His Betrayal Her Lies (22 page)

Taylor ran into the house and grabbed her
purse.
How did he find out?

“Mom, Dad, I have to go. I’ll call you
later.” She ran to the car and sped off the property. Her
attentions had been to tell Kalon everything today but someone beat
her to it.
Was it Ari? No, there’s no way he could have known
about Kalon.

Then, the worst thought of all came to her.
If he knew about her family then he might know about Ari.
Oh my God, please don’t let him know.

As she hoped onto I-294, she kept saying over
and over again, “
I can’t lose him now. I’m in love with
him.”

* * *

Ari was fed up with Maci’s games and lies. He
had no clue what sex tape Taylor was talking about. As far as he
knew, Maci hadn’t ever recorded them having sex. Taylor was talking
about a divorce. That was the last thing he wanted to hear.

Maci was a fling, not wife material. She had
been skating on thin ice ever since that day she jumped Taylor in
the parking lot. Today there was absolutely nothing she could say
to defend herself.

Ari parked outside Maci’s condo and rushed up
the steps. He banged on the door a few times and she opened it with
a red robe draped around her shoulders. Before he could stop
himself, Ari grabbed her around the neck. He forced his way into
the house, backing Maci up until her heels hit the kitchen counter.
She clawed at his hands and gasped between breaths.

“Let me go, Ari, I can’t breathe.”

His eyes darkened at the same time he
tightened his grip around her throat. “That’s the point,” he said
in an unfamiliar voice.

Maci scratched his face and he moved back,
still choking her. Her eyeballs started to roll to the back of her
head.

Just then, Ari felt a blow to the back of his
head and he hit the floor. Maci fell right beside him. Ari tried to
move, but someone’s knee was in his back. That person was shouting
to someone else in the room, “Check the girl.”

A tall man bent down next to Maci’s limp
body, and Ari saw him place two fingers on the side of her throat.
The man looked up at the stranger pinning Ari down on the floor.
“She doesn’t have a pulse.”

* * *

Kalon stared into the lying face of the woman
he had given his heart to. He wondered if this was how most of his
women felt when he didn’t call anymore or didn’t take their
feelings seriously.

Is this karma coming back on me?
He
believed in the saying, “What goes around, comes around.” If this
was what he deserved, could he even be mad that Taylor had lied to
him?

“Why are you here, Taylor?” Kalon noticed the
waterworks flowing from her eyes. She looked vulnerable and weak.
All he wanted to do was hold her and kiss away her tears, but he
couldn’t.

Taylor walked slowly across the steel floors.
“I came to tell you the truth.”

Running a hand through his Mohawk, Kalon
sighed. “I already know you’re married. Is that the truth you came
to tell?”

She paused a few steps away from him. “Yes,
but that’s not all. I need to tell you what led me here.”

Kalon massaged the back of his neck. He felt
himself becoming tense. There was nothing she could say to make him
understand why she would get involved with someone knowing that she
was emotionally and physically unavailable. But the love he had for
her allowed him to hear her out. “Okay, what do you have to
say?”

Taylor took off her coat and folded her arms
in her lap. “My husband fathered a child by another woman and I
still married him for my father’s sake and because I was too
embarrassed to tell my family that he cheated on me. I thought if I
didn’t acknowledge it, then it wouldn’t be true.” Taylor took a
Kleenex off the coffee table and dabbed her eyes.

Kalon stood with his arms folded across his
chest and listened.

Taylor continued. “The first time I saw you,
I was immediately attracted to you but I knew I couldn’t act on it.
This woman started to stalk me and I started to resent my husband.
You were being persistent and I felt like if he cheated on me, I’d
do it to him.”

“So you used me to get back at your
husband?”

“At first yes but then everything started to
change.”

Kalon uncrossed his arms and sat next to
Taylor on the couch. “This is when you tell me you fell for me
right?”

She nodded.

“His betrayal to you, led to your lies to me.
Wow.”

“But if I’m going to be completely honest, I
love you both. I know what he did to me was hurtful and I probably
won’t ever be able to get over it but he was my first love. If you
give me the chance, though, I want to make this work.”

Kalon rubbed his hand around his goatee. He
was mad as hell that he got played, and now she wanted to make
things work? “Taylor, I can’t trust you. Opening up my heart to you
was a big step for me. I’ve never opened up myself to anyone and
just when I decided too I got burned. I think you should go home to
your husband.”

Taylor desperately caressed the creases in
her forehead. “In all my years, Kalon, I’ve never had to fight for
anything. But I will fight for this relationship. You changed for
me. Now I want to be the woman you deserve. Leaving is not an
option for me, Kalon. I’ve fallen in love with you.”

Kalon shook his head. He walked over to the
steel door and slid it back. “You need to leave, Taylor. There’s
nothing more for us to talk about.” A swoop wave with his hands
told Taylor he wanted her to exit.

“But, Kalon, you’re everything that I want
and need. I know that now. Please, let’s—“

He pointed to the elevator.

Taylor picked her clutch purse up off the
couch and ran past Kalon, crying hysterically.

He slammed the door behind her, determined
not to let her see him cry. The loft was eerily quiet. There was no
one present except a man and his pain. But he couldn’t shut off
what he felt for her. His heart went out to her. He knew she was
devastated, and the thought of her driving in that condition didn’t
sit well with him. He ran after her but by the time he reached the
lobby, she had already made it onto the busy downtown streets. He
burst through the door and onto the sidewalk, eyes scanning up and
down the street for her silhouette. He spotted her.

“Taylor, wait.”

She looked back and ran faster to her
car.

Kalon ran out into the streets, trying to
make her stop the car. Her silver BMW sped past him, then he heard
screeching tires trying to come to a stop.

Everything began to unfold in slow motion.
Taylor’s BMW was colliding with a yellow mustang. His heart stopped
beating for what seemed like an eternity. His legs couldn’t carry
him fast enough to the scene. He opened her car door and there she
lay in her seat, head against the steering wheel. Her face was
covered in blood. He was in shock—couldn’t think, speak, or
move.

Someone pushed him to
the side. When the paramedics arrived, they pulled her from the
car. All he could think at that moment was
please God don’t take
the only woman I ever loved from me.

Chapter 18

Kalon stood motionless, glancing around as
people pulled over to the curb, talking on their cell phones. A
small group of onlookers helped a visibly shaken but coherent
driver out the yellow mustang. Paramedics rushed in to give the
younger woman who collided with Taylor BMW medical attention.

Everything seemed surreal to Kalon until a
second set of paramedics placed an oxygen mask on Taylor’s face,
lifted her onto the gurney and slid her motionless body into the
back of their ambulance. Kalon snapped out of his mini trance and
grasped one of the paramedics by the arm. “Wait,” he said in a
distressed tone. “I’m coming with her.”

The young paramedic asked, “Who are you to
this woman?”

Kalon massaged the back of his neck in an
effort to relieve the stress he felt building. He had to think fast
if he was going to convince them to let him ride with Taylor in the
ambulance. “I’m her husband,” he blurted.

The young man nodded his head and stepped
aside for Kalon to hop into the ambulance.

The space inside the vehicle was crowded. It
looked like a rolling ER. While one paramedic reached here and
there, pulling bandages, syringes, and vials of medicine out of the
built-in metal shelving, the other expertly inserted an I.V. into
Taylor’s slender hand. Kalon sat on the side of Taylor’s gurney and
held her free hand as she dozed in and out of consciousness. He
gently squeezed her hand to comfort her as a few tears escaped from
her eyelids. He even had to wipe away a few stray tears of his own.
He hoped to soothe her with his words.

“You are going to be okay, baby. Just hold
on. Don’t give up, okay? Keep listening to the sound of my
voice.”

He felt Taylor give his hand a faint squeeze
and she smiled up at him. Kalon ran his hands through her soft
curls and gave her a tender kiss on the lips.

Taylor eye’s closed once more and Kalon
panicked. He turned towards the paramedic. “She went under again.
Oh God, don’t let her slip away.”

The paramedic pulled a miniature flashlight
from somewhere. Holding one of Taylor’s eyelids open, he flicked
the beam past her pupils several times. “Keep talking to her, sir,”
he instructed Kalon. “She has a concussion and I need you to try to
keep her awake.”

Kalon rocked back and forth on the little
bench he was perched on and told Taylor how much he loved her, how
he never was going to let her go again, and that he didn’t care
about the lies she told him or the truth about herself she kept
from him.

When the ambulance came to a sudden halt and
the sirens stopped blaring, Kalon knew they had reached the
hospital. Inside, Taylor was rolled down a long narrow hallway.
Kalon held on to her hand as he ran alongside the gurney. A doctor
was trotting behind them, shouting out orders to the nurses.
Reaching the double doors at the end of the hall, a nurse with blue
scrubs on placed her hand on Kalon’s arm. “Sir, you are going to
have to stay out here.” She ushered him over to a secluded area to
the left of the emergency room. Kalon ran back up to Taylor’s
gurney before she was pushed through the double doors. He stroked
the side of her face once and she opened her eyes. “I love you,” he
spoke urgently. He stole a kiss as she was whisked away.

Kalon slowly walked back to the waiting area
and flopped down in a steel chair. Images of Taylor conjured up in
his mind. The way she placed her hand on her stomach when she
laughed, the dimples in her cheek that appeared every time she
started to get sassy with him. He daydreamed about how angelic she
looked when she was sleeping with her reddish hair sprawled across
the pillow. Kalon spoke out loud to an empty room, “Yeah, baby,
you’re going to be alright.”

***

Kalon jumped up the moment he saw the nurse
walk out the double doors that said Restricted Access. He ran out
the waiting area and caught up to her. “Excuse me, Ma’am, but how
is my girl?” He quickly rephrased his question. “I mean how is my
wife?”

The nurse kept walking swiftly. “The doctor
will be out to speak with you shortly, sir.”

Kalon couldn’t wait on a doctor, so he
stepped in front of the woman. “I just need to know is she
okay?”

The nurse placed her hands on her hips and
looked behind her, as if contemplating whether to disclose Taylor’s
status. She hesitated for a brief moment and spoke in a whisper.
“She is going to make it, sir.”

Right then and there, Kalon knew that
somehow, some way, Taylor was going to become his wife. He turned
around, walked back to the waiting area and waited patiently for
the doctor.

The saga continues to play out in
Kept Secrets
. Here is a sneak peek:

Kept Secrets

by

Angel de’Amor

The vision seemed so vivid and real. Maci’s
eyes rolled to the back of her head and she clawed and hissed to be
released. Little spit bubbles formed on the side of her mouth as
her neck jerked back and forth but Ari’s hands held on like a vice
grip—until he realized he was committing a crime.

He was standing outside of himself, watching
as someone who looks like him carried out this terrible act.

Ari awoke in a dark room with a massive
headache. As he tried to sit up, he fell back onto the pillow
resting underneath his head. The room didn’t seem familiar at
first. He rubbed his eyes to regain his vision. The black dresser
with chrome handles and the sixty-two inch television mounted on
the wall were part of the bedroom furnishings he had given Taylor
last year for her birthday.

I’m at home. How did I get here?

Massaging his temples, he rolled over onto
the side of the bed and sat up slowly. He thought for sure that he
would wake up in prison for murder, or at least be in an
interrogation room surrounded by police officers and detectives
asking him what his motive was for killing Maci.
Maci
?

“Where is Maci?” he asked out loud to the
empty room. The last thing he could remember was being knocked
upside the head. So many questions started to formulate in his
mind, and he had no answers. Pulling his iPhone out his side
pocket, he scrolled through his directory, clicking on the only
person who could help him. He blew out an aggravated breath. “Hey,
Jay. I’m in some deep shit and I need your help now.”

* * *

“Dr. Jones, you are needed in labor and
delivery,” someone announced on the intercom over Kalon’s head as
he sat in a small secluded room located on the east wing of
Northwestern Hospital.