by L. D. Davis
“Whenever you’re ready to give up your ordinary life in the Midwest, we’ll be here waiting for you,” Felix said to us with a grin.
Donya smiled, but it was a wistful smile. I could feel what she was feeling, a hint of longing.
As we headed out of the city, Rosa sang softly to her iPod. Emily babbled contently because she loved being in the car, and EJ asked me endless random questions about the city. Through all that, I felt Donya’s longing intensify.
I reached over and took her hand into mine. Her fingers curled around my hand as she looked at me with a sad smile, but we didn’t discuss what had been bothering her until we were on the New Jersey Turnpike, and all of the kids had fallen asleep.
“You miss the city,” I said.
“I do,” she responded and sighed. “I never thought that I would, but I do. I lived there for almost fifteen years. I miss that hustle and bustle, the people, and the places. I miss being close to the ocean and just as close to the mountains. I even miss South Jersey. I have so many memories, so many good memories from both places.”
“Maybe we should visit more often.”
She silently looked out her window for a minute before softly responding. “Visiting isn’t enough. Besides, it’s hard to travel with kids, and we can’t keep pulling them out of school. I completely understand why Casey didn’t let Owen come. It can create instability, and I don’t want that for our kids.”
“Do you like this area more than Chicago?”
She looked at me with a wry smile.
“Are you asking me if the subzero temperatures and million feet of snow can compare to the harsh splendor of New York City and the keep-it-real lifestyle of New Jersey?”
I grinned. “Yes?”
Her laugh was soft. “There’s no comparison.”
“Then why did you decide to buy a house and settle in Chicago? You could have gone anywhere you wanted to.”
She shrugged a slender shoulder. “I missed Emmy. I missed you. You were both there, and at the time that was all that mattered.”
“Donya,” I said her name softly, but with gravity. “I traveled halfway across the planet to claim you before. Coming to the east coast would have been nothing in comparison. I would have then, and will forever, go wherever you go.”
I felt a surge of love and appreciation through the bind that connected us, and it warmed me from the tips of my fingers in her soft hands, down to my toes.
“I know that now.” She squeezed my hand in both of hers.
We were silent for a few minutes as an idea began to build in my mind. I wanted Donya to be happy. I knew that she was happy with our family and me, but sometimes there was more to life than that. It took me years of being without my soulmate to understand that, and I still had not forgotten it.
“Donya, do you want to move back to the east coast?” I asked.
She didn’t immediately answer. I felt the tension and apprehension inside her. She was afraid to tell me the truth of what she really wanted, but finally, she did.
“I do,” she said quietly. “I have wanted to move back here since we got married.”
I looked over at her in astonishment.
“Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“I had just opened the boutique,” she explained with some exasperation, either at herself or me or maybe the situation as a whole. “Emmya was just getting started and it was so much work. Then, Luke had offered you a partnership in the firm, and we started having babies. We were cementing ourselves in Chicago more and more. I still thought about it a lot, though. I thought maybe we could do it, but then Emmy had Gracie and went into that depression. I know it didn’t last very long, but it scared me. What if we weren’t there? She may have kept it from us just like she did before when she suffered from depression.”
“I understand what you are saying about Emmy, but Donya…” I sighed, hating myself just a little bit for what I was about to say. I loved my little sister, but she did have her own husband, her own family, and her own life. “You have to do what is right for you and us as a family. I am glad that we were there for Emmy, too, but Emmy is fine now. If you want to move to New York or New Jersey, then we should seriously consider it.”
She stared at me as her hands convulsively squeezed mine hard.
“But…you’re partner at the firm, and the Emmya headquarters is in Chicago.”
“Let me worry about the firm,” I said. “Maybe we can expand and open a second firm, or maybe I can move on and do something else. As for Emmya, it’s your business, Donya. You can move it wherever the hell you want to. Besides, you’re already doing a lot of running back and forth to New York. You said yourself a few times that even though Chicago has its own fashion scene, it will never be able to contend with New York. Maybe that’s where you should be.”
I felt a new excitement coming from her, and a hopefulness I hadn’t sensed in her in a long time, but she was also cautious.
“But what about Rosa? She loves Kaitlyn. They’d be broken hearted if we split them up.”
“We wouldn’t be splitting them up. It’s not like they’d never see each other, they’re cousins. We can send Rosa to Chicago during the summers, or Katie can come stay with us. They’ll be okay. Kids are resilient.”
“And Emmy? She works for me.”
“And she can continue to work for you,” I said reassuringly. “In this day and age, she doesn’t even have to be on the same continent to work for you.”
“So…” A pregnant moment passed. “We can actually do this? We can come back home?”
“Of course we can, baby.” I gave her hand a squeeze and flashed her a smile.
Her smile was so dazzling that it blinded me even with my sunglasses perched on my face. My heart expanded as I felt her happiness and elation. I was jubilant to be in a position to have given her something that she wanted.
Right then, I wished that we weren’t in traffic on the turnpike, because I wanted to kiss her and taste the joy on her lips.
“If we move away, where will Owen live?” A sleepy voice asked from the backseat.
I peered in the rearview mirror, but couldn’t see Rosa where she sat behind me.
“I didn’t know you were awake,” Donya said, looking into the back at our daughter.
“What happens to Owen if we move away?” Rosa questioned.
Donya and I looked at each other, both of us horrified and ashamed to have forgotten that important, monumental detail. It wasn’t that we had forgotten about Owen himself, but we were so accustomed to having Owen with us, that we didn’t stop to remember that our custody of him was shared with Casey and her husband, Tyrone. We couldn’t just take him with us and neither of us would want to take him away from his mom. However, without having to say it, we both also knew that we couldn’t possibly leave him behind, either. Donya loved Owen as if he were her son by blood. It would be the same as leaving Rosa or one of the other children behind.
She swallowed hard, and all the optimism that was just on her beautiful face fell away, but she forced a smile for Rosa.
“We were just thinking about it, Ro,” Donya said dismissively. “Just something to talk about while we’re on the road.”
“Okay, good, because I don’t want to leave Wowo behind.”
“We won’t,” I promised.
Rosa didn’t say anything more, but neither did my wife. She turned the radio up, and still holding my hand, turned her gaze to her window. Occasionally, she’d hum along to a song as she tried to pretend that she was fine, but she wasn’t. Her disappointment covered us like a blanket all the way to Philadelphia.
Later in our hotel suite, as we prepared to head out, I closed our bedroom door and blocked out the sound of the television and the chatter of the kids in the living room.
Donya stood in front of the mirror brushing her long, dark hair. Her light eyes were distant, and I knew why.
“It’s not the bitter end of it all,” I said to her, wrapping my ar
ms around her waist. I looked at our reflections in the mirror, her beautiful dark skin against my fair skin.
She sighed and offered me a small smile. “I know it isn’t, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon, so I may as well get it out of my head.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” she said, admonishingly. “It’s no one’s fault. I was excited about the idea of moving back, but thinking about leaving Owen…Emmet, it makes me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t even fathom doing it. Nothing in the world that I want is so important that I’d put it before our children.”
“Maybe when he is older, we can revisit the idea,” I suggested.
“It will be the same thing. We’d be taking a child away from his mom or leaving a child behind. Neither of those is appealing.” She squared her shoulders and inhaled deeply, fortifying herself and making a solid decision. “We’ll stay in Chicago. I’ll make it work, business-wise. I have so far. Besides, home is wherever you and the kids are. If I never set foot in this state again, I will be okay as long as I have you guys.”
I turned her around and pulled her against me.
“I just want you to be happy,” I said, looking into her beautiful eyes.
“I am happy, Emmet.” Her smile was genuine and full of love, and almost erased her disappointment from earlier.
She put her delicate hands on my face and kissed me before I could say anything more.
Kissing Donya always made my heart ache with the amount of love I had for her. I was always humbled that our love could be so big, so cosmic; limitless, without end, like the universe.
We broke apart when our hands began to wander, because as much as we’d like to stay cooped up in the room and make love all afternoon, we had somewhere we had to be.
“What if we bought a shore house near Leo’s and Tabitha’s?” I proposed as she went back to brushing her hair.
She paused again and looked at me. “You know, I’ve thought about that, too. It’s starting to get tight in that house. Maybe we can buy our own.”
“Right. Then we can come out here every summer if you want. We can definitely bring Owen with us most of the time.”
“And since it will be our own house, we can come out here whenever we want.”
We grinned at each other.
“Can we start looking online tonight?” Donya asked. I could sense her excitement again. It wasn’t as much as it had been earlier, but it is was there.
“Yes. I mean…you know if we don’t wear each other out.” I winked at her. She laughed, but only briefly before it faded and her brow creased with worry.
“If we’re not going to move back, I’ll still have frequent trips to New York. I’ll practically have to live here in the weeks leading up to Fashion Week.”
“I know,” I said as easily as I could. She was worried about how our time apart would affect us.
A long time ago, before either of us had any children, when we were young and hopeful and stupid, we each had our own pursuits in life. I wanted to attend law school and become an attorney at one of the most prestigious schools in the country. Donya wanted to be a supermodel and travel the world. While I was still struggling through school, she had already begun to accomplish her goals. By the time she was eighteen years old, she was traveling the world modeling, acting, and meeting the very wealthy and the very famous.
We’d both made a lot of missteps and bad decisions over the years, but one of my biggest errors was trying to make her choose between her career and me, instead of making it easier for her to have both. So many years had come and gone, but she still remembered that, and it made her hold back.
Donya’s skill, designs, and the quality of her work were comparable with some of the biggest names in the business. Her brand, Emmya, could hold its own in any arena. It could be a lusus naturae, a giant amongst giants if she did not hold back. She held back, however, because of me—or to be more precise—because of a version of me from a time long gone.
Above my own needs and desires, above almost everything else in the world, I wanted to make my bride happy. I wanted her to have everything and anything that she desired and deserved. I wanted her to know that she could have our family, she could have me, and she could have her career without consequences.
A long time ago, I had told her that I would follow her anywhere and that I would support her, but then I’d failed her. I didn’t know how to convince her that I would never fail her again. I didn’t know how to make her not hold back.
I took her brush away and tossed it onto the bed before pulling her close. “So, you’ll have to go away sometimes. What is a little distance between us? It’s nothing. If you were on the other side of the world, it would be nothing. We are tied together, bound by a love bigger than the whole universe. I’ve told you that before, and I meant it. Wherever you will go, I will follow, and if my body can’t be with yours, my heart always will.”
I dragged a thumb across her soft cheek, wiping away the tears that began to fall.
“You are amazing,” I whispered. “You are an amazing mother, an amazing wife, and you are amazing with your career. Don’t hold back anymore. You are meant to do amazing things, Donya Elizabeth Grayne, and I am so damn honored and humbled to be the man who has your amazing heart.”
I kissed her and stole her breath and tasted her tears. My arms held her against my body, and I suddenly felt like we had on too many clothes. I knew that we didn’t have much time, and the kids were just on the other side of the door, but I wanted her and I needed her. I needed to become one with her on a physical level.
Before I could consider it any further, I carried her away from the mirror. I playfully tossed her onto the massive bed. She bounced once with a startled giggle as I reached for one of her boots and began to pull it off her slender leg.
“Go lock the door,” she said with urgency, waving me away.
I did, and as I walked back to her, I unbuttoned my jeans and pulled down the zipper. Donya had gotten both boots off and was shimmying out of a pair of leather pants. I took myself in hand as I impatiently waited for the pants and the black thong beneath it to be gone. I ducked down and kissed her again before pushing her back on the bed. I moved over her until my erection was nestled between her sweet thighs. A moment later, I slid inside her and lost my breath.
She moaned softly as her legs wrapped around me and her arms folded around my neck. As I moved inside her, we both groaned and whispered curses against each other’s lips. She was warm and slippery and snug, and she fit me perfectly, as she did in all things.
I wanted to stay inside her for long hours. I wanted to taste her moans, feel the vibration of her groans in her chest, and hear her say my name as if it were the only word her mouth could form. But we didn’t have the time. It was not our day. The day was for someone else that we loved, and we could not be selfish.
It was over too soon. I trembled lightly on top of her, and she shuddered with pleasure with her nails still in my back. I kissed her once more before moving off her. I got to my feet and held out my hand to help her sit up. I knew we both wanted to revel in the afterglow, but we had to leave.
A short time later, after we were in the car and on our way, Donya took my hand and I felt her eyes on me as I navigated through traffic.
“I love you,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
Her disappointment had vanished. Her uncertainty was a thing of the past. I could feel her gratitude. I could feel her uncontainable happiness.
I felt her unfathomable love.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mayson
“I’m so nervous,” I whispered to Grant while a congresswoman wrapped up her speech on the podium.
“Try to relax,” he whispered back, drawing circles on the back of my hand with his thumb. “You got this, baby.”
“What if I fall off the stage? And my skirt goes up? And everyone sees my Spanx?”
He tried not to laugh, but he did.
He silently shook beside me, not at all sorry for laughing at my possible humiliation.
I’d had eight months to prepare myself for it, but I still did not feel ready to give a speech to over a hundred people—not including the few members of the press that were in attendance. The guest list included police officers, medical professionals, psychologists and social workers, law professionals, several of our current clients, and many others. Kyle and Lily were just behind me, and my mother, Aaron, and Taylor were in the audience.
Almost immediately after telling Grant and Kyle my idea to help rape victims, we got to work on creating the Chrysalis Center. Grant began searching for a viable location and chatting with some people he knew that would want to help. Kyle threw in millions of his own money to help fund my venture, but he also began to reach out to his affluent acquaintances. Together, he and Grant also handled the business end of things, because I knew nothing about running companies or organizations.
Meanwhile, I tackled the enormous task of first building a solid team to get started with and then collecting the trained professionals. Though I found plenty of people in law enforcement that wanted to help, Officer Caine nor any of his fellow police officers wanted to make friends. I had a big, double-decker, megaton bus with their name on it in my speech. They were going to get a good look at my bus’s undercarriage.
My cousins also contributed to Chrysalis. They all gave money without any prodding from me, but Emmy and Tabitha spent long hours on the phone and sending emails as they helped me gather resources and establish contacts. Donya was instrumental in getting the C Center the attention it needed from the public. They were all so eager to help, despite the fact that they all had very busy lives already.
I tried not to frown as I felt their absence at the ribbon cutting ceremony. I understood why they couldn’t be there; I especially understood because I, too, had a family to care for and a full-time job as well. In fact, we were all so busy with our lives that we had to cancel our family beach trip. They all promised to watch the live internet stream of the ceremony, though, and that helped ease the ache a little bit.