Strapped Down (17 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I let out a breath, not realizing I had been holding it since he leaned in. “I’m still here,” I say. “I never left you.” He begins to kiss my neck, at first softly, but the kisses then become more passionate, more aggressive. “My mother,” I whisper. “She’s in the living room.”

“I don’t care. I need you.”
He still wants me. I am not my father. I am not his sins.

Taylor unties the belt of my robe, allowing my naked body to peek through the opening. I rip the collar of his shirt open, some of the buttons pop like little firecrackers. His strong, muscled chest and abs peer through. I move down to his belt, unbuckling it as we kiss hard, almost so hard it hurts. He puts his large hands on my waist, making me feel so small, then slides them down to my ass as he picks me up. I wrap my legs around his hips as he lowers me onto the stairs that lead to the rooftop. My robe opens up, serving as a a spread for me to lay on. He kisses a trail down between my breasts, then stomach, onto the side of my pelvis. The chill in the air raises goosebumps all over my body.

Finally, he reaches his destination. As he purses his lips to gently suck on mine, I moan and he takes one of his hands and covers my mouth to soften the sound. I run my hands through his messy hair, pulling it hard and wrapping my thighs firmly around his neck. He rolls his tongue slowly and softly, making love to it. He stops short of making me come and then he rises, looking me directly in the eyes. His glare is powerful and it feels like he could steal my soul if he stares long enough. I am still scared he’ll see Alan’s eyes now that he knows, so much so that I am tempted to look away, but he doesn’t even blink as he slides inside of me. His forehead presses against mine; we are nose to nose as he slowly thrusts his hips. The ridges of the staircase dig into my back with his weight on top of me, but the pain stirs me in the same way being tied and spanked would. Taylor bites my lower lip and tugs on it hard enough to make me jump, while still staring at me with
those eyes.
One of my hands grabs the metal banister and the other presses against the cold concrete wall as I brace his thrusts, making my best attempt at lengthening my moans so that they don’t cut through the stairwell and into the living room where my mother is sleeping. Whenever I focus my eyes on Taylor between rolling them back in pleasure, he still stares deeply at me as if I would disappear if he looked away. He’s telling me with his body, with his eyes, that he’s not going anywhere, he won’t forsake me because of my father’s trespasses. And so I choose to embrace Taylor’s attention, not to look away or close my eyes in the presence of his blue stare. My hand reaches to the back of his head, pressing our faces even more closely together as we pant in unison. I begin to flood with gratitude, sadness, anger. Everything overtakes me at once.

“Taylor, don’t hate me.” I beg. That is now my greatest fear. That over time, when he digests all of this, he will begin to see Alan when he sees me. It might start small: over dinner I smirk a certain way, and he gets sick to his stomach when he realizes he has seen that smirk before. Or I might get angry, and the fiery way I throw my hands up loses its cuteness and starts to look more sinister. Those moments become more frequent, and before he knows it, he can’t see me anymore, he can only see a version of my father.

Taylor wraps his arms around me and picks me up, as if to respond with his body, to hold me more securely as he engulfs me, pressing me against the wall. I lose control of my volume again; I fear my mother might wake, but the risk of it all, stimulates me even more. He covers my mouth firmly with his hand, never breaking our gaze, answering me with his eyes. He’s not letting me out of his sight. Finally, his eyes soften as he comes inside of me.

We lay on the landing, his head resting on my semi-exposed stomach as I twirl pieces of his hair in my fingers.

“I am so fucked. There’s no point in going to sleep now,” he laments.

“Do you want to come in?”

“No, I like it out here.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I’m not sure there is anything to do.”

“I don’t want to push the issue, but my mother said there is a lot more to the story. There is a lot we don’t know. We both need to find out about our history.”

“Why don’t you finish with your mother first? Honestly, I don’t know if I want to know.”

“I can’t keep what I find out to myself.”

“I understand, but that’s different than some sort of crusade to — I don’t know what the fuck — find out something that will make a difference. I know everything I need to know. Your mother said what she had to say to me a long time ago. And I am grateful to her, you know that, but that was decades ago. If I wanted to dig up the past, kick up dirt, I could have. I have the resources to do it, you know that. But my mother is dead and I still believe what I feel about her. Maybe some of the details have changed, but the ones that count haven’t.”

His mother.
Lyla being alive could change everything. Again, I decide to push that revelation
aside
until I have more information. Just like he said, if she is still dead, it changes nothing.

“You were a beautiful child,” I tell Taylor.

“Likewise. You were like a butterball turkey with a little bushel of hair.” I yank a piece of his hair. “Ow!”

“Shhhh! So you’re okay?” I ask.

“Are you? This revelation is really more about you than it is about me. You need to stop worrying about how it affects me.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.”

“Yeah.”

“I just can’t believe that all these years have passed, and that we would lead entirely separate lives. I mean your dad didn’t want anything to do with us, and yet we found each other anyway.”

“What did you say about my father?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you. He didn’t want my mother to ever get in touch with you.”

“She said that?”

“Yes. I mean, it makes sense from his perspective. He thought she was one of them.”

Taylor says nothing, but his facial expression changes, from relaxed to pensive. I wonder what’s on his mind, but I know better than to try and pry it out of him. In that moment, the world is so still, it’s almost too quiet. It’s like we are flies trapped in a spider web, waiting for the threads to quiver. It can’t be this simple. You don’t get a bomb dropped on you like this and just go along your merry way. The web of lies, secrets, and betrayals in which we are entangled only grows larger and more complex, tying me closer to Taylor, but making it all the more difficult to untangle ourselves from the threats that may lie ahead.

“I should go back in.”

“It’s so peaceful out here. We should just hide out here together.”

“I wish I could spend all day with you. I want to be close to you. But, I have to talk to my mother before getting to work. Speaking of which, work is going to suck so hard today. As you know, I cannot function without my beauty rest.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to make it.”

“I better start brewing the coffee now. I’m going to be staying here until my mother leaves.”

“I figured.”

As we stand up, Taylor grabs the robe belt from the floor, gently wraps it around my waist and ties it. “Well, text me if you find yourself snoozing on the job.”

“That’s almost a guarantee.”

He gives me a gentle jab on the chin, and we both smile, but beneath it, I can see melancholy in his eyes. I watch him walk down the stairs as I prepare to face my mother again. Then he turns back.

“Shyla.”

“Yes?”

“I’m not my mother, and you’re not your father.”

I nod, but I can’t shake the feeling it wasn’t me he was trying to convince.

***

It’s about five in the morning when I walk back into the apartment. The scent of coffee brewing awakes my mother.

“Good morning,” I say as she rises from the couch.

“Good morning. Where did you go last night?”

“No where in particular. I just wanted to be alone.”

“You went to see him, didn’t you?”

I don’t respond. In this case, it’s me that should be asking the questions. She sits in silence for a while.

“Will you ever forgive me?”

“I don’t know. I’m confused, mom. I understand why you did it, but it’s still hard to come to terms with the fact that much of what I have known about myself—about you—is a lie.”

“I always feared this day would come and you would never speak to me again.”

“Mom, I’m not going to stop talking to you. That is, unless there is more you haven’t told me.”

“No, that’s most of it. I mean, there are stories, these were years of my life, but as far as pertaining to you…”

“What about Taylor? You said there is so much he couldn’t understand.”

“Does he know? About me?”

“Yes. I told him.”

“Does he…does he want to see me?” She asks so pathetically, it hurts my heart.

“I don’t think he’s ready. He’s not that little boy anymore and he has done so much to try and move past this. I don’t know if he wants to bring it all back up. He has always had a philosophy about moving forward.”
That is one hell of a positive spin on it.

“Shyla, it would mean the world for me to see him. To tell him about his mother.”

“It’s a very touchy subject for him.”

“I can only imagine, but I have to tell him. He has to know. I owe it to her and to him.”

“I promise I’ll try, but he’s very strong-headed.”

“I have to ask you a question. I know you’re very private, but I need to know this…”

“Okay.”

“Are you in love with him?”

I turn away to pour coffee into my mug to buy some time. I never liked talking about my relationships with my mother. Call me immature, but it just felt…icky. I’m not prepared to share with her the depths of how strongly I feel about Taylor. I am very protective of our relationship, our secret universe. I have become so guarded about it that I haven’t even really told Kristin, the person to whom I tell everything, how deep my feelings have become for Taylor.

“Yes.”

Her eyes well up and I am not sure if it’s from joy or dread. “I can’t believe you two found each other.”

“I’m still trying to process all of this,” I say as I bring her a mug of coffee. “Did you meet Lyla in C.O.S?”

“Yes, I was a member before her.”

“Then why did you come back to her hometown? You weren’t from here, right?”

“Right. I was born and raised in California. I came here because I wanted to be close to her and foolishly I hoped she might show up here one day, for me and Taylor. She’s gone though.”

“Gone as in ran away, or dead?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Whether or not you meet Taylor, this needs to stay between us. This is very important.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do you think it’s possible Lyla could still be alive?”

“Are you asking because her body was never found?”

“Yes.”

“Trust me, I hoped for that. But I knew if she was alive, that after a few years, once the dust settled, she would find me. I moved here because I thought if she were to surface, she would know where to find me and Taylor. It was our original plan after all, to move here and start new lives. I thought there was still a chance we would do that, it would just take her a little longer to come around from where ever she may have hiddden. When she didn’t, I came to terms with the fact she’s never coming back. She’s dead. If she was alive, she would have come back to us. Every so often though, I do wonder, but it’s just a childish fantasy,” she looks wistfully into the distance.

“You think she was killed before the suicide?”

“I can only speculate, but I always thought that when you and I escaped, Alan figured out Lyla helped us and became enraged. Like I said, in is own twisted way, he loved you very much. He would have been very angry, and I wouldn’t have put it past him to lose it.” Hearing how much he loved me is of little comfort. To think Taylor’s mother may have been murdered specifically because she helped me escape only adds to my vague sense of guilt for contributing to Taylor’s suffering.

“But mom, it doesn’t make sense that he would spare Taylor. You said yourself he was jealous of him.”

“Maybe it was plain luck, or maybe he was sick enough to think the greatest torture of all would be to leave that child alone in this world without his mother.”
If that was Alan’s plan, it worked out perfectly.
“There is one thing, but again, I don’t think it holds much weight.”

“What is it?”

“In the shoebox, there are a few postcards
.
”
S
he grabs the box to search for them. “They were sent to my attorney at the time. All of us got plenty of mail, some from admirers and a lot of hate mail, but these were odd as they were from various cities throughout the US
, but there was nothing written on them
. After almost a year, they stopped.”