The Imperfections: A Forbidden Romance

by Sam Mariano

  “Theo,” I say as he rolls me on my stomach. I try to push up, not wanting to put that much pressure on my tummy, but he pushes down hard on my back and flattens me to the bed.

  “Stay put.”

  I hear fabric rustling and I feel even sicker, but then I’m slightly relieved when his coat flies over my head.

  It was just his coat. His pants are still on. Maybe I can still stop him.

  My brain tells me that’s not true, that his pants are probably next. My instincts plead with me to try to lessen the severity of this violation, to ask if I can blow him instead.

  I can’t, though. I’d rather die than have Brant come home and find me on my knees with Theo’s cock in my mouth. No amount of explaining could ever wipe that mental image from his mind. Even if he understood why I had to do it, he would never be able to shake that, and I’d never be able to shake the shame.

  More knots form in my gut as I hear the unmistakable sound of Theo pulling his zipper down. I look at the door, wishing like hell Brant would walk through it and save me, but the door doesn’t move.

  Even though I can’t see Theo from this position, I squeeze my eyes shut as he forces my legs apart and positions himself between them. I don’t even want the memory of what it was like to look at our bedroom wall when I have to relive this later. I just want there to be nothing. No sights, no smells, just nothingness.

  I bury my face in the bed sheet, but that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.

  This is Brant’s side of the bed. When I breathe in, the invitingly masculine scent of him fills my nostrils. My eyes burn with tears that I don’t even try not to shed, and then Theo pushes inside me and all I can do is scream. I scream with fury and helplessness and regret. I scream my lungs out into the spot where Brant sleeps…

  And then all of a sudden, I stop screaming. A burst of clarity hits me and I look up at the nightstand.

  This is Brant’s side of the bed.

  There’s a loaded gun in that nightstand.

  Everything quiets inside me for just a brief moment. I hear a ringing in my ears, like after you hear something way too loud.

  I’m not fighting, but Theo doesn’t expect me to fight. He thinks I’m easy to scare and control. He thinks I’m still the easily led girl who doesn’t know how to stand up for herself even when she really wants to, the girl I was when he knew me.

  He doesn’t expect me to try very hard to save myself, so when I reach toward Brant’s nightstand, he doesn’t react. My fingers shake as I quickly yank the drawer open and reach inside.

  I expect to be a shaky mess of nerves. Logically, I’m even a little afraid Theo might notice what I’m doing and wrestle the gun away from me. Physically, he’s stronger than I am. He could turn the gun around and use it on me, and then Brant will come home tonight to find that not only has he lost the baby he was so looking forward to loving, he’s also lost the wife who cherished him so tremendously. He’ll be all alone again.

  Tears blur my vision so I can scarcely see to aim. I reach down deep and summon every ounce of strength and courage I possess until something calm finally sweeps over me, like the peaceful eye of a terrifying storm.

  My fingers curl around the grip of the gun, and I remember how it felt when Brant taught me how to use it. I remember his strong arms wrapped around me and Scout running around barking after I fired it, not knowing what the hell was going on.

  I take a deep breath and swing my body around. Theo’s on his knees and too busy chasing his pleasure to think about anything else, so the unexpected movement dislodges him and knocks him unsteady.

  “Jesus—”

  I hear the surprise in his voice, but then his words stop when he looks down at me.

  I’m on my back now, looking up at him. Both of my hands are wrapped firmly around Brant’s gun, my finger poised on the trigger.

  “Whoa, Alyssa…” Finally, there’s caution in his voice when he addresses me, but it comes too late. He shouldn’t have underestimated me.

  Theo raises his hands as if in surrender.

  Fuck his surrender.

  I pull the trigger.

  29

  Alyssa

  The explosion of the firearm going off shakes me to my core, and a fraction of a second later, Theo groans with pain and falls sideways onto the bed.

  I don’t wait to see if he gets back up.

  A surge of adrenaline shoots through me and I roll off the mattress. I run around the bed to grab my phone off the nightstand, keeping my gun trained on Theo’s slumped body the entire time.

  I was confident enough when I was below him about to pull the trigger, but now my hand trembles so violently, I’m shocked I don’t drop the damn thing.

  I throw open the bathroom door and hurl myself through it before I start hyperventilating. I can’t catch my breath, but I slam the door shut and turn the lock, then I press my back against it and try to collect myself.

  I need to call Brant.

  I move away from the door, putting the gun down on the counter where we usually put the towels when we’re showering. A kaleidoscope of memories of showering with Brant play out across my mind, and even though it’s weird as hell, it helps calm me down enough to breathe so I can call him.

  The phone only rings twice, but each ring seems to go on for three hours. On top of the shaking, I’m scared shitless that I might’ve only nicked Theo. I didn’t see where I hit him, it all happened too fast, but if he stands back up, he’s going to be fucking furious. If he’s furious, he’s going to be able to get through this flimsy bathroom door.

  I’ve never smoked in my life, but I suddenly feel desperately in need of a cigarette.

  “Hello.”

  I nearly collapse with relief at the sound of Brant’s voice coming through the phone. “Brant. Oh, thank God.”

  His tone was low and calm when he answered, but upon hearing the sheer panic in mine, that changes real quick.

  “Alyssa? What’s wrong?”

  “Theo’s here. He’s in the bedroom. I shot him,” I say, my pitch rising so high I’m not even sure he understands what I said.

  “What?” he practically screams. “Holy fucking—fuck!”

  “Yeah.” I turn and look warily at the bathroom door. “I don’t know what to do. I locked myself in the bathroom, but I don’t know if he—I shot him and I—I—I—ran, I didn’t see…”

  “Oh my God. Alyssa. Okay. Fuck. I’m on my way home, all right? I’ll be there… fuck, I don’t know, I’m still ten minutes away, but I’ll be there as fast as I can, okay?”

  “Hurry.”

  “I will,” he assures me. “Stay on the phone with me.”

  “I will. Brant, I don’t know if he’s still out there and I’m too afraid to look.”

  “No, don’t look,” he says forcefully. “Don’t open that door until I get there, not for anything. Do you have the gun with you?”

  I look over at it. “Yes. I brought it in the bathroom with me.”

  “Okay, good. Is it my gun or yours?” he asks, his voice much calmer than mine.

  I respond to his calm, managing a steadier tone as I answer, “Yours. I grabbed it out of the nightstand drawer.”

  “Okay, that’s even better,” he says, sounding a little relieved. “Theo doesn’t carry, and your handgun’s still locked up in the chest, so you have a gun and he doesn’t. Even if he gets up, even if he tries to get into that bathroom, you have the upper hand, all right? Be confident knowing that. He can’t hurt you, because if he tries, you’re gonna shoot him again.”

  I nod, forgetting he can’t see me. My legs are so shaky, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stand much longer, so I back myself up and lean against the wall. My head falls back and I close my eyes, drawing a shaky breath.

  “Are you okay?” Brant asks me.

  “This is a lot.”

  “I know it is. The worst of it is over, all right? I’m so sorry I’m not there to protect you right now.” He takes a deep breath and lets i
t out. “Do you hear anything on the other side of the door? Does it sound like he’s getting up or… groaning in pain? Anything?”

  I’m too far away from the door to hear any soft noises, so I force myself closer and lean my face close to the wood. “I can’t hear anything,” I whisper into the phone.

  “Okay. I’m almost home. I’ll be there before you know it.”

  He keeps me on the phone the whole time, but after a few minutes pass and my nerves begin to settle, the silence on the other side of the door gets more and more frightening.

  Does it mean I killed him? If I didn’t kill him and he didn’t come in here after me, does that mean he’s still in the house somewhere and he’ll attack Brant when he comes flying upstairs to make sure I’m okay?

  If Theo remained conscious and he had even a lick of sense, he would have gone straight out to his vehicle, climbed in, and fled this property as fast as humanly possible.

  I walk over to the window to check outside. His car is still parked in the driveway.

  He’s still here, I just don’t know in what state.

  A lifetime passes while I’m locked inside the bathroom.

  I hear Brant’s truck fly up the drive and we end our call, but he doesn’t come straight upstairs to get me like I expect him to. I wait, barely breathing, but he doesn’t come.

  After a while, when he’s still not here, I start to get scared. I want to call him again to make sure he’s okay and able to answer, but I don’t want to distract him, either. What if he’s searching the house for Theo, and the moment he looks down to answer his phone, Theo flies out of his hiding spot with a knife? He might not have a gun, but we have a block of very sharp knives downstairs. For that matter, if he made it outside and went into Brant’s shop, there’s a fucking armory of makeshift weapons you could use to really hurt someone.

  The terror is so bad it makes me sick for a second time since I locked myself in this bathroom, and I have to run to the toilet.

  Afterward, I sink down against the wall beside it and draw my knees up. I wrap my arms around my legs as best I can with my belly in the way and lay my head down, closing my eyes.

  Something slams against the bathroom door and I nearly jump out of my skin. I scramble to my feet and go to the counter to grab Brant’s gun, just in case.

  “Who is it?” I shout wildly.

  “It’s Brant,” he answers, sounding tired. “It’s me, baby. Open up.”

  A helpless sob escapes me and I put the gun back down, unlocking the door and throwing it open. Brant is on the other side looking—well, alive, and that’s all that really matters. I throw myself at him, lock my arms around his neck, and hold on to him like I’ll never let go again.

  I might not. It’s going to take some convincing.

  His arms lock around me, but not quite as tightly. Unlike stupid worthless fucking Theo, he is conscious of the delicate little being growing inside me.

  “Where is he? Is he…?”

  “He’s in the workshop,” Brant answers.

  I only let my grip on him loosen enough so I can pull back and look into his eyes. “You left him alone?”

  “He’s not going anywhere.”

  My stomach sinks. “Is… is he…?”

  “He’s dead,” Brant states plainly.

  That does it. My limbs weaken so much, I can’t hold on to him, and I fall back a step. “I… I killed him?”

  “No,” Brant says quickly, shaking his head. “No, you didn’t kill him. You just hurt him. I had to finish the job, though. How the hell would I explain this to Bri?”

  I still feel woozy. I know Brant would catch me if I actually fainted, but I back up until I feel the support of a wall behind me, then I slide down it. “Oh my God.”

  “I had to do it, Alyssa.”

  “I know. I know, I just…”

  Brant doesn’t say anything, but he seems to understand. Sighing, he drops down and sits beside me. He doesn’t touch me, but I can feel him wanting to. “Are you okay?”

  Am I okay? I’m not sure. I don’t feel okay, but I guess I am. It’s probably shock. I feel a little like I’m going to be sick again, but I know there’s nothing left to throw up.

  “Can I hold you?” Brant asks.

  “Of course,” I say on a sigh, falling into the safety of his embrace.

  We stay there like that for a long time, him holding me, neither of us saying a word. After a while, he tells me he has to go back downstairs.

  “To the shop?”

  He nods.

  “I want to go with you.”

  “Alyssa… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I have to see him,” I tell him, looking up into his face. “I have to see that he’s…”

  He stares at me like he wants to argue, but after a minute, he just reaches down and takes my hand. “All right.”

  I know it was supposed to be cold outside tonight, but I can’t feel it as we walk out to Brant’s workshop. My mind replays the first time he brought me in here when I referred to it as his murder workshop, then he swings open the door.

  Spread out on the shop floor is a dark green sheet, a tarp of some kind. On top of that is Theo’s lifeless body. There’s a trail of blood on the floor where Brant must have dragged him.

  I swallow, and Brant squeezes my hand.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t me who killed him?” I ask.

  “Positive,” Brant answers, his tone certain. “I got the pleasure of doing that myself.”

  It’s the first comment that reaches through the shell of shock all around me. I’m stunned that the first thread I feel back to reality is one of near amusement, but I don’t fight it. Looking over at him, I lift an eyebrow. “Thought you said you don’t get anything out of killing people.”

  “Normally, no,” he agrees. “I get something out of it when it’s him.”

  That’s reasonable enough, so I nod my head and look back at Theo. “What are we gonna do with him?”

  “We?” he asks, surprised. “We aren’t going to do anything. You’re going to go inside and take a nice warm bath or shower or whatever you need. I am going to haul his sorry ass out into the woods and bury him.”

  “All by yourself? You need help. I’ll go put some pants on and help you.”

  “No, you will not. You’ve been through enough tonight, and you’re pregnant on top of that. I’m not going to have you out here doing manual labor that could hurt the baby.”

  “It’ll take you all night,” I argue.

  “Then it takes all night.”

  I stare for another moment. “What do we do about the blood? I shot him on the bed, so there must be blood all over the mattress.”

  I expect Brant to answer me, but he doesn’t for so long that I finally look over at him to see why.

  His body is rigid, his jaw locked so tight it looks painful. Alarm hits me so strongly it pierces the haze, too.

  Like I’m waking up from some kind of coma, I turn to Brant, and I actually see him. I feel the chill in the air, smell the sickly metallic tang of Theo’s blood all over the place.

  I’ve been living each moment through some kind of protective fog until now, but something has happened to Brant, and it scares the hell out of me.

  My voice trembles a little as I ask, “Brant? Are you okay?”

  He nods, but barely. Every cord in his neck is so tense, I feel like he’s at risk of snapping in half.

  “Why won’t you say anything?” I ask, my alarm growing.

  “I’m trying,” he says, but I’ve never heard him so strained before, not even during sex. I search his face and his posture, but somehow I don’t connect the last words I said to him before he froze with his reaction.

  Not until he finally finds a way to ask. He looks over at me, and he asks the question I somehow forgot I would have to answer.

  “Why was he on the bed with you?”

  My blood runs cold and this time it’s me who freezes. Now all my words are stuck in
my throat, and I understand why he struggled to speak for so long. I’m so completely frozen, I forget to breathe for a minute.

  Brant doesn’t push, but I know he’s waiting for an answer—an answer I don’t want to give and don’t want to think about, but knowing I have to give him answers, I resolve to just get it out as quickly as I possibly can.

  “I wanted to wait up for you, but I was so tired. I went to bed. Then I woke up when I thought you were climbing into bed with me, only it wasn’t you.”

  Brant nods stiffly, but I only see it out of my periphery. I can’t look at him right now, too afraid of what I’ll see on his face if I do. I look at Theo instead.

  My words seem to run dry for a moment, and we both just stand there until I can speak again. There are plenty of useless details I could share. Some part of me is tempted to just to delay the inevitable, but I know what he wants to know, and even though I don’t know how he’ll take it, I have to tell him.

  “He wanted to fuck me. I tried to stop him, but he used the baby against me. I was too vulnerable, and he wasn’t afraid to hurt me, and it was too hard—”

  Brant brings a hand up to cover his mouth and a shard of fear cuts through me.

  I look up at him, even though he’s not looking at me. “I’m so sorry, Brant. I really, truly tried, but he was too strong—”

  Not letting me finish, Brant turns and grabs me, pulling me into his arms. “For Christ’s sake, don’t apologize to me, Alyssa. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

  Despite his words or maybe because of them, shame swells up around me. “I didn’t want him to touch me, I swear I didn’t. It didn’t last very long, and he didn’t get to finish or anything. I couldn’t bear it and I grabbed your gun out of the nightstand, but that’s why he was on the bed. I didn’t want him to be, I swear to God.”

  “Alyssa.” Brant’s voice is more growl than speech, and he grabs my head, pushing my face into his chest again. “Please stop apologizing. You didn’t do anything wrong.”