Like Musical Chairs
Regina woke up, panting and desperate, and hurried through her beautiful house, looked out on her beautiful apple trees, looked at her beautiful son, sleeping peacefully, like an angel. She was trying so hard to teach him the right things, teach him how to have a happy ending in a world where they didn’t exist. He resisted her every step of the way.
This is my happy ending. It’s supposed to be mine.
But it wasn’t, and that was what was sick and twisted. He was it, Henry. She needed him to love her. Someone had to love you, that was the only way. And he didn’t. He resented her. That vicious conniving Mary Magdalene, with her brutal innocence and naiveté, she had poisoned him against her. Since when was a bird loyal? A bird was a bird. It flew away.
Everything flew away.
And Henry flew away and brought back that slut.
It was strange seeing her, strange like déjà vu. She had only seen her once, through a glass: that pale kid in the hospital bed, looking so tired, looking lonely. Reggie (No, it was Regina now, always Regina; it was never going to be Reggie again.) had been lonely. She knew the look, felt it like it was her own, and she had wanted to reach out, just offer understanding, share the feeling of distance, of disconnect. But the doctor had pulled her away, and then there was Henry, and paperwork, and the knowledge that that woman (girl, really, just a girl) never wanted to see her baby boy again.
It was fine. Henry was hers now, and she was never, ever going to let him get away.
But now the woman was at her door, in her house, in her life. She was there like a slap in the face. Like a riptide, something inescapable, now that it had caught hold, now that it had begun.
Regina hadn’t been fucked in a long time. Maybe that was why there was something about the lines around the woman’s eyes and the downturned mouth that pulled at her. That classless hooker pleather jacket, mussed hair, and the casual way she knocked back the hard liquor, that was dangerous. Because honestly? Trying to seduce your adopted son’s birthmother was a way to lose custody like a lightning bolt. Regina had to make her leave. The woman needed to be out of town, be gone, not standing next to her son like he belonged to her, not trying to spill her soul and beg for pity with pathetic puppy-dog eyes.
Regina had no time for puppies. She had no time for strays. And this Emma Swan, though just enough of a bitch to be interesting, was nothing but trouble.
If the image of her wrists bound, arms stretched over her head, neck exposed as she struggled beneath her, marring the flesh of her throat with her teeth, jerking down her shirt to catch under her breasts, forcing them up and out, puckered and ready…
It wasn’t worth thinking about. She was gone, and all Regina could do was pray that she would never come back.
She dreams sometimes, what would be real vengeance? Fucking their baby girl? Or having their baby girl love her…?
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