Dirty Seduction

I put my hand on his arm, wishing I was still the man who’d have curled up and taken on any conditions to get back to my family. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sacrifice the girl downstairs for another pack of lies.

“That’s not what I said in the letter, is it? I didn’t say I have problems. I said I’m sorry. I admit, I’ve done some appalling things, and I’ve hurt people more than deserves forgiveness, but that’s what I’m asking for. Forgiveness.”

“And what we’re offering you is HELP.”

The kettle boiled, but I didn’t make the coffee, just stared at him.

“Help?”

“YES!” he said. “HELP!” He put the letter down on the side, and held out his hands in a gesture of care that choked me up. “Come with me, now. Come with me and leave this shit hole behind, and we’ll get you sorted, or we’ll try. We can put you into therapy and rehab, and Katreya says she’ll have you back, with an awful lot of conditions, albeit, but it’s a start. That shows how much you mean to us, doesn’t it? That shows how much we care.”

Yes, it did. Again, I was choked up. I had to battle to speak.Belongs to (N)ôvel/Drama.Org.

“I’m very honoured, truly. But I don’t need rehab, or a therapy ward, Michael. And Katreya definitely doesn’t want me back, she never wanted me in the first place.”

“Stop it!” he said. “Stop it and listen to me. You’re ill. You just don’t know it. You’re very, very ill!”

I gestured to the letter on the worktop. “Have you read that? Really?”

“Yes, of course I have. I’ve read every word a hundred times over, but that’s your version of reality, it’s not taking into account illness, or mental health problems, or how they are most likely a hell of a lot more impactful than you wanting to fuck your students. Alcoholism is a great thing to admit to, it really is. We always struggled to get you to see that, but in the other areas, the sexual deviances… you’re still under an illusion. You clearly don’t have the capacity for restraint, but we can help with that. Professionals can help with that.”

My brother was trying to be kind. It was nice to see. His eyes were the same colour as mine and I could read his expressions like my own. He seemed even bigger than me now, in the boxed in space of the kitchen. I was lithe in comparison to the bulk of him, but once upon a time we’d been a couple of boisterous youngsters, battling on the rugby field at high school.

He cared about me. Despite the circumstances. It was more than words could say, and more than I could have ever hoped for.

“Come with me, please,” he said again. “Just grab a few things and come with me. We have somewhere lined up that can take you, if you’ll sign yourself in. A residential rehabilitation facility. Katreya has found you the best, I swear. They’ll be able to fix things.”

It would have been so easy to buckle, and promise anything, and agree to any conditions in the world to go along with him, and see Grace, and Ryan, and Emily. Even Katreya. My old home, and our dog, and my old life. Everything I ever stood for. But I couldn’t do it under the pretence of another round of lies. I reminded myself of that again as I looked at him.

“I don’t need fixing,” I told him. “I need forgiveness.”

“YOU NEED FIXING, JULIAN! You need HELP!”

“Help from what?” I asked. “From Rosie, you mean? The woman I live with?”

He put his hands in his hair at that.

“Woman? You call that girl a woman?! She’s barely fucking legal!”

“That’s very true, yes. But she’s a woman, and I love her.”

“Love her.” He closed his eyes and cursed under his breath. “So, you won’t accept you have predatory sexual urges and need help? Please see some fucking sense, will you? We’re all behind you. I had to virtually beg Grace and Ryan to stay away from this visit, because I didn’t know what the hell state you’d be in, and it’s damn well good I did. Or they’d have seen that poor little girl running away from you, too.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Running away?!”

“Yes, running away. She was running back to her mother, wasn’t she? Where did you find her? On her way back from high school?”

“No. Of course not! And she wasn’t running, I can assure you!”

“Let’s see if the rehab centre agrees with you. Just get your things and come with me. I have the car outside. We’ll get you booked in, and get your assessment done, and when you’re up to it, after some treatment, we’ll get Grace and Ryan to see you, and we can work things through, slowly, and they’ll be there. We’re all behind you, no matter how fucked up things have been.”

I was shaking my head as I finally poured our coffees.

“Well?” he pushed. “Are you coming? I don’t want a fucking drink with you, Jules, I want you in the car on the way out of this shit tip. I have no idea why you even came here. It’s a disgusting place. I’d have thought you’d have at least picked somewhere vaguely habitable for you to end your days in.”

“It’s considerably more habitable than it was when I moved in here, believe me. I keyed in a random postcode actually, and it came up with Worcester. I chose the cheapest place that I could find.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing, I swear. Will you trust me, please? Trust me that you’re ill?”

I sighed at that. I thought my words in the letter had been clear, and real, and conveyed the truth, but the truth can always be misread, and twisted.

I couldn’t blame him, either. They wanted excuses, and reasons beyond my control, clutching at straws at how I could be rehabilitated and turned back into the facade of Julian they’d all come to know. But I didn’t want that. Not now. Maybe a few months ago, but not now.

“I’m not a predator,” I told him, calmly. “My alcohol addiction is easing off, and yes, I’ll happily take therapy for that, but when it comes to upping and leaving and checking myself into rehab for depravity with women, I’m sorry, but that isn’t an illness. Not for me. My past is full of mistakes on that front, and I take full responsibility for them, but I am not sick. I am perfectly aware of what I am doing, and always have been. My crimes have been morality based, in the fact that I acted very out of turn, but I am not a criminal in the eyes of the law.”

I watched his expression turn to rage.

“YOU PREYED ON GRACE’S FRIENDS! BEHIND KAYREYA’S

BACK! Your WIFE’S back!”

I didn’t rise to his shouting.

“I fucked plenty of girls behind Katreya’s back, yes, and I shouldn’t have done it. I’m very sorry. It’s a regret I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life, but Katreya and I were estranged, and I didn’t prey on anyone. I fucked them.”

He turned away from me, his hands back in his hair.

“FUCK. JUST ” He fisted his hands as he swung back around. “JULIAN!”

I didn’t have anything to say. I waited until he regained some semblance of calm, and let him continue.

“I didn’t come here to fight. I came here to help. That’s what we need to do for you now. HELP.”

“Thank you. I’m grateful beyond words. And I’ll take that help, and I’ll love that help, and I’ll appreciate that help more than you could ever imagine. But it has to be help in the right areas.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “What you’re really saying is that you won’t stop fucking teenagers.”

My heart pounded. My senses were on riot, wishing to God almighty that he could get so much as a glimpse into my soul.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all,” I told him. “What I’m saying is that I won’t stop loving Rosie.”

His eyes narrowed. “Rosie? The girl downstairs? This denial is all about her?”

“I love Rosie. It’s not denial, it’s the opposite. It’s the truth.”

“You can’t love a teenager!”

“I can love a young woman.”

“As if.” He shook his head. “Fucking hell. She’s just another seedy fixation, like the others. You saw her, you snared her, now you can’t let go of her pussy. Do you scrawl marker pen all over her? Call her derogatory names as you film her on camera?”

“That’s none of your business.”

That did it for him, he stood taller, pointing a finger.

“It is exactly my business, because it says it all. She’s another one of your dirty little treasures, and unless you get therapy, you aren’t going to change at all.”

“You’re wrong,” I told him. “I’ve already changed.”

His lip trembled.

“You haven’t changed, Jules, but we want you to. All of us. Please.”

My legs almost buckled under the weight of turning this down, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t lie anymore and I couldn’t leave her behind. What is the point of life if people won’t love you as you are, only the person they want you to be?

“I’m not leaving Rosie,” I told him simply. “I’ll do anything else you want. I’ll take alcohol therapy, and lie detection tests, and whatever else you want me to do, but I’m not leaving Rosie. I love her too much.”

He sucked in a breath, and nodded. He knew me well enough to know my answer was resolute.

“I’ll let Grace and Ryan know. I’ll tell them you’re not coming back, because you prefer another girl.”

That stabbed me in the heart.

“IT’S NOT LIKE THAT!”

“It is like that,” he said, and a tear fell down his face. “Please, to God, let us know if you change your mind, and please, to God, come back to us when you see sense, rather than holing up here and planning to kill yourself. We’ll all be waiting with open arms.”

But those arms wouldn’t be wide enough.

I could feel my soul shattering as he walked away from me over to the front door.

“Michael, please…” I called after him, but he held his hand up, firm.

“You know where we are,” he said. “Just a shame we didn’t know where you were, or this may never have happened in the first place. People can scream in anger, but we never stopped loving you.”

Just as I’d never stop loving Rosie.

I couldn’t stand to say goodbye, so I didn’t. I held my weight as steady as I could, leaning against the wall as he closed the door. And then I cried. My God, how I cried.

My heart was torn open, all over again, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to bury myself for the sake of another round of living a lie.

I wouldn’t leave Rosie. Not ever.

If love is as unconditional as they claimed, then they would have to love her alongside me. Or not at all.