Unforgivable

by Lindsay Delagair

  He released me and plugged in the hair trimmer, selected a short attachment for the blade and sighed, “Would you care to do the honors?” he asked, offering me the trimmer.

  “I’ve never cut hair and you will look bad if I do it,” I admitted.

  “You can’t screw this up, Leese. You just put it against my head and slide it through the hair.”

  Gingerly I accepted, but he was almost too tall for this to go smoothly. I could see him studying my hesitation from the mirror; he dropped to his knees.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said turning on the trimmer and placing it against his forehead. “Do you want to close your eyes?”

  We looked at each other for a moment in the mirror.

  “No.”

  I took a deep breath and slid the trimmer forward, watching as all that black silky hair hit the floor. He was right about one thing; it wasn’t difficult although it hardly looked like he’d been in a barber’s chair. He was actually smiling, which I found completely odd. I thought he’d dislike losing one of his most popular features, but he seemed unaffected as the new Ryan emerged.

  I hadn’t realized until I was finished how terribly my hands were trembling. It only became noticeable to me when his very steady hands removed the trimmer from mine.

  “I’ll finish it up around the sides. You might want to find a broom; it looks like we scalped a yeti in here.”

  I left and went to the kitchen to see if there was a broom. I found it and the dust pan and returned to the bathroom and began sweeping up the piles of brown and black hair.

  “There,” he said, turning off the noisy trimmer, “how does that look?” He had removed the guide and trimmed closer in some places, but that gave it a finished look.

  “Can I feel it?” I asked. I’d felt a buzz cut years ago and remembered how interesting it was.

  He leaned his head toward me.

  “Oh, that feels so cool,” I said, laughing as my hands slid over the soft, yet stiff ends of hair.

  His hand went up immediately to feel the stubs, touching mine as he did. He looked at me and smiled. I removed my hand and went back to sweeping.

  “Are you ready to dye?” he asked.

  I didn’t intend to show my reaction when he uttered those words, but he caught my momentary expression of panic. “Yea-yeah, sure,” I said, trying to leave the room.

  He gripped my arm, “I think you and I need to talk.” All his teasing vanished.

  “About what?” I replied, trying to let the color return to my cheeks.

  “You just freaked when I asked that question. I saw the same reaction when I asked you at the wedding if your life was ending. Has Micah ever threatened to-to kill you?” His eyes narrowed at me and I knew he was going to want an answer.

  “There is a lot about Micah and I that no one knows,” I said, holding back the tears forcing their way to the surface.

  Ryan gripped my shoulders, “You know there are no reasons for you and I to have secrets from each other-not now anyway.”

  It was a long, long evening, as I told him everything about Micah and me. How he had been hired to kill me and then almost did. How he agreed to let me buy a few weeks of life to stop whoever was hurting my family, and his agreement to be a gentleman. I told him what exactly was going through my head when I collapsed just before Micah took me away the day at the diner. I replayed my frightening first encounter with David, shooting lessons, his family, being drugged, and our time spent at the small motel becoming too close. I told him about the final call that shortened my life to mere hours, Jack and Ricky’s executions, and ending with being in the hospital.

  “So this is the same D’Angelo guy from the hotel today? He was the one pulling Micah’s strings about killing you?”

  “Yeah, he is like the banker, I guess. Someone comes to him with a hit, and he holds the money and assigns the hit man. When the job is done, he makes the pay-off.”

  “If you hadn’t gone to the hospital that day to try to help your mom, you would have waited for him to come back, wouldn’t you, even though he said he was going to kill you?”

  “I didn’t have a choice, Ryan. If I’d run, then Micah would have been killed. I don’t know if he could have actually done it, but I’ll never forget the way he looked at me when he told me my time was up.”

  “Why,” he asked with his eyes large and round, “did you get back together with him?”

  “I told you, I am so honestly in love with him. He’s not really that way. It’s just how he was raised. He’s changed everything to-to…” I had done well up until this point in only allowing a few tears to fall, but as soon as I considered everything Micah had done to change his life, to make a new life with me, I collapsed inside. It was like an implosion of the worst kind. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe and what was worse was I didn’t want to breathe.

  He had changed his world for me and now I had pushed him away-I had no choice, but at the moment all I wanted was to be selfish and run back to him. To keep him for myself and the consequences be damned, but I knew if I did then one day very soon he would hate me for what I’d done to his family. “Oh, God, Ryan, what is he going through right now? He knows by now that I’m gone. He thinks I’m some trashy whore who couldn’t make up her mind about which guy to sleep with. He must hate me so badly. Oh, Ryan… Oh, God,” I sobbed, my shoulders convulsing from the depth of emotion coming to the surface.

  He pulled me into his arms as I disappeared into my pain. In all the points in my recent life when I had felt broken, nothing ever, ever hurt so badly as what I was feeling now. All I could see was Micah’s face and the hurt, pain, anger and betrayal. All I wanted at that moment was to disappear from the planet earth, but I didn’t know if even Heaven could heal the gaping wound inside my heart. The full effect of what was irreversibly put into motion this morning was like the impact of hitting cement after jumping from a high rise, obliterating everything inside me.

  I must have literally cried into unconsciousness because when I woke up it was dark and I was tucked into a bed-alone. I got up and found Ryan asleep in the adjacent bedroom. It was two in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. I imagined Micah was awake wherever he was at the moment.

  I pulled the cell phone from my purse and sat there for another hour trying to decide if I should turn it on. I wanted nothing more than to call him, to hear him answer his phone as he breathed out my name. I would at least tell him how very sorry I was for what happened. I wanted to tell him I loved him with all my heart, but that wouldn’t make much sense when I needed him to believe I left him for Ryan.

  I finally turned it on and noticed I had twenty-seven new messages. I didn’t want to play them, but I knew his voice was waiting for me at just the push of a button. The first message began the slow tearing of my heart from my chest.

  “Hey baby, call me as soon as you get this message-I just need to know where you are right now. Call me back.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know you love me, Annalisa. Don’t do this to us, please baby. I can forgive you for anything, just don’t leave me.”

  “Why won’t you at least answer the damn phone? Tell me what I did wrong-and then tell me what I can do right to fix this. You’ve got to at least talk to me, Leese, please. I know you’re listening to this message-if you ever loved me, call me, baby.”

  There was a message from my mother begging me to think about what I was doing to everyone, Micah’s family, her and Kimmy, and even to Ryan, “I never thought of you as selfish, honey, but this was the most… God, Leese, what’s gotten in to you?”

  There were twenty three more messages, two more of them from Mom as she balled her eyes out and asked me to come home, and twenty-one more messages were from Micah’s cell number, but they were all silent. The silence hurt worse than the pleas.

  I was still awake when dawn broke. There was no need to go back to bed as I groggily walked to the kitchen. Even tho
ugh I wanted food, coffee would do for now. I think the sound of me in the kitchen must have disturbed Ryan’s sleep because I could hear him moaning and tossing around, but he didn’t wake.

  The coffee finished perking and I poured myself a cup and unlocked the sliding doors that led to the back porch. A mist was lying down the intensely green mountain side as I sat in a rocker and watched a hummingbird by a large flowered bush at the end of the porch. It was so peaceful to look out upon when my inner self was in total shambles. I heard the sliding door as Ryan appeared carrying a cup of coffee; he didn’t appear to be fully awake.

  “Not a morning person?” I asked. Micah and I had both been early risers.

  “Absolutely not,” he said, rubbing his sleepy face, “but you? I figured you were a morning person; morning people always seem to be so bubbly.”

  “Jewels is bubbly, I just like to get up early no matter what mood I’m in.”

  He laughed, “Yeah, you’re right. She was off the charts bubbly most of the time-it drove me crazy.”

  “So was there ever any chance for the two of you to get together?”

  “No. She wanted to try her wings out at-at sex, but I wasn’t-”

  “Jewels?” I said, clearly surprised. “She wanted-”

  “Yeah, like majorly bad. I think I was the complete opposite of what her parents would approve of and that was a big turn on for her.” He shook his head at the memory and breathed in the vapors rising from his coffee cup.

  “Well, I’m impressed with you. Most guys would have been happy to oblige her, especially if it was her first time.”

  “I suppose you’re right, but I honestly didn’t want my first experience to be in the back of my Trans Am with her cheering me on to make the goal.”

  I wondered for a moment if I’d heard him correctly. Did he say his first experience or hers? I stopped the rocker and stared at him, mentally reviewing what he’d said.

  “Big shocker, huh?” he laughed lightly.

  I still hadn’t found the speech button for my mouth. This 6’3” tattooed, Air Force bound, electric-blue-eyed, raven haired angel was exactly what I had been four days ago-virgin. Now I really heaped a huge pile of guilt upon the ashes of my life. He risked everything and ran away with someone who could never be with him the way he was hoping to experience. And, for that matter, how was he ever going to find the right girl as long as he was in my company?

  “That wasn’t your-your first kiss back at the hotel, was it?” I was cringing hard.

  “I’ve kissed girls before…” he said.

  I took a breath.

  “…but never the way you kissed me, Leese. I usually back away if a girl wants to try getting that hot and heavy.”

  I rolled my eyes heavenward as they filled with tears.

  “Don’t be upset about it,” he continued, “they were the best kisses of my entire life.”

  “God, just send down a lightning bolt right now and fry me,” I whimpered, still looking up.

  He looked up at the sky and then back down at me, “Don’t talk like that.” He grabbed my arm and made me go back inside. Yeah, he and I both knew I deserved that lightning bolt.

  “We’re doing your hair,” he stated, setting down his cup of coffee and grabbing the boxes of color and frost on the table, “come on.”

  I think I was still numb up until he rinsed out the first batch of dye. He was towel drying my head and had gotten a little too rough when I snapped out of it.

  “Yikes, give me that towel. You’re about to remove my scalp!”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said and then went for the blow dryer.

  “I can do that part myself.” I handed him back the towel. It usually took me twenty minutes or more to dry my hair when it was long, now it seemed to be dry in five.

  “Okay, now we’ll streak it,” he stated matter-of-factly, getting the product out on the bathroom counter with all the little foil papers. “Crap, this looks complicated.”

  “I don’t have to have streaks,” I argued.

  “We bought it, you’ll look good with them so you’re getting them, got it?”

  “All right hair-god, but if my head goes up in flames, it’s your fault.” Why did I worry? He could work in a salon, even if that isn’t what he considered macho enough for his persona. I looked fabulous when he was done with me.

  The red dye didn’t go quite as smoothly as the blonde. He just didn’t have enough hair to keep from getting it on his skin. Once the time was up and I rinsed it off his head, it wasn’t so bad, but it was certainly different. I didn’t, and I don’t think he did either, consider the shocking contrast with the red hair and the blue eyes.

  “I look freaky,” he remarked as he studied his reflection in the mirror.

  “We’re dying you back to black before we leave here.”

  “Nah, it’s cool.”

  “Ryan, it looks like your heads on fire-you’re going back to black.”

  He grinned as he put himself cheek to cheek with me as we looked at the blonde and the redhead in the mirror, “Whatever you say.” He kissed my temple and walked away.

  The rest of the day was spent lounging on the comfortable couches in the living room and flipping between the news and the weather channel. Ryan snoozed most of the time. He wasn’t kidding about not being a morning person. At the rate he was sleeping, I’d be lucky if he was a late afternoon person.

  It didn’t surprise me there was nothing on the news about me, especially since we’d kept every detail about the wedding hush-hush from the press. I chuckled to myself as I considered we had the tightest security possible during the wedding because it was provided for us by the mob; even the most die-hard paparazzi would have been dissuaded.

  D’Angelo had not been on the guest list because Micah felt having the person who hired him to kill me there, would have been like bringing Robert to the wedding. The reason for the change in our wedding date was now abundantly clear to me. Had we tried to keep it September 15th, D’Angelo would have gotten to me before Micah and I had the opportunity to experience each other. I wondered if it was possible that I might be pregnant. What a sad, but beautiful way to keep a part of him with me.

  When nighttime came Ryan was fully awake and I was exhausted from not sleeping the night before. I felt bad leaving him sitting there with nothing to do, but I had to go to bed. I honestly don’t know why I even tried. Within an hour, I was awake again. I tossed and turned and finally got up and watched a late movie with him until one a.m. and then tried once again to go to sleep.

  I needed my sleeping pill; he was just over six feet tall with muscles and a way of crooning my name, and wrapping his arm around my waist as I drifted off to sleep. But there was no Micah to lull me into the rest I needed, only his memory; and a memory of him could never replace what I needed.

  The next morning, the effects of two sleepless nights were starting to show. Ryan was up by ten and rather chipper for having risen before noon, but he could tell immediately I hadn’t done well through the night.

  “I think you need to get out and get some fresh air and exercise that way you’ll be so tired you’ll sleep tonight. I found a trail last Christmas that leads to a waterfall, wanna go?”

  “Give me a few minutes to pull myself together,” I said as I stumbled to the bathroom and got ready.

  He was right about the walk, I felt so much better as we took off down the mountainside. We discussed leaving perhaps by Friday and going to our final destination, final as long as there were no signs that Micah had figured out where we went. We were both pretty sure our location here had been a good choice and that was why we wouldn’t leave for another three or four days.

  The waterfall was tucked off to the side of the path, but the sound of the falling water could be heard for a good distance away. It was small, but still impressive as it poured over the rocks and continued as a small stream running down the mountain. We splashed around and acted like a pair of kids for a while and then finally started
the journey back up the mountain.

  Okay, now I understood what he was saying about being tired enough for sleep tonight. The trip up the trail was arduous where as the trip down had been pleasant. We were both sweaty and drained of all the positive energy when we reached Harvey’s place. Ryan took a shower and flopped on the couch, passing out almost immediately. I took a shower and tried passing out, but as tired as I was, I simply couldn’t sleep. When he rolled over two hours later, he found me sitting there watching him.

  “I made you some lunch,” I said as he looked at me expressionlessly.

  He blinked a couple times, yawned and rubbed his sleepy face, “Did you take a nap?”

  “I tried; no luck.”

  “Crap, Leese, you’ve got to get some sleep before you turn into a zombie.” He sat up, putting his feet on the floor and running his hand over his shock-red stubble, “If you don’t sleep tonight, we’re going back to town and getting you some sleeping pills.”

  “I don’t take pills,” I retorted.

  “Well you got to do something. Did you have problems sleeping before all of this?”

  “I did until Micah started staying at the house. He was my ‘sleeping pill,’” I said, smiling for once at a memory instead of crying. “Some nights he’d slip in my room and-”

  Ryan’s hand went up to shush me, “I don’t know if I want to hear about what he did to get you to sleep.”

  “Ryan,” I stated with surprise, “we didn’t have sex until after we got married. He would just crawl in bed and hold me and then we could both sleep. It’s like we became so bonded when we had to stay together because of the contract that now it’s as if something inside me is actually…” The tears were coming to the surface as I looked away so he wouldn’t notice, but it was too late.

  He reached over and turned my chin toward him, “It’s okay to cry, Leese. Go ahead and finish what you were saying.”