by Cole, S. Ann
He was oblivious to my wakefulness, so I decided not to disturb him. To fathom how he felt at that moment, with all he’d seen, all that had happened in one night, would be improbable for me. The best thing to do, I figured, was to let him have some time to his own thoughts, to decide whether he still wanted me to be his chosen or not.
His chosen. Of course I still wanted to be his chosen. His apostrophe S.
But he no longer owed me anything. He saved my life. And before that, he unhesitatingly forgave me for willingly and forcefully cheating. For that reason, I wouldn’t force him to stay with me. I divulged to him earlier something I’d kept even from myself: I loved him. A piece of additional knowledge to aid in his decision — that’s if he was wavering on a decision.
At first, he’d been my Again. Then I fell. Hard. Now, I wanted him to be my Forever. Despite all that happened, I loved him, and I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to be a fool for him, forgive all his wrongs, be his enabler. Let him destroy me. Ruin me. Be with me. Just be with me and never leave.
For now, all I could do was close my eyes, revisit sleep to soothe this hammering headache, and send an invocation to the Father above that I’d still be Trev’s when I next woke.
The feel of a wet, warm cloth wiping over the aching areas on my body hauled me from sleep’s grip. I felt like I’d slept for a decade. With a few rapid blinks, vision became clear and revealed a plump, middle-aged woman dressed in all-white, tending to the angry, red welts on my skin.
Noticing I was awake, she smiled. “Miss Kingston, hi. I’m Mary. I’m here to attend to you. How are you feeling?”
A weak smile was all she got, as I let my eyes do a sweep around the room. I was still in Trevillo’s bed — good. The chair he was sitting in earlier this morning, held Marsha instead of him — bad.
Marsha had one hand covering her mouth as she watched me with eyes I knew were fighting not to leak tears. She was a lot like me. We didn’t do the whole waterworks thing, and when a situation was deserving of tears, we tried to laugh instead and pretend it wasn’t all that serious. Though I was shocked to see her there, I was also grateful for her presence.
Eyes shifting back to Mary, I told her, “I’m fine. Just thirsty.”
My condition wasn’t so bad that Trevillo had to go and get me a caretaker. I was just abducted, whipped a few times, and given an orgasm by a female’s tongue while I stood precariously on the brink of death. It’s not like I had a gunshot wound, broken legs, or knife slashes. What I had were minor injuries I could take care of myself.
Mary’s smile was steady as she set the warm rag she used to clean the welts in a basin on the floor and picked it up. “Okay, that’s good. I’ll get you a glass of water. I also have some soup prepared.”
Acknowledging her words, I nodded.
By then, Marsha was out of the armchair and heading towards the bed. Seating herself on the edge, she took my hand in hers and raised an eyebrow. “Well, don’t you have a habit of going missing?”
Finally given the opportunity to laugh, I did. “This time, I didn’t pull a runner. I got snatched by a psycho bitch. Right outside my house.”
Marsha smiled, but there was concern behind it. “I know. Mr. Hot Mogul told me what happened. He called me out of my bed around six this morning. Told me there was a car outside my house, and I should pack a bag and get in. Ordered me, actually. When I got here, he told me about the abduction, how you almost died. He asked me to stay here for awhile, so you had someone familiar around.”
Panic tried climbing up my throat. I took a breath and swallowed it. “So, w-where will he be?”
“Don’t know,” she answered with a shrug. “Just said he wouldn’t be around for a while, because he has some important things to deal with.”
Really? Important things to deal with? More important than me all bruised up in his flipping bed?
“He’s running again,” I whispered, staring off at nothing. “He’s a freakin’ coward. That’s what he is.”
“Why do you think that?” Marsha inquired. “He was visibly suffering from this. You should’ve seen him, Krissy K. He looked like shit.”
“And I don’t?!” I half-yelled at her.
Indignation harassed me, and I tried shaking it off by attempting to speak in a gentler tone. “It’s his style to disappear when shit gets difficult. His excuse is always he’s ‘never done this before’. Well then, how the hell is he ever going to learn how to deal with anything if he keeps freakin’ running? I’m the one who almost took a bullet in the head because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. And even after all that, all I want to do is be with him. Not run. Even though it’s clear being with him is nothing but danger. Straight-up danger. And you don’t see me running, do you?!”
My voice had crescendoed with every word, and by the time I got to the end, I was panting. I, Krissan Kingston, knew how to keep cool, in all things, yet I couldn’t help the ire striating me at the moment.
“Now, now, Miss Kingston, you need to relax,” Mary crooned as came back into the room holding a tray with a porcelain bowl of soup and a tall glass of water.
I sat up in bed with my back against the headboard so she could rest the tray on my lap.
“Be sure to drink all the soup. Mr. Nelson said — ”
“Tell Mr. Nelson I said he should go fuck himself!”
Mary’s lip flattened disapprovingly. Ignoring my outburst, she carried on, “You have to eat. Not for Mr. Nelson, but for yourself.” She pointed to a little bell on the nightstand and told me, “Ring this bell if you need anything.”
I gaped at her as she turned and walked out of the room. I looked to Marsha. “Can you believe this shit? A bell? Really? How old am I? Ninety-nine?”
Marsha burst out laughing. “Maybe that’s the natural treatment when you’re screwing a billionaire?”
Anger was blazing through me, and I couldn’t contain it. I wanted to hurt Trevillo. Badly. How auspicious that he was nowhere in my radius at that moment, because I’d blow my shit all over him.
It wasn’t the fact that he’d abandoned me ‘for a while’ because things might be too cumbersome for him take in right now that infuriated me. It was because I didn’t know if, this time, he would come back to me.
You see, Trevillo always came back to me, and I always took him back, because, as much as he was new to this relationship thing, I was too. But this time, things were different, more serious. Mistakes were made, some more daring than others, which gave a man quite a lot to think about. And the thought of not knowing whether he’d chosen to love me or let me go was both nerve-wracking and exasperating.
Earlier that morning, when I awoke and saw him sitting distraught in the armchair, I was willing to understand and take it in stride if it turned out he no longer wanted me.
Now, however, I wasn’t.
I had enough sleep since then, and now the sensible side of my brain was working quite well. I was coherent enough to know without a doubt I wasn’t willing to give him up. I wanted him to look past my stupid act of revenge — letting another man slip inside me. I wanted him to look past me being ignominiously stretched out and driven to orgasm in front of a string of unknown butches. I wanted him to look past the fact his brother and everyone else at the scene had seen me stark naked, vulnerable and helpless. I wanted him to look past all of it and stay with me.
The chances of that happening were slim, I knew. Because he had never been able to even look at me, or utter a word of comfort. Had it been too much in one night? Too much for him to digest?
A part of me was telling me I should just leave and go home, that this fight would yield no desirable results. But then, that would be me running, too. That would be me being too much of a coward to take the hard truth.
For all I knew, this was what he wanted: for me to leave out of anger and vexation. That way, it would seem as though I was the one who ran from the brashness of this situation and not him.
If we kept running from each ot
her, we’d never be together. Someone had to stay. Someone had to wait. Someone had to have faith.
Therefore, I wasn’t going to leave.
I had pulled the runner on men ever since I lost my V-card. I ran from commitment, love, relationships. I ran from sharing myself, too selfish to do so. I ran because I never before had a reason to stay.
Not this time. This time, I wanted commitment. I wanted a relationship. I wanted love. I wanted to share myself. This time, I wanted to stay. There was a reason to stay. That reason was because Trevillo Marco-Dean Nelson had my heart. He had taken it because it belonged to him, and I never want him to give it back.
He barged into my empty, pointless life and filled it to the brim with himself. All of himself. He found all the dark, numb corners, shone his own dark light in them and made me feel. He wasn’t an angel or a white knight, a savior, or a safe, innocuous, decent man. He was just Trevillo Nelson — as flawed as the fallen angel with sins unhidden, and I loved every bit of him from his filthy mouth to his twisted edge. I loved it all.
So I wasn’t going to move a muscle out of this penthouse. I was going to stay and let life and love prove to me they weren’t overrated.
An entire week blew past, and Trevillo hadn’t made a single visit to the apartment. Neither did he call — well, he didn’t call me.
He spoke frequently with Mary about my wellbeing, and he even phoned Marsha, apologizing for keeping her from her family and business, and told her he would have her daughter picked up so she could stay at the penthouse with us, too, until he ‘got back’.
I was a bit surprised when Marsha agreed to that. Why?
Well, Claire, Marsha’s three year old daughter, was an enigma. Marsha sequestered her from this side of the world. She was my best friend, yet I’d only seen her daughter twice: on the cold, rainy night Claire was born, and another time when I’d made a surprise visit at Marsha’s house; Claire had been five months old then — a chubby bundle of kicking and constant wailing.
Most of Claire’s three year old life was spent in Silicon Valley with Marsha’s sister. One would almost think Marsha didn’t love her child, what with the way she kept her from both herself and her friends. So much so, that sometimes I forgot she even had a child. That damn Prime Douche!
Trevillo also relayed notice through Marsha that the deadline for Skylark’s completion was extended. For me, work at Skylark was on hold, and I needn’t worry about leaving the apartment.
As if I was ever going to. I only left the apartment once, and that was to get a check-up at my gynecologist, then straight back ‘home’.
I had a strong feeling Trevillo’s demand that I don’t leave the apartment was another test of his, to see if I’d respond by doing the opposite of what he said in rebellion.
Normally, I would have done the opposite, especially when it came to work, because I was serious about my work, never allowing anything to get in between, and he knew that. Not this time, though.
If the boss said work was on hold, then work was on hold.
The following week, I tried to convince Mary I didn’t need a caretaker by doing a couple reps of jumping-jacks, sit-ups and push-ups, showing her I was walking, talking, breathing and living just as any other normal human being. Surprisingly, she agreed, and passed on that bit to ‘Mr. Nelson’. Then, she was out.
Trevillo knew he was being a supreme dick, so his ass was trying to surround me with people, in the hope they would blur my vision of him being a supreme dick. If his craven ass didn’t want to be with me anymore, then he should meet me eye to eye and tell me that.
Dick.
“Really, Marsh, aren’t you losing money at your salon by wasting your days here with me?” I asked her one day.
Having Marsha around was great, I loved her. Her craziness helped ease my mind off things at times. However, I figured if she wasn’t around, if no one was around for that matter, Trevillo would be forced to face me. He wouldn’t call Jahleel; I was sure of that. Plus, if Jahleel were to ever know what happened, he’d fight Trevillo to the death to get me away from him.
“Well, yeah. But you mean more to me than money, Krissy K.”
She was sitting in a sofa chair across from me in the living room, looking rather fidgety, her feet close together, bouncing up and down, her fingers drumming restlessly over her kneecaps as she stared at the television. I linked her anxiousness to Claire’s pending arrival. Claire was supposed to be with us since last week, but Marsha had kept putting it off.
Dragging her jittery gaze from the television, she looked over at me with sincerity. “I just want to be sure you’re one hundred percent A-okay before I leave your side. What happened was pretty fucked-up. You almost died, and you’re acting like it isn’t a big deal. I don’t know how you do it.”
That’s because losing Trevillo is a much bigger deal, I mused, flicking my cellphone over and over in my hand, hoping, as I did each day, it would ring, and Trevillo’s name would flash across the screen.
But it never did. And, at the end of each day when I didn’t receive that hoped-for call, I sent him a text message: You. Are. A. Coward.
He never texted back.
Marsha was still being a big bundle of nerves across from me, and I decided to ask her a question that would hopefully piss her off and send her leaving in a fit of pique.
“Is he paying you to stay with me?”
Her feet stopped bouncing, but she didn’t look at me when she acrimoniously bit out, “He wanted to, but I declined. Because a real friend shouldn’t have to be paid to be around.” Her offended eyes flicked over to me. “Instead of being a bitch to everyone, you could say thank — ”
Abruptly, she stopped and narrowed her eyes at me. This was Marsha I was dealing with, I should’ve known she’d catch on to my ploy. “Nice try, Krissy K. But, since you wanna play that game … ” She smirked. “How did it feel to fuck your brother?”
Feigning indifference, I started to ask, “How do you know — ”
“Oh, c’mon! Don’t even try to act like nothing happened between you two,” she said with a scoff. “You were all but screwing each other on the dance floor at the club. Tongues and deep kissing and ass grabbing, then all of a sudden, you were both missing. It wouldn’t take a seasoned whore to figure out what happened.”
“I didn’t … we never … we only — ”
Marsha sucked air through her teeth. “You don’t have to explain. That shit was inevitable. It was obvious to everyone but you that JK’s balls deep in lust with you, Krissy K.”
I was never oblivious to it, I wanted to tell her. I just purposely and spitefully ignored his feelings. Same as he’d ignored mine when I was drowning in them.
Looking over at Marsha, I knew she wanted to hate me but couldn’t, because I was her best friend, and she had no choice but to love me. Marsha had always been in love with Jahleel, and for some dumb reason she wouldn’t let herself stop loving him. All he ever did was use her, and she let him. Over and over. Trying to give her advice was futile. So I butted out and let her do what made her feel … fulfilled.
I, however, knew Jahleel. And I knew for a fact he was never going to settle with Marsha. It didn’t matter how strong or high her hope candle flamed.
To cool off the tension, I got up and went to the kitchen for a drink. Feeling peckish, I grabbed a vanilla Greek yogurt and plopped down on a barstool at the breakfast bar.
A few minutes later, I heard the elevator doors open, and there was the squeal of a little girl’s voice saying “Mommy!”
Claire had arrived.
I decided to give Marsha some alone time with her daughter and went to grab a shower. Truth was, kids weren’t exactly my scene. I wouldn’t say I hated them, because that would make people look at me like I was a she-devil. But, for me, kids were annoying: chatty, whiny, and asked too many damn questions. So I kept as far away from them as possible, lest I might do something like pinch them, gag them, or stuff them in a barrel and roll it down a
hill.
An hour later, fresh from my shower, I wandered back out to the living room, scrolling through my cellphone. Claire said something, and I glanced up. I felt an invisible fist punch to my stomach as I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of Marsha and Claire.
It wasn’t unusual to see a mother bonding with her daughter, no. It was that the daughter was the spitting image of …
“Oh my God,” I whispered, and at those words, twin tears rolled down Marsha’s cheeks as she kept her eyes trained on the television.
Claire was sitting on her mother’s lap, looking up at me with that curious gaze children tend to look at unfamiliar people with.
I felt all the blood drain from my face as her light-gold eyes grew bored with looking at me and shifted back to the television. Her mass of thick, sandy-brown hair was caught up in a curly ponytail, and her nose … her lips … everything was …
“Oh my God,” I whispered again, unable to move from the spot where I was rooted.
Marsha still hadn’t looked in my direction. A few shocking minutes past before I finally found words other than, ‘Oh my God’.
“Does he know?”
Marsha shook her head from side to side, and the tears came harder, silently.
Taking tentative steps toward the sofa, I sat down beside her. “But, why would you keep it from him?”
That did it. Marsha broke down. She dropped her face in her hands and began crying. I reached over and started to lift Claire onto my lap, but she slapped my hand and squealed, “No! You maken my mommy cwy. Stop maken my mommy cwy!”
I promptly moved my hands and gaped. This is definitely a mini Marsha.
“I-I can’t,” Marsha finally said.
“Why not? He deserves to know, Marsh.”
She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Because … I did it on my own.”
