While Crow, Sunny, Chip, Ken and I just stare, Tiarnan walks slowly in front of us; never lowering his weapon. “Sable what are you doing? She has done nothing to you, why in the hell are you here?”
Sable starts pulling at her hair, making herself look more and more demented with each passing second. “Yes she did, I can’t get him to love me while he still loves her. If she wasn’t here it would be me. It would be me!”
Immediately my mind jumps to thinking she is talking about me. I make a move to go and try to talk to her when I see Tiarnan’s fist go up in the sign all Seals know; stop. “Hate to break it to you Bitch, but Zandoville never loved anyone, and he never will. Yes, he is obsessed with Mom, but he doesn’t love her. He just wants to break her.”
Sable starts shaking her head back and forth erratically. “No! He loved me until this bitch came into his life. He loved me, he loved me!”
I am completely confused for a moment, until I remember how bad Zandoville wanted Kye; and then it all fell into place. Sable isn’t talking about me, she is talking about Zandoville. Evidently she’s more twisted than I could have ever imagined, because to love that sick fuck you would have to be pretty sick yourself. The fact that I ever let her lips touch me makes me sick.
Tiarnan barks out a harsh laugh. “Hah. He has known her a lot longer than he has known your ass. In fact, you know that little ‘job’ he had you do eight years ago in Europe? That was only break up Mom’s engagement. She was engaged to Christien and had a chance at being happy. Dear old Dad couldn’t have that.”
“No, no, no, no! He can’t love her, he has to love me. He has to!”
“No, he doesn’t love you, or me, or her. He doesn’t love anyone. He used you like the whore you are.”
It is only then that she realizes that there are four men; Cale has not rejoined us yet, holding their guns with her in their sights. For a minute, I thought we could apprehend her without any more bloodshed. I was wrong because suddenly she pulls out a knife. “You fucking bitch. You have to die!” She raises her knife and four guns, unload their bullets in her.
***
As the cops finished up asking their questions and the hospital staff finished removing Sable’s body, I tried to comprehend what had happened and what I had learned. Kye was innocent of each and everything I had accused her of; had been more forgiving than most people would have been. So many people would have turned their backs on the sons of the man ultimately responsible for her rape, but she took in a baby and a young man of fifteen or sixteen and became their mother. Along with the boy she was already raising as her own. Then she was willing to die, and still might, for one of them. Was she a damn saint? An angel?
Whatever she is, she is a better person than me. I wasn’t good enough to breathe the same air as her, let alone be loved her. I had a chance to love her; not once but twice, and I lost her. I don’t deserve her; I never did. I had let her down over and over again. Fuck, over the years I had made a habit of it. This time I had to protect her. Protect her from myself.
Amidst all the chaos and confusion circling around the recovery room, I quietly snuck in to the small, isolated room where Kye had been placed to recover. Walking over to the bed, I looked down at a sleeping angel that was Kye for a long moment, before leaning down to kiss her on her forehead.
Then I slowly rose, turned around, and left without looking back. I didn’t deserve to get to look back.
32
“Sometimes; doing the right thing, even if it hurts, sucks!”
Kye
Kye
It’s been two months since I got back on U. S. soil. When my family had found out that I had been hurt, they had gotten in touch with my friend Charity, who is an emergency room doctor, to ask for help. Charity is the only friend I have remained in contact with from Georgia where I grew up, and was in Spain visiting her brother who was stationed overseas. Being so close by, it was easy for her to hop a plane and come to help me.
She had to perform emergency surgery to stop the bleeding, and had been in the recovery room with me when Crazy Blond Tramp had come in and tried to kill me. I know the woman’s name now; Sable, but I since she had been in love with Zandoville, I think Crazy Blond Tramp suits her much better.
The first time I missed my period, I didn’t think much of it. I had never been all that regular if I didn’t take my birth control pills so I just chalked it up to the emotional stress and physical trauma that I had been through. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that.
When I missed my period for the second time, I realized that something was off. My breasts were always tender, I was always sleepy, and could start balling at the drop of a dime. So I went and bought a home pregnancy test. It came back positive, and so did the four other ones I took. My doctor told me all the reasons why I had stayed pregnant after having emergency surgery, but I didn’t care. It was still a miracle to me.
Now as I sit here in Washington, D.C., I know that I have put it off long enough. Tomorrow I am taking the company jet and heading out to Texas. Wyatt may hate me, what else could leaving the hospital while I was recuperating from emergency surgery mean; but he still has the right to know that he is going to be a father.
I shake my head, look at my reflection in the mirror and sigh. Sometimes; doing the right thing, even if it hurts, sucks!
33
“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
Wyatt
It has been two months, twenty-nine days and fifteen hours since I last saw Kye. Since the moment I walked out of her hospital room, I have been in a place worse than hell; worse because I know that it is my fault and my fault alone. It was rough when I lost Kye before, God knows that I missed her every day that we were apart, but I never really owned my mistakes in everything that went down. After the current clusterfuck that I had put my life in, I got this bright idea to take a day or two when I got back in the U. S. and came home to Texas to reexamine the past. I wish that I had just stayed stupid, because what I saw when I ripped off the layers of bullshit that I had wrapped the truth in completely gutted me.
First, I had always told myself that I hadn’t had any other choice but to keep the assignment from hell from her; after looking at the past through older and wiser eyes, I had to call bullshit on myself. I could have told Kye about what I had to do, and even if she hadn’t liked, even if she had said that we had to take a break until I got everything settled she would have been there when it was all said and done. Even better, I could have told General Mathers the truth; that I was completely in love with this girl and I would never do anything to jeopardize what we had. But I had been a complete pansy ass and failed to stand up for the one thing in my life that made me complete.
Second, there was no reason for me to have laid on the contemptuous disregard for Kye that I had shown the night she caught me with Catherine. I could have explained to Catherine that Kye was an ex and walked her out, giving me the chance to explain, but no. I had gotten so scared and flustered by seeing Kye that reacted completely irrationally, my only thought about eradicating the problem at hand as quickly as possible. I never thought about the consequences that would arise from that swift and ill thought out response.
The worst part of my sudden clarity was realizing that I had actually blamed Kye for our split. Somehow in the back of my mind I had made myself believe that if Kye had loved me as much as I had loved her that she would have come to see me to find out what was really going on before she disappeared. Even when I had found her again, I had felt like some benevolent being willing to give her a second chance to love me the way that I deserved to be loved. I didn’t realize that I was the one that should have been thanking God and all his merciful angels that I had a second chance with Kye; and I should have known in the marrows of my soul that she was the most loving person I had ever had the privilege to meet and
that she would never do anything that would hurt anyone, especially a child.
But no, I had let my fear that Kye would see how lacking I was and call me on it cloud my judgment. I had buried my head in the sand of misplaced disgust, and helped the devil and his mistress get their claws back into her life. The fact that Kye had been forced to face him because I had been so stupid was too much for me to handle sober, so I had spent the almost three months in a drunken stupor; just living for the few hours when alcohol would let me forget.
Today started out like any other day since I had been home; wake up, get out of bed and head to the nearest bar. The first two mornings that I had woken up with the hangover of all hangovers and had to call in sick, so I had finally decided to take a sabbatical from work. After that I had stayed in an almost constant state of drunkenness; hovering somewhere between completely shitfaced and plastered to the point of unconsciousness.
As I stumble out of the bathroom, completely intent on spending the day in the blessed numbness that has been my one goal since I got back from Morocco, I am completely unprepared to find my mother sitting in the living room, surrounded by empty Vodka and Tequila bottles.
I shake my head, and put my hand on the wall to catch my balance. “Mom, what are you doing here?”
She rises from the couch, careful not to touch anything. “Wyatt, what is going on? This is so not like you.”
I let out a long exaggerated sigh. “Mom, I know that you are worried about me, and I wish I could tell you that you have nothing to worry about, but I just don’t know. Right now I am doing everything I can to make it through the day.”
Mom walks over to me and places her hand on my arm and looks into my eyes, “Honey, what is wrong? Is it Sable? I know that she had told her mom that you two were getting close, but you can’t blame yourself for her death. Muggings are a possibility anywhere and anytime.”
God, I forgot that I lied about how Sable died. I had been trying to save my mom from feeling guilty for bringing her into our lives, but if Sable’s mother is out there spreading these lies I can and will set everyone straight. “Hell no, I don’t feel guilty Mom! Sable was a manipulative whore who used her body to get what she wanted, especially when the drug dealer she was fucking needed something!” I then proceed to tell my mother about how Zandoville had sent Sable to work for our family’s company, in hopes of getting to use our business to move his drugs.
I give my mother time to come to terms with who Sable really was and what really happened. She lets out a mild reproof, “Language,” but I know her heart isn’t in it. She walks over to the window to regain her composure, and after a long minute of staring out into space, Mom looks back at me. “Ok, you understandably didn’t care for Sable, so what is it that has you drowning your sorrows in Tequila and Vodka at nine o’clock in the morning?”
“Mom, I fuc-I mean messed up. And I mean messed up bad, and I don’t know what to do to fix it.” I then tell her about meeting Kye seven years ago and how I had lost her, and then finish of telling her how recently she had come back into my life by accident, only for me to purposefully push her away again.
I look up and see that Mom is not paying any attention to me. “Great, I am sitting here poring my heart out to you, and you are can’t even act like you are interested.”
Mom walks back over at me quickly, and pulls me into a hug. “Now son, have you ever known me to not care about you and what you are going through? I am just trying to find a way to fix it.”
I can’t help but grin. My mother lives to “fix” the problems of her offspring. Mom is the quintessential mother hen and she has never let me, nor my twin brother and sister down. But sometimes Mom’s super powers just aren’t enough. “Mom, there is no way for me to fix this or for you to fix it for me.”
Mom being Mom, refuses to even entertain the idea of defeat. As she gets up to leave, she looks over her shoulder, “We’ll see honey, we’ll see.”
***
I am standing here, waiting to board the company jet, and I still don’t know why I am even here. Yesterday, for a long time after my mom had left, I just sat there, thinking about Kye and what we could have been if I hadn’t been so stupid. Drinking myself into a blind oblivion was harder after seeing my mother; mainly because that would make one more woman in my life that I had let down. But in the end the pain of being sober far outweighed the shame of disappointing my mother. And after a few stiff drinks, I really didn’t care.
This morning, I got a call from my uncle, the CEO of the company, at the ass crack of dawn telling me to get my drunk ass to D. C. Seems there is a chance we could land a major partnership with an Eastern European shipping country and I have been selected to go and represent both the family and the company. As much as I try to get out of doing this, I have been chosen to go, so going is what I’ll do.
I make my way on to the plane and sit down in the first seat I pass by. I begin looking for the little liquor bottles that are usually situated under the windows of every other row, but there are none to be found. Dammit! This flight is going to suck.
After the almost two hour flight, I am ready to get off this plane, do what I have to do, and go back home and wallow in my misery. But no, I have to go and play nice and kiss ass for the family business. I know it is pathetic; but damn, do I want a drink!
After checking into the hotel, I made my way to the conference area. The agenda was for me to meet the CEO in one hour, and since I had time to kill I headed to the bar. I knew that I couldn’t get drunk, but a small buzz might help me get through the bull shit this afternoon.
I was nursing my second Screw Driver when I heard footsteps walk from the door to directly behind me. Before I might have been guided by some sense of self preservation to turn around, but after the three months of hell that I have lived through, I didn’t give a damn so I didn’t turn around.
I felt the air beside me shift as someone took the stool at my side. Damn; Uncle Trip had told me that I was to remain sober for the initial meeting this afternoon and dinner tonight, but that was looking harder and harder to do. I gulped down the last of my Screw Driver and raised my hand to get another one, when the guy sitting at my side finally spoke. “Damn boy. I had heard the stories of you drinking yourself into a pine box, but I hadn’t really believed them until now. Tell me, what the hell did your liver ever do to you?”
As soon as I recognized that voice, I was twisting to get a look at the man sitting beside me. It is never easy to tell these twins apart, but my current level of intoxication makes it impossible. “I am not even going to try, which one are you?”
With a soft chuckle and a slap on my back, “Lachlan, Wyatt, I’m Lachlan. I didn’t think you would have this much trouble telling us apart, since it hasn’t been all that long since you saw Connor. Is it the booze or your failing memory? I don’t know why it is so hard to tell us apart.”
By the end of that statement, his face has become as hard as stone. Well, he evidently knows a little about how I treated Kye, and he isn’t happy about it. While that should be cause enough for concern, it isn’t. After almost three months of stumbling around in the dark abyss I made of my life, I can finally see a little sliver of light. Damn the consequences, I am walking to it. “How is she?”
Lachlan rubs his chin for a few seconds, and then starts to answer. “Who are you talking about? By she do you mean my mother? Well, my moth…”
I slam my hand down on the bar with enough force to make my glass shake. “Cut the bullshit. You know damn good and well who I am talking about. How is Kye? Is everything ok with her? God, tell me something man!”
Lachlan stands up and leans his back on the bar and crosses his arms and looks at me. “Don’t know why you would care. Hell, you couldn’t even be bothered to stick around long enough to see her wake up from the recovery room, but since I am such a kind, passive soul I’ll tell you. That bitch was trying to get her kidney, but only got her spleen. It had to be removed,
and while I am sure you know that you can live without a spleen, doctors are worried that being the single parent of three sons, two of them barely more than toddlers, can put her at a greater risk for infection later on. Oh yeah, and she found out that the man she had let make her break her rules, not once but twice, thinks she is a gold digging, child-molesting, bitch who he just used for sex. So as you can see she is just peachy.”
I close my eyes and repeatedly bang my head against the bar. I am the one who deserves all this, not her. As I try to get my emotions in check, I think back over what Lachlan had said. “What do you mean, ‘make her break her rules, not once but twice?” After ordering a glass of ice water for me and beer for himself, Lachlan continues to stare at me. Finally he explains. “You know ‘Kye’s Rules to Live By’, right? 1. When you love, love with all your heart. 2. When it’s over it’s over. No take backs and NO SECOND CHANCES!!! Well she broke that second rule for you twice. Once in Morocco when she let you back in her life, and when she went to your apartment to see what was going on and met that bitch buttoning her shirt and leaving.”
“Oh God, please no. What did she say? Almost immediately after I found out that she wasn’t the girl I was supposed to find, I was sent on a covert mission for six months. I have never loved anyone as much as a love Kye, and fate and my dumbass keep fucking it up!”
After looking at me for a long moment; completely taking in my dejected presence, Lachlan sighs and offers me a bone. “Look, one of my best friends and partners is having her birthday party here tonight. Be in the Magnolia ballroom by 8:15.”
The confusion is evidently written all over my face. “Look man, if you can come tonight and convince the guys, we will let you see Kye.”
I immediately start shaking my head, “No. I repeatedly let her down and put her in danger. I don’t deserve her or any part of the goodness that she brings to my life.”
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