Page 31 of His Pretty Little Duet

"Go back to your room."

Fawn

Sleep hovers in the distance,my mind alert with the image of his hand on my stomach. The way his fingers flexed against me. I can still feel them. God, I wish the moment with him in the kitchen wasn't the closest I have come to feeling important to someone.

"Love, baby, is feeling invincible."My mum told me as she ran out the door after her fourth husband. I was only seven. Left alone that night and so many before because love is a drug with a mighty grappling high and a brutal bludgeoning low—and she was an addict.

I know nothing of that kind of love, but for the first time in my life, I think her perpetual desire to seek it out makes sense.Invincible.Not a fleeting sexual desire. Not a childish game of cat and mouse. True commitment. For a moment in the kitchen, I felt as though belonging to someone—to that man—would be the sweetest of existences.

When the image of his wife, Aurora, flashes behind my eyes, I wince. Guilt battles my jealousy, while my silly crush takes score. With any luck, there'll be no survivors.

I may be single and inexperienced with men, but if my gorgeous husband was cradling another woman's baby and staring intensely into her eyes, seemingly considering whether to eat her or kiss her, I'd be ropeable. Self-hate slithers into me, because I'm either concocting this intensity in my mind or ...no.

That is what is happening.

I envy his wife for the right to say she belongs to him. For her last name. Her elegance. Jealousy is like a bitter taste tingling my gums. Even her attitude towards our closeness was graceful. My mind wanders... Perhaps they're in an open marriage? Or maybe I'm grasping at straws, or maybe she just knows a man like him would never be interested in a scrawny, uneducated girl like me.

Little deer.

I scowl; his nickname for me is woven with condescension. He sees me as a weak animal, as merely a meal and bones to pick his teeth with.

I swallow that thought before it manifests.

"Who put this inside you, little deer?"

As the memory of his possessive and gravelly voice thrums between my ears, I roll to the side, cuddling the large pillow into my chest, willing this restlessness to ebb.

Covering my face with the pillow, I breathe it in, identifying the subtle fragrant notes of the fabric softener, recognising the scent from his shirt, too.

God,I'm a glutton for punishment.

Why are you here, Fawn?

For Benji.

I groan to myself. "Haven’t you learnt your lesson?"

"You're awake?" Jasmine says softly from her spot on the roll-out in the corner of the room. "Are you hungry?"

I chuckle softly. "Do you ever think about anything besides food?"

"Hey, you made a noise that sounded like you're hungry, okay? Then you said, 'Haven't you learnt your lesson' or something." She goes quiet, and I blink through the dense soundless void between us. Then she says, "You have nightmares, huh? Is that what the dreamcatcher is for? You know they don't work, right?"

I sigh long and slow. "Yeah. It's fucking useless, but I still need it."

"What do you dream about?"

Ringing between my ears, Clay's words add emphasis to her question."Was the boy who touched you high too?"

So, he must have presumed I was high. When I said I didn't remember, I completed the image of the homeless teen mother with an addiction problem.

The perfect cliché.

Iwashigh, but Benji has—hadthis smile, and he was wearing it when he offered me the smoke. He flashed it again when he held the straw to the cocaine for me... And then cuddled me against him... I forgot the rest. The smile was all that sticks, and then the rest is an abyss.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" I ask, redirecting our conversation from my nightmares and her eagerness to probe that particular subject, hoping she will go on a long tangent about the boy she likes.

"Yeah. He's six foot two. Short, military-cut, dark hair. Super-hot," she sings his details, and ends with a dreamy sigh. "What about you?"

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