The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (38 page)

In the darkness
 

She finds herself.

In the darkness

She escapes her hell.

ONE

I lied in the letter—the one I left for Rhett and Sarah. The one I wrote with shaking fingers and bleary eyes. I told them I wouldn’t come back here. That I was better than this place, than my past.

But I wasn’t.

I blinked scratchy eyes, looking out at the truck stop as the bus pulled away from the curb. It hadn’t been long since I’d been here—not really. A year and a half, but it seemed eons ago. Another life ago. The last time I’d been here Rhett had dragged me away.
Will he do that again?

No.

I shut down the thought as the hope sprung up inside me. I squashed it like an unsuspecting bug. He wouldn’t come for me. He’d made himself more than clear. I gave him my heart and he ripped it to shreds. I hadn’t thought it was possible for anyone to hurt me more than Taylor had. I had thought the things Taylor had done to me were the ultimate tragedy, the most pain I would suffer in my whole life. I had been certain of it. But the scratches his knife had made on my skin—the torture. None of it compared to the shredded, bleeding heart in my chest. Rhett had done that. Rhett had broken me. After all this time. All the years I held on, it was only to give him all the power, the ability to rip me apart.

My feet crunched on the dead grass as I moved away from the truck stop and toward the field next to it—the place I had called my home for three years. Each step was one I had made many times, but it felt strangely like I was walking a new path, moving along in a new direction. Not an old one. Not one that I had beat to death over and over. And before I knew it I was there, in the little clearing where Shauna and I had lived. The tent, our little home, was gone.

Where is she?

I hadn’t thought about her much, not in a long time. She had been like zombie in my life. I had never been sober in her presence. I couldn’t recall much about her. I remembered snuggling up to her when it was cold in winter. I remembered those late nights where I’d been so fucking high and she’d gone down on me, sucking on my cunt until my legs shook.

She was older than me, closer to Rhett’s age. She’d been different than anyone I’d ever known. Maybe because she was more like me than anyone else. We would fend for ourselves, but it was nice to have someone else who understood the troubles that fucking for money gave a person.

I stared at the spot where the tent used to be. I knew it had been right here, in this spot, but the grass wasn’t even pressed down from the weight of the tent. She must have been gone for a while. This disappointed me. I didn’t know why.

I shook my head. That was I lie. I did know why.

I wanted to come here. To look at Shauna. To look at my past and feel better about myself. I wanted to remind myself that it could be shittier. That I could be back here fucking for money. I didn’t come back to this place to bend over for more faceless men, to fall back into the drugs. Even the burn that assaulted my skin occasionally wasn’t enough to make me want all of this back.

I rubbed my hands together and laid down on the ground.

The dirt was hard, harder than I remembered. The cold, dead grass poked through my jacket stabbing into my skin. But I didn’t mind it. I welcomed it. It was a nice distraction from the ache in my chest. The ache Rhett gave me.

He was there in the forefront of my mind again. The image of him just before he left. The words on his lips.

“I fucked her.”

I closed my eyes as they reverberated through my head. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being inside Sarah. Of him fucking her when I had just given him everything. I was so easy to erase, to cover up. I was just someone he fucked. I was to him what I was to every other man I’d ever been with. Just a warm cunt to bury their dick in for a few minutes before they moved on. He had become everything I hadn’t wanted. He became just like them. One of those faceless, careless men.

But there lied the problem. He wasn’t faceless. He wasn’t just any fucking John who paid me for sex. He was Rhett. My Rhett. He was supposed to be different. He was supposed to be
my
different. But he wasn’t. And he never would be.

I tried not to think about what he was doing right at that moment. But my mind skittered in a hundred different directions. Him with Sarah on a bed, in a shower. His thick perfect cock making her feel all the things I had felt that night. His hands all over her. Him whispering
I love you
in her ear.

The tears that leaked out of the corners of my eyes were hot for a few seconds before the cool air chilled them. They lingered there on the edge of my eyelids before slipping free and trailing into my ear. I shivered.

I stared up at the sky. The Truck Stop was out of the city so the stars were visible here. Tiny little glowing orbs in the sky. Looking up at them only made the tears come faster.

It was silly to cry. To be here. To be sad about all the things I would never have. I had given up on the chances of a good life a long time ago. I had accepted that my life was fucked, that I was fucked. It had been easy to accept back then. Back when I first made this place my home. But now… now I knew what a good life was really like. I knew what it was like to be in love with someone. A passionate man who made my heart beat fast with just a smile. I knew what it was like to have friends, to be loved in ways that didn’t involve a dick being jammed down my throat or a knife flaying away at my skin.

I knew too much. Too many truths about the good things.

I left him and those things behind. Now I was here. Staring at the clear sky alone. I would have said it was the story of my life. But it wasn’t. Tonight was the first time I looked up at the sky in this way—with the bitter taste of happiness draining down my throat. With the joy of all the things I could never have had rushing down my cheeks.

I didn’t want to think about him. But he wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t push him out of my mind. He was there, and I was back on my birthday, the day he’d given me my car. We were sitting in the car and the way he had looked at me that day, the way his lips curved in the corners when he smiled at me. It was as if my happiness had been his happiness too. As if he would have given anything to see me smile. Then there were the other moments. The ones where he stood in my doorway and listened to me speak about the nightmares, the images that plagued me day after day. He always listened. He didn’t shy away from my reality. The reality of what his father had done to me. As if he couldn’t live or breathe without hearing me speak the stories, say the words. It was as if he needed to live them too, over and over, so he could save me.

What a fucking joke.

I blinked hard, my ears tingling from my pooling tears.

I turned my head to the side and imagined he was there next to me. There on the cold ground, with the stiff grass pressing through his jacket like it did mine. The little stalks would scrape against his flesh, but he wouldn’t shiver. His green eyes would be staring back at me.

I almost laughed at myself, I would have if I hadn’t been crying already. It was like those movies where the two actors looked at the empty space beside them and thought about the other. But that was movies. Rhett wasn’t thinking about me.

I reached out to touch him, to grab him, to pull the image back before he disappeared, but there was nothing there. Just empty darkness.

I stayed there all night. In that field I had called home for years, my back on the hard ground staring up at the sky thinking about Rhett.

Eventually I fell into a fitful sleep and when I woke the next morning I was still alone.

TWO

The whiskey burned as I gulped it down. I welcomed the feeling, the burning of the poison tearing away at my insides. It wasn’t enough though and I slammed the bottle down on the side of the tub, harder than I should have. It made a loud clanging noise. I didn’t flinch.

My head swam as I glanced down at myself. Naked, in the bathtub. I wasn’t one of those guys who took baths. I had too much to do to lounge in the tub. I took quick efficient showers and hustled on with my day. But things were different now.

Faye was gone. I’d come home three nights ago, my heart racing, the proclamation on my lips. The words I’d been longing to say to her for what seemed like forever—but she was already gone. Her car, her phone—all the things I’d given her—left behind.

Because of me.

Yes. I was the reason she left. I had fucked her up against my car like she was some dirty prostitute. I snorted, the water rippling out around me. My heart twinged in my chest and I twisted my face in a grimace at the reality of what I’d done. I’d done to her, what so many men had before. I used her. I crushed her and then I left her all alone.

My first reaction was to go after her. To chase her. To bring her back. But I’d done that before, and what good had it really done her, me, us? What had I done that really made her life better? Sure, I helped put Taylor away, but in reality, I’d given her nothing but more hurt. More pain.
I
gave her that. I couldn’t blame anyone else, no matter how much I wanted to.

I wanted to blame my father. The man who had fucked Faye as a child, who made her love him. Love. She thought that’s what they had, that it was normal, real. Just the thought of him touching her, fucking her—it ate away at my insides like a disease.

I grabbed the whiskey off the edge and took another swig, but it wasn’t enough. The burn wasn’t enough. I needed more.

I need Faye.

I slammed the whiskey bottle down again, but this time the loud clang was followed by the sound of shattering glass. “Fuck!” I jerked my hand away, but it was too late. Pain radiated through my arm as blood burst from the palm of my hand. It was so bright in contrast to the white of my palm. A shard of glass protruded from the wound. I watched it with fascination. The shard wasn’t thick or long, but slender and stiff, destroying what had previously been unbroken.

The image of Faye jumped to my head from that night more than a year ago when I walked into that bathroom. The one in my father’s bedroom at his home, to find her broken and bloody on the floor. I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want to go back there. But I couldn’t help it. There was no avoiding it. The vomit that had leaked from her mouth, and pooled around her head, that wasn’t what struck me. It wasn’t the blood either. The blood that looked like mine, trailing down my wrist from the cut in my palm. It was the way her eyes looked, half-open and glassy. Like she wasn’t there anymore on the other side, that passionate woman. The broken girl.

“If there’s anyone that can save you…it’s her.”

Sarah’s words sprung to my mind. I had believed them there in that moment in that expensive restaurant with the woman I should have loved sitting in front of me. They reached somewhere inside me and awakened something.

I love Faye.

But that realization didn’t change anything. I plucked the glass out of my hand and blood streamed out in rivulets down my arm, dripping into the cooling bath water. I couldn’t save Faye, and she couldn’t save me. It really was too late. I couldn’t chase after her. What could I really give her? What kind of life would we share? She would always see my father when she looked at me—how could she not? I would always been the man who didn’t save her.

I squeezed my palm and the blood came faster. I should’ve gotten out of the tub and cleaned the wound, but I didn’t. Instead I watched the steady stream, entranced. I couldn’t help but wonder what she felt when she took that razor to her skin and decided it was over, that she was done with all the fucked up things that had happened. Had she felt free, relieved? Had she thought of me?

It’s not too late. You can still find her. You can still change everything.

Those words had played over and over in my mind the last three days, but I never acted on them. And I wouldn’t now. The longer the blood dripped, the slower it moved as platelets congealed the wound, sealing it. I dropped my arm into the bath, splashing pink-tinted water on my chest.