Twisted Steel Page 17

I followed Alexa inside and sat her bags in the kitchen. She had already busied herself with putting her groceries away and was doing everything she could to avoid even looking in my direction.

  I stood there for a minute, hoping she would eventually say something to me. When she didn’t, I started helping her by taking some of the things out of her bags for her, keeping my eyes on her the entire time. Eventually, she slammed the refrigerator door as hard as she could and turned to face me.

  I was expecting to see her face twisted in anger, but instead, I saw tears running down her cheeks.

  “Nick, can you please just stop this?” she pleaded.

  “Alexa,” I started as I walked over to the fridge, standing directly in front of her.

  “Please, Nick,” she interrupted. “I want you to stop this. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Can’t you see how much you’ve hurt me? Can’t you see how much you’re hurting me now? Do you even care?”

  “Yes, I care. What kind of question is that? Would I be here if I didn’t care? Do you think I want to hurt you? Hurting you is the last thing I ever wanted to do. I love you more than you could ever know. I love you so much. I just want to do whatever I can to fix this. I want to make this right.”

  “How do you expect to fix this? This isn’t something that can be fixed. You fix things that are broken. This relationship isn’t broken. It’s far beyond that. It’s been destroyed. There’s nothing that can be done about that. What part of this are you not understanding? You lied to me about where you’ve been. You said you were from California when you were actually sitting in a prison cell. I can’t handle that. I don’t want to be in a relationship with you. I don’t love you at all. I don’t want to be with you. I don’t want anything to do with you. The only thing I want is for you to walk out that door and never come back!”

  Alexa was staring up at me, talking to me through a clenched jaw. I’d never seen that side of her, and it made me miss the fun and carefree girl that I’d come to love.

  “Alexa, think about what you’re saying to me. There’s no way you can mean that” I replied, stepping in so close to her that her back was up against the fridge.

  “Nick, you need to stop. Don’t come any closer,” she warned, putting her hand on my chest to keep some separation.

  I wasn’t giving up that easily. I grabbed the hand that was on my chest and moved it to my cheek. I hoped that if she touched me, something might come back to her.

  She tried to pull her hand away, but I wouldn’t let her. I knelt down just a little and pushed my hips into hers.

  “Nick, let me go,” she whispered.

  Alexa was breathing heavily now. I wasn’t sure if it was because she was scared of me, even though I was trying to be as non-threatening as possible, or if it was because she was turned on.

  If it was the latter, I wanted to find out. She was wearing a dress, so I took my hand and ran it up on the inside of her leg. Her body moved with my touch.

  “I wish you would understand, Alexa, that I love you so much, and it’s impossible for me to just let you go that easily. Without you in my life, it feels like a part of me has died,” I whispered into her ear as I started to rub at her panties with my fingers.

  I thought she was enjoying it. I was waiting for her to turn and moan into my ear like she’d done so many times before. Instead, I heard her begin to sob.

  What in the fuck was I thinking? How could I have actually thought that would have worked? I was trying to seduce her into taking me back and instead, I only made her more afraid of me than she already was. I knew I fucked things up even more so I let her go and stepped away from her. She cowered on the floor, looking horrified.

  “I’m so sorry, Alexa. I didn’t mean for any of that to happen,” I told her, sincerely meaning it.

  I wasn’t sure what had come over me. The actions I was taking were all wrong. I felt like a monster. I shouldn’t have even been there. I turned around and ran from the apartment.

  17

  Nick

  I felt as though my soul was being tormented. I was being eaten up by guilt. How could I have been so stupid to have frightened her again?

  All I wanted to do was talk to her and show her that I cared about her. How hard can something like that be?

  Apparently, it’s pretty fucking hard because I managed to screw it up yet again. I knew I’d ruined my chance and Alexa was never going to be mine again.

  Not wanting to go home to my apartment to sit by myself, I drove around the streets of Minnesota with no particular destination in mind. I was just trying to get her off my mind.

  Somehow, I ended up at the same seedy strip club Curtis had told me about not long after I was released. I wasn’t interested in watching the girls dance.

  Instead, I grabbed a seat at the bar and started downing shots. Typically, it would have taken me a ton of alcohol to get drunk, but I hadn’t drunk since Alexa, and I had gotten together. She wasn’t really into drinking all that much.

  The alcohol was quickly doing its job, the buzz making my body feel numb. It wasn’t enough, though.

  It was my heart that I wanted to go numb.

  I wanted to be able to not care at all. I wanted everything that I was thinking to disappear from my brain. I wanted to forget that Alexa ever existed or, at the very least, not care about her anymore. I wanted to forget about the way she felt when I held her in my arms. I wanted to forget how it felt when she touched me.

  No matter how much I wanted to forget, it was impossible to do. Every time I closed my eyes, I could hear the sound of her laughter and see her face smiling at me.

  I missed the way she and I could joke around. I wanted that back more than anything.

  What was I supposed to do, though? She made it clear that she didn’t want anything to do with me.

  “Hey big guy, it’s been a while,” said a throaty voice standing behind me.

  I turned slowly on my barstool to see who in the hell was talking to me. It was the girl that I’d hooked up with the last time I was in there.

  I didn’t invite her to join me, but she took a seat next to me anyway. She flashed a smile at me while casually grazing my arm with her fingers as she sat.

  “Can I get another drink?” I yelled at the bartender.

  “I think you’ve had enough. I’m cutting you off,” he replied smugly.

  I must have been slurring my words pretty severely at that point because, most of the time, people can’t tell when I’m drunk.

  I wanted to argue with him and tell him that I was okay but decided against it. Technically, I wasn’t even supposed to be drinking and I sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be in a strip club.

  Both would have violated my parole and could have sent my ass back to prison. Instead, I pulled out my wallet and paid for my drinks.

  “You leaving already?” the girl asked as I started making my way towards the door. “I was hoping you’d stick around a little longer. Maybe we could have a repeat of last time.”

  She stood up next to me, leaning into me with her hands slowly moving up my chest. The bartender looked over and rolled his eyes. When I looked down at her, all I could see was Alexa.

  “We could have a little fun,” I mumbled. “Why don’t we go somewhere we can have a little privacy.”

  “Sure thing, sweetheart. You remember where the rooms are, right?”

  “Yeah, I know where they are, but that’s not where I want to go. I don’t want to be here at all,” I told her, walking out the door. She followed behind, stopping as soon as she got outside.

  “I can’t leave. I’ve gotta work tonight,” she said.

  “Look, honey, if it’s money you want, I’ve got it,” I said, pulling my wallet out of my back pocket and holding it up in front of her. “You should probably take me up on my offer.”

  The stripper stood in the parking lot, trying to figure out what she should do.

  “Okay. Can you hang out for twenty minutes? I’ll meet you back
out here then.”

  “Fine but try to hurry.”

  I waited in my truck before she finally showed up carrying her things. I grabbed her hand while she was getting in, helping her in.

  “So where are we headed?”

  I didn’t answer her. I just put my truck in gear and drove back to my place. I hated my apartment, but this girl was nothing more than a typical stripper. I wasn’t trying to impress her.

  I walked into the apartment, with her right behind me, her high heels clicking loudly with each step she took.

  Inside my apartment, I went into my bedroom and opened the closet door. There were some things I wanted to grab before things went any further. I gathered what I needed and arranged them out onto the bed.

  “So now that I’m here with you, how much are we talking?” the stripper asked.

  “I’m paying you $300, and for that, you’ll do what I ask.”

  “Three-hundred bucks? What do I have to do to earn that kind of money.”

  “You can start but shutting the fuck up and putting this stuff on,” I told her, pointing to the bed.

  She looked confused when she took a closer look. On the bed, I had sat out a red sweater and a bottle of perfume.

  “So you’re going to pay me $300 to wear some clothes and perfume? What’s the catch man?” she asked as she pulled the sweater over the dress she was wearing, followed by a couple of squirts of the perfume.

  “The catch is that you have to do things exactly as I tell you to. You got it?”

  My voice was hard and cold as I was telling her what she had to do and I didn’t even care. She looked at me like I was some sort of creep and, at the time, maybe that’s what I was being. It didn’t matter, though. This wasn’t about her. It was all about me.

  “So who do you want me to be tonight?” she asked as I sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Your name is Alexa, just like last time,” I responded.

  “Alright, sweetheart. If that’s what you want, that’s what you’re going to get.”

  “Don’t call me sweetheart. She isn’t into shit like that. You have to talk like her. She only calls me Nick. None of that sweetheart or honey bullshit. Nick and nothing else.”

  “Fine Nick, that’s what I’ll call you.”

  “Your voice is too deep. She doesn’t have all that bass in her voice. Her voice is higher and more feminine. Just make your voice higher and get over here.”

  I spent the next hour going over the rules and telling her all the things she needed to say and do. She protested a bit, telling me that she wasn’t going to remember everything I was telling her to do.

  If she wanted my money, she was going to do everything exactly as I told her.

  “You know, this isn’t going to be a one-time thing, right?” I asked, drawing a look of concern from her. “I want you to come over to my apartment every single night this week. As soon as you get off work, I want you over here. I want you here wearing this exact outfit and wearing this exact perfume. I want you to act the way she acted. I want you to talk the way she talked. I want you to be here.”

  “Don’t you think this is a little weird, Nick?”

  “No Alexa, I don’t,” I replied, oblivious to the fact that I was losing my mind. “You don’t even have to knock when you get here. Just walk in and ask me about my day and tell me about yours. I don’t want to hear about any of that stripper shit. I want to know how your day working at the gas station was. If you do these things, you’ll get paid every time.”

  She nodded her head in agreement.

  “Good. Now turn around,” I said once I was done telling her everything she needed to know.

  She did exactly as I asked without hesitation. She faced the wall while I stood up and turned off the lights, leaving nothing but the faint moonlight coming through the windows.

  The lights being off allowed me to forget who I was actually in the room with, giving me a more authentic experience.

  I crept up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist. She didn’t have the same curvy shape that Alexa had, but it would have to do. I rested my head on her shoulder, breathing in the smell of the perfume from her neck.

  “Thank you, Alexa. Thank you so much for giving me one more chance.”

  “You don’t have to thank me,” she said as she made her voice higher as I had requested. “I’m yours, Nick. I’m not going anywhere. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Alexa. I love you so much.”

  I pushed her hair to the side and began kissing her neck. It must have tickled because she laughed and tried pulling away from me. I wasn’t going to let her go, though. Not this time. I held her right where I wanted her.

  Before she could say another word, I reached up under her dress, grabbed her panties and pulled them down before plunging my fingers into her pussy. There was just one problem. She wasn’t the slightest bit wet.

  This wasn’t right.

  Alexa was always wet anytime I touched her. It seemed that just being in my presence was enough to have her ready to go. This bitch was bone dry.

  She was ruining everything!

  That was the moment I snapped out of it. What the hell was I thinking? There was nobody who was going to be able to take Alexa’s place, especially not some second-rate stripper.

  “You need to get out,” I yelled, catching her by surprise.

  “What? Get out? What do you mean get out?”

  “I mean get out of my apartment. This was a mistake.”

  “How in the fuck am I supposed to get home?”

  “Take the money. I don’t want it. Just leave!”

  I hurried her to the door, locking it behind her before I jumped into the shower. I felt like I had to cleanse myself of what I’d just done. It was stupid of me to think that my loneliness could be cured by creating some kind of clone of Alexa.

  She was irreplaceable.

  I needed the real thing. I needed my Alexa back. I needed to show her that I loved her and let her know that, no matter what, I was going to fight for her because she was worth it.

  18

  Alexa

  The summer was extremely long. I was going to be advancing to store manager by the end of the year, so I had a lot of things to keep me busy at work but the evenings weren’t very much fun.

  I wasn’t hanging out with Kim and Curtis all that much anymore. It was weird to be over there and not say anything to Kim about Nick. She’d ask all the time, but I never wanted to talk about it. Eventually, I found it best to keep my distance.

  Once the summer was coming to an end, and my work schedule was beginning to get back to normal, Nick started to pop up again. Nearly every afternoon when I returned home from work, Nick would be sitting on a bench between my apartment and the apartment next door.

  There was no way to miss him.

  I walked by him as I made my way to the door.

  At first, his mere presence scared the shit out of me. I had no idea what he was truly capable of.

  I didn’t think he wanted to hurt me. He’d had plenty of chances to do that if that’s what he wanted to do. Still, I watched plenty of crime shows on television, and that alone was enough to make me wonder whether or not I was safe.

  For the first couple of weeks, I told him to leave me alone and to just go home. He would get up and leave, only to be sitting in the same place the next day. I threatened to call the cops and have a restraining order placed against him if he came back.

  Even that didn’t stop him.

  Of course, I never called the police or applied for a restraining order. As upset as he had made me, I didn’t want him to have any trouble with the law, especially because he was out on parole. I didn’t want to be the reason he ended up back in prison.

  Being too nice to people has always been one of my most significant problems, and there I was, being a lot nicer to Nick than I probably should have been. I couldn’t help it, though. That’s just the kind of person I am. It was true that when Ni
ck lied to me, he’d hurt me badly.

  There was a time when I never wanted to see him again. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. Over time, however, I started to rethink things. I began to evaluate what my feelings were.

  The thoughts that Nick had only gotten with me so he could use me and manipulate me were beginning to slowly fade away. I started coming to the realization that his feelings for me were real, even though he went about everything in the worst possible way. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was what those true feelings were precisely.

  Did he love me or was he obsessed with me?

  I had no clue. The only thing I knew was that he told me he wasn’t going to let me go without a fight, and he was proving that to me.

  Nick told me every day that he loved me and begged for me to sit down and talk to him. He told me that all he wanted was to have me back in his life. I wasn’t ready to talk to him. Not yet anyway.

  Instead, I ignored him, walking into my apartment without even looking in his direction. I hoped that if I ignored him, it might make it easier for him to let me go.

  Maybe he would realize that I’d meant what I said, and he’d be able to move on with his life. I didn’t want him to spend every day outside of my apartment just to try to talk to me. I didn’t want that for either one of us.

  More importantly, however, I didn’t want him to realize how hard it was for me to walk right by him on a daily basis and not talk to him.

  There was a giant pat of me that was still very much pissed off about the lies he’d told me. I was petrified that I’d been with an ex-convict and didn’t have a clue. It wasn’t like he was arrested for some kind of non-violent crime.

  He’d been in prison for attempted murder.

  That was one thing I never understood. I’d never so much as seen him lose his temper so how he ended up in a bar fight was beyond me.

  I had a battle going on inside my heart. The part of me that was still mad at him was fighting with the part of me that still loved him. The fact that he was obviously such a hardened man but still let me in was not lost on me. It probably took him a lot to let his guard down, especially after what he’d been through.