. I am the daughter of Alan-fucking-Peters. I have the boy he couldn’t kill inside of me.
We are invincible.
The element of surprise as I come only elevates the surrealism of the experience and my moans
are
intersperse
d
with delirious laughter.
***
Taylor sits at the breakfast bar as I make myself a snack.
“I can’t believe we did that, Taylor. You’re fucking nuts. It wasn’t really loaded, was it? No, it wasn’t.” I coax myself aloud.
“You’ll never know, will you? Telling you would take away the mystique. Plus, it doesn’t matter anymore. Rest assured, all precautions were taken.”
“Except, you know, removing the bullets.” I want to be angry with him, but it’s just not there.
I fucking liked it.
He smirks and takes a sip of his water. “Whatever was in there, you surprised me,” he says, punctuating the sentence with a finger point.
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I expected you to freak out, but as usual, you surprised me.”
“If you thought I would freak out, why would you do it?”
“Because I want you to push your limits. That’s why they exist. That’s where you find out who you really are. I know I can push them with you, because you and I, we have something that transcends.”