Page 14

DELILAH

M y jaw aches and there’s something dried against my cheek.

It pulls at my skin as I massage across my jawline and peel my dry eyes open.

The room is bathed in light, but nothing is out of place.

The sheets are perfectly straight, and I remain on my back as I do a visual sweep from the window to the door, searching for any evidence of Kane.

I’ll never admit it to him, but I miss the companionship he offered. I miss someone knowing me and not being alone. But there’s nothing on the floor, no boot marks in the rug, or anything else to suggest he was here.

There’s a hard patch on the pillow as I deflate and turn on my side. I swipe at my face when it touches me. I don’t drool but I clearly did last night, considering there’s dried spit on my fucking pillow. That’s disgusting.

That thought is quickly forgotten at the sight of the rose on my nightstand. It’s not plush petals or scented. It’s better because it was made with my sheet music, and he was here. Only one person ever made me anything, especially something personal, and I don’t blink in fear of it disappearing.

There are no scraps of paper on the floor, so he had to have made it before he broke in. Why does it make me feel better to know that’s how he spends his free time? It shouldn’t, because that’s a fucking crazy thing to think. Yet, it does.

Kane still thinks about me, and he doesn’t hate me as much as he says he does. If he did, he wouldn’t give me the rose. The boy I loved is still there deep down inside of him, since he started making them because he didn’t want a symbol for how he feels about me to die.

The tightness in my jaw stops me from being able to fully admire the rose.

I sit up like that could possibly help it.

The sheet slips down, and I kick it off my feet, but something rustles.

Slowly tilting my head, I lift the sheets to find frilly socks on my feet.

Frilly socks that I don’t fucking own. I don’t know what his obsession is with them, but it’s weird as fuck.

What’s weirder is that he isn’t here. He’s supposed to be here so that I can find out what his problem is and beat him at his own game.

Instead, he’s leaving me alone. The first twenty-four hours were busy due to Kane taking over my thoughts.

I had something to focus on, but now I’m back to my terrifyingly lonely existence.

Flopping back against the bed, I close my eyes with the horrible realization that I’m fucked.

I have no job, no savings, fucking nothing.

I don’t even have a life, just a pointless existence that will never lead anywhere.

As per my old routine, tears burn the back of my eyes, and I don’t fight them.

The only positive of Kane’s deception was that it kept me occupied. I wasn’t living to go to a shitty job and making deals with myself to try to live. I was more at home in his lies than the truth of my own life.

The first step of not giving a fuck about him involves having my own life. He can suck shit and ruin me himself. I refuse to allow my mind to do all the hard work for him.

And to have a life, I need money.

I pull my laptop out from under the bed and do what any sane person does—search for the highest paying job for someone who barely graduated high school.

My options are severely limited, and my years of working at Carol’s don’t help.

But I click apply on everything that I can find in the hopes that a hiring manager will have a shit day at work and accidentally allow my application through.

Project manager? Apply.

Executive director? Apply.

Exclusive events coordinator? Apply.

Apply. Apply. Apply.

I’ll lie like a motherfucker in the interview or drop my last name and make them believe I still have anything to do with my father.

Therapy is weird. Even in normal circumstances, it made me uneasy.

Now it’s even more uncomfortable, considering that I never chose to be here and this is all a ploy.

The doctor stares at me. He clearly isn’t trained, because he would know to check my file.

That’s what the others always did. They always thought they were being discreet, but it was the first thing I’d notice when being forced to walk into their office.

The huge folders can’t be hidden when there are four of them.

I should give them credit for reading it when half the information is fabricated by my parents.

“So, Delilah,” he says in an attempt to humanize me by using my name, “how has the last week been? Have you had any more dreams?”

Forty-four minutes is my new goal. The others got fed up after three minutes and demanded I talk.

He’s still speaking calmly, despite the fact I haven’t uttered a word since stepping into his office.

Good for him. Kane must be paying him a lot or he had a rigorous audition process to make sure the acting was up to par.

I go through my week since my last visit, and there’s nothing exciting that could antagonize the bastard, so I make it up.

“The dreams aren’t an issue. Not really anyway.”

The lying doctor leans forward and asks, “Why is that?”

Because I wake up rested and there’s no mental anguish. Only a dull ache in my jaw and random bruises that go within a day or two.

“I’ve started seeing someone,” I say coyly, and lift my bottled water to take a sip.

There’s a brief pause as he attempts to control his breathing.

It doesn’t stop me from noticing the deep breath he takes, how his chest sinks, or how his eyes slightly widen before he corrects himself.

Sitting up taller in his seat, he adjusts the seam in his pant leg as he says, “Is this person new or someone from your past?”

“Both,” I shrug. “He’s real, by the way. Other people have even seen him, before you think I’m dating a hallucination.”

Worry lines his forehead as he leans forward with his notepad held loosely between his fingertips. “How can he be both?”

Fuck, I didn’t think my lie through. But it was second nature as a child, and I rely on old habits as I bullshit my way through my explanation.

“Well, it’s new because I’ve never dated him before. But I knew him when I was a teenager. I went on vacation to Miami, and we first spoke there, but now we’ve reconnected. So, it’s new.”

That will piss Kane off. He’ll be enraged.

The art of a successful lie is to base parts in the truth.

Without those little nuggets, there’s no real fuck you.

Which is what I need for the freak to know that he’s nothing.

For him to think that his plotting and twisted fucking games haven’t affected me.

Most of all, for Kane to believe that I don’t give a fuck about him disappearing from my life.

Dr. Dickhead makes a note for his master, and I hide my smugness as I sit back to watch him scribble.

I’ve never witnessed an angry Kane. He was always even-tempered when we were younger, and he’d never do anything to hurt anyone.

Now, I want his mask to be removed and to prove that he’s worse than he thinks he is.

The high horse that he sits on to judge me is going to be a huge fucking fall when he’s dragged down flat on his face.

My preorganized excuse comes through as my reminder alert blares from my bag. “I’ll have to cut our session short since I have an interview.”

He stumbles through his words as I stand.

Without waiting to hear whatever the fuck he has to say, I leave.

Kane might be fucked up, and deluded to think I owe him shit, but he’s also forgetting the families we were raised in.

Whether I associate with the bastards or not, I am still a Leroux.

We don’t bend and we don’t break, unless it’s one of our own inflicting the damage.

My mother has always been proficient in beating everyone down.

My interview isn’t far from the doctor’s office, and I use the short walk to bolster my confidence.

All I need to do is confidently talk shit, sit there and act like my father raised me to be, then I’ll walk away with the first step at a life.

One where I can afford things like security to keep my stalker out of my house. Or cameras to watch him.

The large office building has a glass front. I wouldn’t be able to see the difference between the old Delilah and who I am now. The designer dress is the last thing I have left from my old life that is still useful, and my heels are sharp points. Exactly as my mother would want.

The glass doors seamlessly slide open. I can’t even see the track on the floor as I step through the threshold with all the shiny chrome and sleek lines.

That’s a good sign for my future paycheck.

My heels crack against the floor with each purposefully authoritative step.

It’s like walking back into my old persona.

The rich, spoiled bitch hasn’t died, and everyone is beneath me.

Only now, I don’t actually believe that shit.

There aren’t any superior thoughts or feelings about the people I pass as I walk to the front desk.

I keep my chin in the air and hate myself for the snotty tone that leaves me as I say to the receptionist, “I have a meeting with Heidi.”

The man seated behind the desk looks at me like I’m a piece of shit, rightfully so.

But I can’t drop the act. Being around “normal” people has forced it away over the years.

Now, it’s like all the brainwashing of my childhood has come back.

The floodgates have opened, and those snobby, disrespectful parts of my personality have re-attached themselves to me.

A woman walks around the desk and places her left hand on the man’s shoulder. “It’s okay, James. I’ll take Miss Leroux.”

There’s a tattoo poking out of her sleeve. The swirl runs up the inside of her wrist and stops just below the heel of her palm. I can’t stop staring at it as she extends her right hand to me. “I’m Heidi. It’s nice to meet you, Delilah.”

My hand moves but I still stare at the navy ink.

Why the fuck do I know that swirl? It’s a hollow shape, but it looks familiar.

I can’t see any more of it as she rounds the desk and guides me through the building.

The small talk is like static as I focus on her left wrist, waiting for the moment I’ll see more of the tattoo.

“I’ve heard many great things about you,” she says as we step into the glass elevator. That penetrates my whirring mind and I look up. “Your father is a very successful man. He’s also incredibly proud of his little princess.”

Bile burns up the back of my throat and changes the pH of my saliva at those two fucking words. I can’t escape her in this glass box, and she doesn’t look at me fully. Her eyes are fixed ahead as she presses a button. The edge of her sleeve pulls up. I definitely know that tattoo.

The cursive number three isn’t supposed to be a tattoo. It’s supposed to be cufflinks that my father would gift to his best employees when they were promoted. I’ve wrapped countless cufflinks with that emblem, and she doesn’t attempt to hide it.

For fuck’s fucking sake. I’m going into an interview with my father’s mistress.

Heidi can’t be more than five years older than me.

She’s not Harkin’s usual type. She’s too put together and confident in herself, so they can’t have been seeing each other long enough for him to ruin her.

His lie about being proud of me is the usual expected bullshit, so I don’t react other than giving her a smile.

The elevator smoothly glides up and the shiny floors below us blur to the point I can’t make out the gray veins in the marble.

A soft ping announces our arrival on the fifty-third floor, and Heidi gestures for me to walk ahead with her left hand.

It feels purposeful, like she’s flashing that three in a claim when none of my father’s countless mistresses would ever graduate to a role more than a whore he uses then discards when they don’t satiate his ego anymore.

If I was a kind person, I’d tell her to run and get away from him for her own sake.

Her eyes don’t leave my face and she doesn’t comment on the symbol as we walk through the corridor to a meeting room.

All the previous light and airy luxury has been replaced with dark leather.

Even the table is dark with a single pane of toughened black glass.

It must be two fingers thick, and the leather chairs are tucked in with exactly three inches of space between the seat back and the table.

Harkin’s requirements have re-entered my life.

The urge to pull and push them out of their alignment is in my hands, but I stop myself as I take a seat.

She takes the seat next to me, far too close, and I’d forgotten about the need of my father’s mistresses.

They don’t just want to fuck him. They have to attempt to befriend me like they’re interviewing for the role of my new mother.

Heidi is no different as she forgoes a normal interview process to talk about the old bastard.

“Would your employment need to be a secret from Harkin, or would you be comfortable with him knowing?”

I nearly laugh at the thought of the face he’d pull when he finds out his last child has chosen working as a sex club host rather than having anything to do with him.

It doesn’t match the image he tries to project.

Although, his personality and marriage directly counteract the loving family businessman he’s tried so hard to portray.

“Feel free to inform him,” I say, leaning to the side when her arm brushes mine.