by Portia Moore
“I know you may not be in the best place now,” she keeps her tone light even though her voice is heavy and it scares me, but I refuse to let her see it.
“I’m ready to hear whatever it is,” I try to assure her squeezing her hands.
“After all that’s happened, keeping secrets just doesn’t seem to work out for this family,” she chuckles and I can’t help but do the same.
“Go ahead,” I tell her firmly.
“When you left, Cal wasn’t the person who took over,” she says hesitantly, and I scratch my head.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean another alter surfaced,” she says hesitantly, her voice even but quiet. I can’t help but cock my head to the side and look at her in confusion. I laugh at first, but when I see her voice doesn’t break, I laugh again, long and loud and my head is shaking back and forth in disbelief.
No way. There is no fucking way! I can feel a frown locked on my face as she takes in a deep breath to reveal more.
“His name is Collin.” Her eyes don’t look at mine, and I throw my head back in frustration.
“Well, that’s just fantastic,” I say bitterly. “Is he as big of a jerk as Cal is?” I shrug with indifference, but I can tell my comment has irritated her and I can’t help but feel a pinch of jealousy.
“He was different than Cal. He was different than both of you actually,” she says with a small grin, and I feel myself frown.
“You liked him?” I ask surprised, that pinch from earlier feeling like a nudge. She rolls her eyes, and I can tell she’s irritated by the question.
“He wasn’t around long enough for me to know if I liked him or not.” Her cheeks redden. “That’s not actually the point right now. He seems to be a neutral party in all of this and what’s more important is what he did,” she says firmly.
“Okay, what did he do?” I ask her, annoyance flowing through my voice. I try not to grit my teeth, but it’s pointless. She takes a deep breath and tells me all that’s transpired after I blacked out. Apparently this Collin is the mediator and knows more about what’s going on than me and Cal combined. Just peachy.
Oh, and we can’t forget that he tried to extort Dexter Crestfield who turns out is actually my biological dad. Not only that but Lauren and my other dad had to stop Cal from killing the man who he thought was responsible for killing my mother when in all actuality she set up her five-year-old son to do the dirty work for her.
After hearing all of this, I feel like I’ve run a marathon. Her voice is calm even though I can imagine her heart has to be pounding a million miles a minute from the way her eyes dart between my face, my chest, the ceiling, and the floor. Her gaze sweeps over me after she’s done, as if she’s waiting with bated breath for me to react. For a brief moment, I wonder what Cal would do in this situation, what Collin would do. How can I really be surprised? After hearing what my dad, my hero did to my mother, the parents I grew up with and trusted, the actions of parents I never knew doesn’t surprise me at all.
“I don’t know what to say. I guess, Cal couldn’t handle finding that out?” I ask and her eyes widen in shock.
“Cal, couldn’t handle it?” she asks me curiously. I stuff my hands in the pockets of jeans I don’t remember buying. “What I just told you doesn’t bother you at all?” she asks, confusion littering her face.
“It does. I mean some of it,” I admit with a shrug and wipe my forehead.
“I thought all of it would be overwhelming,” she answers seemingly confused by my response to all of this.
“I didn’t know my biological parents—well apparently I do since my grandfather is really my dad. But what you said happened with me as a kid, I-I don’t remember it. It…” I trail off thinking how callous it must sound, or stupid even.
“It’s as if it didn’t happen to me. It doesn’t compare to what’s already happened,” I say quietly.
“You mean like it happened to Cal?” she asks unsurely.
“You could say that. I’m seriously messed up. In some weird way I feel detached from it, like it happened to Cal and not me, which is strange but it’s how I feel. Like it happened to someone else. I even feel sorry for him. Just the fact that Dexter Crestfield is my dad, that Dexter isn’t my uncle-in-law but my half-brother is what hits home.”
Her gaze travels over my face and I see her attempting to read me, but my silence seems to be testing her resolve.
I shake my head and this time I do stand and push the chair in frustration.
“How do I even sound? You’ve just told me that my mother got me to kill her and I don’t feel any way about it. Something is wrong with me!”
“Chris.” The color drains from her face as my blood turns cold the second I hear his voice behind me. I turn to see my dad standing with groceries in both arms, his expression is timid but he looks happy to know it’s me.
He shouldn’t.
“Mr. Scott, this isn’t a good time.” Lauren walks toward him quickly, her eyes wide as a cat’s. She’s obviously more intuitive than good ole dad here.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my tone lower than I’ve ever used with my dad. He swallows hard in response.
“I-I’m here to help,” he stutters, nervously. I look at his face, which looks older than I last remember. He’s tired and stressed, but I really don’t give a shit.
“Wait, you don’t think you’ve done enough?” I chuckle sarcastically. He looks down defeated. He’s so different from the man I thought he was. The man I used to look up to, whom I respected, admired and wanted to be like. Now he’s nothing. He’s dirt.
“Help?” I laugh, feeling my jaw clench. “How could you help? This is all your fault. You’re a liar!” I yell at him. His face turns beet red, and his jaw clenches.
“I made a mistake.”
“Mistake?” All the muscles in my body tighten.
“You think screwing my best friend was a mistake? Cheating on my mother was a mistake? It wasn’t a mistake, Dad! A mistake is setting the time wrong on an alarm, incorrectly balancing your checkbook. That’s a mistake. What you did was not a mistake or an accident. You ruined our family! You destroyed my friendship, you broke my mother’s heart and you hid it all, regardless of what it did to me,” I walk closer to him, and I can see the water building in his eyes as I ignore the water in my own.
“I will never, ever forgive you for what you did. You are nothing to me.” I step away from him, giving him one last glance to know how serious I am, how disgusted he makes me. I look back at Lauren who has tears in her own eyes. I wonder if she’s crying for me, for him, or for herself who has been dragged into this dysfunctional soap opera.
“You can show him the door if he can’t find it himself,” I tell her before leaving the room. I wipe away the one tear that escaped my eye. It’ll be the last one that ever sheds for him. He might as well be dead to me.
He is.
I’m an orphan again.
Chapter Three
Lauren
Is this our world now? Are fights, angriness, bitterness and hatred the only things to look forward to? The anger and devastation between Chris and Mr. Scott felt tangible, suffocating us all. I am not a big fan of Mr. Scott. I detest what he did, how he treated me, and he deserves to feel contrite for his act—but seeing how broken he was after Chris verbally eviscerated him—I can’t help but feel sorry for him, and more so than that, I’m afraid.
I’m terrified because Chris has never been so hard and cold before.
Chris is supposed to be the reasonable one, the one who forgives. He’s the one whose heart isn’t hardened, whose spirit isn’t broken. This isn’t who he is. But who is Chris now with everything out in the open? I don’t know who he or Cal is anymore. Has the dynamics changed? Are the men I know still in there? It seems like everything I know has switched. When Cal was here, he was disoriented, broken, and unwillingly vulnerable. Chris is… I don’t even know how to describe him now, but he is not the man I met just a
few months ago. Not the man that I just saw. I don’t know who that person was, and watching him act like that was painful. I can’t imagine the pain he’s in, or how bad he’s hurting. I’ve realized that for Chris this is still as fresh as the day he found out. He hasn’t had time to process any of this because right after he found out Collin took over, and then Cal, and now he’s back in the same space that caused him to leave.
My head hurts. It’s pounding so hard because I don’t know what to do, or how to fix this. Before I thought that if they integrated everything would be fine. I thought if we found out the truth things would be better but, the truth hasn’t fixed anything and if anything has made it worse. I’m dealing with a fractured man, all the pieces broken and I’m not sure how to put the pieces back together. I have no clue what to do.
How do I bring Caylen into this? Even with his state of mind now I know he’d never hurt her but is this even healthy for a child? What if we can’t recover from this?
“I’m going to head out.” I look up and see Mr. Scott, looking almost as broken as his son. I forgot that he was still here. It’s been an hour and a half since Chris confronted him, and to be honest, a part of me is sad that he’s leaving because I’m afraid that I can’t handle this alone. I nod at him, his blue eyes are dull and heavy, and he looks as defeated as I feel.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asks quietly, shifting the bag on his shoulder. I let out a sigh and plaster on a smile.
“I always am,” I tell him in the most upbeat tone I can and wrap my arms around my legs. He looks toward the stairs as if making sure Chris isn’t going to pounce and attack.
He sits next to me and lets out his own deep sigh.
“I really screwed things up.” He covers his face with his hands. I don’t say anything because he knows how bad this is.
“I know that I said I was sorry for how I treated you before but─”
“I know.” I can imagine how sorry he is for everything, but the words won’t make things any better at this point.
“We have so much more to focus on now. We have to look forward, it makes no sense to keep looking back on the past,” I tell him quietly. I see him nod out of the corner of my eye.
“I’m going to stay at a hotel a few blocks from here if you need me. I’ll text you once I check in to let you know where I am,” he says as he stands.
“Thank you.” My voice sounds tired and weak, but I hope he knows how grateful I am for him being nearby. I walk him to the door, and we stand awkwardly for a moment. We aren’t close enough to hug, and it would feel awkward and weird if we forced it. If Chris came out and saw us hug—with him being so angry—it wouldn’t be a good situation for either of us, though we both could use a good hug right about now. So instead I pat him on the shoulder, and he nods. He opens the door, and I watch him waiting for the elevator before shutting the door when he’s finally on his way down.
“You look like you were sad to see him go?” I turn and see Chris sitting at the bottom of the staircase. His expression is somewhere between crossed and bemused.
“You’re not?” I ask him keeping my voice steady and even.
He rolls his eyes. “I thought I made that pretty clear to you both earlier.”
I stare at him trying to read him, thinking of where we are in this moment. How hard I wished, hoped and prayed for him to be back here with me. How many nights I imagined us being here, and we’re here, just not exactly how I pictured it. I have to remind myself that us being here together is what’s important. It’s a small victory, but I’ll take it. He could be God knows where but he’s here with me right now, and it’s what I remind myself of before answering him.
“I wish it was under different circumstances,” I tell him truthfully as I walk over to him.
“You’re right. I wish my dad hadn’t fucked up my life,” he chuckles, running his hand through is hair. It’s longer and thicker than I’ve seen it—in need of a trim—but still beautifully wild. I want to rest my head on his shoulder. I want him to wrap his arms around me and tell me everything is going to be okay, but the state that he’s in I know he can’t do that for me right now. Unfortunately we can’t sit still and be stagnant because we have a daughter and we have to fix this, or at least start somewhere.
“I’ll never forgive him,” he says bitterly wringing his hands together.
I sit beside him on the stairs. “I know you’re angry, and I cannot imagine what you’re feeling right now, but I have to know where we go from here?” My voice is shaking and reveals every nerve in it. He lifts his head, and I make my eyes meet his. At first, I expect his eyes to be hard and angry, but they’re not. They’re the same soft green I used to see, and the tightness in my chest goes away briefly.
“I don’t know,” he shakes his head and puts his head between his legs. I put my arm around his back and lean my head on his. Our fingers intertwine, and he grips mine back.
“You have every right to be angry, but you can’t let this anger and hate consume you. Don’t let it change you, please,” I tell him quietly. His previous limp body stiffens, and his hand releases mine. He stands abruptly and when he turns around the tightness in my chest is back. The soft green eyes that were just there are still the same in color, but his stare is hard and his faced locked into a scowl.
“So it’s okay for Cal to be pissed off and hate the world but it’s not okay for me to be upset?” he asks, defensiveness radiating off of him. My mouth drops open, and I’m so surprised I don’t know what to say.
“T-that’s not what I meant?”
“That is what you meant. It’s okay for him to fly off the handle, to even try to kill someone—but me—I get angry with my asshole father who screwed my best friend and lied about it for years, and it’s a problem!” He’s yelling and his face is red. I press my lips together to try to keep from saying the wrong thing. Chris has never talked to me like this.
“I-I didn’t say that! That’s not what I mean I just…” I stand and touch his chest and he backs away from me as if I have the plague.
“Then tell me. What did you mean?” He shouts, and I can feel my hands trembling.
“I only meant that…” I’m at a loss of what to say. The glare he’s giving me makes me think whatever I say won’t be the right thing.
“My dad is a cheating selfish asshole, but he was right. I’ll always be the consolation prize. I’ll never be good enough for you!” I feel tears in my eyes, sadness battling against anger because of his icy tone. My emotions battle against my better judgment and I want to lash out at him, to yell at him for questioning my love.
“You want to fight right now?” I ask him angrily, feeling a tear slide down my cheek. He scoffs at me. I storm into the guest bathroom and pull out the handheld mirror I keep there and stomp over to him and put it in his face. “That’s who you are fighting with!
“I am not going to do this with you. I am not going to be your verbal punching bag. I can’t, no. I won’t do it! I love you. I love every single part of you. So yes, I love Cal. I even love Collin. I’m sorry if that upsets you, if you’re going to punish me for that, if you’re going to hate me for it, but I don’t know what else to tell you. This is not a contest! I want you—the whole man—for our marriage, for our daughter. I don’t want one of you over the other, so let’s just get that out of the way right now!”
His scowl is still there, my heart is beating fast, but it feels like a piano just got off my chest. The truth is out, and I hope he gets it. I hope that he doesn’t take it the wrong way, but I cannot keep doing this with him. I cover my face with my hands. I want him to say something but the silence in the room is heavy, and his footsteps that follow it are almost devastating as I hear them quiet in the distance. He’s walking away from me, without a word, without a hint of what his response is. My head is hurting so badly to think about the pain that this is causing both of us. I’m going to bed, and will try to get some sleep and hope that my husband is still here when I wak
e up.
When I open my eyes, I see that it’s dark out. My eyes glide to the alarm clock on my dresser and see that it’s 7:20 pm and I’ve slept almost the whole day away. It makes sense since I’ve gotten almost no sleep over the past few days. I climb out of bed and rub my hands down my face. I went to bed frustrated and angry after the blowup with Chris, and in that moment I didn’t care where he went and if he’d be here when I woke up. Now dread wrapped around worry has crept in and I realize there’s a possibility that he may not be here. It subsides when I hear the shower running in the bathroom. I walk into the bathroom and brush my teeth glancing back at the steamed glass clouding my vision of him. I grab my phone off the sink that I don’t remember leaving in here, and dial Mrs. Scott’s number. I’m a little relieved when it goes to voicemail because I don’t know what to say to her, but I’m also disappointed because I don’t get to talk to Caylen. It’s been two days since she’s heard my voice or her father’s, and I miss her terribly.
“Hey, Mrs. Scott, just calling to check in and talk to Caylen….” I sigh not knowing what else to say. When am I going to tell her? Should Caylen be here while—whatever this can be labeled as—is happening?
“Tell Caylen that I love her, and I’ll see her soon. Just dealing with… Actually just call me when you get this message. Thank you so much again.” Mrs. Scott has been a godsend, even in the midst of all the chaos that’s in her own life; she has been so supportive of us. She said that Caylen has been a welcome distraction.
I lean back on the counter and realize it’s been so long since I’ve shared a bathroom with my husband. The last time he was here he used the guest room. My heart skips a beat because Chris has never used this shower. I inch closer to the shower and let out a small breath as I open the door, and the steam spills out. He doesn’t turn around, but I admire him from behind. His body is still perfect, created with the greatest skill to be the desire of any woman that lays eyes on it.
