Beautiful Savage

  Copyright © 2020 Lisa Sorbe

  All rights reserved.

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Indie Solutions by Murphy Rae

  Formatting by: Allusion Graphics

  Editing: Jessica Trier

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7344393-0-4

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7344393-1-1 (e-book)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Other Books by Lisa Sorbe

  About the Author

  To those who feel invisible

  Seeing her again, after all these years, was like coming home.

  — November’s Night, Hollis Thatcher

  Most mornings, he’s here.

  Usually alone, he sits at the same table, laptop open with a bowl-ish looking mug of coffee at his elbow, the steam from the hot drink rising up, up, up until it disappears into nothing.

  I’m only here to watch.

  Golden light slants through the grimy window of the coffee shop, warm rays that brighten the right side of his face. The left side is thrown into darkness, a sharp contrast to the half bearing the sun’s muted glow. Thick brows and a dark shock of hair shadow his downturned gaze, though I don’t need to see his eyes to know their color.

  Blue with green striations. Sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, depending on his mood. The left iris is also dotted with flecks of gold, a perfect imperfection only noticeable once you get up close and personal.

  But I remember.

  He wears his age well. Not that thirty-seven is old, of course. But he looks the same. The roundness has been carved from his cheeks and his jaw is sharper, more angular than when he was a boy.

  I say boy, even though the last time I saw him was the day he turned twenty-two. Hardly a boy. Yet, at the time, man didn’t seem to fit, either.

  It certainly fits now.

  I like to think I’ve aged well, too. Wealth has helped, of course. Organic produced squeezed into fresh juice each morning and injectable fillers strategically placed around my lips and brow keep me looking closer to thirty than forty. Luckily, I can afford to hold on to my youth. I guess you could say that’s one perk of the path I chose.

  The chance of being recognized is slim. While I may look twenty-seven as opposed to thirty-seven, my appearance has changed drastically since he saw me last. These days, my skin is fair, my complexion a dewy alabaster compared to the tanning bed bronze I used to sport well into winter, and I traded my strawberry blonde waves for sleek platinum strands over a decade ago. My body is equally as sleek; the curves he once ran his hands over as he plunged into me from behind no longer exist. I’m hard now, both in body and soul, and the weight of his touch is a memory I can’t even recall anymore.

  Except in dreams. The coveted nights when sleep becomes a portal through which time has no bearing, and I’m instantly transported back there, back to him, back to our old studio apartment that, at the time, cost more than we could afford, where the ancient vents used to clang loud enough to wake the dead during the winter and the window air conditioner turned the small space into an icebox in the summer. On those nights, drifting deep in that dreamscape, I can feel his splayed fingers, the desperate way his thrusts reverberate up my spine, the liquid heat of his release. And then after, when he grabs my hair and pulls my head back, pressing his lips to mine, I can even taste the peppermint mouthwash on his tongue.

  I wake from those dreams with a sweetness in my mouth and a heaviness in my chest, the latter usually taking days to shake.

  The thing is, it’s not a dream. It’s a memory. The same one every time. One that leaves a frustrated ache just below my abdomen, a swelling something pooling between my legs that not even my faithful vibrator can satiate.

  They used to come sporadically, these nighttime recollections of sexual frenzy. But this past month, they’ve been coming weekly. Of course, there’s a reason for that. Probably many reasons.

  Now, I peer at him from beneath my lashes, a dark fringe made longer by an expensive lash booster, and feel a different ache flutter through my core.

  My heart hurts as I study his bent head, yet I can’t tear my gaze away.

  Believe me, I’m not a masochist. (Well, maybe a little.) But when it comes down to it, I prefer pleasure over pain.

  Though, sometimes I feel I deserve the pain more.

  I’ve heard it said that pain is penance. And I suppose that’s a good thing, because seeing him today hurts more than ever.

  I’ve been visiting this coffee shop all week, starting the morning I arrived in Duluth. Of the seven days I’ve been frequenting the place, I’ve seen him four times. Today marks the fifth.

  His Facebook page is private, but his Instagram account isn’t, and it told me everything I needed to know to track him down. So it’s no coincidence that I found him here, in this bookish café, where paperbacks and hardcovers adorn the faded brick walls, are piled high on elaborately carved tables. The subtle smells of wood polish and old paper mingle with the scent of coffee, inspiring a kind of lazy, caffeinated high. This environment fits his personality like a glove. Back in the day, it would have fit mine, too.

  This is his city, but it used to be ours. And we roamed the streets and bars and cafés like true urbanites, despite our small-town roots. We were moody and artsy, passionate and wild, toughened by the weather and softened by love. Our past kept us humble, kept us hungry. It doused my wariness and stoked his hope, made us better together than we were apart.

  Until it didn’t.

  I’m incognito behind chunky, designer glasses with a thick black frame. The lenses are clear and merely for looks; I had Lasik a few months after I got marri
ed. Aside from this little trip, I haven’t worn glasses since I was twenty-four. But I appear more bookish than I am, almost as bookish as I used to be, and no one glances twice in my direction, as though my studious appearance proves I love literature as much as they do. To further the lie, I brought along a book, his book, and it’s currently propped stiffly in my hands, a nostalgic nod to paper and ink. It’s been years since I read an actual book, electronic or traditional, though this particular novel is so intriguing, so heart-wrenching, so full of life, that I’m now on my third read-through.

  And it’s his novel, his story, his heart-on-his-sleeve. How can I not read it at least a dozen times? How can I not search its pages for meaning, for memory, for signs? For even a hint of remembrance of what we were, of what we used to be?

  I suppose I’m tempting fate. In fact, I’m absolutely tempting fate. All he has to do is look up and across the room, see his new release in my grasp, and take a closer look at the woman devouring his words to jolt his memory. He’s a new author, and I’m sure the thrill of seeing his book being read in public would make him peer closer, harder.

  Would he recognize me? Would he see past the thick frames and pale skin and bleached hair and plumped lips to the girl I used to be? Back when he loved me and only me and no one else?

  Probably not. Becca Cabot has been buried by Rebecca Cabot Crane for so many years that I doubt I’d even recognize her if she surfaced.

  I flick my eyes up from the book, train them his way, and finally settle them on her.

  The woman. The one sitting next to him, not across from him. The woman who appeared at his side this morning for the first time this week, who is all curves and freckles and laugh lines. I watch as she leans her head on his shoulder, brings her left hand up to rub his arm while silently reading from the screen of his laptop. A diamond sparkles on her ring finger, and though it’s not nearly as large as mine, my insides twist with jealousy.

  I run the pad of my thumb over my own rock, a princess-cut design with a halo setting that, at just over two carats, rarely fails to make most women’s lips purse with envy. Now I flip it on my finger, tucking the diamond deep into my palm. I give it a squeeze for good measure, picture it grinding to dust in the hollow of my hand.

  There was a time when I wanted this ring and everything it represented so badly that I turned my entire life upside down just to get it.

  It’s funny how things change.

  On second thought, it’s not funny at all.

  As if to mock me further, laughter – her laughter – trickles through the air, rings like bells in the deepest narrows of my ears. Though it might as well be fingernails scraping down a chalkboard for all the effect it has on me. The muscles along my back pull as my shoulders stiffen, tightening inward. I shut my eyes and crack my neck, swallowing the banshee-like scream rising in my throat. When I open them again, it’s just in time to see him press a kiss to her forehead.

  Okay. I can’t watch this anymore.

  Still, I don’t want to let them chase me away, because even if they don’t know it, we’re playing a game, and I intend to win. So I casually sip my latte and return my attention to my book, squinting as I read, every now and then allowing a small smile to curve my lips, as if by appreciating the author’s cleverness, I’m proving my own.

  More laughter snakes its way to my little spot in the corner, but I don’t look up. I stay bent over my book, ignoring everyone and everything around me, even the growing need to use the restroom. My bladder pinches, throbs, and the words blur together, run together, seem to drip right off the damn page. I can’t concentrate; the roar in my head and the twisting sentences are too much, too sinuous, too accusing. After nearly half an hour of this shit, of faking nonchalance when I’m anything but, I hear more than see them rise from their table. From my hunched position, I watch from the corner of my eye as they head for the door. When he rests his hand on the small of her back to guide her through, I clamp my teeth together so hard a sharp pain shoots up into my check, flares across my jaw. Then, just as the bell above the exit jingles, signaling their departure, my shoulders finally sag, and the breath I didn’t even realize I was holding erupts from my throat in a strangled sigh.

  The shop’s air conditioning is blasting full force, a valiant attempt at keeping summer’s stifling heat and humidity at bay. But it’s like there’s an invisible forcefield around my table, one the chilled air can’t penetrate. Because I’m hot, clammy. My blouse sticks to my skin, the light chiffon clinging to the small of my back. Sweat beads my brow, gathers under my arms, pools between my breasts.

  Closing the book, I trace my fingers over the cover, lingering on the author’s name. I bought the book a month ago, but already the raised, blocky letters are worn from my touch.

  Hollis Thatcher.

  The only man I’ve ever loved.

  And probably ever will.

  The question I’ve been asking myself lately is: What the hell am I going to do about it?

  Swallowing hard, I take off my glasses and press the pads of my fingers to the corners of my eyes. I’d cry, but I’m too mad to cry, too angry to cry, too betrayed to cry…when, really, I have absolutely no right to feel any of those things. I gave Hollis up years ago, walked away from the life we’d made, the future we’d planned, crushing his heart and breaking every single promise I’d ever made to him in the process. I didn’t just end our relationship, I pummeled it, beat it to a pulp, ground it to a dust beneath the heel of my cheap pleather boot as I walked out the door of our shitty apartment and never looked back.

  Until now.

  A body slides into a seat at the table next to mine, a large presence that draws my attention, despite the Hollis-sized blinders I’ve been donning this past week. I turn my head, some magnetism I can’t pinpoint pulling my awareness, and am met with a pair of dark eyes that are annoyingly kind. Which is irritating, because I don’t want kind. I want intensity. I want passion and burning indignation. I want to look into eyes that carry in their depths a tumultuous storm railing on my behalf.

  I want someone to match my fury, to rage with me. To mirror my pain so I don’t have to bear it alone.

  He nods in my direction, flashing a crooked smile as he does. “Great minds.”

  I frown, wondering if I heard him wrong, wondering why the hell he’s even talking to me in the first place…wondering why…why…why he reminds me so much of Hollis.

  It’s the build. The broad shoulders slanting down to a narrow waist. It’s the black jeans and black t-shirt and leather boots, despite the fact that it’s summer in the Midwest and humid as fuck outside. It’s the messy hair, tousled like he’s only just pulled himself from bed. It’s the long fingers, thick enough to avoid appearing feminine, attached to hands that are perfect for creating.

  He’s an artist. Some kind of artist. Any kind of artist.

  His smile doesn’t waver while he waits for my answer, just kicks up a notch, as if I amuse him. As if he knows something I don’t, like why life turns out the way that it does or the secret of why it is that we become what we become, when, in the end, neither of those things matter because Fate’s a bitch with an itchy trigger finger.

  I huff lightly, just enough to show that I’m unimpressed with him and his kind eyes and his adorably crooked smile. “Excuse me?”

  He nods to my book, to Hollis’s book, the book that is still clutched in my hands. With a self-deprecating sigh, he holds up a matching copy and wiggles it in the air. “Great minds?” He repeats himself, turning the words into a question this time.

  I nod mechanically, and he chuckles, eyes scrunching at the corners as he does, and something in me wants to stay, wants to see what those eyes look like in another setting, a dimmer light. They’re brown, but so dark they look black. So different from Hollis’s light gaze, his angel gaze, though there’s a touch of something in their depths that reminds me of my ex-boyfriend.

  It’s freedom. Uninhibited freedom with a dose of double dar
e.

  I dare you, Becca. I double dare you…

  Hollis’s voice is a distant echo, a cheap taunt, and I push it from my head as I push up from my seat, leaving this man, this stranger, as easily as I left Hollis all those years ago.

  Because inside, I’m utter destruction, a wasteland of bad decisions and even worse desires. And the serenity this man exudes only serves to magnify that ruin. Darkness can’t survive in the light, and this man is like the sun to my shadow.

  And I can’t have that. Because I need my shadow.

  I need it to survive.

  On my way out, a fashion magazine catches my eye. Left on a table just inside the door, like whoever brought it didn’t have the guts to bring it all the way in and, after seeing the customers with their noses pushed into far more intellectual reads, discarded it out of embarrassment. The glossy cover boasts superficial gratification along with the image of a famous actress who, according to the text overlapping her svelte figure, is touting her new skin care line. Alarmingly beautiful, she stares up at me, moody in her indifference, her strawberry blonde hair brushing her shoulders in contrived, messy waves.

  Without caring who’s watching, I snatch the rag and carry it with me out of the shop.

  “Nicholas Crane. Leave a message.”

  I shoulder through the front door of our lake house, my phone pressed to my ear and a bottle of Hendrick’s under my arm. Kicking off my sandals, I pad into the kitchen, the phantom taste of gin already on my lips. “Hey, babe. Just checking in. I’ll try you again later.” Swiping end, I toss the phone on the counter, trading it for a glass tumbler from the cupboard, which I top off with three ice cubes and a generous pour. Then, pulling my sticky blouse over my head, I drop it right on the kitchen floor before shrugging out of my bra. My shorts and underpants follow, and then, grabbing my drink in one hand and the bottle in my other, I leave the whole mess behind and make my way across the living room.

  The cold air pumping through the vents blows over my skin, turning the sweat into a fine glaze. It feels like sticky heaven, like what having sex in a walk-in freezer might feel like.