Faith does not know herself, and at the same time she feels like herself for the first time in months. Her nights and days with Kenny are wild, passionate and free. She is living from orgasm to orgasm, really, there is nothing else she wants. Her only responsibility is her body, and it must be pleased. When Kenny had asked her to run away with him, she had not hesitated – only long enough to transfer the task of looking after Claymore to Tom and Nicholas, in the most basic fashion. She had slept on the plane, they had fucked in the washroom, they had checked into a suite in Las Vegas, and they had not left it for two days.

  She had ignored the messages from Nicholas, and she had not even read the ones from Tom because she knows that they might contain accusations, not wholly unjustified. She wants to feel herself, and she really does. She finds that she has ignored this hunger inside herself for a long time, and it needs to be satisfied. She puts her phone away and cuddles up to her sleeping husband, until he wakes up and makes her forget the world outside once more.

  The ceremony in the Little Wedding Chapel had been a fast and cheap affair. Half an hour later, they had been back in their room. Nothing seems real.

  On the day after the wedding Faith wakes up, does not find her husband beside her and looks around for him. There he is, bent over the desk. She hears that he is breathing in sharply. She is suddenly wide awake.

  “What are you doing?”

  He turns towards her, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, laughing. “Well, what does it look like? What do you think how I am able to survive a trip like this?”

  He walks to the bed, ready to throw himself on top of her, but she fends him off. “Babe, I thought you like this. Come on.”

  She moves away from him, wrapping herself into the blanket. “You were high all this time?”

  Kenny grins. “And so were you.”

  “Yes, but differently. What is that stuff? Cocaine?”

  “You should give it a try.”

  She stares at him in disbelief.

  “Don’t be so prudish. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “Absolutely not.” Faith is looking into an abyss all of a sudden. This is her husband who wants her to do drugs. How could this have happened? How stupid is she? She feels sober, the rush is gone, she is herself again, and she is unable to grasp what has happened. She only wants this situation to be over. How can she make it stop? Kenny’s grinning presence is physically unbearable.

  She makes a dash for the bathroom, locking herself in for almost an hour, not crying, but desperately trying to regain control of herself again. Kenny leaves her alone, thank God, and when she returns to the bedroom he has ordered food and already consumed most of it. She grabs her phone and leaves. He does not try to stop her.

  The city of Las Vegas is a nightmare all by itself. It is hot, and even around noon it is crowded and noisy. She finds a coffee shop and sits down in a corner, suddenly exhausted. She is married to a junkie, she has fallen for a shithead. She has ruined it all. She has betrayed her friends. She has betrayed Tom. She does not allow the thought of Mori to emerge at all. She is a bad person who is doing bad things.

  She needs help. She has no idea how to get out of this on her own, and the only person she can think of is Tom. She calls him, it is early morning in Europe, he must be at the hotel. He sounds sleepy when he picks up.

  “Tom.” This is all she manages. She wants to cry.

  “Faith?”

  She is unable to speak.

  “Faith?”, he repeats. That he sounds worried and relieved at the same time does not make it any easier.

  She pulls herself together. “I’m so sorry, Tom. I’ve been so stupid.”

  “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m in Las Vegas. I’ve gotten married and…”

  “You did what?”

  “I’ve gotten married. It is…”

  “Whom did you marry?”

  “Kenny Payne.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Are you fucking crazy?”

  She is so grateful for his reaction. This is exactly what she has been. “Yes.”

  “Faith, tell me that you’re joking, please.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “That guy is a crackhead.”

  “I know. I’ve just found out.”

  Tom sighs. She waits, but he does not speak.

  “Tom, what do I do now?”

  “Get it annulled. And come back.”

  She longs to hear him add “to me”, but that does not happen. He just repeats, “Come back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  They are silent. She can feel her tears welling up again because she cannot talk to him. “Thank you, Tom. Until then”, she says, and then she ends the call. She waits, but he does not call her back.

  She has to go back to Europe. And she has to – what was the word? annull? – her marriage. A lawyer to handle this is, maybe not surprisingly, not hard to find. The information she gets is reassuring. They have to sign a simple contract, they can do it today. She researches her husband and his horrified to learn that he is virtually broke and that his career is finished. She also looks up flights and books one for the same evening. Then she returns to the hotel.

  Kenny is not in the room, and he does not react to her messages or calls. Following her instinct, she goes down to the casino. He is sitting at the black jack table, acting comfortable and cocky. Faith watches him for a few minutes until she is thoroughly disgusted. Then she approaches him. “We need to talk.”

  He does not even look up. “Not now, Babe.”

  Faith is stunned. She is not used to being talked to like this, nor does she particularly like it. She sweeps his chips from the table and walks away with them. Kenny, cursing her, follows her into the lobby, where she sits down at a table.

  He is standing in front of her, angry. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  She points at the chair opposite. “Sit down. We need to talk.”

  He sits down and reaches for the chips immediately.

  “Take your hands away from my money”, she hisses.

  He looks surprised, but then he catches himself and says, “Babe, you’re really hot when you are like this.”

  She does not heed his remark. “We need to get the marriage annulled. It was a mistake. We can do it now. And then I’m going back to Europe.”

  Kenny leans back, looking at her, calculating her expression. Then he says, slowly and deliberately, “No, babe. This is not going to happen. I don’t want to annull anything. And if you want to go back to Europe, I’m going with you. Even though I really like it here.” He stretches out his legs in front of him.

  Faith looks at him, speechless. He grins. “What is the problem, babe? Are you not having a good time?”

  “Not really. And I’ve got a job. And I don’t need a… a…” She cannot find the right word.

  “No junkie? No loser?”, he supplies helpfully. “Nobody to fuck you senseless?”

  She shrugs.

  “There was nothing wrong with the fucking, though, was there?”

  She would never have thought that she was ever going to have a conversation like this. It is bizarre. It cannot be real.

  Kenny must have sensed that he was getting the upper hand. “Yes, the fucking was good, and now you’re sitting here talking about money. Some of it I have earned, I believe.”

  “Yes, maybe. But you are going to spend it on drugs, and I cannot condone that.”

  They stare at each other until Kenny says, “Well, I don’t have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t have to spend it on drugs. I can become clean.”

  She is irritated by the turn the conversation is taking. “Are you serious?”

  He leans forward. “I want to try. For us. It is stupid to fight about it. Of course I can become clean, but I need your help. Faith, maybe you are the best thing that could have happened to me. Maybe it was fate that we met.” She raises her hands, defensively, but he speaks on. “Let us fly back to Europe, wherever you want, and let me try. Please, Faith.”

  She stares at her husband, who has for the time being outwitted her. He is much more dangerous and calculating than she had thought. There will be no meeting with the lawyer today. She needs another plan. And she needs to play along if she wants to get out of this eventually.

  She takes out her phone and books another seat on her flight. “We’re leaving at five.”

  Then she gets up to call the lawyer again.

  After the check-in, she feels relieved. In twenty hours, she will be home. She does not really think of the race track at Le Castellet as home, but she really means her team, her job, Tom even. They are going to have to change planes twice, but this is going to be easy. The lawyer had told her that for a quick divorce, for now it would have to be a divorce, it would be good to always know where Kenny was. He is sitting beside her now, ordering drinks. Let him. He is not going anywhere. She finds some music on the entertainment system, they have Bach’s double concerto she had been listening to at the concert in Monaco a couple of days ago, and then she falls asleep.