Angry God by L.J. Shen

Iwoke up alone.

Vaughn’s warmth had evaporated right along with his hard frame. I scrubbed the sleep out of my eyes and sat upright, trying to ignore the painful echo of Papa’s whispers to Arabella last night. There was no mistaking what had been happening there. He’d told her to get off of him. That meant she was on top of him—and not to play chicken fight, presumably.

I stretched, trying not to worry about what last night with Vaughn had meant. He’d said I was his girlfriend, but Vaughn was a master manipulator, and had many reasons to say things—many reasons that had nothing to do with his actual feelings.

I stood up and opened my door, knowing I’d find a steaming cup of coffee and a basket of something sweet. This time, it was a tray of muffins. The scent of banana bread and blueberries wafted in the air, and my mouth watered as I grabbed the tray and coffee, ushering them to my new drafting table. I was grateful my sister had kept up her daily tradition. I set everything aside and called her.

“Heya,” I said when she answered.

“Hey! What are you up to? I was meaning to call you yesterday to check on you.” She sounded like she was out and about in the big city. A bit breathless.

I ran my hand over the table, mentally going through the pros and cons of salvaging my assemblage statue.

Pro: It was a magnificent piece. It was going to help me put a mark in this industry. There was something iconic and different about it.

Con: Putting this piece out in the open meant admitting to feeling things I swore I wouldn’t feel, to a man I swore I’d never even acknowledge.

“How’s London?” I asked.

Listening to Poppy’s voice soothed me. I didn’t know how I could break her heart by telling her about Papa and Arabella, but I knew I had to.

“Lovely, albeit gray. And Carlisle?”

“Same.” I chuckled, picking invisible lint from my PJs. “Listen, I know you’re busy; I just wanted to say thank you for all the chocolate and pastries. Aside from the type two diabetes I’m bound to have by the end of these six months, it’s a sweet gesture, and it reminds me someone cares, that somebody is thinking about me every day.”

Silence stretched on the other side of the line.

Should I have said something sooner? Probably. It’d been months since she started doing it. I hadn’t wanted to embarrass her by talking about it. This was obviously a mistake. A gesture better left unspoken.

“Look, I—” I started, at the same time she began speaking.

“It isn’t me.” Her words came out in a rush.

“What?” I paused.

“It isn’t me who’s been sending you the sweets.”

“But I thanked you on my birthday. You didn’t seem confused.”

“Yes, I wasn’t. I sent you a teddy bear, and I was planning to give you your real gift later that evening. But I never sent you any sweets, Lenny. It’s just now that the penny dropped. You’ve been getting many gifts you thought were from me, but I can’t take credit for them. Can you guess who it might be?”

Could I?

It wasn’t Pope or Papa. They were both too busy with their lives, and anyway, it wasn’t their style. Uncle Harry and I were close, but not that close. This took commitment. Obsession. This took discipline and care. I didn’t know many people who were capable of those things, who would keep this a secret and not mention it.

I knew one person like that, actually.

But it made no sense at all. This dated back to our time in Todos Santos. Impossible. But then…

“As for your birthday gift, my sweet…” The memory of his voice coated every part of my body. It had been a hint.

“Lenny?” Poppy probed. “Who could it be?”

Something pricked my thumb just then, dangling from the edge of the drafting table. I frowned, sucking on the blood and leaning forward to get a better look.

A crown of thorns.Elaborate, thick, and completely perfect in every way. For my ruined sculpture. Jesus, he must’ve worked all night to make it happen. Did he even sleep?

“I have to go.” My voice quaked with emotion. “I’m sorry, Poppy. I really must. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay…you’re not angry, are you?” she asked.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I was going to give her some bad news, but I didn’t even have it in me to do that anymore.

“No, Poppy. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, actually.”

I ran the length of the corridor, down to the cellar. I had to tell Vaughn I knew, ask him why he’d done that. It was ten in the morning, and everyone was in class. The clinks of my boots thudded in the empty hallway. I got to the first door of the two leading to Vaughn’s cellar and raised my fist to knock, but I heard a familiar voice coming from inside.

“…will never forgive you. I know my niece, and she is good. Pure. Her artistic nature is not to be mistaken for insanity, as in your case.”

If I had to guess, I’d say my uncle and Vaughn were standing on the stairway leading to the second door of the cellar. It made sense. Vaughn wouldn’t let anyone see his statue.

“She’ll have no way of knowing,” Vaughn replied.

“I’ll make sure she does. Not a difficult task, I assure you, with or without my laptop. I can go to her right now.”

“I don’t care,” Vaughn said after a beat of silence.

What were they talking about? I could feel that things were tense between them yesterday, but I’d been too occupied to poke.

“Yes, you do,” Uncle Harry said through a smile I could hear. His voice was low. Mocking. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Vaughn Spencer. In love. And with a timid English rose, no less.”

My heart rioted in my chest. They were talking about me. Uncle Harry regarded me dismissively, like I wasn’t worthy of Vaughn’s affection—very unlike the Uncle Harry I knew, who’d taken me to galleries and carried me on his shoulders when I was younger.

Vaughn let out a bitter laugh. “I’m not in love with your niece.”

“You just happened to kiss her publicly?”

I could practically hear the shrug in Vaughn’s voice. “I see a lot of girls, publicly or not.”

“You let them suck your cock casually. Yesterday you were afraid I’d hurt her.” Yet another taunt left Harry’s lips. “Don’t pretend like we haven’t been keeping tabs on each other over the years. I know exactly what you do, and who you do it with. No. Lenny’s different. Plus, you aren’t the only one fond of snooping around—got a bit of quality time with your nightstand drawer while you were playing French lover. Over twelve thousand quid in chocolate and brownies in the last few months? Are you trying to kill the girl?” He let out a humorless laugh.

My stomach twisted. Everything inside me screamed to pound on the door and demand answers.

At the same time, I knew both of them, and I had no doubt I couldn’t pry secrets out of them with theatrics.

“Stay away from your niece. I mean it.”

“I don’t take orders from you. I mean that, too.”

“Screw you, Harry.”

“Almost did, lad. Almost did. It’s not too late, by the way. I like your fire.”

“When I fuck you,” Vaughn growled, low and untamed, his voice seeping bone deep, “it’s not your ass I’m going to break. It’s your spine.”

A loud thud filled the stairway. Harry whimpered in pain, and it sounded like his body had collapsed against the stone stairs.

I closed my eyes, drawing a shaky breath as the pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place, each of them clicking and locking against one another with chilly finality.

The stolen internship. The threats. The hatred. The taunts. The secret Vaughn thought we shared.

Turns out, we had very different ideas of what had happened in that darkroom.

I turned and ran, my legs failing me twice before I finally made it to my room.

No, Uncle Harry, I thought bitterly. I wouldn’t blame him if he kills you.

Three nights passed before Vaughn came to me.

On the fourth one, he crawled into my bed while I pretended to be asleep and kissed my lips. It felt like goodbye. Maybe for him it was. But not for me. I opened my eyes midway through the kiss, staring back at him. He pulled away, his slanted eyes widening in surprise.

“Whoa. Should’ve kept that balloon floating tall on the last day of school. You are a creep.”

I grinned, stretching to try to ease the tension in my shoulders. Vaughn’s history with Harry explained so much about his behavior. My heart was in tatters just thinking about it, so I’d given him the time he needed, letting him come to me. I’d spent the last few days heaving into the toilet, trying to stop my tears from running.

“Kiss me, arsehole,” I demanded, tapping my lips.

Vaughn leaned down and gave me an obedient peck.

“You’re grinning. Why are you grinning?” He frowned.

Why, indeed? My father was a total perv, my uncle a child molester, and I was stupidly in love with the boy I hated.

The boy I’d never really hated.

The boy I’d convinced myself I hated so I would never have to face the feelings I felt right now: sheer fright that he was going to snatch my heart from my chest and stomp on it with his army boots.

“Because I realized something in the days you were away.”

“I—” he started, but I put my finger to his lips.

I didn’t want his apologies.

He perched his forearm on my pillow, staring down at me, his lips naturally pouty to perfection. “I’m listening.”

“You are the one who keeps sending me all the chocolate, brownies, and coffee every morning.”

He kept staring at me, like he was waiting for the punch line. I swallowed. What if I got it all wrong? But of course it was him. Even Harry had said he saw the receipts.

I cupped his cheek, bringing him to my lips again, whispering against his mouth, “To what do I owe these morning gifts, Vaughn Spencer?”

His breath was ragged and shaky as he grabbed my jaw, angling my face to his.

“I am hell bound, and you are heaven sent. You’re the first girl I ever looked at and thought…I want to kiss her. I want to own her. I wanted you to look at me the way you look at your fantasy book—with a mixture of awe, anticipation, and warmth. I gave you a brownie, hoping you’d remember me sweetly, praying the sugar rush would spin a positive feel around that vacation. I remember how you looked at me when you saw me killing jellyfish. I never wanted you to look at me like that ever again.”

“I won’t.” I shook my head, tears falling down my cheeks. “I would never look at you like that again.”

He licked his lips. “You did. For an entire year. But somehow, it made shit bearable. It felt like proving a point to myself—that you weren’t worth the work, that we were doomed.”

“We’re not,” I insisted, swallowing back the L-word, which kept rising in my throat, demanding to be said.

I didn’t want to freak him out, but I felt it. I felt it humming in my body, threatening to burst forth.

“We are.” He dropped his forehead to mine, shaking his head. Our noses brushed together. “Fuck, we are, and soon I won’t be good enough for you. But tonight? Tonight I can convince myself I still am.”

“Tell me everything. I want to know.” Tears ran over my cheeks now.

I kissed the tip of his nose. The corner of his lips. His cheek. Forehead. Eyes. Everything about him screamed boy all of a sudden, and things I’d thought I could never forgive—the way he’d acted toward me, Arabella sucking him off, him snatching the internship—seemed so trivial now.

He shook his head, pressing his hot lips to mine. His eyes shone. Even in the dark, I could see how close he was to letting it all out.

“I would never put you in that position.”

“I’m asking to be in this position.”

“Let’s pretend tomorrow never comes. Because for me, it doesn’t.”

I was about to answer when his mouth descended on mine. I wrapped my arms around his neck, raking my fingernails along his working muscles. They bulged as he removed my top and jammies.

Rain began to drum on the windows of my room. It had been an exceptionally dry fall, and as winter wrapped around the castle, I was expecting more storms. But it seemed eerily quiet. Like nature held its breath in anticipation, just like us. The cards were about to be revealed, people were going to get hurt, and the thunderclouds let the rain loose.

Vaughn kissed his way from my lips to my jaw and down to my neck, sucking one of my nipples into his mouth. My legs wrapped around his waist in a vise.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he moaned into my nipple, flicking it with his tongue. “Funny,” he murmured against my flesh as his lips moved back up, while he kicked his trousers down. “Talented as fuck.” His mouth dipped into the hollow place between my neck and shoulder, tasting me. “And mine,” he finished, thrusting into me in one go, so deep and carnal, I arched my back and let out a yelp. “A million times over, forever mine.”

He moved inside me in smooth, continuous thrusts that left me clawing at his back with impending insanity. Everything about what we did felt delicious and final and completely different from our previous encounters. This was not Vaughn taking his anger out on me or the time we lost our V-cards together. This was Vaughn apologizing for the past decade, and for what was still to come.

And it was me accepting that I couldn’t keep him.

I couldn’t ask him not to do what he was about to do. I just needed closure before he left. Because he was leaving. All this time, I thought he’d stolen the internship to spite me. Turns out, he had a much bigger plan. I was just a bystander.

A casualty. Collateral damage.

After he came inside me and rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling, I found his hand under the duvet and squeezed.

“Why do you always do that?” he croaked. “Stare at the ceiling. What’s so interesting about it? I always wanted to ask.”

It warmed my heart that he cared. That he wondered. I smiled sadly. “That’s where I keep all my memories of her. They’re written in all the ceilings, of all the places all over the world.” I pointed at my blank ceiling. “At night, I pluck a memory out, relish it, play it like a video, then put it back. I never run out.”

“You,” he whispered, kissing my cheek, “are so effortlessly yourself.”

That was the greatest compliment someone could give me. I turned to face him in bed. “I know what you’re about to do. I just need to hear your story.”

He swallowed.

“The minute it’s done, I’m leaving. I can’t let you waste your life with someone like me. You deserve more, and if trouble ever finds me, it sure as fuck isn’t going to touch you.”

Some things you just need to power through. Losing each other before we’d even had the chance to have one another seemed to be one of them. I didn’t fight him.

“Tell me,” I whispered. “I want to know why you’re leaving.”

He did.