Church. Read online

  “And now you’re going to tell me everything I want to know about our new friend.”

  THAT NIGHT, EMMA SAT cross-legged on Church’s bed, his laptop balanced in her lap. She chewed on a strand of her hair while she scrolled through different social media sites. He was in the kitchen, getting them something to drink.

  “I still don’t understand,” she started speaking when he entered the room. “Why do you have your sights set on this girl? I mean, honestly Church – I don’t like most people, but this chick … she’s nice. Simple. She almost seems wounded. I don’t think she’s had the easy life you think she’s had.”

  “Trust me, she has,” he grunted, walking over and handing her a tumbler. She took a large gulp of the water, then nearly spit it all out when she realized it was mostly vodka, with just a hint of mineral water.

  “What makes you say that?” she coughed, wiping at her chin.

  “I know.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet?” he sighed, putting his own drink on a night stand. “I know all. Lizzie Renny was born and raised in St. Louis. She went to a private all-girls Catholic school until she was sixteen. Then she switched to a public high school. After graduation, she attended St. Louis Community College. This last summer, she moved into student housing here, and has been attending classes at our college since it started.”

  Emma was a little surprised. Church knew an awful lot about this girl. Why did he need her to pretend to be her friend, then?

  What the fuck is it about this girl? That’s the real question.

  “Oookay,” she drawled out, and she took a healthy swig of her drink. “Yeah, I pretty much learned all that at our little lunch date today. I also found out she’s had somewhat of a sheltered upbringing – thanks Catholic school – and a strict mother. Living in the dorms here is the first time she’s ever lived on her own. She’s also scared of her own shadow. I don’t get it. What exactly is it you want to do with her?”

  There was a long pause. He was standing at the side of his bed, staring at the wall. He disappeared sometimes, off into his own thoughts, to a place she couldn’t reach. After about thirty seconds, he blinked to attention, glanced at her, then picked up his drink.

  “You really don’t get it,” he agreed. “I grew up with a woman who thought beating me was the best form of education. This girl … she had everything. Everything. She’s pretty and she’s happy and she’s loved. Are you loved, Emma? Has anyone ever loved you?”

  She shrunk back into the pillows, as if she’d been struck. She frowned down into her glass.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Exactly. She’s been given love her whole life, and she takes it for granted. Loved and adored, and she whines and she whimpers. Can you imagine the kind of person you’d be if someone had just loved you while you were growing up? You’re goddamn amazing right now – you’d be fucking unstoppable if you’d just been loved. And she pisses on that opportunity. Cries over it. Fuck her. She doesn’t deserve it. So I’m going to take it away.”

  Wow. Church had a lot more hang ups than he let on. Emma finished her drink, then leaned over to put her glass on the floor.

  “So because you got fucked out of a proper childhood, poor little Lizzie gets to pay the price.”

  “Someone has to – why not her?”

  “Doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Life doesn’t seem fair, Emma. Why did she get parents who loved her? Why was I born with a superior intellect and inferior empathy? Why were you stuck with a mother who hated you and men who … well, I guess we haven’t covered that yet, have we?”

  Emma sat upright again.

  “Okay, so you got screwed while Lizzie got blessed, fine. What exactly is it you want to do to her? I’m somewhat of an expert at ruining lives – Margo has done it enough to me. Wanna make it so she can never rent an apartment? Wanna get her kicked out the dorms? Kicked out of school? Out of town?” she started babbling. Church smirked and folded his arms across his chest. He wasn’t buying it.

  “I already know what I want to do to her. What I want to know right now is what happened to you.”

  Noooooo, that was not okay. Emma pulled her lips between her teeth and bit down. She wanted to know everything about him, but she wasn’t quite ready to share all of herself.

  Church was simple, really. Easy. A quasi-sociopath who wanted to hurt people. A lone wolf who for whatever reason saw fit to grace her with his attention.

  But Emma was difficult. She was truly fucked up. Truly broken. And most of the time, when simple met difficult, it didn’t end well.

  Yet he was staring at her in that way she already knew all too well. “No” would not be an acceptable answer. She looked away from him.

  “Am I allowed to smoke while we talk?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll have to deal with me taking smoke breaks, then.”

  He sighed and crawled onto the bed next to her.

  “Hold off for as long as you can,” he suggested. “Now. Tell me all your dirty secrets, Emma Hartley.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “My mother used to tell me I was ugly.”

  “Everyone is entitled to their opinion.”

  “She said I looked just like my dad,” Emma kept going. “But she said it like it was an insult. He wasn’t that ugly. I mean, she did fuck him, after all.”

  “You look nothing like your mother.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “So you must take mostly after your father.”

  “I do.”

  “And you’re exceptionally good looking,” Church continued his break down. “So he must have been attractive, as well.”

  “Exceptionally?” she asked, grinning at him.

  “Sometimes,” he amended his statement. “Mostly when you’re not talking.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to know all this,” she pointed out. Before she could continue on with her story, though, they were interrupted.

  “Awww, isn’t this nice?”

  They both looked up to see Jerry tapping on the door. Emma stared at him. She wasn’t wearing any pants and was sitting cross-legged on Church’s bed. She hadn’t realized Jerry was even home.

  Jerry was easy to forget.

  “Yes,” a voice grumbled from the darkness, and Margo appeared at his side. “It’s so … nice.”

  She glared into the room. Emma grinned back at her.

  “You’re looking particularly lovely this evening, Mother. Big plans?”

  “We’re going into the city,” Jerry answered. “It’s so good to see you two helping each other. I think this is a really good thing, kids. Paul can help you with your grades, Emma, and maybe in return, you can introduce him to some of your girl friends.”

  HA HA HA dee HA HA.

  “Maybe, Jerry. Maybe.”

  When their parents finally walked away, Emma quickly grabbed her jeans off the floor. She started clawing at her pockets, but Church pulled the material out of her hands. He wrestled her cigarette case free and tossed the denim back onto the floor. Then he held her cancer sticks hostage in his hands.

  “I hate to be rude,” she spoke in a low voice. “But I think your father might be the stupidest men I’ve ever met.”

  “Jerry’ll surprise you.”

  “He wants me to introduce you to my ‘girl friends’, you caught that part, right?”

  “Well, I am a catch, and he is my father.”

  “Church … we fuck on a regular basis. How could he not know that?”

  “Because I only fuck you when he’s not home or not awake or when I’m sure you won’t make any sounds. Stop trying to get out of this – finish your story.”

  Emma groaned and raked her fingers through her hair. When the front door slammed shut, she finally started speaking again.

  “I don’t really remember my father very clearly. He would be nice to me sometimes, then hit me other times. Then he started h
itting Margo, which I guess was crossing the line. She left him in the middle of the night. We’ve never spoken to him since. That’s pretty much it.”

  “Like hell that’s it. How did he hit you? What all exactly did he do?”

  “I don’t want to talk about all that.”

  “Pity, because I do.”

  She struggled to breathe. She knew he wanted to hear all this, was happy he wanted to know more about her, but that didn’t make it any less hard for her. Church was like a computer. Things went in, he collected data, and he could read it all, interpret it. But he didn’t necessarily understand all of it, and especially not when it involved feelings. He was very good at mimicking emotions when he wanted to – he could smile, laugh, probably even cry, on command. That didn’t mean he knew why other people felt the need to do those things. She was scared he wouldn’t understand her. Scared he would realize she was even crazier than he already thought.

  “I’ll tell you all about it when you start reminiscing about mommy dearest beating you with a wooden spoon,” she snapped.

  Silence. Then a creak. A shift. He looked down at her.

  “It wasn’t a wooden spoon,” he finally said. “It was a cutting board.”

  Hmmm, now there was an interesting twist. Emma couldn’t decide whether or not she was impressed. What kind of cutting board were they talking about? Like one of those decorative ones you serve cheese on? Or the big mother fucker you pull out on Thanksgiving? She supposed neither was good.

  Still, cutting board or no, she was pretty sure she’d had a worse childhood.

  “Sounds like a real charmer, your mom,” she sighed, glancing around. Looking at her hands. She wished she’d painted her nails. Her toes were midnight blue, he’d painted them again the night before; he never offered to do her hands.

  “Yeah. It worked, though.”

  That statement surprised her. Was he endorsing his own abuse? She looked back at him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was fucked up before she started hitting me,” Church said, staring up at the ceiling. “Sometimes I wonder what I’d be like now, if she’d never done it. How many people would I have hurt? The louder I’d scream, the harder she’d hit. When I learned to be silent, the beatings stopped.”

  “She taught you to hide it,” Emma whispered, understanding dawning.

  “She taught me to bury it. Bury everything. Because if one thing gets loose, then who knows what’s next, and suddenly I’m burying co-eds instead of my thoughts and emotions.”

  She frowned, mulling over his statement. There was something wrong with it.

  “But … you talk, now,” she pointed out. “You smile with me. You’ve even laughed once or twice. You touch me.”

  His hand reached out to her and a finger traced down the side of her leg. It was cool in his room, the heater wasn’t working very well. Her skin was a little cold and clammy.

  “I want to touch you right now,” he whispered.

  “You can.”

  “I know.”

  She thought he was going to say more, for a moment. The way he stared at her leg. At her breasts. That look was back in his eyes, like he was really seeing her. Like he was … appreciating her. Then his hand fell away and he turned his gaze elsewhere.

  “You’ve fucked things up. Kind of ruined them,” he sighed. “That’s why I made sure you wouldn’t get kicked out of school – so I can be close to you as much as possible. You hold all the bad parts of me now. When you’re out there just walking around, they’re out there with you, too.”

  Wow. She hadn’t realized that. All his bad parts? What a gift.

  “Now,” he kept talking. “Back to you. Make me understand you, Emma. Why are you the way you are? What did Daddy do to you?”

  “What if …” her voice trailed off.

  “What if what? Are you afraid?”

  She nodded. “If you understand me, you might get bored with me. Then you won’t want to be with me anymore.”

  “What if I promise you that won’t happen?”

  Church didn’t lie. At least not to her. She nodded again.

  “Okay.”

  He leaned over her and cupped her face in his hands. Ah, she loved these kisses from him. She loved anything she could get, really, but these were the best. So gentle, allowing her a glimpse of the heart he pretended didn’t exist. She was seeing more and more of it. Soft lips pressed against her own, with the tiniest hint of bite behind them.

  “I promise if I ever get bored with you, you will never, ever know it,” he whispered against her mouth. It was the best she was going to get from him, she knew, so she took it.

  “My father used to hit me,” she whispered, lifting her eyes to meet his baby blues. He kept his hands on her face and held her stare. “First just a light slap here and there. Then he back handed me. After that, it was anything. He’d beat me up for any reason. For no reason. Sometimes, he’d just hit me. Other times, he’d get me on the ground and kick me. One time he used his belt. Another time his shoe.”

  “And which was your favorite?” Church asked in a breathy voice. She could practically hear his excitement.

  How does he know I had a favorite? How does he know me so well?

  “His hands. When he used his hands,” she replied.

  “When did you know you liked it?”

  Emma chewed on her bottom lip, desperately wanting to change the subject. To hide away. But she couldn’t move, and he wasn’t letting her go, and she was already so far gone with him, she didn’t have a choice.

  “The others,” she managed to cough out. “Husband number two. Then a boyfriend. They would … touch me.”

  “And you didn’t like that.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “But you liked the hitting,” Church answered for her. She nodded. “Why one and not the other?”

  She couldn’t take it anymore. His stare was always so unnerving, even after all the time they’d spent together. It was like she was naked, but not in a good way. He stripped down her soul to its ugliest parts, then made it dance for him. She finally looked away.

  “When someone …” she struggled to find the right words. “When you fuck someone just to fuck, it’s all about you. Not them.”

  “Of course.”

  “You want to get off, you want to come. You’re only thinking of yourself,” she stressed. “So when those other guys would touch me or fuck me or make me touch them, they were doing it to feel good. To feel pleasure. To come. I was just something that was there to help them feel good, just a vessel. If we’d had a dog, they probably would’ve fucked it, too. I didn’t like that, I’m not some fucking dog. Not some fucking animal.”

  “But the beatings,” he said, and she could see his chest rapidly rising and falling.

  “When my father hit me,” she whispered. “It was because he wanted to hurt me. He was only thinking about me. He was completely focused on me. It was like nothing else existed but us. For those moments, he was the center of my universe.” She thought back on what Church had said about fear, and she suddenly understood why they got along so well. “He was my everything. He was my god.”

  Emma had never told anyone that, not any of her therapists or social workers. She knew how awful it was to think that way, knew how bad it sounded. She was fucked up, clearly. But she was functioning, and up until she’d found Church, she’d needed to keep on functioning.

  Now that she had him, though, she didn’t have to worry about functioning anymore. She probably didn’t have to worry about her further descent into madness, either. If she held all his bad parts, well then, she would give him all of hers. He could take them and play with them and dissect them and put them back together any way he wanted, because they belonged to him now. He could just think for her, and she wouldn’t have to worry about anything ever again.

  “Jesus,” he breathed, and his forehead fell to hers. “It’s like I invented you. Where have you been all my life?”


  “In the deepest parts of hell, waiting for you.”

  “Thank you, Emma. Thank you for being perfect.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight and tried not to cry. This was all wrong. Logical Emma knew it and was kicking and screaming. But all Logical Emma had ever done for her was keep her locked in shitty situations. Dark Emma had been the one to make the best of those shitty situations, had been the one to learn how to survive – and even thrive – in them. So fuck Logical Emma. Dark Emma deserved this moment.

  A single tear slid down her cheek.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please love me back.”

  Silence. Then she felt him move. Pull away from her.

  “No,” he responded to her in a loud voice. “But I can give you the next best thing.”

  Emma opened her eyes to find him lighting a cigarette. She was a little stunned for a moment, watching him inhale deeply, then breathe out a huge cloud of smoke. He dropped his free hand onto her bare thigh, rubbing it up and down.

  “What’s the next best thing?” she finally asked him.

  “I will be the brightest sun your little universe ever saw.”

  The hand on her thigh suddenly clamped down, holding her leg immobile. With his other hand, he ground the tip of the burning cigarette into her soft flesh.

  Emma let out a shriek and jerked forward involuntarily. It took everything she had to stop herself from yanking away from him. She bit down on her bottom lip so hard, she tasted blood, and she gripped onto his wrist, digging her fingernails into his skin.

  When he finally lifted the cigarette away, she was sweating and shaking. Still, though, she didn’t pull away. She sagged back against the headboard and tried to catch her breath while Church pulled her leg out, stretching it awkwardly across his lap.

  “I knew it,” he breathed. “The cigarettes. I fucking knew it.”

  “I always wondered,” she panted, shakily pulling her fingers through her hair. “You never said anything, but you must have seen them. I wondered what you thought.”

  Marching down the inside of her right thigh, in an almost perfect line, were eight circular burn marks. Well, nine, now. The original eight were all healed, just puckered pink circles. She hadn’t burned herself in over two years, so the new one really stood out, very red and angry against her creamy skin.