Complicated: A Tainted Love Novella (3 page)

I hate how much I have broken him up. I hate how much I have broken myself. My heart is telling me to tell him what I’ve done, but my head is putting up so much resistance. It will kill him to know what I’ve done, but is there a possibility that he would be happy about it? And if he is, would I hate him for it?

The thoughts become too much for me to shoulder and instead of falling apart, a stone wall erects itself around me. Self-preservation. I know this mode so well. I have used it many a time with my own family, when I can’t live up to the perfection they expect of me, I shut everyone out. The only persons who had been able to penetrate those walls have been Consuela, my parents’ maid and The Keyes’ family.

I’d often entertained fantasies of being part of this family, a family that wanted me, who cared about me; having parents who loved me, a sister who was also my best friend and a boyfriend as the love of my life. With the recent turn of events though, that dream has dwindled like a waning fire.

Behind the stone walls, my heart breaks, and a lone tear slips down my face.

“I can’t focus at school,” he continues, angling his body away from me. I feel the resignation from where he is. He’s pulling away from me. And I’m allowing him to.

“My grades have dropped and I’ve hardly been eating, but all of that means nothing to me because here you are, hurting, and you’re shutting me out with your anger and false accusations.” He sighs heavily, shakily, and it hurts me to know that I’ve hurt him so.

The truth will hurt much more, so I remain quiet, taking my inner turmoil with me, not letting him in. I’m destroying him anyway. Going our separate ways is the best solution…for both of our sanities.

“Rae, I don’t want to keep loving you if you don’t want to try,” he implores and it’s a stake right to my heart.

With my heart in tatters, I look up at him and say the words he has been hanging onto, “Goodbye.”

Marshall

I was going to marry her.

I dig the black box out of my pocket and squeeze it in my palm until I feel some modicum of pain other than the one her walking out on me caused.

It is beyond me what happened to us. One minute everything was blissful. We had small disagreements, but for the most part we were happy. So much so that I’d bought her a beautiful engagement ring a month before, a ring that I was planning to give her on her eighteenth birthday.

The next minute, everything went to shit. It was exactly a month ago that all the problems started and I felt her pulling away from me. I sensed the demise coming, but felt as if I was watching a movie – knowing what’s to come but unable to do anything about it.

I’d begun disliking her, not wanting to come home to my parents’ because I knew I’d see her and it would only bring about an argument and misery, but I was so miserable staying away. We had two years together, surely it wasn’t meant to be perfect every day. So I tried, and I kept trying to make her happy, but nothing worked. I was never enough.

I’d always feared that she would tire of me considering her age. She was young, full of life; of course I must expect her to want to live it to its fullest. Maybe she felt like I was holding her back. Maybe she found someone younger?

Maybe, just maybe, she didn’t love me anymore.

The rest I could deal with, but for her to not love me anymore is a thought that kills everything inside of me. It would destroy me if she didn’t love me anymore. She walked away from me, but I saw that tear. There’s something she’s not telling me and she is hiding behind her wall, a wall that I’d taken my time in tearing down.

It also told me that there is still hope for Rachel and I, and I will hang onto that.

So, with a broken heart, I stuff the ring into the back of my underwear drawer, hoping that one day in the future, she will be the wearer of it.

A grand picture of me walking down the aisle with Rachel springs into my head. The scene continues with her belly rounded with my child and I smile. Having a baby with her would be the highlight of my life.

I’ll give her time, allow her to live her life, but I won’t be too far away; because despite my feelings toward her now – my frustration and sheer dislike of her mood swings – I still love her. I’ll let her deal with whatever is going on in her head now; let her sort out what she wants. I’ll be right here waiting for her when that happens, because this girl…this beautiful girl is it for me. I feel it in my bones. She’s mine, even if she thinks that she isn’t.

I love her enough to walk away now, but it won’t be forever.

Marshall

SEVEN YEARS LATER

A
s I sit in my large, black Adirondack chair and stare at the only picture on my desk, it transports me to a simpler time, a beautiful time seven years ago. I have been a criminal lawyer with the best law firm this side of the East Coast for the past three years, Swanson and Shreiger Incorporated. I’m moving up the ranks and there is already talk of making me partner. I couldn’t ask for a better life, but I do. I wish for it every day, and the only better my life can get is staring right back at me, here in the picture that I’m holding.

In the picture is a woman sitting on the sands of a beach in North Carolina, her back turned. The woman in the photo, wearing a white sarong tied up to her neck, is staring out over the sparkling blue water, her arms wrapped around her knees with her strawberry blonde hair whipping around in the slight breeze. The sadness and despair oozing from the image speaks of, no, even mirrors my own sadness and despair, but I cherish it nonetheless.

Most people who see it think it’s a stock photo and have asked me on many occasions why I haven’t replaced the image with an actual family picture. My on again, off again – currently off again – girlfriend, Jenny, has been pressuring me to put a picture of us in the sea-shell encrusted frame; but I could never do that.

That frame and the picture in it, means more to me than anything else ever has, aside from my family. That picture along with that frame helps me to hold on to something that I no longer, and may never have again.

Rachel had given me that frame for my twenty-second birthday, made it herself. At first, there was nothing to put in it. I had pictures of her – some clean, some
very
dirty – but couldn’t put them in the frame because our relationship was a secret. This picture I had was snapped six years ago on a family trip out to Emerald Isles. It was after Rachel’s and my last and final breakup; a breakup sparked by my cheating on her. The misery had gotten too much for me then – the constant arguments, that one physical fight, the accusations – and I’d gone out drinking with my fellow law graduate, Joanna, and had four too many.

It was coming up on Rachel’s graduation and I had a surprise for her. In spite of the arguments, I had hopes that once she graduated, everything would go back to normal with us. I’d just bought her an apartment that we would both live in so we could stop hiding and start our life together without the secrecy. I had the keys ready to share the great news, but, once again, she’d turned a simple thing into a huge argument; asking why I’d been so secretive lately.

I’d left the house shortly after my parents got home, preferring not to get into it with her while my parents were around. They’d been getting suspicious and much too observant. My Dad had even asked me if there was something between us, warning me to stay away as she’s still very young.
Too late, Dad
, I’d thought at the time, trying not to smile. As if I could stay away from such beauty and sexiness.

I never meant to see Joanna, but she provided me with female company. After we fucked, I slept it off, not realizing what I’d done or where I’d brought her. It wasn’t until I’d woken up that everything came crashing down. I’d taken Joanna to our new apartment and I’d fucked her in the bed Rachel and I would have shared. I’d gone home, fully intending not to say a word, but Joanna had left marks on my skin and when I came clean, that spelt the end of whatever happiness we could have had.

A week after the breakup, my parents invited Rachel to our North Carolina beach house to celebrate her and my sister’s impending graduation. She was sad the entire time. Delilah never even allowed me within breathing distance of her so I could try to fix things. The picture was taken a few hours before we left, in the early morning light. I was about to follow her out, to plead my case, when I saw her sit herself down in the sand. Even from fifty feet away, I could feel her despondence, but it was so beautiful to me. I couldn’t pass up the chance to snap her photo…nor could I muster up the courage to go talk to her.

I’d let that moment pass and I’ve never had another chance, especially with the trouble my sister had found herself in.

A few months before she graduated high school, Delilah hooked up with this entitled, piece of shit asshole, Rick Mason. He was wrong for her from the start, but I couldn’t save my sister from spiraling out of control because I was too caught up in my own world, keeping tabs on Rachel. If I had opened my eyes to what was going on with my sister, she wouldn’t currently be on the run and Rachel would not have followed her to keep her safe and out of trouble.

I let my moment pass, and I’ve never had another chance.

Throughout the years, we have hooked up, but it never went beyond having her beneath me again. The first time we hooked up after the split, was the day she and Delilah relocated to Denver. I had to give Delilah a new identity. After her sadistic prick of a boyfriend, Rick Mason, raped her, she shot him, and had no choice but to go on the run. His parents had pressed charges against her and I’d gotten her out on bail. Based on her history and her drug use, she would have been put away for years, so running was the best way to protect her from the harsh and unforgiving prison system as well as from her ex and his parents who had been out for her blood.

Delilah had been sleeping and I was getting ready to leave. She didn’t want to talk to me, but when I had touched Rachel’s hand to thank her for making this move with Delilah, a wildfire broke out between us, a desire so uncontainable spread that it was impossible not to ravage each other then and there. As she’d dressed, my heart soared. The distance between us was over and I could get my girl back; but she hadn’t been able to even look me in the eye when she told me that it didn’t change anything.

I’d let my moment pass then, too.

I’d kept tabs on her, getting my updates from Delilah. She’d warned me off of Rachel once and for all last year, telling me to stop showing up, fucking her friend and messing with her progress. When Rachel and I weren’t together, it was good – though I was in hell – but together…God, together it was dynamite, a collision of hearts and souls, a bonding of love so strong, so hard to forget, so hard to put out.

Even now I still love her. It takes everything out of me every day not to call her and demand she gives me another chance; but I’m nothing if not patient. I’d tried to make things work before, when I thought she’d had enough time. I’d fought for her, but it just wasn’t the right time. We’d gotten back together, only for the festering, unanswered issues to grow. We spiraled and haven’t been able to get back to the way we were since then. It kills me to be apart from her, but the very thought of her still fills me with hope.

A smile breaks out on my face as I reminisce on all our stolen moments when we were together – the trips to the movies where we kissed more than we watched the film, our many rendezvous in the stairwell, weekends holed up at friends’ apartments while Delilah covered for us, the few hours we’d have before my parents came home or before Rachel had to go home, stolen kisses in passing, holding hands in the rain. Those moments were cherished and I wouldn’t trade them for what others consider perfection; because at that time, those little things were the epitome of perfection for me.

I’ve been unhappy lately and I know it’s because I miss Rachel so much. I’m tired of not having her. My biggest regret was not being more persistent, but our distance ends now. Surely things have changed since we were last together. I’m done giving her space.

My cell phone vibrates like mad on my desk and I almost drop the frame from my hands as it startles me. I gently rest the frame on the desk so it faces me, always a reminder, of what I lost and hoped to regain, and pick up my phone. My heart does a leap when I see Rachel’s name flash across my screen. It’s almost as if she heard my thoughts.

Damn.

I try to calm my raging heart; try to keep the smile off my face at seeing her name, so I don’t get my hopes up as to what this call could mean. Is she calling me to tell me that she misses me, misses us? Truly, Rachel
never
calls me, unless…

Oh God…

“Marshall?”
Rachel says nervously when I answer the call. Her voice makes heat rise to my head, not from the panic lacing it, but just from the sexy lilt in her tone. Fuck me she has the sexiest voice, soft, but raspy.

I snap out of my lust and latch on to what worries me most, the worry, the nervousness, the panic. Something’s wrong.

“Are you okay, Rae?” I ask.

Her voice hitches a bit as she gasps. I still affect her. Good. My cock stretches awake at the fact.

“Yeah, I’m fine,”
she finally answers. Then…

Oh God…

“Is Delilah okay?” I know she’s not. I feel it now.

“No, she’s not,”
Rachel chokes out in response and everything in me dies.
My baby sister…

My heart clatters to the floor, along with the pen I brushed off my desk when the life left my free hand.

Rachel bursts into tears and I feel her fear when she tells me,
“Rick’s got her.”

I want to throw up. I want to pummel somebody. I want my sister. I want…

I want to hold Rachel and promise her things that I’m not even sure I can give to her, like the safety of my sister. I hate myself for thinking of Rachel when my sister was missing and in the clutches of the man who tried to ruin her life. I should have known something was up when a colleague of mine at the D.A.’s office told me the sick fuck came in and dropped the case against her. It was just too easy. He wouldn’t let go of her so easily. I should have been vigilant. I was upset with her for not staying out of the public eye when I had failed in protecting her from Rick on my end. I failed her as a big brother.

“Have you gone to the police about it?” I question, hoping she is smart enough to go to make a report first. Immediately, I bring up Google in the silence that stretches and search for flights out of New York to Philadelphia. I have to get to Rachel. I have to get to my sister.

After a few long seconds, she gathers herself enough to stop crying. My heart breaks for her. My sister is her best friend and if anything happened to her, she will be a wreck. I have to get there.

“Yeah,”
she replies in a soft, scared voice, and I want to rip Rick to shreds for causing my girl fear on top of all the crap.
“We’ve reported it. We’re at the precinct right now, actually. You need to get here as soon as possible.”

“Let me talk to him,”
I hear a man say, taking the phone from her before she even gives the go ahead.

“Hello, this is Ben Hayes. I’m Sullivan’s…boyfriend. We need you here ASAP. How far are you? I’ll send my driver for you.”
This guy.

This must be the hot shot Ben Hayes that has my sister neglecting her safety. He must be something to risk her life like that. I hadn’t seen her be so foolish since Jared Mayhew, the first and only guy she fell in love with since she fled. He’d died in a plane crash a year or so after they’d started dating and I never thought she’d find love again. I guess she might have with the way he’s stepping up and taking charge. I think I could like this guy…

Eventually.

“Mr. Hayes, I don’t live in Philadelphia. I live in New York,” I inform him.

“If you’d like, I can send my company jet for you, but if you prefer commercial, I can purchase your ticket, anything that will make this go faster,”
he offers.

I want to snort at his vain attempt to throw his money in my face. I did my research, I know he’s loaded; but I’m not living in squalor either. I may not have a private jet, or I might not be able to use my company’s private jet – as if they had one – but I always flew first class.

“Mr. Hayes, I will get there my own way, thank you. I’ll be there as soon as possible,” I assure him.

“Thank you,”
he says tightly before continuing,
“Is there a reason Sullivan has a lawyer who lives in New York? Isn’t that inconvenient?”

“This is not a cell phone conversation, Mr. Hayes,” I dismiss, knowing he would be intrigued about this. I imagine that Delilah has kept her secrets from this one so far, especially since he still uses her alias, a name Rachel came up with it.

“Save all your questions for when I arrive,” I tell him. “I will keep in contact with Rachel. You both only need to give the officer all the information you have; and do
not
try to pressure Miss Welles to give you any information.”