Chapter 31
Malcolm
There it was again, some annoying ringing sound that was pushing its way through my subconscious. I groaned, and rolled over to turn on the lamp beside the bed. This time the ringing was followed by a knock, or I thought it was a knock. I looked at the clock. It was almost 1:30 in the morning. Who the hell would be at my door this time of night? The ringing pierced through again.
“Fuck!”
Throwing the covers back, my eyes scanned the floor for something to put on. I shoved my legs into a pair of jeans, not bothering to button them up. The doorbell rang again.
“Whoever the fuck is down there better be near death ringing my fucking bell like that!”
I bounded down the steps, flipping on the light in the hall as I walked toward the door. I unlocked it, ready to cuss out whoever was on the other side. All annoyance drained away when I saw Calida. She stood on my front porch in the middle of the night red-eyed, wearing an over-sized T-shirt, and a pair of shorts. She held a sleeping Shawn cradled in her arms.
I took a long blink, certain I had to be dreaming. “Calida? What…is something wrong?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know…can I come in?” Her voice held a raspy undertone.
I shook the fog from my head. “Yeah, yeah…of course.” I stepped to the side.
She walked in, softly cooing to Shawn who’d started to wake.
“Here, let me take him.” I took the sleeping child without waiting on an answer.
I turned to take him upstairs. She didn’t move. She simply stood in the foyer. The playpen Macy’d left here remained set up in the room meant for Shawn. He fussed when I put him in it, so it took me a few minutes to get him settled down. As I rubbed his back, my thoughts raced with reasons for her being here. She’d been ignoring my attempts to reach her since she sent me home Monday.
I’d spent the last two days talking myself out of driving to her place to speak with her. I figured it would be pointless, since she probably wouldn’t open the damn gate to let me in. On top of that, I needed to respect her wishes, and she’d made them clear. She wanted to be left alone. But now she was here, in the middle of the night.
Pulling the door closed behind me, I exited Shawn’s room. The house was dark again. The only light came from the master bedroom. I found Calida sitting on the bed, her head hanging as she picked at her nails. When I leaned against the doorframe, the knob hit the wall. The sound caused her to look up. She gave me a weak smile, and tucked her hair behind her ear.
Taking careful steps, I made my way over and took a seat beside her. “Is everything okay?” She nodded in response. “You have a key and a garage door opener.”
She shrugged, turning her attention back to her hands. “I didn’t want you to think I was a burglar or something.”
“Ah…so ringing my doorbell like a mad woman worked out much better.” I gave a little laugh in an attempt to break some of the tension. It didn’t work.
Her knee started bouncing, and she kept twisting the ring I’d given her around in circles on her finger. She still wore it and the necklace.
“I’m sorry for just showing up like this.”
“It’s okay. And not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but why exactly are you here?”
Calida shrugged in response. “I...I’ve been thinking, about a lot of things, and I just…I just wanted to see you.” She looked at my legs and frowned. “You sleep in jeans?”
“Uh…no. I sleep in nothing, but didn’t think that was the best way to answer the door.”
“Oh…” she replied softly. A red flush crept into her cheeks.
I wanted to hug her, hold her hand, something, anything, but I refrained. Her comment about me not keeping my hands to myself lingered at the forefront of my mind.
“It’s late, you can take the bed.”
I eased off the bed and walked to my dresser to retrieve a pair of shorts. If I had to sleep in clothes, I needed something less restrictive than denim.
“Where are you going to sleep?”
“On the couch. My decorator helped me pick a comfy one, but she’s been slacking on filling up the remaining bedrooms,” I answered, turning to smile at her.
“You should probably fire her then,” she replied with a small laugh.
“I should, but since she’s rather sexy, I keep her around.” I waited for some retort, but it never came. “Okay…well, get some sleep.” I grabbed the shorts and started for the door.
“I don’t want to be alone.”
Her words stopped me in my tracks. There was a double meaning to that simple statement. I knew it, but needed to choose which path to take. “You don’t have to be. You just have to stop pushing me away,” I answered, choosing to take what could be the more dangerous route.
My reply was met with silence. I let out a heavy sigh, ready to head downstairs, but Calida got off the bed, coming to stand in front of me.
“I’m a mess, Malcolm. I thought I was doing better, but…I’m a mess.”
She wrapped her arms around my waist, buried her face in my chest, and started crying. The shorts dropped from my hands, and I closed my arms around her. I held her, while her tears ran down my naked torso.
“I…I…I’ve been so hurt…and you…you…I…I just don’t know. You…you keep saying you love me, bu…but I don’t know. I…I’m scared.”
The anguish in her words was like a knife in my heart. Each tearful stutter sliced through me. I held her, wishing there was a way I could absorb her pain. To free her from all of it. I couldn’t. I’d been a fool to believe I had enough love for the both of us to heal her broken heart. That if I’d loved her enough, she’d see she wasn’t the shell of a woman she thought she was.
She looked up at me. I wiped the tears from her cheeks only to have new ones take their place. “I do love you, Calida. Without a doubt.”
She closed her eyes, fresh tears spilled free. I watched the rise and fall of her chest as she took deep audible breaths. Her arms fell from my waist, and although I didn’t want to let her go, I released my hold on her.
She opened her eyes and looked at me. Her hand came up to cup my face, and I leaned into her touch. Stretching up on her tiptoes, she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me. I was shocked by her actions, but my body quickly responded to hers. I put my hands on her hips, bringing her body closer to me. My tongue slipped into the warm comfort of her mouth.
Her hands closed around my hair, and she moaned as her tongue wrestled with mine. My dick grew hard, restricted painfully by the jeans I wore. Cupping her ass, I rubbed her body against my erection. Having her close to me like this drove me crazy and I feared I’d come in my pants at any minute.
Holy Shit!
I pulled away, disentangled her arms from around my neck, and took a step back. What the hell was I doing?
Her eyes were wide, and she brought her hand to her lips.
I took another step back. “Shit! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done any of that.”
She wrapped her arms protectively around herself. Watching her do that gutted me. I diverted my eyes to the shorts I’d dropped.
I reached down to grab them. “Try to get some sleep.” I turned to leave, fully expecting her to lock the door afterward.
“You don’t want me now.”
I stopped, unsure if I’d heard her correctly.
I turned back to face her. “What?”
“You...you wouldn’t look at me that next day. And...and now I’m here, and you can’t get away from me fast enough.”
“What! No! That’s...that’s not—”
“That is exactly it!” she yelled. “It’s why you couldn’t look at me that morning, Malcolm. It’s why you can’t look at me now. Admit it. Now that you know, you see me differently.” She covered her face and turned away. “Why did I come here? What was I thinking?”
Turning back around, she headed toward the door without looking at me. I stepped in front of it, blocking her escape route. Surprise flashed across her face, but it was quickly replaced with a look of fear. We needed to get through this. I couldn’t keep letting her run away.
“Move, Malcolm.” There was a tremor in her voice when she spoke that made me second guess my plan of action.
“No. Not until you hear me out.”
She stepped back. I hated that she was scared of me for any reason, but I needed to talk to her. She needed to know that what she thought was wrong.
“I want you. Lord knows I want you in the worst way. Don’t ever doubt that.”
I paused. Separation needed to be between that statement and what needed to come next. “You were raped, Calida. Hearing you talk about what he did, seeing you that night…” I stopped and took a breath.
Those emotions were still fresh, and the last thing I wanted was to lose my cool and for her to think it was directed at her.
“The reason I couldn’t look at you the next day had nothing to do with you. Well, not in the way you think. I was…am pissed and ashamed at myself for being too fucking dense to not have considered he would have done something like that. Or, hell, maybe I did, but didn’t want to admit it to myself. Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that morning was about me. I’d spent the night thinking back over everything I’d done, the way I pushed you at times, and I was fucking pissed! I was pissed I’d fucked up so badly and ignored all the signs right in front of me!”
I threw the shorts to the floor. “I...I wanted to be someone that you could count on. I...why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because…the way you all looked at me when I was in the hospital. That was hard enough. The pity. The disappointment. I couldn’t handle it, so if you had known, it would have been worse. Besides, who was I going to tell? Macy, my best friend, she didn’t talk to me for months. She could have died because of my actions. I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me any more than they already were.”
“It wasn’t pity or disappointment, Calida. It was fear, sadness, hell, a whole slew of emotions, but never disappointment. As for who to tell, anyone. I was there, or tried like hell to be there. You had your parents, you’re paying a small fortune to Dr. Carr. You had options, Calida!”
“Obviously, I didn’t see it that way. I pushed it down. I tried not to think about it. I lived with him. I was married to him. Every day I was in fear of him killing someone I loved if I didn’t behave. So what if he was angrier one time over the next? The end result was the same. I couldn’t focus on it! I couldn’t! You all wanted me better. It was like none of you knew how to act around me, so I just pushed it down. I got really good at pushing it down. I had to. You all wanted me better, so I was better.”
My head reeled with the new information. Just when I didn’t think the hell she went through could have been any worse, she proved me wrong. The anger and pain from the night I’d found out boiled to new heights. More than once. He’d done that do her more than once? I took a breath, needing to remain calm for her sake.
“Yes, we wanted you better, but that didn’t mean you needed to hide your feelings from me. From any of us.”
“Can you honestly tell me had you known, you wouldn’t have treated me differently? More so than you already were?” She sounded tired. Defeated.
“Hell yes, I would have, but not for the reason you think. You went through an impossible and traumatic experience. No one expected you to be fine whether we knew that part or not. If you needed to scream, cry, punch someone, whatever, that’s what you needed to do.”
I took a step forward. She shook her head.
“I would have been there, by your side the whole way through, trying harder to make sure you knew you weren’t alone. Making sure you knew you had someone to take care of you when you couldn’t take care of yourself. I fucking love you, Calida! I would have been there to make sure you felt it even when you didn’t realize it.”
I stared into her red-brimmed eyes. Seeing her like this, so lost and deflated, all fight drained from me. I pinched the bridge of my nose, and mentally counted to ten. Since learning about what he’d done, I’d racked my brain to figure out why she felt like she had to keep it a secret, and now it made sense. She didn’t trust us.
She’d resorted to putting on this act, pretending, all while hiding her deepest pain from all of us. We’d failed her. I’d failed her.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I put that kind of pressure on you. And I’m sorry that because of it, you had to keep everything in. We’ve made you feel alone in this, but you’re not. I’m here. I’ll always be here for you. In whatever way you need me to be.”
She drew in a shaky breath before dropping down onto the bed, and burying her face in her hands. Without hesitation, I crossed the room, and pulled her into my arms when I took a seat beside her.
“I’m so tired. I...I just don’t know anymore. I’m so tired.”
I kissed the top of her head. “Get some sleep. The bed is very comfortable.”
I started to get up, but she stopped me. “Stay with me.”
I thought about telling her no. I didn’t want her to wake up and possibly freak out in the morning, but she was so frail and vulnerable that I couldn’t leave her.
“Okay, just let me get changed.”
“For what?”
“Because sleeping in jeans would be hella uncomfortable.”
She sat up and gave me a shy smile. “But I thought you said you slept in nothing.”