by Kiki Leach
“You already are.”
“But I’m not.” He leaned away from her hand and sat back. “I should be, but I’m not.”
Vanessa made a face and dropped her hand to his lap. “What are you talking about, Mo?” She let out a nervous giggle. “I’m starting to get confused by all of this and what you mean.”
“Do you remember when we were in your office, and Gina came to talk to you about that guy she was seeing?”
Vanessa thought for a moment and knit her brows. “The asshole who was trying to use her to get in the papers or something? Yeah, I remember. Why?”
“And you remember telling her about someone leaking Nathan and Sheila to Page Six?”
“I don’t remember saying exactly that, because I still don’t know how the information ever actually got out there.” She bent forward and dropped her shoulders. “Either way, I don’t understand what any of this has to do with what we’re talking about now--”
“How the information got out there,” he interjected. “Never mattered as much as it being out there in the first place, right?”
“I guess.” She shrugged. “But it’s not like it was some kind of picnic either way. You remember how crazy my life got after that information trickled between circles within the city. After Page Six posted the original story--”
“Your life went to hell not long after,” he mumbled.
“It did, but I had people like you and Nikki to help me get through all of that shit.”
He exhaled and momentarily closed his eyes. “But it brought back all those memories as soon as Sheila and Nathan came back.”
“You know it did, but we’ve been able to move past all of that. When Tweedle Dumb returns, he’ll be off planning his wedding with Tweedle Dee and we’ll continue to be happier than they could possibly ever be.” She shook her head and sat back. “I still don’t really understand what all of this has to do with anything now.”
“It has to do with a lot, V. More than I ever wanted you to know.”
“What does that mean?”
He and pressed his elbow into his knee while anxiously rubbing his hand back and forth across his mouth. Vanessa could see from the wild look in his eye that he was close to losing his shit.
She stared at him curiously. Her breathing increased, as did her heartrate. “You’re starting to scare me with all of this, Mo.”
“I don’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I don’t ever want to do that.”
“Then tell me what the hell is going on with you.”
He placed a hand on top of hers and pressed down hard, frowning. “You remember coming to me about Nathan and Sheila?”
She nodded. “You were the first person I told.”
His eyes traveled up to her face and as the guilt began to overwhelm him, the color drained from his skin. Vanessa noticed but was too fearful of what was happening to him to ask.
“I did something,” he told her. As his hand started shaking against her, he ripped it away. “I did something that I look back on now, that was stupid and reckless, but I did for what I thought were the right reasons at the time. I did it because I wanted to help you and protect you. I felt that you deserved better than what you were getting and I thought that they needed to pay for the hell that they put you through.”
She stiffened as she started to become aware of what he meant, but didn’t want to believe that what he was trying to tell her could possibly be true.
“What are you saying to me, Maurice?” she asked, her voice cracking as she spoke.
“I’m telling you…” He stopped and took in a breath. “I’m telling you that I’m the one who went to Page Six about Nathan and Sheila. The reason the story got out, the reason they even had the information in the first place was because of me.”
Shocked, but still refusing to believe that he could betray her in such a deep and conniving way, Vanessa shook her head and wouldn’t stop. She was starting to make herself dizzy, but if it helped to forget what she had just heard, she was willing to continue on with it.
“How is that even possible?” she asked. “How could you have--”
“I found one of their editors outside the building and told her--”
“Her.”
He gulped and looked straight into her eyes. He could feel the trust she had for him literally draining out of every part of her body by the second.
“Olivia Greenwald,” he said. “Which is who I was with earlier.”
“Her.”
“Yes. She was the one I spoke to at the time.”
Vanessa looked away from his face. “Fuck.” She slammed her feet to the floor and balled her fists, slamming them down against the couch. “FUCK!” She briefly dropped her head in her hands, then lifted her face and glared at him. “She immediately recognized you that day on the beach, didn’t she?”
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Shit. What the hell happened after that?”
“I told her that I could give her a solid story about the daughter of a former senator, and the boyfriend of the daughter of Alexis Brown. As soon as I said those words, she brought me up to her office and listened to whatever else it was that I had to say.”
She tried swallowing, but her mouth was so dry that she nearly choked. “You’re shitting me about this, right?”
He shook his head. “No, V. I’m not.” He took a moment to gage her expression. In all the years he had known her, never had she ever looked at him as if she hated him for just existing. He understood, he knew that she would be pissed and he expected it. But he didn’t expect for her reaction to hurt like hell. “I went there with every intention of screwing those two over for what they did to you. I went there armed with the information you told me about them for the sole purpose of humiliating them for the hell they put you through.”
“You didn’t just do it for that reason,” she said.
“I did, V--”
“LIAR!” she screamed, bending over in his face. “You are a damn LIAR!” She zipped away from him as fast as she could and stomped across the room. She crossed her arms over her chest tight to keep from slamming her hands into his chest or beating him until he could no longer breathe. “What did that bitch want from you today?”
“It doesn’t matter, Vanessa.”
“Oh, it fucking matters and the fact that you’re not telling me exactly what she asked you for is ALL I need to know. What did you do, promise her dick to keep her quiet?”
“She asked for it, V, but I would never do something like that to you,” he shouted, “ever!”
“But you could do THIS?!”
Maurice enfolded his hands. “What I did in telling her about Nathan and Sheila wasn’t meant to hurt you, V--”
“But it DID!” she hollered, spinning around to look at him. “You understand that, right? You understand that my life blew up into tiny little bits and has been put underneath a microscope ever since the very moment that information was leaked! Sheila was able to escape it – NATHAN was able to escape it and they’re the ones who fucked up by fucking each other in the first damn place. But the moment they skipped town, they were damn near off of EVERYONE’S radar. Meanwhile I was stuck here to continue living it out. Stuck here working for my mother and having to prove myself to every person who walked in and out of her building that I was worthy of running it even better than she did--”
“And you’ve proven that--”
“I shouldn’t have had to prove it as hard as I DID, all because they were more obsessed with my personal life and who I might’ve been sleeping with at the time than my work ethic. Let’s not mention my drinking, excessively, to the point where you had to carry me upstairs to my own bedroom time and again because I was too fucking drunk to walk. Or all the times I took whatever drug was available to me because I couldn’t bear to pass a newsstand anymore, only to see my face on the cover with people all around me stopping to wonder OUT LOUD if I was ever going to move past being part of a high school GOLDEN COUPLE bec
ause a new one had emerged in THOSE TWO.”
She furiously ran her hands through her hair and down the sides of her face.
“You know what, I want you to get the hell out. I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t even want to know you right now – GET OUT!”
He looked up at her with a dangerously fierce expression. She was pissed at him and had every right to be, but as far as he was concerned, she was still the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with and there was no way in hell she was just going to throw him away as if he meant nothing.
“No,” he told her. “Hell no.” He jumped up from the table and shuffled closer to her. She tried avoiding his eyes, but he forced his way into her space. “You’re not just going to get rid of me like that, V, not after all the shit we’ve been through and EVERYTHING we’ve done to get to a damn better place in our relationship. Now I fucked up, I get that and I’m sorry, but I’m telling you that I didn’t do it as a way to hurt you--”
“And I’m telling you that it DID!” She waved her arms in his face for emphasis and he stepped back. “Ever since that day, my life has never been the same, NONE of our lives have been the same. And shit has only gotten worse since then! We’re still on the covers of rags from here to Detroit with people I don’t know still coming up to me and asking about my current love life and how I feel about Nathan and Sheila getting married. I still can’t even walk down the street without feeling all eyes on me for one reason or another and that’s all thanks to YOU and your big fucking mouth, and why? Was it all because you were just so damn desperate to get inside my pants? Because honestly, if that was the case, I would’ve been willing to let you have a chance to see what’s inside them back then just to keep you quiet -- !”
“HEY!” he called out. His face was turning red, his eyes were bulged and his teeth were clinched. Every word she spat hit him like a brick in the chest, but he remained determined to come back stronger each time. “I’ve wanted a lot of things from you over the years, V, A LOT of things. Yeah, sex has been one of them, but it has never been the ONLY thing and it sure as hell has never been the thing to keep me around you for so long since I never thought I’d actually get any.”
She scoffed and turned away from him. “I told you that I would’ve let you in my pants if it would’ve spared me the public FODDER!”
“Stop it, alright?” he said. “Just stop. That’s not what things were like between us then and you damn well know it. You’re only saying all of this shit because you’re pissed and I get it, V. I get it. I know that what I did really screwed you over, but that was never my intent. And I never did what I did to get inside your pants. You damn well know that to be true too.”
“How do I know anything anymore? Here I was scared the fuck out of my mind of how you would react in learning the truth about Adrian and the fact that I was pregnant with and lost HIS child. And for years, YEARS you have kept this secret to yourself, knowing how inside out my life had become because of it, KNOWING that I have hated every second of being in the limelight, not because of my mother or because of the magazine, but because my boyfriend decided that he liked having sex with my best friend more than me.”
She swerved around him and shuffled to the other side.
“All the comparisons to me and Sheila over the years really fucked with my psyche,” she said. “Rags saying this and that about our appearances and why Nathan might have left me for her and on and on and on. It wasn’t just about what he had done or that it became public. It was everything else that came along with that shit. Just finding out that you were the reason it did--”
He slid around the table and sat back down in front of her, taking her tiny hands in his again and remembering how it felt the first time he held them. “I never meant to hurt you,” he said. “This was never about hurting you, it was about hurting them because of what they did to you.”
“It doesn’t matter, Mo. Because in the end, we all got screwed over because of it.” She ripped her hands from his and got up again. Resting them on the window sill, she struggled with her feelings, of both loving and hating him at the same time. The only other time she had had such strong feelings for a man was when she found Nathan in that shower. But even then, even that didn’t seem to hit her as hard as this. “I need you to go.”
Maurice shook his head and chewed his lips. He was determined. She was his; it took him a long ass time to make it happen and there was no way in hell the mistake he made years ago was going to be the one thing to tear down everything he had built up in bringing them exactly where he always felt they were supposed to be, together.
“No,” he told her. He moved over to her side. She kept her eyes locked on the window but felt his presence the moment the air in the room shifted. “No. I’m not leaving my own house, Vanessa.”
She looked up into his eyes, the same eyes she loved with her entire being, the same eyes that made her heart swell before bursting into then thousand pieces inside her chest. She wanted to forgive what he had done. God, did she want to forgive him for the lies and deceit and the betrayal of trust. She knew that what he had done was for her. Despite her anger and how much she wanted to hate him for it, she knew that if it hadn’t been for the sole purpose of making Nathan and Sheila look like the villains they had become, he would’ve kept his mouth shut about it, just as she wanted.
But what happened after that, everything that culminated between not only them but the entire group, everything she suffered because of that information leaking out to the public, was something that she couldn’t find in that same heart that loved him so much to forgive. At least not that night.
“V.” He reached out for her, but she flinched and stepped back.
“Leave,” she told him.
“Vanessa…”
Scrunching his brows, he sniffed and returned to her eyes. He wanted her to look at him so badly, but knew that if she did, there would be nothing but pain and fury in return. It was as if she had taken his heart and twisted it in knots before slamming it back inside his chest. Seeing how angry she was with him, knowing that it could’ve been prevented if he had just waited out his time, waited out his chance to finally be with her; it almost made him sick to his stomach to know just how much he had truly fucked up a damn good thing.
“Vanessa,” he said again. “I have waited since we were kids to be with you – when I wasn’t even sure what love was, but felt whatever I thought it was for you. I was selfish for what I did. I was arrogant and stupid and more than that, I was wrong. But what we have is deep. It’s real and it’s honest and it’s raw. Sometimes it’s angry, but it’s the best and worst part of who we both are. You stole a part of me years ago and you’ve never given it back and I know that after the last few months of us being together that I’ve done the same for you – a big part that I refuse to return no matter how much you might beg for it later. You can’t just walk away from this; what we have isn’t just something that you can toss into the trash without a real fight for it. We’ve been through too much shit together for that.”
“Maurice--”
“I’m not Nathan. I’m not just going to pack up my bags and leave you in this city alone, hoping that someday I’ll be able to move on from everything we shared together while secretly hoping that you never do.”
Her lip quivered. She wiped away the fallen tears as they spilled out in copious amounts and flooded her cheeks.
“You still feel this,” he said. “It’s not something that’s just going to go away overnight no matter how angry you are.”
“Of course it’s not just going to go away overnight,” she snapped. “I’ll probably love you for the rest of my life, more than Nathan and Adrian or any other man I ever thought I loved before now. THAT is what makes this hurt even more.” She shoved past him and headed for the coatrack near the door, grabbing her jacket.
Maurice chased after her. “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving. Of all the peop
le in my life, your love is the last that I thought would ever cause me the most pain.”
That jarred something within him as he thought back on his earlier conversation with Melanie.
She slipped on her jacket and lifted her hair from beneath the collar. She turned to look at him as he stood in the frame of the doorway and glowered.
“I need to get the hell away from you right now. But since you won’t go anywhere, I’m taking the initiative and getting the hell out of here before my head explodes.”
“You need some time away from me, and I understand that. But I’m still going to be here when you get back,” he said.
“Do me a favor and don’t.” She grabbed her keys from the small table and slammed the door behind her. It was only then that she completely broke down in uncontrollable, shaking tears.
When she heard his feet sliding toward the door, she took off down the stairs and ran down the sidewalk as fast as she could before rounding a corner. She didn’t know where the hell she was going or when she would get there, but she knew that after that fight, there would be no turning back for either one of them.
Part Eight
After making love more times than they could count on both hands and feet combined, Nikki rolled off of Oscar and back onto the floor of the bedroom she currently shared with William.
As she rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling, Oscar placed a finger at the center of her chin to keep her head steady, then leaned in and glided his tongue up and down the side of her throat. She giggled as the sensation tickled her skin.
Though there was a part of her that felt extreme guilt for not only what she had done and with who, but just where they had done it and why, it seemed to be overshadowed by the exuberance of the act itself burning throughout her entire body, as well as his.
Even while knowing that it was only a matter of time before William returned, she still couldn’t seem to bring herself to tell Oscar to go, because she feared, even after all he had said and all they had done, that he could suddenly change his mind; if he walked out of her life again, if by choice or fate, there was no way in hell anything would ever be the same for her again, and she knew it, and it scared the living shit out of her – more than William possibly finding them there, wrapped up in each other like two frazzled bows beneath a wrecked Christmas tree.