by Portia Moore
chapter 2
Lauren
I can’t breathe. How do you stop your heart from beating a thousand miles a minute? How do you crawl out of feelings that are wrapped around you like a noose, feelings that have swallowed you up whole? One sentence was all it took for me to know it was him. My gift and my curse, my ending, my beginning, my best dream and my worst nightmare all wrapped in one. Cal Scott, in all of his glory. I knew it. From the moment I heard his voice on the phone, anxiety crawled up my spine. As I made my way up each floor level, I knew it was him. I imagined this moment so many times. I dreamed about it, prepared for it to happen but never ever expected for it to happen like this. Which is fitting since I never know what to expect from him.
He’s watching me, his eyes narrowed on mine, his gaze locked there. It’s like time has stopped, the atmosphere changed. It’s quiet, so quiet, just like the moment before thunder cracks from the sky and all hell breaks loose.
I’ve seen him almost every day for the past two months but not like this, not the intensity of his gaze, the overwhelmingness of his presence, causing fear, excitement and anxiety to course through me. The icy glare on his face sends chills down to my very core. I’m frozen in place as I look at him.
What the hell happened? All of this time Chris is here and then, just like that, he’s gone and this happens, right after I slept with him.
I’m confused, I’m nervous and, with the way Cal’s looking at me, a little scared, scared of what’s to come, of what’s about to be the backlash. Because the energy exuding from Cal lets me know it’s about to be bad.
Cal.
He’s the one I married. The one I’m in love with, the man who I spent years of my life with. But I’m trembling because my body can barely contain the emotions crashing against one another inside of me. The man I loved and loathed. There’s so much I want to say to him but my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. I don’t know what to do and oh my God, what happened to Chris?
Last night we made love—well, Chris and I made love—and I told Chris he was the one I wanted. Cal knows what happened.
Shit, shit, shit!
Why the hell do I feel guilty? They’re both the same fucking person but, the way he’s looking at me, with disdain, anger and almost disgust makes me feel like the lowest creature on the planet. He unfolds his arms and saunters towards me, each step making my heart stampede out of my chest. I expect him to touch me as he gets closer but he steps aside me and closes the door that I left open.
“What happened?” I ask, my voice barely over a whisper. His hand firmly grips my wrist and he turns me around toward him.
“You tell me." His voice is low and stings me but I try not to show it.
“What do you mean?” I ask, feeling my hands quivering in his grasp. I know Cal would never hurt me but he’s so angry.
“I love you Chris. You’re the one I want, Chris,” he says, mimicking my voice.
“Are you kidding?” I let out a nervous chuckle. He can’t be serious; but I know he is.
“You think I’m fucking kidding?” he asks tightly as he quickly relinquishes his hold and shoves me away, causing me to stumble. He storms across the room with his hands on his head but, in a split-second, he whips back around.
“How could you do that to me?!” he shouts and I have to fight to breathe. His voice is deep and strong like it always is, but from the look in his eyes, vulnerability seeps from him. His anguish is hitting me like a truck. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s hurt and I don’t understand. That’s a lie because I get it. I don’t fully understand it, but I do get it. It’s the only thing shutting me up right now.” I try to think of something to say as tears well in my eyes.
“You don’t get to cry, Lauren!” he says angrily.
“Cal. I—I...”
“What? What do you have to say? Tell me!” he demands, walking closer towards me but, before I can even answer, he starts again.
“I loved you for years and all it took was for him to smile your way a couple of times, tell you how much I love you, and your legs fly the fuck open for him?!” he asks. “You tell him you love him. That he’s who you want!”
I try to command the tears coming into my eyes to stop. “You don’t understand,” I squeak out.
“You don’t understand!” He gestures his finger towards me. “I—I can’t even look at you right now,” he growls before grabbing a pair a keys off the table.
“Where are you going?!”
“You can’t just leave!” I shout, grabbing his arm.
“Don’t touch me,” he snarls snatching away from me.
“So you hate me now? Is that it? You hate me?” I’m full-on crying now.
“I wish I could hate you,” he says bitterly but this time he heads into the bedroom instead of out of the door. Before he crosses the threshold he turns to face me. “You were supposed to be different,” he says, shaking his head. “But you’re like everybody else,” he adds quietly and the look in his eyes causes my breath to hitch.
He looks broken and I think I broke him. I broke Cal and I broke Chris. His dad’s right. I’m not good for either of them. I try to stop the wail coming from my mouth, my emotions trying to escape from my body. There’s too much energy I’m trying to keep pent up but I can’t let it out. I slowly sink down to the floor.
How did things get like this? How did I end up here?
When did I become the villain?
He’s looking at me with bitterness, disgust, and what’s bordering on hatred. He’s never looked at me like that before. How can he be so angry at me, like I was with another person? I love him so much. I’ve loved him every day—every part of him. The good and the bad. I hate myself for crying, that I’m sitting here like a sad little girl. How did things get like this? Today everything was supposed to be better. After being with Chris, things were supposed to be good and I have a feeling they’re about to get worse.
I don’t know what to do. Do I call the Scotts? Do I call Dexter? Did sleeping with me cause Chris to run away and hide? A part of me is glad that Cal’s here but how can I not feel terrible knowing that Chris is gone and Cal is in a rage? I don’t know what he’s going to do. I think back to my conversation with his dad. What he said would happen if Cal came back. Oh God, I can’t believe I’m even considering what his dad said. I have never seen Cal as mad as he is now. The only thing worse than his anger is his disappointment. But why is he so angry? Because I slept with him? After two years of being alone I slept with him and he’s upset with me like I betrayed him?
My phone rings, breaking me away from my thoughts. I pull my phone out and see that it’s Mrs. Scott. How the hell am I supposed to explain this to the Scotts? It’s going to be my fault of course. Maybe it is my fault. Not only do I have to tell them that Chris is now Cal again, but I also have to tell them that he’s mad at the world and I have no idea what he’s going to do. I guess I never did, but now it’s like he’s on a hinge that’s barely hanging on and I can’t deal with it right now. The hollowness in my chest turns into a burning sensation as tears sting my eyes. I want to scream.
This is almost like déjà vu. Being left on the floor crying, desperate, broken because of this man and he’s done it again. I crawl off the floor and climb onto the large sofa, curl up into myself, and close my eyes. I’m emotionally drained and mentally and physically exhausted like I’ve been on a 5k run.
Chris wanted me to love him. Cal apparently doesn’t want me to love Chris. It’s all too much to think about—how I ended up in a tug of war with one man. The man who is my daughter’s father, who has a shitload of emotional baggage. The depths of which I don’t think I ever fully understood until now. They’re the same person but neither of them see the other as who they are. Cal really looked at me as if I cheated on him.
How can he not understand it’s him I love—whoever he decides to call himself? I hate feeling like this and really I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t just lie here and cry. That’s
not the type of woman I want Caylen to be. I may have hurt him, but it wasn’t intentional and what he’s done to me is much worse. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t even be in this situation.
If anyone should be hurt it should be me. How can he have the audacity to say those things to me? Like I didn’t wait for him for two years. Like he didn’t leave me alone to raise a child. I basically forgave him for having a freakin’ fiancée and that he lied to me about his condition. I sit up and clutch my chest, the hollowness there quickly incinerating as my anger washes over me and through me. Why should I lie here and cry and worry? I’ve forgiven him a thousand times over. He can forgive me once, even though I’m not even sure that I need to be forgiven.
He may be furious with me but he still loves me. I head up the stairs, anger my new source of energy. I swing the door open. It’s completely dark aside from a small sliver of light peeking into the room from the window but I can see that he’s lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. The sight of him makes me pause, my once seething anger disappearing in seconds. This man. This man could easily be the death of me.
“You’re still here?” he says. His tone suggests it’s a joke and my dissipating anger starts to grow again. “I thought you’d have ran off and tattled to Chris’s mommy and daddy.”
“You have a lot of nerve,” I say as I plant my feet on the floor.
He glances over at me. “Oh. That’s a nice welcome. You fuck Chris and want to argue with me?” He laughs bitterly. He’s switched, the emotion pouring off him earlier has been replaced with this indifferent, arrogant sarcasm. That will make this a whole lot easier.
I walk over to him and stare him directly in the eye. “This isn’t about Chris. This is about you,” I say venomously.
“It wasn’t yesterday,” he says sarcastically as if this is a big joke.
“You’re still the same selfish jerk you always were,” I say and he begins to laugh. “You think this is funny?!” I yell at him and push his chest. He sits there, firmly planted as if it my hits have absolutely no effect on him, and I completely lose it. “How dare you!” I yell at him, pulling at him with all my might, swinging my arms as hard as I can, trying to make him feel a fraction of my pain. “How could you do that to me?” I shout at him as we begin to tussle.
“Calm the fuck down!” he says, trying to contain me. I’ve gone from helpless fool to crazy woman in the span of ten seconds.
“What’s wrong with you?!” he says, covering up a laugh that makes me even more furious.
“You’re what’s wrong with me” I say, throwing fist after fist at him.
“Lauren, stop!” he says, finally grabbing me and throwing me on the bed. A second later he’s on top of me, pinning me down. I hate that he’s stronger than me, that he can contain me.
“I hate you!” I say, catching my breath, tears filling my eyes again. This man drives me insane, pulls my spirit out from the inside. For him to doubt that for a second hurts, especially when he pretends to not give a flying fuck.
“You left me, Cal. You. You lied to me. I waited for you for almost two years. I had Caylen alone. You abandoned me without any inkling of what was going on with you and still I never gave up on us. EVER!” I shout at him and I can see his hardened expression soften a little but I don’t care. I take a deep breath, trying to ignore the feelings that shoot through my body at his glance. My anger’s turned into an overwhelming sadness. I close my, eyes remembering how it felt to lose it.
“You almost broke me,” I mutter, not trying to hide my emotions. I’m tired of hiding them. I hid them from everyone else, even Chris. Cal, he’s the one who needs to see them.
He lowers his gaze to mine, like he’s thinking, absorbing my words. He leans down closer to my face and my entire body is on edge. His lips near mine. It’s been so long. So long since we were like this in this position. But it hurts. His eyes look into mine, almost like Chris did a few hours ago. His hands loosen their grip. Finally he sits up, freeing me from the confinement his body created as he pinned me down. I scold the part of me that wants to be in the position we were just in. The tension is the only thing in the room thicker than the silence.
“When I left you, I thought I was doing the right thing,” he says, his eyes finding mine. They’re no longer the light green I’ve grown accustomed to over the past few weeks, but deep, dark, and menacing, like the sky before a storm.
“I left you because I knew I’d fucked up. I’d waited too long to tell you the truth and then I found out the medication I thought would fix me could actually kill me,” he says, his eyes leaving mine and finding the floor.
“What medicine?” I ask and he looks up at me.
“It doesn’t matter. It didn’t work,” he says, his voice quiet but stern. I think about what he means by the medication not working.
“You were trying to get rid of Chris?” I ask hesitantly.
“Trust me, he’d do the same thing in a second if he had the chance,” he says. A statement I know for a fact is true, which makes this situation even more messed up.
“The day I left you…” Cal pauses as if trying to gather his thoughts. “It was the first unselfish thing I’d ever done. I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t know you were pregnant. I never would have left if I knew that.”
I look into the eyes I fell in love with a thousand times over and, as mad as I am, those same feelings are all still there. I sit up and move closer to him on the bed.
“Why didn’t you tell me? How could you not trust me?” Out of everything that happened that’s what hurts the most. He didn’t trust me to love him, to not give up on him, on us.
“Because I was trying to let you go,” he says, bluntly, his voice stern and unwavering. He lifts his head, his eyes leave mine and sweep over me, drinking me up as if he’s been dying of thirst.
“You deserved better than this,” he says, letting out a long sigh.
“Do you think I would have left you if you told me?” His eyes cast downward.
“You should have given me a choice!”
“There wasn’t a choice.”
“You’re right! I loved you. There wouldn’t have been a choice other than being with you!”
“Tell me this is what you wanted. A dude so fucked up he can’t even be the same person? That’s what you dreamed of for your husband?” He chuckles bitterly.
“It doesn’t matter. I love you. There isn’t a choice for me,” I say, standing and meeting him where he is.
“There’s a choice now,” he says, closing the space between us.
“What’s the choice?”
“Me or Chris?” he says and the words cause every nerve in my body to wake. My mouth immediately becomes dry and I can’t speak. That isn’t a choice. There is no choice.
“I can’t do that.”
“You can’t?!” He looks up briefly before his eyes narrow in on mine. “You chose him yesterday,” he says, dangerously quiet.
“That was different. He needed to hear that,” I say, feeling tears in my eyes.
“I don’t give a shit what he needed to hear. You fell in love with me. Caylen is my daughter. This shouldn’t be a hard decision!” He’s yelling now.
“You’re the same person, Cal,” I say, grabbing his hand, pleading with him. He steps away from me and snatches his hand away.
“If anyone knows that isn’t true, it should be you,” he says quietly and my eyes leave his. He is the same man. Making some arbitrary choice won’t even matter, it would just hurt…one of them…both of them. Oh my God, this is insane!
“Don’t choose then. I’ll choose for you,” he says, simply nodding his head, an amused grin spreading across his face, one that scares me more than his yelling. He steps away from me, shoots across the room, and grabs a black jacket and keys.
“What does that even mean? Where are you going?” I say, starting to follow him.
“Ask Chris, whenever he gets back,” he says sarcast
ically, leaving the room.
“No!” I follow behind him, grabbing his arm.
“This. This is what is still wrong with us after everything. You running away, keeping me in the dark not telling me how you feel!” I yell as he continues walking towards the door as if my words and my tears don’t faze him at all.
“I choose Chris!” I yell at him, and those words stop him in his tracks. He turns around and faces me with the same amused grin instead of the angry, pissed-off scowl I was expecting.
“You choose Chris?” he says, stalking towards me. I stand my ground and lift my head to meet him.
“You don’t tell me how you feel, you’re mean, you’re self-centered, arrogant and an asshole. I choose Chris,” I say, commanding my voice to steady, putting on my best poker face. Does he know I’m bluffing? That it’s a ploy? He eyes me for a moment and I think he does, because his grin spreads into a full-fledged smile and it makes me nervous. I knew what I said would stop him from leaving but I didn’t expect him to look happy about it. For a moment I wonder if he’s gone and Chris is back in front of me, but that thought leaves as soon as he grabs me by the waist and lifts me up so we’re face to face.
“You’d be bored with Chris in six months,” he says, his lips inches away from mine, the huskiness in his voice reminding me how much I used to crave this man. And there it is, the one thing that Cal wins at, the electricity between us—an overload of energy in the air. The broken man I walked in on is gone and the man that knows me, loves me, drove me to crazy and back is here right in front of me, daring me to not want him. He leans in, his lips touching mine but they don’t pull me into his. Just a touch and my body is going crazy. I’m about to lose it but he drops me back on floor. I land on my feet but stumble because I’m shook, startled, and in a haze.
That’s it?
The haze doesn’t last long. In a moment, he snatches me forward and I clash against his chest. It’s like an explosion; his hands are everywhere, his lips all over me. My clothes, his clothes, both flying. His kisses are rough but passionate. It’s almost too intense. It’s been so long since I felt him like this. It’s so much, almost too much. My body’s on fire, my skin tingles all over, my stomach is doing flips. I try to catch my breath but he doesn’t give me long before I’m against the wall and he’s inside of me. Why is his touch electric? Why is it so easy for his kiss to cause me to melt?
