His groan has me immediately sitting up and wiping my tears away, straightening my face out. I’m trying to get strong enough and cursing myself for acting like I had.
“‘Leeth, not looth meh.” His smile makes his dry lips crack, and he winces. I go to stand up but his frail hand grabs mine, rooting me to my spot. My blue eyes meet, locking on his blue-on-red ones. “Not looth me. Neba looth meh, ‘Leeth.” His hand slips from my arm and he smiles again, cracking his poor dry lips even more, but he seems too tired to notice.
His eyes flutter closed again a few seconds later. As I watch him in the silence, his breathing evens out. Finally, my tight muscles and rigid frame relax. I fall face-first on the two-seater couch and lie there with my head turned facing Leo and do what I’ve done for three months.
I watch the man I love sleep.
Annalise
I could call this last month one of the hardest of my life. I could and I would also get away with doing so.
But when you’ve had months in your life, hits that you take, like I have, this is nothing more than a beautiful struggle.
It’s been over a month since Leo had the seizure that threw him into cardiac arrest, that spurred the doctors to defibrillate and administer enough epinephrine directly into his heart, jarring him from his unconsciousness, slapping him from his drug-overdose-induced coma.
The morning after his seizure, he woke up just like the rest of the world, grunting that he was hungry, and growling when I attempted to step away from his side to shower or use the restroom.
He’d almost chewed his tongue in half during the seizure, so for the first few days, his S’s were shot and his speech was so fat-tongued and slurred that I had to try very hard to keep the grin off my face.
I was so happy having him back, though, that I miserably failed to hide my happiness. But when Josh bounced in that morning asking, “What’s up, pussy?” and Leo responded with, “Thuck my thick, bith,” I couldn’t. I just could not contain it. I was a laughing, snorting hot mess. Giddiness unlike anything I’d felt since I was a little girl skipped through me entirely.
The following two weeks were hard, I won’t deny that. It’s very difficult to watch the man you love, a man who has always been larger than life, struggle to do something as simple as push a button to raise the head of his hospital bed.
The physical therapy alone was ungodly. The rigorous tasks began as nothing more than Leo lifting his hand from the bed or the PT therapist laying him on his stomach and asking him to raise his foot two inches off the bed. Leo was unable to do even these simple things at first. Watching the man you love as weak as a newborn? THAT was difficult, and that was only as a person on the sidelines.
My heart had been shattered by this man more times than I could count.
Now it shattered a billion more for him.
Oh, my. I don’t even want to get started on the whole catheter thing.
He bitched for days, making promises to the doctors and nurses that I would help him use some male urine catcher, just because he had to have his catheter removed, only for him to blatantly lie to the nurses for thirty-six hours that he had indeed pissed while I looked at him wide-eyed, knowing what was coming..
Was it funny when he woke up pissing in bed? NO. It was hilarious. Especially when the nurses put the catheter back in and he had over 2000 cc’s of urine in the catheter bag before they’d even taped and secured it to his leg.
“I told you so,” never fell from my lips. He knew. There was no need for me to ever tell him so.
So, now here we are. No…here HE is, a month later, all walking, using the restroom, and eating without help. He’s nowhere near the man he was before last April, but he is light-years from where he was thirty-five days ago.
“So, Gramps, you give my job away, old man?” Leo asks, walking into his hospital room from his fourth daily PT walk. The therapist only ordered two daily walks, but Leo says that that’s for the smaller patients, and since he’s not small...
“Hell yeah I did. The hell you ‘spect me to do? Damn business hasn’t seen your ass—your sober ass—in over six months, boy.” Leo’s gramps smiles before finishing. “My VP’s prostate took him into early retirement though. So there may be some positions available and ready for ya. ‘Lise, when is he bustin’ outta here?”
My sip of cappuccino goes down the wrong pipe from being yanked into this serious conversation. After I cough and sputter, I regain my composure and answer, “Umm…from what the doctors have told us”—I look to Leo and he nods for me to continue—”hopefully before the week is over. But, Gramps”—I shake my head—”he isn’t anywhere close to being able to work yet.”
“Damn, woman. I’m not gonna toss him in a office the day he gets out. But I at least need to get an idea of the kinda time frame we’re lookin’ at.”
My eyes are on Leo, watching him for any reaction. He isn’t giving me anything though. I look down into my cappuccino before whispering, “I just want Leo better. That’s all I was saying. Sorry, Gramps. I didn’t mean it to sound like that’s what I—.”
“‘Lise.” Leo’s stern voice cuts me off in my bumbling attempt to apologize.
All of this seriousness has my hands trembling. I don’t like being around stern voices. I really don’t being in the middle of this. I know Leo doesn’t know this. Hell, he hardly knows anything at all about me. I grasp my hands in my lap to hide their shaking.
He pats the bed beside him. “Come here.”
When I get near his side, he reaches out and pulls me almost in his lap. He tucks me up so close to him. Glancing up into his eyes before quickly looking back down, I whisper nervously, “Hey.”
“‘Lise, I know it’s hard for you, but I don’t need you worrying about me. You gotta stop that, babe.”
A chair squeaks then. His Gramps says, “Need a smoke. Be back. Give y’all a minute.” He softly closes the door behind him.
Leo slides his arm under my hair and hooks his elbow around my neck to bring his lips to my forehead before whispering against it, “I’ve never had a girl like you before, never loved anyone like I love you. This is new for me, ‘Lise. I only remember pieces of the months before I took all those fucking pills, but the pieces I remember are all you babe. When I was lost in nothing but thick darkness swallowing me whole, the only light I had was your voice telling me you were there and that you weren’t leaving me. That’s the only thing that got me through. You’re the only thing that got me through.”
Warm tears began falling from my eyes after he’d said, ‘I’ve never had a girl like you.’ And with every word after, they just fell faster and faster. I don’t even know what to make out of his words. I keep flipping them around in my head like puzzle pieces. “Leo? I don—”
“Shh…” His big hands cup my face, his thumbs wiping away my tears while my eyes search his for anything. “I’m not sure what I did to fuck up so much. Not surprised… It’s kinda what I do.” He chuckles before brushing his lips against mine. “I’m gonna fix it though, ‘Lise. If you let me. If you help me. I know I can’t do a damn thing in this world without you. Just…please don’t leave me. Promise me you’ll never leave me.”
Sobs crawl from my soul when I finally hear the handful of words I’ve always hoped but never expected to hear from him. And I don’t care why or how. I just grab on to him for dear fucking life.
Brokenly through my sobs I promise him, “I’ll never ever leave you, Leo. I love you far too much to ever leave you. I swear—”
His mouth is crashes against mine in a hungry, urgent, fierce kiss that makes me lose any other thought. Everything but this man vanishes. I let him consume me, allowing him to ease away all the pain and guilt I’ve endured for months.
I don’t want to know why. I never want to know why. Because I don’t care. I have him, all of him. For the very first time since I met Leo Phillips, he finally, wholly belongs to me.
A week and a half later, Leo is discharged from the hospital. And
I walk into my…our apartment for the first time in almost five months.
Josh has been so wonderful. He moved Leo’s tall chest of drawers into my…our room. And he had Candy wash and fold all of Leo’s clothes and put them away. All of Leo’s other stuff, the things I already had, was sold, the cash left on the coffee table. Well, what was left over from Candy’s grocery shopping she did for us the day before we came home.
And that is the moment in time that I am Leo’s and he is truly mine.
I don’t know if it happened in one of the four times he coded and was resuscitated for over thirty minutes during those first few nights after he was hospitalized. I don’t know if she was dislodged from his memory during those nightly seizures he had during that first month or if she was wiped from his memory while he seized at the same time she was sent home with her new baby girl and her happy husband.
I do know that she lost him somewhere in that span of time.
And I know more than anything that I will never let him hear her name again and I’ll never, for as long as I live, let Leo go…
Leo
FUCK! Don’t ask what the hell I did in my past life to deserve ‘Lise. If you start asking questions, I can promise you’re not gonna want to hear the answers.
I know enough to know by the one carat diamond solitaire I found in my boxer drawer that somewhere, even though I was fucking high out of my goddamn mind, somewhere I knew she was the one.
I found the ring on the day we got home from the hospital. I asked her to marry me in the kitchen that night while she was stirring the oregano into the spaghetti sauce.
That was almost three months ago.
With just a few of our friends and some of my family, right in the middle of a Rose garden, on the grounds of The Rose Center, I’m standing under a gazebo, ready to marry my ‘Lise.
When I first see Annalise at the other end of the aisle, something cracks inside my chest. I don’t understand the pain, and for a second, I wonder if it’s an anxiety attack. My heart’s pounding like a drum and my skin breaks out into a cold sweat. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.
Then her eyes meet mine, immediately soothing away the ache, replacing all of my anxiety with calmness.
She’s fuckin’ beautiful. Her dark blond hair is pinned up with pieces falling down around her face and neck. Her dress is off white, sleeveless, short—hitting above the knees in the front—with a long train billowing behind her. Fuck yeah, just like Axel’s girl. You know who I’m talking about.
And she sparkles… DAMN, does my girl sparkle. The mid-morning sun bounces, reflecting off of her. She looks angelic. I’m the luckiest son of a bitch alive and I know it. How did I ever deserve this girl? I’ll never know, but I plan on spoiling the shit out of her for the rest of her life.
“Hey,” she mouths to me when she reaches me.
I don’t give a fuck about the rules or what I’m not supposed to do. I grab ‘Lise up, both of my arms wrapping tight around her waist, and I whisper, “Goddamn it, baby. You’re so fuckin’ beautiful.” Then I plow the hell outta her mouth with mine.
Yes, I’m mauling my wife-to-be, picking her up like a caveman, growling and fucking her mouth with mine in front of God, the priest, and everyone else.
Hell no I don’t give a fuck. And neither does ‘Lise.
This girl loves me more than I have ever been loved, more than any man in the history of time has ever been loved by a woman.
Yep. I told you—luckiest son of a bitch alive.
Soon after the short ceremony, we have a small party by the fountains in the rose garden. Annalise continues to steal my breath away even hours later under the sparkling lights hanging from the magnolia trees and roses bushes as they dance across her tan skin, navy eyes, and shimmering gown.
“What did I do?” I ask as soon as ‘Because You Loved Me’ by Celine Dion starts spilling from the hidden speakers around the glass-covered fountain pool we are dancing on.
Confusion makes her brows furrow. “What did you do? What’s that supposed mean, Leo?”
“I just keep asking myself that over and over, and I can’t find a reason. I don’t know how or what I did to get you, much less get to keep you.” I shake my head, trying to clear my mind of these stupid, pointless thoughts right before I crush my mouth against hers and plow my fingers into the hair she has pinned up.
I feel her knees buckle under her, but I keep her standing with my arm locked around her waist and my knee between her legs rubbing her under the front of her short gown. “Leo…” It’s a plea, a beg, one I’m more than happy to grant.
I grab her hands and pull her away from the crowd. When I get her far enough away, I scoop her little ass up and jog towards the limo.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here, ‘Lise” I look up at the driver and jerk my head towards the car. “Come on, man. I gotta get between my wife’s legs, and if you don’t hurry, I can’t promise I won’t take Mrs. Annalise Phillips for the first time as my wife in the back seat of your limo, dude.”
He has the car door open and a smirk on his face. “You got it, Mr. Phillips. But please, just hold off until we get to the Chateau Suites downtown.”
“Like I said, you better hurry.” I slam the door shut and my mouth over ‘Lise’s at the same time.
He barely made it, screeching to a halt in the front of the sliding glass doors of Chateau Suites. ‘Lise had already cum on my hand twice and was frustratingly trying to free my cock when the car stopped.
Her navy eyes blink up before she scans her surroundings. She blushes as she slides off my lap then starts crossing her legs and clenching her thighs, keeping her eyes down until the limo door opens.
“Babe, your cum soaked the first three inches of my tux sleeve. Own up to it. You’re a sexy fucking sex bomb that really needs my ten inches.” I nip her collarbone before whispering against her ear, “Fucking every goddamn inch of me wants inside you, ‘Lise.”
She moans quietly right before I grasp her hand to hurry her up to our suite.
Annalise and I make love like our lives depend on it, and afterward we fuck even harder than we made love.
When the beast inside me takes over, she submits, wholly and without question. She allows me to hold her life in the balance as I stab into her over and over. My energy is never spent; my body never tires. It’s almost as if I keep trying to reach something, yet unable to capture it and never tiring of attempting to obtain it either.
It dawns on me as the sun is rising that that is exactly what I’m doing while drilling into my new wife’s unconscious body… I’m reaching for something that hovers just outside my consciousness. I know it’s there, and for some sick, twisted reason, I can only ever catch snippets of its existence while I’m buried inside Annalise… Or more specifically, when I’m hurting Annalise while slamming balls deep into her.
What scares me the most is that I know. Somewhere I know in my fucking soul that it doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with Annalise.
I sigh, pulling myself from her and rolling onto my back. I cover my eyes with the crook of my elbow to block out the brightness of the morning sun.
And just like every other damn night I’ve tried in vain to chase this thing, using ‘Lise to get me close enough to it…I see her again. She’s the epitome of love and hate, the complete essence of elation, happiness, and decimating agony. She’s both the nameless love of my life as well as the annihilation of the peace my soul constantly and instinctually continues to seek.
A surreal feeling of warmth and coming home blankets me. And in my mind, I look up and catch a pair of the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. The smell of apples and lemons saturates my mind as her long blond waves create a curtain around us before she leans over, straddling my waist, and whispers so softly that I can barely hear it over the sound of my mind screaming at me how important this woman is.
I hardly can make out her words before I slip into the sleep that’s fighting to con
sume me, yet still I hear her, see her face crumble in devastation and familiar pain when she whispers, “You told me you would never leave me. You promised that I was the only one. Yet I see now that I am not, and I also see exactly what I always knew you’d end up doing. You left me. You hurt me… Why?” Her tears slide down her beautiful face, falling but never landing on my skin. “What did I do? Why did you leave me, your firecracker?”
On a choked sob, she slips away with her parting words lingering. “What did I ever do to deserve the pain you’ve left me with?”
Annalise and I have been married… I can’t say happily married, nor can I say unhappily married. You know what the fuck I’m saying… We’ve been married for five years.
Our first year… No, our first three years of marriage I can easily say were some of the best years of my life. However, Annalise wants a baby, and I’m not sure why, but that is a serious hard limit for me and I make damn sure she fucking knows it.
That doesn’t stop her from lying about her birth control or the pill disks I’ve found full of unused pills stashed away during the first few years of our marriage.
Sadly, even the seven miscarriages she’s endured doesn’t stop her from trying to get pregnant either.
Hard. Limit. Meaning NO GO. Am I the only asshole in the room here? Who the fuck wants to get pregnant by a man who doesn’t, never has, and never will want children? Fucking who? Tell me.
Anyway, like I said… We’ve been married for five years.
Over last six months, the only thing that has changed in our lives was Gramps passing away. Three days later, to the fucking hour, the minute, so did Grands.
While cleaning out Gramps’s house, I came across more than a thousand letters written in the ‘60s, all from and to Grands.
Holding Her in Madness Page 15