Truth & Consequences: A Miss Independent Novel

by Leach, Kiki

  “You still don’t have the entire story.”

  “I don’t need it. I can pretty much guess what’s coming next, GET OUT!”

  “No,” he stated in a firm tone. “Not until you hear the rest of what I need to tell you.”

  Anger fueled her emotions and she slammed her hands into his chest, shoving him back into the wall so hard, the pictures around him crashed to the wooden floor.

  “You are downright evil.”

  “V--”

  “You don’t wanna leave?” She clinched her teeth and shoved her way into his personal space even further, her eyes roaming every part of his face, a sneer arching up her lip. “I will fucking force you out.”

  Reacting the only way she knew how, she raced to the kitchen and rounded the counter. Nathan followed after and watched with wide eyes and a gaping mouth as she picked up a plate and tossed it at his head. She hoped to crack it right between his eyes and straight through to his thick skull. Unfortunately for her, he had ducked just in time, as the chinaware smashed into the wall directly behind him.

  “You’re everything that’s still wrong with the world, you EVIL, STUPID, SICK son of a BITCH!” She smashed another plate, this time, nearly missing the side of his face. Had he not dodged to the right the moment he saw the second plate flying at him, there was a chance he would have been in need of a glass eye. “PIECE OF SHIT!”

  “V!” he yelled.

  But she wasn’t trying to hear a single thing he had to say.

  “I don’t know what the hell I ever saw in your sorry ass! I must have been blind as FUCK from the moment my mother gave birth! Ever since we were kids, all you’ve ever done is fuck up my life and nine times out of ten, it’s been for your own damn selfish reasons.”

  “And the one time it wasn’t?” he asked.

  “It was for Sheila’s.” She grabbed another plate and held it tight, breathing so hard she could feel her heart slamming against her ribs. “Almost twenty years is too gotdamn long to be in any kind of relationship with you, good, bad, five miles away or thousands!” She lifted her hand high above her head, preparing for another toss.

  “I only reacted how you wanted me to in seeing you together, alright?!”

  Vanessa paused and took her time to lower the plate in front of her before dropping it on the counter and wiping blown strands of hair from her face. She pulled her brows together and rattled her head, certain Nathan had finally lost the last shred of his damn mind.

  “What the hell are you even talking about?! Do you think that what we were doing up there in the privacy of my own damn bedroom was putting on a show for you, you freak?!”

  His anger rising by the second, he closed his eyes and tried to breathe in through his mouth and out through his nose. But deep, heavy breaths evaded him. He was now a lit fuse just waiting to explode from every end.

  “You asked me once before, remember?” he said. “What I would have done or said if I had seen you with someone the same way you saw me with Sheila in that shower. You specifically said, if I had seen you with Maurice.”

  She gripped the edge of the counter if only to keep her hands from wrapping around his throat. “It was a metaphor, you moron, an ‘if/chance’! I didn’t think something like that would actually come to pass, considering I never thought you would actually go skulking around inside my house like a damn cat burglar instead of using the doorbell like everybody else with even half a brain!”

  His skin lit up like a firecracker; he could actually feel the flames building inside his neck and exploding out both sides of his face. The man was red hot and though he hadn’t ever planned to show Vanessa of all people just how angry she in particular could make him, especially when it came to discussing her feelings for another man, she had finally pushed a button in him that he could no longer diffuse before shit not only hit the fan, but shot it straight through the ceiling and roof like a rocket.

  Nathan rushed forward in the manner of a professional linebacker waiting to kick and brought his fist down hard on the edge of the counter, rumbling the plates and cups left behind. When she didn’t react to his anger, he brought his fist down again and glass went flying from one side of the room to the other. Vanessa defiantly folded her arms and he stepped around the counter, the glass popping beneath his heels like fireworks as he moved. He stood just a few inches from her face and stared down into her eyes with a mixture of lust and rage that continued to burn up from the inside of his core.

  “I used the doorbell,” he said in a relaxed, but frightening tone. The words shook as he spoke, spittle flew out from either side of his mouth. And by now, Vanessa knew that she was in for a rude awakening about a man she once thought could have been her everything.

  “You should’ve – !”

  “I USED THE MUTHAFUCKIN’ DOORBELL!” He roared so loud and hard that it made her ears ring. For a few seconds, she thought she might have gone deaf. He moved even closer and she shrank down almost like a child in fear of receiving physical punishment. “But you were too damn busy in there fuckin’ Maurice’s brains out of his head that you couldn’t hear it! When I knocked, the damn door opened on its own. I didn’t know where the fuck you were, and so I called out to you. And when you didn’t answer, and I saw your keys scattered across the floor, I got worried. And so I went up, and that’s when I saw you. That shit wasn’t something I went looking for, Vanessa – seeing you on top of him like that, calling out HIS name in a way you have never called out mine when we were together. Woman, if I could dig my own damn eyes out with a spoon to keep from ever looking at the two of you again and only seeing you wrapped up in him like that? I would.”

  As Nathan continued to scream out about other things she couldn’t half understand, Vanessa’s eyes traveled down to the blood pouring down from his hand. She took another step back, bumping her head against the cabinet, and frowned. It was the first time in all her years of knowing Nathan that she had ever seen him become so violently angry. Sure, he would scream and yell, maybe even throw things on the floor from time to time when he felt she wasn’t listening to or refusing to hear him. But this was something on a completely different level, to the point where she actually feared he could not only put his fist through a wall, but put her as well.

  Knowing that it was all because of Maurice, how she felt about him and what Nathan thought they still had together, didn’t move or thrill her, not like it would have maybe years or even a few months ago. Now, it only made her feel sad for him, sad that he was still clinging onto something that she forced herself to give up the moment she realized he had yet to change his ways for the better. It also made her angry as hell that he had the nerve to think that she would or should still be pining for him in the same way after all of the shit he had managed to pull since being back in town.

  When he raised his hand to make another point about something she had no interest in listening to any further, more blood dripped down the side of his arm and soaked into the cuffs and sleeves of his shirt. She pointed a finger toward him and glared.

  “I don’t know if you even realize this, but you’re bleeding. A lot. And all over my damn floor, which I just so happened to mop up this morning.”

  “The same floor now covered in the glass you threw at my head?” he shot back.

  Vanessa sneered.

  Nathan looked down and turned his hand over, palm side up. Getting a good look at the blood and deep cuts from the shattered glass, he wasn’t startled or even in pain. More than anything, he wanted Vanessa to know how seeing her with someone else made him feel. He thought about continuing on, confronting her about the baby she shared with Adrian, but in looking at her face again, at the shock and outright disgust she displayed in her eyes, he decided against it.

  “Do you want me to tend to that for you or do you just plan to stand there and bleed to death inside my kitchen?”

  He made a fist and tightened his jaw while watching the blood seep out from the cuts and onto the tips of his shoes.
/>   “Nathan,” she called out to him, her tone hard and unapologetic.

  His eyes flickered as he glared at her, then he moved back around to the other side of the counter and took a seat on one of the stools. He unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and raised the sleeve past his elbow while glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

  “I’ll go get the first aid kit.” She moved around him, then headed for the door and stopped as she rested her hand against the center to push it out. “If you’ve got glass in any of those cuts, I won’t be able to get them out unless I use alcohol and tweezers.”

  He made a fist again and flipped his hand to the side. “I can’t feel any in there.”

  “Damn,” she said, peeking back at him, her lips pinched to the side. “What a pity.”

  He narrowed his eyes, keeping them on her as she shoved the door out and barraged through the foyer like a mad woman, desperate as hell to be anywhere else but there with him.

  He had made an idiot of himself and he knew it, but the worst part of it was that he didn’t really give much of a damn, at least not in the moment of it all happening. He was so damn angry just remembering back to when he had seen her with Maurice, her skin practically glowing – glistening and soaked in sweat which could be seen beneath the moonlight; her mouth opened wide as another name rolled off her tongue and slammed down hard against her ripe full lips, lips in which she sank her teeth into to keep her screams and moans from waking up her neighbors.

  In that moment, seeing how happy they were, how much they didn’t have a care about anyone else in the world but each other, he wanted to kill them both. Or he wanted to kill Maurice first and make her watch. Or vice/versa. He wasn’t sure at the time, but he knew that he didn’t want to continue sharing the same airspace with either one of them much longer.

  And now with the memory etched in his brain for the rest of his life, because as much as he wished for it, brain bleach didn’t exist, it didn’t seem as if that feeling was going away anytime soon.

  He turned when he heard her coming back into the kitchen, her house shoes sliding across the floor, crackling against the glass and chinaware.

  “Here.” V stood to the side, handing him the first aid kit. He placed it on the counter and she took a seat on the stool across from him, hooking her ankles around the legs so as not to tip over into his lap. She flipped open the lid and pulled out a 16oz bottle of vodka.

  Nathan peered. “What the hell is that for?”

  “For you to drink, dummy. When I douse your hand with the rubbing alcohol, it’s gonna burn like a bitch.” She twisted the cap off of the bottle and handed it to him. “The less you feel, the less noise you’ll make when it hits.”

  Hesitantly, he took the bottle with his good hand and stared down at the clear liquid. And then he looked back into her eyes and lifted his brows in question. “Did you put anything in here?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Something that would make me fall asleep and never wake up again.”

  She reached into the kit for some gauze and a tiny pair of scissors. “Would it be so bad if I did?” She looked up at him beneath her lashes while using the scissors to trim the frayed edges.

  He got a strange feeling in his stomach that he couldn’t quite explain, one that traveled up to the center of his chest, and set the bottle down on the counter, shaking his head.

  “I wouldn’t put anything in your drink, Nathan.” Once she finished with the edges, she started cutting the gauze into large strips. “I would just shoot your crazy ass with the gun I keep stashed upstairs and have Sheila come to identify the body out of spite.”

  He stared at her, unsure of whether or not to take her as seriously as she sounded.

  Silence filled the room while she prepared his hand for the alcohol. Looking over at the bottle of vodka again, Nathan grabbed the neck and took a sip, twisting his face in agony as he sat the bottle back down.

  He slammed his good hand across his chest a few times and coughed. “How the hell strong is this shit?”

  “100 proof. Finding a bottle that small with that much alcohol in it is rare, so don’t guzzle it back like some drunk off the street.”

  “Where’d you manage to find it?”

  “Chinatown.” She stopped to look up at him. “From a drunk off the street.”

  He nodded.

  Though she hadn’t said it again, and despite her halfhearted attempt to lighten the dismal mood, he could tell how enraged she still was just by looking at the hardened expression on her face.

  He bent forward a little and she leaned back, suspicious as to what he was trying to do.

  They stared at each other for a long time before he finally spoke again.

  “I didn’t mean to lose my shit like that with you, V. But let’s be honest, you started tossing plates at my head first, alright?”

  “And for a damn good reason,” she replied. “You should’ve gotten the hell out when I first told you to leave.”

  She doused a cloth she found at the bottom of the kit with rubbing alcohol and smacked it down hard against the side of his hand. He flinched at the pain, seething and gritting his teeth as she rubbed the cloth up and down against the cuts, but didn’t say a word aloud about how much it actually hurt.

  Once the bleeding finally stopped, she lifted his hand to check for any slivers of glass left behind.

  “I can’t really tell in this light if there’s anything in there,” she told him.

  “Don’t you have better lighting somewhere else in the house?”

  Maddened by his challenging tone, she slammed his hand down to his lap as hard as she could and sat back.

  He jumped up a little, then fell back down on the stool. “SHIT!” he called out. He made another fist as the pain radiated throughout his entire hand like one thousand knitting needles being shoved into his skin. His fingers began to throb and turn colors. “What the fuck was that?”

  “That was you being an ignorant and arrogant dumbass. I’ve got better lighting in every other room in this house, but do you think I’m actually going to take you somewhere else in here alone?”

  “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, V.”

  “You mean physically,” she said. “But I’m not even sure about that anymore because hell, I don’t think I know you anymore.”

  “You weren’t any better fighting with Sheila at the reunion like two wild cats on the floor.”

  “She provoked me. Just like you did with Maurice. Unlike the two of you, we don’t go around looking for shit to destroy, like people and their relationships. Somehow, it just manages to find us all on its own.”

  A smile inched up the corners of his mouth, but in no way was he thrilled with what she had to say. “Don’t play the victim here, V, alright? Nobody’s an innocent in this mess that we’ve all created for ourselves and each other.”

  “I’m not playing a victim of anything,” she snapped. “And I wouldn’t dare say that we all created this mess. I’d say that you and Sheila created it like you do everything else and dragged us right along for the ride which leads straight down to hell.”

  “That’s bullshit, Vanessa.” He sighed.

  “No actually, it’s not bullshit, Nate. In fact, it’s far from it. My life was a hell of a lot easier, and so much simpler without the two of you back in it, mucking it up as usual. I don’t know how many times I have to say this before it finally sinks into your thick as hell skull, but you two haven’t even been back a year yet and look at all of the destruction you continue to leave behind in your wreckage.” She took his hand and wiped it down again with the cloth. Then grabbed a large, white bandage to tape down over the cuts. “You and Sheila are like two tornadoes who go out of their way colliding into everyone else except for each other.”

  He looked into her dark brown eyes, those same dark brown eyes that he would do anything for, even now, even in his rage, and swallowed hard.

  “Colliding into each o
ther is what got us here, V.”

  As he reached up for her face, his fingers twitching as they neared her cheek, she jerked herself away and shoved him back.

  “Yeah,” she said, “it got us miserable like always. Maurice was right, I can’t think of a single time you and I were together when you actually made me happy. Even when we were together for the first time, I was in pain. God only knows what the hell I was hanging onto for so many years after that. Maybe part of me thought I’d never actually find anyone else to put up with my shit like you could. But who the hell knew you’d give it right back to me ten-fold for years to come? Even apart, you manage to turn my world upside down, inside out and I always seem to come out the worse for it, like now. You are a human wrecking ball, Nathaniel Taylor, and I’m sick and fucking tired as hell of you always swinging that thing into every wall I’ve built up with my bare hands to keep you out.”

  What she said struck him straight in the chest like a dagger. The edge pierced his heart and once again, he was left bleeding all over her kitchen floor.

  When she heard the front door creaking open from the foyer, she felt it was a sign that things needed to end right then between them. She quickly finished wrapping Nathan’s hand and grabbed the items from the first aid kit, tossing what was damaged and soiled into the trash and stuffing the rest inside.

  “I’m sorry, Vanessa,”

  “Save it.”

  “No,” he said. “If I knew that everything I had ever done back then would end up destroying you over the years like it did, I never would’ve done it.”

  “Yeah, you would’ve,” she told him. “You just might not have done it so often.” She slammed the lid down on the first aid kit and grabbed it from the counter. “Forget what I said before and just keep the rest of the vodka. And since I’m no Florence nightingale, you should probably go and see a real doctor sometime soon to make sure your hand doesn’t get infected and your fingers don’t fall off.”

  He didn’t retort this time and instead turned his focus on her kitchen, at the mess they had both made, and pushed the stool back to stand up. He stared down at her and she immediately became alarmed by the sudden ‘less than hateful’ look in his eye.