Consequences of Deception (18 page)

Killian hasn’t come back since he stormed out after we had sex, and rather than obsessing over it or being upset, I’m completely avoiding thinking about it. Too keyed up to nap once he left, I take a quick shower and then do a little research to find the nearest craft store before I call Chord and ask if someone will take me to Michael’s Crafts and a supermarket for supplies.

Adam has quickly been dispatched to take me, and he’s pleasant during the drive and patient as I go through the stores and pick up the supplies that I need. Clearly, my sending breakfast over has been a big hit.

During the last several years that I’ve been trapped at Stephen and Celine’s, I haven’t really been able to be very social at all because they didn’t allow for it. In order to get out of the house, I started taking random classes at a local craft store. I’ve taken scrapbooking classes, sewing lessons and jewelry making classes, just to name a few. The classes that I enjoyed the most were the cake decorating classes and I wound up doing an entire year’s worth of classes, keeping at it until I had finished the most complicated class.

I’ve always loved to bake since it’s something that my mother and I did together often as I was growing up, and the addition of decorating the cakes and cupcakes has kicked up my love for it another notch. Focusing on cake decorating keeps my hands and my mind busy and I need that now more than ever.

We get back to the resort a little after two, and I get right on making two-dozen cupcakes. While I am waiting for the cupcakes to bake, I make two large batches of homemade buttercream icing before I move on to coloring several of them and setting up piping bags for decorating.

Once the cupcakes are out of the oven and cooling, I quickly throw together a pan of lasagna and put it in the refrigerator to chill until it’s time to make dinner. After clearing off the bar and getting my workstation in order, I go to work making the decorations for my cupcakes. Using the sugar paste and fondant that I bought at the craft store, I make all different kinds of flowers.

I am so engrossed in my work that I don’t even hear Killian enter the condo, so when he leans across the breakfast bar to see what I am doing, I let out a little screech of surprise.

Settling my hand over my heart, I glare at him. “You scared the shit out of me!”

He shrugs his shoulders while simultaneously rolling his eyes at me. “I don’t know why, seeing as how I live here. The door is literally twenty feet from you and I wasn’t exactly stealthy as I came in. What are you so involved in? It smells fucking incredible in here, by the way. As I was coming down the hall from the elevator my mouth started to water.”

I am tempted to call him out on being all over the damn place. Realizing that egging him on is only going to make the situation worse instead of better, I gesture to my flowers and give him a half smile.

“I’m making decorations for some cupcakes that I made. You know how I like to bake.”

He nods his head absently as he studies the flowers. “Yeah, I remember the baking, but I don’t remember you making flowers or anything this elaborate. It looks like hard work. Do you like doing this?”

“I do, actually. It’s a good stress reliever and it helps me to focus. Some people do puzzles, some listen to music really loud… I decorate baked goods.”

Gesturing to the refrigerator I say, “I put together a lasagna for dinner so that we wouldn’t have to go out or order in. How about you preheat the oven and throw together a salad while I finish this. I got a loaf of French bread to make garlic bread as well, the garlic and herbed butter is already made and in that red bowl on the counter. If you’d spread that out on the bread so that it’s ready to go in the oven just before the lasagna is finished, that would be great. I’ve got another six flowers to go and then I’ll be able to move on to icing and decorating the cupcakes.”

“Sounds good. I’m about at the end of my rope with eating out every night. I forgot how talented you are in the kitchen. You could be a chef.”

Looking up, I roll my eyes at him and laugh. “I’ll always love to create magic in the kitchen, but if it was my career, I don’t think that I’d love it nearly as much. It’s much better to keep it as a hobby that I love. It’s nice being able to make things that I want to make. Living with Cruella de Psycho for the last few years, I had to give up kitchen time since she bitched every time I made anything that she didn’t approve of, which was everything. I could make the same exact thing that the housekeeper made, but because I made it Celine would hate it and go off on a rampage and start yelling that I was going to ruin her kitchen. That’s really pathetic, considering the fact that Celine doesn’t cook, ever, but that’s how she rolls. Aside from grudgingly being allowed to make the things I needed for my cake decorating classes, I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen. Basically any cooking that I’ve done since I had to move in with Stephen and Celine has taken place at the Tates. They’ve always been awesome about encouraging me to explore my love of cooking.”

I went back to making my flowers while I was talking, and when I look up, Killian is staring at me with the oddest expression on his face, something that almost looks like guilt. Before I can ask him what the look is for, he shakes his head and starts rinsing the vegetables I’ve left on the counter for the salad.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about being allowed to use the kitchen anymore. By all means, cook away. I don’t care if you leave spaghetti noodles hanging from the ceiling as long as the finished product is delicious and, since with you it always is, have at it.”

His words make me happy and I grin like an idiot. I love to be in the kitchen and the fact that he’s going to encourage me makes my life much easier.

Curiosity about where I’ll be living for the remainder of the time I’m with him once we get back to San Jose gets the better of me, and even though I promised myself that I wouldn’t ask questions, I decide to chance one anyway. “Is there a big kitchen where you live now?”

He is mid chop when I ask, and setting the knife aside he looks up at me and frowns. “This is the second time you’ve said something that makes it seem like you don’t know where I live. I live where I’ve always lived, Slo. You know how big the kitchen is.”

This is news. “But… Stephen said that you put the house up for sale years ago.”

His facial expression indicates that my words have pissed him off for some reason, but he holds his temper. “Well he was wrong so, clearly, he must’ve gotten bad information. I probably will sell it at some point in the near future, but I haven’t decided where I’d like to move instead.”

Noticing the expression on my face he asks, “What’s going through your brain right now?”

“Nothing, it’s silly. Don’t worry about it.”

“Spit it out, Slo. What?”

Toying with the flower that I’m making, I blurt out, “What are the new neighbors like? Are the people that bought my house nice?”

The buzzer on the oven goes off, indicating that the oven is now pre-heated. Turning his back on me, Killian busies himself putting the lasagna in. Figuring that he isn’t going to answer me, I go back to finishing my flowers.

“No, the person that bought your old house isn’t nice.”

Hearing that makes me sad, and I look up at him with a frown. “That’s so sad. I always hoped that whoever bought my house had a big family, would love the house and become part of the neighborhood. Growing up there was the best. I was devastated when Stephen sold it out from under me, and it hurt that I couldn’t even drive by to look at it and remember happier times since it’s in a gated community. It’s a shame that the new owner isn’t nice.”

He’s silent for a moment. “The house isn’t there for you to drive by and look at. I bought it and had it bulldozed to the ground. It’s a nicely landscaped empty plot of land now.”

His words stab at me like a knife. I try damn hard to control my reaction, to keep the devastation that his words leave behind inside, but I fail miserably and words pour out of my mouth against my will.

“There’s nothing that you won’t do to hurt me, is there?”

His eyes go wild as he glares at me, the look of disgust on his face so brutal that it feels like a slap.

“You can go ahead and play the innocent victim all you want, but I know the truth. The things that I do to you hurt a hell of a lot less than what you deserve.”

The weirdest feeling comes over me, so intense that I swear I actually hear the snap. I’m through fighting, through pretending that someday things are going to get better because it’s clear to me now, in a way that it never has been before, that nothing’s going to improve at all. This is it, apparently. I must have done something horrible in another life to earn such bad Karma in this one, but I’m done fighting against the tide.

Shrugging my shoulders, I ignore him and go back to decorating my cupcakes so that he won’t realize how upset I am. There’s no point in arguing with him. There’s no point in anything. Not anymore. My pain is my own.

It’s amazing, really, the way that a switch can be flipped and everything can change. Killian continues to have me whenever he wants me, but I’m not there while he’s doing it. I’m nowhere at all, really. My body is a traitor and continues to let him bring pleasure, but my mind has shut him out entirely.

As for my heart, I’m surprised it’s still beating. The brutal truth is that I wish that it didn’t. I should’ve died on the ground next to my lake house four and a half years ago, after Shannon pushed me out the window. If I’d died, then I’d have gone knowing that I was loved. Instead I came back to life only to find that everything I’d loved about it was gone.

I’m on the balcony staring out at the waves, which is pretty much all I’ve done in the days that have passed since the night that Killian told me he knocked my house down. I don’t know why it was that one thing that snapped my spirit like a twig, but knowing that my home is gone killed whatever wasn’t already dead inside of me. I’ve daydreamed for years about getting my inheritance and being able to buy the house back, and having that option taken away so permanently, first by losing my inheritance and now by Killian destroying it, has ruined me.

The door from the living room to the deck opens, announcing Killian’s arrival on the porch. Not bothering to look over at him, I keep my eyes on the ocean. It’s obvious to me now that he needed to break me, and I hope that seeing me broken gives him the peace that he needs. He’s won, and I have nothing left.

Sitting down on the lounger next to me, he stares at me for a minute before speaking. “It’s almost dinner time. How about we eat out, since it’s your birthday?”

Frowning, I mentally calculate the days in my head. He’s right; it’s my birthday. For four and a half years I looked to this day as a marker of a new beginning, the day of my liberation. Silly, stupid little me—so very foolish to believe that things would ever get better.

Do I want to go to dinner to mark a meaningless day in a meaningless life? He’s insane. What’s the point?

“No, thank you.”

“Goddammit, Sloane, you haven’t left the condo in days and you aren’t eating. Are you feeling alright?”

“I feel fine.”

Smacking his hand down on the arm of his recliner he snaps, “You don’t look fine and you aren’t acting fine. What the fuck?”

Looking over at him dispassionately, I shrug my shoulders. “I said I feel fine. Why do you care?”

A sound of anger erupts from him as he jumps up from the lounger and grabs me, lifting me up and carrying me into the condo. Throwing me down on the bed he rips my clothes off, tossing them carelessly onto the floor.

“Turn over and bury your face in the pillow. You need to be reminded who’s the boss.”

Without saying a word, I roll over and lay my head down on the pillow. I stay silent as he walks into the closet, and I close my eyes to block everything out. I know what to expect this time, and I really can’t care less. I sure as shit know that I’m not in charge and I don’t care anymore.

I hear the sound of the belt slicing through the air and I feel the sting as it hits my bottom. My body reacts, predictably, softening and creaming up hotly for him. Rather than focus on my body betraying me, I go away in my mind and float through a sea of gray.

My mind wanders to my parents’ bedroom in the house that no longer exists anywhere but in my memory. It’s so easy to remember my mother laughing as we danced to her eighties music and I dressed up in her clothes. I think about my father teaching me to ride my bike without training wheels, in the driveway, for the first time, and I can still hear his shout of pure joy when he let go and I kept right on going.

One after another, the memories wash over me. Stephen helping my dad build a little wooden playhouse in the backyard, back before Celine came into our lives. Shannon, Demi and I jumping on my trampoline for hours. Killian standing at the bottom of the stairs and shaking his head at me as I slid down the curved bannister and landed at his feet with a shriek of joy.

Things prick at me as I travel down memory lane and think about how much I had loved my home, but I push them away. From a far away place I feel the pain of the belt, feel Killian entering me, even feel my body coming undone, but I stay gone. I don’t want to go back to reality anymore. It’s nicer here—safer. There is no pain, no loss, and no regret. Instead I’m in a happy place, remembering the people that I love, and I want to stay here.