Complicated: A Tainted Love Novella (2 page)

Marshall

I
was twenty the first time I saw her, she was just fifteen. Wavy strawberry blonde hair encased the heart shaped face of the most beautiful person I’d seen since my sister Delilah. While Delilah was short and voluptuous, with curly dirty blonde hair that she left untamed like her personality, Rachel Welles was taller, with a tight athletic body and had a quiet fire about her. I found out later that she was on the debate team and also ran track – a distance runner; a combination of two things I loved: a woman with a mouth on her and a limber body.

I’d been home for the long break, having gotten a Summer job temping for David Hampton – a friend of my Dad’s – whose paralegal had gone on maternity leave. It had been a long, frustrating day and I had gone to court with Hampton where he’d been representing an alleged murderer. As a pre-law student, even then I knew I never wanted to do what he did. I knew I wanted to practice criminal law, but Hampton defended the scum of the criminal underworld, the mob, drug kingpins, all for financial gain and critical acclaim. While the experience gave me immense inside knowledge, I knew I didn’t want to defend criminals, especially with the stuff my sister had gone through in her life.

I know it’s more than what she’s let on. Delilah has had a rough life – having been neglected by her mother – but some of the behaviors she exhibits tell of deeper emotional scars. She keeps her secrets close to her chest, gripping them in an iron vise, such that it’s hard to get a proper read on her at times. Rachel balances her out. She is the calm to my sister’s wild, and that is what I noticed first about her – how serene she was, to the point where she made everyone around her take on the peace and happiness she exuded.

I tried to stay away. I’d been dating Kelly at the time, a fellow law student. The relationship we had bordered on something regimented: when to have sex, when to show appropriate displays of affection, nit-picking over the smallest detail…just not natural behavior for persons who should be in love, really. Rachel and I fell into such an ease, from conversation, to little looks here and there, to slight touches in passing. I never thought she noticed, but every time we touched or if I was in the same room as her, a kind of electricity always crackled between us.

It wasn’t until one night after a long case that I even knew she had felt anything. I should’ve left her alone. I should have stayed away. It’s complicated; even now I can’t explain it, but when she’s around, it’s impossible to keep away. She has such a pull on me; as if her spirit calls out to my own.

I loved Rachel, still do, but things have become so complicated, so completely fucked. I wish I could take back everything that got us to this point, but what can you do when the one person in the world you love with every fiber of your being is the one you hate in equal proportion?

Rachel

EIGHT YEARS AGO

H
e came home that night later than usual. I was so worried; I’d been twisting the sheets the entire time while waiting for him. I know the case he’s working on with his boss, David Hampton, is a long, grueling and dangerous one. It’s hard not to worry.

As soon as he stepped into his parents Upper East Side apartment, the atmosphere sparked with awareness and my nipples beaded tight, my arousal soaking right through my pajama shorts.

Jesus.

Marshall Keyes.

I wondered if he knew what he did to me. I know he is older than me by five years, but it doesn’t stop my heart from beating faster and my body from responding in ways it never has with any other boy my age. Simple brushes or touches have me almost melting at his feet. A mere glimpse of him sets my body on high alert and eager anticipation.

Delilah, my best friend and his little sister, has been telling me to do something about my feelings for him but I am so afraid that he will laugh at this teenage crush that has become so much more than that now. Delilah has had way more experience than even the average adult, so she can say whatever she wants to. Some of us aren’t that highly sexed or experienced. Then again, she has been through more than the average adult so her word has some clout.

I am currently in her room, trying to hold back my raging hormones. Her parents are away on a trip to Chicago. They’ve always trusted her even though they shouldn’t. If they found out about the stuff she’s been up to whether they’re in New York or not, they’d ground her for life. Taking her freedom, Delilah left me to sneak out with some college guy, telling me that it was shit or bust time as it regarded her brother…and I’m currently shitting my pants about what I plan to do!

I am going to seduce Marshall Keyes!

Holy fuck, I am in way over my head. I don’t do stuff like this! I have only had sex once and I regret ever giving that asshole my virginity. Stupid fucking Joey Catalano and his stupid hoe cheerleader Cara Langley, I hope she gives him herpes…crab-infested slut.

Now, I’m going to throw myself at a grown man. It’s stupid, but, whatever it is that makes my blood heat and the warmth pool between my legs, I know he feels it too. When I see him – his wavy dark hair looking like silk, his golden brown eyes flicking alive with returned interest, his lips looking so utterly kissable – all I want to do is be beneath him, experiencing the pleasure he can bring to my body. Thinking about it now has me climbing down from Delilah’s black sheeted canopy bed.

My plan is to lure him to Delilah’s room under the guise that there is a huge spider that came through the faulty window. Everyone is aware of my fear of spiders, so it’s not that far-fetched. I just hope that I’m right that he feels the same way I do, because I’d probably go drown myself in the Hudson if he rebuffs my advances.
How embarrassing.

I find him in the kitchen, sitting around the island, nursing a glass of amber liquid; no doubt his Dad’s expensive whiskey. Delilah and I have imbibed the lovely stuff, as well as the other kinds of liquor in the cabinet. The Keyes’ are some of the coolest parents I know. My parents are strict, stuffy people who like to look down on others. My mother is a Manhattan socialite and my Dad a successful venture capitalist – capitalist being the operative word. Mariana and Allan Welles are from old money and they don’t let people forget how wealthy they and their families are combined.

On the outside, the Welles family exudes power and high society, the envy of everyone around them; but on the inside, this family is like a decaying carcass – it stinks. Pretense covers pretense. Smiles cover ruthlessness. Expensive clothes, lavish cars and homes conceal the ugliness. My family is entrenched in secrets and for as long as I can remember, it has always been better when I’m not around all their lies and their expectations of me.

While my parents at home pressure me to be successful and to take over the family business or to marry a rich heir, the Keyes’ allow me to be who I want to be, saying that kids will become who they are destined to be through love and nurturing. I get neither from home, which is why I am always over at the Keyes’. That, and that they’ve got a hot fucking son who drives me crazy with lust!

Like, seriously, it should be a crime to look as hot as him!

The plan is executed perfectly. I play the damsel in distress, almost fluttering away when Marshall casts a leery gaze down at my figure in a breast-hugging tank top and tight pajama shorts. He comes readily to my assistance, opting to stay with me in Delilah’s room, in case the spider comes back, since he couldn’t find it. 

It doesn’t take any time for things to escalate between us. As soon as he sits on the bed next to me, something changes in the atmosphere. My nipples peak and my breath comes out shallow. I try not to squirm from the thumping of my vagina, but I can’t help it. I squeeze my thighs together and that’s when I hear Marshall groan.

I snap my eyes up to his and they have this glazed look in them. He is clenching his jaw so much that it’s a wonder it doesn’t break under the pressure. We are so close, all he needs to do is reach for me and I’d be done for.

“Rachel,” he whispers in a deep, gravelly voice.

I whimper at the sound of it and bite my bottom lip to conceal the sound.

“Fuck,” he swears, before grabbing my neck and pulling me to his lips.

Stars break out behind my closed eyelids and I melt into his kiss. He takes, that’s what he does. He doesn’t wait for me to give, he rips everything from me in that one kiss – my desires, my pleasure – and with that, he owns me.

He roughly pulls away from me and goes to stand, growls as he reaches up and grips his hair with his fingers. I am breathing hard and fast, trying to catch my racing breath, but finding it difficult. My tummy is doing somersaults and my underwear is ruined, so wet that my juices are running down my inner thighs. My fingers tremble as they come up to touch my bruised lips.
Holy shit, that was sooooo hot!

“Rachel, I have been trying to avoid you,” he tells me, voice full of regret and lust. It does stuff to me. “But, Jesus H. Christ, you drive me crazy. I have jerked off to your tight little body so many times it’s a wonder I’m not in fucking jail. This is wrong, Rae.”

He looks so tortured. I hadn’t been thinking at all. This is so wrong. How could I put him in this position? If the authorities found out, he’d be put behind bars for sure. I can't do that to him, much as I want him to bang me like a drum.

“Oh, my God,” I breathe shakily. “I’m s-so sorry.”

I move to get up to try to make a mad dash to the adjoining bathroom in order to escape my utter shame, but Marshall stops me, backing me up to the door, and cages me in. My stomach drops to my core and it tightens at the look I see in his eyes. I want to fall into those eyes of his, now a dark brown almost black. He is wild with want, I see it; I feel it radiating from his very body like heat.

I follow the movement of his hand as he raises it and trails it down the front of my tank. His finger hooks into the front of it and he pulls it down over one breast. He takes a sharp breath when he sees how puckered my nipple is and traces the tight bud with the rough pad of his thumb. My legs give out from beneath me at the experience in his touch but he steadies me with a strong arm at my waist. His fingers dig in, scorching me, marking me. This is a grown man’s touch, a man who is hungry for the flesh of someone barely touched. This is wrong, but the throbbing in my panties tells me the opposite. It feels
oh so good
.

“I feel you in my blood, Rachel,” he rasps out as he idly toys with my nipple. “I have wanted you from the first moment I saw you. You could undo me.”

The way he speaks unlocks something inside of me. He is telling me something, something that I have always felt about him. He could unravel me like no other, he could destroy me, but like a moth drawn to a bright flame, I step into my demise.

Rachel

TWO YEARS LATER

I
stare down at the white stick in my hand. Two blue fucking lines. Pregnant. Motherfucking pregnant at seventeen years old. I stare at Delilah, tears brimming in my eyes with heartbreak. She knows the score. I want this baby, but I can’t keep it. If I keep it, as much as it would mean carrying Marshall’s child, it would ruin his career and my parents would disown me. The latter doesn’t mean as much to me as the former. Marshall is my life and it would kill me to see this destroy him.

What a position I have found myself in: pregnant at seventeen by a grown man. I have always turned my nose up at girls who got pregnant while in high school, thinking they’re foolish and irresponsible. Yet, here I am, foolish, and eating my words. I don’t remember even missing one of my birth control pills, but I must have. Now, as a result of my irresponsibility, I’m carrying the baby of the man I love. Maybe if I was just a year older; maybe if it was under different circumstances, circumstances where I was out of high school and no longer living with my parents, this would have been a dream come true.

Now, it’s just a nightmare.

My hand drifts down to my stomach and I try to convey every ounce of remorse to the growing fetus that will never see the light of day. I can’t have this baby.

A regretful sob bursts from my throat and I mournfully weep for my impending loss. I will never understand how abortion was ever an easy option for any woman; never understand how some made it somewhat of a sport, not caring that a life was growing inside of them. Without knowing the sex or health of this baby inside me, I love it. Or, at least, I want to. I don't know.

What is making me so despondent is the fact that I don’t seem to love this baby enough, and that makes me the worst possible human being. I close my eyes and let the grief, the disappointment, and the anger flow through me. I have no hope to cling to, other than my best friend gripping my hand as the tears flow down her face. She is mourning her godchild as well. Would we ever get this chance again? I put my hand over hers and place it over my barely paunching stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Delilah whispers to the unhearing fetus in my stomach, her sadness heavy. My belly does a flip at her words, as if by some psychic miracle, the fetus heard her and moved.

This causes me to choke out another sob. What would this baby have become? Would it follow in its father’s footsteps and become an attorney? Would this baby turn out to be a great man or woman? I see the same thoughts flicker in Delilah’s eyes, as if it’s written in bold print on her face. The answers to those questions we will never know.

The longer we delay, the more attached we would both become.

I remove both our hands, determination steeling my features, but as I ask the next question, my resolve crackles, “What am I gonna do, Lilah?”

Tears flow down my face at the reality of the situation. I haven’t the first dollar to go towards an abortion and I can’t ask Marshall for it. He’d want me to keep the baby and that is just not the answer I want to hear right now.

I can’t stop my mind from drifting to a happy family, white picket fence, and a dog to boot. Marshall loves Siberian Huskies. I smile, but it again dissolves into a sob. He’d resent me, I know it. Knowing my parents, they’d force him to stop law school, go into the family business, and marry me. He’d always wonder what if, always miss law, and miss his life before I got pregnant. The thoughts consume me and are breaking my heart.

Marshall was always careful to make sure we were being safe. He’d gotten upset with me once when I didn’t tell him I’d missed a pill. I didn’t even know that I had myself. He’d been back for the weekend and had rented a friend’s loft for a few days. After the first round of lovemaking, I had fallen asleep, only to be roughly woken up by a fuming Marshall, holding my packet of pills and pointing at the missed pill that was still very present in its wrapping. I blanched. After that, Marshall made it his point of duty to remind me to take my pills everyday right on time.

But, I had royally fucked up this time.

I clutch my stomach and muster every psychic ability I possess to tell my baby how sorry I am. I will mourn this loss forever when it happens. I imagine what his or her life would be like, how much love it would have growing up. A garbled sound of grief and despair rips from my throat and I second-guess the decision I have to make for the first time. What if I bring this baby into the world? Would it be so bad being disowned by my family, dropping out of school and possibly having Marshall hate me?

Oh, God…

“Don’t worry, Rae, I’ll get the money,” Delilah promises, cutting into my despondent thoughts and clutching my hand. “That therapist I’d been seeing, I owe him a blow job. I blew him off the last time. He pays me for my services and for my silence. I can always ask him for the amount to cover the abortion…”

I start shaking my head. She keeps putting herself in dangerous situations for me. I won’t let her become her birth mother. The Keyes’ adopted Delilah when she was ten years old. She’d run away, but they thought it was because her mother Fiona was neglectful. Her mother was a prostitute, but worse than that, she’d pimped Delilah out for two years in order to support her drug habit before Delilah ran away.

I don’t want her going down that road.

“No, Lilah, absolutely not!” I argue. “I won’t let you prostitute yourself for me.”

“So I should just let your parents disown you, let your life get fucked up?” she fires back, her eyes flashing with anger and sadness in equal measure. This is breaking her heart.

“You’re my responsibility, Rae,” she continues, her eyes teeming with tears. Her voice stays strong and resolute, though. “I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re too important to me. If it means I have to do this to protect you, believe me I’m gonna do it. Not like it's anything new for me, is it?”

Tears burn my cheeks as they fall. Delilah would sacrifice everything for me. I couldn’t ask for a better best friend.

“No,” I maintain, knowing she’ll do it anyway.

“Okay,” she half-heartedly agrees, tapping my hands. She will.

It’s been four and a half weeks since I got rid of my baby and the pain is still so very real to me. Not so much the physical pain, but a gnawing emotional agony, that never seems to wane. The hollow feeling in my stomach taunts me daily and I have been having nightmares filled with baby laughter and crying. Regret eats me up every day, but what makes me feel like scum is the fact that a part of me is happy; happy that I don’t have to worry about what bringing a baby into the world means.

I cry so much nowadays and find myself snapping at Marshall more often. I hardly even want to see him anymore, but if I don’t, I get upset. It’s like I can’t live with him, and can’t live without him. The emptiness that I feel on a constant basis makes a wider crevasse between us, especially with him not being near me.

I can’t understand my harshness toward him. Am
I mad at him and punishing him subconsciously for getting me pregnant and having to make the decision to get rid of the baby? Am I mad at myself and taking it out on him? Whatever it is, it is causing a strain in our relationship. It’s becoming too hard, yet still I fight.

Marshall senses the change in my mood. Sometimes he tries to avoid me, other times he tries to see how he can make me feel better. My mood swings wear him thin, and we have broken up twice so far, only to get back together each time. He knows something is up, has asked me if I’m hiding something from him on numerous occasions, but I can’t tell him. He won’t understand that I did this for us, for him. I saved him from giving up his dreams; I saved him from hating me…but I didn’t save me from hating me.

The guilt of my actions never leaves me alone, it threatens to choke me with its tight grip on a daily basis. The only person keeping me from going off on the deep end is Delilah. She has been such a source of strength to me in this time. There is no way to repay her for what she did to help me with the…procedure – I can’t even say the word – but I know that she has my undying loyalty from here on out. To do something so heartbreaking for someone in a scary situation is such a courageous thing to do.

The ugliest situation has its own dose of beauty in it. And Delilah is my beauty. I couldn’t have wished for a better friend, because in the midst of my chaotic inner battle, she is my peace.

Unfortunately, it’s not so peaceful with me at the moment, which would explain why Marshall and I are at each other’s throats.

“Oh, my God, Rachel!” he screams at me, gripping his hair and pulling it in frustration.

This has been our umpteenth fight for the day, all brought on by me. His parents are out of town and we decided to spend the day at the house together while Delilah was out with her new guy…well, her other new guy. She has a few.

He had tried to sleep with me but as soon as I closed my eyes, all I saw was my baby; a baby I will never get the chance to hold in my arms; a baby I had to get rid of if I wanted a happy life…one that, sadly, I am yet to experience since it happened.

I had choked out the word ‘condom’ and he froze, setting off the first argument about why the need for additional protection if I’m on birth control.

“Who knows the kinds of skanks you’ve been with,” I’d stupidly muttered and the whole thing snowballed after that.

“Fucking hell, how many times do I have to tell you that Joanna and I are not and have never been together?” he shouts, his face turning red with rage. “Why don’t you tell me what the real problem is?”

Since the procedure, I have gotten to accusing him of cheating on me. I’m not being rational. In my heart I know it, but tell that to my guilt-addled brain.

“You think I’m stupid, Marshall?” I ask, anger flaring. I have to do something to distract him from the guilty truth; his shock, disappointment, hurt, hate and resentment – which will result from his knowing my real problem – will wound me far worse than his anger can.

“Yes, Rachel! Because no matter how many times I’ve told you that I love you, you just can’t seem to believe it nowadays!” he fires back.

He’s right; I’ve been questioning him at every turn. Nothing ever seems enough. He goes above and beyond to make me happy but I still make everything so much more difficult. I find it hard to trust him because I know that I broke his trust. I find it hard to believe his love for me, because I wasn’t strong enough to believe that he would love me even if he found out I’d been carrying his child. He has been nothing but good to me, when all I’ve done is fuck up a good thing.

“I can’t do this shit,” he admits, his hands falling to his sides in defeat and the tears I’ve been trying to hold back spring to brim in my eyes.
No
.

“I’ve been trying to be the loving, supportive boyfriend, Rae, but it’s killing me,” he voices in such a broken voice that my tummy where a baby should have been quivers in pain.

“Something’s wrong and you’re not telling me, and instead of loving you regardless…I’m finding it hard to even be around you.”

The words slice through me like lance, unbelievable pain erupting from my soul.

“Please, Marshall,” I beg, but I’m not certain what for; for him to not break up with me? For him to not press this issue of what’s been bothering me?

“You’re stressing me out, Rae,” he tells me, his voice soft.