Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (54 page)

I shouldn’t have asked, because his look wasn’t one of denial, but “How dare you ask?” The way he said it, I was sure he’d done some fucking in the past two weeks and it immobilized my heart. When I was a kid, a hole the size of a fist opened up in the middle of our street. Three inches of asphalt dropped into a deep nothingness. It got bigger and bigger, falling into itself until Teddy Ramirez’s Toyota got stuck.

My chest had that sinkhole in it. It just fell in on itself, creating a bigger opening into nothingness and sucking the breath out of me. No. That was not good. That was the very definition of awful. I shifted and went for the door. He reached across me again and blocked the handle. “You can’t run away every time something gets difficult.”

“Jonathan, please, I can’t bear the thought of you with someone else.” His body was so close to mine, so real. That son of a bitch. Built so right for me and how many others?

“Wait. You think there was someone else?” he asked.

I bit my lip. I didn’t know what I thought any more.

“Monica. There’s. No. One. Else.” He let the handle go and stared at me for a second. “There’s only you. You think I’m stupid? You think I can create what we have with another woman? I know the world. I know the people in it. Us? What we have isn’t something we made. It’s something that existed before we even met.”

The sinkhole in my chest reversed itself, like film run backward, from broken to whole.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked. It wasn’t my business.”

“Why did you walk away from me if you still care?” he asked.

“I’m human. It’s a terminal condition.” I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted his lips, his hands, his tongue, but I couldn’t, not when there were so many sensible reasons not to. “I took a meeting with Eddie Milpas. He wants to make me a star, which I’d laugh at coming from anyone else. But it’s not funny because he has the power to do it. He wants to put Carnival’s muscle behind me. If he does, I’ll have everything I ever wanted.”

“Monica, that’s—”

“He wants the song,” I said. Jonathan leaned back, against the door, a rueful smile at his lips. “He’s not getting it. I keep my promises, and to be honest, I wish I never wrote that thing. But that’s not the rub. He has plenty of songs with kinky lyrics that’ll sound great from a girl all dolled up in leather and chains. BDSM is hot right now, apparently, and I’m ‘in the know,’ so I can pull it off.”

I paused, because the image exploded in my mind. “Fuck! I spend a few weeks with you and I’m Bondage Girl. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Do you know how hard I’ve worked? Do you know what I’ve put into this, and to sit across from this guy, and he tells me…wait for it….he tells me that I’m perfect because I’ll
know what I’m talking about
? Who am I? What the
fuck
?” I slammed the dashboard. “And Kevin, do you know why he forced himself on me? Because
he thought I liked it that way
. God damn it. Jonathan, what if those cameras were in my house because someone wanted to blackmail
you
? And I’m getting caught in that net now. This is not what I want.

“I want to sing. I want to make music. I alienated my mother, I sacrificed a hundred other careers, I lost my best friend over it, I practice and work all the time. It’s all I think about. It’s all I want. But I’m trapped in this kinky thing with you right when all the work could be paying off. This sucks. My career could break any minute. These should be the best days of my life, and I wish I was dead.”

I had to stop or I was going to cry, which I didn’t want. Crying would derail my whole point. I didn’t look at Jonathan because I didn’t care what he felt or thought. I didn’t want to see his beautiful face because he’d turn me into mush. I looked at my hands in my lap, then out the window at the party.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I don’t blame you. You didn’t intend to ruin my life. But I’d really like for it to not get any worse, if that’s okay.”

We sat in silence. I considered saying goodbye and opening the door, but I couldn’t. I considered running before he could catch me, but I couldn’t do that either. Instead, I faced him. He rubbed his chin absently and stared into the middle distance.

And then my mouth opened and words came out. “The worst part is, I miss you.”

He didn’t react, but I did. I turned into stone. Jesus, what was I saying? He was last thing I needed. He was trouble. Six feet two inches of life-damaging trouble in a sweet, tempting motherfucking devil of a package.

He turned to me, as if having decided something. “You and Darren take my plane up to Vancouver. Let me put you up in a hotel.”

“No.”

“Would you stop making me crazy?”

“You’re not hearing me.”

“I’m hearing a lot of pain from all quarters. It’s going to get worse if you don’t let me protect you. When you get back safe, we talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Oh, goddess.” He brushed my cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“Don’t call me that.”

“We have so much to talk about.”

I closed my eyes. His touch felt like a boat on still water, leaving ripples in its wake. When would I stop craving him? “I don’t want my life ruined.”

“Neither do I. But this...” He brushed his hands over my face, bringing my skin to life. “This, I want. I’ve never wanted anything so badly. I feel your hands on your phone when you read my texts. I go to the Stock after your shifts just to stand where you’ve stood. I fall asleep on the pillow you used when you were in my bed. I need to share whatever piece of the world you’re in. Tell me you don’t feel the same.”

“You know how I feel,” I croaked.

“We can’t go backward. You and I are going to figure out how to make this work.”

His confidence should have made me hopeful, but it only filled me with dread.

“I want to go home now. Please.”

He walked me to my car. When he handed me my keys, dangling them from his fingertips, I had the desire to do what I did when we’d met, what Will Santon had done: overshoot my grasp for a touch. Just a little. But then Jonathan spoke.

“Until we talk, and you get your head on straight, I’m not touching you. You were right. We get reeled in, you and I. We touch and we feel good, and then we land in bed and we forget the basics.”

“Talking’s not going to fix this.”

“Neither is fucking.”

I snapped the keys from him. “We can fix us, but we’re not going to fix the world, Jonathan.”

“The world is full of assholes.” He opened the driver’s door for me and closed it when I was safely in.

I lowered the window. “When I met you, I thought you were an asshole.”

He smiled. “You did not.”

“I did. A gorgeous asshole.”

His laugh came from deep in his chest. He bit his lip and reached out to cup my cheek but fell half an inch short. “I was an asshole for making you another conquest.” He put his hand in his pocket, and I missed the potential in that almost-touch. “Get out of here, goddess. Get some rest.”

When I got back to Echo Park, Darren was out. My face was a little swollen. I made myself an ice pack and went to the couch. I lay there with the TV muted, remembering him. The kiss we shared. His touch, the heat. I slid my hand under my cotton panties, shuddering in anticipation. I wanted to come. I wanted to want to come. I wanted to fall into my filthiest imagination and wrap myself in sexual desire.

But when I touched my opening, I found it unprepared for attention. A little fiddling got me nowhere, and I felt as though I was trying to get music from an instrument I’d never heard of. I pulled my hand away and went into an uneasy sleep.

JONATHAN

I
’d walked her to the car with few words, but not because I had nothing to say. I had plenty to say. In the time it had taken for her to forgive me for destroying her career, I’d thrown a dozen mental balls in the air, and if I spoke, I would have dropped them.

I didn’t have compassion for her situation. I had a raw empathy that made me want to hold her and whisper lies of comfort. But it wasn’t going to be all right. Things weren’t going to go back to normal. The only one way the whole thing would blow over was if she lived a life of obscurity. The recognition and success she’d earned and deserved promised to exacerbate her situation. There was absolutely no chance of people unknowing what they knew, and there was even less chance she’d drop her ambitions to protect her privacy.

If I let her go, the most likely scenario was that she’d swear off men until another dominant appeared. Then she’d fall right back into her submissive role with him.

That was not acceptable.

I had calls to Asia until well into the night. In the morning, after what felt like thirty minutes of sleep, I had Kristin find out when Eddie Milpas would be at the Loft Club. I needed to feel him out. I didn’t want to take action based only on Monica’s exploding imagination.

MONICA

I
woke at half past eight and stared at Darren’s popcorn stucco ceiling. The vertical blinds cast stripes across it, and only when my eyes hurt from looking at their odd symmetry did I get up.

I had an email from Kevin. I was tempted to delete it without reading it, but I was curious. I read on my phone while bleary-eyed and in the bathroom.

Dear Monica,

You’re not going to pick up my calls. I know you.

I feel like such a fuckup. I don’t care. I’ll put it all in writing.

I never knew what I did wrong. I should have damned my pride and waited on your porch until you told me why you left me. Really why. Not because of Tuesday nights. That could only be a symptom of some other disease.

I didn’t know what I was doing making the coalmine piece. I just did it, and it took a year. I wasn’t going to invite you. I thought if you saw it, you’d be pissed but you’d know how I felt. I figured it was the equivalent of me waiting on your porch, twenty months later.

Everyone said you were single, but you weren’t were you? When I saw you go in there with another man I wanted to eat my face off. And then you were in the garden crying on his shoulder. I can only imagine it was over the piece.

Remember how we read Blake sometimes? I thought of this one—

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears—
Ah, she doth depart.

I went a little crazy. I knew I wanted to do cooperative work before Eclipse, and you were the first person I thought of. I was just going to mention it to you later. After we talked. But the crazy took over.

We did good work together, but you wouldn’t talk about what happened with us, even though it was all over the piece. I heard about your new boyfriend and the kind of shit you were into. I thought maybe that was what you needed from me and you couldn’t say.

Wasn’t that easy, was it?

Last night, after you left, I was pissed. And hurt. And I said a lot of shit to that dickhead about you I shouldn’t have. I’m sure he repeated it to you. In the moment I meant it because my face was busted. But now I’m too embarrassed to wait on your porch. Once we get back from Vancouver, I will.

—Kev.

I sat on the bowl and read it again. Then the Blake poem. Then the letter in full.

I was a heartless bitch, hiding behind silence and self-righteous indignation that stayed unchallenged. I thought I was taking control of my life, but I’d left a mess behind me. How many people had I done that to? My mother? She never failed to hurl some innocent-sounding cruelty at me, but I’d cut her off and call it independence.

Everything hurt. I’d woken up with no more than a dark spot under my eye, but it weighed down half my face. My back felt twisted and weak, aching as if I’d lifted a piano up the stairs. I didn’t know what to do about my pain, or even if anything needed doing.

My phone blooped at nine a.m. exactly.

—How’s the eye?—

I’d never answered a nine a.m. text, but after the night before, and Kevin’s email, I thought I ought to.

—You should see the other guy—

There was a longer pause than usual. I imagined him reading my text, so surprised I answered he had to take a second to organize himself.

—I feel your hands on the phone—

I caressed the little plastic and metal box like a lover, feeling a warmth and tingle between my legs that had been missing the night before.

—I have to go to work. Lunch shift—

—I know—

Asshole. Gorgeous asshole.

JONATHAN

“I
really could have used you guys last night,” I said, blaming Will for something that wasn’t his fault. Margie, the money source, had moved his whole team onto a divorce case with triangulations from Flintridge, to Santa Monica, to Monterey Park, and back. I could have deduced who was splitting up if I cared.

Santon seemed unperturbed by what had happened to Monica. We sat at a table at the Loft Club. Santon didn’t seem impressed by the club at all. A mark in his favor.

He slid his hand over his glass in a way that looked like a threat. “I can’t get into the house, so even if one of my guys was there, I make no guarantee it wouldn’t have gone down that way.”

“Do you have anything on this guy? Or are my hands tied?”

“We found some warrants in Idaho. He led an anti-war protest outside Boise city hall and got picked up for inciting a riot. He dropped out of sight a month after he did his thirty days and no one up there actually gave a shit when he showed up down here. Parole officer my guy talked to never thought of him as a criminal. Then we found two open. One battery charge. A DUI. Different parole officers.”

I scanned the club. Larry poured drinks. Guys in suits laughed at the bar. I expected Eddie soon, and I wanted to be done with Santon before he arrived.

“The cameras?” I asked. “Anything?”

“We got taken off before we found out how it was done and who ordered the job. We did track the serial numbers though. Followed the money.”

He paused, and I rotated my hand at the wrist for him to continue. He didn’t. The guy was unflappable.