My Beautiful Lies (Beautiful Nothing #2) (5 page)

“I wanna play your keys; tell me if I am doing it right,” I say just before I thrust into her from behind. Her warmth wraps around my cock, sending jolts into my legs making me numb. I place one hand on her ass cheek and the other on her hip, getting a better grip as I push farther and deeper, making her tighten and swell around me. I reach around and pinch her nipple as she lets out a yelp of pure ecstasy. She is convulsing as I continue to drive it home. When I finish, I fall forward against her back and we sit that way for a few minutes, trying to catch our breath.  

“Did you like my tune?” I ask jokingly, receiving a hazy smile. “Nothing could sound as good as what you sound like when you’re reaching climax,” I tell her, making her blush. 

She goes to clean up, and I get dressed to go outside and call Jake.

It rings three times before he picks up. “Hey, I will stop by after work Monday. I need to talk to you,” I tell him and I can sense his bad mood. 

“Yeah, you need to, man. I am starting to get bored. This chick is no fun, she’s mute and dumb. I don’t know what you want me to do with her, but I know that she isn’t going to last too much longer. She’s not right in the head anymore. She has been talking to herself and won’t even acknowledge us,” he says. I tell him to shut up and just make sure she doesn’t die yet. I really need to figure this shit out. Maybe if we make her death look like an accident or drop her in the river, all this will go away. None of this was a part of the plan. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with Laney. I was only breaking her so I could fix it and be a hero. I’m not a drug addict, but saving people or making them forget things is my fix, but all plans change when love gets involved. We hang up, and I head back in the house to Laney. I find her in the bedroom getting dressed. 

“What do we do now? We have all weekend to do whatever you want,” I ask her.

“We could always just do each other all weekend.” She blushes, embarrassing herself from being so blunt. I love when she does this. I tell her we could, or we could go out to the lake to paddle boat around for the day. It doesn’t take too long for her to dash up the stairs to look for warmer clothes. 

We pull up to the river an hour later. When we find a parking spot, we get out at the rental shack for our paddle boat. It’s colder today, more than it has been—the wind has a crisp frost to it. She has to be freezing, so I ask her if she would rather save it for spring. She tells me no, she came prepared. She’s covered head to toe in sweater material, even her boots have a matching design. I laugh as we set off, placing the paddleboat in the frigid river. I climb in, then hold out my hand to help her. We start paddling away from the dock area. It’s so peaceful—not many people come out when it’s like this.  Except fishermen, mostly, and the hunters on the private land in the woods.

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like to just vanish, just pack up, leave work behind, and start over?” She asks, staring off toward the baby ducks following their mom out of the water.

“Sometimes. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t.” 

“Sometimes I think if I never went off to college for music, my mom wouldn’t hate me, and maybe my best friend would still be here.” She turns back to me, asking for a response. 

“I think if you never went to college for music you wouldn’t have met me, and Lindsay would still have had an accident. Laney, there’s nothing you could have done to change that. You need to stop feeling guilty for things you never had control of,” I say, grabbing her small hand in mine. 

“I love you. I don’t know what it is about you, but I have felt comfortable with you since the first day I met you. You make me feel safe, you protect me from myself, and I don’t think I could ever be back to normal, but being with you comes close.” She says, giving everything she’s got. She never holds back on telling me how she really feels.

I tell her I love her back, not knowing if I will ever be able to give all of myself to her like she does to me. When we pedal back to the dock, she takes a seat on the edge facing toward the water while I go back to the shack to get the deposit back. Coming back, I watch her sitting there still facing the river. The lies are hurting my insides. I want to tell her everything, but then she’d hate me. That’s not a chance I’m willing to take. 

“You ready to go?” I ask, sitting down next to her.  She nods her head, and I help her up. She seems quiet; this is not the way I planned our day to go. I decide to surprise her by ordering tickets to see a Broadway musical later that night online. Once we get home from the river she says she wants to lay down and take a nap. I put a movie on, sit down, and she lays her head on my lap. I run my fingers through her hair until she passes out. Getting sleepy myself, I set an alarm on my phone and nod off with her.

The sound of my alarm is annoying. I feel around with my eyes still sealed shut without luck. Laney is half awake, mumbling under her breath. I finally find my phone in the side of the cushion, quickly shutting it off before it starts to sound off again. 

“We need to get up, we have plans,” I tell her, shaking her again.

“Why? Just another hour, please…” she whines. 

Laughing, I tell her, “Fine, if you wanna sleep then I guess we won’t go see a musical.” This gets her attention. 

“Are you serious, you really made plans?” She jumps up from the couch in worry like she won’t have time to get ready. I tell her yes and we go get freshened up for the night.

She comes downstairs about thirty minutes after me, looking absolutely stunning. She has on a deep-violet dress, featuring all her curves. Her shiny hair is pulled over to the side in a clip, falling right below her shoulders in light waves. Lips lined red, diamonds dangling loosely from her ears. She’s so beautiful it makes me nauseous that she even let me have a chance to steal her heart. I walk toward her and take her hand in mine, leading her out the door. Two hours later, we arrive in New York City. We park in the parking garage only a few blocks from where we are going. It’s hauntingly dark, the cold air makes it hurt to breathe. I look over to see her shivering in her thin dress. I suck it up and place my jacket around her shoulders. There’s no way I am letting her freeze. We walk and walk. Only ten minutes left until we get to the theater when we realize someone is following us. My heart drops. Not because I’m scared for me, but for her. It’s not the safest city to be lurking around at night. Shit, it’s not the safest during the day, either. 

“What was that? Did you hear that?” she asks, pulling herself closer to me. I turn around, looking. She turns with me, seeing a shadow of a person not far behind us. 

“Who’s there? Show yourself! You’re scaring my girl,” I yell out, but the shadow and sound are gone.  “It was probably just a homeless guy. Don’t worry, I’m here. Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I say, reassuring her. She believes me and we continue down the road. It’s so dark I don’t recognize where we are. I quickly grab my phone pulling up the GPS to get us on the back on track. It sends us off into a stinky alley full of trash. We see the opening to the road, but once again someone is watching. I know New York is full of people, but the feeling I have is off. It’s the same person; I can feel their eyes stabbing at my back. Trying not to pay them any mind, I grab Laney’s hand and pull her out onto the sidewalk. I pull her into my arms and whisper in her ear, “The person that was following us… they still are.” I can hear her suck in a deep breath. I kiss her, wrap my arms around her, and take all of her in. When I break the kiss, she looks even more terrified than before. She squeezes my hand tighter as she drags me around the corner of the building. Moving fast and holding her breath.

BOOM! We both jump, turning to see a man dressed in all black tripping over a trash can. I immediately let go of her hand and chase him. He is faster than me, and once I turn the corner, he is already climbing a ladder to the roof. Then I hear something drop. I bend down to pick it up. It’s a guitar pic. Flipping it over, I see the initials JT on it and know who it is instantly. I go to put it in my pocket, but she catches my hand first. 

“What’s that? Give it to me,” she says, taking it before I can close my hand into a fist. She knows. The look on her face says it all. She tightens her fist around it, deliberately moving toward the nearest wall. Her back meets it; she slumps down until she is sitting. She flips it over repeatedly with her fingers, her eyes boring into it. Any light she had disappears. 

“We need to get out of here,” she says, still focused on the pic. I don’t second guess her order, I simply lift her from the ground and half-carry her to the street to hail a cab. I am going to kill Jake. I can’t believe he was following me. We need to talk, but I’m so pissed at him it can wait until after Christmas. He had her and lost her. She’s mine now, and he will be sure to understand that. 

We have the driver take us to my car and Laney is mute for the ride. We make it back to the car, and I lay her down in the back seat of my silver BMW. She doesn’t acknowledge me at all—she is in a trance so I drive back in silence. I pull in her driveway around one o’clock and open her door to find her sound asleep. I carry her in and lay her in the bed. I don’t know what this is going to do to her. All I can do is wait for it. Wait for her to fall apart again.

Even when I am dreaming, I dream of the voices. They come and go, but right now that’s all I can hear. They want me to make all her pain go away. My eyes won’t open. I am closed off to any other senses. All I hear is her muffled screams and cries for help. I just stand there, frozen. There’s nothing I can do. Even if there was something I
could
do, the voices would keep me chained to the floor. I jolt awake, my shirt damp with sweat. Laney isn’t in the bed, and I race from my bed in search of her. Reliving the night she tried to take her life, I fly through the bathroom door to find her in the tub. The water is spraying from the shower head as she holds herself in a ball. I climb in and sit down in front of her, turning her around and pulling her in close. I grab her hand to hold and she pulls it away in one quick jerk. I look down, getting a closer look and find her hand is oozing of blood as the guitar pic digs in deeper and deeper when she closes her fist.  Thanks to Jake she is falling apart again. 

“Laney, drop it. Don’t let him hurt you anymore,” I whisper in her ear, trying to pry her hand open. She’s in shock. She won’t answer to me. She’s completely mute. I just sit and hold her as she holds herself. Minutes pass, turning into hours. I am freezing—my body has gone numb from the cold. She sits in my lap, shivering—not saying a word. Each time I try to move her she pushes back against me. When she snaps out of the state of mind she’s in she lays her head back. 

Looking at me, she stutters, “Hold me tighter, because if you let go, I will fall apart. 

“Never,” I tell her, and try to lift her again. This time, she allows me to. I reach around and turn the shower off, then stand with her in my arms. Quickly walking her back to the room, I almost drop her a few times from the numbness. I lay her down, sliding her soaked clothes off and onto the floor. I lift her hand that is tight around the pic and place a soft kiss inside her wrist. As gentle as possible, I open her hand. Her face scrunches up in pain when I pull it from the cut it made. I tell her I’m sorry before going back to the bathroom for a rag and bandage. Her hand is pruned and cold as I wipe it clean and bandage it. 

How do you know when you’re in love? You put them first, in everything life throws at you. Each time I see her hurt, it hurts me. Every time I think of what they did—what I did—I cringe. I feel like a monster, like our love is a lie. 

“Do you think he will come here?” she asks, breaking my thoughts. 

“No, and if he does, he will have to go through me,” I spit out with more anger than I should have. It’s true, though. If he comes anywhere near her, he’s dead. Yes, I made a mistake letting my friends make this whole plan and wanting to be a part of it. I knew all of this would happen—I knew I was hurting her. The worst part is I could have stopped it. These damn voices, they tell me it’s okay. I promise myself that tomorrow I will go to the office and speak with the other doctor. Maybe I can tell her Laney is showing signs of schizophrenia, and get her to prescribe her clozapine. She’s a quack anyway, prescribing medicine to anyone and everyone. I will get these voices to go away—I have to. For Laney. 

I strip off my clothes and climb in the bed with her. She turns onto her side, and I pull her back into my chest, holding her as tight as I can. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again,” I tell her.
Not even me,
I think to myself. She falls back asleep, and I lie there awake, thinking of how this plan came into play.  

It all started in high school. We were all really close friends, even lived in foster care with most of them. Jake, though, he was the leader of our pack. He always made the calls, on the football field and off—we all looked to him as an idol. We wanted to
be
him. He always got the girls, drugs, and even threw the best barn/house parties without ever getting caught. We were all at a barn party the night it started. Jake would lure drunk or high girls from the party out to our secret spot.