The Complete Tempest World Box Set

by Mankin, Michelle

  “Truly apologetic? Not just remorse? Like you will stop doing shit like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Alright.” She released an audible sigh. “Then tell me how you’ve been doing. Since the therapist I mean.”

  “Pretty good.” I could feel Juaquin watching me. “He thinks I have trust issues.”

  “Duh,” she said, and I smiled.

  “He got me talking about our father and us some.”

  “So you’re saying he’s a miracle worker.”

  “Maybe. Probably. I realize I was pretty self-involved. Didn’t really consider how things with him affected you, mom and Bryan, too.”

  “That’s on him, Miriam. Not you.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it, but I don’t care about him. Just you.”

  “And Mom and Bry?” she queried.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then you should come home.”

  “No, I’ll just have to find another place to live after I sell the house is all. But I’ll figure it out.” She knew about Mike leaving. About King. Tempest commitments. She might say texts didn’t count, but mine had been informational. She had extrapolated based on what I had shared and wanted me to return to Seattle. My mom did have space for me in the new place Bryan had bought for them. But though I loved her and had a little more empathy toward her regarding the way she had handled things with my father, I didn’t want to go back to live with her at home. I had left to be on my own and independent. I was determined to stay that way whatever it took.

  “No,” I repeated just so we were clear. “I don’t belong there. You won’t even be there much longer, either. Right?”

  “You could at least come to visit. Come to the engagement party at Footit’s. Tempest is playing. Juaquin’s adoptive brother is getting engaged. Everyone will be there. He will be here.”

  “I know that.” I turned my head to glance sharply at my bed companion. “I wasn’t invited.”

  He shot up straight in bed, knocking me to the floor. It wasn’t far to fall, but I frowned up at him.

  “What happened?” Ann asked. “Did something fall?”

  “Yeah, I did.” I backed away as King came toward me. He had a glint in his eye that I wasn’t quite sure about. It was kind of how he had looked at me in the dressing room at Sexxy before he had slammed the door and fucked me on the counter.

  Oh, yes please.

  “Listen, Ann. I gotta go.”

  “Are you coming are not?”

  “I’m thinking yeah,” I told her. “I’ll talk to you later,” I said before hanging up and dropping my cell on the nightstand.

  “Oh, you’ll be coming alright, Reina.” He picked me up and threw me on the bed. The box frame collapsed with a whoosh making me squeal. I tried to scramble away backward from him, but he grabbed my ankles, flipped me over and pulled me slowly back toward him. “After I spank your ass for playing games with me instead of telling me straight out what you wanted.”

  • • •

  King

  I stood in front of the window while she showered. My lips curved, recalling how hard she had come after we played. Teasing her, seeing her smile made me happy. The last few weeks had been tough. I would take her however I could get her of course, but I much preferred her contented like this.

  “What’re you doing?” She asked, and I turned my head away from the view of the yard and the rolling desert hills beyond it to look at her.

  “Watching the sunrise.” I beckoned her over. She padded across the tiny space, rechecking the towel she had tucked between her breasts. Seemingly satisfied that it would stay in place, she moved beside me.

  “I think I can see one of the reasons you chose this place.”

  “Yeah.” She glanced away from the window, her brow creasing.

  “It’s a pretty sunrise.”

  “It’s alright.” She shrugged. “I can find a new one after we sell. The sun comes up. It goes down. It’s the same everywhere.”

  I shifted, took her by the shoulders to turn her more fully toward me then brought up her chin. “Don’t play games,” I chided gently. “Not that I didn’t love what we did earlier, but I’m being serious right now.”

  “Alright. But I don’t know where you’re going with this. Why you think it’s so important.”

  “Because of what you said about sunrises that first night we spent together. Then the fact that you’ve been avoiding them since the thing with Campanella. We don’t even go out to run until the sun is well up.”

  “You are being serious.”

  I nodded.

  “Why don’t you go first? You never shared about music or your poetry when we had that discussion.”

  “What about those things?”

  “Why do you write them?”

  “They’re a part of who I am.”

  “You’re creative. I realize that, Juaquin. It’s a part I love about you. My brother, too. But I sense a deeper reason. I know they predominately used your poems about Southside on the last album.”

  “Words are important. My music gives them a forum. A chance to be heard.”

  “Your poetry is…” She trailed off and looked at me expectantly.

  “The voice for my pain.” I gave it to her. All of it. Dropped my defenses and shared knowing she would understand. “Basically as soon as I could talk I started putting together words and phrases. Most of it sucked but as an artist himself Adrian saw my potential and encouraged me to keep going with it. Before he got involved in La Raza we had this dream of owning a studio together. My words. His paintings. But after he was taken away from me, I had to figure out a way to move on, a way to deal with the loss, a way to channel the anger and the pain.”

  “Yes.” She nodded as if she had known that was how I felt about my rhymes all along. She probably did. She had a way of reading the deeper meanings between the lines of everything I wrote. “It helps you make sense of it in a way. So what would it mean if it suddenly stopped?”

  “That I had given up.”

  “Yeah.” She affirmed, and my heart twisted for her.

  “Have you given up, Reina?”

  “No, Juaquin. But I had for a while, I think. Or I was hiding from the pain. I thought it might be too hard, to look at all that beauty every morning. It’s such a contrast to the ugly things that have happened to me. Like with my father.”

  “And like what those men did to you, too.”

  She nodded, her eyes flooding.

  “Can you let it go, Miriam? Can you move past it?”

  “I don’t know, Juaquin. But I know I’m ready to try.”

  “That’s all any of us can do. Would you do something? Would you start watching the sunrises with me? The good and the bad, can we try to make sense of it all together? However many sunrises it takes?”

  “What are you saying?” She brought her hands up to her chest as if her heart wanted to fly out of it. I was experiencing something very similar.

  “I want you by my side. I’ve wanted that for years. I think you have, too. Whether we’re laughing like earlier, or being serious like we are now.”

  “We only just started,” she cautioned, but I didn’t want caution for her anymore. I wanted better for her and me. For both of us.

  “Yeah, I know. But love is a beginning. Like sunrises. Let’s take them together. Stop looking back with regrets and start looking forward to the future. Let’s get up in the morning believing that anything is possible. No more living half-lives apart. Let’s live full ones together.”

  • • •

  Miriam

  “You’ve obviously had some time to think about this.” I needed to find words that would come close to describing how I felt about what he had just said, where I was with us, and how I felt about him that had the same level of depth. I looked out the window for inspiration to frame them, the way it seemed he had been doing when I had walked in. “These past few weeks your support, your patience with me, it’s made the diffe
rence, you’ve made the difference for me. The reason I didn’t give up was because you were here beside me.”

  “Reina, no,” he groaned in complaint and reached for me. “That’s your strength not mine.” His hands skimmed my cheeks as he slid them into my hair and tipped my face up so he could peer into my eyes.

  “Let’s say it’s both of ours then.” I smiled softly, the brightness of that truth shining in my eyes. “Everybody has faith in something, Juaquin. Well, my faith’s in you. You’ve never changed in all the time I have known you. Sure, you lost your way and made mistakes. We both have. But even when you pushed me away you thought you were doing the right thing by me. I realize now that your motivation was pure. You were trying to protect me. You worry about failing me. I have never worried about that. What I worry about is me failing you. But I’m willing to risk disappointing you because I need you. I’ll take it day by day. Sunrise by sunrise. Whatever that might look like. Wherever that might be. For however long you want me. You’re what I need, and I have the courage to reach for you because if I fail or fall again I know that having your love means I’ll always have a safe place to land.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Miriam

  “Thank you for rescheduling me, Dr. Claffey.” I was in his office several hours later than my original appointment.

  “It’s no problem. I was able to fit in a video conference with another patient to fill the slot you left open. Is everything alright?” he asked, studying me closely.

  “Yes, it is actually. Better than alright. Remember the relationship I mentioned as being important in our initial session? It took a turn I didn’t see coming. A really good one. We shared our feelings. We made promises to each other. He asked me to commit to him, and I did.”

  “That’s wonderful news. You look happy. More settled today.” He regarded me thoughtfully. I knew it was Juaquin. He made me happy. He brought out the best in me. If the Campanella business hadn’t sidetracked us we probably would have already been where we were now.

  “I’m in a really good place,” I confirmed. Even with the remaining uncertainties like how I would make a living and where, in Juaquin I had no remaining doubts. With us, if I truly and completely threw away caution and determined to look only forward, I would discover that I already had everything I had needed and more than I could have hoped for.

  “Words a therapist loves to hear,” he said. “Have a seat. I’m excited for us to get started.”

  “Me, too.” I took a step toward the couch then deliberately chose the chair closest to him instead.

  He nodded approvingly and leaned forward as soon as I was seated. “Did you think about any of the things we discussed?”

  “Yes, I did. I even talked to my sister about some of them this morning”

  “Ah, already opening up with your family. Moving into a committed relationship. You’ve taken a lot of trusting steps forward. Very good. Any other insights you would like to share?”

  “You asked me to think about why I liked dancing at Sexxy.” I paused before giving it to him and myself straight. “It was an empowerment thing. Instant validation of my appeal as a woman.”

  “It filled a void inside of you after the man you cared about rejected you.” My jaw dropped. He was right. Exactly right. Glancing down, he swiped his hand over the screen of his iPad. I recognized my handwriting and realized he was looking at one of the questionnaires I had filled out. Goals. Background information. A personality profile. I had even signed a release giving him access to all my medical records. “You wrote here that you took an interest in acting in high school.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What about acting appealed to you?”

  “I enjoyed pretending to be other people. It was an escape.” I shrugged. Did I need escapes anymore when I had such a strong man beside me, and the firm foundation he provided?

  “A coping mechanism. Southside Seattle sounds like a pretty rough place to grow up. With no father around and your mother working two jobs and going to nursing school I’m sure your life was difficult. I’m not surprised you wanted to be someone else.”

  “I’d never thought of it that way.”

  “Abandonment leaves emotional scars. Verbal abuse does, too. Words are powerful things. They can wound, but they can heal, too.”

  “Yes,” I agreed with everything he had said. Fortunately, I’d had my sister and Juaquin to speak positive ones to me. But the topics we were discussing reminded me of another little girl with a background similar to mine. Jasmine. Who did she have right now in her life to speak words of affirmation to her to counteract all the negative ones? In trying to run from my problems, I’d not only done myself a disservice, I had neglected her. I made a mental note to reopen the lines of communication between us. She wasn’t my charge anymore, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still be her friend. “My dyslexia made the written classroom work frustrating, but I was good at acting.”

  “You excelled at it. You received a full scholarship to a prestigious school.”

  “Yes, but I lost it.”

  “You did. But that doesn’t negate the accomplishment.” He tapped the screen, and I let that sink in so I could examine it. If I hadn’t gotten the scholarship, I might still be back in Southside. “So the acting and dancing served a similar objective making you feel valued.” He glanced up. “Are you buying that?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. The strokes of a paintbrush. A canvas no longer bare. A picture emerging.

  “Physical appearance matters a lot in those fields.”

  “Yes, it does,” I agreed.

  “Would you also admit that the things about a person that can’t be seen have a more lasting merit? Like the heart? The soul?”

  “Yes, I believe that.” I’d told Juaquin something startlingly similar. My interest in him at the very beginning had been because of the glimpses he had given me of his heart.

  Your value as a person is far greater than you think it is. Ann had said the night I’d first risked it all sneaking out late to see Juaquin.

  Your true worth to me isn’t your sex appeal, but what you mean to him. Even as twisted as he was, Campanella had gotten that right.

  “I’m fortunate to have people in my life right now who love me because of what’s inside my heart. I don’t need the validation I got from stripping anymore. I’m starting to consider other things.”

  “Then you were right in your earlier assessment. You’re in a good place. You’re not only here in therapy talking about traumatic events that might have caused you to give up, you’re ready to reorganize your life to move past them.”

  Have you given up, Miriam?

  No, I hadn’t quit. Not back then in Southside, despite abandonment, verbal abuse and rejection. Not now. Sure, I hadn’t gotten to this point alone. I had a lot to be grateful for, including Mike’s counsel and example as an assault survivor. And Juaquin, always Juaquin. But in the end it had been me, reaching out for what I needed like he had said. I was the one inside this room doing the hard work it took to get better.

  “I’m proud of myself and where I am.” I lifted my chin, tears sparkling in my eyes. Juaquin loved me. “Those men who hurt me, they can’t take that away.” I refused to allow them to victimize my spirit anymore, either. My King. He was proud of me. I was his queen. It was time to get off my knees. No more cowering. “I’m going to own my strength and all the rest of my positive attributes.” After all Juaquin and I were a team now. Who I was, how I saw myself and how I acted reflected on both of us.

  “You’re incredibly strong, Miriam, independent and resilient, too. You make my job too easy. You’ve made such progress in a very short amount of time. I’m proud of you, too.” He set his iPad aside. “Now how about you tell me something else? Something that isn’t on the paperwork you filled out.”

  “Such as?”

  “This relationship for starters. It has you practically beaming today. Are you in love with him?”

  “Yes
.”

  “And he with you?”

  I nodded. “I’ve been in love with him a long time.”

  “Love means many things to different people. Tell me what it means to you.”

  I gave that some serious consideration based on the examples I had seen. My brother and Lace. Mike and Alex. Juaquin’s parents. Juaquin and me. “It’s about becoming something better because you’re together. Transforming each other’s weaknesses into strengths. Making something beautiful together.”

  “Ah, very eloquently put. Makes sense to me. And in light of that…” He took my hands and squeezed them. “I think you’re going to be very excited about what showed up on your blood work. You have a beautiful beginning inside of you, Miriam. You’re going to have a baby.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  King

  Inside the detached garage at Miriam’s mom’s place, we had just finished rehearsing the Tempest songs we were going to play at the engagement party later at Footit’s. I set my sticks down on my stool and moved to take a seat on the couch beside my brother. Bryan was on the other side of Sager. War was pacing back and forth, getting geared up to make one of his infamous speeches. Dizzy was flopped sideways in an easy chair, multiple new piercings glinting beneath the bright lights of the retrofitted space. But my bandmates weren’t really what was on my mind. It was her. My gaze drifted yet again toward the door. I wondered what was going on with her, her mom, her sister and all the others who were getting ready inside the main house.

  Miriam had been noticeably distracted since her appointment with the psychiatrist. Though she had mentioned that he had told her he was proud of her progress, she hadn’t been willing to divulge the details like she had after the previous session. Not that we’d had a lot of time to talk privately since we had headed to the airport for our flight to Seattle as soon as she had returned to the house. I’d pulled the celebrity card with the airlines and gotten us on the same flight as Mike and Alex. Then we had come straight here. Lots of hugs. Lots of catching up. We had gotten separated. Family and supporters inside. Band out where we often practiced when we were away from the studio facilities at Black Cat Records in Vancouver.