Best of 2017

"Yeah?" Dad looks at him, pure fury in his eyes. "Are we going to talk about the fact you turned my fucking daughter into a sex toy for your pleasure?"

My hand trembles on the stairway rail.

"Are we going to talk about you painting her," dad bellows. "Fucking naked in front of your sick damn supporters?"

"James," Mason begs him, sneaking a glance at me. "I don't know who told you about all this."

My dad laughs bitterly, saying, "Word gets around, Mason. You wouldn't even believe."

"He didn't force me to do anything," I get out in the smallest of voices.

My dad laughs, like it's the most idiotic thing he's heard in his life.

"Didn't force her," he mocks Mason. "She's fucking eighteen, you son of a bitch. She's been manipulated. You fucked up her head, you jackass. You fucking ruined her!"

"Daddy, stop!" I yell, but my words fall on deaf ears as my father lunges after Mason.

I shriek as the two men tumble to the ground, trying to make my way to the spot on the floor where they're brawling. But Filippe intercepts me, holding me back while the only two men that mean anything to me fight it out.

My father is fueled by rage, but Mason is taller, stronger. He's got the upper hand, even though I can tell he's just trying to calm dad down.

"Where are they?" dad snarls as they get up, Mason holding him at an arm's length. "Where are the fucking paintings, you son of a bitch?"

None of us says a word as my dad rips himself out of Mason's grip and runs up the stairs. He doesn't even stop when he passes me, and I feel myself crying, hot tears of humiliation falling down my cheeks.

We all race after my dad as he tears through the house. He doesn't stop until he comes to a door I don't even remember.

"In here?" he snarls at Mason. "Did you put her with all of your other whores, you sick bastard?"

I give Mason a confused look. He looks at me worriedly, before raising his arms at my father.

"Calm down, James," he begs for the last time. "Let's sit down and talk about this."

"I did not take a fucking ten-hour flight to talk," dad yells at him.

He tries the door, it's locked. Then, he lunges at it with all his might, screaming as he breaks down the door. We all stare into the Pandora's box he's just opened.

The room is big, more of a hall, really. There are four easels in the middle of it, my nakedness exposed on every one of them. I blush deeply, but then I see the rest of the room.

It's really a gallery, the walls adorned with paintings. Dozens upon dozens of them.

I walk past Filippe, past Mason, past my dad. Someone flips the light switch and I come face to face with them.

The women.

The muses.

Innocence.

Yearing.

Submission.

Domination.

Four portraits for every one of them. All of them on the walls of this room. It must be over ten women. Maybe over a dozen. And in the middle of the room, my own portraits, like a fucking mockery to everything I thought I'd experienced with Mason.

I can't even turn to face him as the hot tears start to fall. I hear them talking, shouting. I feel someone reach for me but I rip myself out of their touch and sit down on the floor in a corner. I can't keep myself up anymore.

I watch my dad head for the paintings of me, punching a hole in every one of them. Ruining them.

Someone kneels down in front of me, and makes me look into his eyes. Mason.

"How could you?" I ask him. "How could you use me?"

"I didn't," he says. "You were the last one. The most important one. My work of art. My magnum opus. My muse, cara mia..."

"Shut up!" I wipe my tears off angrily, my whole body throbbing with the lies and deceit he's fed me over the past month. "I hate you, Mason Scott. You're a jackass. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you."

“Tell her you love her, then,” my dad interrupts from behind us, and Mason clenches his fists like he’s in physical pain. “Tell her you love her, you bastard.”

Mason looks at me and his mouth opens, but there are no words. He just stares at me, begging me to understand, hoping I’ll see something I don’t believe in anymore.

“Please,” I say softly, even though I don’t want him to see how vulnerable I am. “Please, Mason.”

“I…” he swallows. “I’m sorry, cara mia.”

I push past him and start running. I can barely see through the tears clouding my vision. I don't stop until my bare feet hit the ground. I don't stop until I reach the secret garden.

Once I'm there, I tear through it. I want to hurt him by damaging something that means a lot to him. Even though the garden is overgrown, there is still a certain kind of beauty to it. And I tear through it like a banshee.

I pull out roots, break down branches. I dig up the soil, kick the flowers, I do my fucking best to destroy the beauty of the place.

I don't stop until someone drags me away. My feet drag on the ground as I get taken away, feeling like a lifeless doll. I realize it's my father talking to me as he sits me down into a taxi. I'm still only wearing the silk robe over my PJs, the fabric now stained with blood. I look down at my hands and find them cut up. Probably from the rose bushes in the garden, I think absentmindedly.

Someone slams a fist on the window and the taxi driver starts chattering in Italian.

"Don't fucking take her."

The voice is muffled. I look up at Mason, his eyes pleading with me, with my father.

Don't. Go.

I want to say something back, but my mouth has dried up.

Surely all this wasn't fake. Surely he felt something for me, even though he painted so many other women in the same manner. But what we had... It was real. Maybe just for me. Maybe not for Mason.

Fresh tears spill from my eyes as I look at him through the window. He's desperate, he's reaching for the door, but we're locked inside. A part of me wants to tell my father to let me out, another part w

ants me to stay put and leave it all behind. The pain, the heartache. The love, the intensity of the man I spent my summer with.

"Drive," my dad orders the taxi driver. "Marco Polo airport. Now."

The driver hesitates and Mason slams a fist on the window again.

"NOW!" my dad demands, and the driver steps on the gas.

I stare outside of the window feeling numb as the car drives off. Mason's figure gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And then it disappears, and I don't feel anything anymore.

"It's okay, honey," my dad tells me, his voice shaky and pent-up. "You're okay now. I'm taking you home now. Don't worry, you never have to see him again."

I always thought I would break with a scream, go down in flames, come apart loudly. But as I fall apart in that car, I don't make a single sound.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MASON

AFTER JAMES LEAVES with his daughter, I'm a wreck. I don't know how I get back inside the house, don't know how I rip my knuckles open and make them bleed down my fist. The red mist finally starts to back away when Filippe patches me up in the kitchen.

I lost her, just like that. Because I was a fucking prick and couldn't tell her how I really felt. What she made me feel, what kind of man she made me become. Cara had changed me for the better, and I hated myself for not telling her that when I had the chance.

Filippe's calming words are coming in through a dark cloud of anger.

"I want you to leave for the night," I tell him roughly, as he's putting away the first aid kit.

"I don't think that's wise," Filippe says hesitantly, but one look from me has him too scared to say another word.

He nods one, packs up his stuff and leaves, letting me wallow in my sadness by myself. As soon as he is gone, I get up and walk to the bar in the dining room. I go through the numerous bottles in the bar and finally find an 18-year-old Scotch in the bar. I stare at it for a long time, letting it bring back all the memories from the day I received it.

"She's pregnant! She's fucking pregnant!"

I grin at my friend's words, clapping him on the back and giving him a big hug.