Fucking thank FUCK my cell rang! I knew it was her. Even though she didn’t say a word, I knew it was my firecracker. I knew I wasn’t too late. I knew it was her calling me for help, calling because she finally needed me.
I will thank God every night of my life for that call… ‘Cause I had a motherfucking number.
In only twenty minutes, that abundant victory immediately gutted me, leaving in its wake nothing but bleak desolation.
Shit, y’all were there. You know what the fuck I saw when I walked in the bathroom of her hotel suite. Her beautiful head was lolled back, lying in a bathtub of bloody water, her skin so pale and white it was transparent. Fuck, I’ll never forget that shit. It’s imprinted in my brain, etched across my skull. It’s seared into the backs of my eyelids.
She had a blood clot smeared from behind her ear, stringing like a fuckin’ spider web to her shoulder.
As I pulled her out and screamed, “Fucking call 911!” I cradled her against me, brushing her hair away from her pale face, asking her, “Baby, baby? Fuck, what did you do? Why, Lil? You know I can’t fucking live without you! Why did you do this?”
After I bound her wrists in towels to slow her bleeding, I carried her to the bedroom and fell to floor with her cradled to me, rocking her back and forth as I ran my fingers through her hair, humming ‘Black Balloon’ into the cold, pale skin of her shoulder.
Thoughts were invading my self-preservation. This is all my fault. I know it fucking is. I shouldn’t have left her at home that Valentine’s Day night. I should have tried harder to reach her.
I knew I looked like a pussy crying into Lil’s hair and rocking her wet, blood-soaked body on the floor of the suite when the paramedics came in, but I didn’t give a fuck. She stopped breathing and I frantically tried to find her pulse. “Please, baby. Fucking please don’t leave me.”
“Sir, I need you to lay her on this stretcher,” one of the paramedics said, standing next to a gurney draped in a white sheet.
“Can I go with her? Can’t I just hold her?” Panic was crawling its way up my throat, mixing with bile.
“Sir, the faster we get her in the ambulance, the faster we can get her stable, and she needs that now. Right now.”
I didn’t realize I had Lil wrapped up with my gun in my hand.
“Yeah, sorry, man.” I sat the gun aside and carried my wife’s light and lifeless body to the stretcher, laying her down as sobs and tears escaped me right there in front of God and every other motherfucker in that room.
When I backed away, they swarmed around her, one pushing on her chest and another fitting a mask on her face, breathing for her. That’s when it hit me. I’ve lost her. She’d fucking needed me and I’d let her down, just like I’d known I would. Just like her dad had said I would. He’d been right. I’m not a good enough man for her. I never was.
No matter how much I fucking tried.
It just wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.
After the docs got her physically well enough to be moved to the psychiatric unit, she was admitted to The Center.
I knew then that my fate, my happiness, my fucking LIFE depended on being strong enough for her. Everything in our goddamned life depended on me stepping up and doing anything and everything I could to save my firecracker, be there for her, and make fucking sure she knew I was there and that I wasn’t leaving.
And I did.
I made fucking sure I was enough. I killed all those fuckin’ bitches in her head. I went through Hell for my fuckin’ firecracker and brought her back to life.
And now, even if I have to stay here in Hell for the rest of my life in order to keep her out, that’s what the fuck I’ll do. As a man, sometimes you just have to do what the fuck you have to do.
When you’ve been where I’ve been, seen the shit I’ve seen, and been shredded as many times as I have, there is no other option. Even if it means your life is hell. Even if it means from this point on, you are the one who carries all the weight and burden.
You fuckin’ do it because you love a woman, the only woman in this whole damn world. You do it because she’s your soul mate. And without her, YOU would rather be fucking dead.
Now, as Lil and I both said… Let’s end this where we began. That was my story. I didn’t fucking tell my story because I was seeking absolution, pity, or even understanding from you.
No… I told it because, even though it was difficult to tell and probably just as painful to hear, it still needed to be told. BOTH sides needed to be told.
I could give a fuck what you say about me. As a matter of fact, I fucking beg of you to judge me.
Persecute me.
Blame me.
Hell, fucking hang me.
Take me if an execution is needed because the two fools in love fell over and over again, unable to withstand the blows we took both together and alone.
Then take my fucking head.
But don’t you fucking ever, EVER, touch a goddamn hair on Lil’s head.
If I’m this much of a fucking bastard as mortal, I would hate—no, love—to see my immortal wrath obliterate you for fucking with MY firecracker.
Lil
I open my eyes and see my reason for living since I was sixteen years old lying with his head where our son both lived and died. And when I feel his tears soaking the gown covering my abdomen, my mind flashes back to that night over twenty years ago in his car.
And just like back then, both of his hands cup and pull my face to his, our tears mixing, our breath mingling, our souls once again combining as we stare into each other’s eyes.
“Hey,” I barely choke out.
Leo cradles my body to his before allowing himself to fall apart, whispering over and over, “I’m here… I gotcha, baby. I gotcha. And I’m never gonna let go again. Gonna fix you, baby. Swear to God, I’m gonna fix you, angel.”
I slide my weak arms around his neck and I feel my tears spill as my body shakes from my sobs.
I gotcha, baby. I gotcha. And I swear I’ll never let you go...
I killed myself on May 23, 2016. I passed the point of no return, and once you find yourself there, all alone, it drives you mad. Insanity and evil wait for you in the shadows of madness, and when you are within their reach, they make their move to steal your soul.
Leo saved my soul. He saved my life and he saved my soul
Leo fought me tooth and nail. He held my hand, and when I shoved him away and screamed at him to die and leave me the fuck alone, he let go of my hand only to grab me up and hold me tight against him, even while I struggled to get away. He held me until I would exhaust myself. And when I woke up, I was still in his arms—in his arms covered in bite and claw marks from my fighting. He remained with me no matter how ugly it got. He continued to fight for me, even if that meant he sometimes had to fight with me... He never stopped fighting.
After weeks of warring with anyone and everyone who tried to fix me I finally, thankfully, exhausted myself of fighting.
Only then did I realize all the voices were gone.
I’d gone mad.
But I’d come home.
Fighting like a wounded animal, Leo fought harder.
And he brought me back home.
I killed Lilith on May 23, 2016. And over the next six months, Leo brought me back from the brink of madness. He fought me and everything standing between me and my happiness like a man on the single mission of his life.
He fought me with passion and anger. He fought me with love and pain. He fought me tired and at his wit’s end, but he never stopped fighting.
Our story isn’t covered in fairy godmother dust. Lord knows I’m no fucking princess.
But I don’t care. That doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t get the prince because I never wanted the motherfucker. My eyes never left the knight. My knight in shining black armor. My Leo.
There isn’t a castle or a white horse. There is no grand closure with magical twists of fate that set everything just as it should be, wrappe
d in a perfect bow.
There is not a single real story that is.
And the reason for that is because real life isn’t scripted. There are no cue cards, no directions, no stages, and no characters who wipe off their makeup at the end before running home.
Life… Real life is a beautiful yet painful struggle. It’s a poetic pull and tug of smiles and tears, laughter and sobs.
Our story is a melodic collage of misery and bliss, pride and humiliation, hope and despair.
And this… This is a perfectly flawed mosaic created with the pieces of our shattered souls, the entwining of both our darkness as well as our light, laid out for you to see, from both his side and mine.
But most of all, this is the end of our Madness.
This is Our Ending
Five years later…
Leo
I sit watching over my steepled fingers as Bella and Lil fuss over some fucking lace, I know the look on my face is either shock from the confusion over whatever the fucking hell they’re getting so upset over or smirking like a cocky yet still confused bastard, showing just how little ANY lace is of importance to me.
Well, any lace that isn’t covering Lil’s sexy little ass.
I feel a slap on my back before it squeezes and lets go. Looking up, I see Nick standing beside where I sit with shocked horror crosses the features of his face.
“What in the fucking hell? Are they bitching over lace?”
I sigh and lean my elbows on my knees, running my hands up and down my face before letting them fall in between my knees. “Nicky, honestly I think this travesty was spurred by lace. Now…why? Don’t fucking ask me, man. I’m not Bella’s daddy. Hell, YOU raised her. You should know about lace more than I do.”
He laughs, shaking his head at me with a pointed knowing look on his ugly fucking mug. “All in good time, my friend. Besides, I didn’t do the dress up, prom/homecoming shit with Bells. Lil did that, not me.”
“Leo, which one?” Bella is looking up at me from across the room with two hands full of white lace. That’s all I fucking have, people! Two determining, certain factors. White. Lace. That’s all I see. I glance over at Lil and raise my right eyebrow for help.
Fuck, I love you, firecracker.
She lifts her left hand and makes an L with her thumb and forefinger.
“They’re both beautiful, Bells. But I’d have to say the one on the left, definitely.”
Her smile lights up the fucking room, just like her mother’s.
“Well played, rookie. Well fucking played.” Nick laughs loudly but it’s immediately cut off by Lil.
“HEY! Both of you! Stop it! Each and every one of us knows I can go toe-to-toe in an F-bomb war with a sailor, AND easily use it to not only as a noun, but a verb and adjective as well, but we”—she stands to her full five-foot-nothing stature before cocking an eyebrow and pointing her finger at me and Nick—”will NOT use it in church. It’s illegal!”
“Iweegaw!” Olivia’s chubby hand flies to cover her tiny mouth in mock scandal a little too hard and she ends up popping herself in the mouth.
My eyes are fucking glued on my baby girl.
Come on, Livvy. Where’s Daddy’s big girl at…?
Everyone else in the room is running around in the controlled chaos as I watch Livvy’s sapphire eyes water. Her chin quivers for one point two seconds before her toddler resolve steels and she blinks once, twice. Then my baby girl’s tears are all gone.
As Lil, ‘Lise, and Bella get what I thought was just lace pinned in Bella’s hair, I hear Nick heading towards the room’s exit, sighing and mumbling something about this day being one he’d hoped to miss.
Livvy stands up after taking the entire skirt of her dress and hiking it up over her shoulder, holding it like Santa’s sack, before her little three-year-old legs start walking to me. Her blond ringlets bounce on her head as she shakes a finger at me, holding her skirt all the way up with her other hand.
“Daddy! You not post to be iweegaw! Neber, eber! You hearin’ me?”
I look down, pretending to be ashamed until she’s in reach. When she’s close, I snatch her up around her waist to blow raspberries on her tummy then sit her on my lap, tucking her skirt down.
“Well for one, I wasn’t being illegal. That was your uncle Nicky. And two”—I lock eyes with her—”you, young lady, know you’re supposed to keep your skirt tail down.”
Her little brows furrow and she glances at the door Nick just walked out of. “I knowed it was Untle Nicky.” Then she drops her voice to a whisper. “And, Daddy, dis dwess is gonna kiwl me.” Her eyes grow as big as saucers, her face as serious as ever. “I dus know it will.”
My chuckle has Lil looking over at us and smiling. She’s so fucking beautiful it makes my goddamn chest ache.
I still don’t understand that riddle.
Why in moments like these, with my firecracker smiling so big it lights up the entire fucking room, glowing from the inside out from not only her radiance but carrying my son, does my heart still painfully ache?
Lil’s beauty still fucking takes my breath away. She’s happier than she’s ever been. We’re all truly happier than we’ve ever been. So why does my heart hurt when our happiness resonates so intensely in these moments?
I feel tears bite the backs of my eyelids and only realize Livvy is standing in my lap when I feel her tiny, chubby hands cup my jaw to pull my face to hers, locking eyes with mine. “Untle Awwen says don’t be scawed to be happy, Daddy.” She kisses my nose then blinks her eyelashes against mine, which are soaked in tears. “Da utter shoe won’t hurt you ‘cause dare is no utter shoe.” She smiles brightly at me then moves to get down from my lap. I stop her and hold her tight to me.
I kiss her sweet chubby cheek before I whisper in her ear, “Promise me, Livvy. Tell me you promise, baby girl.”
Still smiling brightly, she whispers, “I pwomise, Daddy… I pwomise.”
She hops down from my lap to go chase ‘Lise and Josh’s four-year-old little boy, Joshie Jr., around the room then out the door.
Katie and David walk in as Livvy and Joshie weave between their legs on their way out.
Katie rushes over to where the girls are and David comes over to where I’m sitting. I’m sorry. Call me fucking crazy, but this motherfucker still makes me nervous.
My spine stiffens and I sit up before leaning back and resting my left ankle on my right knee.
I clear my throat just as he begins to speak, and that causes me to cough, which in turn has David slapping my back hard.
“Didn’t expect you to be all choked up over Bells getting married, Leo.” He looks around the room. “Where is Nick anyway?”
“He ahh… He left a few minutes ago. Can’t be far.” I smile.
“And you? You all right?”
Shit! He fucking sits down next to me, dammit.
“Pretty good. I can’t complain.” I nod in Lil’s direction. “Feel a whole fuck of a lot better in a couple months though.”
David’s arm crooks around my neck before he pulls my head towards his and whispers, “Son, don’t you know it’s illegal to cuss in the Lord’s house?”
If this man had any idea that what the fuck he just said was indeed something I knew. Because not only my firecracker, but my Livvybell as well, made damn sure I knew just minutes ago.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that? Everyone knows that s-h-i-t, Leo.”
My eyebrows shoot up at hearing him spell ‘shit’ out. I sigh.”Yes, sir. You’re right. And I did know that.” I drag a hand down my face before sitting back and trying to relax with David so close to…well, me and the proximity of my fucking physical well-being.
I watch Lil as she leaves Bella in ‘Lise’s and Katie’s hands to make her way over to us. She hugs her daddy around her pregnant belly. “Hey, Daddy. How’ve you and Mom been?”
“We’re good, sweet pea.” He smiles and it reaches his eyes. “You look beautiful, Lil.” He nods towards Bella.
“Bella… Goodness gracious.” He shakes his head. “When the hell did she get so big?”
Lil and I exchange looks, but before we can say anything, Livvy has a finger pointing and shaking it at him. “Now, Paps, you knowed you not post to be bein’ iweegaw! My daddy knows that. My momma knows that. Don’t cha know no better den Untle Nicky, Paps?”
Laughter splits through the room, down the halls, and into the sanctuary where my wife, Lil, will give her daughter away with Nick standing there beside her.
Lil
“Son of a motherfucking BITCH!” I can’t breathe any harder, I’m fucking trying not to push but, “SHIT. FUCKING FUUUUCK!” Another contraction barrels its way through me.
Leo’s grip on my knee tightens and his foot pushes the gas pedal lower. “Baby, just breathe… Please just breathe. We’re almost there.”
A tortured cry leaves my mouth, turning into a laugh when the contraction ebbs away. “Oh, Leo. You’re so cute. What the hell do you think I’ve been doing? Not breathing? If I’m screaming, I’m breathing.” My head lolls resting back against the headrest. “I love you, Leo. So fucking much. I want you to know that, okay?”
His worried eyes glance at mine before going back to the road. “What the fuck does mean? Why are you saying shit like that, Lil?”
Before I can answer, the strength of my contraction is pulling and separating me from rational thought again, “FUUUCK! Shit. Fuck. Damn. Hell. Motherfucker!!”
“Wait, no… Go back. Come back, Lil. What the fuck were you talking about, baby?”
His grip tightens on my knee as my contraction eases up again.
“Baby, keep squeezing my knee. It makes the contraction go away, I think.” The labor unit nurse in me rolls her eyes and hangs her head in shame. “‘Kay. ‘Kay?” I grip his hand on my knee. “Just don’t stop. I’ll tell you what’s happening. Leo, I don’t think Baby Allen is gonna wait. He’s coming and he’s coming NOW!” My voice contorts into a demonic growl as another contraction seizes me, stealing my breath away.
Holding Her in Madness Page 21