by L. D. Davis
I looked down at my pile of Legos. “He was too busy I guess,” I said, sparing him the truth, that Walter hated me even when I tried very hard to get him to love me as a child.
“Okay so don’t be too busy for your kids,” Gavin said with a shrug. “You can give them good memories. This is a good memory, too. Our starships are super! Mom, take a picture!”
Gavin sat beside me and we held our ships on display as his mother froze this memory.
***
Four days after we arrived in Ohio, I had to return back to Philly to handle a zoning problem at the bar site. Marco was in California handling his own business, so I had to go to the site myself. I needed to get back to work soon anyway. Then there was the obvious, the manila envelope sitting on my desk.
I hired a full time nanny to help out while Rose, Lily’s mother, recovered. Whether or not the family decided to keep the nanny after a few months was entirely up to them, but I let them know I will cover the service as long as they needed it. I also made sure that both women had a way to get around until Rose was able to drive again, and I did end up buying Gavin several more containers of Legos and left them with a note that said, “Keep building new memories.”
“You’re the sweetest dick I know,” Lily said, standing on her toes to kiss me.
“That’s what all the girls say,” I said, wriggling my eyebrows.
She punched me and went back to folding my clothes and putting them in my carryon bag. I was leaving, but I felt Lily needed a little more time with her family. She had years to catch up on with Lydia, and I wanted her to feel comfortable leaving her mother so soon after her heart attack, and she was so in love with the kids. I knew it was going to be hard for her to leave them when she finally did.
“So,” she started slowly. “What are you going to do when you get home?”
“After I take care of the zoning shit I’m going to jump on network for a while, see what’s been going on. I’ve never taken such a lengthy vacation before—except when I was in rehab.”
“What else?” she asked as I watched her refold the same shirt twice.
“What are you asking me, Lily?”
She hesitated. She absently shook the shirt out and began to fold it a third time. “What am I going to come home to?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
“You’re selfish,” Lily said. Her voice was still soft, but her tone was dripping with anger and pain. “You are so damn selfish. You just couldn’t leave me alone.” She looked at me, her gray eyes hard and cold. “I would have been fine without you. Anything I felt for you back then was tolerable. I would have been okay! Even though you were still hung up on Emmy, you had to have me and you didn’t care about the consequences.”
I was stunned to hear such similar words from Lily as I heard from Emmy almost a year ago.
“You don’t give two shits about the aftermath when you get what you want.”
“Don’t look so surprised,” Lily snorted. She tossed the shirt she was holding into the bag and moved away from me. “You got what you wanted,” she shrugged. “Now you can be on your way.”
“Lily,” I moved towards her, desperate to ease the aching in my chest, but she backed away towards the door with her hands up in a defensive gesture.
“Don’t,” she said harshly. “I know you want me. I know you love me, but you don’t need me. You still need Emmy. That’s why you cried last night,” She touched her neck with remembrance. “Because as strongly as you feel for me, you don’t need me. I’m not enough. I just wish I didn’t need you, too.”
Before I could make my feet move across the room, Lily was out the door. I raced out after her, but she was already halfway down the hallway, running full speed to put some distance between us. I started to run after her, but a whole damn family exited a room in front of me, and as if coordinated, the family across the hall came out, too. They stood in the middle of the hallway chattering, blocking me from Lily. By the time I got through the cluster fuck, Lily was gone and I wasn’t sure if she had taken the stairs or the elevator. I ran into the stairwell and could hear faint footsteps racing down the stairs.
“Lily!” I called after her as I raced down the stairs. “Stop!”
By the time I reached the first floor, she was nowhere in sight. I ran outside, almost crashing into a small crowd of people waiting to board a shuttle bus for some tour. I scanned the parking lot for the rental car I got for her the night before, but it was still there. I turned in a circle.
Where the hell did she go?
I thought maybe she was still inside, hiding out somewhere, but then as the shuttle started to pull away, I saw her. She was in the very back seat, watching me through the dingy window.
“Lily!” I screamed, but the shuttle pulled out into traffic and she was gone.
***
I missed my first flight out, trying to track Lily down. Lydia and Rose had not heard from her and I believed them. I stayed at the hotel past check-out, waiting for her to return for the car, but by mid-afternoon, she still hadn’t returned. I called her, texted her, emailed her and called some more, but my calls always went straight to voicemail and everything else went unanswered as well.
Her words ripped me apart inside. I would have been extra insecure if I thought that Lily didn’t need me. Was that how I made her feel? Insecure? Had she felt like she was in Emmy’s shadow the entire time? I couldn’t even imagine how that must have felt. The entire time we were together I was hurting her and too damn stupid to see it.
By the time I was on the next flight to Philly, I knew what I had to do. I had to burn the damn pictures of Emmy without looking at them. Lily was right, I hadn’t let Em go. I still loved her and my heart still ached when I thought of her, but it was Lily and our baby that I wanted—that I needed and I had to prove that. I was such a fucking idiot. Lily was the best thing that ever happened to me, accepting me as I was from the very beginning, from that first night I went into SHOTZ looking for Emmy. I couldn’t imagine my life without her, and the truth was that she kept me in line, kept me from burying myself in drugs, grief, and self-hate.
I had Corsey and Harry drop off my own car at the airport. I raced across the bridge to take care of the issues on the construction site. It took up more time than I would have liked. I wanted to find Lily and do what I needed to do to get her back, but the bar was for her. It was the only reason I remained patient, but as soon as it was over, I took off at speeds higher than legally allowed to get back to the penthouse. As soon as I got inside, I took my phone out of my pocket to call Lily again, but it was dead.
“Fuck,” I muttered, dropping my bag by the door. I went down the hall to my office so I could plug my phone in and maybe jump online to see what was happening at work.
The manila envelope was on the center of my desk, seemingly the biggest thing in the room. I tried my best to ignore it, setting my laptop on top of it as I fired it up and plugged in my phone. I jumped on the Sterling network and started sifting through my emails, a job I would have assigned to Lily. It was tedious and time consuming, something I never had time for, but Lily was MIA and even if she wasn’t, I wouldn’t have taken any time away from her family to make her work.
I threw myself into the task, responding to emails that needed responding to, flagging others that needed more attention at a later time, and deleting junk. A couple of private instant messages popped up from people in the office. No one sent me messages to ask me how my vacation was or to chit chat—I wasn’t that kind of guy at work, but there were things that needed my immediate attention. I talked to Brian, my newest employee who works directly under me, for a long time about some important matters. I got a new email from Warrick and sighed loudly when I read it. Traveling is part of my job, but now they wanted me to go help build my same department in the U.K. headquarters. I knew from experience that it wasn’t a request, but a command.
I couldn’t go to the U.K. until Lily and I we
re where we needed to be. I needed her with me, at least figuratively if not physically across the pond with me. I picked up my phone to call her again and saw that I had a message from her. I scrambled to unlock the phone so I could listen to it.
“Kyle, listen closely,” she said, her voice strong and confident. “I’m not doing this. I can’t do this. I love you, but you’ve already made your decision. I am scared stupid about losing another baby and I just want to focus on taking care of myself during this pregnancy. I can’t have all of this angst and stress, and…” she paused and took a deep breath. “And maybe I don’t want to worry about when you’re going to take another hit of meth—during or after the pregnancy. I’m not enough to anchor you, clearly, or we wouldn’t even be in this situation. I don’t know when I will get my things out of the penthouse. I guess…I guess I don’t need any of it.” She paused again. I could hear cars in the background, as if she were walking down a city street. “I guess I’ll work on not needing you, too. Please stop calling. Just…just leave me alone.”
The message ended. I listened to it twice more, trying to calm my rippling emotions.
“Fuck that,” I growled as I returned her call. I fully expected it to go to voicemail, but to my surprise she answered.
“What?” she snapped. “I told you not to call me.”
“You’re just going to leave?” I yelled into the phone, surprising even myself by my burst of anger. “You’re going to try to keep the baby away from me?”
“What? No. I didn’t say that.”
“It damn well sounded that way, Lily,” I shouted. “That’s my baby and you won’t keep it away from me, Lily!”
“I’m not!” she yelled back. “You ass, I still have to come back to work eventually!”
I closed my eyes, squeezed the bridge of my nose. I needed a hit so badly, the urge swarmed over me suddenly.
“You’ll be back in the area then,” I said, trying to control my anger.
“Yes, I’ll be back in the damn area, and I’ll be back at work soon, too. I just need a little time to get my head straight.”
“When?”
“I don’t know when,” she sighed wearily.
“I have to go to London very soon and for a long time. I need to see you again before I go.”
There was a moment of silence from her end. “Okay,” she finally said in a quiet voice. “I have a doctor’s appointment Friday morning. You can meet me there. At least maybe there you won’t cause a scene.”
“Lily,” I said, my emotions swinging from anger to despondency. “Please don’t do this. I love you and you are more to me than you know, and I’m so sorry I haven’t—”
“No,” she said with strong, painful emotion. “Don’t say this shit now because I’m gone. Don’t do it. You don’t mean it, you’re just upset. I’ll text you the details for the appointment. I’m hanging up. Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Just leave me alone. And don’t you dare stalk me. If I find out you have anyone following me around, you’ll lose your chance to be in your baby’s life.”
With that, she ended the call. I stared at the phone for a long minute in disbelief.
“Fuck!” I yelled and hurled the phone across the room. It smashed against a bookcase and fell to the floor in pieces.
I slammed the laptop close and tossed it to the side. The manila envelope sat there, equally enticing to me as a few hits of meth or cocaine. I didn’t have any drugs in my possession, but I had the envelope and its contents.
I was going to burn the whole thing without looking, but that was when I thought I could get Lily back. It was possible I could still win her back, but most likely not with the way I just behaved on the phone with her. Chances were high that she would resist me at every turn and I’d never have her again. I took Emmy back over and over before I beat the shit out of her, but Lily’s resolve was higher. She didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do. If she folded for me, it was because she chose to, not because I made her.
I picked up the envelope and weighed it in my hands. My fingers itched to tear it open. My heart pounded with anxiety. I carefully released the golden clasp on the back. With a deep breath I shook the envelope, releasing proof of my fury onto my desk. I picked up the pictures with shaky hands. It only took three out of forty photos to make me come undone.
Chapter Seventeen
Lily
Vomiting sucks. I had puked my face off into my barf bag when I got a whiff of someone’s Greek yogurt on the flight back to Philly. I apologized to the flight attendants and those around me profusely.
My stomach was still feeling queasy as I caught a cab from the airport to the OB’s office in Center City. I checked my phone again on the way to see if Kyle had answered my text. I texted him twice, telling him the name and address of the doctor and he never responded. I was tempted to call the office, but I wasn’t ready to hear his voice. It took a pep talk from Lydia for me to even get on the plane to meet him for the appointment.
Well, you told him not to call or text, I told myself as I handed the cabby money for the fare. I definitely fully expected to see him inside when I arrived, but even after I checked in and filled out paperwork, there was no Kyle. I texted him once more to let him know I was going into the back, but I got nothing.
I went through the appointment, expecting Kyle to show up apologizing for being late, but he never came. By the time I left the doctor’s office, I was anxious and worried. What if he gave up altogether? What if he wanted nothing to do with the baby? It was so difficult to tell him the things I told him on the phone, but I knew I had to do it. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be without him forever, but I needed that space. What if I pushed him away forever? The thought made me queasy again.
After a few minutes of indecision, I caught another cab to the penthouse. I was actually surprised that he had not sent Corsey to pick me up from the airport, but then again I had warned him about having someone follow me and I definitely would have assumed just that if I saw Corsey waiting for me.
“Miss Whitman,” the concierge nodded to me as I walked to the elevator a little while later.
I acknowledged him with a nod, but I didn’t trust myself to speak. It seemed like the elevator ride to the top floor took twice as long as usual. When it finally stopped, I bolted out before the doors could even open halfway. I used my key to let myself in and immediately knew something was wrong. The house was a mess. I don’t mean dirty dishes and empty pizza boxes. I mean it looked as if King Kong had walked through, destroying everything in his path. The furniture in the living room was askew, the couch was turned at a funny angle, and the coffee table was across the room, upside down and broken. The other little pieces of furniture in the living room were broken or way out of place. The glass dining room table was shattered and the chairs were everywhere.
Afraid to call out Kyle’s name, as quietly as I could I made my way down the hallway to his office. The first thing I noticed was his phone, shattered on the floor by the bookcase, which explained why he wasn’t answering me. His work laptop was in pieces on the floor by the desk—everything that was once on the desk was on the floor in various parts of the room. The window behind Kyle’s chair was broken and anything breakable was definitely broken. What stood out the most though were the pictures on the floor. I picked up the one closest to me and choked to keep down the bile that had risen from my gut. Emmy’s back was bright red all over, the beginning stages of bruising. There was an actual partial shoe print on her back. I picked up another photo and this one showed her face—another shoe print there. He had kicked her in her face, I just couldn’t fathom it. I picked up more photos, each one seemingly worse than the one before. The one that made me stop looking for more to look at was the one of Emmy’s pregnant belly, bright red in spots from getting hit or kicked.
I lost whatever was left in my stomach then, right there on the littered carpet. After dry heaving for five minutes after that, with the pictures gripped in my hand, I stumbled out of
the office and back down the hall. Judging by the way the house looked Kyle had been on a rampage after seeing what he did to Emmy. The question in my mind was whether or not he was grounded when he did it.
I should have just left and called Corsey on my way out, but needing to know if Kyle was okay outweighed my need to leave. I put the pictures in my bag and jogged up the stairs. I paused in front of my bedroom door. My belongings were strewn across the room. Anything that wasn’t too heavy was broken, smashed against a wall. I moved onto Kyle’s room and found the same type of disarray. It became obvious that he wasn’t home, but I was no less worried. What if he was out buying drugs? What if he hurt himself?
I jogged down the stairs and was almost to the foyer when the front door opened, stopping me in my tracks. Kyle stopped for only a moment to stare at me before continuing through the door. He went to throw his keys on the table that was usually by the door, but that table was lying on its side on the floor. Pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand, he slipped the keys into his pocket. He looked terribly reminiscent of how he looked that night he came into SHOTZ. He hadn’t shaved, his eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, and his hair looked like he had been running his hand through it an awful lot.
“I’m sorry I missed the appointment,” he said. I could hear how weary and tired he was in his voice.
“It’s okay. Nothing important happened. You look like shit.”
His hand went through his hair as he sighed. “Yeah.”
He walked past me and started up the stairs. Unsure of what the hell just happened, I followed him. He went into his room, stopped a few steps in, and looked around as if he was searching for something. When he moved again, he went to his suitcase, which still had clothes from Tahiti in it. He picked it up, dumped out the rest of the clothes, and put the empty suitcase on the bed.