Epilogue
Helene
Five Years Later
I often saw him around campus, walking in that same casual and laid-back way he’d always had. He never carried a backpack with him. It was always just a book or two and a pen. And he always wore jeans, a casual shirt, and work boots. I, on the other hand, dressed far more professionally. He would smile kindly at me if he passed me on the sidewalk, and I would smile back, my cheeks warming.
But on this day his path was leading in the same direction as mine, and when he reached the door of the Academic Center, he pulled it open for me.
“Thank you, Mr. Thorson,” I said curtly, forcing my response to sound professional.
“You’re very welcome … Dr. Thorson.” He winked as I passed him.
We walked side by side down the hall, and when he suddenly reached in front of me, grabbed the handle of the door we were passing, and then pulled me into the darkened room after him, I let out a yelp of surprise. He pushed me to the wall just beside the door, and his lips found mine in the near dark. He groaned as he kissed me, and he pushed his tongue past my lips.
I was wearing black trousers and a fitted light pink knit shirt. It hugged my belly, and his hands ran over my protruding stomach as his moan loudened.
“Have I ever told you how much I enjoy making babies with you?”
I laughed quietly, letting my palm rest against his cheek as my thumb covered his lip and stopped his mouth from any more inappropriate kissing.
“You’re going to get me in trouble,” I admonished.
He scoffed. “I’m pretty sure baby number two was conceived somewhere on this campus…” he said as his hands still ran over baby number two’s bump. “…so it’s a little late to be worried about propriety, Hell. Don’t you think?”
“Later.”
He chuckled. “Yes, Dr. Thorson.”
He pulled the door open again, peeking down the hall in both directions before tugging on my hand. It wasn’t like it was any secret we were married, and the most the college cared about was that he didn’t end up in any of my classes. That didn’t mean Doctor of Philosophy Helene Thorson exiting a darkened vacant lecture hall with local carpenter, part-time student, convicted felon Kane Thorson would be seen as appropriate.
“Where were you working today?” I asked him as we strolled down the hall slowly.
“Harry McAllister’s. His wife made him call me to finish that addition he started eight months ago, because apparently she expects it to get done sometime in her lifetime. Never mind the fact he hasn’t even gotten Tyvec up and we’re going into winter…” He looked at me, smirking. “That reminds me, Hilde wants us to take Hannah trick-or-treating with them.”
“She’s only a year and half old. Is trick-or-treating even appropriate at this age?”
“Well… I said we’d talk about it. But I’m not gonna lie. It’s Halloween, it’s trick-or-treating, and I’m siding with Hilde on this one.”
“You just want the candy.”
“Of course I want the candy.”
I laughed. “Maybe?”
He nodded. “We’ll talk about it later.” That meant he intended to get his way.
I paused outside the lecture hall, turning toward him and taking his hands in mine. “You ready?”
He smiled sweetly. “Yes.” He winked at me, and then he pulled the door open, waiting for me to enter first.
I walked to the front of the classroom, and Kane followed me, taking the seat behind my desk. He leaned back casually in the chair as I stepped in front of the desk and sat on the edge.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” I began. “We’re continuing our discussion on justice today, and we have a guest here to help facilitate some dialogue on the topic. This is Kane Thorson, my husband. He was also the subject of my dissertation—”
“Kane Thorson. I know who you are,” one kid in the front row remarked.
I was already forgotten. That tended to happen when I invited him into my classroom. We’d done this a number of times in my general philosophy classes, and I was used to being outshined by him on these days. It was a small town, after all, and it was no secret who he was at this point.
“You… You like killed a man.”
I glanced back at Kane who was staring blankly at the kid.
“I mean, dude, it’s totally cool. He deserved it. You’re like … vigilante justice in the flesh.”
When Kane pulled his attention from the kid, he met my eyes. I gave him a quick nod, and he stood, rounding the desk to me. He leaned against the desktop, resting his hand just behind my rear, and his thumb stroked gently above my tailbone. I shut up then, letting him take over.
“So let me start out by saying, I don’t for even one second condone my decisions. You should understand that about me,” he said adamantly. “I was seventeen, I’d been traumatized, and my actions that night nearly ended up destroying me.”
I let myself sink just a little closer to the crook of Kane’s shoulder as he spoke. I loved listening to him discuss this, which might be odd, but I did. There was this certain authority and conviction to his tone that was all the assurance I needed that he was now in an emotionally healthy place with this. He’d recovered from the trauma … finally.
He’d spent three years of a five year prison sentence focusing on this. And then, thanks to his stellar behavior, he’d been granted early release. He’d been fortunate enough to be sentenced to a medium security prison with a committed focus on intensive behavioral and emotional counseling—of course we had Ross Bernstein to thank for a lot of that, too. Kane needed the emphasis on emotional wellbeing, and he was also smart enough to know he needed that—a fact that went a long way in his recovery.
“As my lovely wife has undoubtedly mentioned before, justice is not an easy topic. Believing someone deserves to die doesn’t make it so. And handing out that judgment comes with a very heavy burden. Helene said she handed out the forward of her dissertation last week, so you’d all have a chance to read the background of my particular case, so we won’t spend time rehashing that.
“What we can talk about, is what justice truly means, the arguments surrounding the topic—injustice to fight injustice, the moral qualms with vigilantism, the emotional and psychological trauma associated with taking the law into one’s own hands, moral and ethical dilemmas surrounding the death penalty, I could go on…” He rolled his eyes, and students chuckled. I did too.
“So, Kane used to be a student in my evening class,” I continued. “He’d actually done his term paper on the topic of ethics surrounding vigilantism. He gave a copy of it to me prior to turning himself in, and his self-effacing and self-examining approach to the topic spurred me to hone my own dissertation topic to vigilantism, and very specifically, the ethics and even psychology surrounding it. I already knew I wanted to incorporate the psychology of victimization into my study of justice, but I ended up focusing my research on justice and vigilantism as a result of victimization.”
“You married your student?” a young gal asked, clearly having heard nothing else of what I’d said.
“Well … we weren’t in a relationship at that time,” I lied.
But then the class erupted into laughter, and my brain scrambled to figure out what I’d said that was so funny. Until I glanced to Kane just to see him mock scowling at me. He rolled his eyes, and I had to fight back the laughter then too.
“That’s not the point,” I continued quickly.
“She did, however, steal my term paper topic and use it as her dissertation topic,” Kane continued dramatically. “You guys caught that, right?”
“Wha—?”
“Well, you did,” he said sarcastically. “Just sayin’…”
And more laughter.
“I did not,” I said indignantly as I gaped at him.
His lips pursed into a small, very satisfied smile as his eyebrows shot up.
He held his free hand up in placation as his other hand still toyed with my backside. “I’m kidding. It’s a topic we’re both equally passionate about for good reason, and it was an amazing experience being interviewed by her for her project. We would go through interview questions during visitations or she’d mail me questions, and it was … cathartic—which is such a bullshit cliché word, but…”
My eyes bulged as I glanced at him. He was cussing in my classroom again. When he looked at me and caught my eyeball admonishment, he laughed.
“She’s sensitive to cuss words,” he said to the class. “Don’t mind her.” And he rolled his eyes again as students laughed once more. “My point is, it was amazing. Talking to her in such detail about a past we’d both experienced was…” He shook his head. “It helped me learn to talk about it, and it taught me I actually love talking about it. Umm…” He glanced at me as he contemplated something. “It also really helped me isolate my feelings on certain things.” He held the eye contact for a moment, and his lips pulled up slightly.
“The thing was,” he continued as he looked back to the students. “From the time I committed this crime to the time I found Helene again, I was doing everything in my power to destroy myself. I was spiraling out of control in a very self-destructive way. My behaviors, my actions, my lifestyle, none of it was acceptable. And yet, I couldn’t seem to give up the need to hurt myself. In fact, letting go of that was like recovering from an addiction—the need to feel pain was very strong. But I’m a smart man,” he remarked casually, and students smiled at his easy manner. “I knew my actions were being driven by guilt. I could see what I was doing, and I thought I understood it—even if I didn’t think I could change it.”
A sea of enthralled eyes stared back at him.
“But I was wrong. It was so much more complicated than that. And that realization was one of the first things I discovered about myself just through working on her dissertation questions and talking with her.”
“So if it wasn’t guilt, what was driving you?” a student asked even as she was still raising her hand.
“I was angry,” Kane said simply. “I was carrying more fury and rage than I knew what to do with. I was internalizing it and aiming it at myself, but I was … mad. One of the most poignant moments of this process for me was when Helene asked me if I would have killed the man if he hadn’t become confrontational.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn’t answer that question,” he said bluntly. He looked at me again. “I couldn’t tell the woman I loved more than anything else in this world, who I wanted to marry and have children with, and who I wanted to trust me with her life and future whether I was capable of killing out of rage or not.” He swallowed harshly over a lump in his throat as he looked at me, and his brow flinched.
“That destroyed me psychologically,” he said as he looked back out to the class. “And yet, I’d never been able to put that into words prior to sitting down with her and analyzing the repercussions of my actions. In truth, it infuriated me because I felt like that man had taken away my chance to change my mind, and I was so angry at him for that, and I resented him. That one thing that seems so clear and simple now had gnawed away at me for years, and yet, I was so focused on hurting myself that I didn’t fully realize the why behind my need to punish myself.”
I looked out at the faces watching Kane intently. Some stared, some eyes were glassy, and a few hands were even reaching for eyes to brush away stray tears.
“How do you trust yourself not to hurt the people you love the most when you have no idea what you’re capable of?” He slipped his hand up under the back of my shirt, placing his palm on my lower spine.
A young man raised his hand, and Kane nodded at him.
“Why did you turn yourself in? I mean, no one knew! No one would ever have known.” The kid shook his head, clearly perplexed.
“I knew.” He studied the kid for a moment. “And I wasn’t doing a very good job of managing that knowledge. Don’t think it was an easy decision. When I was … nothing more than a student in Helene’s class…” He rolled his eyes again, and students snickered. “…I was changing my mind every five minutes. I didn’t want to go to jail. I didn’t want to talk about it. I sure as hell didn’t want to leave Helene. But … I also knew I couldn’t continue in this life the way things were.
“The thing I learned is that whether I deserved to mete out justice or not … didn’t really matter. It was bigger than me. Justice is bigger than all of us. It’s complicated, it’s messy, it…” He glanced to me and smiled. “…unravels the second you think you’ve wrapped your head around it.”
He looked back out at the students. “Human life is a fragile, fragile thing. Taking it away from someone … is a decision that doesn’t belong to us. Mind you, this is my opinion, and it is based solely on my experiences and my prejudices. You’re not required to agree with me, and I would fault no one for taking a different stance. As my wife will tell you, nothing is black and white in this field.” He went silent, and his hand stroked my back gently.
“So, an eye for an eye?” I asked as I looked at him.
“That one’s still a little complicated for me. But if it involves taking an offenders life, no.” He looked back at me.
“Death penalty?”
“No.” His lips pulled up slightly.
“Extermination of pedophiles?”
“No. Though, I’m not at all opposed to castration.” His lips pulled up in a bigger grin as he watched me.
Students laughed again, and when we faced forward, I saw more hands brushing tears away even as they chuckled and smiled.
A young woman in the second row raised her hand, and I called on her.
“Is there a circumstance in which you would ever kill again?”
Kane nodded. “To protect my wife, children, and even my own life … absolutely. To exact a revenge I thought I deserved. No. That price tag is too high.” He paused for a moment. “Here’s what I’ve discovered. I deserved better than what I gave myself. I deserved to recover from the trauma that happened to us and go on to live my life. I’m the one who took that away from myself for ten years—from Helene too, because my actions impacted her just as much as they did me. None of us can do anything in this world only to ourselves without affecting another. We’re all just dominoes lined up waiting to fall.”
The room was silent, and Kane’s fingers curled against my lower back, sending a flush over my skin.
“Okay,” I finally said. “He’s open to questions you might have, so I’m turning it over to you guys. Don’t worry. If he doesn’t want to answer a particular question because it’s too personal, I assure you, he’ll tell you.”
I stood, and Kane’s hand slipped from under my shirt. I rounded the desk and took a seat in the chair, and soon, hands started to raise. Kane answered one question after another. Many were relevant, many were ridiculous or just plain invasive. He politely refused to answer any questions about what happened to Kane and I—there were always a few people willing to ask for specifics. But frankly, our statements were all part of public record if they cared to research it, and it simply wasn’t the point of this discussion.
“What were you most looking forward to doing when you got out of prison?” a young woman asked.
He glanced back at me, smirking for a moment as I rested my hand on my stomach.
“That’s absolutely none of your business,” he said as he turned forward again. “But I’ve only been home for two years and three months, and we already have a daughter who’s eighteen months old. Do the math.”
I shook my head as I rolled my eyes, and laughter erupted from the class again. There was usually plenty of laughter when Kane paid a visit.
The questions eventually died down, and as Kane stood to leave, more or less cutting off any further discussion, I stood too.
“Okay, guys. Take fifteen.”
Students stood and stretched, and Kane turned toward me, but he paused, turning back quickly. “Immanuel Kant has some wicked stupid theories about sexuality, by the way,” he announced.
Students stopped for a moment, and mouths pulled up in intrigued grins.
“Just … fair warning. Don’t even bother showing up to class that day.”
Whoops and hollers broke out for a moment, and as the room emptied out, my rather juvenile husband turned back to me and smiled.
I leaned against the side of the desk, and as the last of the students cleared out, he reached for my stomach and stepped up close to me.
“I’m going to go pick up Hannah from your sister.” He leaned down, kissing my cheek. “I’ll see you when you get home tonight.” He smiled, caressing his palm over my belly.
“Okay.”
The door opened, and the first of the returning students walked back in. His hand grazed down to my hip, and he leaned down giving me one more kiss on my forehead. He winked just before he turned and walked out.
* * * *
Kane
“I’m just saying…” I popped an apple slice in my mouth as Hilde scowled at me disapprovingly. “…she just didn’t seem to think trick-or-treating was a necessary thing for a one and a half year old.” I bit off a small piece of apple, stripping the peel from it before holding it up to Hannah’s mouth. She practically took my fingers off as she attacked the apple.
“Well, that is just hog manure,” Hilde retorted.
“Agreed. I mean, she’ll be the cutest damn ladybug this town has ever seen. And I will totally split the loot with you if you can talk her into it.”
Hilde nodded. “Okay. I’m on it.”
“How was Hannah Montana today?”
Hilde scowled at me again. “Do not call my niece that. She’s going to start tweaking soon if you keep calling her that.”
“Twerking, Hilde. It’s twerking. And Hell’s already tried to teach her. Hannah’s just not coordinated enough yet. Soon I think though…” I offered Hannah another bite of apple as she cooed and giggled and then shark bit my fingers.
Hilde rolled her eyes at me, and I smiled back at her. Hilde did a lot of eye rolling and scowling when it came to me, but … she still liked me. Mark told me so, and I believed him. He was blunt after all—a man would have to be to be married to Hilde.
She finally sighed. “She was a peach. We dropped Sienna and Brody off at school, went to the library, came home, took a nap, ate, played, ate, played some more, ate some more…”
“Cool.” I shifted Hannah over to my other hip as I pulled my car keys out of my pocket.
“Hey, when are you planning on the upstairs bathroom tile job?”
“Probably two weeks. I’m fitting it in between the McAllister project and a roof I want to get done before it gets much colder out. Plus I’m taking a couple classes this semester, so I have to work around that. Will that work?”
“Sure.” She tossed the apple core in the sink, rinsing her hands. “Don’t know why you’re bothering with school, given how busy you’re staying with the carpentry.”
I snorted. “This coming from the woman who chastised me for dropping out of high school once.”
Hilde stared at me for a moment. “That was a long time ago.”
And that was a Hilde apology.
I paused for a moment. What was one supposed to say to a veiled apology like that? Thanks? You’re forgiven for being a judgy biotch?
“I better go,” and a sincere smile was what I eventually settled on. “Tell Sienna and Brody I said hi when they get home from school.”
“Okay,” she said as she walked up to me, smacked a kiss on Hannah’s cheek, and patted me on the shoulder.
“Okay, shorty,” I said to Hannah as I buckled her into the carseat. “It’s just you and me for a few hours until mama gets home from her night class.”
She smiled and giggled, reaching for my chin and pulling my whiskers.
We spent the next few hours playing and watching football in the living room, and when Hannah fell asleep on my chest as I lounged against the end of the couch, I checked my phone to see the time. She’d be home soon.
I brushed Hannah’s light brown hair off her forehead. She looked like us. Of course she was supposed to, but it was still such an incredible thing to see Helene mixed with me in this beautiful little girl. Never in a million years did I imagine my life would amount to so much—so much that I was able to share part of myself with Helene to create something new and amazing. There was a time when I didn’t think I had anything good enough in me to share in that way.
But I was wrong. Thank God I was wrong.
“I love you, Hannah,” I whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear me.
Thirty minutes later, Helene walked in. Her lips pulled up sweetly as she set her briefcase down by the door. She slipped her heels off, and she walked toward me. She leaned over the sofa, peeking at Hannah’s face.
“Hi, baby,” I whispered as I reached for her tummy.
“Hi.” She kissed me. “I’ll put her down.”
I nodded. “Come to bed when you’re finished.”
She lifted Hannah from my chest, and I stood, following her toward the hallway and turning lights off as I moved. She veered off toward my old childhood bedroom with Hannah, and I turned the other way toward the master bedroom. I stripped out of my clothes when I entered and crawled into bed.
I picked up a textbook that I’d left on my nightstand, and I tried to immerse myself in business law for a few minutes. But I was already thinking about fucking my wife, and that did something to my brain not entirely conducive with studying. I stared at a page related to contract law, knowing this actually did pertain to my line of business and was likely important to my very profession, but … I saw nothing.
“Whatcha doing?”
I looked up to see Helene standing in the doorway, and I smiled. “Thinking about fucking you.”
She sauntered over to me. “Really? Because it looks like you’re reading.”
“Oh, no. I promise you I’m not.”
She took the book from my hands, taking in the sight of my erection, and her eyes bulged. “Oh, no you’re not. Not unless business law became a lot more interesting than I remember it.”
I smirked at her as she set the book back down on my nightstand, and as she stooped over slightly, I grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her down to hover over me. Her face was close to mine, and as she watched my eyes, I pushed my fingers up under her shirt and then down past the waist of her pants, trailing my palm over her belly and down to her pussy.
My mouth fell open and hers did too when I slid my finger between her pussy lips. She was wet, and her breath caught in her throat when my finger ran over her clit. She leaned down, sucking the head of my cock into her mouth.
“Oh, fuck,” I cursed as my fingers twisted into her hair. She bobbed up and down, and I watched her lips stretch. She’d taken a step back when she leaned down to my dick, and I couldn’t reach her anymore. Of course, her lips were now wrapped around me, so I couldn’t complain too much about the loss of her cum from my fingertips. Instead of touching her pussy, I kept my hand on the side of her stomach, caressing gently with my palm as she sucked and licked.
“Kiss me,” I finally demanded when my need to come became too intense.
She pulled up slowly, letting me watch as my dick passed her lips. She leaned to my mouth, toying with me by holding her lips just out of reach. I lunged then, kissing her as I sat up straight and pulled her pants down her legs. She was moaning against my mouth, and I didn’t break from her lips until she was naked from the waist down.
I leaned back, propping my head up on my hands to watch her. She stood up straight and stripped her shirt off over her head, unclasped her bra, and then let it slide off her arms.
She crawled onto the bed between my parted legs, and she leaned back, resting with her head at the foot of the bed. I reached over, grabbed her pillow, and tossed it to her. She pushed it under her head, and then she opened her legs.
I stroked my cock as I stared at her pussy, and she reached down, parting her lips for me. She was too far away for me to reach out and touch, but she was close enough to see the details—the glossy wetness, the pink skin, the hole I was going to fill. She knew I wanted to look, and she knew I wanted to watch her touch herself too.
So many things were unspoken between us in the bedroom now, and I loved that. I knew she liked to watch me jack off just as much as I liked to watch her touch herself. I also knew when she wanted anal play by nothing more than the way she’d bite her lower lip and take a deep breath as though she wanted to ask the question but couldn’t quite figure out how. She was just shy that way. I always made her ask the question regardless of her nerves before I’d give into her wishes. I was just a shithead that way, I guess. And as her cheeks would blush as she fought to describe exactly what she wanted me to stick up her ass, I’d smile and my dick would get even harder.
But this wasn’t the anal play sort of night. I could tell by the way she was touching herself that she wanted to feel me there, only there right now. Her fingers brushed gently over her clit, and she gasped. My hand was gripping my erection harshly, pulling up and then sliding back down.
“Pretty soon I’m not going to be able to reach my own vagina,” she commented even as her breath caught in her throat again.
I pushed up to my knees, smiling down at her. “Do me a favor. Let Dr. Kossuth say vagina. You stick to pussy when you’re with me.” I winked as I leaned down to her … vagina, and I sucked her finger that was still stroking her clit into my mouth. I pulled on it for a moment, tasting her subtle flavor, and then I released her finger, turning my attention to her pussy.
I licked and laved and let my tongue roll over her nerves, and when I flicked her clit with the tip of my tongue, her fingers dug into the tops of her thighs until in a loud groan, she came, clapping her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound so she wouldn’t wake Hannah.
I chuckled with my lips still against her wet skin, and her thighs trembled. I sat back, wiping my lower lip as she stared up at me and caught her breath. I pinned her thighs back farther as I wedged my knees under them, and then I pressed my cockhead to her entry.
I pushed forward, watching her face as I slid in, and her eyelids fluttered as she moaned. I rocked in and out, looking down on her. I’d been terrified of this once, but now I leaned over her, bringing my face close to hers as she lay under me. I wouldn’t be able to make love to her this close face to face before too long, and I was going to take her this way for as long as I could.
“I love you,” I whispered as I thrust my hips harder.
She reached for my cheek, pulling my mouth to hers. “I love you, too.”
She held my face close as I fucked, and she whimpered and cried out as I penetrated and plunged deep into her. I came with gritted teeth as I stilled and spasmed inside her, and then my muscles crumbled, and I pulled her to her side as I collapsed next to her.
I ran my hand over baby number two, and she watched me as her fingers pinched and pulled gently on my facial hair. She touched my forehead then, grazing her fingers over my skin and tickling across my face. As much as I missed laying closer to her and feeling her breasts sandwiched against my chest, I loved the feel of her round belly pushing against my stomach.
She started falling asleep, and I yawned at nothing more than the contented look on her face. Her eyes would open, watch me lazily for a moment, and then close again.
“It’s a good life, isn’t it…” I said as my fingers still touched her belly. It wasn’t a question. “A beautiful life…”
Her eyes opened again, looking so tired. But she smiled a perfect Helene smile. “Such a beautiful life,” she said. Her eyelids fluttered again as they closed.
“Good night, my sweet Hell,” I whispered, and then I closed my eyes.
The End