But all I can focus on is the name.
“Zoe? The girl from the diner? I asked you once about her, and you made me feel stupid—like I was crazy for thinking anything was amiss.”
I stare at him, and he drops his gaze, ashamed.
“Fuck you, Jude. Get out.”
“Can you at least lie down before I go?” he asks simply. “I’ll stay in the kitchen until Michel gets here. I’ll have him take you to the clinic. Please.”
“Call Michel and then Get. Out.”
My words are like ice pellets, and they are shaved from my heart.
Without a word, Jude stands up and walks away.
I wait until I hear the bedroom door close, and then I sob.
51
Jude
I don’t even remember driving to the park after I leave the house. I know Michel is probably already on his way to Reflections with Corinne, and I am so furious that I can’t even see.
My thoughts come in red waves, like ink or blood or pain.
When I arrive, Zoe is already in the gazebo, wearing a short skirt and a white lace bustier. If the look she’s going for is virginal, she failed. She’s anything but. She knows it, and I know it.
“Hey,” she greets me with a smile, but it dies on her lips as she looks at my face. “What’s wrong?”
“You are,” I growl, standing over her. “And you know why.”
Her eyes widen, and she tries to feign surprise, but then she gives up.
“You mean...my gift for Corinne? Knowledge is power, Jude. She deserved to know.”
“The joke is on you, then,” I tell her, and I can’t help but get a little satisfaction from this. “She doesn’t remember. She’s blocked it out.”
“Jesus, your wife is a head case,” Zoe says, shaking her head. “God damn. What a freak.”
“You’re a fucking bitch,” I tell her. “Don’t speak about my wife. Don’t even say her name.” My hands clench and unclench. She eyes my hands, and she smiles.
“Do you want to hurt me, Jude?” she asks, her voice velvety smooth. She takes a step toward me. “Do you want to wrap those hands around my neck and squeeze?”
God help me, I do.
“You’d like that too much,” I answer.
She smiles again. “Oh, how you know me.”
“I wish I didn’t,” I tell her, and I grab her arm, and my fingers sink into her flesh, and she flinches, and I like it. I like knowing it hurts her. If I could kill her and get away with it, I think I would. In this moment, I would.
I’ve never hated someone so much.
“I like that,” she tells me, and I think she probably does.
“You’re such a twisted bitch, you probably do.”
“Such language.” She clucks, and I want to throw her on the ground.
The fury is all I can see.
The next few minutes pass in snippets, because my anger takes over, and my rational thought disappears. It’s gone, like it never existed, and in its place is rage like I’ve never felt before.
Zoe takes a step and laughs.
I grab her arm again and shove her backward onto the picnic table.
Her eyes widen, and then she smiles that strange smile.
“Have you ever fury-fucked someone?” she whispers, and then she spreads her legs, and she’s not wearing underwear.
“I hate you,” I say through my teeth.
She throws her head back and laughs.
She stands up and slaps me across the face, as hard as she can. I don’t even feel the pain. I just feel white-hot light pass across my eyes, clouding my vision.
I grab her and shake her. My fingers cutting into her flesh, and God that feels so good.
“How could you fuck with Corinne?” I growl at her. I shake her again, and her teeth snap together. I’ve never put my hands on a woman in such a way, never never never, and I don’t care now. All I want to do is hurt her like she’s hurt me, like she’s hurt my wife.
“You wanted me so much?” I ask, shoving her backward, and my fingers cut into her waist as I spin her around and push her against the table. Her thighs are pushed against the wood and she bends, shoving her skirt up to her waist.
“Yes...” she moans. “Do it. Fuck me. Make it hurt. Make me hurt.”
I do want to make it hurt. I want to punish her.
It’s about punishing now. And I want to.
She has to know.
She has to know she’s wrong.
I grab her neck and push her face into the wooden table, pushing it into the wood, hard harder harder.
I don’t feel sexual.
I feel vengeful.
In this moment, I feel powerful, like I’m inflicting punishment or revenge. I push against her, pondering for one moment, the idea of fury-fucking her. Of making her hurt. Of pounding into her until she begs me to stop.
I push against her hard, through our clothing, harder, harder, and then, from the haze of my anger, from the rage, I realize she’s moaning.
The sick bitch likes it.
I stop moving.
I’m still.
I’m frozen.
She looks over her shoulder, up at me, and blood streams from her lip, from being forced against the table. Her cheekbones are red and scraped, and her lipstick is smeared all over her face, making her look grotesque.
“Fuck me,” she says, breathless. “Do it, Jude. More. Slap me across the face. I like it hard.”
“You don’t deserve to like it,” I tell her, and I’m coming to my senses now.
But then she slaps me again, hard.
And I slap her back.
God help me, I slap her back.
Her head snaps to the side, and her hair is askew. A patch of blond shows through against the brown. It shouldn’t surprise me that her long hair was a wig all along. She smiles slowly, a grin that makes its way across her clown mouth.
“Again,” she whispers.
And I don’t know what happens or why, but I do.
I slap her again, harder this time.
Her cheekbone is red, and it will bruise, and I like it. I like knowing that.
It’s when she asks for it yet again that I catch hold of myself.
I take a breath.
I let it out.
I’m out of control.
I’m out of control.
I don’t want to be here.
I don’t want my dick anywhere near this girl.
Not anymore.
She smiles, and she looks more fucked up than ever, her red lipstick a slash across her chin, her hair crooked and mussed from my fist, her cheekbone starting to swell.
“Fuck my mouth, Jude,” she breathes, and she shoves her face into my crotch. Her mouth seeks me out, warm and hot and needy, and tries to suck me, tries to lap at me, to pull me into her mouth, but I stagger backward, trying to clear my head.
I suck in a cold breath.
“Stop,” I snap at her as she tries to touch me. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“Fuck my mouth, Jude. Punish me. You know I’ve been terrible. I’m a terrible, awful person, and I deserve to be humiliated. Show me how pathetic I am. Do it.”
She grabs at me again and tries once again to pull me into her mouth, her mouth warm on my pants as she scrambles for my zipper.
“You’re fucking pathetic,” I tell her, and I’m so so angry. I’m so sick to my stomach. “Never come near me or my wife again.”
I whirl around to leave, but her next words leave me cold.
“I own you, Jude Cabot.”
I turn back around, slowly, slowly.
She’s watching me, waiting, satisfied.
“You will do what I want. I own you. I have bruises on my face, scratches on my arms. You have my skin under your fingernails, I’m sure. One wrong move from you, and I’ll call the police. And tell them you attacked me. I barely fought you off.”
I can’t wrap my mind around that.
I’m stunned.
I’m so fucked.
She sees it when I realize. I open my mouth and then close it.
“I’m not a rapist,” I tell her, and I’m so numb.
“I know that, and you know that. But that’s not what it looks like,” she says, and she’s so smug that I want to slap the expression off her face.
“I’ll have a bruise on my face from you, too,” I tell her. “How will you explain that?”
She shrugs, not concerned. “Defense injuries. I was trying to fight you off.”
“You’re a cunt,” I tell her.
She smiles. “I’ve heard that before.”