by Vivian Ward
At that point, I noticed she was shaking. I also noticed that she had some kind of paper in her hand. I tried to figure out what it was, but she had it gripped so tightly, it was crinkling in her fist.
“Shay? You gotta talk to me. What the hell is happening? What’s wrong with you?” I asked her, taking a step in her direction.
“Don’t come near me,” she shouted, taking a step away from me. “You just stay there and don’t come any closer to me.”
I didn’t want to freak her out any more than she already was so I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at her, holding my hands up slightly as if to let her know that I wasn’t going to move.
“What’s the matter?” I asked softly. “What is it that you have there?”
“What this? You wanna know what this paper is?” she asked, holding it up in front of my face. “These are just your parole papers,” she spat out with disgusted venom.
Her head started to shake, and her eyes began to fill up with tears. It took me a minute to realize what she’d just said to me. I felt like I was in shock.
I felt like there was a huge weight suddenly on my chest, pushing down on me and making it hard to breathe. It felt so heavy that I felt like I could fall over.
That was when the reality of the situation truly hit me.
My stomach started tying itself in knots, and my heart physically began to ache.
No, this can’t be happening. Not like this.
I didn’t know what to do so I just stood there looking at her, studying her face with my mouth hanging open in shock. I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to say to her.
It wasn’t something I’d gone through in my mind. I never wanted her to find out like this. Hell, I never intended for her to find out at all. I didn’t have a plan for this situation.
There was nothing I could do to divert her hurt or anger. There were no lies I could tell that was going to fix it. I was fucked.
Shay stood there in my kitchen, staring a hole right through me. Tears were streaming down her face, and she didn’t even make an attempt to hide the fact she was crying.
I felt crushed, wanting nothing more than to hold her and comfort her. I wished I could tell her that it was all a misunderstanding, that the paper she was holding was some kind of a mix-up, but I knew I couldn’t do that because there was no mix-up.
There was no misunderstanding. We were at a stalemate, with me staring at her and her staring right back.
“So you were in prison?” Shay finally asked, mercifully breaking the silence in the room. Her normally sweet voice was nowhere to be found. It was instead replaced with the sound of disgust.
“Yes,” I murmured as I exhaled and closed my eyes, not being able to handle the look on her face.”
“What did you do, Nick? What did you do to get sent to prison? This wasn’t even jail. You were in the penitentiary. You gotta do some fucked up shit to get put in the pen.”
I didn’t reply.
“Maybe I shouldn’t even be asking you this,” she continued. “I mean, you didn’t tell me in the first place so I’m sure you’d just feed me some line of bullshit, wouldn’t you? And what about your family, Nick? You’ve told me so many different things that none of them are adding up anymore. Was any of that the truth?” she added, putting things together right there in front of me.
I should have known that she would have figured it all out eventually. She’s a very smart woman. She’s always been a lot smarter than me.
She was college educated, and I didn’t even finish high school. I’d known from the start that she was too good for me, but I held on because I loved her so much. I should have seen all of this coming. It was inevitable.
“Nick, answer me! You at least owe me that much,” she yelled, snapping me out of my thoughts.
Her words had so much anger in them. They were filled with hate and loathing. I’d never seen her act like that before.
“Yes, Shay. Yes, I was in prison, but it was for something really stupid. It was just a fight.”
“Just a fight? I’ve known lots of guys who have gotten into fights. None of them were ever sent to prison for fighting. I call bullshit on that one. Try again.”
“It was a fight. It was a fight that ended up very badly. The guy I was fighting hit his head and was in really bad shape for a while. I was brought up on attempted murder charges.”
“Attempted murder?” she gasped, her face suddenly going flush. “I’ve been with someone who was convicted of attempted murder? Holy shit.”
“It’s not like that, Shay. It’s not like that at all. I didn’t go looking for a fight. The other guy did. I didn’t go out trying to murder someone. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you about it. I love you, and I didn’t want to lose you over a stupid mistake.
“Uh-huh. And what about your family? What about everything you told me about them?”
“I don’t have a family,” I said coldly, looking across the room past her. I knew she was gone. I knew I had already lost the woman I loved.
“So let me get this straight. You lied about where you were before you moved here. Apparently you’ve always lived here. You were just in prison. In fucking prison, Nick! Then you lied about your family. Has there been anything real about you? Have you told me anything in our entire relationship that wasn’t complete and utter bullshit?”
I watched her as tears streamed quickly down her cheeks. Her face was contorted in pain. I could actually feel what she was feeling, and it was heartbreaking.
“I love you. That part has never been a lie,” I told her.
I knew that those words weren’t going to do any good, but I wanted to say them anyway. I wanted her to know that no matter how badly I screwed up, my love for her was the one thing that was always real.
Shay laughed a short, involuntary laugh. It was as though she couldn’t believe what I was saying. Her lips sneered in disgust and anger.
It was a side of her I’d never seen before. She shook her head and started to say something, but she stopped herself. Instead, she tossed the parole papers onto the table in front of me, looked at me with pain in her eyes, and grabbed her purse on the way towards the door.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I was frozen in shock of what had just gone done. I couldn’t say or do anything. The only thing I could do was stand in the kitchen and watch her walk out of my life forever.
She was opening my front door when I knew I had to stop her. I couldn’t lose her. Not like that. Not without at least doing everything I could to convince her that I’m not that man anymore.
I run up behind her, close the door in front of her before she had a chance to leave. She jumped at my unexpected arrival. She may have even been a little frightened, but my intention wasn’t to scare her.
I would never do her any harm. Even though I’d hurt her emotionally, there was no way I’d ever hurt her physically.
I’d hoped that she’d turn around to talk to me. At the very least, I just wanted her to hear me out. Instead, she remained facing the door, her hand firmly gripping the knob.
“I want to leave, Nick,” she mumbled. I hated the shakiness that she had in her voice. She was scared of me. That was the last thing I wanted.
“Shay, please don’t do this,” I begged of her with my hand still pressed against the door, preventing her from opening it until I at least tried to talk to her. “I love you more than anything in the world, Shay. I’ve been waiting my entire life for you. I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you. Please don’t walk out on me.”
There was so much pressure building within my chest. I had a fear and panic in me that I never knew existed. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes and fought them off the best I could.
I’d always been told that crying was a form of weakness so I never did it. I certainly didn’t want to cry in front of her, but the tears were coming, and I didn’t know if I had it in me to choke them back.
“Nick, please just let me go. I don’t want to be here right now,” she begged
I hated the way she was pleading with me. The shakiness in her voice increased with each word she said. I didn’t want her to be afraid of me.
I didn’t want to scare her any worse than I already had. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want her to go. I was afraid that if she left, I’d never see her again. At the same time, I didn’t want to ruin any chance I had left, no matter how slim that chance was.
I certainly didn’t want to make tings any worse than they already were. I removed my hand from the door and took a few steps back. She threw it open and ran out. Just like that, Shay was gone.
I didn’t have much in life. Shay was the only thing in my life that meant anything to me at all. She was my life. She was my entire existence.
Now, she was gone. I’d lost her, and there wasn’t anything I was going to be able to do about it. There would be no talking my way out of it. I fucked up, and I was going to have to live with that reality.
A hollow, empty feeling filled my open as I closed the door before leaning against it and sliding down to the floor. I sat there, looking around my empty apartment and started to cry.
It was a new experience for me and one that I didn’t like at all. I never cried when the state came and took me from foster family to foster family. I never cried when these families, who were supposed to love and care for me, beat me belts or choked me when I didn’t act exactly how they wanted me to.
I didn’t cry when I was convicted of attempted murder. I couldn’t even remember the last time I cried.
That night was miserable to me. My mind wouldn’t shut off, and there was no way I was going to be getting any sleep.
All I could think about were what-if scenarios that I couldn’t do anything about. I thought about the things I should have done differently from day one. I thought about all the things I should have told her.
When I couldn’t think about what I should have done differently. My mind turned to Shay in general. I thought about how I felt the first time I laid eyes on her. I thought about the first time she and I had sex.
I thought about the week at the cabin that we’d just come back from. I thought about the way her body looked, the way she always smelled so good. I could still remember just the way she tasted. I sat in my apartment by myself for hours playing back all the time we spent together.
I spent most of the night remembering everything about her. I remembered the way she felt when we made love and the way I felt the first time I heard her tell me she loved me.
I couldn’t go down with a fight. I couldn’t let things end like that. She was mine. I knew I was good for her, whether or not she believed it at the moment.
As good as I was for her, I knew she was even better for me. I didn’t just want Shay, I needed her. I needed her in my life to keep me grounded. She kept me sane. I felt like she gave me a purpose to go on when everything else seemed impossible. In some ways, she was my reason for breathing.
Since I met her, she was the reason I got out of bed every morning because I knew she’d be waiting for me at the end of the day. She was the kind of person that you only meet once in a lifetime. I couldn’t let her go. I refused to let her go. I was willing to do whatever it was I needed to do.
I was going to get her back.
Chapter 9
Shay
It had taken me a lot longer to get home than it normally did. It was hard to drive with shaking hands and the tears filling my eyes.
I was still having a hard time processing everything that had happened. It caught me off guard, and I was finding it especially difficult to wrap my head around it.
As I pulled into my parking lot, the tears had finally stopped but my head continued to spin.
A million thoughts ran through my mind. Was any of this actually happening? Was it all a bad dream? Was I going to wake up relieved that none of it actually happened? As nice as that would have been, I knew better. My world was being turned upside down.
How could Nick hide something like that from me? He seemed so real. He seemed so trustworthy. He seemed so genuine.
When he told me he loved me, I was dumb enough to believe him. Instead, he made me out to look like a fool. I should have been used to that. He sure as hell wasn’t the first person to do that to me.
There I was, being the naive, trusting girl that I always was. I was a fool who was willing to give myself completely to someone who didn’t deserve it. I gave him the best of me, and all he did was lie to me and manipulate me so he could get what he wanted.
He told me what I wanted to hear so he could get into my panties and I let him. He used me for his own benefit. I thought he was different but in reality, he was just like any of the other assholes that I’d been with in the past.
I went inside my apartment and didn’t even bother to take a shower. All I wanted to do was go to bed and put an end to the horrible day I’d just had.
I didn’t even bother to take off anything other than my shoes. I crawled into bed, buried my face into my pillows and closed my eyes.
My intention was to sleep until morning, but that ended up being much more complicated than I’d intended. Instead of resting up, I laid there, replaying the day’s events.
The day was going fine. I was going through his apartment and organizing it for him. Early in the afternoon, I noticed the mailman out the window and figured I’d grab his mail for him so he wouldn’t have to do it later.
I didn’t figure he’d have a problem with it. He left the key sitting on the kitchen counter and as far as I knew, we didn’t have any secrets to keep from one another.
I never even intended to go through his mail. I had just placed it down on the counter when a return address caught my eye.
It was from the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
I knew that meant it was from a jail or prison in the state and figured it was probably put into the wrong mailbox. I was looking to see who it was addressed to so I could get it to the right person when I saw that it was actually sent to Nick.
I spent the next few minutes being very conflicted.
Why would Nick be getting something from the Minnesota Department of Corrections?
It didn’t make any sense. I made the decision to open it. It wasn’t a decision that I’m particularly proud of, but I made it, and there was no turning back. I had to know what it was.
Why would it matter anyway? If Nick didn’t have anything to hide, me opening it would have been no big deal. Instead of the letter being something harmless, it was a letter from his parole officer, letting him know when and where Nick needed to come in and meet with him.
My mind spun, and I was in shock. I felt like I had tunnel vision as I stared at the paper, not being able to see anything but the white sheet in front of me.
Had Nick been in prison without bothering to tell me? The letter referred to the Ramsey County Correctional Facility, which was about an hour from where we lived.
How was it possible that he could have been at the Ramsey County Prison in Minnesota? Nick and Curtis had both said that he’d lived in California before coming to work at the construction company Curtis owned. Surely he would have mentioned being in prison, wouldn’t he? Everything was starting to sink in as I sat in his kitchen.
Nick had never been in California.
That was just a big line of bullshit that he fed to me. He lied to my face. All of the things that he’d told me he’d done had all been lies. Everything he said about his life had been lies.
All of the stories about his childhood and his family, none of them made sense. None of them seemed to add up over time. Even something as simple as what he used to call grandma changed with the stories. Sometimes he would refer to her as Granny and other times he called her maw-maw.
It was odd that he didn’t have a certain thing he called her all the time. I remember thinking it was weird before but it never seemed like something that was
worth questioning him about.
One thing I did notice was that when Nick would tell me about his past, specifically anything about his family, he never showed any emotion whatsoever.
He wasn’t happy or sad when he told me about them. The stories were just empty. It was different when he told me stories about Curtis.
The two of them obviously had a very strong bond. They each thought of the other as their brother. That was evident from the way they both spoke of one another, but none of that emotion was ever present when he talked about family.
I wondered if any of the things he told me about his family were true at all.
I have no clue how long I sat at his kitchen table, waiting for him to come home. I just remember sitting there, wondering what was going to happen when he got there.
I didn’t know if I should leave before he got there, especially since I didn’t know what he’d gone to prison for.
Would I be in danger if I stayed there? Was Nick a dangerous man? Was he a violent offender of some sort? Did he kill someone? Did he do something to a woman he was dating?
He had never done anything to me in the time we’d been together. Hell, he had never cursed at me or even so much as yelled at me. For our entire relationship, he always treated me so well. He always acted like a total gentleman. He was a sweetheart.
How much of that was an act, though?
Maybe the way he was treating me was all a cover up. Maybe it was to hide the person he really was. I was so deep in thought, I didn’t even hear my cell phone ringing over and over.
The true panic didn’t set in, however, until Nick walked into his apartment. I’d lost all track of time and didn’t realize that it was already time for him to be home.
He appeared in front of me before I’d had a chance to decide how I wanted to handle the situation. I was still trying to wrap my head around everything when he appeared next to me, touching my shoulder. That touch was more than I could handle. That was when I lost it.
I couldn’t put up with a man who had lied to me every day. I couldn’t endure the betrayal and the deceit. When I walked out the door, I had already made the decision that I was never going to see him again.
