Hansel 3(3)

Her mouth opens. I close the space between us and slide my hand under her hair, cupping her head. “You don’t have to tell me,” I murmur, looking down into her eyes. “Leah, I can read you like a book. You’re hung up at Mother’s house. That time I fucked you on the day I killed her. Stuck. You’re stuck there with me. No boyfriend,” I whisper, stroking her hair. “You’ve never had a lover, have you? No one serious…”

I can’t breathe as I watch her face for confirmation.

Her features twist as she wobbles back, wrenching away from me. “What’s the point of this?”

I inhale deeply. Let it out. “I’m telling you to get lost, Leah. I didn’t ask for you like this. I wanted Lauren,” I taunt. I nod at the bathroom, glad to break my gaze away from hers. “I’m not like you, Leah. I might want to fuck you, but I don’t…want you. I’m not waiting for you. Can’t you tell?”

Her lip is caught between her teeth. Her eyes are bright enough to be electric. They sear mine for a long second before she whirls and flies into the bathroom.

The second that she slams the door, my chest starts aching. I step toward the door, my arm outstretched; that’s how badly I want to open it and snatch her out.

Instead, I turn around and leave my own apartment.





CHAPTER TWO

Leah



He’s full of shit.

He thinks he can fool me? He thinks I don’t know him? He’s lying to himself.

I’m not sure if I’m more upset or more sad—sad for him.

Everything he said about me being hung up on what happened at Mother’s house, alone and unable to find love as an adult, is almost laughably hypocritical. Does he think he’s any different? I don’t see him married with two point five kids and a minivan. Maybe it has been a long time since I’ve had sex; maybe I can’t bear to be intimate with anyone because my first experience was him, and as soon as it was over, he just…left. Maybe that makes me pathetic, but taunting me about it is horrible. So horrible, it makes his motives completely obvious.

After what happened in his bedroom—after how upset he got—he doesn’t want me here. He can’t even stand to look at me. He knows I won’t leave, so he’s making it out like he doesn’t want me around. Like he isn’t attracted to me.

I stab my legs into my red jeans. I’m trembling with excess energy.

Does he not remember all the things he said to me last night? How, today, when he walked into the room, he said he was going to call me Leah like he does with all his subs?

As I jerk my lacy pink bra on, my heart starts hammering. There’s no way I interpreted things wrong, is there? Am I thinking irrationally?

No. The way he acted is completely obvious.

The man’s got issues, Leah. He’s pushing you away.

“Right.”

At that moment, a memory pops into my mind, vivid as a picture: Hansel on the stage, holding a whip, and two blonde women on the mattress in the room that looked like mine.

But maybe he only wants me for sex.

Right, because I’m so skilled at sex.

I pull my shirt over my head and try to talk some confidence into myself. He calls the subs ‘Leah’ because he cares about me. Clearly. And why wouldn’t he? For more than a year, he was my only confidant. We got to know each other in a way that’s usually impossible, because most times, people put up walls. But our wall was a literal thing, so with each other, we erased all lines. I told him things I’ve never told anyone before. I’d like to think the inverse is true, too.

My insecurity rears its head again, and I question why he would still hang onto that so many years later. But the answer is obvious: for all the reasons I do.

I wonder, as I look into my own eyes in the mirror, if he wake up this morning and remembered last night. If he remembered seeing me. Or was he so smashed, he had no idea until the bed a few minutes ago, when he asked me why I was calling him ‘Hansel’. Earlier this morning, when his driver came to get me, was he really calling ‘Lauren’ back, because he liked what we did Monday?

I suck a deep breath into my lungs and step out of the bathroom, ready to confront him. I look around the living room.

“Han— Edgar?” The word hangs there in the air, and my eyes fly around the room. The ceiling fan is motionless; the room is empty; something in the refrigerator across the room makes a clicking sound, and I jump a little, but it’s only ice. I walk a little farther out into the living area.

“Edgar?”

Into the kitchen, and the counter looks barer than it was a few minutes ago, when I came in here to confront him.

Another second swells around me. I can feel his absence.