I must really look like shit if she has the balls to ask me that. I’m flushed and sweating. Feverish.
But I’m getting control of myself. Slowly, by sheer force of will. Formulating new plans for how I’m going to bend Mara in half and crush her under my heel.
“I’ll be great when I have my fucking coffee,” I snarl.
“Right! Sorry,” she squeaks, hurrying off.
I take the stairs up to the top floor, the entire space given over to my office.
As soon as I step through the door, my nostrils flare, picking up a distinctly sweet and peppery scent.
Mara.
I whirl around, expecting to see her sitting at my desk.
Instead, a freshly hung painting awaits my view. Abstract, with large streaks of violet, scarlet, and sienna . . .
She fucked on that painting, and then she hung it on my wall.
I’m struck anew by the absolute insanity of this girl.
I admire her audacity. While planning how I’ll punish her for it.
Stepping closer to the frame, I examine the painting. The shape of the strokes.
I see a distinct nipple print where Mara rolled across the canvas, stamped into the crimson paint. Below that, a heart-shaped mark that almost certainly came from her naked buttocks.
I’d know the shape of that ass anywhere. That perfect fucking ass.
She’s signed the painting in sharpie and titled it:
The Best Night of My Life
I’m hit with an emotion I’ve never experienced before. It rolls over me, heavy, smothering, nauseating. It takes the heart out of me, it makes my guts churn. It gives me a deep ache in my chest.
The feeling is so abrupt and unfamiliar that for a moment I think I really am sick. Or having a coronary.
I sink down in my desk chair, still staring at the painting.
Slowly, with great difficulty, I examine this feeling that sits on my chest like a fucking gremlin, weighing me down.
I think . . . it’s regret.
The title of the painting is a taunt. But it stabs me, all the same.
It could have been the best night of her life.
It could have been me fucking Mara on that canvas. Me smearing paint all over her tits. Rolling around with her. Kissing her like I did at the show.
I wanted you . . . genuinely.
She would have taken me back to the studio, if I let her.
Instead, in that moment when she knelt before me, my impulse was cruelty. I wanted her—badly. And because I didn’t like that feeling of need, of weakness, I tried to humiliate her.
I wanted to force her to submit. But I should have known, she won’t fucking do it. She wouldn’t submit even while bleeding, bound, at the point of death.
I could have spent the night with her instead of watching it on a phone screen. Tasting her, smelling her, touching her. Making art with her.
I wish I had.
I’ve never regretted anything I’ve done.
It’s an ugly feeling. Depressing and unending, because you can never go back. You can never undo what’s been done.
I can’t shake it off. I can’t get rid of it.
My heart rate spikes and I’m sweating harder than ever.
I jump to my feet, looking wildly around my office.
I don’t want to feel regret. I don’t want to feel anything I don’t want to feel.
This is the singular factor separating me from everyone else in the world: I choose what I feel and what I don’t. They’re all slaves to their emotions. I’m master of mine.
I’m superior to everyone else because I choose not to feel anything that weakens me.
But in this moment, I’m weak. She’s making me weak.
With a howl of rage, I yank the driver out of my golf bag. I whirl around looking for a target, any target.
The solar system catches my eye: gleaming, glittering, the jewel-toned orbs rotating in space.
I swing the club through the air.
It crashes into the model, exploding the fine Venetian glass into a million pieces. The pieces pour down on me, cutting my skin in a dozen places, a rainstorm of shattered glass.
I keep hitting the model over and over and over again, beating it, rending it, destroying it.
When at last the club falls from my numb hands, the solar model is nothing but a twisted ruin. Beyond recognition. Utterly destroyed.
I loved that piece.
Sometimes you have to kill what you love.
20
Mara
When I was done fucking Logan, I told him to go home.
“Can I get your number first?” he said, his grin a white slash in his paint-covered face.
“I don’t think so,” I said, as kindly as I could. “That was just a one-time thing.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, it was a great time. At least for me.”