Page 18 of A Taste Of Truth

“No.” I mean it. I do. “You’re wrong.”

“As opposed to right?”

“Obviously.”

He sits on the step, a sigh dropping out of those lips that just kissed the shit out of me. “What has right earned you in futile your life?”

“Civility.”

He chuckles and nods, eyes still looking at me. “Alright, Alice. Go. But know I’ll regret not getting the chance to be inside your mind as much as you’re in mine.” And that’s just damn clever. It leads towards making me feel he’s actually interested in me as a human. He’s not really. Or maybe he is, but mainly he’s just pissed that I’m not fawning all over him, running when he snaps his finger like all the others do.

My chin lifts, legs staying exactly where they are. I might be done, but I’d like an answer to the question I’m most consumed with. Perhaps then this feeling, this intensity that seems to keep us attached, might lesson or evaporate. I’ll be able to live my life again, forget once I’m home rather than have the mental images linger like my mother’s do. “Why did you try to kill yourself?”

He stares for the longest time. No particular expression. Just stares. It doesn’t make me back down, or move, or feel like I’m intruding. This thing that bound us together, the pills and the thoughts that were running through me, make us more than that.

“That’s not your concern.”

“Me being here is because of you. The pills were you, the attachment between us is because of them is all you. The time we spent in bed – you. The kiss – you. I held your head when you were dying. I did that – for you. This is my one ask for me. Be a man – answer the fucking question without trying to avoid it. Prove yourself and I’ll consider staying. Earn it, Malachi, because I doubt you’ve ever had to earn a fucking thing in your life.”

More staring, this time filled with what seems to be cruelty rather than amusement. I remember it well, can still feel it in me from the time when I can’t remember a fucking thing. And there was a song – I can feel that, too, as if this animosity is creating a new heartbeat between us. We danced along a corridor softly, closely.

My head tries shaking the feeling off, eyes still focused on his as if nothing means anything but this answer and him saying it. “Why, Malachi?”

“If we go there, Alice, we go all the way. Better to go too far.”

“What?”

“Than not far enough?” Well, that at least makes some sense. Life shouldn’t be about halves. It should be about wholes. About achieving and living. Not that mine has been, but it could be if I was free. “Are you cold?” I don’t answer. I’m not answering anything until I get a fucking answer to the question I asked first. “Alright, Alice. Come inside. Let’s see how far we can go.”

The knife drops from his grip, silver glinting on the black floor around him, and he turns before I get a chance to counter the statement. It’s just him and his body moving up the steps and into the open doorway. Asshole.

Chapter 8

Malachi

Why is she looking at that painting again?

I turn and watch, wondering what she’s thinking about. The thought amuses me for a split second. Considering what any woman, apart from my wife, is thinking about is unusual. Why this one is becoming interesting is unfamiliar. That’s what she is, though – unfamiliar and yet sitting comfortably. It’s a confused state of mind, one that seems able to create an imbalance inside me. I don’t know what she’s thinking. At all. Feeling? Yes - I can still feel that a little, too, but thinking? Blank.

“What day is it?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Look at your phone. Better still, give it to me.” She spins to look at me, hand outstretched.

“No.”

“Goodbye.” Her snarky little ass starts walking back towards the door the maids just closed, foot tapping as she waits for it to be opened again. The maid looks at me. I shake my head and send her on her way out of the room.

“Tit for tat,” I muse. She spins back to look at me. “That’s the game we were playing, isn’t it?”

“It was, but then you did what you did, again. And you still haven’t answered the question.”

I’m not going to either. What would she know of how I think, and what right does she even have to ask? Putting aside the degenerate amusements Gray’s having with his tepid attempt at realism, she’s just another woman. Attractive maybe, and lingering inside me because of his pills, but her right to judge or question me? None. If it wasn’t for those lips she’s just let me devour again, and the fact that I haven’t got around to fucking her yet, I would have let her go.

“This is too straightforward for me,” I murmur.

“Straightforward? Isn’t that the word of the fucking hour? Okay.” She seems to gird herself, heeled boots walking her closer and hand still spinning that blade around. “My mother killed herself. She bled out on the floor in front of me when I was a child. I watched it, suffered it, and couldn’t do a fucking thing about it. Is that tit for tat enough for you?”