Her Bad Boy (Chapter 6)

How does a girl cope when her twin flame is the definitive bad boy? (18+ Erotica)

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6: In the Dark

All Stephen could see was darkness.

It felt like an impenetrable wall, but he knew that was a trick of the eye. There was depth to this darkness; things were moving out there. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear them.

Shit. Scrap that. He could fucking feel them.

Breathe. He commanded his mind to focus. Loosened the grip on his rifle. At times like this his training taught him you needed to relax as best you could. It was precisely when your internal fight or flight responses kicked that your mind played tricks on you.

He couldn’t afford to make mistakes. Not on the field. The lives of his friends were at stake. The weight of responsibility was on his shoulders.

Count to ten. Breathe.

He stopped peering into the darkness; it was an exercise in futility.

Ten. He knelt down, and hoped it was true what they said about your senses. That when one shut down, another heightened. In the dark your hearing amplified. He tried to use that to his advantage now as he put his hand over his fallen comrade’s mouth.

Nine. He wasn’t breathing. The shot had come out from nowhere, but it must have hit its mark. That had to mean the combatants had night goggles that worked. But where would they get the technology?

Eight. He looked up at the starless sky. It was as black as the earth. They could be hanging upside down for all the visual aid they had, technological or otherwise. All their equipment had stopped working. They had no way to call for fire.

Seven. They were completely cut off. Stranded. If Stephen had been a believing man he would have prayed about now. But it was too late for that. Too late they were paying for the mistakes of their dead friend.

Six. He closed his eyes. No use thinking about it now. You had to play the hand your were dealt. Fuck, he was beginning to sound like his dad. Amazingly he felt like laughing, but the thought got stuck in his throat. The noises came again. A slick kind of scurrying.

Breathe. Five. Whatever it was, it was closer. He tapped on the butt of his rifle to signal his surviving team to fan out. He tapped twice in an agreed signal. Keep low. Aim high. The noises were coming louder now. Whatever it was, it would be on them soon.

Four. A flash of red in the dark. He suddenly sensed he would never reach the count of two.

Three- He raised his rifle, but it was too late. He felt something grab his shoulder.

Stephen woke with a startled jump. Focused on the hand that had jolted him out of the darkness.

A female voice spoke. “Hey, now! It’s aright, laddie. Looks like you were having a bad dream.”

Stephen nodded. “Nightmare.” He guessed it was a nightmare. Better to call it that.

“Here. Looks like you could do with this.”

He moved his gaze from the hand on his shoulder to one holding out what looked to be vending machine coffee. He took it with a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

The lady smiled and sat down on an empty metal seat opposite to him. “Don’t thank me until you taste it. Hospital vending machines aren’t known for their great coffee.”

Stephen took a sip of the black liquid and masked his wince. “I’ve had worse.”

“Looks like you’ve been here all night.” She squirmed her large round frame in the small wire seat. “Can’t have been comfortable.”

“Like the coffee, I’ve had worse.”

She gave a light laugh. It rang like a wind chime. “I can see you have. You look like someone who has faced many monsters.”

Stephen shrugged. “I’ve faced a few. Who hasn’t?”

“Sometimes we think of ourselves as the worst kind of monster of all,” she said, pointing to the scar on his right arm. “Was that in battle with one of those monsters?”

Stephen didn’t reply. He was still trying to rid himself of his dream. The bright fluorescent lights of the hospital’s emergency rooms did little to shake the feeling that he was still in the darkness. He knocked the coffee back. Enjoyed the bitter, burning sensation at the back of his throat, and wished it was something stronger. “Thanks again for the coffee, but I don’t need the therapy.”

“Och, we all do now and then. I think you do, too.”

“Maybe I am not being clear.”

“Nae, I know you have no problem getting your point across.” She glanced across to where the big, burly security guard Stephen had clashed with earlier was making sure to give them a wide berth. “And he deserved it no doubt I’m sure.”

He straightened up in the chair, and massaged the crick in his neck. “You seem to think you know a lot about me.”

“I just know people. It’s my business.”

Stephen stretched out his legs. “And what business is that?”

“I read palms, dearie.”

“Business must be bad, if you go looking for clients in hospital emergency rooms with coffee and sympathy.”

“Dear me, did I give that impression?” There was that laugh again. Wind chimes in a gentle breeze. “One of our fairground lads had an accident. I’m here for moral support. I have a tent at the fair. Have you been yet? You should come for a reading. The carnival is still here for another two weeks. Until Halloween.”

“Shouldn’t you be speaking with a fake foreign accent and asking me to cross your palm with silver, or something?”

“Funny that, an English lad talking of foreign accents! Aye I do, but only between opening hours, laddie,” she said with a smile. “Madame Rosario at your service, but you can call me Molly.”

“My name is Stephen. Well, Molly, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t believe in all that.”

“Nothing to be frightened of, laddie,” she said.

“I said I don’t believe in it. I’m not afraid." He crushed the drained coffee cup and threw it towards a nearby bin. It landed dead centre of its target. “I don’t frighten easily.”

“Oh, I can see that. You’ve been in the wars you have. In more ways than one.”

Stephen gave her a long look. “Do you know me?”

“Never seen you until now.”

“You look at me as if I should know you. You sure we haven’t met before?”

She smiled. It was sincere. “You said yourself you don’t believe in palmistry. How else would we have met?”

“I just can’t shake the feeling I should know you. I came from the fair, too, maybe that’s where I saw you.”

“Could be... You waiting for someone? A girlfriend?”

How to answer that one?

She looked at him questioningly. “You not sure?”

“You’re the mystic. You tell me.”

“I’m just a palm reader, dearie, not a mind reader,” she chuckled, “but if I had to hazard a guess, there’s usually only one thing that gets a person on the defensive. When it’s a matter of the heart.”

Stephen had to admit that she was no fool, and for some reason he couldn’t even begin to fathom, he was beginning to warm to this strange lady. “It’s complicated. Her young brother had an accident.”

“Sorry to hear that. How is he?”

“OK hopefully. She’s up with him now.”

“She must mean a lot to you if you are still here.”

“She deserves a lot better than me. A whole lot better.”

She reached over and tapped him motherly on the hand. “You should let her make up her own mind about that. Contrary to popular opinion, girls usually do know what they want, you know.”

He grinned. “So now you’re handing out love advice, too? Agony aunt of the stars.”

“Cheeky, aren’t you? But not cruel with it. That is what she must see in you, despite you wanting to run. It’s really all a show though, isn’t it? If people keep their distance, then they can’t hurt you. Is that it? Am I right?”

“Or I can’t hurt them. I have a habit of hurting people.”

“Nae, laddie. I can’t believe you would hurt anyone you loved intentionally.”

Stephen snorted. “I wouldn’t bet on me. You’d lose a whole lot.”

“Call it foolish female intuition, but I have come to trust in my inner voice. And it tells me you are not the monster you think you are.”

“Oh really?”

She gave an emphatic nod of her head. “What we see in ourselves is not always how others see us. Sometimes the truth is clearer from the other side.”

Stephen kept quiet. He got up, stretched. “Can I pay back your kindness and get you a decent cup of coffee?”

“There you go again. Wanting to run.”

“I’m offering you coffee, Molly. From the local coffee shop. Getting you coffee from here would be like being kind to be cruel.”

She nodded at his last remark. “Aye, you’re not wrong there. I thank you for the thought, but come sit down by me Stephen. A little bit of wisdom, for what it’s worth, never hurts. As I say, people are my business. And I appreciate your politeness at not telling me to mind my own.”

“Talk is free, right? Or is this all leading up to you asking to read my palm?”

She took his outstretched hand in hers. “We often fail to realise that our hands are very telling parts of us. They give us touch. Help the blind to see. Allow the deaf to hear. They have a language all their own. And our palms are like mirrors into our true nature.”

Stephen looked down at his palms. “You see all that in a palm? Who knew?”

“Would you like me to tell you what I really see in your palm?”

Stephen pulled his hand away. “Thanks, but no thanks Molly. My future was mapped out a long time ago.”

Her face turned serious as she looked up at him. “Don’t confuse darkness with destiny, my boy. Sometimes we feel so sure there’s something hidden inside us that’s so terrifying and monstrous that we feel if we ever go looking for it, we won’t be able to face it. But it’s only when we allow ourselves to come face to face with the dark that we find the light.”

Stephen knew all about facing darkness. He had been in the dark all his young life.

There is nothing as painful as growing up. Maybe I went into the army to prove myself wrong. And found something darker still.

Ever since he was a kid, there had been a darkness in him, probably because he’d been in his father’s shadow his entire life. Stephen cracked a grin despite himself. What would his father say if he saw him sitting here entertaining a fortune teller, no less?

Stephen sat back down, next to her this time. As he did so, he suddenly found himself sitting in a tacky gypsy tent waiting for Madame Rosario to read his palm. His mind didn’t question the impossibility of it. In fact it made sense.

I must still be dreaming, he thought.

Draped in multicoloured fabrics, Madame Rosario stared intently at his open palm in front of her. She shifted her large frame in her star sequinned chair. It creaked in complaint. The tent shook, rattling glass ornaments hanging from its ceiling.

But my mind must really be cracked to be dreaming this.

She spoke finally, her voice low, like rubbed velvet. “You really weren’t joking were you?”

“About what?”

“Let’s just say you were a wild child in your teens.”

Stephen gave an understated shrug. “I guess. If you work hard, you earn the right to play hard.”

“Your father. You followed him into the army. You have recently come back from a tour of duty.”

Stephen nodded. But said nothing.

“You have been in the dark for a long time.”

Another shrug.

“I can understand why you don’t like to talk much. You think to reveal yourself is dangerous. Like a cobra, you are always relaxed, but always ready to strike.”

He smiled at that, and gave her wink. “Molly, I’m hurt. You calling me a snake?”

“You know very well what I mean. Don’t try and deflect my point. I’m saying you think it means you will feel less if you hide more, but those who keep things inside actually feel more. To people like that, every bad memory is a bruise that won’t heal until it sees the light of day.”

He peered down into his own palm. “You actually going to tell me you see all that in those criss-cross marks? I just see lines. Madame Rosario. Just lines.”

She lifted her eyes from his palm to look him directly in the eyes. “You saw something, didn’t you, Stephen? Out there. On duty. Something happened? I see its darkness behind your eyes.”

Stephen’s jaw tightened. “A close friend died in action.”

“But was that enough to make you want to leave? What would your father say to that? No sacrifice is too small for the defeat of your enemy. Was there more to it than that? Something so bad it made you run from what you had known your whole life. And you are not a person that runs. What was it?”

He tried to keep his voice light. “Doesn’t it tell you that in my palm, too?”

“No, son,” she said with a deep measure of sadness. She touched him gently on the chest. “It is hidden in here.”

“You don’t read minds, but you want to try your hand at reading hearts now, is that it?”

She gave a small sigh, and sat back in her creaky chair. “Something like that.”

“Molly, some memories- some feelings are better left on the shelf. Neither emotion nor weakness has any place in the desert of warfare. You learn that pretty quick if you want to survive.”

“You’d be surprised, Stephen, how much of our chaos is caused by shelving things away - or by turning our back on a chance at love. That’s what you’re doing isn’t it? But true love doesn’t break you. It completes you. Love is when the mind and heart say the same thing.”

“There is no love on the streets I’ve walked, Molly. No offence, but women are just designed to appeal to the eyes and mess with your soul.”

“Or to remind you that you have one. Have you ever heard of twin flames?”

He thought he misheard her. “Twin what?”

I thought people woke up once they realised they were dreaming? About time I woke up, he thought. This shit is just getting too surreal.

“Twin flames. We constantly search for what seems like the missing piece to something eternal we call our soul. But there is a lot we can’t explain.”

She took both his hands and held them tightly. “Science says beyond outward form there is nothing but atoms. All forms and substance is composed of atoms, the atoms of nature, the atoms of your heart, the atoms that form all the beings in the world, and atoms are eternal, Stephen.”

He felt a strange calm wash over him as she continued to speak. He knew this was a dream, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was somehow real.

“Once you discover this truth you realise there is no death, but that we change into something else. Our atoms once the dust of stars, go back to the stars. Tiny cosmic seeds of life, eternal, unending... Every age rediscovers this fundamental truth that has been known throughout all the ages of awareness. That there is no darkness, just the absence of our light.”

Stephen blinked. His eyes were playing tricks on him. It looked like a steady stream of light was emanating from Molly’s hands. He felt his fingers begin to hum.

“Love is the light that will end your darkness, Stephen. Just open your eyes to its flame. Open your eyes.”

That is what I am trying to do, but I can’t seem to wake myself up.

She was fully bathed in light now. Her voice had filtered down to a whisper. The quality of wind chimes had returned to its timbre. “Often, if we can’t see something it’s probably because we’re not looking at the big picture, which usually means it’s probably right under our nose. You’ve found something precious. Don’t run from it because it is hard. We don’t try hard enough and say it wasn’t meant to be, but you know better than most that you have to fight for what you want. You have the answer to your darkness, but he who has the answer and doesn’t know it, is as lost as one who never knew.”

“Just who are you?” Stephen had finally managed to unlock his voice.

“I told you. My name is Molly. Madame Rosario is just my stage name.”

“No, I mean who are you really?”

“Someone who was expecting to meet you. You’re Sally’s bad boy, aren’t you?”

Stephen opened his eyes with a jolt. He was alone. As realisation dawned that he was back in the hospital’s emergency waiting room again, he resisted the urge to pinch himself. He was sure he was awake this time, because a few feet away from him stood Sally’s friend Daisy, staring at him.

My mind isn’t that far gone to have started dreaming about her yet. Weird nice ladies in my head I can handle. But Daisy? He was not so sure.

He pre-empted her making a move by jumping out of his seat and stretching the sleep out of him. He stopped in mid-stretch. Noticed the cup of cold coffee on the seat next to him.

Stephen was sure he must have purchased it before falling asleep, but for the life of him couldn’t remember doing it.

End of Chapter 6 | Read Chapter 7

Yours in love,