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A car horn blared from the road below, pulling me into the half-world of dream and reality. I didn’t know if I’d been dreaming or if I was now awake. My hips stretched to meet him. I reached into the dark of my room, hoping to thread my fingers through his hair. My heart was so full, the tender sweetness of love melting everything between us. I wanted nothing stopping us from melding into each other, his mouth becoming mine, so desperate to stay glued together that we breathed for each other, with no idea who moaned, only that the vibration of it carried us both as we sank.
But my hand met air. There were seconds of confusion as I fumbled around, sweeping my hand around the mattress, stretching out to find nothing reaching back.
He was gone. My heart ached as I searched blindly for him in the dark. What happened? Where did he go?
I let out a heaving gasp, my hand fisting the sheets as I shot up, disoriented, fully awake. Cold horror thumped through me, like a bucket of ice water dousing me, my memories ripping me open.
SLUT
I’d wanted to scream as I stepped into my bedroom that night ten years ago. Jewellery boxes empty, torn book pages littering every surface. They had taken a baseball bat to the dresser that belonged to my grandmother, my vanity table shattered, lying broken on the floor; my clothes shredded, the mattress slashed, duvets and pillows disembowelled, covering the room in a dusting of feathers, like snow blanketing the scene of a crime.
I had run to the bathroom, unable to hold it in as I stepped on pages of my diaries, feathers sticking to my feet, heart in my throat. I moaned as I reached the bathroom door. More destruction. I didn’t have time to take it in as I fell to my knees and emptied my stomach into the toilet, tears bursting at the corners of my eyes. Disgust rolled through me as I sat back, realising they had left me another present in the bowl. I rose, wiping my mouth and flushing away the evidence. I moved to the sink, aiming to clean my face, trying not to weep at the floor covered in all my favourite soaps and lathers, but the sink was full of shards of glass. I looked up and met my own broken face in the cracked mirror. There, etched in my favourite red lipstick, was one word.
SLUT
Back in my bedroom, back in reality, I pulled myself up, gripping the top of the headboard as my lungs worked around my rapid panting. I couldn’t breathe. It was too fast. There was no room for air, and I needed to move. I was going to throw up, right here, on the bed, bent over the pillow where I thought Max’s head had been. My legs froze, my hand clenched against my heaving chest as whimpers interspersed my gasps.
Tears pecked my cheeks as I tried to control myself, but the empty desolation of finding him gone, of remembering again how he’d left me, tore into me, and I had no choice but to ride the wave as I gasped for air in the safe cavern of my bedroom.
Come on, Cat.You can do this, just breathe…
I clutched the old T-shirt I’d worn to bed, trying to protect my open heart from the deep ache of missing him, the longing bringing me down. The early morning darkness brought back memories of days and nights shut in my room after he left me, trying to fathom how I could live without him when I’d made him my entire world.
I finally settled, my breath returning as my body trembled from the shock. I stayed still, stone-cold, letting the pain of it all wash through me.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
It was the same as the fear that rumbled through me before I entered the courtroom. It could be handled. It was another situation to be dealt with. I had the tools and knowledge to bring myself back, and I could employ them easily.
I only had to remember to breathe.
I hadn’t had a panic attack for years. I thought they were under control now. The last time had been four years ago when I forced myself to walk out of the courtroom with my head held high after they wrongfully convicted my client, and I was sure it was my fault. I’d had to shut myself in a bathroom stall to ride out the worst of the hyperventilating.
Fucking Max Rider.
I clenched my teeth, my heart racing beneath my rib cage, my palm flat between my breasts, evidence of my weakness.
No.
I wasn’t doing this.
My jaw ached as I tried to force myself to calm down. The bedsheets tangled with my legs, and my pussy was damp, pulsing with need from the dream, at war with the memories shaking my body.
Rage burst in my chest, giving way to mournful longing. I was alone — I was safe, but I was alone, and I wanted him. I wanted him with me so I could reach over and bring him inside me and feel loved and protected and all the other things he’d given me before my world was shattered.
I tried to shake away the feeling, but it caught me in a storm. Every sweet memory turned bitter when he left, but now the luxurious velvet taste of pleasure was poisoning me.
It had been one meeting. Only three days ago. It shouldn’t be like this.
He got into my office, he’d riled me up, and now he was invading my dreams.
The ache was so tender that I covered my face with my palms and stifled a shout.
How dare he? How dare he do this to me? It was like when we first met at uni. I’d been obsessed with him. An irresistible pull had me following him around Oxford for months, attending every single one of Clutch’s gigs in the hope he would notice me. In the end, I'd stood by the back door of the pub they were playing at in a miniskirt and a boob tube, waiting hours for them to come out. It was November, and by the time they left, my lips were blue. Max found me straight away. He covered me in his jacket, helped me inside, and took my virginity against the sticky wall of The Red Lion.
At first, I thought it was Max that had destroyed my flat. Even though I couldn’t believe it, he was the only one that had the keys. But Goss couldn’t keep the secret for long.
I sat up, growling as a heaviness blanketed me. A thin finger of streetlight crept through my blackout curtains. I checked the clock. I still had two hours until the monthly Fischer family brunch.
