She mumbled solemnly. Stared into their twisted hands. Watched his thumbs brush hers absently. His cock straining his trousers. Shallow breaths working his buttoned blouse.
“You’ve filed already?”
“No.” Her gaze refused his.
“Are you going to?”
“Richard will work on me until I do—it’s so much more satisfying for him if it’s me to do it,” Finally, her eyes met his. “I told him we’d married during our first fight.”
“He hit you because of that?” he looked as solemn as he ever had. Somehow mourning the misfortune of his wife more than he had the fact he was on the very brink of jail time. Again. Yet she smiled. A small, wry smile.
“No.” Searched his eyes. “I said he has a god-complex and a tiny dick,” Before he could think any better of it, Vincent took the woman’s face between his two hands. Watched her smile fall. Breathed her anti
Blue had wished silently that her fiancé would scold her for the absence he would have assumed a hook-up, correctly at that. But he hadn’t seemed to notice. And she knew well she would know if he had. She sat patiently in bed with a book whose page she hadn’t turned a whole hour. Staring. Watching the words swirl as her eyes moved in and out of focus. But he came quietly. Shed his coat. Fixed a stiff kiss to her right cheek. Smiled the same way one would at their spanking new car sat in the garage for the first time. Went for his shower. She had feigned sleep when he re-emerged. And she was sure he masturbated quietly beside her.Sat at her mother’s dining table, it was quite easy to imagine her husband in the seat next to her. The earthy scent of damp hair and cologne making a gentle ingress on her self-control. His fingertips inching toward her own beneath the modesty of the dining table. The coolness of his wedding band brushing her k
“It’s funny.” Marian paused. “When I was about your age, I was pregnant, too.” Like Blue needed to be reminded.“By Michael, apparently.” The teenager mumbled. Unsure of whether her mother knew that her husband’s boss was the culprit, she decided it best not to make any rash revelations she’d regret not being able to renege.“I loved him…” Pausing, fingertips drumming the table, Marian cast her eyes to the lip of her daughter’s discarded breakfast plate. In that moment, Blue pitied the older woman. Wondered if things between them hadn’t been quite as fraught as they had seemed. Whether her muddied elitist childhood had narrowed her field of vision; it had. Rather, wondered by how much? Had her mommy issues multiplied into some twisted trauma due to moneyed entitlement? Was she little more than a spoilt brat?She suspect
Though the ignorant bliss would have been rather nice, Blue certainly wasn’t born yesterday. There was nothing particularly legal a corrupt senator paedophile could do with five million smackeroos, though life would have been a great deal easier if there was. Standing in front of the door she had pressed open with her palm how many times, she no longer felt worthy of even knocking. Her husband would be on the couch, she could imagine. In part due to the softly muttering television. Whether he was with another woman was beyond her. A soul so faultless and free of the clutches of greed that had marred him. Only she had become its claws. A baroness of corruption. A product of the greed which she had eluded thus far, though clearly unsuccessfully. She had become that which had ruined this man’s life—though not with the same intentions. Perhaps that was untrue. Had she traded her husband’s innocence for another? For her own? It was a bit
She spoke before she could stop herself. “Would you think any less of me if I got into trouble?” She wondered more if she would think any less of herself. If that was even possible. But the man smiled. A small, soft smile.“If I did, how would I have expected you to do the same?” His stomach flexed as it flattened to hers. The gentle throw of his groin sheathed inside of her was all the comfort she could ever ask for. Yet she begged the man a bit more.“It was never your fault,” If only the police had agreed.“And it wouldn’t be your fault,” He drew away. Sucked in a breath as she tensed on his joystick. Felt his chest tighten with her gasp of quiet encouragement. Shy. Uninhibited.“You don’t know what I did,”“I know you would have done it for me.” Staring
Blue had imagined her death time and time again. She’d hoped to be laying in a hospital bed, a metal dish under her arse to catch her shit and a pad of paper to write down her thoughts sat in her lap. Her grandchildren would sit around her and try their utmost not to laugh when she farted especially loudly. Her children would scold them when they did; “Gran’s old,” They would hiss. “Is this how you want to remember your last moments with her?” But she’d be staring blankly at the roof. Vincent would be twenty years dead by then. Her only thoughts would be of hoping they’d meet in whatever darkness was awaiting her. That after the turmoil that had been her young adult life, death was sleep after a very long, very hard day.The scenario that she’d be ushered into her sperm-donors house by her fiancé with a gun in her back hadn’t existed in even her wildest fantasies. Fantasy was perhaps an
Staring at her father and her stepmother in bewilderment, she somehow had no urge to struggle. Not after their last altercation. Or the one that left her with a scarred cheek. Instead, she stumbled alongside him, feet feeling awfully heavy. And did her utmost not to land splat on her face lest he lose his patience and do away with her in the hallway. The fact that five million dollars had done little more than buy her plane ticket to the Maldives was completely out of her comprehension.Try as she might, no part of Blue was really to accept that the whole ordeal wasn’t a fever dream. And again, she wondered if she’d wake up from it all—though not in bed with Richard. Instead, she’d awake on the morning of her birthday party. Richard and Vincent had both been figments of her imagination. Manifestations of her fear of money and her desire to live quietly. Two opposites; one good and one evil. Considering one had shot her father in
“It’s not that simple,” Michael paused, staring at his daughter. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. “From what I’ve gathered Richard destroyed the evidence my wife,” He glanced to the woman bitterly. It was a wonder they were still together. “Sold to him,”“So that’s it?”“No, I’m sure there’s something somewhere—Christopher isn’t half as smart as he thinks he is,” He glanced at the teenager who looked about as confused as he would have thought. “Richard and Vincent were friends all throughout school, there’s a point where it all went digital and that would have had to be when they both seemed old enough to do it themselves,” she looked even more confused. “He can’t be framing children, Blue, why would a five-year-old commit fraud?”“If the
“And you expect me to just trust you because...?” obscured by the hair that fell across Blue’s eyes with the tilt of her head, Marian looked quite young for a moment. If only a moment.“What do I have to gain from lying, Blue? My husband despises me, I’m a prisoner in my own home-”“Fine!” The moment Blue snapped, she felt rather guilty rather instantly. Slouched in her seat as the woman sent her a pointed stare. Curled her toes in her shoes. Out of shame? She wasn’t sure. “You can’t blame me for being cautious…”“No, I can’t.” Fiddling with her napkin, Marian cast her eyes to the table—feeling, too, something like shame. “But what other options do you have right now? Other than the obvious,”“Marrying Richard?”“Exactly.”&nbs
Staring out at the living room floor, Blue saw a sight she never thought she would live to see: Marian playing with her grandson on the floor. It was unsettling, in an uncanny-valley way. Something so close to resembling human but just short of enough. She spun her engagement ring back and forth on her finger. He slid his arm around her waist. “’You okay?” She glanced up to the man stood at her side. His dark hair gathered into a short, thick ponytail. Eyes as bright as ever. Smile as devilish. Would it be so wrong to fuck like animals with her mother in the room next to them? After all, to a married couple, sex was the most natural thing. Or so she'd heard. “Yeah,” Blue sighed. Hugged her arms around herself. “I think so,” “How long is she staying?” “Until she can get the settlement money from Bradley,” “I didn’t think he had any left,” “It’s all
It could have been hours by the time Blue came to. Usually, the state of her coffee would be a good indicator, but it had been stone cold for god knows how long. The sun was still up, if that counted for anything. She had left her phone at the house. Vincent was with the baby. She had stolen herself away for some quiet at the very café she had shared with both Vincent and Richard. Sat staring at her right hand where the engagement ring of the latter sat without a band. What was he doing? A thought that crossed her mind often. She hadn’t heard from him after the verdict, though still awaiting the sentencing. She had the thought that he was arrested for assaulting a police officer after his fiasco of escaping custody in the courtroom. Christopher wouldn’t have set any bail, would he? Not after he pretended to have been oblivious to his son’s sins. It would be hard to act surprised if he was actively helping his son as someone ought to. Vincent
Blue stared at the city; Vincent stood at the counter behind her. The windowsill seemed to share her most pivotal moments more than even the universe shared them with her. Though her grief was one of the poorer-kept secrets of the world she felt marginally better whispering her thoughts to the brittle pane. Just as she felt gratitude Vincent had kept the apartment they’d outgrown with the baby for nostalgia’s sake. Or to bolster his net worth. Either one.She was muttering the same three words over and over. Repeated hoping that enough times would unencumber her or the rage that swelled with each inhale to expel them. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. I hate… The world?“I should write him a very strongly worded letter.” She glanced to her husband, the man fiddling with a steaming tea as though debating which moment would be safest to present it to his wife. “But
“It is found,” Blue glanced up at her husband, her arse feeling rather sore from the wooden bench. They had been sat in court for what ought to have been five hours at that point. The room smelt of wood varnish and stale air, having the look about it of a church with generous natural light and the buzz of Catholic choir. Only the silence rattled through much the same way any prayer would. “That the Commonwealth has proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” She had stared at the back of Richard’s head the whole time, if only hoping he would meet her eyes for just a second. She feared he thought no one in the room was on his side, a feeling she had become well-acquainted with over the years. Nothing seemed more dreadful than being carted off to prison with that same feeling. How strange it was to think that the man she was so sure she would murder given the chance had sat on the living room floor playing with her son just a day or two before. Staring into her husband’s deep green eyes, she w
“So, I have a question,” Blue reached for her coffee, eyeing her maid. Well, she wasn’t her maid anymore. She was her mother-in-law. It was complicated. Pregnancy had somehow made her even fonder of coffee, maybe because she hadn’t had it. “Why did you tell me not to stay with Vincent when I told you I was pregnant if he was your son this whole time?” She couldn’t help but smile at her own sentence, taking a long gulp of the latte that had since gone flat. Vincent stared between the two silently. It was news to him.“I thought he was going to prison,” She simply shrugged. It was a good enough answer. Blue wasn’t sure whether Anya—Alfonza, as she had come to know—liked her all that much. “I thought I was doing what was best for everyone,”“So, you tell my wife to leave me?” Then came her husband’s booming voice, deep and accented. Ho
Blue stared at the deep purple wrap dress in the mirror, sleeves to her elbows. Loosened the strings around her waist and tightened the knot again as though it would magically make her thinner. She was yet to properly mourn her pre-baby figure. She looked like a rectangle. A bloated, lumpy rectangle. Or so she thought quietly to herself. She tore the dress over her head.“I think we’ve found a winner,” Vincent entered the wardrobe quietly. Tried his best not to gawk at the woman in her underwear as though he’d never seen her half-naked before. Failed miserably. Wrapped his arms around her middle instead and pressed his mouth to hers. But she shoved him away. Turned back to the clothes instead.“We can’t do this, we’ll be late,” though she spoke as firmly as she could, she couldn’t help but smile softly to herself and blush as she leafed through her clothes without looking. The idea of let
“It’s not fair, why can’t I go with Richard?” Vincent dug his heels in as he stopped behind his mother. Hoped a childish frown would move her enough to let her son be with his only friend. “I’m not a child anymore,”“I’ve seen the awful lot Richard hangs out with, you can either help me out for the rest of the day or go to the deli with your father,”“I’m a vegetarian.” He spoke expressionlessly.“Housekeeping it is!” Alfonza sounded a bit too cheerful for Vincent’s liking. Was it too late to call back the Taxi that had brought him straight from school? “Now find somewhere quiet to sit, I shouldn’t be any longer than an hour,”“I’ve got homework tonight, Ma.”“Then do your work here,” She smiled again. A bit too cheerful. Aga
Her skirt was over her stomach in a matter of seconds, underwear kicked beneath the bed. Heart racing, fingertips beating in the tips of her fingers curled up into her palms, Blue spread her legs with no further instruction. Released a long, shaky breath as her husband hooked her legs over his shoulders and breathed into the inside of her thigh. But she stared at the roof. Watched the shadow cast by the lamp behind him loom over her, growing in size as he neared. And all she could feel was his hot, damp exhale fanning her center; his opened mouth quick to follow. “I still can’t believe I’m your wife.” She grumbled the words quietly, arching her back as his lips closed around her and his teeth grazed her labia. “I’m a lucky man.” He grumbled back, his voice twisting through her and carrying its echo deep into her stomach. “I can’t believe that you were so adamant you never wanted to see me again after your birthday party and now you’ve got your pussy i
“Are you joking?” He had his wife’s face in his hands again, staring between her narrowed eyes with a look of expectation now not quite as well-hidden. “You actually went to the police?”“Of course, I did, all the love I had left for him went when I found out how much my mom actually cares.” She looked like she’d thought it rather obvious. Despite the fact she’d been defending him for so long. “He could be sentenced to death, and I’ll be happy to do it.”“You don’t mean that,” he’d released her, sitting back on the edge of the bed, hands on his knees. But she’d rocked forward. Wrapped her fingers through the sides of his hair. Met his eyes with a stare he wasn’t quite so daffy to break.“He told me it was my own fault Richard hurt me.”“But Richard’