Lost in La La Land(49)

“No, please, forgive me.” My voice waivered and I pushed off the wall, fleeing for my room in my ruined dress. My shame wore heavy on my shoulders as I slumped them in the safety of my room.

It wasn't bad enough that we had bastardized the language of the Regency era, but also the morals. I prayed as I stared at the girl looking back at me in the mirror, the one trembling and flushed from pleasure, that Jane Austen wasn't rolling in her grave.

Though none of this story was Jane’s. Characters and a few traits perhaps, but the rest was me.

I was driving the crazy train.

I was the one in charge.

I had tainted it all.

“Jane?” A knock at the door startled me. I winced as Wentworth opened it, remorse clouding his eyes. “I will not ask for your forgiveness again. I do not deserve it.” He stepped inside and closed the door. “The lust I feel for you is insatiable. I fear I am unable to control myself with you.”

“You wish to call off the engagement,” I said, knowing it was I corrupting him and only a matter of time before he realized it. I was not the virginal girl he would’ve wanted to marry.

“No.” His eyes widened. “I could never. I love you. I just wanted to assure you that I will work on remaining a gentleman at all times.” He wasn't angry with me? He didn't want to know where I’d learned to have sex? He was truly disgusted with himself?

“No.” It was my turn to speak. “If you aren’t opposed to it, I prefer how things stand between us.” I tried to think of a way to say it without actually saying it, the art of the era. “I enjoy the way we are together. You are a gentleman in every aspect of your life; if you wish not to be one when we are alone, I have no reservations about that.”

“But you were so horrified.” His eyes narrowed.

“Only because you apologized. I thought you didn't—”

“Think nothing, because my actions and my words are at war.” He stepped to me, bringing me into his arms, cradling my head against his chest. “I have never felt this way about any woman, and I dare say I never will again. The way you awaken the man inside me, pleases me as much as it scares me.”

I lifted my gaze, sighing into his jacket. “I love you, Frederick.”

It was the truth.

The half of a heart I’d brought into the book was in love with him.

While I’d destroyed the innocence and purity of Austen’s character, I’d used her story as a baseline to create my own. One I could live in happily. Even if it meant Captain Wentworth was now a bit of a sexual exhibitionist with an insatiable lust for fucking.

I mean, maybe she meant him to be that way all along. I wouldn't ever know the truth to that.





Chapter Twenty-Two


Three weeks in a hotel wasn’t much different from three weeks at our house. But here we took turns sleeping for ten hours, dreaming and living. Our bodies were used to the long sleep. We used step counters to ensure we got ten thousand steps a day while the other person slept and ate healthy. And with no construction workers, we had no one to know how we spent our time.

I spent a few hours every day lifting some weights in the hotel gym, swimming, and lying in a tanning bed.

We didn't go outside. The new tanning beds really were safer than going in the sun anyway. We didn't interact with other people unless we had to.

I never noticed that like true addicts, we found ways to have our cake and eat it too, without giving up our time in the machine.

In front of the mirror in the hallway of the hotel, I pulled my hair into a bun, noting the dark rich color had returned as had the thickness.

For a moment, I had to pause, checking my reality to determine if I was in the machine or not.

I looked like me again. Not quite as beautiful as the me in the story. The one with flushed cheeks and meat on her bones. But this was an improvement, much better than before. I lifted an arm, noting my skin now clung to my body instead of hanging there.

I was getting healthier but Lana lay on the bed, still a bit gaunt.

Her cheeks didn't flush and her hair hadn’t fully thickened. Her skin was tanned, no longer gray, but it was fake. Beneath the brownish coloring was a pallor no one would envy and her skin still hung. She took the health risks lighter than I did. But she was improving, if only marginally.

Being a researcher, I knew the problems the organs faced when the body stopped being active, the same problems patients with ALS faced. A better chance of getting flus and colds and even pneumonia.

I didn't lessen my time in the world, I improved my time out of it.

I read again, something I’d not done in ages.

I lived, as a regular person might. A regular hermit. That still bothered me, being around groups of people. But it had always bothered me. Jonathan had been the extravert who adopted me and made me social.

When Lana woke, we packed up, leaving a massive tip for housekeeping, as the room would need a lot of cleaning, and headed home.

My stomach was in knots at the excitement of seeing the house.

As we drove up and the cab stopped, Lana climbed out but I sat, staring. The veranda was new, redone with large beams and fresh brick, matching the fa?ade of the house. The vines and creeping gardens had been torn down and manicured to look as they had likely been intended. The open wrought-iron gates were gleaming in the spring sunlight and the pathways were fresh stamped concrete.