Truth & Consequences: A Miss Independent Novel

by Leach, Kiki

  “I didn’t fuck Sheila,” he said.

  Maurice bobbed his head. “What would you call it? A friendly get together?”

  Unable to answer, Nathan turned his head and focused his eyes across the room.

  “What I did in telling Page Six wasn’t about you or Sheila in a personal sense. By then, I didn’t feel as if I owed you anything one way or another, loyalty-wise. It was about Vanessa. I never banked on her life becoming a spectacle after that. I just wanted you two to suffer for what you had done.”

  “Then it was personal,” Nathan replied. “We’ve known each other our entire lives and you were willing to give up that friendship for pussy you never thought you’d taste.”

  “But I have,” he said with a smile parting his lips. “And it tastes just like honey, straight from the hive of a Queen Bee. See, you were willing to give that up for a woman you don’t even love – one most of us questioned if you even liked outside of what she could to do your dick. And now you’re miserable as fuck and getting married, having a wedding you don’t even want. I may not be with Vanessa now, but we’re going to get back there. No matter what happens from this second forward, she’s never going back to you or that toxic life before me.”

  Nathan swallowed hard, then sucked down on the inside of his bottom lip while violently shaking his head. “I never meant to hurt her like that,” he said. “I never meant to do her dirty in fuckin’ around with Sheila.” His eyes fell. “It was just something that happened and I couldn’t stop it… I didn’t want to stop it. After all that shit came out, I thought that once it died down, maybe we would have another chance. But once it got to a point where we couldn’t even walk out the front doors without cameras in our faces and reporters asking questions nobody wanted to answer, I knew that there would be no way in hell she was taking me back. Even if she wanted to, her pride wouldn’t let her. Neither would Alexis. But I never gave up on the idea of it happening again. Because being with her made me better than who I was. It might not have seemed that way at the time given my constant fuck ups, but it did. Being with Sheila after that…” He stopped and laughed to himself. “Over the last five years, she’s driven me crazier than a muthafucka.”

  “But it’s not the kind of crazy that V drives me,” said Maurice. “The kind that keeps me sticking around for it even when I feel like I can’t take much more.”

  Nathan quieted his voice. “Yeah.”

  “Look, as much as I might want to, I can’t exactly tell you to stay away from her. I could beat the shit out of you again, but I’ve known you too long and with her coming here today, if she does, there’s no point. All I can ask is that you back the fuck off and let her breathe for a little bit. Like I said, she’s not going back to what you had. She’s not going back to that Adrian asshole either, whatever they had is done.” He waited a moment and sighed. “I don’t like fighting with you, Nate. We were boys for most of my life.”

  “Yeah. Mine too. But I guess it had to come to an end at some point because of how you felt about her. I didn’t think she’d ever go down that route with you though, and at first thought that maybe she did it just to piss me off. But when I saw you together, I don’t even want to admit it, but I knew that it was honest, and that there was no way in hell that any of us were going back to what we had. Even so, I’m a stubborn muthafucka and I don’t bow out in silence.” They both chuckled. “But V did.” He stopped to think before continuing on. “I thought bringing out Adrian would shake things up and it did, just not in the way I had initially planned.”

  “We’re not together,” Maurice replied. “That’s what you wanted.”

  “Not now, but you just said it won’t be that way for long. And I believe that. I sure as fuck don’t want to, but I do.” He stopped, waiting for a beat to pass. “That being said, you do know me well ‘cause I’m I not gonna stay away from her,” he said. “But I won’t go out of my way to sabotage whatever the hell it is that you two have, again. I keep trying to get shit my way and it hasn’t done anybody any good. Now I’m locked up, she’s more miserable now than she was when we were together, and you got left with a face that only she and your mother could love.”

  Mo ran his hand down either side of his face and smirked. “It’ll heal. And so will she.”

  “Us too?”

  Nathan cautiously raised his hand.

  A suspicious Maurice looked down and waited a moment before raising his own hand and sliding it between the bars.

  After moving them up and down in unison a few times, Maurice belligerently jerked Nathan forward, slamming his face against the bars.

  Blood spewed from his nose and mouth and landed on Maurice’s shirt, but he didn’t back away. Nathan roared like an animal inside a cage as soon as one of the rusted bars smashed against his tooth. He tried pulling back, but Maurice latched his other hand around his wrist.

  “I want you to understand something now,” he said. “We will never be good again. Ever. Fool me once and all that shit. And if you ever try and fuck her over again in any capacity, because I do know you well enough, a cell will be the last thing that your ass will need to be concerned about. Cause next time, it’ll be a coffin waiting for you, the same one that I buried you in five years ago right before you left for California. But this time, you won’t be coming out with just a few scratches. Because you won’t be coming out of it at all.”

  Maurice forcefully shoved him away and Nathan tripped back to the center of the cell. They glared at one another but Nathan was the first to break away when he turned his head to spit out the blood coating his teeth. He wiped the blood from beneath his nose and flung it in the air, subconsciously hoping to hit Maurice in the face.

  “I missed you for a lot of years,” Maurice told him. “You were like the brother I never had. But there was no reviving that friendship for me after what you did to her. She may eventually forgive you for that shit. But I don’t think I ever will.”

  “It’s a damn good thing I’ll never be asking for it.”

  “Damn good thing,” Maurice replied. “A real damn good thing.”

  He wiped Nathan’s blood down the front of his shirt, then headed for the door and knocked a few times. When it swung back, he glanced over at Joe and nodded, then paced down the hall and out of Nathan’s sight.

  Joe headed inside and saw Nathan walking around in circles while clamping his fingers around his nose and holding his head back to keep from bleeding out all over the floor.

  Joe shook his head. “Do you need a medic in here? Or a mop?”

  Nathan wiped his nose with the back of his hand and spat on the floor again. “No,” he said. “Just make sure that the next person who comes in here to see me isn’t--”

  Joe raised his hand and shut his eyes. He was done listening to anymore of what Nathan had to say.

  “Listen kid, you don’t get to make the rules in here.” He pointed to his chest. “That’s my job.” And then he pulled out his cell phone and flipped it sideways. “Now raise your head and smile for the camera.”

  Nathan shut his eyes as soon as the bulb flashed and cursed to himself.

  “My wife will get a kick out of this. She was never all that fond of you or that fiancée of yours from what she used to read,” said Joe. He stared down at the picture on his phone for a few seconds and laughed before stuffing it back inside his pocket. “I heard you telling the other one that Vanessa is supposed to be coming by here later to bail you out.”

  “She’s the only other person I’d be willing to see.”

  “Yeah, alright kid. If she chooses to show up” – Joe opened his hands – “I’ll let you know.”

  Seconds later, Nathan was left completely alone.

  He walked back over to the bars and slipped his arms through them again. Bending forward, he closed one hand around his fist and began to wonder if maybe life would in fact be easier if after marrying Sheila, they went back to California just as she had been begging him to do from the moment they stepped f
oot back in the city.

  Maybe getting the hell away from everyone again would be exactly what they both needed. Maybe he could even force himself to be truly happy with her, love her as she always wanted, as she always hoped that he could if they just got back out like they had before.

  Maybe this time, he could put in some real effort and show her with more than just his words, which after a while meant nothing to either one of them, that all the years she spent loving him despite his pining for someone else were not wasted. Maybe then he could finally give her the kind of life she deserved.

  And maybe, just maybe, in the midst of it all, he could actually start to appreciate her worth as his woman.

  Part Twenty-Two

  While lying back in the arms of a man she wasn’t sure she loved yet, but was certain that she could, Sheila raised her hand high above her head and stared long and hard at the diamond on ring finger from a man she was certain she still loved, but was certain by now would never love her back the same.

  As she rubbed her thumb back and forth across the diamond and stared at the memory of that ring, and how she initially felt in receiving it, Adrian reached out his hand and wrapped it around her wrist. Bringing her hand down to his face, she enclosed her fingers around his thumb and turned to look into his eyes.

  But as he pulled his brows together, he kept his eyes on her hand, and that ring.

  “I have to tell you something,” he said.

  Sheila started to panic again as his voice seemed to darken and the whites of his eyes turned red. She shifted in the bed beside him and though she tried to appear completely calm at his actions, she could feel every other beat of her heart racing to keep up with the speed of her pulse. Her insides threatened to rip apart at the thought of him telling her the one thing she dreaded hearing the most after sex with a man who had first cared for someone else – that someone in question being Vanessa.

  “What is it?” she asked him, her voice rattling against the beat of every word. She cleared her throat to feel more at ease but it seemed to make her that much more worried about what he had planned to say next.

  “This doesn’t exactly feel all that right to me, Sheila.” His tone was solemn, honest.

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  He held up her hand and stroked a thumb across the gold band. “It doesn’t seem as if you should still be wearing this whenever I’m inside you.”

  Now feeling reassured that he had no desire to jump out of bed in that very moment to be someplace else, with someone else, she pulled her face back into a wide smile and shook her head against the pillow. “It’s not as if you gave me much time to remove it,” she said. “Maybe the first time, but--”

  “I don’t think you should be wearing it anymore at all,” he told her. “What does it mean anymore? You’re not committed to Nathan anymore, or what you have and neither is he. Otherwise, he’d be here in this bed beside you instead of me.”

  “He was put in jail last night.”

  “You’re saying that if he wasn’t he’d still be here?”

  She ripped her hand from his and sat up in the bed. Covering herself with the sheet, she sat back against the headboard and focused her eyes across the room.

  Feeling the sudden tension, Adrian sat up as well and dropped his hands to his lap. He looked over at her but she refused to turn her head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know all that much about your relationship aside from what you’ve told me and from what I’ve seen for myself.”

  “And aside from what Vanessa has told you.” She tucked her hair behind her ear in annoyance and clasped her hands together.

  “Once again, Vanessa’s being brought into a conversation in which she wasn’t invited.”

  “What?”

  “She has nothing to do with what we’re discussing, Sheila. Even when I tell you about it, you still manage to bring her up during times when she’s not needed, or frankly, wanted in the room – especially during times like this when what we’re discussing should be about the two of us and --”

  “And Nathan,” she replied.

  He dropped his hand to the bed and slapped it against the mattress, aggravated. “Yes, and Nathan.”

  She scrunched her face. “Why are you getting so pissy with me when you’re the one that started this entire conversation by telling me that wearing my ring during sex with you didn’t feel right?”

  “I’m not getting pissy.” He turned at an angle to face her, but she still refused to look at him. He ran his hands up and down both sides of his face, then wiped each one across his mouth and breathed out. “I don’t think you should be wearing that ring during sex with me, Sheila, because it represents something that you thought you had with him. It doesn’t make me feel all that great to know that while you’re calling out my name, while I’m giving every piece of pleasure to your body that you’ve ever sought from another man but had yet to find until me, that he still has the ability to claim you as his own.”

  “He hasn’t claimed me for a long time,” she said.

  “The ring says otherwise.” He reached for her hand again and stroked his fingers back and forth across it, then slid one finger around the band and spun the diamond around until it was facing her palm. “You say that he hasn’t claimed you for a long time, and I believe that. But how do you think as a man that he would feel in knowing that you were wearing it while we were--”

  “Making love without the love part of it?” she asked, in part to get beneath his skin.

  He dropped his chin and looked to the bed. “Yeah.”

  She lifted her hand and stared down at the diamond again. It was the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. A hell of a lot more beautiful that the relationship it was born from.

  “He’d probably be pissed. Which is what…” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye, then stopped. “Which is what I assumed last night when I thought about telling him if he ever came back to the hotel.”

  “You were going to tell him last night that we slept together?”

  She nodded. “But after learning that he had gotten arrested, and why, I realized that it was probably better not to say anything just. Even if he no longer claims me on his lips, I’m still left wearing his ring.”

  Adrian thought about that for a moment, then slid his fingers around that band one more time and lightly jerked it back and forth against her finger.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  After finally removing the ring and placing it on the nightstand beside him, he wrapped his hand around hers and held it tight.

  “If he doesn’t claim you on his lips,” he said, “he sure as hell shouldn’t be allowed to claim you with that.”

  “So what am I supposed to do then?”

  “That’s your call, Sheila. I can tell you what I want. I can tell you what I think you should do in order to secure your happiness and escape the misery you’ve been living in with him for the last five years. But what I say doesn’t carry a hell of a lot of weight – it doesn’t matter much unless it’s what you want to.”

  “Is what you want…?” she started, nervous. “Is what you want…?” She stopped again, too afraid to continue, and closed her eyes.

  Adrian slid a finger beneath her chin and lifted her head. “Look at me,” he commanded. Slowly, her lids peeled back and her nose started to swell as tears formed behind her eyes. “I want you. And I’m going to keep wanting you. I don’t give a damn what you’ve done before, where you’ve been before. We’ve all done shit we wished we could take back. We’ve all been people we wish we never were. But that doesn’t take away from who we are now. Who you were back then doesn’t take away from the woman I see right now, today, in this bed with me. A woman I could love if she really gives me the chance she claimed that she would.”

  As tears streamed her face, she wiped them back. “I’m still willing to give you that chance, to give this a chance. But I’m going to need some time. If he gets out t
oday, I can’t just break things off with him the moment I see him. We’ve been together too long for that and were friends even longer.”

  Adrian removed his hand from her face and moaned. He wasn’t thrilled, but he was willing to wait if that’s what it took.

  “I can give you time,” he said. “But what I can’t give you is any more space.”

  He reached a hand behind her head and pulled her to his mouth, displaying an urgent need to feel her again, to know that what they had was becoming real, more real than he initialed imagined or even wanted.

  After a few deep kisses, he removed the blankets from his lap and positioned her on top of him again.

  Part Twenty-Three

  After the meeting with Melanie essentially blew up in her face – and across her hand – Nikki frantically raced back to William’s hoping to hide out before the news of what she had done to the wife of the man she was once again sleeping with reached the press.

  And more importantly, the producers and other actors of the play. She had worked too damn long and hard to earn the position of a lead in a respected Broadway production to have it thrown away by being so stupid in actually assaulting someone, who wasn’t just anyone.

  Of all the things she had ever done, the one thing she couldn’t believe she had managed to follow through with was raising an actual hand to strike hard across Melanie’s face. Despite everything she was going through, she knew that she couldn’t even use the excuse that she had the right to do it, considering out of the two of them, she was the one who more than likely deserved to be slapped – and hard, a few times, for continuing to screw around with not only one man who happened to be married, but two, despite the other being happily divorced.

  It was only fitting, she thought, that just as she was reaching new heights in career notoriety that even her parent’s never achieved, that her personal life would begin to take a nosedive straight down into the damn gutter.

  When she finally reached the block leading to William’s townhouse, she searched around in her bag for the set of keys she needed to get inside, never noticing as she approached the stoop that someone had been sitting there the entire time waiting for her imminent return.