Page 73 of Brutal Intentions

“If my plan works, I’ll get my inheritance and you’ll be protected from your family. It will be an ordeal when the time comes, but we can get through it together.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“We’re tough, you and me. We’ll find a way to make it work.”

Wearetough. We’re as tough as goddamn nails. “Then I trust you to do whatever it takes.”

A dark, triumphant gleam comes into his eyes, and his smile grows cold and a little scary.

Just what is he going to do? Now I’m worried. “Maybe you should tell me what your plan is, after all.”

He puts his head on one side, regarding me in silence. “No. I don’t think I will. It’s best you leave everything up to me. Now come on, let’s get going.” He nods toward home, and we start walking side by side.

“Are you sure you don’t need my help with anything?”

Laz gazes down at me as we walk along, smiling his mysterious smile. “No, Bambi. Not a thing. Just keep being your adorable, beautiful self, and everything will work out perfectly.”

* * *

As the weeks go by,Laz and I hone our subterfuge. We ignore each other at home whenever anyone else is around, but the second we’re alone, we’re all over each other. He screws me so many times in my bed that I lose count of how many orgasms I have. It’s loving and it’s beautiful, but there are no two ways around it.

We don’t make love.

We fuck.

Desperately.

Furiously.

The nights I’m meant to be working, we spend together. Sometimes at a hotel. Sometimes just driving around together, listening to the radio, and holding hands. For the first time in my life, I’m happy. Genuinely—complicatedly—happy. I’m being a terrible person by anyone’s measure, but I can’t bring myself to care.

Being a good girl never brought me anything but misery.

Being Laz’s bad girl has set me free.

Not everything’s angels and cupcakes, though. Late at night, I hear Mom and Laz fighting. I can’t make out the words, but I know what it’s about. He won’t sleep with her.

He doesn’t like to talk about it with me, but he’s said enough to make me understand that for a few weeks he was able to make excuses for not having sex, or he pretended to be asleep, but Mom’s starting to get frustrated.

When Mom’s frustrated, she throws things. Two vases and three wine glasses have bit the dust in the last two weeks.

I lie awake in bed listening to them arguing, but it’s worse when they finally go silent because I start to imagine that he’s given in and he’s having sex with her just to make her shut up. For hours I lie awake imagining them doing it. Picturing him coming to me and confessing what he did. How I’ll cry, and he’ll beg me to forgive him. It’s pure agony, but I can’t make myself stop.

One morning, I’m a zombie in the kitchen as I make coffee, and tears keep threatening to spill down my cheeks. I heard them arguing again last night and then they went ominously silent. I’m so tired and overwrought that I’ve already half accepted that they’ve had sex, and it’s only a matter of time before Laz confirms that my nightmare is real.

He comes into the kitchen, and the sight of him is enough to make a lump rise in my throat.

“Bambi? What’s wrong, are you sick?”

I shake my head and open my mouth to beg him to tell me it didn’t happen, but then Mom sweeps into the room in her red silk kimono, and I swallow all the words I was going to say. They burn down my throat and make my stomach ache.

Behind her back, he gives me a desperate look and crosses his heart with his forefinger. He didn’t.

He wouldn’t.

I believe him, but how long can we go on like this?

Over dinner that night, Mom’s in an uncharacteristically good mood. We eat braised beef in red wine with fried potatoes, but the food feels so heavy in my stomach that I can only manage a few mouthfuls and spend the rest of the meal picking at my plate.

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