Forever We Fall

by Chloe Walsh

  Instead, I used every penny of our savings to pay those same doctors to keep him alive, to keep his heart beating and his lungs filling, and when the money ran out I sold the house, the cars, my jewelry and every spare stitch of clothing, electrical item and piece of furniture we could survive without.

  When the sale of the house in South Peak Road went through, for less than half of what it was worth, I returned with my daughter to the only piece of property David hadn’t been able to take from Kyle; the house in Thirteenth Street, with two measly suitcases in my hands and Derek Porter by my side, a silent rock to cling to as we faced an unknown and terrifying future. Help had come in the form of my mother who had cared for Hope while I sat at Kyle’s bedside for months on end without the slightest flicker of hope, with only the memories of my husband’s voice to keep me company and the rising swell of my stomach to keep my faith alive.

  “Think of your children,” the doctors had begged me. “You have no medical insurance to cover the cost of his care. You’re banking your life savings on a man who will never wake up.”

  “He’s gone, Mrs. Carter,” the nurses had whispered. “It’s been four months. Let your husband go. It’s the kindest thing for him. I’m sure he wouldn’t want this for you.”

  “There is no hope,” they’d all told me. “He will never wake up.”

  I told them they were wrong. So very wrong.

  I risked it all. Everything I had.

  I bet all our money on Kyle Carter.

  And I won.

  The night his fingers twitched, five and a half months after the attack, I’d been bursting with exultation. And then, three days later, when he wiggled his toes my heart had soared. Eight more days had passed before he opened his eyes, and when he finally spoke, “Shh, baby, I got you,” those words alone pieced all my broken parts back together.

  I went into labor a week later, and when I was brought down to theatre for my C-section Kyle was right by my side, propped in a wheelchair, with his hand securely in mine, spreading warmth, love and comfort through my body as our three sons made their entrance into the world . . .

  And six weeks later, when I was finally allowed to bring my three tiny babies home, Kyle Carter defied all odds, and shocked and shamed the hell out of every medical professional in St. Luke’s Hospital, when he walked from the hospital with a car-seat in each hand. The man who had been given no hope, absolutely no chance of survival, had raised his middle finger to the whole damn world and had, in his own words, ‘fucked the odds.’

  We returned to Thirteenth Street, to where it all began for us. To a home void of luxury and bursting to the seams with love. It was there, up to our eyeballs in medical bills and debt, with four children under the age of two in tow, that Kyle and I faced our greatest challenge of all; keeping afloat.

  The first year was the hardest, and there had been times when I broke down from the pressures of parenting four babies while Kyle worked all the hour’s god gave him to pull us back from the brink of bankruptcy. He worked four jobs, eighteen hour days, and we scraped by, just about kept our heads above water.

  My mother was a godsend during those early years, arriving each week armed with boxes of diapers and formula and fresh cuts of meat. I knew it killed Kyle to accept my mother’s handouts and Derek’s ‘back-rent,’ and any night that he came home from work and saw a steak on the table, instead of our budgetary meal of beans on toast, a little piece of his pride died.

  When the children started school, I took a part-time cleaning job at the local library to help cover school expenses and two years later, the night before the boys seventh birthday, Kyle had his first brainstorm . . .

  It was freezing cold and we’d turned the radiators off in our bedroom to lower our already over-due heating bill, using only the radiators in the children’s bedrooms. My teeth chattered as I snuggled against Kyle’s warm body. “I don’t want this life for you,” he whispered as we lay wrapped in each other’s arms. “I promised you more. You deserve better than this. You and the kids. You should have pulled the goddamn plug when you the chance. At least you and the kids would’ve had a decent life . . .”

  “Don’t Kyle,” I begged as I placed a kiss on his chest. “Please don’t talk like that.”

  “I’ve let you down, Lee,” he insisted.

  Throwing off the bedcovers, Kyle jumped out of bed and started to pace. “You’re freezing and I can’t fucking make you warm,” he hissed, his voice torn with pain. “Hope needs new tennis shoes for gym class and I can’t afford to buy her a pair. The boys can’t join the local soccer team because I can’t fucking pay the registration fees and I am hanging onto this house by the skin of my teeth.” Sinking down on the foot of the bed, he choked out, “I’m sinking like a goddamn stone, Lee, and I’m taking all of you down with me.”

  Silently I climbed out of bed and went to him. His slumped shoulders broke my heart, the exhaustion I saw when I looked at his face shredded me, and I wished more than anything that I could tell him something that would take all of his worries away.

  “I love you, Kyle Carter,” I whispered as I knelt in front of him. “Things are hard for us now, but that doesn’t mean they’ll always be.” I squeezed his knees, willing him to hear me, to know I wouldn’t change a second of my life. I had him. That was enough for me and it always would be. “I have such faith in you,” I whispered. “Someone once told me that given the chance, you were going to show the world what you’re made of . . .” Something clicked inside of my brain, something I’d forgotten about many years ago. “Oh my god,” I hissed, feeling incredibly angry with myself for forgetting. “I have something that belongs to you.”

  “What?” he asked when I dropped to my knees and crawled under our bed. “Lee, what the fuck are you doing, baby?”

  “I was supposed to give this to you years ago,” I mumbled, coughing from the dust mites. “I can’t believe I forgot . . . She said I would know when the time was right.”

  “Who?” Kyle asked in a curious tone.

  “Linda,” I replied as I reached out and grabbed the old duffel bag, I had years since forgotten about and dragged it out. Sitting on the floor, I unzipped the bag and tipped the contents out on the floor in front of me. My eyes locked on the old brown folder and I sighed in relief. For a moment I’d been afraid I’d lost it.

  “Linda gave this to me a few months before she died,” I told him as I picked up the folder and handed it to him. “She said . . .” I paused as I strived to remember what she’d told me. “She told me to keep this safe for you,” I whispered as I watched Kyle’s reaction carefully. He sat frozen on our bed with the folder in her hands. “She said you weren’t ready for what was inside, but I would know when you were . . .” Clasping my hands together, I let out shuddering sigh. “I think you’re ready.”

  Opening the folder with shaky hands, I watched as Kyle skimmed over page after page of god knows what. His eyes lit up with every page and curiosity burned inside of me. “Well?” I asked after a few minutes when I couldn’t take anymore. “What is it?”

  “She knew,” he whispered. “She must have known he’d fuck me over.” He shook his head and chuckled sadly before handing me the folder. “She was warning me, Lee . . . About eight years too late.” My heart sank. Linda had foreseen it all and I had kept the information from Kyle. . . .

  Standing up, Kyle walked over to our bedroom window and drew back the curtains. “She had a feeling David was going to launch an attack on me. She wrote a detailed report on each member of staff . . . their loyalties . . . My rights. Her way of helping me—protecting me—when she knew she wouldn’t be there anymore.” Gripping the window sill with his hands, he stared out into the black sky. “She said I was to fight him.” Dropping his head, he sighed heavily. “That he would try to break me.”

  “We’ve been broken before, Kyle.” I whispered, forcing my tone to sound light and easy. “You know what they say: united we stand, divided we fall
. . .” Shrugging, I added, “At least we’re together. We break, we build . . . the same as we’ve always done . . .”

  “Yeah, we break, we build . . .” his voice trailed off as his head snapped up. Turning around, Kyle gaped at me. “That’s it,” he whispered. “We break, we build. That’s it.” He shook his head. “United they stand, divided they fall. That’s fucking it.”

  Staring down at me with a look of pure astonishment on his face, I watched as a tiny glimmer of the man I’d fallen in love with breathed life into the shell of a man he’d become. Hoisting me to my feet, he kissed my forehead and grinned. “You’re a goddamn genius, princess.”

  “I am?” I shook my head and stared blankly up at his face. “Wait, divided who falls?”

  “I gotta go,” he muttered as he kissed me quickly before grabbing the folder and rushing from our room. “I need to go write this down.”

  That night and every night that followed for months, while everyone else was in bed, Kyle sat at the kitchen table scribbling furiously on the children’s old copybooks, the cardboard from cereal boxes, the back of his hand, and pretty much every available surface he could get his hands on. In all those months he never once told me what he was doing and I, in turn, had never asked. I dutifully set aside notepads and pens before I went to bed each night, and every morning, just before the sun rose, Kyle would crawl into bed, make love to me with a fervor that never dwindled, and rest for a few short hours before leaving for work. Whatever he was doing had brought a spring to Kyle’s step, set alight a fire in his belly that had been missing for far too long.

  Finally, six months later, Kyle woke me in the middle of the night and showed me what he’d done . . .

  “What do you think?” Kyle asked nervously as he hovered behind me, clearly anxious.

  I sat at the kitchen table in my threadbare dressing gown, with my mouth hanging open and my heart hammering inside of my chest. “You want to take them back.” It was a statement more than a question as I gazed down in sheer amazement at the extensive plans, proposals and information that lay on the table in front of me. “You want to fight back, Kyle?”

  “I know it’s crazy,” he muttered as he sank down on the chair beside me. “And probably the most fucking insane thing I’ll ever do, but it’s not impossible, and if you’ll back me on this . . .” Taking my hand in his, he stared into my eyes. “Lee, if you support me on this I swear I won’t let you down again. I promise I’ll give you a good life, one I’ve earned.”

  “It’s not crazy,” I whispered, clutching his hand as excitement bubbled inside of me. “And you weren’t born to follow in anyone’s footsteps, Kyle Carter. You were born to forge your own path.” I smiled up at his beautiful face. “This is your path. Of course I support you.”

  “I won’t do this if you don’t want me to,” he vowed, honesty pouring from his words. “You have the final say on this, baby. You need to know that this is a huge motherfucking risk. We could lose everything. The house . . . everything.”

  “A risk we’ll take together,” I told him. “I think it’s time you took back what’s always been yours.” I smiled darkly. “You’ve done your homework, Kyle Carter. I’m impressed,” I purred. “Your father won’t know what hit him.”

  “I know, Princess,” Kyle chuckled as he leaned over my shoulder. He pressed a soft kiss on my head before whispering in my ear, “This is my plan.”

  “It’s about damn time,” I giggled as happy tears trickled down my cheeks. “I’ve missed your plans.”

  Kyle fought hard and he fought dirty. He worked like a Trojan, rarely slept, and every single day that passed his confidence grew, his belief in his abilities soared as he came closer to executing his plan–to overthrow his father and expose his dishonesty. I remained faithfully by his side throughout, offering him solace in times of darkness, support when his confidence took a battering, and . . . well, me.

  It took three more years, re-mortgaging the house to pay our attorney fees, four bank loan refusals, one bank loan approval, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears to execute the takeover. But finally, after a long and tedious court battle, on his thirty-fourth birthday, ten years after he’d been cheated out of his inheritance, Kyle Carter returned to the helm of—what was left—of the Henderson Hotel Chain and it was business as usual.

  David was not impressed and, needless to say, sent us plenty colorful letters from his jail cell, where he was serving thirteen years for tax fraud and extortion, to express his outrage. I dutifully responded to each one of his letters with a letter of my own. Of course I didn’t feel the need to write a long and monotonous letter explaining my husband’s actions, preferring instead to use one simple word; ‘Meow,’ before sealing each envelope with a big fat kiss.

  Linda had been right when she said Kyle had his grandfather’s golden touch, and I was witness to that golden touch when I watched my husband transform the two remaining hotels in New York and Boulder into healthy, profitable–very profitable—businesses once more. Kyle’s longtime friend and old wingman, Marcus Whiteman, was relocated to New York and, as a token of gratitude for his loyalty–and acute spying skills—to Kyle during the years David was in charge, Kyle signed the New York branch over to him, claiming the hotel in Boulder was more than enough for us to handle. Poaching Derek from the highly appraised Michelin star restaurant in Denver where he was head chef was the icing on the cake.

  Three months later, I quit my cleaning job at the local library and took up the role of Kyle’s right-hand woman in the hotel where I learned I had quite a flair for numbers and figures myself. With Kyle’s support and encouragement I found the courage to complete my education, and when I earned my degree in Accountancy from the University of Colorado, at the ripe old age of thirty-six, my husband stood in the crowd with tears in his eyes and a huge smile on his face.

  And so we remained on Thirteenth Street, choosing to raise our young family in the house our lives had fallen apart, and where they had been pieced back together more times than we cared to think about. Our home had ghosts—many of them—but it was exactly that. Home. Our home.

  The years passed by in a crazed, rushed, mind-blowing blur. Our four children transformed from high-spirited kids into raucous teenagers, some more rebellious than others—namely Cam—and Kyle and I adapted together. We learned to cope, learned to adjust and grow together. We still fought all the time. Angrily and vocally. But we always made up at the end of the day. That was a rule Kyle had reinforced after he’d spent three nights on the ‘spine crusher,’ when he’d suggested during our twelfth wedding anniversary dinner that it was time to have another baby. I didn’t take the suggestion too well and after a painfully embarrassing screaming match in the bar of the hotel—and three weeks of sleeping with sweatpants on—Kyle didn’t suggest it again. I did approve of his new rule. It was one of his best plans to date . . . Whenever we had a fight, or were upset with one another, we made up or stayed up. No going to bed angry and no sleeping apart. I liked that plan best. I always knew he was a clever man . . .

  Kyle received only one letter from Rachel Grayson after his visit. It came last June, on the eighteenth anniversary of Camryn Frey’s death. It was an apology. It was too late. The phone call he received later that day from the prison, confirming Rachel Grayson had hung herself in her cell that morning, came as no surprise. The news of her death brought with it no relief, no sadness, and truly no feeling at all. We had chosen a long time ago to focus only on the here and now . . .

  “Are you crying,” Kyle mumbled against my lips, stirring me from my reverie. “Why are you crying, Lee?”

  “I’m not . . . c-crying,” I blubbered, feeling mortified. “I’m happy.” Sniffling, I whispered, “These are happy tears.”

  Pulling back slowly, his eyes studied my face carefully. Blowing out a breath, he shook his head and smiled fondly. Placing me on my feet, he pulled me into a hug. “You’re such a crier.”

  “What the hell does
that mean?” I asked as I poked him in the belly. “I’m such a crier?” Walking over the door I called out, “Cameron, Colton, Logan and Hope, come down for your dinner.”‘

  “Not hungry,” all four voiced back in chorus.

  “You cry all the time,” Kyle laughed as he grabbed some plates from the press and started setting the table. “When I kiss you, when I hug you, when I fu . . .”

  “Don’t say it,” I warned him before shouting out, “Uncle Derek’s on the way with pizza.”

  “ . . . make love to you,” Kyle added smoothly as the sound of feet stamping on the staircase gave me the warning I needed to step back from the door. Seconds later all three of my boys barged into the kitchen with hopeful expressions of their faces.

  “Help your father set the table,” I told the boys as I passed Cam a bottle of soda from the fridge. “Kyle, I may cry sometimes, but that doesn’t make me a . . .”

  “You’re a crier, Mom,” all three of my boys laughed.

  “I rest my case,” Kyle said with a smirk as he folded his arms over his chest.

  The front door flew open and the sound of Derek’s voice calling out, “Honey, I’m home,” reverberated through the house.

  “I’m in here, cupcake,” Kyle shot back as he unfolded his arms and grinned the biggest shit-eating grin when his oldest friend stepped through the doorway of our kitchen, laden down with pizza boxes.

  “Uncle D,” the boys cheered in unison as they stalked towards Derek.

  “There’s a creepy old man out front, staking out the house,” Derek mumbled as he balanced the stack of pizza boxes under his chin.

  “Short, fat, gray haired with glasses?” Kyle asked as he took the pizza boxes out of Derek’s arms and placed them on the table. Derek nodded and Kyle roared, “Goddammit Colt, I told you to phone that girl.”

  “I did,” Colt protested his innocence. “But Cam didn’t,” he added with a snicker. “And Mr. Sullivan’s got one hell of a wife.”