by Aidy Award
Because he was a good man. That’s why.
I had been crouching against the wall, but I stood up thinking I might be able to help.
A funny sound, like a firecracker going off sounded next to me and something jumped up and bit me. I fell to the ground and I couldn’t move my arms. I looked over Gray hoping he would see me, come and help me. Right before my eyes in a blinding rush of light, heat, death and destruction, the car exploded.
White hot heat blew me down. Smoke filled my nose, choking me, and a ringing filled my ears.
Then the world went black.
Dark Night of the Soul
I woke up with a screaming headache. In fact, every part of my body hurt. All I wanted was to roll over and snuggle into Gray’s body.
I couldn’t move.
My eyes wouldn’t open. I breathed in the air around. Even the scent of the room smelled wrong. Where the fuck was I?
I pushed the cement from my lids and pried my eyes open. An institutional halogen light buzzed above me.
“Angelina?”
My head wouldn’t move. “Gray?”
His voice wasn’t right.
“It’s me, Jim.”
No. I wanted Gray. Where was he?
“Jim? Where’s Gray?”
The breath I used to say his name floated from my lips and didn’t return. My lungs, heart, and brain wouldn’t make another move until I found Gray.
The car. The explosion.
Gray had run toward it.
Then there was nothing.
“Gray?” His name creaked out of my throat. “Where’s Gray?”
I pushed against the four-ton blanket covering me, holding me down. Everything was wrong. The room, the man beside me, the stuttered beat of my heart.
“Angelina, calm down. You’ve got injuries and you’ve been unconscious for a while. I thought we lost you… You were shot.”
“Jim. Where. Is. Gray?” The shrill of my voice hurt my own ears, shattered through my head.
Jim put a hand on each of my arms, holding me still. “He’s… not here.”
I wiggled to make him let me go. He didn’t budge and I didn’t like it. “Where is he? Tell me now.”
We both struggled until Jim released me and plopped down into the chair next to the bed again. He dropped his head and scrubbed a hand across his forehead.
“I—He’s…” He cleared his throat, but I barely heard it over the ringing in my ears.
Jim continued to talk, I was lost in a fog of grief and confusion.
“Shot—”
“The explosi—”
“Body—”
“Not yet identi—”
“Medical rec…Army—”
“I’m sorr—.”
No.
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no.
No.
Gray was my protector, my world, my life, my soul.
That couldn’t be taken away from me.
“Where is he?”
A pain, unlike any of the other aches in my body, built in the bottom of my stomach. It clawed its way up to my chest, spreading fear and hurt and anguish along the way, gripping me with despair and overwhelming anger and sadness. There was nothing but an empty hollow space behind my chest, where my heart should be.
Tremors shook my body, then turned to great gasps, sobs that I couldn’t control.
Strong arms, but the wrong arms, wrapped themselves around me. I buried my face in Jim’s chest and wept.
“I know, Angel. I know.” The words were soft and meant to soothe, but they hurt me even more.
“No. He’s not gone. No. He can’t be. No.”
No. Not Gray. Not my Gray. He could not be dead. He just couldn’t.
I cried out his name, but the only response I got wasn’t the right one.
“I know, doll. I know.”
A month past and passed me by.
I healed on the outside. A circular scar where Foster’s bullet had hit me was the only visible scar.
No one could see the sharp and shattered wounds I still had on the inside.
Those would never heal. Not without Gray.
His remains, what little there was continued to be unidentified. Jim explained that the army was likely the cause of that. Delta operators barely had identities in the outside world, even after they weren’t active anymore.
I stopped listening for the phone. Stopped watching the door. Stopped everything.
Jim tried his best.
He’d taken charge of my security. Once again, I had bodyguards in my life. Not like I thought I needed them.
Foster hadn’t been caught.
Didn’t matter.
He’d gotten his revenge.
Without Gray to hurt, I doubted I mattered to him anymore.
The FBI, or whoever weren’t convinced. They said the agency was involved and would continue to monitor us for reasons I didn’t even care about. They questioned us all dozens of times. All except Ilario.
They told me he hadn’t come back from the city yet and no one could get a hold of him.
I swore he’d been at the club. No one else had seen or heard him. The therapist told me my mind had made him up to help me through the trauma.
I fired the therapist.
The agents implied Ilario was involved, and that he’d been a part of the act of terrorism and had fled the country after. I knew better. Foster must have had done something horrible to my sweet Ilario too.
The club healed on the outside too. Lilly became a master of PR and had the whole world thinking the damage had come from a fireworks display gone wrong. Only law enforcement and my circle of friends knew any better.
I spent each hour of each day knowing this was all my fault. That if I had never gotten involved with Foster, hadn’t challenged him at the club, taken Lilly from him, tried to make him understand true love, then none of this would have happened.
Gray wouldn’t be gone.
Ilario wouldn’t be missing.
I wouldn’t be dying inside more and more every day.
Cade, Dominic, Hawk, and Lilly took care of everything to get the club reopened. They encouraged me to come back each night.
After another month, I still hadn’t.
I couldn’t.
I did my absolute best to isolate myself from the world. After feeling alive in Gray’s arms, now there was nothing. Numbness.
Which was fine by me.
It wasn’t okay with anyone else. But I didn’t give a flying fuckface.
I tried going to the club. One time. Danica had called while I was there and had been stuck on the side of a cliff on some tropical island, sure she was going to die.
That was more than I could handle. Jim had taken care of her in the end, and I hadn’t returned to the club since.
Cade and Dominic, Hawk and Lilly, even Danica continually checked up on me under the guise of club business or needing advice. Like I could give anyone advice.
Danica had somehow persuaded me to meet her at the Mean Bean for coffee. Her total confidence in herself leeched into everyone around her, and I was glad she had become an integral part of the club in my absence.
I may have put on clothes instead of the pajamas I lived in, but hair and make-up were not happening. I sat while Dani got drinks from the too cute for his own good latte boy, Taylor.
He was putty in Danica’s Domme hands. That almost made me feel something. Something that hurt.
“That boy would roll over and beg if you asked him to.” I pretended that’s what someone like the old me would say in a situation like this.
She nodded and winked at him. “I just might do that. He is yummy, and there’s something about being adored by a twenty-two-year-old that tickles my fancy.”
I appreciated that Dani never asked me all the clichés. I didn’t want to say I was fine when I wasn’t, or that I would be okay when I wouldn’t.
She let me be. She pretended things were normal when no one else would.
>
“I’ve decided I’ve got exactly the girl for Cade.”
Huh. Was that a tingle of interest I felt in my brain? Strange. I took a sip of the coffee. No. It must be the caffeine. What do I say? Oh, right. “Do tell.”
Dani went on like this was a continuation of an everyday conversation we had. It might be if things had been different. Once upon a time I wanted everyone around me to be happy.
“He broke it off with Lizzie a few weeks ago.”
“Cade goes through subs faster than you do.” Huh. That didn’t feel fake. I actually meant to say that.
She frowned at her coffee. “Yeah, at least he’s the one dropping his partners like their hot, unlike me.”
There was something different about Danica today. She didn’t seem that upset over losing a sub. In fact, she’d been different since her near death experience on that island. “No more subs for you?”
“Nope.” She shrugged. “I’m taking your advice and am on a break from Domming for a while.”
Another tingle went through my brain. A feeling other than complete misery tried to pry its way through the darkness. “You can do that? I mean, give it up?”
“I’m swearing you to secrecy right here and now.” She took my hand in hers. “While I do have the perfect girl for Cade, that isn’t why I asked you to talk to me today. I’ve got a serious mess on my hands, and you’re the one person I know who would get it.”
I was the one who needed help. Dani had her shit together, nothing bothered her. “Why me?”
She tipped her head to the side and blinked twice before she said, “Because of the kind of relationship you had with Gray.”
Poof.
My mind went dark, and my skin cold.
There was no more coffee shop, no more friend needing advice. The black empty void of my life without that relationship, without Gray, expanded all around me, beckoning.
Everyone avoided talking about him. No one even said his name to me anymore. I hadn’t heard it anywhere but in my dreams, or in my own voice when I woke in the middle of the night calling his name.
I wanted to scream – how dare you say his name, how dare you bring him and all the memories of him bubbling back to the surface? I wanted rail at her, scream, cry, and scream some more.
Warmth seeped into my hand where Dani squeezed it.
The chill receded and I found my voice, even thought it was buried deep in the dark. “What Gray and I had…” I swallowed, “was hard won, very special, and taken away all too soon.”
“I know.” Her reply was matter of fact.
She didn’t really know.
“If you have someone you think you can have that with, take a hold of him hard, and don’t ever let him go, mija.” The goodness, the joy in saying that seeped into my soul. A small chink in the armor holding me together melted away.
“I want to. He doesn’t know about my kinks, and he’s not the sub type. He’s alpha all the way, has been since I met him in college. But you’re a Domme and Gray was dominant too. How did you make that work?”
Gray and I? We both started in fear, showing only a part of ourselves to the world, but both seeing through the other’s façade at some primal level. We’d been so damn close to getting our happily ever after.
That could either break my heart irreparably forever, or I could be grateful for every moment I had with him.
This void in my soul would hurt for a long time, but maybe this was the first step back to life.
“Love,” I finally replied. “Of course, it’s not simple, and it was rarely easy. But we loved each other so hard, we found a way.”
“Oh.” Danica stared at her coffee for a long time. I let her have her moment of thought. The silence was good, because for the first time since that horrific moment I learned Gray was gone, the quiet wasn’t filled with the grip of death and sadness.
Today, a tiny ray of light worked its way back into my heart.
“Thanks, Angelina.” Dani cleared her throat and took a sip of her drink. She made space for both of us to move forward. “You want to hear about Vanessa? Cade is going to go gaga for her.”
“I do.” For real this time.
The mantle of anguish I’d been wearing wasn’t gone. I think I’d always wear it, but sitting here, talking to Dani about Cade, all people who were important in my life, it felt the slightest bit lighter. Like maybe I could go on.
Move on.
Try, Try Again
I walked through the purple door of Devils and Angels.
Then I turned back around, went to the car, and stared at the club for a good solid hour. I had tried to come back once before. What made me think I could do it now? Nothing had changed. Gray was still gone.
What was this place without Gray? Nothing to me.
But it had come to mean a lot to the community everyone around me had built.
It was everything I ever hoped it would be. A place where people could explore the fun and intimacy of their own sexuality and kinks in a safe environment where no one would make them feel less for being who they were.
The tears stung my eyes, until I couldn’t blink them back any longer.
I let them stream down my face. I swallowed great gasps of air as the sobs shook my body. I missed Gray beyond the known depths.
Why couldn’t he be here to see what we’d created?
Why did he have to die?
Why did I have to ever fall in love with him in the first place?
I sniffed and pulled the tissues I never left home without and blew my nose. Then I signaled to the bodyguard Jim had follow me everywhere, put the car in gear and drove home.
Maybe tomorrow I’d try again.
I called Jim from the car on my way.
He answered on the first ring and I could hear the hubbub of the club in the background. “I thought maybe we’d see you tonight, doll.”
“Yeah. I tried.” It was all I could do. Continue to try.
He was silent for a minute. “It’s okay. You come back when you’re ready.”
Go on.
Move on.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. Which is why I’m calling.”
Jim must have walked away from the bar because the background noise quieted. “Don’t quit on me all together, Angelina.”
It was a close call.
Go on.
Move on.
“I’m not. But…” I swallowed and pushed the words out. “I’m going to need help. Tomorrow night. Will you come pick me up? That way I can’t back out.”
“You got it.” I pretended not to hear his sigh of relief.
“Thanks, Jim.”
When I got home, I took a long hot shower, which hid more of the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. I completely wore myself out and was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.
The phone ringing woke me. Sun streamed into the room. I must have been really out of it because I never left them open. I covered my eyes with my arms as I answered.
“’lo?”
“Angelina, I’ve convinced her. Nessie’s coming to the club for BBW night this evening. It’s her birthday.”
“Danica?” I don’t know who I was expecting to be on the phone.
“You have to make sure Cade is there to meet her.” Dani was way too giddy for the butt-crack of dawn.
“I do?”
“Yes, he’s been sulking since he broke it off with Lizzie. He hasn’t been coming to the club half as often as he used to. But if you come tonight, no way he can stay away.”
Oh, right. Danica was becoming a kinky matchmaker. “I was planning on coming in tonight anyway.”
“Sweet. I can hardly wait. I think these two are going to hit it off from the get go.”
I fumbled for the covers wanting to pull them over my head. Sink back into oblivion for a little while longer.
Go on.
Move on.
“Jim is picking me up tonight to bring me. I guess I can ask Cade to meet me there.�
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“That would be perfect. See you tonight.”
It was nice and all that Dani was having fun dragging this friend of hers into the kink scene. Was she avoiding her own love life by interfering with others'? Probably, and it sounded like a great plan to me.
I dressed that night in a little black dress. It was understated compared to what I usually wore to the club, but infinitely dressier than the SpongeBob pajama pants I’d been wearing for weeks. I added some black leather heels with silver spikes across the toe to spice it up.
I let my hair fall around my shoulders and kept my make-up to mascara and some lip gloss. Even that felt heavy after months of nothing.
“Angelina?” Jim called my name from the living room. Hewas right on time to pick me up. Unfortunately. But I guess that’s why I asked him to come in the first place.
He rushed into the bedroom and looked around, even checked my closet. A pang of heartache threatened me with tears. I saw so much of Gray in those actions.
“Your front door was unlocked. Scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry.” My mind just wasn’t bothered by stuff like that anymore.
He escorted me to his car and held the door open for me. “Doll. You look great. Very sophisticated.”
More sophisticated than dirty yellow pajamas. “You’re being nice.”
He shook his head at me. “That’s not how I earned the nickname Jackass, so no. I’m not. You do look good.”
I guess I’d take the compliment.
“Ready?”
“No. Let’s go anyway. Cade will be waiting.”
I did my best to hide the hyperventilating and the pound pound pounding of my heart as we walked into the club. Jim wasn’t dumb though, and poured me a drink as soon as we hit the bar. A pretty young waitress I didn’t recognize brought it over.
Jim introduced us. “Angelina, this is Amanda. She’s our new waitress. Works the floor mostly.”
I nodded and tried to smile. It might have come across more as a grimace. I wasn’t sure. My face wasn’t used to much besides a sad face these days. “Nice to meet you, Amanda. Welcome to Devils and Angels.”