She drops the gun and walks forward to me, pushing Denver aside with her gun hand. Inches away from me now, I can feel Jill’s breath on me, exhaling hard. Although she has a calm front, I know that deep down she’s steaming—ready to blow.
“You see, Tara, when you can’t use sex to get what you want, you have to think of something else,” she says. “See, you were able to get Denver. So you wouldn’t understand what it’s like on this side. You wouldn’t understand what signing your life away is life. Ask Martin, Mae Lin, Gloria. Any of them. He’s sick. I’ll be doing you a favor.”
“If he’s so sick then why go through the trouble? You love him?”
“I did love him, but he wouldn’t have me. I wanted him to be my husband and to share in his life. But, since I can’t have that, I’ll just have his life.”
Jill’s eyes are like glass as they stare into me—I see nothing on the other side of them, just emptiness. In a millisecond there is a CLANK and Jill drops to the ground.
Martin hit her in the head with the pan I cooked breakfast in.
She’s passed out on the ground, but not bleeding. Denver grabs the gun from her limp hand and I feel my lungs regain regularity.
*****
Denver called his connection, Lieutenant Hasboro, who phoned Simi Valley emergency, and they were at the house in minutes. Martin walked without any hassle, and when they put the cuffs on Jill she was still passed out. The officers put both of them into the back of their squad car and pulled away, leaving Denver alone in the yard.
Martin agreed to tell the whole story against Jill in court, because he really did love her and the fact that she was using him broke his heart. In the heat of that showdown, Denver said that they both loved Danielle. I’m guessing that when Jill confessed, it set Martin off.
Now, we’re back inside, all the doors are locked and all of the curtains are shut. Once the house is secure, he comes over to me and puts his hands on my arms.
“This has been one crazy day,” he says.
“I don’t really want to be here any longer than I have to be,” I say. “And to be honest, I feel like I might need some space. So much has happened, Denver. Everything with Jill…I can’t tell what’s real from what isn’t.”
His knowing eyes hold me, and then he brings me into a hug, his lips pecking my ear. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry, Tara. I understand. Just know that everything I told you was true. Don’t let the lies get to you. Trust me, Tara.”
When he pulls away, I want to give in. I want to go upstairs and make love until the crack of dawn, sleeping the next day off. I want to act like this never happened. But it did, and I can’t ignore it. Just like when I made love to him both times, I can’t control my emotions, and I start to cry.
Now that we aren’t making love, the sight breaks his heart. “Please, baby,” he said. “You have to see that now everything is different. Today hasn’t been life altering for just you. It’s now a new beginning for me, too.”
I nod, but I can’t speak because my voice will crack, which is only going to make me cry more. I just have to go. I don’t even have my car here. Looking at the door, I refuse to turn my head toward him, hoping he’ll take the hint.
“I’ll call you a cab, Tara,” he says. “It will take you to wherever you want. When you’re ready to talk, call me.”
I nod my head and go toward the door. With the handle in my fingertips, I twist it and pull the door slightly. I want to say ‘goodbye’ or ‘see you soon’ but I can’t bring myself to, so I just bring it open all the way and step out.
***
I sit on the stoop for what I guess is twenty minutes before the luxury driver pulls up. I look in the tinted windows before walking up, because I am not going to take a vehicle sponsored by Denver D. Phillips. On the dashboard sits a Gogo sign, so I know that he at least thought about me enough to get a public service.
On the way to Burbank I just stare out the window. I don’t want to replay a single thing until I can lock myself in my apartment and rethink things. The driver doesn’t speak a word to me, and I think it’s because when he looks back at me he can see that my eyes are baggy, weighed down. Maybe Denver told him that I wasn’t much of a talker. He’s probably a good tipper.
The driver drops me off and I walk up the long stone path to my gate where I punch in my code. The interior of my complex is one big, gated court facing in on itself. It’s not much, but right now it’s all that I have. Taking the steps up to my apartment, I smell the familiar stench of Mrs. Almadi’s spiced curry, and the college student next door’s reefer. When I unlock my door, I take in the aroma of my place, which I haven’t been in in days—lilac and coriander. I like the soapy, clean smell that they give me every time I come back.
Even though it’s old school, I still have a landline, and it’s full of messages. I don’t even want to bother going through them. I scan through the caller ID and see that most of them are from Dominic, some from my parents and friends. The others are bill and loan collectors. Nobody I really need to call back right now.
I double-check that my apartment is locked tight. After having a gun in your face, there’s nothing like returning to an empty apartment in a not-too-great section of Southern California. The first thing I do is plug my phone in, and then I take a hot shower. When I come back, I see that Denver has tried to reach me. He doesn’t have my landline, but I’m actually excited to see that he’s blown up my cell with texts and calls. They’re all positive, filtered with different ways to tell me he loves me without wearing the word down to nothing.
Right now, I have the upper hand because he knows that my phone has been off, so I text him that I’m going to bed, I’m shutting my phone off, and I’ll get at him when I’m ready.
Deep down I want to send him every heart or kissy emoji I can find, but I have to act hard for a night and make him think I don’t even care. Really, though, I care a hell of a lot.
In the comfort of my own bed I finally close my eyes, feeling protected. It’s funny that even the “safety” of a billionaire feels less guarded than my own, in-need-of-washing sheets. This smell just reminds me of me. Before all of this, I spent so much time with Dominic that my own apartment basically became a place where I store and dump stuff off.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll get around to cleaning. I plan on sleeping for as long as possible. If I didn’t see the police take Martin and Jill away with my own eyes, I probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep right now. I wouldn’t be able to imagine Denver’s smile, the way he stood in front of a gun for me, or how his eyes rolled back when we came together.
Drifting to sleep, I hold my phone as close as it will go while staying plugged in. I go through all of Denver’s texts—they’re like letters in time, telling me how amazing I am. How he wants to give me the world. How I changed his world.
This is the stuff dreams are made of, Tara, I tell myself. Suddenly my phone lights up and he sends me a picture of himself, lying in the purple sheets where we made love earlier. The text bubble simply reads “wish u were here”. It’s his face, lip pouty, eyebrows scrunched in—and those deep, brilliant blue eyes.
My man.
I take one of myself, but I don’t use the flash like he did. I let it remain dark and slightly blurred. With a little time I’ll let myself come into focus, and hopefully soon there will be room in the frame for Denver, too.
THE END
Bonus Story 35/40
The Seal’s Undivorce
Jacob Sanders drove off the Dam Neck base and onto the highway, determined to put a quick end to this bullshit. Divorce papers? Fucking hell. How long had that shit been sitting in his in box? Couldn’t the Navy at least notify him when his wife was divorcing his ass? Jacob mentally calculated how long he’d been away on deployment. Christ. Three months in Iraq … two in France, then home for … what, two days before his team went wheels up to Syria? God dammit that had been what … shit, six months ago? He had lost track.
&nb
sp; He grit his teeth and pulled out from behind a slow moving truck.
Whatever it was, however long it’d been, he and Danika had an agreement. She was an officer’s wife and knew who he was when she married him. He was a SEAL and his career meant everything. His team was everything. He’d had to put them first over the past ten years in order to be the type of leader he wanted to be. The one he aspired to and his men respected. He led from the front. It was an ugly fact that might suck ass but —
A fucking divorce!? What the fuck, Danika. What. The. Fuck!
He gripped the steering wheel and pulled around another truck.
His marriage, now a bleak separation from his wife was equally as important though. Danika and his five boys meant the fucking world to him. She knew that. They were what he fought for. Protected. Treasured. So when his wife, after eight years of marriage, had broken down under the pressure, he had reluctantly agreed … well belligerently allowed a separation.
He fucking hated every minute of it, but had no choice after Danika dug in. He couldn’t fight with her forever. She was his queen and — Jacob blasted his horn when a car pulled in front of him.
They decided that Danika would keep the boys. He left the house and stayed on base. When it was his time to see them, he stayed with them at the house while Danika left. It was the best way to make sure the boys were the least affected by their problems. Keeping them in the house meant the same schools, same friends, same everything they’d always known, and the adults going back and forth instead of the other way around, kept the boys adjusted as they soldiered on. They made Jacob proud.
Now she wanted a divorce? No way. No fucking way. He would not lose his family. She was not walking away. It would be over his dead body that she would walk away from everything they had.
Jacob glared out the windshield. What the hell was with all the traffic? He checked the time, then his rear-view mirror. He looked like shit. He hadn’t shaved in days, needed a haircut bad, and sported enough dark circles and bags below his eyes to rival a raccoon. Because he was in the sun most of his last deployment, his brown hair looked blond, his brown eyes bleak and like he was some kind of strung-out surfer in need of a week’s worth of sleep.
He looked away from his sorry-ass reflection and back at the road.
He and Danika had an understanding, dammit, and he had stuck to it even though he fucking hated it. He stayed on base when not with the boys, and she went … who the fuck knew where when he was at the house? It fucking pissed him off that she never told him where she was staying, but he backed off asking and gave her space, as requested.
“Jacob, you take off on deployment and I have no idea where you are. I can only reach you by phone if I’m lucky. If you want to get hold of me during your time with the boys, call my cell.”
Jesus Christ. Her fucking space was now a goddamn chasm. Why did he let her get away with that?
Because you fucking loved her and didn’t want to lose her, would do just about anything to make sure she didn’t walk away.
Fuck. Jacob sped past another truck.
He was done appeasing her. He’d given her everything she asked for. Now this. Space. Time. More fucking space. He’d given in and given her everything he could think of to keep her from completely leaving with his boys and still she wanted a fucking divorce? Goddamn him if he even knew why.
He glanced down at the package of papers beside him. Pictured them on fire. Burning to ashes that he’d bury out back behind his house. Or he could just toss them out the window, and let ’em land in a swamp.
Divorce papers? What fucking divorce papers? I never got any god damned fucking divorce papers.
He pulled off the highway and headed through the downtown core. In minutes, he was driving up into the hills of the neighbourhood he’d grown up in. He passed St. Augustine’s church, the centuries’ old place he had tripped home from every Sunday his whole childhood. He married the love of his life in there in front of fourteen hundred of his closest friends, family and SEAL team brothers. It had been beautiful. She’d been beautiful. The best goddamn day of his life next to every day he spent with her on their honeymoon in the Maldives. She had walked down the aisle to him in that huge fairy-tale dress. His Black-American princess came to him and promised to be his for life.
For. Life.
He’d waited so long for her to say yes, he’d knocked her up on their wedding night. He’d never been so horny or determined to do anything before in his life, coming in her, on her and back inside of her all night. Once she had surrendered her virginity, he couldn’t leave her alone and was inside her all night, over and over until they were both exhausted. He’d tired her out by morning, but when he got called out to deploy, four days into their honeymoon, he left completely satisfied she was replete with his seed, marked, and with his baby already growing inside her womb. It was his best fucking work. Literally.
He’d wanted Danika the first day he’d seen her on campus. He was already a SEAL delivering some shit for the Navy, and she was sitting at a table with her nose in a book. He asked her where he could get a cup a coffee and she didn’t even look up at him, just nodded toward the Starbucks and pushed her empty cup his way.
He brought her another cup, and in less than a year she became Mrs. Jacob Sanders. He gave her his name. His family estate. Everything he had, he laid at her feet. He was his parents’ sole heir, and after they died there was nothing he could not afford. Everything he had he gave to his wife. His princess. His queen. The mother of his children. Where the fuck had he gone wrong?
He never got tired of knocking her up. Seeing her get round and soft with his kid always made him hard and horny as all fucking hell. He was one of those men who loved his woman pregnant and endeavoured to see her that way all of the time. Every chance he got over the past eight years, he was on her and in her, coming as hard as he could.
What the hell had he done to deserve a fucking divorce? They agreed, no divorce. She had to know he’d never sign those goddamn fucking papers. He’d never agree to tear their family apart. The past year of separation had pushed him far enough. Did she now want to shove him over the edge? Because her little bundle of papers had just fucked their already fucked situation even more.
Jacob pulled his truck around his family’s estate driveway and got out. In seconds, he slid the key into the lock and slammed open his front door. He blinked in shock. What new fucking Hell was this now?
*****
Danika put down her finally asleep infant daughter and closed the bedroom door against the rising noise coming from the front of her townhouse. “Stay Auntie,” she patted her five-year-old Rottweiler on the head. Auntie was the second last addition to her new townhouse life and a welcome protector to her horde of children.
She walked up the three stairs that led to the entrance foyer and froze.
Sweet baby Jesus. Jacob!
Her fingers trembled on the wrought iron banister. She was not ready for this. She looked back at her daughter’s closed bedroom door, Auntie now lying down dozing before it. She knew this day would come, when she would have to stand and deliver before her warrior hus— ex-husband. She had rehearsed what she’d say, how she’d handle Jacob’s dark belligerent stare a thousand times but … She swallowed against the sharp pounding of her heart. Did he know about Daniella? Finally get the divorce papers? Did he sign them? Maybe he was just here to get the boys and leave? Questions swirled and flapped like flags in her mind. Red flags. Big red warning flags.
Jacob had never crossed the line and come to her townhouse. As far as she knew he didn’t even know where it was. They had agreed to do the “changing of the guard” with the boys at the house, and for the past year he’d respected her wishes and called or texted when he was back home from his tours and wanted his time to be with the boys. They always arranged things so he came to live at the house for at least a week at a time, or until he was recalled to deploy. What brought him here now? Unannounced?
Danika
swallowed and inhaled a shaky breath. He looked good, really good, but then Jacob always did. Tall. Extremely fit. A dark roughness to his all-American features. One look at him and you wanted to sin, drop your panties and just go sin with him. Give him anything he wanted, whenever he wanted it. She had been guilty as charged. Her husband had the ability to make her sit up and beg like no other man. This past year was the one time she’d said no to him in the ten years they been together. Danika let out the breath she held. She had to pull her mind into focus. This was Jacob the warrior she was dealing with right now. She could do this. She could see him again and feel absolutely nothing. Face him and be as neutral as he had been with her the last time. Whenever they missed the changing of guard and had accidently run into each other back at the house, he had looked right through her as if she wasn’t even there. Angry, of course. Bitter even. Yes, he’d never forgiven her for asking to separate. The last time they saw each other he didn’t even notice she was four months pregnant.
Now, it had been over six months since she’d last see him, and she had gained a lot of ground to her self-confidence during that time. She was not going to cave in or turn tail and run. Most of all she was not going to cry. Not anymore. She would hold her own against this man. Assert herself. Eight years of being on his pedestal, set aside on a shelf, until it was time for another baby, waiting for him to turn his attention from his career to her, doing every damned thing required to be a good soldier’s wife.
She was done. Soooo so done. She’d gone rogue with no intention of ever coming back. She’d gotten a life and it was her time now. Danika lifted her chin and started toward the scene at her front door. If not for the seriousness of the situation, she might have laughed at how ridiculous it all looked.
Max, her Cuban hottie nanny and housekeeper, stood staring up at Jacob with his chest puffed out, kitchen towel in his low riding jean’s back pocket. He crossed his arms to bar the doorway that led to the rest of the house.
Suburban Cyborg Page 119
