by Untamed
I had to tell him the entire story. I owed him that much. I also needed to air it out for myself so I could let go of all the pain. I wiped my tears. Then I forced him to remove his hands from his face. I wiped his tears with my hands, and then I held his hands in mine as I began to confess to him.
“I don’t even have the words to say as to why I did what I did, Lincoln. All I know is that I was hurting. You’d left me, and I loved you so much. So damn much. The night you broke things off, Ryan came over, and he was there for me. That’s how we got close again. Ryan was the first person I told I was pregnant. He wanted to get back together then, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t over you.
“Then, when my baby girl Charity got sick, it nearly tore me down. After she was hospitalized, I got so angry with you. I mean, I was so furious with you for leaving me, and it was compounded by Charity’s illness and subsequent death. I won’t lie to you. I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to get back at you for leaving me and our family, so I took all my feelings and emotions for you and I bottled them up into keeping Lexi from you. I forgave Ryan and decided that I should marry him and be with him. And I did.” The floodgates opened, and I allowed every tear that I’d held in over the past year to pour down my face. Those were the realest, rawest, and sincerest emotions I’d ever shown him.
Lincoln looked at me as I put my head down and cried a river. The next thing I felt was him pulling me up to hold me in his arms. For the next few minutes all that could be heard were sniffles and cries as we both let out our emotions on each other.
“So if you’re going to hate me, hate me. You have every right to hate me. Hell, I hate me. You didn’t deserve that, no matter what happened between us, and neither does Lexi. And even though it’s not worth shit now, I’m so sorry,” I added after our tears had somewhat subsided.
He exhaled slowly, and I could feel his tension and anger easing away. “I want to hate you, but I can’t, because I failed you too, Charice. As your man and your soon-to-be husband, I failed you so badly.”
Something about what he’d just said drew fear inside of me. I didn’t want to hear what he was about to say. Don’t get me wrong. My heart wanted to hear it. More than likely, I needed to hear it. There were so many doors left open in our relationship, ones that we had never bothered to close, so I had made my closure, or so I thought. Until that moment. This ball of conflict tore me apart. My head screamed, No, don’t listen, but my heart... my heart said yes.
In a last-ditch attempt to leave the past in the past, I pleaded, “Let’s just focus on what we’re going to do about Lexi.”
“No, I’m gonna say what I should’ve said over a year ago.” He turned my face to him and cradled my cheek. “You need to know the truth, Charice, and I’m gonna give it to you.”
“I can’t, Lincoln, because it will—”
“It will what? Change things? Make you look into places and feelings you thought you’d closed and overcome? I face that shit every day, every time I see you with Ryan,” he explained with conviction.
I stood up and turned away. I was ready to jet out of that house. This moment of reckoning had become too much to bear. “If this isn’t going to be about Lexi, I don’t need or want to hear it. Ryan is my husband.”
He grabbed my hand. “And don’t you think you need to hear about the kind of man your husband really is?” he asked, turning me around. “Look, I will admit that I came to New York to be a thorn in Ryan’s side. I wanted to ruin your marriage. But I have a new outlook. I have a daughter to raise, and now another one to love and raise as well. It’s time-out for the bullshit. Whether you stay with Ryan or not doesn’t matter to me anymore. Lexi and London are who matter to me. I just want you to know the truth. I want you to know that I didn’t just leave you—I was forced to.”
My mouth flew open, and I shook my head in disbelief. “Huh? What?”
Lincoln took my hands and gently pulled me back down onto the sofa. Then he pulled over the ottoman from the La-Z-Boy and sat in front of me. “The truth is your husband is the king of deceit. After he found out about me and you, he threatened me all the time, him and his little clique on the Cowboys team. At first, it was just physical shit—you know the altercations that we got into—but then that shit got real. During his unrestricted free-agent status, he worked out a scheme and told the Cowboys’ administration he would reject the contract the Giants had offered him and would stay on the team if they traded me. At the time, he was the best running back they had, and I was the best linebacker, but the team had two other good linebackers and a decent backup, so I was expendable, and Ryan knew that.
“The only problem was my salary. Nobody in the league was willing to foot the cost of my contract at the time, and Ryan knew that too. That meant they could just waive me, and I’d be stuck searching for a team. He issued me his ultimatum—either leave you or have my contract waived. The sneaky shit, which no one took into account, was that whether or not I gave up on you, he was leaving the team anyway. His goal in all of it was just to break us up, and either way, I’d be on the losing end.” He took a deep breath.
He went on. “That shit hurt me so bad, Charice. We were newly engaged, and I couldn’t be in limbo with my money and career, not with having you, the boys, Charity, and London to support. In the NFL, your only lifelines are your practice and game stats. I couldn’t take the risk of having to sit out a season or mulling about teams that weren’t the best fit for me. That’s when you and I began arguing and having problems. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you what I was considering.”
Talk about being floored. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and to what lengths Ryan had gone just to get me away from Lincoln.
“Oh my God. Lincoln, why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Why? I’ll tell you why. After we started arguing, I started drinking a lot. Ryan convinced me that he wanted to call a truce. He said that he understood that I wasn’t going to leave you, and he’d learn to live with it. He said we both could just squash the shit and keep playing for the Cowboys. No hard feelings. I thought he was being straight up with me, nawimean? I guess a part of me wanted to believe him because I didn’t want to give up on what we had.
“But that grimy, dirty, reckless bastard took me out with him to go drinking, and he brought some laced cigars for a fellas’ night out. While we were out, he told me this elaborate lie about how you two were cool now, and how you’d confided in him that you were pregnant, but since we weren’t married, you didn’t want to have another child out of wedlock, so you had an abortion. I was so upset with you. I lit up a cigar to relax my nerves. Being a little tipsy already, I didn’t realize weed was inside the cigar, nor that he was capturing it all on video. Then he told me that if I confronted you about the pregnancy, he’d report me to the team, which, of course, would’ve led to a suspension and made it easier for the team to release me.
“This bastard even went so far as to send the video to Lauren, which he knew would also cause issues for me about London. Of course, Lauren threatened to take London completely away from me and actually had my visitation restricted to supervised visitation. That started an all-out battle between her and me. Your husband tried to ruin my career, forced us apart, and tried to take my child away from me.”
My ears were burning. This could not be the same man I had married. It absolutely could not. The person Lincoln had described was a villain to the umpteenth degree. Only the devil could mastermind something this extravagant. This was not my Ryan. Not now. Not ever. It couldn’t be.
I jumped up, as if a fire had been lit underneath me. “You’re a liar. Ryan would never do that to you or me.”
Lincoln’s fiery gaze met mine. “Oh, yeah? Well, call Rosalyn, then. Why the hell do you think I had to fight so hard to get London after her mom’s breakdown, huh? Come on. Not only am I her father, but I have plenty of money and a sound environment too. There’s no way in hell the judge could even deny me. I had my parental rights, but my custody rights we
re stripped with the whole ‘drug abuse’ issue. Hell, you can call my mother. She knows what Ryan did to me. Why do you think I came home and broke up with you that night? Wasn’t I drunk and high then? And I bet Ryan ran over to your hotel room, swearing he was clueless about anything just to be your fucking knight in shining armor.
“Then this bastard signed his contract with the Giants anyway. Why do you think I came all the way to Atlanta to whip his ass the day Charity passed out in the yard? I gave you up . . . for what? Nothing. He left the team anyway, had me tied up in all kind of nonsense legal bullshit over my little girl, and we still ended up not being together. So, if you want to blame somebody for losing me and our family, blame your husband. If you don’t believe me, ask him. He schemed to take you away from me.”
My body shook with such intensity that I thought I’d begun convulsing. I felt like my chest was about to explode. This couldn’t be, could it? I had always known there was a reason Ryan was so secretive about leaving Dallas, but this? But how could it not be true? If I look at just the things that had happened that I knew about, they coincided perfectly with what Lincoln had said. We had begun to argue a lot. He had developed trust issues with me and had pulled away from me. He had drunk a lot. He had had problems with London, and more importantly, he’d always alluded to the fact that Ryan was the cause of his troubles and mine too.
Where did that leave me with this information? I was hurt, devastated, and pissed. When Ryan had done what he did, he’d known I’d turn to him for solace, and with Charity passing, I naturally had flocked to him. No wonder he’d asked if Charity’s death was God’s way of punishing him. I had never known why he’d think that, especially since he’d made up for his wrongdoings with the kids and me. I guess now I knew.
Despite being damn near hysterical about everything Lincoln had told me, for some reason, the one thing that pissed me off more than anything was the fact that Lincoln had felt I’d ever kill our child. “How could you think that I would kill our baby without even mentioning it to you?” I managed to choke out, hitting his chest with my fists.
He absorbed the hits until I grew tired and I fell into him. I was distraught over everything that had taken place. I felt hurt, betrayed and, most of all, like a damn fool.
“I don’t know, Charice. I was so messed up in the head during that time, I didn’t know which way was up or out. I knew you and Ryan talked, and I’ve always felt he had the advantage over me, because you two had children. I also knew how much you used to love him. When he sprung that on me, he made sure I had plenty on my plate to deal with so that I couldn’t even fully focus on you,” he explained before he pulled away from me, stood, and started pacing the floor. “What about you, huh?” he continued. “You ran to him, as if I was nothing. As if I meant nothing to you. Then you married him so fast, I wondered if you had even loved me at all. Now I find out you’re passing my seed off as his.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” I stared at him in disbelief. “You left me. I begged you like a fool to stay, to trust in us. But you gave up. You gave up, and I was the one left holding on to my feelings for you. Hell, I still loved you even after I married Ryan. I prayed and asked God to take those feelings away, because I couldn’t let go,” I blurted out. I gasped, covering my mouth.
Shocked, he looked back at me. “You what?”
With my hand still over my mouth, I shook my head, refusing to repeat my innermost secrets. “Nothing.”
Calmly, Lincoln approached me with determination. His demeanor begged for my honesty. “Charice, don’t lie to me. For the first time in a very long time, we have the opportunity to be totally honest. Are you telling me that when you first married Ryan, you were still in love with me?”
And there it was. My truth. As bad as Lincoln had hurt me, as angry as I was with him, as much as I wanted to hate him, none of that mattered, because to my core, I had loved him. And to my core, a part of me still did. Very much so.
Wiping my tears, I confessed, “Yes.”
“Is that why you lied to Ryan and didn’t tell him about the kiss? Did it stir up feelings for me that you didn’t want to admit you still had?” he asked as he closed the space between us.
I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t let the words fall from my lips. I began trembling and backed away from him. “I lied to protect him.”
He eyed me with a half smile on his face. “Come on now. Be truthful.”
“That’s the truth.” We both knew I was lying.
A hint of mischief flashed in Lincoln’s eyes as he rubbed his hands together. “You know, the funny thing about the truth is that it always has a way of getting out.”
A beat passed before he licked those LL Cool J lips of his and then invaded my personal space, cornering me in a world I’d fought so hard to escape. Lincoln’s land. In the land of Lincoln, I was a captive, a willing one. In that land, love, lust, and longing dwelled, and when I was trapped in that land, it was euphoric. Fuck that. Utopia. As I backed away, he inched forward, determined to make me linger there just long enough to apply for an all-season pass.
“I told you and Ryan, New York is my state. And your husband should never tell his personal business to his business partners who happen to be really good friends with me.” He pulled me close to him. There was nowhere for me to go, and I was dangerously close to giving up the fight. “I know what you said to Ryan in the shower, Charice. Just be real with me.”
My knees buckled, but Lincoln caught me and held me upright. “You . . . you . . . know,” I stammered.
“When it comes to you, there isn’t much I don’t know, except about the baby. That you kept hidden pretty good.”
“It was a mistake.”
“Was it?”
“Ye-yes.”
“Not that,” he said, lifting my face to match his gaze and confirming that he was no longer referring to the baby.
“I’m married.”
“I love you.”
“Even though—”
“No matter what,” he interrupted.
“I can’t—”
“Hush.” He placed his thumb to my lips and then replaced it with his lips and kissed me passionately.
My mind said, Resist—I promise it did—but my heart and my body gave way instantly. I kissed him with such fervor and frenzy that it scared me. I knew I’d crossed a line with Lincoln, and I pushed back from him immediately.
“Oh my God.” I touched my lips in disbelief and glanced at my ring finger. “I’m married.”
Lincoln grabbed my hands and caressed them. “Are you married in your heart, mind, and soul or on paper?”
I snatched my hands away from him. “Married is married. Unless I’m not married, I’m not going there with you.”
“So, what you’re saying is you want to go there with me, but you can’t, because you’re married?” he asked, eyeing me.
Shit, that was exactly what I just said to him. Would I? Did I? I didn’t know. My mind was swirling off this new information about Ryan, which I just didn’t want to believe. I was angry at both of them and myself. Not to mention, I was confused and jacked up on old feelings and new feelings, so I couldn’t trust what I was feeling at the time.
“Lincoln, I don’t know what to think or feel. If you’re truthful, you’ve just told me that I lost you because of Ryan, whom I probably would’ve never married if he hadn’t manipulated you and me. However, I did marry him, and I married him for a reason—”
“It sure as hell wasn’t love,” he cut in.
“But I love him now. My anger toward him doesn’t turn that off. Just like it didn’t turn it off for you.”
He rubbed his neck in frustration. “So you’d really be with him, knowing what you know?”
“I don’t know. I have to sort it all out for myself. You’ve known for a year. I’ve known for all of ten minutes, and my position is different than yours. I can’t change the fact that I love him, that we have kids, and that we are married at this very mom
ent.” I walked over to the window and leaned my head against the cool pane of glass. My life was such a mess.
I heard him walking toward me. He stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders, then whispered, “You’re right, Ma. You can’t. I’m sorry for trying to force you to choose. I was wrong for that. I love you so much, Charice, and I want you back so badly that I overstepped my boundaries. I know you need time to work through this, and whatever you decide, I will support. I give you my word that if you choose Ryan, I won’t interfere ever again. The only thing I ask is to be a part of Lexi’s life and that she bears my last name. I’ll pay child support, do visitation, and anything else, according to your terms, but Lexi is my daughter, and I want her in my life. Having her mother also would be an added bonus, though.”
I smiled. “You just had to add that in, didn’t you?”
“You know I had to get it in. You know, do my campaign plea, like the politicians,” he said as I laughed.
I turned to face him. “I hear you. Loud and clear. I have to go and break this down to Ryan and get some answers from him. But I will contact my attorney in the morning to get the process started on the name change. As for visitation and child support, I can discuss that after I’ve talked to Ryan. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough . . . for now . . . but I trust you.”
I reached up and hugged him. “Thank you for forgiving me and being patient and understanding. I promise you I’ll make it right. And I thank you for the information.”
He looked down at me. “I know you can’t accept it now, but when you do, I’ll be there. As for my forgiving you, I can never stay angry at you for long. Real love doesn’t allow that. I just hope you forgive me for allowing our relationship to end the way it did.”