The Righteous and The Wicked Read online

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  “Danni, I have to go. Someone’s at the door. I’ll call you back.”

  Eric drives away from his trailer at sunrise, looking for something he can’t quite find, a place he can’t quite remember. He slows once he emerges into the village, and discovers what he was searching for.

  The bell rings as he enters the coffee shop. The sound reminds him of Emma’s wind chime and he smiles at the automatic thought. He steps to the counter and feels like a fool. He’s face-to-face with Christie, a victim he found in this very place.

  The memory of her lips on his cock flashes across his mind. Because of his addiction, his body finds this vision arousing, but he hates himself for reacting this way. She sees him, and his former self is reflected in her eyes. It is sickening. He doesn’t want to be that man anymore.

  “Hey, stranger,” she says.

  Eric is polite, but cold. He orders breakfast and she flirts. She touches him and he can’t help but flirt back. It’s as if he’s floating above himself, watching the train wreck happen, but is powerless to stop it. The road to his recovery stretches before him, and he realizes that without Emma near, he falls back into his loathsome habits. He wants to get away, to return to her safe haven as soon as he can. Christie bags up his order and he wishes he could fly; he can’t get back to Emma fast enough.

  He pulls onto their street and a white car passes him that he doesn’t recognize. The sunshine glares off the windshield and he can’t see the driver. The white car disappears in his rearview mirror, and he wonders who it could be, but as he pulls into his driveway, the thought drifts away from him.

  He gets out of the Jeep and walks toward the trailer with a brown paper bag in his hand. It’s filled with bagels and pastries, and he smiles as he opens the front door, expecting to see sleeping Emma curled up in his bed. Instead, he finds it empty, and his heart sinks. He wonders why she would leave, and then a realization comes over him. He turns to run up the tree-lined path as fast as he can.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Emma answers the knock at the door. It’s Eric, and she says a silent prayer of gratitude.

  She jumps up and hugs his neck. She thought the worst of his unexplained absence, and is thrilled she was wrong. Her physical craving for him is intense, but he has a firm hold on her heart now as well, and the feeling that this could all melt away at any moment scares her to death.

  What she doesn’t know is that Eric feels the same way.

  “Where did you go?”

  “I just went to get us breakfast.” He sighs into her hair. “Don’t leave like that again.”

  In this moment, Eric would like to assure her he’ll always be there and he’s not going to leave her like Aaron did, but that’s a promise he cannot make. They are walking a precarious line because of his addiction, and even though he’s progressing toward some semblance of recovery, he knows one day she will not be this happy to see him.

  She looks up at him with watery eyes and he understands what she’s feeling because he feels it, too. The fear that this just can’t last. The looming unhappy ending that neither of them will acknowledge. After being with her, and being there with her, feeling her against his body and in his heart, finding his bed empty was crushing. He has kept his life free from bonds to others for a reason. The fewer people he has in his life, the less chance there is for hurt. Hurt done to him . . . or done by him. He’s well versed in keeping his selfish heart cold and unaffected by others, but Emma has changed him.

  Eric makes coffee and slices bagels while Emma goes upstairs to change. He waits, but becomes impatient and looks for her. Her bedroom door is open a crack, and her back is to him. He watches her dress in the bright morning light. He sees her smooth back and the crease at the bottom of her plump, round cheeks . . .

  The floorboard creaks and she startles.

  “Sorry.” He looks like a bad little boy and enters the room uninvited. Emma watches him stare at her bed and he looks at her things while she dresses. He fondles a small snow globe that rests on her nightstand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Um, that was a gift . . . from Aaron.”

  Eric sets it down. Even though he shouldn’t, he feels envious and almost angry. It’s a small thing, but it seems enormous to Eric. He walks out the door.

  “Breakfast is ready,” he says over his shoulder.

  The table is set, and Emma smiles at the small feast Eric has prepared. She sits with him and they begin to eat. Eric takes large bites of food, chewing and shaking his leg under the table.

  “How did you know you were in love with Aaron?” He keeps his eyes on his food.

  She’s thrown by the random question. “I’m not sure. I guess it was something that fell over me. It wasn’t like time stopped or anything, but once it was there it was like it hurt when he wasn’t beside me, and I guess that’s how I knew.”

  Eric nods like he understands, and maybe he does.

  “It hurt to be away from him, and it was like I was whole when he was there. So I guess that’s what love is—when someone completes you that way. Like that old myth of men and women being two halves of one being, but when that piece of you is gone forever it’s like your life ends. I never want to feel that way again.”

  She sips her coffee and steals a glance at him. He picks at his food, but he does not look at her.

  “Have you ever been in love?” There’s fear and hope in her voice.

  Having no frame of reference, it’s hard for him to label what he feels for Emma. It hurts him to be away from her, and she occupies his mind at all times. Last night, he felt closer to her than he has ever felt to anyone.

  “No. I haven’t.”

  He sees her flinch and regrets what he has said, but he can’t take it back. He’s not ready to tell her what’s growing in his heart . . . not yet.

  “There’s somewhere I’d like to take you today.” He changes the subject.

  “Where?” She clears their empty plates.

  “It’s a surprise.” He stands and follows her to the sink, wrapping his arms around her waist, and pressing himself against her as she washes the dishes. Although he was just with her last night and his thirst should be at bay, it rises up when they touch. He begins to dream of the next time he’ll be able to be with her that way.

  With her back to him, he feels safer revealing the thoughts inside his mind. “Emma, I want you to know that last night was different for me.”

  “It was different for me, too.”

  He speaks of the flame of new love in his heart and the way she is saving him. She speaks of being bound to his bed and toyed with, but the newness and change for both of them is equally profound.

  “I’m going to tend to your yard. It needs to be mowed.”

  He kisses her neck and, for a moment, she thinks that must be some sort of euphemism, until he lets her go and walks out the back door to the garage. She watches him pull out the old mower and is touched that he’s doing this small thing for her. She smiles to herself as she puts the dishes away.

  Emma and Eric are playing house.

  The sun is bright and the vibrant green of spring blankets every visible thing. It will be an unseasonably warm day. Emma sits on her porch and watches Eric pushing the mower. It hums, and his arms flex. He looks like he’s concentrating on something very important. Emma bites her lip as she watches this fantasy come true. Stormy Eyes, working and sweating in the sun—for her audience of one. She hugs her knees and enjoys the view.

  He works hard, and Emma begins to pass the time by sweeping the front steps, avoiding the gaping crater that remains from when she fell through the wood slats. She hears the mower cut off and Eric rounds the corner of the porch. Upon seeing him, the spark flares inside her. It feels as if time stops and Eric freezes where he stands. Something unspoken passes between them as they stand silent with eyes locked. The breeze picks up and a single crow caws in the distance, but neither Eric nor Emma can feel or hear anyt
hing but the sound of their own beating hearts. He approaches her, his gaze never leaving hers.

  “You’re filthy,” she says, when she gets a look at him up close. He’s covered in dirt and grass from the yard.

  “I don’t think you need to call me names,” he teases her with a smirk.

  She laughs, and he runs his dirty fingers down her arm, leaving a gritty black trail. “You’re dirty, Emma. You need to take a shower.”

  Her world becomes inverted as Eric throws her over his shoulder and marches upstairs to the bathroom.

  Danielle turns down the volume on the radio of her gunmetal gray convertible as she and Abby pull into Emma’s driveway.

  “I don’t know about this, Danni. Showing up unannounced? Confronting her? What if she freaks?”

  Abby’s on the fence, but Danielle is not. “I’d rather she was angry with us than left broken-hearted. I can’t watch her suffer again. Not when I know we can stop it.”

  The front door of the house is ajar and they let themselves in. The house is eerie and quiet, but Abby can hear the faint rush of water from the shower.

  “Emma?”

  She gets no answer. They creep up the stairs. What they hear when they reach the top makes them stop dead in their tracks.

  “Shit . . . yes, just like that. Oh, God . . . yes . . . yes . . .”

  It’s Emma’s voice, and the girls are shocked by the words coming out of her mouth.

  “You like that? What about this?” It’s a man’s voice. Eric’s voice.

  Abby covers her mouth to stifle a gasp. They hear the sounds of wet skin meeting and slapping together.

  “Oh, yes. Don’t stop, Eric . . . shit. Never stop. Oh . . .”

  Abby grips Danni’s arm to keep from squealing.

  “You are so fucking good, Emma. You feel so good . . .”

  Danielle is flushed and frozen. It’s clear she knows nothing about Emma. Sweet, Catholic, lonely Emma is getting her brains fucked out in the shower, and she’s begging for more. She stares at Abby, and they share a moment of unspoken understanding. Then they run from the house.

  Steam encircles their naked wet bodies and Eric is once again walking the fine line between falling into the black, and being in the moment with Emma. He struggles against his old rituals. Avoiding the darkness gets easier every time he’s with her. He doesn’t want to fade away. He wants to be her partner. To watch her skin glisten in the warm water of the shower. He wants to taste her sweet lips, and hear her voice. He wants to feel her heartbeat; he wants to make her come.

  Emma lets herself sink into sensation. When Eric’s inside her, she wants nothing else. It may be a sin, but she experiences unspeakable peace. She feels like herself for the first time in her life. The bond between her heart, her body, and his, is growing stronger. Eric holds her close, her back against his chest, his hands cupping and rubbing her breasts, his cock buried inside her. He turns her mouth toward him and brushes his lips against hers in a soft, wet kiss. She is his and his alone. The hot water streams down his back and Emma gasps for air as Eric looks down to watch his cock moving in and out of her, a sight that has become vital to him.

  “Shit . . . yes, just like that. Oh, God . . . yes . . . yes . . .”

  “You like that? What about this?” He stops playing with her breasts and slides his hand lower, rubbing her clit with his thumb.

  Her knees almost buckle when he touches her there, but he holds her up, teasing her with his touch, and Emma loves it. She doesn’t come as easily as his other victims have, and that feeds his fire for her.

  “Oh, yes. Don’t stop, Eric . . . shit. Never stop. Oh . . .”

  The pleasure she gives him is almost more than he can take. He closes his eyes and feels her around him. He savors her tight warmth. He begins falling down into the evil depths, the dark. He opens his eyes, and she touches his face. He buries his hands in her wet hair and kisses her neck. Emma is pulling him back out of the depths.

  “You are so fucking good, Emma. You feel so good.”

  He tries to take it slow, but a frenzy overtakes him, and he pounds into her as she screams and grips the tile wall. He slides his hands all over her slick skin, holding her hips and fucking her harder. She’s greedy for what he gives her. She pushes back against his thrusts, always craving more and more. The heat from the shower is nothing compared to the heat he feels inside for this woman. He rises and reaches a peak then his climax takes him. This time, when he closes his eyes in bliss, there is no blackness.

  Emma’s face is all he sees.

  Danielle pushes her foot to the accelerator and speeds down the street like she’s being chased by a wild animal.

  “Now what? I seriously feel like I need to wash my ears out. That was . . . damn . . .” Abby shakes her head.

  “Maybe we should just leave this alone.”

  “I have never known you to leave anything alone, Danni.”

  “Maybe there’s a way to help her without telling her the truth?”

  “What do you mean?” Abby asks.

  “He’s a dirtbag. I’m sure he will show his true face to her at some point. The best we can hope for is that she hits it off with Ian at the engagement party and forgets about Eric.”

  “I don’t know, Danni. It sounds to me like Eric will be a hard act to follow.” She laughs. “I mean, damn! That was some seriously dirty talk coming out of Ms. Santori’s mouth. She sounds happy, Danni. We should just let her be.”

  Danielle is sure that Abby is right, and Emma does deserve to be happy, but in her mind she sees Eric standing in her foyer, undressing her with his eyes with her fiancé just feet away. She just can’t shake the feeling that Eric is evil.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Eric unlocks his bike from the hitch of his trailer, eager to return to Emma’s side as soon as possible. Excited about the surprise he has for her today, he pauses to look up at the home he has built, now on the verge of completion. He allows himself a moment to dream of filling that house with happy things and indulges in a vision of peaceful days and long nights there, with Emma . . . but the impossible image dissolves, melting from his mind like turpentine splashes on an oil painting.

  Once on their bikes, they race each other down the wooded trail as sunlight dips and flutters through the vegetation. She follows and he leads. He follows, she leads. They ebb and flow together like waves, familiar with the voyage.

  Eric steers her down a different and hidden path. It’s narrow, and they have to dismount their bikes in order to maneuver in a single-file line through the brush. He looks back over his shoulder to check on Emma, and fights a smile when he sees her stumble and wage a losing battle against a thorn bush.

  Ahead, Emma sees a structure take shape amid the trees. It’s a small stone cottage, crumbling from the passage of time. The roof is covered in thick moss, and numerous layers of vines have overtaken the walls and what were once windows. The ivy conceals it in a green cocoon. They drop their bikes and Eric holds his hand out to her. She takes it, and when his fingers cover hers, her whole body tingles. He leads her around the ancient and abandoned home.

  “What is this place?” she asks.

  “I found it one day when you were at work. It must date back to the 1800s. I thought it was . . . sort of . . . romantic. And I wanted to show it to you.”

  He opens his backpack, pulls out a blanket, then sits and invites her to join him. He lies down, pulling her into his chest, and they lie in the quiet, looking up at the patches of blue that peek through the trees. They are silent, and Emma feels the urge to ask him more about himself. She wants to know all there is, to see every piece of him.

  “Why don’t you speak to your family?”

  He hesitates. “I told you before, I didn’t know my father, and my mother . . . my mother drank, as I said, and she was a different person when she was drunk, which was almost always. I think she was pissed at my father for never being there, and she took it out on me.”

  “What do you mean
‘took it out on you’?”

  He exhales a sigh that’s familiar to Emma—a labored sound that can only come from the soul of someone carrying an immense and painful wound.

  “I don’t like to talk about this, ever, but she beat me, Emma. I was abused by her for years. It was never the physical damage that got to me; it was the look on her face.” He stops. His body is tense, and Emma feels how difficult it is for him to remember.

  “That’s why Mary was so special to me. She did her best to try to divert my mother’s drunken wrath onto her.” Eric stares into the air at the ghosts he speaks of. “Mary used to break dishes when my mother was on a bender, just so she would get the heat instead of me.” He remembers with fondness the person who cared for him as a child.

  Emma rubs her hand across his chest. “That’s awful.”

  “It’s over, Emma. It’s the past. I don’t think about any of it anymore, and that’s why I don’t speak to my family. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have any.”

  Emma knows what it’s like to feel that way. Like you don’t deserve love, like you’re not worthy of it. She clings to him, wanting to take the pain away, but she cannot. Pain that runs deep never ever goes away, no matter how far you get from it, it lingers, refusing to diminish. The only effort she can make is to show him a small piece of her own.

  “You know, the longer I was with Aaron, the less I knew who I was. It was like my true self faded away and I had become what he wanted to see. Like a caricature come to life, a distortion of what was real.” She feels Eric’s fingers stroking her arm until goose bumps rise, and the memories of her failed marriage flow from her lips.

  “I remember he once bought me a pair of shoes for my birthday. They were too big for me, and he was angry that my feet didn’t fit into them. I thought about how symbolic that was, you know? That I could never fill the shoes he laid out for me. I was never good enough for him . . . never perfect. It’s funny the things you ignore when you’re trying to make something work, or make someone happy.”