His Betrayal Her Lies

by Angel de'Amor

  Kalon uncrossed his arms and sat next to Taylor on the couch. “This is when you tell me you fell for me right?”

  She nodded.

  “His betrayal to you, led to your lies to me. Wow.”

  “But if I’m going to be completely honest, I love you both. I know what he did to me was hurtful and I probably won’t ever be able to get over it but he was my first love. If you give me the chance, though, I want to make this work.”

  Kalon rubbed his hand around his goatee. He was mad as hell that he got played, and now she wanted to make things work? “Taylor, I can’t trust you. Opening up my heart to you was a big step for me. I’ve never opened up myself to anyone and just when I decided too I got burned. I think you should go home to your husband.”

  Taylor desperately caressed the creases in her forehead. “In all my years, Kalon, I’ve never had to fight for anything. But I will fight for this relationship. You changed for me. Now I want to be the woman you deserve. Leaving is not an option for me, Kalon. I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  Kalon shook his head. He walked over to the steel door and slid it back. “You need to leave, Taylor. There’s nothing more for us to talk about.” A swoop wave with his hands told Taylor he wanted her to exit.

  “But, Kalon, you’re everything that I want and need. I know that now. Please, let’s—“

  He pointed to the elevator.

  Taylor picked her clutch purse up off the couch and ran past Kalon, crying hysterically.

  He slammed the door behind her, determined not to let her see him cry. The loft was eerily quiet. There was no one present except a man and his pain. But he couldn’t shut off what he felt for her. His heart went out to her. He knew she was devastated, and the thought of her driving in that condition didn’t sit well with him. He ran after her but by the time he reached the lobby, she had already made it onto the busy downtown streets. He burst through the door and onto the sidewalk, eyes scanning up and down the street for her silhouette. He spotted her.

  “Taylor, wait.”

  She looked back and ran faster to her car.

  Kalon ran out into the streets, trying to make her stop the car. Her silver BMW sped past him, then he heard screeching tires trying to come to a stop.

  Everything began to unfold in slow motion. Taylor’s BMW was colliding with a yellow mustang. His heart stopped beating for what seemed like an eternity. His legs couldn’t carry him fast enough to the scene. He opened her car door and there she lay in her seat, head against the steering wheel. Her face was covered in blood. He was in shock—couldn’t think, speak, or move.

  Someone pushed him to the side. When the paramedics arrived, they pulled her from the car. All he could think at that moment was please God don’t take the only woman I ever loved from me.

  Chapter 18

  Kalon stood motionless, glancing around as people pulled over to the curb, talking on their cell phones. A small group of onlookers helped a visibly shaken but coherent driver out the yellow mustang. Paramedics rushed in to give the younger woman who collided with Taylor BMW medical attention.

  Everything seemed surreal to Kalon until a second set of paramedics placed an oxygen mask on Taylor’s face, lifted her onto the gurney and slid her motionless body into the back of their ambulance. Kalon snapped out of his mini trance and grasped one of the paramedics by the arm. “Wait,” he said in a distressed tone. “I’m coming with her.”

  The young paramedic asked, “Who are you to this woman?”

  Kalon massaged the back of his neck in an effort to relieve the stress he felt building. He had to think fast if he was going to convince them to let him ride with Taylor in the ambulance. “I’m her husband,” he blurted.

  The young man nodded his head and stepped aside for Kalon to hop into the ambulance.

  The space inside the vehicle was crowded. It looked like a rolling ER. While one paramedic reached here and there, pulling bandages, syringes, and vials of medicine out of the built-in metal shelving, the other expertly inserted an I.V. into Taylor’s slender hand. Kalon sat on the side of Taylor’s gurney and held her free hand as she dozed in and out of consciousness. He gently squeezed her hand to comfort her as a few tears escaped from her eyelids. He even had to wipe away a few stray tears of his own. He hoped to soothe her with his words.

  “You are going to be okay, baby. Just hold on. Don’t give up, okay? Keep listening to the sound of my voice.”

  He felt Taylor give his hand a faint squeeze and she smiled up at him. Kalon ran his hands through her soft curls and gave her a tender kiss on the lips.

  Taylor eye’s closed once more and Kalon panicked. He turned towards the paramedic. “She went under again. Oh God, don’t let her slip away.”

  The paramedic pulled a miniature flashlight from somewhere. Holding one of Taylor’s eyelids open, he flicked the beam past her pupils several times. “Keep talking to her, sir,” he instructed Kalon. “She has a concussion and I need you to try to keep her awake.”

  Kalon rocked back and forth on the little bench he was perched on and told Taylor how much he loved her, how he never was going to let her go again, and that he didn’t care about the lies she told him or the truth about herself she kept from him.

  When the ambulance came to a sudden halt and the sirens stopped blaring, Kalon knew they had reached the hospital. Inside, Taylor was rolled down a long narrow hallway. Kalon held on to her hand as he ran alongside the gurney. A doctor was trotting behind them, shouting out orders to the nurses. Reaching the double doors at the end of the hall, a nurse with blue scrubs on placed her hand on Kalon’s arm. “Sir, you are going to have to stay out here.” She ushered him over to a secluded area to the left of the emergency room. Kalon ran back up to Taylor’s gurney before she was pushed through the double doors. He stroked the side of her face once and she opened her eyes. “I love you,” he spoke urgently. He stole a kiss as she was whisked away.

  Kalon slowly walked back to the waiting area and flopped down in a steel chair. Images of Taylor conjured up in his mind. The way she placed her hand on her stomach when she laughed, the dimples in her cheek that appeared every time she started to get sassy with him. He daydreamed about how angelic she looked when she was sleeping with her reddish hair sprawled across the pillow. Kalon spoke out loud to an empty room, “Yeah, baby, you’re going to be alright.”

  ***

  Kalon jumped up the moment he saw the nurse walk out the double doors that said Restricted Access. He ran out the waiting area and caught up to her. “Excuse me, Ma’am, but how is my girl?” He quickly rephrased his question. “I mean how is my wife?”

  The nurse kept walking swiftly. “The doctor will be out to speak with you shortly, sir.”

  Kalon couldn’t wait on a doctor, so he stepped in front of the woman. “I just need to know is she okay?”

  The nurse placed her hands on her hips and looked behind her, as if contemplating whether to disclose Taylor’s status. She hesitated for a brief moment and spoke in a whisper. “She is going to make it, sir.”

  Right then and there, Kalon knew that somehow, some way, Taylor was going to become his wife. He turned around, walked back to the waiting area and waited patiently for the doctor.

  The saga continues to play out in Kept Secrets. Here is a sneak peek:

  Kept Secrets

  by

  Angel de’Amor

  The vision seemed so vivid and real. Maci’s eyes rolled to the back of her head and she clawed and hissed to be released. Little spit bubbles formed on the side of her mouth as her neck jerked back and forth but Ari’s hands held on like a vice grip—until he realized he was committing a crime.

  He was standing outside of himself, watching as someone who looks like him carried out this terrible act.

  Ari awoke in a dark room with a massive headache. As he tried to sit up, he fell back onto the pillow resting underneath his head. The room didn’t seem familiar at first. He rubbed his eyes to regain his vision. The black
dresser with chrome handles and the sixty-two inch television mounted on the wall were part of the bedroom furnishings he had given Taylor last year for her birthday.

  I’m at home. How did I get here?

  Massaging his temples, he rolled over onto the side of the bed and sat up slowly. He thought for sure that he would wake up in prison for murder, or at least be in an interrogation room surrounded by police officers and detectives asking him what his motive was for killing Maci. Maci?

  “Where is Maci?” he asked out loud to the empty room. The last thing he could remember was being knocked upside the head. So many questions started to formulate in his mind, and he had no answers. Pulling his iPhone out his side pocket, he scrolled through his directory, clicking on the only person who could help him. He blew out an aggravated breath. “Hey, Jay. I’m in some deep shit and I need your help now.”

  * * *

  “Dr. Jones, you are needed in labor and delivery,” someone announced on the intercom over Kalon’s head as he sat in a small secluded room located on the east wing of Northwestern Hospital.

  Through the clear glass windows, Kalon could see the gurneys being pushed down the aisle, the people laying on them hanging on for dear life. IV lines, pumping fluid into the patients’ veins, were suspended from bags hanging above poles on some of the gurneys. Doctors and nurses with blue scrubs on crowed the hallways, running back and forth with distressed looks on their faces. The stench of bleach filled the room. The cold air did nothing for Kalon’s exposed arms and legs.

  His head hung low. In his lap, his bloody palms trembled fiercely as the accident played over and over in his mind. The smell of burnt rubber from tires skidding across the intersection invaded his nostrils. The sound of metal colliding, scraping, bending, and crushing would not leave his ears. His heart rate increased as the images became more vivid, especially Taylor’s limp body being pulled from the car and the paramedics performing CPR.

  This woman was the love of his life and here she was in the hospital on the brink of death. The thought of being responsible for her accident made him fall from the cold steel chair onto his knees. He had never prayed before in his life but felt compelled to do so now. He didn’t know if there were certain things you were expected to say in prayer; he only knew what was in his heart. “I’m not sure what to call you, but I’ll call you what many say you are, the God of peace, love, forgiveness, and healing. I bow to you this day to ask for your mercy on Taylor. Please don’t take her away from me.” Warm moist tears trickled down his face. His voice cracked at the next words he spoke. “I love her.”

  The door to the room swung open and Kalon, still on his knees, turned around to see Mayor John Briggs, Tammy Briggs, three women, and two men enter. He recognized two of the women through his watery eyelids.

  Before Mayor Briggs could utter a single word, the ER doctor walked into the room, taking off her surgical gloves and pulling down her mask.

  “How is my daughter?” Tammy asked, standing firm in front of her husband.

  The doctor placed her hands on her hips and sighed. “We did everything we could do; she lost a lot of blood.”

  Toni, Pam, and Libby all put their hands to their mouths to restrain their sobs.

  Tammy screamed, “Nooooo,” and she buried her head into her husband’s chest.

  The surgeon spoke loudly and urgently. “No, no, it’s not that. She’s okay. She did lose a lot of blood but she’s a fighter and is hanging in there. Right now we are just waiting for her to wake up.”

  The family breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  Tammy jerked her head up. “When will she wake up? Can we see her? What happened?”

  “Well it’s up to Taylor when she decides to wake up. Her body is in a comatose stage, and people in this state might wake up right away, the next day, or a week from now.”

  Mayor Briggs tightened his grip on his wife’s shoulders.

  Dr. Yancy said, “You all can see her two at a time.”

  Tyler stepped to his mom and dad. “You both go ahead and we all will stay out here and wait.”

  Mayor Briggs’ bodyguard, Frank, came and stood by his side, awaiting instructions. Mayor Briggs placed his hand on Frank’s shoulder and stared him straight in the eyes. “I need you to keep the media away from this hospital until I find out what happened. And I need you to contact my lawyer, Mr. Fox, and ask him to meet me here immediately.”

  Frank nodded and walked swiftly out the waiting area.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” Tammy asked again, sniffling through her tears.

  Dr. Yancy gazed across the room. “You might want to ask that young man over there.” She nodded her head toward the corner of the room.

  All eyes shifted to Kalon. The family hadn’t noticed him until now.

  “And who are you?” Mayor Briggs asked.

  Kalon stood up on trembling legs, straightened his wrinkled shirt as much as he could, rubbed his face a few times and swallowed the lump in his throat. “My name is Kalon Knight, and I’m the man who is in love with your daughter.”