Find A Way Or Make One

by Kelley, E. C.

  A long silence follows my question. Just when I think he has already hung up, Cale starts talking in a voice that is so soft and quiet, I have to wonder if it is really Cale on the other end of the line. “A while back, I lost all faith in love. Hell, I lost all faith in fucking humanity. Kye showed me how to get my faith back, and she showed me that love, true love, can and will always be there.”

  I sit there for a long moment. Finally, the need to know is just too great for me to ignore anymore. “Have you had a relationship with Kye too?” I know the stress I put on the word relationship made anything that had occurred between them sound sordid, but I couldn’t let myself believe that Kye and Cale had actually been in love. If I did, then I would have to accept that Kye could truly love someone; and that would have me constantly looking for anything that said she truly loved me. Deep down I know that if I went looking for proof that Kye truly loved me and found out that she didn’t, I would die. Yeah, I may go on breathing, but my very essence would be dead.

  Yeah, it is much better to just think she is a self-serving, gold digging bitch and leave it at that.

  ***

  Sable and I reach the door to the warehouse, where I push on it to find that it is open. The warehouse has been painted black by the dark night outside. The only light that I can see is a small flickering light in the conference room, leading me to assume that is where we are supposed to go. As we reach the door of the conference room, I make out Cale and a large man standing on the other side of the conference table.

  Sable looks at the man beside Cale; it is obvious that she doesn’t recognize Cale or the guy standing next to him, so she still doesn’t know that anything is going on.

  Just when I am getting ready to ask Cale what his game is, a voice speaks out behind us. “Hello again Sable. I see you are still trying to wreck lives and add notches to your bed posts I see.”

  I look over at Sable. She has turned white as a sheet. I let out a long whistle and turn around. The guy is dressed all in Armani suit, and I can tell that he is used to Armani and the other fine things in life. His dirty blond hair is expertly styled and the tight smile of his seems somewhat out of place. Like he hasn’t smiled or had anything to smile about in years.

  As I am trying to figure out what is going on, Sable suddenly turns around and runs off. Cale starts laughing with the man standing beside him. Even the smile that Armani suit is wearing becomes a little more natural. He shakes his head then walks over to Cale. “Guess she didn’t want to reminisce about old times, huh?” Once he reaches Cale’s side he holds out his hand.

  Cale reaches out to shake the extended hand. “No, I guess she didn’t. Thank you for coming. When I called, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t even expect you to know who I was.”

  “I know who you are. I make a point to know everyone in her life.”

  After hearing that, my confusion takes over. “Who the hell are you and what the fuck is going on?”

  “Good evening…Wyatt is it? My name is Christien.” Armani suit turns to address me; without holding a hand out for me to shake. Armani suit looks pissed, but I really don’t know why he is so pissed. As I stare at him for a moment, it suddenly hits me.

  Holy shit! “Your Sable’s ex-fiancé, aren’t you? The prince who slept with Kye and broke her heart.” I barely have time to finish my sentence before Christien has both hands wrapped around my throat.

  Cale and the other man move to force Christien to release me, but somehow their movements are slow; slow enough for Christien to inflict some damage. As they pull Christien away from me a catch a smirk on Cale’s face before he quickly school’s his expression. It is then that I realize that my suspicions had been correct. Cale and the other man had moved decidedly and purposefully slow.

  Christien shakes Cale and the other guy off, and begins to pace up and down the conference room. After regaining some of his composure, Christien turns and levels a glare at Cale. “This waste of skin is who Kye loves; really? I never thought my girl would be into pain, but evidently she is, because listening to this dumbass spout his nonsense is probably the most painful thing I have ever had to endure.” He slowly shakes his head and turns to look out the window.

  Cale clears his throat, causing Christian to turn around, and gives him a pointed stare. Christien can’t help but flinch. “No, listening to the bullshit that spews from his mouth isn’t the most painful thing that I have had to endure. Listening to Toby tell me what I threw away, and knowing I would never have it back; now that was and is a pain that will never be surpassed.”

  I have stayed quiet up until that point, but the mentioning of a name that had been previously associated with Kye, and had caused me no small amount of insecurity and jealousy has me instantly alert. I look over at Christien, and the look of despair that has overtaken his face becomes that will forever haunt my dreams.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Cale give a decisive nod. “Exactly. You hurt Kye, but this guy has gutted her; not once, but twice. He deserves to live out the rest of his days knowing what he had, but threw away.”

  I can’t help but shake my head in wonder. Did they really think that anything they said would change my mind about who Kye really was? “Look guys, I know you are going to probably tell me what a great person Kye is bu…” Christien’s next words stop me cold.

  “I was never engaged to Sable. Never dated her, or gave her the time of day except for the one night I was hurt and drunk, and had a one night stand with her. A lousy, drunken, angry one night stand.”

  Ok, this is all so damn confusing. “So you and Sable weren’t engaged? You only had a one night stand with her? So why has she been so devastated for the past eight years?” None of this was making any sense.

  Christien threw back his head and howled with laughter, but it wasn’t a happy laugh by any stretch of the imagination. “Oh you sad, naïve, deluded man. Sable used her ‘broken engagement’ to gain sympathy and access to countless bank accounts and business contacts. My government has been looking in to Sable’s activities for a while now. While we haven’t been able to figure out why or who she is working for, we have uncovered a pattern in her targets; wealthy men who were in charge of large scale import/export businesses. The fact that Kye was former DEA, spooked her and whoever she worked for, so I will give you one guess what she was involved in.”

  Christien was staring into my eyes and I could sense more hostility emanate from him than had ever been directed at me before. I couldn’t understand it, but the confusion over Kye’s part in all this superseded everything else. “Ok, so Sable is whoring herself to get close to guys in charge of import/export businesses. Fine. I feel like a dumbass, but since I never slept with her I guess I am not as dumb as everyone seems to think. But even I don’t know what has you so damn pissed at me. And I don’t understand how proving Sable is a whore makes Kye any less of one.”

  Christien stares at me for a moment, and then turns and takes a few steps away from me. I can hear him trying to control his breathing. Sounds like some B rated horror flick. “Let me tell you a little about Kye. Kye was typical American seventeen-year-old living in Georgia. She had dated a boy for about eight months, until his cocaine addiction became too much for her to deal with and she broke up with him. Sounds sad but normal right? Well, that only scratches the surface of the story.

  During the eight months that she had dated this dick, she had tried every way she could to help him; even going so far as to go to his drug dealer to pay off his debt. When she finally decided that she couldn’t save him but had to save herself and broke up with him, the boy became bitter and started using Cocaine and Heroin and ran up a massive debt. When the dealer came to collect payment, he didn’t have it, so the dealer told him to get it from his girlfriend like he had before and the dick told him that they had broken up. This interested the drug dealer, because when Kye stood up to him, she had sparked his interest. He made a deal with the boy that if he could del
iver Kye to him, he would consider the debt paid in full.

  So the ex-boyfriend tricked Kye into coming to help him with something and abducted her. Only he was still bitter and full of resentment, so in the six hours that he had Kye he beat her and raped her repeatedly. It would have been even worse for Kye if the drug dealer hadn’t had an undercover DEA agent with him when he went to go pick up Kye. The agent decided to screw the op and get Kye out.”

  I am glad that the table in the conference room was sturdy, because what I had just heard shocked me so much that I had to prop myself up on it to keep from falling. Shaking my head, I looked over to Christien. “How do you know all this?”

  The smile that flashed across Christien’s face was full of such self-loathing that I had to avert my eyes. Somehow I knew whatever he was getting ready to say was going to gut me. A moment later I wasn’t disappointed.

  After a few more deep breaths, Christien sat down on the table and began to speak. “I was told this one month after my one night stand with Sable. The DEA agent had become Kye’s best friend, and he wanted me to fully realize what I had thrown away. You see, I might not have been engaged to Sable, but I had been engaged to Kye. The night with Sable had actually been my and Kye’s engagement party.”

  To say that I was floored didn’t even begin to cover what I was feeling. Knowing what I knew about being with Kye, I couldn’t understand why he would turn to another. “Why? Why did you do that to her?”

  Christien’s head is bowed for so long; I don’t think he is ever going to look up. When he does he doesn’t look at me, just looks straight ahead with quiet tears rolling down his face. “You have to understand, I loved Kye with everything I had in me; still do. We had never made love, never done more than kiss; but I assumed after the engagement party that night that we would. When I tried to take it further she froze up. She started gasping for air like I was trying to kill her. At the time I didn’t know about the rape, so that obvious rejection hurt like a mother fucker. I stormed out to the nearest bar and proceeded to get blindingly drunk. When Sable made her play, I was too drunk and too hurt to stop it. Kye’s brothers came to see me the next morning and found her in my bed. They started beating the shit out of me and Sable started screaming; alerting the entire floor of the hotel about what was going on.”

  I was stunned. “I never heard about any of this. How did you keep it quiet?”

  “Oh it wasn’t kept quiet. The British tabloids had a field day with it. But I guess since my name wasn’t William or Harry, it didn’t make headline news in the States.”

  “Where did all of this happen?

  Christien looks at me like I am crazy, and at the moment I am beginning to think that I am. “I met Kye while she and brothers were attending Oxford like me.”

  I close my eyes and groan. That explains how she met the owners of RRP. She had gone to school with them. I know then that I have fucked up, and fucked up in a major way. It is ingrained in most men to hide our own failure by pointing out the failures of others. I am no different. Belligerently I say, “Ok, that explains some things, but that doesn’t explain Kye’s children. It is obvious that the boy toy is the father of one of her kids, but who is the father of the other one?”

  I can see the anger rolling of the prince in waves. He steps up to me so that he is so close that I feel the air he exhales. He grabs my shirt and pulls me even closer to him. “Do you know that I have waited seven years to get my hands on you? Since the first moment I learned of your existence I have been so full of hatred and jealousy that at time I couldn’t breathe. I have always known that Kye loved you more than she ever loved me. The fact that Kye slept with you proved it, even if you are too damn dumb to appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, I used to hate you, but now all I feel for you is pity. For a brief time I had the girl, but never really her heart. You had the girl AND her heart and you threw them both away.” Then the prince pushes me away so hard that I stumble and fall flat on my ass. He gives me one long look full of both hatred and jealousy and walks out followed by the two other men in the room.

  As I rise to my feet, I realize that I have a choice to make. Either forgive Kye’s past, or lose her for good.

  24

  “If you can’t handle me at my worst, you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best!”

  Marilyn Monroe

  Kye

  As a run up the beach, trying to numb my brain into oblivion; my mind refuses to cooperate and keeps replaying the events of the recent past. No matter how many times I repeat “left, right, left, right” flashes of Wyatt’s cruelty keep seeping into my consciousness. The words that he had speared me with cut to the bone, but what had hurt the most was his lack of faith in my integrity. The fact that he thought, even for a moment, that I would sleep with a child made me sick through and through. Even though he had gutted me seven years ago, I had never thought he could ever assume that of me. The fact that he was sleeping with the very woman who was guilty of that heinous crime was one of the cruelest ironies that I could ever imagine.

  As I reach the pier that I have designated as my turning around point, I slow down to a stop. As I am staring out across the water, I heard footsteps. I don’t know how I know, but I know it is him. I start to slow down, realizing that he was going to probably use his cruel words to cut me again; I use a deep breathing technique I picked up somewhere along the way to fine my inner calm.

  I stood there for a long moment, bent over trying to catch my breath. I hope that I am wrong; that the truth I know in the marrows of my soul to be true was not. When he spoke I lost all hope that my last wish; my last prayer for some peace would be answered.

  “I met Christien the other day. He had a lot to tell me; a lot that you should have told me seven years ago.”

  I can’t help but cringe as I stand there; waiting for Wyatt to elaborate. After a few silent and tense moments, I realize he isn’t going to answer. I still haven’t looked at him when I force myself to ask, “Really; what did Christien tell you?” Even though I was trying to give the illusion that I am not concerned, I am. Christien could have told him about my family and I don’t think that I could have taken him seducing me to get the high society wife; all the while secretly hating me. It took every ounce of strength that I have to keep standing there looking out over the ocean.

  Wyatt walks over until he is standing by my side, but I still won’t look at him. He takes the hint and follows my lead and just stands by my side looking out over the ocean. Finally the silence is broken as he takes in a deep breath and readies himself to speak. “He told me about your high school boyfriend, and what he did to you.”

  I slowly shake my head and close my eyes; it gets harder and harder to breathe. I have come to terms about what happened, and for the most part it doesn’t have any effect on my life. It really only causes me one problem; I can’t sleep past four hours at a stretch; if I do I relive those eighteen hours in my sleep. So this near panic attack that Wyatt’s words have caused me makes no sense.

  After I get my breathing under control; I slowly turn my whole body to the side to look at him. When I do, both of Wyatt’s hands reach out to my face. He looks into my eyes for a long moment before he finally speaks again. “Kye, it explains so much. Why you went to work for the DEA; the nightmare you had the night you got stabbed. I bet it was why you were always so worried about when you woke up after spending the night with me, right?”

  Wrapping my arms around myself, I look down at the sand beneath me. I softly tell him about my nightmares. “Since that day, I have never been able to sleep more than four hours at a time. And I don’t I have nightmares, I have night terrors. They are a hell of a lot worse than nightmares.

  Except for when I am with you; I tag on in my head. I have never had a night terror when I have fallen asleep with him. “Kye, you could have told me. No, you should have told me. It kills me to think that you didn’t feel like you could share that with me.”

&nb
sp; I look up into his eyes. “What does it matter now?”

  “It doesn’t; not really. I love you Kye; always have and always will. I have tried and tried to get over you, but it is just no use. You don’t have my soul, you are my soul. If you will give me a chance I will love you and your boys forever.”

  As much as I try to fight it, hope bubbles up in my chest. I close my eyes and launch myself into his arms. He holds me tight, with his cheek pressed to the top of mine.

  We stand there a long moment. Finally, a small seed of hope takes root in my chest and grows; until he opens his mouth and I am cast out of heaven and into hell yet again.

  “Kye, I will love your boys like they are my own; but you have to promise me to stay away from T. I understand why it happened, I really do. The hurt got to you too much and taking advantage of a kid gave you a sense of control that was taken from you. I understand and I realize we all make mistakes, but I don’t want to be constantly reminded of it.”

  If he had reached in and yanked out my heart it couldn’t have hurt anymore. He still thought that of me? I slowly retracted myself from his arms. “You are going to stand here and tell me you love me, will love my children, and you still think I am a monster who would take advantage of a child?”

  Wyatt turns his back on me and runs his fingers through his hair. “I have seen your child side by side with T. Forget Austen Powers and Verne Troyer; that boy is his mini me. I can love your sons, because they are yours, but I can’t be reminded of what you did on a regular basis.”

  Damn, damn, and double damn. The fact that he could think that of me and still claim to love me makes me realize something; he is either lying or not the man that I thought he was. How can anyone with the slightest moral compass say they love a child abuser? “You know what Wyatt? FUCK YOU!!! You think you can come to me with this condescending act about how you love me, even though I raped a child??? Marilyn Monroe was right. If you can’t handle me at what you think is my worst, you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”