Uncovering You 6: Deliverance (17 page)

He looks amused. “Lilly,” he tells me, “I would love to do it again.”

He reaches into his pocket to take out his phone. A second later, a different song starts. “This is
Lehar
by Mantovani,” he says. “A ballroom classic. It’s a powerful song, yet subtle, and perfect for someone like you.”

I almost recoil. “Someone like me? You mean, someone who can’t dance?” I say, my heart sinking.

“No.” An instant frown mars Jeremy’s perfect face. “Don’t ever second-guess yourself, Lilly. Not around me. I forbid it.”

“Then what?” I ask.

He smiles again. “Isn’t it obvious? Someone with delicacy, yet an unwavering spirit. You are… much like the song. You have more than natural, understated beauty. You shine, Lilly, but only in the eyes of the people sophisticated enough to see it. Your talents… your intelligence… your strength… would have been wasted if you found yourself on your own. But with me…” he looks quite serious, now, “… you will become all that you are capable of. And more.”

He steps away. Taking my hand, he drops to one knee. I stare at him, stunned.

“I will not harm you again, Lilly,” he says. My jaw falls a little bit. “That I swear. I will only nurture you, and mold you into the woman you are destined to become.”

Slowly, he reaches into his jacket pocket. I feel like I’m in a dream. Time crawls at a snail’s pace as I await whatever it is he has.

A ring? It can’t be a ring. No! There’s no way. He can’t be proposing. Not now! Not this soon…

Then again, nothing about Jeremy is predictable. Fear slices through the elation that defines this moment. If he pulls out a ring… I don’t know what I’m going to do.

When I see his hand emerge, relief surges through me. He’s holding a small envelope, thin and unsealed. There can be no engagement ring hidden inside.

“This,” Jeremy says, holding the square, folded paper between his thumb and forefinger, and looking at it with regret, “represents everything that you once were to me. It represents everything that you meant a scant half year ago. Do you know what it is, Lilly?”

I swallow. I have a strong suspicion of what it might be, hearing him say that… but I don’t want to interrupt.

I shake my head slowly.

He gives a thin smile. “I think you do,” he tells me. “It doesn’t matter. I would hesitate, too, were I in your position.”

He lays the envelope on the ground between us. His movements are exaggerated and deliberate. With the classical music still playing in the background, it’s almost like I’m an actor in a foreign ballet.

Still on one knee, he puts his free hand behind him. It re-emerges as a closed fist.

“And this,” Jeremy says, extending that hand toward me and slowly unfurling his fingers, “Represents the start of a new beginning.”

Inside his hand lies a single, wooden match.

My heart starts to beat even faster.

Jeremy lays it on the ground beside the envelope. They make a perfectly-aligned pair. “I should have done this before,” he tells me. “But I’ve been waiting, Lilly. Waiting for the right moment. Tonight…” He looks at me, holding my gaze. “…brings to us, finally, the right moment.”

He picks the envelope up again. He hands it to me. “Open it. Please.”

My fingers tremble as they work under the flap. I peel it back.

Inside sits exactly what I expected. That thin, parchment-like paper with the vile words, THE CONTRACT slashed across the top.

“Take it out,” Jeremy whispers.

I do. I look at my signature at the bottom. It makes me remember the final desperation I felt when I gave in and signed it. But it also makes me remember my strength. I signed the document with a purpose in mind. Even if it meant giving five years of my life away, it also put me in a position to get back at the bastard who subjected me to the worst weeks of my life.

And now, that bastard is kneeling in front of me, repenting the things he’s done.

“Hold it out,” Jeremy says.

I do. I find it pathetic to see how the paper shakes in my unsteady hands.

He picks up the match, strikes it against the heel of his shoe, and brings the flame to one corner of The Contract.

The paper catches. Both of us watch, entranced in our own ways, as the licking flames spread across the bottom. Black ash falls to the floor.

Jeremy snuffs the match. And still I stare, astounded, at the burning piece of paper held in my hand.

It’s a measure of my disbelief that only when the flame reaches my fingers, and a sharp pain shoots up my arm, do I let go. The remaining strip flutters to the floor and curls into itself as the fire consumes the words that bound me to this man.

He rises, slowly, and steps over the remains. I stare at him, craning my neck up, up, up, as always.

“Now what?” I whisper.

“Now,” he says, running an unhurried hand through my hair. “We make love.”

Waking up the next morning is like nothing I can imagine.

Jeremy, last night, was tender. He was caring. He was unrushed and unhurried and just… perfect.

It was not a heated, all-consuming session. We’ve had that before. In the bedroom, I’ve experienced domination. I’ve experienced being taken by force, against my will. I’ve experienced deep passion and the rush of unbridled desire.

What I’ve never experienced before… what I’ve never had with him… was true lovemaking.

And yet, that was exactly what last night was. When he slid into me, both of us aroused from the foreplay… the way he stared into my eyes… the way he held my body to his… it was something special.

Special because of what that moment meant. I was no longer bound by any darn document, enforceable or not, to make myself available to him. I was not forced into doing anything against my will.

There was no collar. There was no contract. All there was, and all there ever will be in the future, was a man and a woman making love. A man and a woman, both of them free, both of them equals, both of them accepting and giving all at once.

Of course I find the bed empty again this morning. Jeremy’s already at work.

I feel bliss that comes from not having anything in the background, stuck in the back of my mind, detracting from where I am. I must have had the first good sleep since before the summer.

I discover a note waiting for me when I go to put my slippers on. It’s signed at the bottom not with Jeremy’s initials, but with his full name. I’ve never seen that before.

The note reads:

You are my sun and my stars.

You are my sin and my repentance.

You are mine, Lilly. I will never let you go.

But you, my dear, are free to leave me.

If you do, I will drop everything and follow you to the ends of the world.

I will make you say those three tiny words to me.

But you will do it as a free woman.

Tomorrow, I will introduce you formally to Simon, my driver. He will be at your beck and call at any moment. You may go wherever you wish with him. I trust you.

Tonight, if I return in time, we will call Fey. You will arrange to meet with her in Oregon before she and Robin leave for school. You will take my private jet. I will not accompany you, nor will I listen to your conversations with her. You may tell her, or anybody else, whatever you wish.

I trust, however, that you will use your best judgment in the things you reveal. You are now in a position to hurt me, Lilly. It is my sincere hope that you don’t.

Jeremy Stonehart.

“Wow,” I breathe. I barely know what to make of things. This letter does not come from the same man who abducted me. It’s almost like it’s from someone else. Either he was acting before, acting the entire time, or else he was deliberately hiding the side of himself he’s showing to me now.

My money is on the latter. Knowing what I do about Jeremy, thanks in no small part to the things Charles revealed about his past, lets my understanding of the man grow.

I can picture him as a youth, and imagine all the struggles his upbringing caused him. I can envision that type of environment giving rise to the personality traits dominant in Jeremy.

I can also imagine, and I can see, how for his entire life, Jeremy had to act like… well, like
Stonehart
. Weakness was something he could not tolerate. It was something his father did not tolerate. Jeremy could not allow himself to be anything but a success. The persona he shows to the world, the side of himself that he reveals to the public… it is always strong, infallible, in control.

That is the man I first met. He seemed inhuman. A machine, devoid of warmth or feelings or emotions. That was the man who kidnapped me.

Somewhere along the way, the defenses fell. The walls broke down. Maybe it began on our trip. Maybe it began—I swallow—when he first realized he had feelings for me. Back when he fought against those emotions. The outcome of that struggle resulted in my being shocked by the collar.

But I don’t hate him for it. Not for that specific episode. There are other things I hate him for. But now that I understand him more, what he did to me… it makes sense.

Christ
! Am I really telling myself that the abuse I was put through makes sense? It can’t. It shouldn’t. It was sadistic and cruel and demeaning and…

Evil.

Evil. That is really the best way to describe Jeremy when he was Stonehart. But even evil comes from a source, from some initial seed that sprouted and took hold of a person’s soul.

Jeremy was not always evil. Children are not
born
evil. He became that way because of his upbringing. His formative years were defined by consistent feelings of inadequacy and neglect. I know enough psychology to know how much that affects a person’s psyche.

So, Jeremy became the man he thought he should be. He became cruel and vindictive. His entire being was centered around Stonehart Industries. Stonehart Industries was created as a method of revenge, as a way to get back at, and prove himself to, his father.

I wonder what Jeremy’s father would be like if he were alive today. Maybe he still is—I don’t know. I also wonder what Jeremy’s two brothers are up to. What they’re doing, how they’re living, whether they are in poverty or not. In the story Jeremy told me, he sounded absolutely determined to bring all of them down. And he did.

But what happened to them next?

The point is not to get lost thinking about Jeremy’s family. The point is to say that I do understand—really, I do—the root of most of his inhuman behavior.

The sad thing is: Jeremy lived most of his life like that. He spent over twenty years carving out this persona for himself. One that allowed no weaknesses. One that had to be bullet-proof and completely infallible.

Yet the man who wrote this note is not the same man as the one I first met. It’s astounding. I’m starting to feel like I’ve managed to strip away the layers of defense around Jeremy.

Simply by being myself.

That
is the staggering part. I thought that I would have to act like someone I’m not, that I would have to be just as calculating and determined as he is, to get to this point. To arrive at a position where I can hurt him.

But he said it himself in the letter: I am already there. And now that I have the power to do so, I find myself… unwilling.

“Time,” I mutter. “I need more time.” Too much has happened in too short of a time span. The collar’s come off, the contract’s been burned. Tomorrow, I’m actually going to fly out and meet Fey—on my own—and we’re just a few weeks removed from my nightmare in the dark. There’s also the standing issue of Paul, locked in that awful mental institution…

The best course of action for me, right now, is to simply wait. Wait, and let everything soak in. Jeremy’s behavior has been different. But, I’ll have to see how long it lasts. Besides, it’s not like I have anywhere to go. It’s funny. Now that all restrictions have been removed, I find myself uninterested in being anywhere but…

Here.

Twenty-four hours later, I am on a private jet, on my own, dressed in a fine fur coat, touching down in a small airfield in Oregon.

Jeremy was true to his word. When he came home, he let me call Fey and tell her the news. She was thrilled when she heard, and immediately invited me to stay with her and Robin at his parents’ place.

The spring semester begins next week, so the timing isn’t exactly ideal. Fey and Robin have a flight scheduled for New Haven early tomorrow morning. I thought my visit might be too close to their departure, and throw a wrench into the usual last-minute packing stuff, but Fey was emphatic that it would not. She wanted to see me again, she said, and Robin was excited, too.

I get off the plane and into the waiting limo. I don’t know anything about Robin’s parents. It strikes me that arriving like this—dressed in something so preposterously luxurious and in a chauffeured limousine—might not give the exact first impression that I want. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. Jeremy has instilled the importance of appearances in me. Clothes and luxury come with the territory.

The driver already has the address. He informs me it’ll be an hour’s drive. My phone is still crippled by restrictions. Otherwise, I would have checked out the location on Google maps. As it stands, I have absolutely no idea where we’re going.

My heart begins to sink when, nearly sixty minutes later, we’re driving through a quaint, quiet mountainside community. It feels like a village more than a real district. Everything from the surrounding evergreens to the cedar-log cabins on the sides of the gravel road instantly makes me feel awkward and out of place.

We stop in front of something that looks like a mix between a cabin and a grounded treehouse.

“Here goes nothing,” I mutter.

I step out. As soon as I do, three giant huskies come bounding from the back, barking and howling like they’ve caught sight of prey on a hunt. I tense.