by Lexie Ray
“He was my husband. You still saw him! So you accomplished nothing in this martyr bullshit new life that you sought after!” she screamed into his chest, eager for him to let her go.
“Did he tell you about all of his stalking allegations? And that’s when I knew that I wanted to stay by your side – no matter if I saw him! He’s crazy, and he can’t be trusted!” he yelled, his face full of emotion as he pulled her away from him at arm’s length. “And I fell for you instantly!”
And then she felt it all over again: stalking allegations? What the hell was happening? Why was all of this so crazy? When had her life become so dramatic? When did it flip upside down like this? Why did she not know anything at all anymore? She let Joseph explain it all, and what she heard terrified her – and it made her wonder who the fuck she had been married to for so many years.
Joseph had explained that Preston had been lucky he had so much money, because he had the money to get good lawyers time and time again. He said that for as long as he worked for Preston, he never saw him pinned with any sort of charge. If he had, she would have known – and because he had gotten out of all of it, he had also gotten off the hook from telling his wife.
She’d never know. Or so he thought – but now, it held no merit. Now she didn’t give a shit, because it was over. And she knew it was over. He had betrayed her in so many ways that she didn’t care if he did get the help he needed; she didn’t care if he could change. She couldn’t forget it all. Perhaps she could forgive, but she would not forget it.
We fear the unknown, and she knew that was why she was even considering the entertaining possibility of forgiving Preston to the point of staying when it first all went to shit. He was comfortable; he had been there for so long that he was all she knew, but then it hit her – not very long afterwards, and now the notion seemed even more so – he was still unknown.
She had just learned all the incriminating details of his secret life for the past God knows how many years. If he could hide all of that without her realizing it – did she even know him at all? Did she ever? Did she even love him? How did she not notice? He was either that good, or she was that blind.
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She could tell Preston was losing control, and she wanted to be there for him. So when he called her, despite a part of her that gnawed at her soul and screamed at her to stay the hell away, she came. And she was glad she did, as he fell to the floor sobbing like a baby. Preston never cried. Hell, he was never anything more than absolutely composed. She saw him on his knees, sobbing like that into the palms of his hands, and she felt sorry for him.
His premium suit was wrinkling as it crumpled up beneath the weight of his knees. Despite her better judgment, she found herself go over to him and squat down beside him. She took his hands and held them, and he looked at her with confusion.
“You care about me still, after all this? You’re here?” he asked.
“I would have been here forever, Preston. I was your family –” she began, until he interrupted with an outburst of tears.
“You are my family! We can get through this.” He had interrupted so abruptly that she thought he might have had something credible to say rather than some ill-conceived idea that he was somehow holding onto. She felt bad. But they were not getting through it, not in the way that he was so obviously hoping for.
“No. We aren’t. I wish we were, but we aren’t. I’ll be here for you, as someone that cared for you. Just to see you through this and for our children – but you and I are not together. We’re getting a divorce.” She felt bad, but she spoke flatly and without emotion. She didn’t want to confuse him more. “Don’t confuse this. This isn’t anything more than compassion. I care about you, and I always will.”
Chapter 12
It ended with a meeting with the judge the next morning. It ended. Fifteen years of marriage were finished in a fifteen-minute meeting. They agreed Marissa would have full custody, and Preston would have visitation. They agreed she was to reside in the house, and they would divide all monetary assets equally between both parties. They agreed. They agreed. They fucking agreed. They always had. Marissa thought that they always would – but she definitely didn’t agree with him fucking half of Chicago. She couldn’t get on board with that.
She could get on board with him trying, though. If he tried, she would be there as a friend. You may be able to undo fifteen years of marriage in the blink of an eye – but you couldn’t undo nearly twenty years of friendship.
He had called and called and called, and only having heard from Marissa once since they parted ways, she didn’t really want to answer. Marissa had texted a status report regarding Lucas’s school situation, as well as an interesting tidbit regarding Preston and previous stalking accusations, as well as several other lawsuits. So of course she didn’t want to hear from him.
Lucas was set to be enrolled in a school uptown from his previous one for next year, and Marissa said he was fine with it – excited even. He was excited to start over. Haley could only wish she could start over, and she was sure Marissa felt the same.
Remembering what she said only led to more hate. More anguish. Because she remembered that she had debated with herself on whether or not to reject the other three members of the family as her family. All to be with him. She remembered everything. His eyes as they looked at her body, as if they bore into her soul, used to captivate her, but now as she recalled the look, it caused only the most excruciating cold feeling she had ever experienced. It was as if a ghost had walked through her physique and sucked out every ounce of life that she had possessed.
It was as if he had taken all that her life once was, and it was all for his own selfish gain. He didn’t love her. He didn’t love anyone. Only himself. Now, because of everything, she hated herself.
She peered into the mirror – an act she seemed to always do when she was reflecting negatively upon herself – and clenched her jaw at the sight. The feeling was too familiar. It had seemed to happen far too often. She really and truly hated herself, and it was time that she did something about it. What, though? She wasn’t quite sure. All she knew was that seeing her reflection meant seeing the woman that ruined her life. It meant beholding upon her enemy.
She clenched her fists together tightly, so tightly in fact that her fingernails dug into her palms with a pinch and her knuckles whitened with intensity. She drew her fist back and slung it at the mirror in front of her. She felt the crack of her knuckles and the smashing of glass against her skin. Her flesh muttered a slight burning sensation as her hand met the glass. She didn’t feel much pain, though. The alcohol must have been masking it.
She drew her hand back, and noticed the mirror was cracked and shards had penetrated her skin. She felt a bit of pain when she saw it, and she wondered if the alcohol was still keeping some of the physical pain at bay, because it hurt – but not like she thought it would.
Her hand looked like a pin cushion that had been full of needles. It was a gallant effort that she portrayed when she shook her hand to displace her pain. She pulled a piece out, and cringed from the pain. She let her mind wander to a dark place for a moment as she willed her cut hand open, just to watch the blood drip onto the floor. She looked at it with awe, actually – just happy that her mind had gotten off of the emotional pain for even just a moment. And it was for just a moment. She looked down to the photo the Lancers had gotten her before – the one she so coincidentally had found a letter tucked away within just recently – and the emotions came flooding back. She missed them.
She wondered how many others had ever wondered if they were on someone else’s mind at all. Whether or not they were even worth thinking about. Because she did. She did wonder, almost every minute of every day. She wondered if she was worth the time that someone would spend on thinking of her. She really did wonder if her memory was even worth the storage in precious space in someone’s cortex. Was her life even worth
the painstaking efforts of trying to straighten out again? Was it something that she should release to the wind – wipe her hands and be done – and allow it to merely crumble along with the ruin of her past?
She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything. This jibber-jabbering she tended to do within her own mind was starting to get the best of her. She was sick of the constant confusing questioning. She was sick of not being in control. She was so fucking sick of it all. She hated not knowing what was going on inside her own mind. She was sick of the constant battling back and forth – and the continual feel-sorry-for-herself attitude. She was sick of it all.
Her head hurt, and she made her way to her bedroom – her hand wrapped neatly in gauze – and sat down on the bed. She had conveniently forgotten to clean the mess of the broken glass in the bathroom. She really didn’t want to deal with it. She honestly wished her life was as easy to brush aside for later, because she really didn’t want to deal with it. Not right now, anyway.
She pulled her laptop out from underneath her bed and sat Indian-style atop her mattress and opened it. She stared at her screen, not really knowing what she grabbed it for in the first place. She just wanted a distraction. She just wanted to look at someone else’s life, so she didn’t have to deal with her own. She found herself, instead, typing out what she felt.
Why? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of really anything these days. She thought that perhaps she could find some resolution if she typed her thoughts out; she thought maybe could she figure something out. But she didn’t. There was only one word that seemed to jut out from the screen, and it was a word that tended to repeat itself over and over again, on the electronic notepad, and in her consciousness: loneliness.
Sighing deeply, she topped typing the word that weighed so strongly on her mind. Her head pounded once again, and her eyes were beginning to burn. She looked at the clock and noticed that she had been staring at the screen for three hours. She groaned and placed her forehead into her sweaty palms before rubbing her temples. She hoped that she could ease the pain, but she knew that it wasn’t the headache that was plaguing her so terribly.
Her eyes – just above her fingertips – shifted and caught sight of the gauze covering the cuts from just a few hours before. Her palms rested flatly against the center of her forehead, and she sighed. Why the hell had she punched the mirror? She was losing it. All of her resolve was seemingly gone, and her irrational jolts of psychotic emotion were really getting in the way of her wellbeing. Hell, she was getting in the way of her wellbeing.
She already knew that she had to make efforts to change. She had to work on herself. She couldn’t hope to be worth loving if she didn’t love herself first. She knew that, and she was proud that she could at least rationalize that thought; she was happy that somewhere in the depths of her mind, there was still a glimmer of the old Haley, the smart Haley, the good Haley.
Maybe next time around she could do right by them. Maybe she could deserve their love. Maybe she wouldn’t betray them. Maybe she could get back some semblance of a relationship – and maybe, just maybe, she could have her family back.
Chapter 13
Preston really did want his family back. Not in the traditional sense like many women hoped for, but in the sense that he did really love his children. The first step to that, though, was repairing his always-strained relationship with Lucas. Marissa didn’t like blindsiding her children, but she had been asking Lucas for weeks to see his dad. But he wouldn’t.
Because of his reluctance, and the fact that she knew that it was important they rekindled their relationship, she decided to set up a meeting between the two of them. Without Lucas’s permission, and without his knowledge. It was the best way. She was going to force him into the same room as his father.
She set up the living room for the rendezvous. Preston knew about it; Lucas didn’t. She knew the two could always bond over food. She told Preston to come hungry, and Lucas was always hungry. The party trays were littered all over the living room; she had definitely gone overboard. She knew that as she looked around the room. There were countless trays placed out, filled with chicken wings, jalapeno poppers, mozzarella sticks, and three full-on cheese and vegetable platters.
There was enough food in the living room to feed an entire NFL football team. Or maybe just enough to feed a growing boy and a really hungry father. She laughed. She probably had overestimated the food situation by a touch.
It seemed like only a moment before that Lucas had been so happy to be home from school and his face was bright with joy at all the food. But when she looked into his eyes when his dad greeted him, she saw a boy with his face screwed up into a seething rage. She watched as Preston tried to go against his will and pull him into a hug.
The pain that Lucas seemed to exude from his facial expression and sudden squirming caused Marissa to cringe. He was dramatic, but this was more than that. Lucas was more upset than she had ever anticipated. She wanted to groan aloud and save him from what she had just inflicted upon him.
She felt horrible. She wondered if she should have tried to do this in another setting, therapy, perhaps. There were clearly issues here, and it was far beyond what she thought. Lucas grunted under his dad’s forced hug, and she could tell he was trying to dead weight when he buckled under the embrace. The efforts were almost in a slow motion, it was that tense, that awkward.
When Preston finally gave up on struggling with him to merely give him a hug, Lucas fell to the floor. He had been throwing his weight down so that Preston would free him, and when he did – he seemed to become even angrier.
"Don't ever fucking touch me again!" he screamed, outraged, before turning on his heel and leaving the room. She watched – a little in shock at the harsh profanity that had escaped him – as he pounded his way into the foyer and up the stairs, stomping as he walked up them.
Marissa found herself walking over to Preston. His face crestfallen, she smoothed his back gently, his muscles tensing under her touch. "It's okay," she soothed. "He's just going through a lot right now. He'll come around. He always has."
"He hates me," Preston spoke suddenly, in a hoarsely sad voice. It was a voice she had never really heard from him before.
"No he doesn't. He's just going through a lot. You really messed him up – but we will get it all sorted out,” she replied again in a soft manner. She was talking to him with an even more soothing voice than she had meant to. It made her shudder to be nice to him, but if she was making steps at forgiving him, she would have to be civil. If she wanted him to have a relationship with their children she would have to be an ally rather than an enemy. She would have to be a bigger person than Preston Lancer had apparently ever been.
“I’m going upstairs,” he said, and she wondered if that was a good idea or not. “I mean, we already blindsided him. May as well finish what we started. We need to talk. I know what I need to do…”
With that, he left. He disappeared, and judging by his words, he didn’t expect her to follow. He didn’t want her to be his mediator. He wanted to do it alone, and she would respect that. She could only hope that Lucas would be OK.
~~~
It had been a while since Preston had gone upstairs to be with their son, so she had to imagine what was being said all the while. That was, until she heard the conversation increase in volume. Lucas spoke in detail of the torture his father put him through at school with his horrific actions towards Darren’s mother – including wrongfully terminating her. He yelled about Haley and the fact that he couldn’t trust him; she heard his voice in its entirety. Not just the words coming from it. She heard the anger, the hurt.
She heard Lucas yell about his attack and how with every punch he endured his face had flung strangely with a forceful energy that he had never known before while a mixture of spit and blood hurled powerfully from his mouth and onto the ground.
It brought back the reality of seeing his face beaten and bruised that day – full force, without conta
inment. She knew what Haley had always thought; she had Mother Bear syndrome, and perhaps she had – but seeing her baby as battered as he was that day was enough to emotionally scar her for life.
Lucas had been seeing a counselor three times a week for what had happened to him. It was low key, not quite a therapy session as much as a big brother kind of program. He was being counseled while they played sports and whatnot. She knew it probably wasn’t necessary, but it put her mind at ease. She knew that she was probably the one that needed counseling after the incident, but it seemed to help him.
He was expressing himself with his father in a way that he never had before. He described the blood coming from his mouth like that of a sprinkler system as he gasped for air. She couldn’t even imagine it, and she didn’t want to imagine it. She heard that he was speaking of the physical pain, but – being better at expressing himself – also went on about the emotional pain being much worse.
“I felt betrayed by you! You were my dad, and you let me down! You said you’d take care of everything, and you didn’t! You just decided to have sex with Haley and forget all about me! I came to you, and you didn’t help me!” He was screaming, but his voice cracked with sadness the further he went on with his argument. “Why didn’t you help me!” she heard him ask, a little softer than the time before – and she knew he was sobbing.
She heard Preston respond, but she couldn’t quite make it out. His voice was soft and sturdy, and then there was silence.
“You’ve never loved me as much as you love Sophie!” bellowed out suddenly before she heard a hard smacking sound. She ran up the room, hoping with everything she had that Preston hadn’t just hit their son. Running with a fierce passion, she reached the top of the stairs in no time, and she saw Preston through Lucas’s half-opened door holding his jaw.
"I deserved that. You will never hit me again. Do you understand? I’m your father, and it doesn’t matter how angry you are at me, you will not disrespect me. We're even, so can I talk now?" Preston said calmly, still holding his jaw. She couldn’t believe her small-framed twelve-year-old had just hit her almost-ex-husband in the face and actually done damage.