I walk down the corridor and into my bedroom. Jack is going through the messages on his phone. I close the door and lean against it.
He puts his phone down and smiles. “Everything okay?”
I nod.
“Lock that door and come here,” he says.
‘We’ll have to be very quiet tonight,” I tell him.
“Fuck being quiet,” he says, picking something up from the bed and letting it swing from his pointer finger.”
I giggle. “You bought a gag?”
“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
Thirty-four
Jack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNc278W45ck
One day after Lori and her grandmother return from Sofia’s tower at the castle and return to her mother’s apartment, I get home from work and find Guy in the living room. He walks up to me, puts one hand on my shoulder, grabs my other hand and shakes it firmly.
“I was wrong about you. No matter what happens in the future, you’ve done more for Sofia than I would have thought possible. She’s a new person,” he says sincerely.
I shrug casually, but I can’t help the glow of pride I feel inside. I know I have been good for her.
“No, really,” he insists. “Every day I see her blossom and become more and more radiant. Sometimes I look at her and she doesn’t even seem to be the same person anymore.”
I smile, and don’t tell him about my deepest concern. Yes, her body is repaired, but that may be just one battle won. The war is far from over. The real problem is Sofia and I have sex, we laugh, we eat, we dance, but we never talk about her past. Nothing. Even when I have tried to tell her about mine, she leans forward and listens eagerly, absorbing every little detail greedily, then instead of offering even the smallest tit bit about herself, she’ll say something like, “Guess what I’m wearing underneath this dress,” or “God, I’d love to have you inside me now.”
That’s like waving a red rag at a bull. Action guaranteed. We’ll have sex and the moment will pass. Of course, I don’t want to hear about all those men. Even the thought is enough to make me feel sick to my stomach and want to kill someone, but I don’t want her whole past to be a no-go area.
I know she is keenly aware of how possessive and jealous I am, but how would it hurt to throw a little scrap about her childhood in my direction. I know her father was a cruel and sadistic man, but we can’t go through our lives never referring to him.
Sometimes I’m even tempted to ask Lena to tell me what really happened. Just so I understand. Just so I have a picture of her as a child. I want to understand. I know I own her body, but that is not enough. I want it all. Mind, body and soul.
“Have a drink with me?” Guy offers.
“Sure. I’ll have a beer.”
He takes a bottle out of the mini fridge under the bar for me and pours himself a whiskey.
“Glass?” he asks.
“Nah.”
He brings my bottle to me. I smile my thanks and take a swig. “So where are the girls?”
“Lena is helping Sofia dress.”
I frown. “Why?’
“It’s kind of a surprise.”
I look at him warily. “Right.”
“Here they are now.”
Lena comes in first and she is grinning like a Cheshire cat. Then Sofia comes in and it is like a punch in the gut. My eyes widen and my jaw actually drops. Jesus! She is wearing a red dress made from some kind of slinky material. And she is wearing high heels. And her hair has been styled in waves that flow down her back. She is fucking stunning.
“Hi,” she says softly.
“Wow! Just wow,” I reply. My voice sounds gruff. She has never dressed up for me before.
She blushes and looks even more beautiful.
“Well, we’ll be off then,” Lena says.
“Bye,” I say, and I don’t even turn my head to watch them leave.
The front door shuts and suddenly the apartment is too quiet.
I walk up to her, take her hand and twirl her around slowly. “How can a woman be so beautiful,” I whisper.
“I’m not beautiful. My sister is the beauty in our fami-.”
I place my finger on her lips. “Don’t. Don’t spit in our good fortune. We are the luckiest people on earth.”
A smile trembles on her lips.
“Where are we going?” I ask, lifting my finger away from her lips.
“We are going to a classical concert.”
I groan. “Don’t tell me you’re taking me to a place where I have to sit in the dark next to you with a hard on for an hour.”
She giggles.
My goodness. How beautiful is my girl.
“You’ll survive. I wanted to treat you with my first bit of money. It’s the rent from my apartment. Guy and Lena gave it to me so I’d have my own money.”
“In that case, I am honored.”
She takes me to see Vanessa Mae, and I have to admit the woman was amazing. She looks good and is as buzzed and energetic as any rock star, and played the violin like an electric dream.
Afterwards, we go for a meal in a fancy restaurant. We have our first argument when the bill comes. I’m glad she has her own money and that it makes her feel happy, but I’m damned if my woman is going to pay the restaurant bill. We end our disagreement in the car park with my tongue in her mouth.
I’ll never forget the strip show she put on until my dying day.
Thirty-five
Sofia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJSik6ejkr0
(Running)
I move into Jack’s apartment ten days after my surgery. Every day I stand in front of the mirror and turn around to look at my back. Every day I see it improving. The redness is going. The swelling will take six months to completely go away but it is slowly coming down.
Sometimes I’ll leave my hair down and walk around naked. I could never do that before because my hair would get stuck in the uneven bits of flesh and irritate me, reminding me of my scar.
This is without doubt the happiest time of my life. One day we attend the wedding of an acquaintance of Jack, Noah Abramovich, to his startlingly beautiful bride.
“We’re just going to show our faces, then disappear,” Jack tells me, but when we get there we are treated as honored guests and invited to sit at the very front. The famous pianist Alexander Malenkov is there. I nearly die when he comes forward to shake my hand. I’m so flustered by the encounter Jack gets jealous.
“Do I need to go punch his lights out?” he growls.
I laugh. “I don’t fancy him. I just think he’s incredibly talented.”
“Well, don’t keep looking at him as if you do then.”
“I’m not. I’ve got eyes for no one but you, babe.”
He snorts.
On the home front, Mika is growing fast. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and find she is taller. She has grown overnight. Like me she has fallen in love with Jack. You should see the madhouse we have here when Jack comes home from work. There is barking, wailing, whining, jumping, sloppy kisses, and too many hugs.
On the fifth day something goes wrong with the heating and the apartment becomes cold. Lena tells me to go to the Kensington apartment, but I tell her I will wait for Jack to come home, and if he doesn’t know what’s wrong with it, we will go together. I convince her that it’s not that cold since I’ve switched the oven on and left the door open.
However, after I put the phone down, I walk into the living room and notice a definite nip in the air, so I decide to get some blankets out and curl up with a book.
I go into the bedroom which is already freezing cold and open the cupboard. I have seen blankets stored on the bottom shelf. I squat down and pull three out at the same
time. Something hard falls with a soft thud on the floor. I pull the blankets away to see what has fallen out and notice that it is a photo album. Midnight blue with the brown cardboard showing at the edges of the cover, scratches, and finger marks.
For a few frozen seconds, I can only stare at it as if it is some alien object from outer space. Instinctively, I know it is not an ordinary album. Nobody rolls up an album in blankets and pushes it to the back of their cupboard. I can hear my ragged breathing as I bend down to pick it up.
I hold it in my hand, but I don’t open it. Instead I place my finger on the finger marks. They are his. I can tell just by the size. They belong to my lover. To the man I would die for. I run my thumb along the spine.
Would it be wrong to open it?
It’s not like it’s a diary. It’s just an album. If I owned a photo album would I be okay with him seeing it? Why not? It would only contain pictures of my family.
I grasp the cover. My heart is pounding in my chest. Thump. Thump. Thump. I lift the cover. The breath I am holding comes out in a whoosh.
Oh sweet Jesus!
I turn the pages slowly. Page by page. In a daze. Disbelief rolling in my veins. How stupid I’ve been. How blind. Of course. It was there for all to see. I just didn’t want to. A ripple of disgust runs through me. My hands are shaking with shock as I turn the last page and close the album.
I sit on the floor and carefully roll the album back in the blanket. Then I put it back exactly where I found it. I place the other clothes back onto the shelf on top of it. I look at it. Hmmm … the red blanket was on top of the blue one. I restore the order of it. Yes, that is how I found it.
I close the cupboard door and stand up.
The sense of loss is so acute that for an instant I feel faint, but it passes. I wipe my hands down my jeans. As if they are sweaty or dirty. They are neither. They are like icicles, but I don’t feel cold.
My mind is whirling in the way a gust of wind will carry a few leaves round and round. Oh God. Oh God. My sister’s trigger was seeing my burnt flesh. Here is my trigger. Looking into Jack’s past.
I walk out of the bedroom and go into the living room. My heart hurts. So fucking bad. I never felt this even when I was Valdislav’s whore. Then I felt nothing. Nothing. I was empty. Nothing could touch me. Time had stopped then. I want to feel that way again. I want time to stop again. This is unbearable. I can’t take this pain. It hurts too much. I need it to stop. I run out of the apartment without a coat.