Instead of going into Dario’s apartment, which I came to do, I go back into the stairwell. Instead of going back downstairs, which I should do, I head up to the greenhouse, toward the voices.
Halfway up, I realize Dario would not approve of this decision under any circumstances. The sounds coming out of that greenhouse are neither good nor wholesome. He’s not here to protect me. I cannot protect myself. It’s incredibly stupid, and if I don’t stop, I’ll be compromising the happiness we’ve been promising each other.
I stop, but don’t know how to turn around. Footsteps creak above me.
One sentence rises above the others. It’s a shriek. From a man. All throat.
“Whaddya want from me?”
The murmuring goes silent. The wind stops whistling in the shaft. The last footstep is taken.
“Your dick.”
Two words. Concise. Unquestioning. Coldly confident.
Two words delivered as a message from the future. My future.
Two words in Dario’s voice.
I take the stairs two at a time and burst into the greenhouse.
There are men. Half a dozen in varying states of boredom. One zip-tied to the steel shelving, bloody-faced, pants cut off from waist to thigh like reverse shorts and leaving his penis dangling like a sad caterpillar. One man with his back to me, shirt stretched over his shoulders, half untucked from his jeans, arms and knees bent in a state of readiness, fists flexing.
“Did you get it?” He sounds like a monster, and he is. He always was.
One of the bored ones clears his throat.
Dario looks over his shoulder, at me, and I am consumed by the power of his attention.
“Fuck!”
I have the sudden urge to kneel, but I don’t. The effort to stay on my feet leaves me weak-willed, and I explain myself as quickly as possible. “Willa was taking me on the subway, and she wanted to get some things, so I came up to get I don’t know those fuzzy socks or—”
“Why did I get you a fucking phone?” Dario shouts, now fully turned around, jaw clenched tightly, beautiful on fire. He could demand anything from me. He could tear me apart with his dick and I’d submit to him. But all he wants is the answer to a question.
Why did he get me a phone? To teach me something or to…?
What was it?
I can’t think with him standing over me, shoulders forward, neck bulging with vein and muscle, hard and thick as his cock.
Why did he get me a fucking phone?
His eyes are on fire, burning my solid insides into the liquid pooling between my legs.
The things he can do to me with those arms, that mouth, that focused rage. The clatter of a man running up the steps releases his gaze from mine. He looks over my shoulder.
“I got it,” says the voice behind me. The man who ran up the stairs passes Dario a knife with a curved blade, handle first. I recognize it from his kitchen. It’s used for meat.
He got me a fucking phone to…
“In case I needed you,” I say. “That’s why you got me the phone. In case I needed you, and I didn’t. When I need you, I’ll call you.”
One of the men standing around blurts out a laugh. Dario turns toward him and he goes silent.
The guy hanging from the shelving sobs, and in it is a name.
“Sarah?”
I recognize him.
“Shut the fuck up,” Dario says, slapping him across the face. I’ve never seen anyone hit that hard.
“H-H-Henry?” I say when the echo of the slap dies down.
Henry was on the boys’ side of the school. He was the best student. Prizes. Ribbons. I dig to find a specific memory of him, and they’re all looking up at him on stage.
“I’ll show the lady out.” Connor comes toward me with his hand out.
I slap it away and point at Dario—this terrifying hulk of a man. “You promised me.”
“Take her downstairs.” He spins the knife on the heel of his hand and turns his attention on the sobbing, caterpillar-dick man hanging from zip-ties. Dario’s intentions are obvious, and Henry is terrified.
“Come, lass.” Connor takes my arm. “You don’t need to see this.”
“I do.” I yank away from his grip and get in front of Dario. “I need to see you break your promise.”
“Sarah.” With grinding mouth and shut eyes, he utters my name as a warning.
“Go on.” I ball my fists and set my feet apart. “Do it.”
“I’ll get her out of here.” Again, Connor puts a hand on my arm.
“Let him take me, you coward.” I pull toward Dario. His eyes open. His jaw loosens. “Let him drag me away. Take me somewhere I don’t want to go and lock me up there. Let him do it because you’re afraid I’ll see your promises don’t mean anything.”
He spins the knife on the heel of his hand again, then on the tip of his middle finger before gripping it in his fist and heading for Henry.
He’s going to do it, and I’m going to remember it forever. I cringe so hard my eyes are nearly closed.
Dario’s arm shoots forward.
I keep my eyes open. I need to see what he’s done. Every time I open my legs for him, it will be for the man I love and this murderer, who I want so badly my skin is electric for his touch.
He plants the blade in a wooden table and faces me. “Come.”
“Where?”
Dario isn’t taking questions.
“When I say come.” He grabs me by the back of the neck and pushes me in front of him. “You come.”
He grips me tightly, keeping me in front of him for the trip down the stairs, into the hallway, through his apartment. He’s taking me back to the suite via the chainsawed wall.
“I won’t stay locked up.” I make the pronouncement of control even as I let him control me. “And I won’t forget it. I won’t trust you ever again.”
My last statement is the breaking point where I resist the forward pressure of his hand and he releases it. I find myself freed, and he finds I’m not where he wants me.
I push at him, punching whatever my fists can find, knowing it’s not doing more than annoying him into greater waves of anger. He tries to hold me still, but I avoid his hands, slipping away to slap, scratch, punch whatever part of him I can reach.
The wind is knocked out of me. For a split second, I think I’ve been thrown on the floor, but the pressure on my back is the wall outside my bedroom and gravity isn’t what’s keeping me there. It’s his hand on my throat.
“You think I’m breaking a promise,” he growls low in my ear. “I’m keeping a promise. The first one I ever made and the last one I’ll ever break. To protect you.”
“Pleeeeeaaaseeeee….” The wail comes from above—through the ceiling. It sounds like a plea made with a last breath of hope.
“Not like this,” I manage to say. “He’s innocent. Not like this.”
He pulls back to look me in the eye, hand dropping to my upper chest. “Who’s innocent?”
“The man in the greenhouse? Henry? He’s really smart. He was doing long division in first grade. Is that his crime? Too smart for you?”
Dario takes his hand off me, shaking his head as if he’s disappointed. It’s not until then that I notice the smell. Sharp, like mothballs, and earthy like overcooked cabbage.