Page 3 of Never Tell Secrets

I closed my eyes and slipped into my Lola dreamspace. Any memory would calm me but this one was my favourite. She sat in the jacuzzi, eating a black forest gateau, her firelight hair piled up on her head, out of the water. She gazed out of the window and then, in my memory, she turned to look at me. Pleasure lit her eyes, a warm kind of pleasure that I never saw in any other woman's gaze. My presence pleased her. My person. Not my money. Not my cock.Me.

That had been a shocking revelation. I remembered her throat as she swallowed the mouthful of cake, the way tiny droplets of water dripped off a loose tendril of hair. The tips of her breasts resting at the water's edge. The calm that settled into me as I gazed at her.

That was when I knew. Away on that trip, the cold grey she’d fought off had begun to set back into my soul, but then I’d returned. I’d come back to her and found her waiting. I’d warmed immediately and I knew, right in that moment, that I was in love with her. Not just passion, not just obsession or lust. It was a new feeling. Centred. Calm. Grown from the purest part of me.

I had to do this. I had to turn myself into a good man. Just in case.

For Lo.

One

The sound of water rushed in my ears. The smell of dank canal water filled my nose and permeated the air. The water rose, lapping at the sides of my bed. I couldn’t move. My body was sunk into the mattress and I couldn’t move.

“You left me.” My mum’s voice was hoarse and raspy, not the sweet tones I remembered. Her hair was lank and damp, her beautiful skin rotten, her deep blue eyes soulless. “You left me, how could you leave me?” she asked as she stood staring down at me with those blank eyes.

I opened my mouth but the words never came out. They got stuck at the back of my throat behind a mass of water reeds that blocked my airway. I screamed a muffled scream. I squeezed my eyes shut as my mum’s bloated, dripping corpse advanced ever closer to where I lay trapped in my bed. I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to see. My mind whirled with panic when suddenly, a different voice reached out to me.

“How could you give up on me, baby? How could you leave me behind?” I opened my eyes and found empty steel greys staring back at me. Alfie crouched over my frozen body, mirroring my mother who still stood on my other side. His skin rotted before me, his hair wet and slick to his scalp. “You leftme.” His damp hand curled around my throat. “You’ll never leave me again.” Water reeds sprang from his skin, shackling me to him, and I screamed and screamed as my body was taken over, my mind broken and undone.

I screamed until the reeds broke free and I shot up in bed, damp with sweat but alone.

Well, almost.

“Are you alright?” Maia stood in the doorway, her dark skin in shadow, her mass of curls pulled back in a tight bun.

I gasped a breath and nodded. It was just a dream. A nightmare. The same one I’d had a thousand times.

“Can I get you anything?”

I shook my head and she nodded quietly, turning to leave.

“Wait,” I said before the door closed. “Thank you, for never asking.” She said nothing, only nodded again and left me. This was why I liked Maia. She minded her own business and she never complained when my nightmares woke her up.

I pulled my knees up, one hand squeezing my necklace as if my sanity depended on it. Alfie’s memory was embedded in my chest like a piece of old shrapnel. A war wound that had never quite healed. During the day I could fight him off. I could be distracted. I could smile and laugh and live like everything was perfect. But at night, when I was alone, he came for me. The dark, twisted memory I had of him. The man who had violated my trust, manipulated my psyche…and was responsible for killing a man.Adam. He was dead because of me. I’d hated him, but that didn’t make the guilt any easier.

The worst part was that even now, after all of Alfie’s damage, the only person that I wanted was him. I craved him every moment. I missed him in my bed, in my body.My Alfie. Except he wasn’t mine. Not anymore.

I sighed, rubbing at the Alfie-shaped pain in my chest. Yeah, this was all so much easier during the day. Luckily for me, the sun was beginning to rise.

I kicked off my covers and got up. I trudged to the bathroom to brush my teeth before returning to my room to dress, throwing on jeans and a t-shirt.

Next up on my morning agenda, I put together my bag for tonight. My dress was hanging in the hallway, fresh from the dry cleaners. I threw makeup, jewellery, and spare underwear into a bag. Shoes...where were my shoes? Oh crap.

“Where are they? Where are they?” I muttered furiously, clawing my way through the jumble of shoes at the bottom of my wardrobe. My black pumps. They weren’t here. With a strange sense of deja-vu, I hopped out of the chaos and stuck my head out of my bedroom door.

“Keira? Did you steal my shoes again?” Silence. The door opposite mine opened and Maia stuck her bespectacled face around her door.

“Um, I don’t think she made it to her bed last night.” She gave me a small smile, dimples forming in her cheeks. I thanked her and resolved to borrow a pair of Keira’s heels for tonight. I took a breath and returned to my mirror to finish fixing myself.

Today would be easier. I brushed out my hair and pulled it up into a ponytail. With every centimetre it grew, the urge to hack it off again gnawed at me, but I refused. Two years and four months was too long for him to still have power over me.

Those early days after I left him were a viscous whirlpool of agony. He was everywhere. I’d been grateful that I’d thrown my GPS tracked phone away because I knew without a doubt that I would have called him, begged him to come back to me. I wasn’t proud of it, but in those darkest moments when I ached for him deep into my bones, I’d felt like I’d poisoned myself and his touch was the only antidote.

I’d tried to keep him from my mind but every time I’d looked at myself there he was. Every time my hair brushes over my own skin, I’d felt him. When I washed it, dried it, brushed it, he was always fucking there. So I’d taken Keira’s fabric scissors and hacked it off until it sat above my shoulders, destroyed and lifeless, the fallen locks laying on the floor like trodden flowers.

Still, he didn’t go away. He haunted me. But something had snapped in me when I’d cut my hair. I’d cut him out. Made him a ghost. Relegated him to a cold, grey space at the back of my mind where he could no longer burn me. I’d grown steel strong since then. The tears still came, but they didn’t break me.

I ran a hand over my ponytail and told myself for the millionth time that today would be easier. I wasn’t entirely wrong. It had gotten easier. Smiling had gotten easier, sleeping, eating, working, all of my basic functions had gotten easier. But still I felt gutted. That hadn’t gotten easier. But I looked myself in the mirror and told myself it would because if I didn’t believe it, there was no way I could face the day.