Damaged Love

by Sarah J. Brooks

  “Do you need me to pack you anything?”

  “I’ve already packed,” I said to her, “so just get something to eat and wait for Simon.”

  “Alright,” she said and hung up. There was no update on her meeting and by her tone, I deciphered that she wasn't ready to speak about it yet, so I let it go and waited until I boarded the jet.

  She was already seated when I arrived, so I took my seat across from her and turned toward her waiting smile.

  "How was your day?" she asked.

  “It was alright,” I replied. “How did your meeting go?”

  She turned away to hide the fright in her eyes but widened her smile even more. “It went well.”

  I knew then what the result had been. “They told you to wait for a response.”

  She turned toward me then and sucked in a painful breath and it amused me. She looked so adorable in that moment that I couldn't stop myself. “Come over here,” I said to her and she all but ran toward me. I sat her on my lap and laid her head against my shoulder.

  As I patted her head, the flight attendant came in to inform of us takeoff, but I asked for a few more minutes and motioned to her to leave us alone.

  “It’ll be fine,” I told her. “You did you best.”

  “I hope so.”

  I kissed her on the temple and then reluctantly pulled her up. Soon we were taking off for the half hour flight to Connecticut.

  Upon our arrival at her parents’ house, we were received at the door by her mother’s shocked stare. “What are you… both doing here?”

  “It’s daddy’s birthday. Where are you going?”

  She was dressed as though hurried, her flower print blouse buttoned wrongly and her jeans with stains that were hard to miss. In her hand was a basket that I assumed had food in it.

  “I was just uh, going out for a short while. And you are right, today is his birthday. I didn’t even remember. He’s 67 this year, he’s still so young.”

  I didn't miss the small moisture that had gathered in her mother’s eyes and wondered what the problem was.

  “Xander, you're here too. Thanks so much for taking such good care of Carson for us. It has really calmed down our worries.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked, just as she tried to scramble her way past us in the doorway. Her gaze moved from mine to Carson’s, and then she let out a sigh of defeat.

  ♡

  CARSON

  My dad was in a coma.

  I stood by his bedside in the hospital, not understanding how a man that I had left well on his way to recovery was now unconsciousness and battling for his life once again.

  “He has advanced diabetic ketoacidosis," my mom had said to me. “It’s been about a week now, but the doctors say that it is hopeful. They’re expecting him to wake up from it in the coming week or two. He had been vomiting for about a day prior, but it wasn't too alarming, so I didn’t act quickly enough.”

  “It's not your fault, Mom,” I said to her, and then held onto my father’s hand, and felt my heart tearing into pieces.

  The tears rushed down my cheeks then and when I felt a sob about to choke me, I turned and ran out of the room. I didn't stop until I felt unable to breathe, so I slowed down and dropped to my knees. I hid my face in my hands and began to cry my heart out. A few seconds later I felt hands around me. Angrily, I shoved them away, but then I was jerked upright, turned around and crushed into someone’s arms. Warmth engulfed me, and the tears fell even harder.

  “Xander,” I cried as I held onto his shirt and buried my tear-soaked face in his neck. He didn't say a word. All he did was hold onto me as the strength drained from my body, and when I couldn't cry anymore, he carried me in his arms over to a row of seats. He cradled me like a child in his lap and there I stayed, unwilling to face the horror that was becoming my reality. The months I had spent watching my father slowly heal, the times I cleaned his wounds and changed his bandages, and the defeated and pained look in his eyes.

  He was my father, the man I loved most in the world, and he was slipping away from me and there was nothing I could do about it. “Do something,” I said to Xander. “I can’t take it. Do something.” He held me even tighter to his chest as the tears ran from my eyes once again and I held onto him for dear life.

  I didn't know how long we remained there. I fell asleep somehow and when I awoke, I was still in his arms. “You have to leave,” he said to me.

  I straightened away from him. “What?”

  “I just got a phone call. Your pitch was accepted, and they want to meet with you immediately.”

  The tears began to fall from my eyes again as I looked towards my father’s hospital room. “Why does this always happen when I get a break? Why do I always have to choose? Why can’t he be okay? I want to tell him that my dream came through. I got accepted. Why isn't he awake?”

  Xander buried my face to his neck again and I sobbed all I could into his collar. “Let’s go,” he whispered into my ears. “You can tell him what you need to and then fly out. He won’t be happy if you miss this opportunity on his behalf.”

  I returned to my father’s room, and took a seat by him and told him all that Xander had instructed me to. “You’re proud of me, aren’t you?” I asked, and managed the smile but as I said the words I couldn't ignore the prick in my heart that told me that I didn't deserve this opportunity. Xander was the one who had made it happen. I shook my head to dispel the thought and convinced myself that even though he had opened the door, my work had gotten me through it. I wouldn't have been called back if the reverse was the case.

  I rose up from the seat, planted a kiss on my father’s cheek and linked my hand in Xander’s. I promised my mom that I would return the moment I got my new project in order, and we flew back to New York.

  On the plane, I said to Xander. “So, what really matters? Your dreams or the people that you love?”

  He was quiet for a few moments before he responded. “They both matter,” he eventually said. “because you wouldn’t like who you were without either of them.”

  ♡

  CARSON

  “The way your show is being steered is strange,” one of the hired writers on my team commented. Everything is going too fast and without much contention from either the network or studio. Its either you're just really lucky or they are fully confident in its potential which is quite baffling to me.”

  I knew exactly what she was talking about. From the time I had returned from Connecticut, everything had gone too smoothly. It made me happy, but still knowing how bloody the war to airing was in the industry, it also made me constantly queasy. They hadn’t asked to change much in my pitch, and even the story document was approved in a matter of days. I received a pilot commitment and thereafter an on-air commitment, and was looking toward a filming order in the following year.

  I returned home from a writing day at the office and met Xander in the kitchen unloading takeout boxes of Chinese food.

  “Your mom tells me that you can cook,” I said to him as I went in to give him a hug from behind. “You’re just too lazy to.”

  “Not lazy,” he said, as he leaned backward for a kiss. “I just don’t have the patience. How was your day?”

  I kissed him deeply, refusing to let his lips go until he turned around and leaned over the counter. With his legs spread apart, he pressed me unto his hardened crotch while I slowly unbuttoned his white dress shirt.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” he managed to ask, and I nodded in response. “I am but I kept imagining your cock inside of me all day today. It was excruciating to concentrate.”

  The way he stared down at me and into my eyes made me forget how to breathe.

  I watched him with knowing eyes as he unbuttoned my pants and then reached into my panties to grab my mound. His grasp was as sweet as poison.

  “You’re soaked,” he said, but I was beyond comprehension as I rode my swollen sex against his hand until he finally slipped his fingers into me.
Just then my phone began to ring but I fully intended to ignore it.

  With his free hand, he retrieved it from my pocket and then brought it to my ear. “Don’t ignore business calls,” he mouthed to me and I pouted in response. He spun me around to lean into him as I answered it and began to nibble on my ear.

  The speaker on the other side almost sent my heart flying out of my chest.

  “You bitch!” The caller screamed, and I pulled the phone from my ear to gaze at the ID. It was my agent, Will. I hadn't spoken to or heard from him since the night of the altercation with Xander. “Three of my client’s shows just got dropped and then I find out that yours has been approved for a full series. You don't even have any goddamn fucking experience!”

  “Will,” I began and moved away from Xander.

  “Guess what I found out,” he said. “I found the reason why an untalented bitch like you could even get such an opportunity. It’s because of that your bastard of a husband. He is financing your entire goddamn show for millions. The network literally has nothing to lose if it fails, and he is doing it all for nothing. Don’t we all fucking wish we were married to billionaires, you whore?”

  I ended the call and pulled the phone from my ears. For the first few seconds after I couldn’t move and only when Xander held my wrist did I realize that I was trembling.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice full of panic and I turned to meet his eyes.

  “Are you financing my entire show?” Realization hit me then as he took a step away from me.

  “I told you that I would support you.”

  “By getting me through the door. Right now, it seems as though you’re buying the entire building.” Confused, I ran my fingers through my hair and turned away from him to head toward my room but he stopped me. “And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with buying the entire building. I’m well able to.”

  I didn't know what to say, but I knew how I felt and that was scared. It was as though he read my mind.

  “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

  “Everything,” I respond.

  His voice rose. “What does that mean?”

  “I need to think,” I said and began to walk away but then I stopped and turned to him once again. “What of if it fails? The show, I mean. What of if—"

  “So what if it fails?” he asked me and I couldn't understand.

  “You’re spending millions,” I cried. “How does that not mean anything to you? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “We entered into a contract,” he said quietly to me. “I said that I was going to support you.”

  “This is not supporting me. This is… this is making me accountable to you. For everything. Knowing how much you’re putting into this what will happen if it fails? How will I recover from it? The world will mock me, and you. I will be finished!”

  He smiled bitterly at me. “You truly have no confidence in yourself or your work. What makes you so sure that it will fail?”

  “What makes you so sure that it won’t?” I yelled at him, tears rolling down my face.

  “Maybe it will,” he said. “And so what? Hmm, Carson Oliveira? So goddamn what? Isn't this your best work at this time? Didn’t you put your heart into it? Didn’t you strive to make it the best it could possibly be? That is what counts. Who in your industry has ever been a hundred percent sure about anyone of their shows? Many have failed, and many have succeeded, but in all of this, did the world end?”

  “They believed enough in their work to risk asking the network to invest it in it. You, on the other hand, are too afraid to jump, to take the leap in going after or demanding what you want from the world. You were the same way with this marriage. I literally had to force you to choose what was best for you. Otherwise, you were willing to throw your potential and life away in some loveless marriage to someone who would probably have been unable to give you anything.”

  “You were the one who lied to me,” I said to him. “How was I to know that you’re probably able to buy half of New York?”

  “And now that you do know?” he said. “Aren't you throwing it in my face?”

  “Do you not understand what your investment in me means? It means that I owe you, that for the rest of my life I will be forever indebted to you and it is a debt that I cannot ever repay. How am I supposed to live in peace knowing that?”

  He stopped then and stared at me from across the counter. “Carson, what am I to you?”

  I wiped the tears from my eyes and threw the question back to him. “What am I to you, Xander?”

  “I’m in love with you,” he said, and I felt my heart drop into my stomach.

  “What does that mean?” I asked him. “You want to stay married to me?”

  “No, I do not,” he said. “The contract should best end as we initially planned it.”

  “Why?” I said to him. “Because you’re scared you will hurt me? Just like you hurt your father?”

  I almost felt him freeze from all the way across the room, and the coldness in his gaze drove me to explain as quickly as I could. “Your mom mentioned it to me a while ago. She wanted me to understand why you are so closed off.”

  He took a deep breath then and walked out of the kitchen.

  I stood in front of him and stopped him. “If you’re in love with me then why wouldn't you want to be with me?”

  “Move out of the way,” he said.

  “No. Answer me.”

  “It won’t make sense to you,” he said.

  “Don’t assume that. Answer my question.”

  “The only life I want to take responsibility for is mine.”

  “Why?”

  “My father was a good man, and he loved my mom. But then life happened, as it always does. He lost his business, his dreams, and himself. He forgot that he’d promised to make my mother happy and ended up instead making her the most pitiful woman in the world. Because even as he beat her and humiliated her, she refused to leave because she loved him. Because she had the guts to keep the promise that she’d made no matter how hard life got. I basically murdered my own father, and it doesn't matter whether it was an accident or not. What matters is the aftermath. Did he deserve that? Yes and no. He was human after all and that is the biggest realization that I took from him. The fact that he and I are human.

  I cannot promise to love you today for the rest of your life and then turn around in twenty years and turn you into nothing but garbage, and quite possibly make our home into such a nightmare that perhaps my son will also accidentally kill the beast that I become, and be haunted by the memory for the rest of his life. Marrying you indefinitely means promising you my sanity for the remainder of my days, and I don’t have the confidence that I can keep that promise.”

  “It is not your responsibility to make anyone apart from yourself happy,” I said to him.

  “Maybe, but I also don’t want the opportunity to make you miserable either.” He gently pushed me out of the way and began to head towards the door.

  “Don’t leave,” I yelled at him. “If you do we’re over. I’ll move out right now.”

  He paused for a moment, and I could feel time stop.

  Please turn around. Please, I beg of you.

  Xander Cage pulled the door open and walked out of the apartment.

  Chapter 16

  CARSON

  I moved back into Bethany’s place, and in the weeks that followed, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  I took a break from my project and it was the scariest thing that I had ever done, but more important was my need to figure out my heart, because Xander had jumbled everything up.

  Was I going to accept the finance that he had pledged to the network to use in undertaking my show, or was I going to walk away from it and find my own way?

  I was terrified that the decision I was going to make would be the wrong one and that it would send me back to square one.

  Over the weeks I pondered my options, missing Xander so much t
hat I found myself crying to sleep more times than I was proud of. I had been back home twice to visit my father but the daily updates that he still had not woken up brought me to the kind of despair that I hadn’t felt since he initially had the accident. It felt as though everything was crumbling around me, but one evening I got up from the bed and decided to make a final decision.

  I asked Bethany and Ida what they thought about it and they each had more than enough to say.

  “I say get a huge alimony check from the billionaire, and go your own way,” Bethany said, and Ida sent her a poisonous look.

  “What? Everyone is so emotional about everything.”

  “She is in love with him,”

  “Love doesn't always solve everything. People are made up of their beliefs and this comes from their interpretation of the things that happen to them in life. You can’t just wish someone to change the way they think just because you want them to. It has to come with time and life experiences that none of us have any control over. Xander might have a change of heart and come back to her, and that would be great but if he doesn't then Carson has to move on. She can treasure it as one of those amazing life experiences. It is a story that she can tell and retell and will never get old. You told her this at the start of this whole thing Ida, now I don't know why you’re being sentimental about it all.” She shook her head in disgust.

  “Now I know why you keep changing boyfriends,” Ida said. “Your heart is made of stone.”

  “It’s not, I’ve just come to realize that nothing is truly a big deal. Life keeps moving on regardless of what we think or experience, so why stress over what we can’t control.”

  Life keeps moving on regardless of what you think or experience.

  Those words played over and over in my head and haunted me every single moment thereafter until I worked up the courage and returned to my network.

  “You want to end the contract?” Jeremy Hay, the lead executive on my show exclaimed.

  I nodded my head in response and covered my trembling hands. “I am not sure that I have the confidence to see it through, so I ask that I be placed among the other writing teams for the upcoming season.”