Page 52

Praise kink.
Not my thing at all. I wasn’t a girl, and I had certainly never wanted to be a good one.
Submissive, meek, soft, pliant. No. I wanted to rage against men and a society who rewarded the good girls and punished the bad. The bad being those with voices, agency and different ideas about what it was to be a woman.
But I found myself sipping my martini, settling in for the night so I could be Elliot Shaw’s good girl.
One of the most dangerous and destructive decisions of my life.
Eleven
Falling — Florence & The Machine
“I’m gonna walk you to your car,” Elliot told the last waitress left in the once-crowded bar.
Music still played over the speakers, but the volume had been lowered, quieter than the soundtrack to the rest of the evening. The staff had all cleaned up with smiles and an easy banter that communicated they liked working there.
The last waitress looked at me with a questioning and vaguely hostile eye, which amused me. It didn’t escape my notice that she was nursing a massive crush on Elliot. She’d been all but rubbing her tits in his face all night. He hadn’t so much as blinked at it, even though they were arguably nice tits, and she was gorgeous. Blonde, clear-skinned, freckles dusting over a delicate nose. Younger, maybe early twenties. An easy smile, no shadows behind her eyes. Likely a better candidate than me for Elliot.
I smiled back at her, all teeth, slightly taunting. Jealousy was not and had never been my thing. Pitting women againsteach other for the sake of a man was laughable to me. And no man had ever been valuable enough to me to go against another woman in the first place.
But my body heated, and my fingers curled at the idea of Elliot with someone like her, someone much better suited. Who wouldn’t have murderous ex-boyfriends lurking in the shadows, waiting to present bodies as trophies. Who had a fruitful womb to bear his babies and a soft nature that would bring out the best in him. She showed me where I was lacking. I didn’t like that. Didn’t like the thought of Elliot’s gaze being anywhere but on me.
“I’ll be here,” I promised Elliot, crossing my leg over my knee while taking the last sip of my martini. It was my second. I’d been nursing it since Elliot made a strong drink, and I had no intentions of being drunk when whatever happened was going to happen.
Furthermore, I got the impression that Elliot was the type of guy who wouldn’t fuck me if I was drunk and he was sober.
Noble.
His eyes ran over me with hunger and promise for a split-second before he wiped down the last surface of the bar and rounded it to guide the waitress out.
I gave her a finger wave that every woman knew was akin to a middle finger.
Her delicate nose wrinkled in distaste before she smiled up at Elliot, pressing herself as close to him as possible as they walked out.
I wondered if once I was out of the picture she’d come and pick up the pieces, the promise of a much simpler exchange, maybe even settling down together once he’d gotten his taste for an unpredictable woman out of his system.
The bitter taste of that mingled with vodka wasn’t entirely unpleasant. It was an escape hatch. I’d get this noble, smilingman out of my system then go back to the life I was suited to—the one in New York—and he’d get the blonde-haired, small-town girl who would marry him, give him babies, and generally make sure not to rock the boat, pun intended.
A plan formulated. One that scratched along my insides like sandpaper but one I would commit to. I’d been lingering in Jupiter far too long, getting too attached to the proximity of my friends and family, to a life that was untenable for someone like me.
I’d found myself back at the wall of photos spanning the left side of the restaurant, eyes roving over the father with the teenage sons, then to a similar picture, this time with grown men and an older man, the one I now knew as Beau cradling a small Clara in his arms. I searched out images of her, of which there were many—her growing up throughout the years, either on a boat, the beach or in this restaurant, in the kitchen with her father cooking.
Nothing hinted at the illness, it didn’t leak onto the wall there. They wouldn’t want it to. It was nice to be able to look at a wall and see only happy memories, as if erasing the horrible ones were just as easy. To imagine a life where a smiling, gorgeous, healthy girl wouldn’t be resigned to a two-dimensional image on a wall one day.
Scattered throughout the photos was a woman. Though she was only in a handful of them, looked enough like Beau and Elliot to make me ascertain that she was their mother. She was also in a wedding photo with an attractive man who must’ve been their father. Then, rounded pregnant, cross-legged on a beach.
She was always smiling, her arms around her boys or her husband with an energy I couldn’t help but connect with my own mother, since the photos we had scattered around our familyhome were similar. Content, windswept, a little unkempt, but in a way that seemed purposeful and effortless at the same time.
I wasn’t surprised when someone came to stand beside me, close enough for my arm to brush against his, the scent of the ocean and spice permeating my senses.
I’d heard him enter, felt the vibrations of his soft footfalls as he approached, but I hadn’t turned to look at him.
“What happened to your mother?” I found myself asking. Even though there shouldn’t have been any questions between us. It was meant to be just sex.
“She died.” There weren’t decades’ worth of pain injected into the two words he stated, plain as day. Yet there was love. Elliot didn’t hide any emotion in his voice; he wore each of them in every syllable, he was that expressive. Open. There were no barriers. It was incredibly off-putting, being around someone so honest.
Though it was a bad idea, I craned my head from the wall to check out his profile, finding him smiling at what I’d guessed was one of the last pictures of them together, on the beach. She was older in that photo, ever smiling, her boys already taller than her.