by L. D. Davis
“How bad was it?” I asked her.
She hesitated. “You talked to my mom about how I looked…”
“I want to hear it from you, Emmy,” I said rigidly.
She shifted beside me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her fidgeting with her engagement ring.
“You told your cousins and Donya,” I said, losing my patience. “You told your mother. Tell me. We’re getting married. We’re having another baby. Tell me.”
“I don’t want those images seared into your brain,” she said. “I don’t want you to look at me and see me on that day.”
I pressed my fists on my knees as I looked at her. I was barely able to control my sharp tone. “You have those images seared into your brain, Emmy. You have nightmares,” I confessed. “You have nightmares often and they’re bad. If you can’t forget that day, I can’t either. Tell. Me. Now.”
She took another deep breath and clasped her hands together.
“I was slapped,” she said, trying to sound very matter-of-fact, but there was a slight tremor in her voice. “Slapped to the floor. I was dragged to my feet by my hair and my head was smashed into the mirror of an antique vanity. When I ended up back on the floor, I curled into a ball to protect my unborn child as I got kicked, stomped, punched, and shoved. I didn’t fight back, because fighting back would have been as well as signing a death warrant. I did, however, scream and beg for him to stop, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me, he couldn’t comprehend what I was saying because Kyle was gone. There was only this monster in Kyle’s body. I got away by locking myself in the bathroom. Is that enough details for you, Luke?” she asked, breathless.
I swallowed back a roar of distress and spoke with gritted teeth. “Was Lucas hurt?”
“No,” she breathed. “The doctor said he was uninjured.”
“Obviously you didn’t call the police,” I spat out. “But why didn’t any of the hospital staff? What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t go to a hospital,” she said quietly. “Walter sent me to some under the radar doctor.”
“You didn’t even go see a real doctor?” I growled.
“As far as I know he was a real doctor,” Emmy said, getting to her feet. She stood just out of my reach. “Are you satisfied now that you have all of the gritty, bloody details, Luke?”
I wanted to break something. I wanted to put my hand through a wall. I wanted break Kyle Sterling and put him through a wall. I wanted to yell, and I wanted to fucking cry.
I moved off of the bed and reached for Emmy. I pulled her close, wrapped my arms around her waist, and pressed my forehead to her belly.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” I whispered to her. “I should have been there for you. This would have never happened if I hadn’t left you.”
“You had to leave,” she said as her fingers began to sift through my hair. “I didn’t deserve you and you didn’t deserve what you got.”
I looked up at her and said, “I came back for you.”
Her fingers in my hair faltered for a moment as she looked down at me in confusion.
“What do you mean you came back for me?”
“I came back for you, Emmy,” I repeated.
“When?” she whispered.
“It was a Friday…about a month after I left. I was going to take you back and I was going to do something I should have done long before and kick Kyle’s ass. I looked for you at the office first, but when I found out you and Kyle were both gone on different errands, I drove to his place.”
Her fingers stilled. “How did you know where Kyle lived?”
“When you’re pretty sure your girl is fucking her boss, you make it a priority to know where he lives,” I said bitterly.
I felt her inhale deeply, but she didn’t say anything, and I didn’t expect her to.
“When I didn’t find either of you at Kyle’s, I drove to your house,” I continued. “If you weren’t home, I was going to get the hidden spare key and wait. I was about to get out of my car when I saw him pull into the driveway. Before I could really decide what to do, you came outside, carrying luggage.”
I felt Emmy stiffen in my embrace. She was completely still.
“The day we went to Miami,” she said flatly.
“Apparently so,” I said just as flatly. “I watched him kiss you…”
“And then I rested my head on his chest,” she whispered, letting her hands drop to her sides.
“I couldn’t make myself get out of the car after I saw that,” I said softly, but then my tone hardened. “But if I had, Kyle wouldn’t have broken your wrist. If I had gotten out of the car, chances are Kyle wouldn’t have beaten you while you were pregnant with my son.”
We were quiet again, staring at one another. I couldn’t figure out what she was thinking and that bothered me immensely.
“Would you have left him and come back to me if I got out of the car that day, Emmy?” I asked after some hesitation. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know the answer.
She hesitated before answering. “I think no matter what answer I give you, it will only hurt you,” she finally said.
I closed my eyes for a beat. Did I really want to know?
“Tell me,” I said once again as I opened my eyes and looked up at her.
She sighed, and rested her hands on my shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said gently. “And that’s the best answer I can give you. I don’t know.”
That wasn’t even one of the two answers I was expecting, but she was right. It did hurt. She could have broken my heart all over again, or she could have appeased my heart, but then how would I have felt weeks later? Months later? Would I have trusted her or would I have been too bitter to even make a relationship work?
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Emmy sighed. “Please.”
“Okay,” I answered. “But if I ever see Kyle Sterling again…”
The threat—no, the promise—went unsaid, but very little imagination was necessary for her to understand what I was implying. It went without saying that if I saw the man again I would try my best to kill him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
After intense house hunting, Emmy and I found a house to buy. It was bigger than either of my sisters’ homes, which meant we would be hosting a lot of family dinners out of our large dining room, eat-in kitchen, and nook. Though there were only three and a quarter of us, we gladly took the five bedrooms the house offered. We never discussed how many children we wanted to have, but at least we had room to grow, because neither of us wanted to have to ever move again. It took a few weeks for us to get settled in. We had an amazing amount of stuff to move out of our small apartment, and we had to shop and wait for quite a bit of furniture to make our home comfortable.
Our wedding day was scheduled for four months after my proposal. We only invited about a hundred people (our families made up more than half of that amount), choosing to keep it quaint. Emmy didn’t care for larger weddings. I didn’t care how it happened, as long as it happened. Several times I insisted on eloping, but Emmy was adamant.
“I am putting on a gorgeous white dress and walking down the aisle with my family and closest friends gazing adoringly at me!” she had snapped at me the last time I made the suggestion. “Too many of my childhood dreams have been destroyed. This princess—and I will be a princess—is marrying her prince the proper way!”
I didn’t argue with her. I didn’t tell her that there was nothing proper about a five month pregnant ‘princess’ getting married in a white dress of all things. Her hormones were making her a little batty. I stayed out of the firing zone as much as possible.
Early December. Life was good. I had won over the love of my life and she was going to marry me in two short months. We had an increasingly rambunctious son and another baby on the way. We had a beautiful, comfortable home that we warmly shared with family and friends. My business was flourishing and all of our demons of the past seemed to have been expelled.
The thing about one’s past, however, is that it doesn’t always stay in the past. This is a lesson I would learn repeatedly over the next year of my life.
I was having a remarkable day. I had awoken with my morning wood in Emmy’s beautiful mouth. While I was in the shower recovering from an incredible blowjob, my lovely bride-to-be made me a high-energy breakfast with oatmeal, eggs, and fruit. My son was behaving, happy at the window watching the snow fall. Despite the weather, traffic wasn’t too bad and I actually got to work early. I stopped in the new combination book and muffin shop next to the office and got two dozen muffins for the employees, and Iris, the shop’s owner, had thrown in a few extra for free. By noon I had a nice settlement offer on my desk for a case that was due in court the following week, and the business lunch I had went perfectly. I was ready to start singing Disney songs, because life was that great.
The phone on my desk beeped from the front desk.
“Yes?” I said pleasantly to Kacey.
“Mr. Disgustingly Optimistic, you have a phone call on line two,” she said dryly.
I didn’t take offense. Kacey always spoke dryly, even when she was happy.
“Who is it?” I asked, though I really didn’t care. There weren’t too many people I avoided talking to, except maybe Vivian. But I only did that because it got her all rankled.
“Kyle Sterling.”
There went my spectacular day. Just like that. Two damn words. One damn name. Gone was my high from my morning blowjob, breakfast, well behaved kid, easy traffic, tasty muffins, generous settlement and successful business meeting. I couldn’t imagine why Kyle Sterling would be calling me. I hoped he was calling to tell me he was dying horrifically, but I knew there was no real chance in that.
“I’ll take it,” I said after a long hesitation.
“You don’t sound too sure about that,” Kacey said in her dry tone.
“I’m not,” I admitted. “I’ll take it anyway.”
“Whatever.”
Kacey disconnected and I sat there with the phone in my hand looking at the blinking light of line two. What the hell did Kyle want?
Shamefully, for a moment, I imagined he was calling to tell me that he and Emmy reconnected and she was taking my son and going back to him. The thought only lasted a millisecond before I blasted it out of my head.
There was only one way to find out what the bastard wanted.
I pressed the button next to the blinking light.
“This is Luke.”
***
The paperwork could have been done remotely. He knew that as well as I did, but he agreed to come to Chicago anyway. I was automatically suspicious about his easy willingness to come. I thought maybe there was an ulterior motive, like he was going to try to see Emmy. I even had another moment of distrust for my fiancé, believing in the possibility that she knew he was coming, that they were talking behind my back. But the moment passed, and I felt guilty for even thinking it.
“Can I ask you for an enormous favor?” I asked Iris the day before the meeting.
I didn’t know her well enough for her to do any favors for me, but I felt it was worth a shot to ask her. She was pleasant enough, but very straight forward. I wouldn’t have to bullshit with her.
“An enormous favor?” she questioned, with a raised eyebrow. “What kind of enormous favor can a muffin lady possibly do for an attorney?”
I laughed, despite the impending doom I was feeling. “You are much more than a muffin lady,” I said.
She had been wiping down the glass counter, but when I said that, she stopped, put a hand on her hip and said, “Oh, my. I have to hear this one.”
“You are a generous muffin lady,” I said, turning on my blue-eyed charm. “A pleasant muffin lady who is also a very accomplished pastry lady. Your buns make my toes curl.” I leaned forward slightly. “They are the flakiest, tastiest, cinnamon buns in town.”
She narrowed her eyes at me and just stood there for a moment before breaking out into a smile. “What do you want, Mr. Kessler?”
“I have a meeting with a client tomorrow morning,” I spoke quietly. “I need a private place to meet him. I know the last tenant had a decent size office space in the back. I was wondering if I could meet him here and use that office.”
“What is wrong with your office?” she didn’t hesitate to ask.
I was going to have to give her a little more information in order to convince her.
“Okay, listen,” I said, sounding defeated. “This guy is very private. He’s not comfortable meeting in my office, and he can’t come after hours when everyone is gone because he has to fly back home immediately after our meeting. If you can’t or don’t want to do it, I understand, Iris. I can meet him somewhere else, but I thought this would be a good location.”
She stared at me for a long moment. “You’re not having some kind of homosexual affair are you?”
“Umm, no,” I said, a little thrown by the question. “And if I were, I’d meet the man in question at a hotel, not in the back of a muffin book shop.”
“You’re not some underground drug lord, right? You don’t want to use my muffin book shop to smuggle cocaine do you?”
“Do I look like a drug lord?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you? I’m not sure what a drug lord looks like. Do they look like you?”
“I hope not,” I replied. “I promise I am not dealing drugs.”
“You’re not going to bully a juror back there, are you?”
Where the hell was she coming up with all of this stuff?
Amused, I shook my head. “I am not bullying a juror.”
“Will there be any illegal activity going on back there?” she asked.
I hesitated and then answered her honestly. “The man makes my blood boil. I can’t promise that I won’t fuck him up while we are back there.”
She gave a shrug. “Why didn’t you just say so from the beginning? Yes, you can use the room. Just don’t get blood on anything.”
“You’re my new best friend,” I said with relief.
“I’m honored,” she laughed. “Take your fiancé’s muffin and get out of here.”
Late the following morning, I walked into Iris’s muffin book shop and found Kyle standing at the counter talking casually with her. When she saw me, she was suddenly interested in talking to one of the regulars on the other side of the room and left us standing at the counter. It took every bit of self-restraint I had to not slam his face into the glass display case. I hated this man more than I could have ever hated anything anywhere, ever.
“Follow me,” I grunted to him and walked back to Iris’s office.
I waited until I heard the door close behind us before I threw the envelope I was carrying onto Iris’s desk and turned around, surprising him with a right hook that sent him stumbling back several feet. He looked at me as he put a hand to his lip. His eyes flickered down to the blood on the back of his hand and the motherfucker snickered.
“Is that it?” he asked.
I punched him in the gut so hard that he slammed against the door. I grabbed him by his coat, and slammed him into the wall hard enough to make his head roll back and hit it with a sickening thud.
“Fight back!” I yelled and swung him back against the door. “Fight back, you fucking piece of shit!” I slammed him up against the door again and again, but he didn’t fight back. With a roar of anger, I lifted my fist, ready to knock him into the next decade, and he didn’t even flinch.
“Don’t pussy out now, Luke,” Kyle growled. “Hit me. What are you waiting for? An invitation? I invite you to hit me!”
“Fight back,” I said again, breathless.
His next words should have signed his death warrant. He spoke slowly and clearly.
“She. Didn’t. Fight. Back.”
I roared again and threw him up against the wall again. I wanted to beat the shit out of him, but unlike him, I refused to beat on someone who wasn’t going to f
ight me back. I refused to be like him. It didn’t matter that Emmy had been a woman—a pregnant woman—and that he was a man—the very man that had beaten that pregnant woman. If Kyle had come here with the hopes that I would punish him for his fucked up deeds, he was going to be disappointed. If he believed that by getting the piss beat out of him that he was going to somehow be redeemed, I wasn’t going to be the one to give him that redemption. Maybe he was fucking sorry and maybe he wanted me to beat him, but I was sure that if guilt was eating him alive, the guilt would do far more damage than anything I could do. I wanted him to live with that every second of his life and never feel like he had somehow made up for what he had done to Emmy.
I dropped my hands and turned my back on him.
“Go ahead and fucking hit me!” he yelled.
“Fuck you,” I said over my shoulder as I picked up the envelope. I threw it to him. “You can fax it to my office when you’re done.”
He looked extremely disappointed and then he just looked disgusted with me for not doing what he thought I should. I didn’t give a shit.
“Get the fuck out of my city,” I said, opening the door. “And stay the hell away from my fiancé.”
My words hit him just as hard as my fists, though the change in his expression and demeanor was small. His mouth opened slightly, his eyes widened only a fraction, and he stood more stiffly. It quickly passed and he was back to wearing his self-righteous sneer.
As he passed by me out of the office, he muttered, “Fucking pussy.”
I was tempted to punch him in the back of his head, but then I may not have stopped punching, and that’s what he wanted. I wasn’t going to give him what he wanted.
“Don’t beat up your new girlfriend,” I called after him.
He ignored me and kept walking and walked right out of the shop. I hoped to god that would be the last time we ever had to deal with Kyle Sterling.
Chapter Twenty-Three