Page 12 of Gilded Fake

He’s with her, and he’s happy, and he got his revenge.

I’m here, and I’m free, and I got my karma.

Because even when I made myself cum with Maverick, when I didn’t let someone else control my pleasure, when I took control and took it for myself, it’s as meaningless as that day in the locker room with Colt. I cut myself free from my puppet masters, but I forgot that they created me, a painted marionette made to entertain their darkest desires. I had a purpose as long as I kept dancing in their depraved show. Like a puppet, I’m worthless without my strings, a useless doll lying crumpled on an empty stage.

Even freed from their control, I’m still a creature of their making. Their fingerprints are all over me, invisible but just as real as the ones blooming into bruises on my skin—and more insidious. Their handiwork is in my very design, the pain I need to feel pleasure, the personas I adopt so well for the stage that I believe, for a moment, that every face I try on is my own. Every part of me is shaped by their hand, from the way I don’t know how to make a decision if the outcome isn’t a choice between survival or destruction, to the way I cum.

I don’t know how to just be happy, or fuck a man, or get a job, without scrutinizing every aspect of it for hidden cyanide capsules. I don’t know how to feel anything other than the pain they taught me to crave, even when it leaves me empty. I’m a discarded doll, stripped of its purpose, trying to remember the shape I took before they carved out my soul until I was hollow and poured their sickness into me until it became my own.

three

Rumor Has It… A certain, newly restored member of the elite was seen out and about spoiling his queen on several occasions of late. Is he making up for lost time, or working up to something bigger?

Colt Darling

“Are you coming over after this?” Dixie asks as we pull up to Two Scoops of Love.

“I thought you wanted to go out, now that we can,” I remind her, since that’s what she said earlier.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to still hang out at home too,” she says. “We can watch Twilight and make popcorn. Maybe my parents will even let you spend the night. I mean, we’re both eighteen, and they know we’ve been hooking up for years.”

“And now my family’s not being shunned, so they approve of me again,” I finish, saying the quiet part aloud. Shaking off my annoyance, I get out of the car and go around to open her door, take her hand, and help her out.

“They were just looking out for me,” she says. “You can’t blame them for that.”

I sigh. “We went out Friday so everyone would see us together at the movies, we’re coming here so they’ll be reminded that I’m allowed anywhere I want to go. How much of me do you need to see?”

“It’s spring break,” she points out, stopping at the door to the ice cream shoppe and waiting for me to open it. “We can hang out as much as we want.”

“And keeping me busy is your way of keeping tabs on me,” I say. “If I’m with you, you know where I am and what I’m doing.”

“That’s not fair,” she cries, her voice loud and shrill inside the small place. A few tables give us curious looks, and I know she’s going to cry in public to make me look like an asshole. I guess I deserve that one, but after three years of it, I’m sick of being the bad guy. I know why she doesn’t trust me now, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I’ve told her for years I’m not the relationship type, that I didn’t want that, but she wouldn’t let me walk away. So here we are.

“Let’s just order,” I mutter, glancing at the counter, where Florence is working.

“Whuhkinnagechall?” she drawls in her deep, deep south accent. If I was here by myself, or with family or friends, I’d tease her about her new haircut, blonde spikes poking out in three directions and slicked down in the other, though it’s no weirder than the others she’s had. But if I take my attention off Dixie, she’ll just get madder and louder.

I give her a look, hoping she’ll chill out while we order, though I should know better by now. Florence is good people, a Faulkner legend even if she didn’t grow up here, a warrior and survivor of her own battles. She’s the one who gave me a key to this place, a small kindness done in secret, passed from palm to palm with a whisper and an unspoken understanding. I never for one moment took that for granted the way I would have before the Dolces. I know what she could have lost.

“I can’t believe you’d say that to me,” Dixie says, not bothering to keep her voice down.

I grit my teeth and approach the counter.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Dixie shrieks, chasing after.

“Can we just order and sit down before you yell at me?”

“Oh, now it’s all my fault?” Dixie asks. “Because I’m such a bad girlfriend? Is that it? You still think you can do better, don’t you? You’ve always thought you were too good for me.”

“Dixie,” I warn, glancing at Florence, who stands behind the counter waiting, a tall oak of a woman in her Docs, dark Levi’s, and ever-present flannel shirt, this one sleeveless and showing off her muscular, tattooed arms. “This isn’t the place.”

“What’s wrong with this place?” Dixie demands. “A minute ago you didn’t want to hang out at my house alone, but now that we’re fighting, you don’t want to be with me in public. What’s the problem, Colt? You don’t want everyone to know you treat me like shit?

“The problem is you’re causing a scene,” I grit out. “In front of someone I respect.”

“Well, it’s good to know you respect her,” she snaps. “What about me?”

“I respect you plenty,” I say. “Enough to want to keep you from embarrassing yourself.”

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