by A. L. Woods
I clapped a hand to my mouth, trying to contain my cry, but it was no use. The wail peeled out of me, my chest shuddering. I was a fucking joke, bawling over my choices. Mine. Not his. Not Penelope’s or Dougie’s, mine.
In the most inappropriate place in the world.
But none of that mattered to my best friend. She saw me for what I was, she always had. She never cared that I was broken, that I didn’t come from a good family, that my past was ugly. She loved me, to a fault, without a care in the world.
Somehow, though, I suspected Sean loved me more.
Had loved me more.
“Come here,” she commanded, opening her arms to me.
Her blue eyes were glistening when I edged closer to her. It occurred to me then that this was the last time we would ever have a conversation just as we were right now. This time tomorrow, she would be someone’s mom. Someone else would need her more than me, and it was high time I learned to stand on my own two feet, to stop depriving myself of what I wanted.
What I deserved.
I had been punishing myself for so long, terrorizing Sean in the process because I truly believed I was protecting us both. It never occurred to me I was destroying us by wallowing and remaining tethered to a past and fear that no longer served me. My proclivity to keep him safe was our pitfall. That admission was strident in my mind. I felt it in my heart, permeating right through to my fingers and toes.
I leaned into her, Penelope’s arms catching me. She squeezed me hard just as another contraction hit her, her breath hot in my hair on her exhale.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t supposed to be about me today,” I said, laughing through the tears that burned behind my lids. One of her palms worked over my spine in soothing circles.
“Your bullshit is distracting me from what I can only describe as terrible period cramps and a powerful urge to shit myself,” she chuckled, brushing my hair away from my face. I moved to pull back, but she held me still. “But I promise you that if you don’t choose happiness by the time I push this baby out of my vagina, I will be obligated to throttle you.”
I didn’t need to decide; I already had.
Now I needed to see it through.
Clearing my mind of the replay from yesterday, I kept my footsteps light as I climbed up the steps of the portico that sang under each step, schooling myself into breathing through the nerves. I felt like I was going to be sick, but I knew it would be worse if I gave in to the cowardice.
I had fed that beast for years, and now it was time to starve that bitch to death. If I knew him like I thought I did, that door would be unlocked. Sure enough, the knob turned with no resistance. Cool air from an air conditioning system working overtime swept over my skin as I pushed the door open that didn’t so much as creak.
The house smelled of fresh paint and sprigs of clipped lavender set in a vase on a console table in the foyer that had a circular modern-looking mirror suspended over it. The engineered hardwood floors were a barnacle gray color. The footprint of the house, from what I could see now, was more open than it had been previously. The ceilings were higher, fewer walls. From my spot in the foyer, I had clear sight lines into the family room, where a dark sectional couch sat opposite of one of two impressive fireplaces. The dining room on the opposite side of the house also had a fireplace; both made up with stone the same color as the brickwork outside.
The decorative elements of the house married modern aesthetic with subtle eighteenth-century hints throughout in the dentil work over the fireplace and the trim on the windows and archway into the kitchen. I undid the zipper on my ankle boots, stepping out of them and tucking them close to the door.
I heard shuffling in the kitchen that had me holding my breath as I followed the sounds. When the kitchen came into my line of vision, my eyes shot to the coffeemaker, the aroma of fresh grounds turning my insides. Sean’s back faced me, his palms resting on a massive island that sat in the middle of an expensive-looking kitchen. The cabinets were snow white, the countertops a deep black granite with creamy vanilla swirls in the middle. High-end stainless-steel appliances, a floating hood vent that almost looked commercial grade, and an oversized apron sink that outdid the one in Dougie and Penelope’s house completed the decor.
I never gave it much thought before, but Sean had a beautiful back. He’d donned another white dress shirt today, his jeans black, his Oxfords catching the rogue stream of sunlight from an oversized window over the kitchen sink. He was concentrating on a stack of sheets on the counter containing what I assumed were the listing details of the house. He was all long limbs, a powerful set in the breadth of his shoulders. The dress shirt clung to his defined frame, the sleeves of the shirt snug on his biceps.
I didn’t think he had so many shirts that weren’t work T-shirts in his closet, but a lot could change in seven months.
A lot had changed in seven months.
He didn’t look behind him when my shoulder carelessly whacked the trim on the archway, earning a wince from me. His head rose a little, his gaze fixed on the rear garden doors that looked into a sprawling yard where fresh sod was verdant and alive.
“Open house isn’t until noon.” His voice sent my heart rate north of a hundred and fifty beats per minute, the gravel in his tone tightening my insides, making my next breath scarce. “Come back then.” He picked up a coffee mug, his grasp loose as he lifted it to his mouth and took a sip.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move if I had wanted to.
“Did you hear me?” he questioned, his head turning to look over his shoulder. The recognition in his profile was immediate. I thought I witnessed him die a little in that moment.
Sean didn’t complete his turn. A force of shock appeared to sock him directly in the gut. The mug he held slipped from his grasp. We were both transfixed when the mug hit the floor and shattered into a million pieces, scattering between us.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” Sean’s breaths dragged out of him, his brows tipped together, his mouth a slashed line. “Why are you here?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he intercepted me. “Actually, don’t answer that. Just leave.” I stepped further into the kitchen, but he intercepted me with an outstretched palm, just like I’d done to him yesterday. “Now is not the time to be a stubborn pain in my ass. You’re not wearing any shoes and there’s glass all over the floor.”
The steely fortitude of my response took even me by surprise. “I’ll go when I’m ready.”
Sean snorted derisively. “Funny, when I tried that angle a few months ago, I got slapped in the face.” He stepped over the pile of glass and hot liquid that had skittered in every direction, breezing by me, his scent in my nose imbuing me with hope. I turned to follow him, not sparing a moment to stop and admire all the little details of the house they had rebuilt in half a year’s time.
I passed the front door, but kept following him to the laundry room. He jerked his thumb like an arrow at the front door. “You missed your exit.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You can either leave or I can toss your ass across the yard, choice is yours,” he snarled, ripping open a closet door filled with cleaning products. “But you are absolutely not fucking staying.” Sean jerked a broom fastened to a clip free from its holster. He was practically foaming at the mouth when he kicked the closet door shut, storming by me again with nostrils flared and an obvious tick in his jaw.
But I just followed. When I didn’t stop at the door, Sean turned on his heel, his frame shaking. “Get out. I swear to God, Raquel.”
“You always scared me a little,” I whispered. “The things you represented.”
His face softened for a minute, his eyes searching mine. Then his molars gnashed together loudly, and the fleeting softness vanished, replaced by his justified anger once more. “Good,” Sean barked, storming back to me. “Be very fucking afraid of me.” His body looked like it vibrated. His fist crushed hard against the handle of the broom. He looke
d like he wanted to snap me in half and feed me through a woodchipper.
But his eyes, those dark iris-less pools that I’d lost myself in countless times before—kept me here. As utterly cliché as this statement was, his eyes were the window into his soul, and his soul silently communicated that he wanted nothing more than to drown in the very essence of me.
The feeling was mutual, and I didn’t want to fight that anymore.
Our destruction was driving him now, though. And I would need to prove myself worthy of him, of his time, of his love.
“You won’t hurt me,” I said confidently, though I stepped backward as he ascended upon me like lightning drawn to a conductor. “I know you won’t.”
“You know nothing about me anymore, Raquel.”
I didn’t miss the way he punctuated my name, like he was trying to reinforce that I was nothing to him. “I know plenty.”
“Don’t kid yourself.” He stomped to the front door, turning the knob so hard I thought he would rip it free. Outside, birds chirped, and a soft breeze rustled the branches of the trees. The tone of his voice sounded like steel on steel, but there was a tremble in it. “Get out.”
I don’t know why I did it. One minute I was standing by the stairs, his eyes burning into mine, his hand gesticulating outside.
The next, my handbag and Penelope’s car keys were on the floor and I was flying up the stairs, skipping the steps two at a time. It was childish, but it got his attention.
He slammed the front door shut. “Fuck you!” he bellowed. But I heard his footsteps flying up the treads of the stairs, his pursuit a chain that almost reared me back into his grasp. “Get out of here! Stop fucking with my head.”
I darted into what I could only assume was the master bedroom, the walls cream, the hardwood floors from downstairs continued upstairs. The king-sized bed was made up with pristine white bed sheets with a stark black duvet, gray and rose gold throw pillows flanking its center.
I felt his presence before I saw him. My eyes darted around the room, looking for a place to tuck myself into, but he grabbed me before I could turn.
Sean’s fingers dug into my biceps, whipping me around to face him. “You think this is a fucking game, don’t you? Is this your idea of fun?” He was breathing hard. “You’re sick. Get the fuck out of my life.”
I reached for his waist, but he winced, jerking himself back like I had shocked him with my touch. “I’m not trying to hurt you, Sean.”
I never was. I was trying to hurt myself back then, pay a penance for a wrong I thought I’d caused.
He lurched toward me again, touching me once more. “It’s too fucking late for that!” he shouted at me, his fingers sinking into my biceps. “‘It’s too late.’ That’s what you said, isn’t it? It’s too late for us. Too late for me. ‘I can’t’.” He pulled me close, though his words said he wanted me gone. “So, go. Get out of my life, leave me alone. I’m tired of being your doormat. I’m tired of praying and begging and pleading. Get out.”
“I can’t,” I whispered.
And I meant it this time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Can’t.
What a stupid fucking word, the most over-abused one in her impressive lexicon. No one knew syntax like her, I was sure of it. Yet, she always defaulted to that ugly contraction.
I can’t be with you.
I can’t love you.
I can’t marry you.
Can’t, can’t, can’t.
It was the word that played on a loop, the feedback grating and deafening. It nearly drove me to a manic-like state, a psychosis I wouldn’t have wished on anyone. It was a mistake allowing myself to fall for her, to get sucked into the maelstrom she was. My wicked tempest with her stormy brown eyes that burned everything in her wake like bolts of lightning striking the earth with a relentless vengeance that promised no survivors.
Raquel was playing a dangerous fucking game with me. I was a strong man. I had learned to be a strong man, but she pushed every single button I had from the moment I met her. And now she was behaving as if she was a child in an elevator who just dragged her fingers across every circular button until they unanimously lit up like a Christmas tree.
“I don’t want to hurt you, so you need to leave,” I gritted, releasing her with a shove. “Go.” I was scared, truly. That her presence continuously tested the strength that was ingrained in me for thirty-one years before she showed up and knocked everything I’d ever known in my life to the floor with little regard. She didn’t care about the mess of emotions she left in her wake, like the aftermath of a storm when the eye moved elsewhere.
She didn’t care. She never cared.
She couldn’t be with me because she didn’t want to be.
She couldn’t love me because she didn’t want to love me.
She couldn’t marry me because she didn’t want to marry me—to build a life with me, to fight for me, to fight for us.
I couldn’t do this with her anymore—I wouldn’t do this with her anymore.
This love was going to kill me, and I needed to let her go before I succumbed to the pain.
She needed to go. I needed to get it together so I could sell this place and close this chapter of my life.
Move on to sweeter things.
Forget the cancers in my life.
Including her.
Raquel didn’t move. Her brown eyes round, something naïve in them when she ran her glossy stare over me like she was trying to measure my rage.
“Did you fucking hear me?” I yelled. “Get out!”
She shook her head, two tears slipping from her eyes and streaking down her cheeks. “I can’t.”
There it was again.
“Fine. I’ll help you.” She slapped my hand away when I reached for her wrist. A timbre of a growl rocked through my chest. “You’re fucked in the head, aren’t you?”
Her laugh was brittle and laden with her agony. “Maybe a little.”
I pressed my palms together in prayer. “I’m begging you to leave, Raquel. Just go.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is. You march out of here, follow the stairs, put your shoes back on and let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.” I pointed at the door behind her. “Simple.”
“Nothing about you and me was ever simple, was it?” Her eyes hardened, her body ossifying in place, hands pitching on her hips. “I always thought we were doomed from the start.”
Had she taken something? Was she high? “What is this?” I snapped at her. She didn’t want to do this yesterday, and now I didn’t want to do it at all. I wanted to not care. “I don’t want to rehash what happened; I want you to go.”
“Yet we couldn’t stop this if we tried,” she continued, her throat weaving. “I thought if I kept running, you would eventually tire of chasing me. You didn’t. Why?”
“Too late for whys,” I said. “You need to go.”
“You love me, don’t you?”
My knees buckled. She was going to get me committed. Maybe that was what her intent was all along. Drive me to the point of derangement, where I did something like commit a crime of passion.
No, I wouldn’t. I’d never hurt a hair on her head, no matter how angry she made me, no matter what she did to me.
Her heart was a different story, but I had owned the pain I’d inflicted there. That was my cross to bear. The lashes on my heart from where she had whipped me back served as the reminder.
We were through; I wasn’t giving her an inch to continue her head fuck. “No, I don’t.” I failed to get the L word out. I was the one who wouldn’t be able to finish that sentence.
“You’re not any better of a liar than I am, Sean.” Her smile thinned. “I think you might be worse.”
Fuck her.
“You’re testing my patience, Raquel.”
“And you’ve tested mine right from the beginning,” she said, her arms dropping to her sides. “You’ve pushed me, driven me harder t
han anyone I’ve ever met. You never took your foot off the gas, you never let me breathe, you just wanted more and more, faster than I could give it to you because I didn’t know how.”
That was true. I crowded her. I’d wanted her to lose herself in me the way I had gotten lost in her. I’d wanted her in every part of my life from the beginning. I didn’t want to wait.
What was I saying? No. This was part of her game again. Fuck her.
I leaned forward, trying to control myself. My body rattled hard with the emotional overload as I breathed through it. “Well, congratulations. My foot is off the gas. You can inhale the earth’s supply of oxygen for all I care, as long as you do it away from me.”
“That’s just it,” Raquel said, studying me. “I don’t want to do it away from you.”
I barked out a laugh I didn’t feel. “You’re a fucking piece of work.” I punched the air between us with my pointer finger. “There you go again, jerking the chain, expecting me to come. Well, guess what, Raquel? The dog broke free from his chain and he has no mistress now.”
“Want to know something else?” she asked, ignoring me as though I had said nothing at all. Why was she getting closer? Why was she breaking the distance between us? She was so close now that I saw the glistening of her tears that made her eyes glow like pools of liquid amber. “I love you.”
Fuck.
I threw my hands over my ears, trying to stop the words from penetrating my brain, but it was too late. I had heard them; they settled in my cerebral cortex, flowed through my veins, finding the atriums and ventricles of my heart.
It beat louder, accepting the message I had tried to intercept. “Shut up,” I gritted, though I wanted nothing more than to hear her say it again.
“I’ve always loved you, but it’s complicated loving someone who also terrifies you, isn’t it?”
I was close to driving my fist into the wall. She took my current inability to form a coherent sentence as permission to keep on saying all the things I’d wanted her to say months ago.
“I’ve known a lot of scary people, Sean. I’ve been beaten and kicked down like a dog, too.” She pushed air through her lips. “I thought it was safer to keep you at a distance so I could learn to trust you at my pace, but you just wanted so much more. You wouldn’t slow down for me.”