Page 98 of Empowered
While his voice didn’t sound defeated, per se, she still sensed the panic rising within him. “You don’t understand. It’s not only about being fulfilled. I need to know that something like that is never going to happen again. I have to learn how to trust someone all over again. If you think that’s easy…”
“You know of my own trust issues. While they may not be on that level, well… we’re both learning how to trust our potential lovers again.”
Sighing, Sarah turned her whole body toward him, eyes open and wide. “I know you’re a good person, Luke. I know you mean well and that you love me. Theoretically, anyway. Iknowthat. But I’ve forced myself to become so apathetic that I can’t feel it. The only way I can feel anything good is if I dress up like this.”
“Angel.” When did it stop being her alter-ego and become her true pet name? “I love you. Beyond words. If that means loving both halves of you, then that doesn’t bother me.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It bothers me.”
“I’m sure it does. I can look at you dressed like this and out of it and know that it’s the same woman. But do you know that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who are you right now?”
Sarah glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Blond wig. Sultry black jacket. Thick, come-hither makeup and a pair of boots that would get her kicked out of the office. “I’m…”
“Do you even know?”
“I’m a mess is what I am.”
He took her hand, but did not entice her to come closer. That was her choice, wasn’t it? “I don’t want you to be a mess. I want you to be happy and healthy. If it turns out there’s no room for me in that equation, well…” Lucas looked away. “It will break my heart, but I will understand.”
“You’re too good for me.”
“Yet you’re the angel here.”
“When I picked that name,” she began, also looking away, the only thing holding them together their sweaty, linked hands, “I wanted something that was obviously not my real name. Something sexy and innocent, like men were going to get a specific kick out of me. But the joke would be on them. I wasn’t innocent. I knew exactly what I was doing. In a way, I wanted them to use me. I told myself that I was using them, but in those situations, they were still the ones with all the power. Look at that fucking video tape. I never knew about it. It’s been out there this whole time, waiting to be used against me. Powerless to stop it.”
Lucas squeezed her hand. “I used you too. I admit it.”
“I know.” Of course he had. Sarah offered no-strings-attached sex. He took it. As much as Sarah wanted to believe she could live in a world where casual sex gave her power, she had to stop thinking of it that way. Maybe it was fun. Maybe nothing bad came out of it. But every time she went out dressed as Angel, determined to get her freak on with the first semi-attractive man looking in her direction, she put herself at risk. Risks those men rarely had to think about.
She wanted the risks. They made her feel alive. They made her believe she was free from the constraints her brain put on her heart.
“Tell me what to do. Tell me how to help you.” Lucas gently turned her around to face him again. “What do you want, Sarah?”
This time she answered without thinking about it.
“To be whole again.”
It was the answer she had bitten back every time he asked her that asinine question. The answer she always knew was true but was afraid to admit – because then she was admitting that she had never been whole to begin with. That she didn’t have the power and free-will she craved.
“I know. I’ve been waiting for you to say it.”
He pulled her into his embrace. While they didn’t kiss – yet – Sarah felt every ounce of his love coaxing her to trust in him, to believe that he truly wanted the best for her.
“I love you,” he muttered. “I’m afraid that’s one matter you don’t get a choice in.”
She rested her cheek upon his broad chest. He was possibly the only man in the world who made her feel safe in his embrace. Too bad she was about to ask him to shatter that illusion.
***
Night had almost fallen by the time Lucas emerged from his bedroom. Sarah sat in the middle of the living room couch, looking past the TV and upon the glistening water weaving between brand-new high-rises and warehouses as old as her mother’s lineage.
He flipped the light switch connected to the living room lamp. Sarah was thrown into darkness.
“Come here, Angel.”
