He stands and shakes his head no. "Says the law, sure. But what about those same laws that failed you repeatedly? Are you going to tell me shit happens? Because that's the only theory left baby."
"Say's God, the law and my heart. If you did this D, there will always be something chasing you down. Something so dark and ugly that you committed in some misguided sense of love and loyalty, that will ultimately always risk you being ripped from me and our life to suffer in prison."
He slices his hands through the air, shutting me up. "You're never going to know. You're never going to understand why and I am never leaving you again Luv. Those are three guarantee's I will make right now."
I know the right thing to do here, and the right thing is rarely the easy thing. This is the absolute hardest thing I will ever do. "I don't believe you. I don't trust you. Your calmness and the fact you won't deny or confirm this awful fear of mine is proof you don't trust me either."
He shakes his head no. "I do trust you Luv. Implicitly, with everything. But I know what you can survive knowing, and you won't survive knowing who did it."
"I won't survive knowing that I believe it's you." I say and for the first time in what feels like forever, I see true fear in those perfect eyes.
He steps slowly toward me until we are close enough our chests touch. His hand comes up on the back of my neck, his thumb along the base of my throat. It is how he will always prove to me, that no matter how deep rooted my anger or fear is in the unknown, that where he is concerned I know to my core that I trust him. "Be sure you want the truth; that you will handle it and cope and move on. Be sure and promise me that Emjay, because there are things you will never unsee just as there are things you can never forget."
I nod and close my eyes, tears falling freely down my cheeks. "I have to know." I whisper. He kisses me hard and fast on the lips before pulling away on a roar.
He paces the spot in front of me, pulling at his scalp and groaning. I can feel his distress, I hear the fear in his groans and it all tells me. He no longer needs to confirm it, he just needs to let me hear it now. He comes close, slips his body behind mine and rests his back against the hotel room door.
"Close your eyes Emjay. Close them, listen to what I say and understand why I am doing what I am about to do."
I want to fight him and try to turn when I feel his hand over my eyes, his other arm blocking my arms and holds them against my chest.
"Listen to me Luv." He pleads with me and I no longer want the truth, fear that it is far worse than I assume. "Nod that you agree, you don't have to speak."
I will forever wish I didn't nod, I don't know why in that final moment where I could have lived blind, I chose to know more than I could handle.
"Picture me, that day after he beat you. You know now, where I was the night before and you have loved me knowing I am willing to take his life."
I nod again and feel tears spill from my eyes and through his fingers.
"Picture the night we met…" His voice catches and I let out a sob at the pain his voice gives away. "When I pushed him out of your life for the first time. Picture the pain, if you can, that you felt that day for his betrayal."
I do and nod. "I was destroyed by them both and never knew how lucky I was that you were there, until it was over and I couldn’t let you go."
I feel him kiss the top of my head and he nods in agreement. I feel wet drops on my scalp and know he is gutted by whatever he is about to tell me, knowing…knowing full well I will truly walk away.
He for once is giving me everything I need to move on knowing that in doing it we will never be together. "Remember the first time I collared your throat with palm…to show you how safe you were?"
I feel his hand slide from my arms and cup my throat I cannot control the sobs that break free at his touch. It's not fear of him, it is fear of losing him and the connection that allows him to touch me there. "I made love to you for the first time on your bathroom sink in front of the mirror. I had never been inside of you like I was that night. I gave you everything I am that night…"
More tears fall.
More sobs wreak havoc on my body.
"Now picture Harley. Beautiful, enormous Beast of a protector, bounding through the glass to save you. Following you everywhere whenever she was on guard… corralling you to safety until she determined there was no threat."
I let out a sound of true pain caused by her loss and he kisses my head again. "I know luv, I know." He says and I know without a doubt he is crying. He snifs and clears his throat, desperate for a strength to continue and ruin everything.
"Now… picture saying goodbye to her Emjay." I immediately try to open my hands, knowing his hand is blocking me. I try and pull from him. "Let me fucking go!" I say and try to maneuver my body from his.
"Picture her suffering, shallow breathing and in so much pain she was unable to move. Picture Ken smiling as he shot her, your baby. Shot the one thing you loved for the reasons that love exsists. Innocent yet terrifying, helpless and yet lethal. She was there for you through it all, every single time and that fucking prick took her from you when he knew nothing would stop him or his gun."
I fall apart at his words knowing full well he accomplished what he wanted by showing me with my own memories everything in my life that mattered, including my hate for Ken.
"He did break a part of you in killing her Luv. She was your Achilles heel. He knew it and he made you weak with it. He has you crying and scared for him, because of your skewed perception of right and wrong. He received only a fraction of what he had coming for him."
I lean against the wall beside the door and slide to the ground. He is right, I hate that he is right. I care for the wrong reasons. It is done, and what I think on it or feel about it doesn’t matter.
He opens the door and I feel my heart stop and grip his jeans at the shin. "Wait, don't go!" I cry as he bends to remove my hand from his leg.
He shakes his head no. "The truth, all of it is in what I gave you Emjay. It is there in every single word I spoke. You know the answers, I have always told you what your weapon is. I have always made my intentions for him abundantly clear. I have never apologized for the tremendous amount of hate I feel for him and not once have I ever kept a secret like this from you, because you could handle anything but this. I say nothing, but do everything. I will not stop doing it. I will never relent. I will forever be the dog on his heels, since he took the one I gave you. That is why he isn't dead Mallory."
Oh… my … fuck!
I shake my head no and grip his jeans as I stand, reaching for his hands. "Dante…" I don't know what I should say, or feel or think. I just know that every fear I have ever had manifests into one giant terrifying moment and the only thing I fear is him leaving.
"You need to think. Long and hard about what I just gave you. What I trust you with and what that trust could cost me. You analyze it however you want or need. If you want me when it is all said and done…" He leans down and kisses my lips softly. "Then come to me, to our home and leave this bullshit here. I won't discuss it ever again. I won't acknowledge any part of it. If you chose me, then resolve to locking this shit and what happened here in a box so deep in your mind tat even you can't find it."
He steps back, but as I try to speak he kisses me. Hard, brutal lips smashing mine. His angered mouth taking the need to scream or fight or cry from me until we part to gasp for breath. His hands cup my face and I have no choice but to lock eyes with him. "If you can't do that… if you can't accept what I have given you… then at least do me the favor of keeping your fucking mouth shut and take it to your grave."
He opens the door and I watch him walk away, careless to the bomb he dropped, careless to the pain he inflicted and not once did he look back. He left it behind in this hotel room with me to figure out if I could carry the burden of it.
My gut told me before he could. Dante Kole tortured Kendal for my baby, for all my fear and punishments. For every tear, he made him p
ay. He followed through on the very promise he gave Kendal. He also made it clear, he would never kill Kendal so that Kendal always knew that he was spared on another fatal warning.
That warning gave D the satisfaction he needed to move forward. Ken was scared and that was all D wanted.
Chapter Twenty Six
Present Day
Seattle, WA. (North end)
I want to scream why? Why us? Why were we marked to suffer? What evil deed had we committed in a past life that cemented this fate? I was begging D for the answer to something I knew. Something he knew I knew, and I still broke him down to get it. He risked everything and put a faith in me to protect him that I didn't deserve. A trust in me that I didn't have in him, not in that moment anyway.
I wanted the answers now to why? Why us, God damn it! Why? I want to demand that God, or fate or the cosmos explain why they torture us? Maybe we were never destined to meet. Perhaps we were the biggest cosmic mistake, an error that someone missed? Dante always talks of balance and how you need good with bad.
I recall his late night talk with me years ago when I was blinded by everything, sleeping beside him in more dorm room.
"You can't have good without the bad Emjay. If everything were good, the balance would be unrecognizable. We would all be wealthy, healthy, happy and free. No poverty, no famine. No starving children, no homeless vets too fucked up to recognize reality from the damage the war they survived caused their fragile minds.
"No prisons. No dead children who were born addicted to a drug that was built on everything in the kitchen sink. No children, born to die for some greater plan. None of it, because there would be no greater plan. Nothing in His image, just life and perfection."
"That sounds amazing…" I say and he shifts, rolling me from his chest to look at me.
"No luv. It's all false. Where is the action, the need? There would be no desire, no friction. All things amazing and beautiful… everything that makes life worth living is caused by friction. If there was no balance, no minds would stimulate. We wouldn’t learn, we would be clueless and zombified."
"But the bad… I think of the news and it is alarming the hate and sadness. I like the idea of a world that is safe and perfect." I must sound like a child at nineteen trying desperately to see his vision.
"Balance all comes from choice luv. From the very beginning. I don't care if you think we come from aliens, two people in a garden or from apes. Balance is there in the details and that's where the devil lurks baby. That is desire… Adam and Eve. They fractured the perfect world for desire and to this day, desire is the leading cause of heartache and happiness depending on what you desire.
"Evolution is the very definition of balance and the survival of the fittest. If evolution is what you believe then you know it took millennia to get here. Through wars, disease, death, fighting and a simple belief system that you would kill to survive by all means necessary. Without balance, we literally take progress and fracture it in a way it is forever broken.
"Heaven and hell, death and birth, sickness and health… It is in the very vows that people speak before God and Man, to honor and obey, just to break them in a moment of desire or need. Rage or pain. We error, it is human and considered divine. We all have it in us to forgive or to not. It is all a choice, life is a series of choices that take us to our ending.
"Without that balance, there is no choice. No heaven or hell, no sorrow to counteract laughter and joy. When everything is said and done and our light is snuffed and we exist no more, even then we are judged. It is exactly why desire guides, because we only have this life to make it right. I figure do it all with a smile on your face, with purpose behind every hard decision and with the understanding that we all eventually end. A whole new generation takes over, changing and progressing forward. More death, more destruction… but who knows? Maybe with destruction there is finally a cure found for cancer or some other devastating disease. It is there you see the balance and the scales between good and bad are even once again."
I think of his words, the depth and the power they held over me. At nineteen I thought him philosophical and worldly. Now, I see and feel the emotion behind it and understand why he thought so hard about it. He was married with a child and in love with a woman thousands of miles away. There was balance in us all along.
I see it now and I wonder if I have shown up too late and the inning is over, the field deserted.
I am a broken tattered version of that girl in bed with him that night. He is a pale impression of the man he was back then as he spoke of balance. Maybe it isn't the cosmos, the fates or Gods, but just balance.
I heard once that the meaning of life was in us all. That we all held the answer in varying degrees that would forever be argued. Money, health, love, success and joy. All good arguments but none of which could ever be defined or guaranteed.
I used to think my professor was crazy as she rambled on in true hippy form, but now I can see her point. To me, the secret to life is clear in the details of this entire manuscript.
Love.
You can't look so closely at it, the answer is a blur and it's jaded because it has been broken and bent over the years. It has been a means to hurt, to heal, to forgive and as I process the true meaning I understand the power of forgetting. He knows me, he knows I can't forget. All he is asking is that I let it go.
He will never come out and say, 'Yes, Mallory. I chopped off Kens hands and fed his tongue to the garbage disposal.'
No, he never will. He lead me to the water and gave me the choice to drink and be sated by it, or to suffer and continue to find it on my own. To search endlessly for the answer in front of me and just fucking drink it! No grand gesture or vindication for the water. I need to take what I get from it, survive by the lesson that the water gave me and stop hating the fact that I did it the hard way.
I know, I know… the water thing is getting too confusing. I am using it as a metaphor for the truth. I have the truth in my possession and the meaning of life, to my life is staring me down as I fight two different outcomes.
I think of his words and how, from the beginning desire created the balance and that right this instant I need to forgive and forget, or balance our connection once and for all by letting my love for him die in the shadow of hate.
Sure as the sky being blue, if this festers I will hate. Not him, but everything else that ruined him in my eyes. Eyes that have always forgiven him. Eyes that have always known that he could never be anything but mine. Eyes that shed tears for him, as he shed them for me.
Balance.
Where I am broken and bleeding. He is strong and vigilant. Where he suffers is where I shine. Together we create a perfect balance and rhythm. Apart we suffer, we struggle and fear. We function at our weakest and hurt one another.
I have the power to change it, to force the cosmos to realign themselves because we belong together. Show the fates that they know nothing, they cannot determine or control the connection we have. Prove to God, that we can be divine together. That we will always heal, fix and strengthen one another.
The oldest most controversial question is, 'what is the meaning of life?' It is in this profound moment that I find the answer. The meaning to my life starts and will end with loving Dante Kole. He is not disposable to me. In the gravest of circumstances, when I test him to the most grueling limits and where he pushes me past every barricade I have between right and wrong.
What he is capable of is something I have always known, but never accepted because it wasn't politically correct. It would be judged and destroyed by the hate of others. I was the other woman for years. I will always be the one he loved more than his wife.
I am Emjay and I am his. I have always been his and I regret nothing. Not a fucking thing. Not the guilt, the lies, the betrayals, the pain, the desire, the joy, the comfort or the forever. He balances me in every way.
I will always be who he risked everything for, who he hurt to protect, who he protected as he hurt
in my honor. I am forever the calm to his storm, the gentle to his rough, the love to his hate… the perfect to his ugly.
Epilogue
Schererville IN
Dante
Seven long ass days later…
She is determined to let me end this little fucked up tale that, mind you, she manipulates us all into thinking is a thesis , where I think it's something she needed to purge out of her system so she could finally heal.
Then again, I drive a truck for a living and I am as philosophical as a children's book, but hey the pen is mightier than the sword right?
She says I have free rein to say whatever I want here without a muzzle, then warned me she would edit it and make sure it had good flow.
I am currently testing that promise by misspelling everything and it is all one big, long run on sentence. So if it reads like shit, laugh because it proves I got the final word.
If it doesn’t, then she is a lying little shit.
I won't start with sonnets or some lame ass poem because love is not patient or kind. It is boastful as fuck and arrogant to the Nth degree. Whatever other false promises it makes you, just ignore the shit out of it and let your gut guide you.
Do that, and you'll find that there is less turmoil, more fun and better sex.
I don't really know what to say here other than reaffirm that I will never change. I have made the adjustments necessary to be in her life permanently, but that's all the give I have. I wonder if she has some undying hope I will tell you all what you want to hear so that you don't think I am some cheating, lying scumbag biker.
The problem with that, and Emjay as a whole, is that I am all those things. I willingly cheated on my wife with Emjay. I lied about it and accepted that it was exactly what I deserved. My punishment was knowing it killed her that I left. Killed her I lied… and for a while there it cost me everything that mattered.
Over time things shifted in my life and I stole happiness where I could and was content to live my days out married to the wrong woman, for what I thought were the right reasons. But, karma fucks you like a cactus up the ass and I learned that it wasn't the misery and suffering thinking of Emjay. It was losing everything I kept instead of her.
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