Complicated: A Tainted Love Novella (14 page)

Marshall

I
t’s been three weeks of major ups and downs for all of us. Delilah is finally out of hospital and we have been staying at Ben’s as she continues to recuperate. She’s been having nightmares that keep us up for hours until she calms down enough to go back to bed, but with the therapy sessions, she’s getting much better.

She’d suffered severely at Rick and Ryan’s hands – I still want to murder that prick for tricking Rachel – but as it stands, nothing permanent. Her scars and bruises have been gradually fading and she is coming back to her old self. As she and Dad dance away in the living room, I am struck with the beauty of the moment.

My family is together again and I got the girl.

Even though said girl is giving me the silent treatment, I couldn’t be happier. We had been having little tiffs here and there, typical of any relationship that’s been battle-tested. We’ve been working through our issues of trust and hurt and every time I’ve touched on the question of why things changed between us, she freezes me out. There’s something that she isn’t telling me, but I’m patient.

That, however, is not the reason she is glaring at me from across what Ben calls his leisure room. Little Miss Rachel is mad at me because I told her that she would be moving back to New York. She thinks I don’t value her job, and is mad that I would even think of splitting her and Delilah up.

Honestly, I don’t care about either of those things and let me explain why. It’s not that I don’t love my sister. I love her world without end, but she can’t keep me warm at night or get my dick wet. Delilah is with moneybags and if she pouts her little lips and bats her eyelashes, he’ll get her on a plane to New York in a split second. So, truthfully, they won’t be apart much. Her job, as much as she’s head receptionist at a large real estate firm, is just that: a job. She can get one in New York.

I sound insensitive – as she alluded to, before growling at me and storming out of the room I stay in all sex-mussed and sexy. From my point-of-view, however, I make sense. I have spent seven years without her by my side…
seven years.
I couldn’t do another week apart even if I tried, but I would give her a month. That was my compromise. I’ve got roots in New York, and I’m not talking about my parents. For me to uproot and try to make my name as a lawyer in a new state, it will take years to rebuild my reputation. Then again, I can see the same problem for Rachel.

Fuck. I can’t believe I’m even going to give this shit any thought.

It’s the night of Delilah’s post-birthday party. Ben had found out that her birthday was the day after she was found and sought to remedy the memory. My respect for the guy rose in spades with this, making the fact more and more obvious that he loved my sister, fucking worshipped her.

Rachel and I decided that we’d use tonight as a sort of coming-out for our relationship. We haven’t labeled it yet, since we’re still working through stuff, but it’s official that we’re dating. She’d stopped being mad at me after I told her that I understood her apprehension and then apologized for being so pig-headed.

Everything came together perfectly for Delilah’s party, and as the music plays on, I stare from across Ben’s pool at Rachel in her body-clinging red dress, looking like a wet dream. I am trying to find the perfect opportunity to whisk her into a dance, but she will not leave her damn friends for a few minutes. I think she might be torturing me because every time our eyes meet, she gives me a cocky smirk. As if she
knows
she’s driving me crazy.

I am definitely gonna fuck her hoarse for that later.

Finally I get my chance when Delilah pulls away from the group and the other girls, Simone (a beautiful blonde with stacks to match) and Jan (a sassy black girl with curves for days), disperse. I creep up behind her and place my hands on her hips, bringing her flush against my hard-on. Her hands automatically wrap around my neck.

“How’d you know it was me?” I ask her, swaying to the rhythm of
Animal
by Maroon 5. So fucking apt with the way I’ve been stalking her all night.

“Please,” she scoffs. “Like you’d allow any other guy within breathing space of me.”

She does speak the truth.

“Mm, you’re right about that,” I murmur, nuzzling her neck.

Rachel begins a slow grind of her hips and I grip her tighter as I match her movements. I’m not usually a dancer; I never even got the chance to dance with her when we were dating since we were always hiding. She’d always gone to school dances, had dates to go with her but never me. I’d have gone to jail for sure if anyone had ever found out about us, so the finer things of a relationship, we didn’t get to enjoy. We didn’t get to be normal. Being free to dance together now is…priceless.

As she moves against me, the beat pulsating through us, my cock responds in kind. My hands trail up her torso, teasing the area underneath the swells of her breasts. Rachel bends forward slightly and I groan at the pressure of her ass on my hardness. My lips graze the exposed skin of her neck and shoulder, and I feel her shudder. Bringing my lips up to her ear, I lick the shell of it before speaking.

“Let’s go up to the room,” I suggest, voice thick with lust.

Rachel nods desperately, need seeping through her movements. The rolls of her hips are frenzied; my girl, a ball of unmet desire. I loosen her hands from around my neck and grip her wrist, pulling her behind me as I storm off. A commotion draws our attention to inside, where Ben is wailing on some guy.

“Fuck,” I mutter, before dropping Rachel’s hand and heading in his direction, Rachel following closely behind.

We stop as we realize that Matt, his brother,
and
Delilah, have it under control.

“Aw, shit,” Rachel swears, sighing heavily.

“What is it?”

“Delilah slept with that guy the same night after she’d spent the day fucking Ben,” she answers. “I’d wondered why he was here. Apparently, Ben and Blonde Guy are buddies…” She looks over at the melee and shakes her head. “…or
were
.”

Jesus Christ. That is very much like Delilah, playing two guys at once. This time it seems she went too far – sleeping with his friend. I have always warned my sister to be careful about her sleeping around. I’d realized that it was as a result of whatever happened to her as a child; that she was trying to cover the hurt from her past with her impulsive behavior. Recognizing her behavior for what it was – self-sabotage – I’d tried to get her help a number of times. Each time, however, she’d made things worse and just graduated to greater acts of recklessness.

Shaking my head, I watch the commotion ensue, another part of Delilah’s past catching up with her. When Ben pushes her, though, I see red. I surge forward to go beat his obviously drunk ass, but Delilah recovers, pushes him back and smacks him hard across the face. She screams at him then stomps off and I beam with pride at my sister’s fire. I haven’t seen it in a while, and I am happy it’s returned. This is the Delilah that doesn’t take shit from anyone.

Rachel pulls me behind her as she follows after Delilah. I wanted to stay behind so I could give Ben a piece of my fucking mind, but my sister is more important. We head up the stairs trying to catch up to Delilah. She storms into the room she shares with Ben then spins right back out.

“Argh! I can’t
believe
him!” she yells, frustrated. “I need to get outta here.”

“We can go back to the apartment, babe,” Rachel suggests, and so we set off, Ben’s driver risking his job to take us there.

Sadly, after Simon dropped the girls off, I was forced to head back. They needed a guy-free zone, Rachel had said.

As I lay in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, my mind races with thoughts of Rachel. The greatest cock-block is a best friend. I get that my sister is upset right now, but why did I have to suffer for it? I palm my rigid cock and smooth my hand up and down the length of it, groaning in frustration. Reaching for my cell, I see that it’s been an hour since I’ve seen Rachel. I type out a message to her expressing my irritation.

I don’t like this
.

She responds immediately,
Neither do I. Lilah & Ben are fucking like animals. Wish I didn’t tell u 2 go.

Before I even finish reading, I am up and throwing clothes on. Fuck if I’m going to stay here starving for her when she’s just a few minutes away. I’ll be going back home soon, so every moment with her is precious and I’m not wasting any of them.

I’ll be right there. Leave the door open.

After paying the cabbie – they are a lot like New York cabbies with their terrible driving and bad attitudes – I race up to Rachel’s apartment. I find their accents hilarious: Fit Shtreet for Fifth Street, Iggles for Eagles, wooder for water…like, what the fuck? And what the fuck is a MAC machine and why couldn’t he get money from it? I did promise the cabbie that I’d try their famous Philly cheesesteak with whiz on it, though. At first I thought he meant piss, but when he told me he meant cheese whiz, I was all over it.

Bypassing the gay front desk agent who shoots me a wink and a kiss, I find the bank of elevators, thankful that they open as soon as I press the button. I swear that guy makes me uncomfortable, but it’s kinda flattering that he finds me attractive.

As I reach the eleventh floor, the doors can’t open soon enough. They finally do and I quickly make my way to Rachel’s front door. The door bangs against the wall as I fling it open without knocking. Rachel emerges from her bedroom in tiny shorts and a white cotton tank. Kicking the door closed, I strip my t-shirt over my head and charge for her, tackling her up against the wall.

The sounds I hear coming from Delilah’s room is enough to drive anyone crazy. I get why Rachel was so restless. My sister sounds like a wild animal, and Ben sounds even worse. They’re possibly taking their anger from the night, out on each other – a great way to exorcise demons, if you ask me.

“You’re gonna fuck me hard, okay? Long and hard,” Rachel tells me.

“Your wish is my command, Firecracker.”

Rachel

I
stretch my aching limbs, the soreness between my legs testament of mine and Marshall’s dirty romp up against the wall, on the floor, on the bed and then again in the shower. Last night, having live sex starring Ben and Delilah going on a few feet away from me was too much to take. I was so turned on from the carnal sounds wafting from Delilah’s bedroom, that it was a wonder I didn’t go join them. She’s a freak, so I’m sure she’d let me.

Marshall came by last night, raging, his cock fighting its way through his jeans – that’s how hard he was. Dancing with him at Delilah’s birthday party had been arousing enough and I guess the feeling never really waned as the night progressed and we were apart. While he was grossed out by what was going on in the next room – no man wants to hear their sister getting pounded or spanked – he didn’t let it deter him. Our lovemaking was almost violent, but still worshipful in its intensity. I love the sex between us. It is always earth-shattering, fusing us together as one on a physical and metaphysical level.

I was loud. Demanding and loud, and Marshall enjoyed every scream that he ripped from my throat:

“Oh, my God, Marshall!”

“Fuck this tight little pussy!”

“I’m gonna come so hard!”

“Ah! Oh! Yes! Right there!”

I was crazed last night, and so was Marshall. His dirty talk was epic:

“This pussy is mine. See how fucking wet it is? That’s all for me.”

“Yes, squeeze that tight little cunt on my cock.”

“Fuck, Rachel, you want it hard? I’ll fuck you until every move you make you’ll feel what I did to you.”

“Oh, Christ, this pussy is home to me.”

“Jesus, I could get lost in you every day.”

That last one hadn’t really been dirty. It had made me tear up because, at that moment, it was exactly how I felt. It scared me. It scared me how much I wanted what we’d previously had. What if I hadn’t gotten pregnant? Where would we be now? The way he looked at me made me believe that none of that mattered and I couldn’t afford to think that way. I couldn’t afford to have that kind of hope and I couldn’t afford to get lost in him when I was battling such an immense amount of guilt. Since that missed opportunity the other day, I haven’t been able to work up the courage to confess my secret to him again.

Not wanting to admit it to him – knowing that it would lead to questions…questions I wouldn’t know how to answer – I’d told Marshall that I needed to get some sleep, and that if he stayed neither of us would get any. He begrudgingly agreed and left in the wee hours of the morning with a chaste kiss to my lips. I needed space to sort things out in my mind. Everything was coalescing into one confused jumble, my emotions all over the place. I’d fallen into a fitful sleep and woken up feeling worn out in more ways than one.

Marshall wants me to move to New York, but I don’t know if I ever could. My best friend is here, my job is here and my parents are…there. That had been the real reason behind my refusal to go back to New York in the first place – facing my parents, knowing that I have not accomplished much in life, is an embarrassing notion. I don’t know if I can, but if I’m going to move on with my life, I need to face them at some point.

If I’m going to move on with my life, I’m going to have to forgive myself for what I did seven years ago and I’m going to have to come clean to Marshall about the…abortion. The word guts me and a garbled sob tumbles from my lips.

My baby. I killed my baby because I was scared, because I was a coward. How can Marshall even want me? I’m a despicable human being. He’d be better off without me, better off without my lies and my poison. He is a good man and I pushed him away. He should want to stay as far away from me as possible. Look how badly I’d hurt him? I’d shoved him into the arms of another woman. Yet here he is, offering me a life with him, and selfish as I am, I can’t say no.

I don’t even know how he will take my secret. How can anyone understand abortion and sympathize with someone who does it? My reasons for doing it were selfish. I was thinking about myself, my family name, about how it would ruin my relationship with Marshall. I was selfish, I wasn’t thinking about this baby who deserved to live. I would have embarrassed my parents with a pregnancy and no one embarrasses the Welles, not even their own.

The perfect family was the Welles. A powerful father, a beautiful, “charitable” mother, and a genius for a daughter; but behind the perfection, lied a father that drank too much and cheated on his wife with younger, more beautiful women; a wife that drowned her sorrows in pills and Botox and found joy in tearing down her only daughter; and a daughter who found that the only time she existed, the only time she felt alive was when she stepped out of the hell she called a home.

I didn’t know how to be a mother. How was I going to love a child when I had no example? I had Miss Willy, but there was an inherent fear in the pit of my stomach that I inherited my mother’s hatred. I didn’t want to give my child that life.

Some people will ask why I did it, and when I finally tell Marshall I’m sure he’ll ask the same question. I have asked myself this every single day, because every so often, the guilt of my actions springs up, choking me with its presence. After analyzing my so-called reasons to death, I come down to one thing, the one thing that drives many a careless, foolish decision in the name of self-preservation: fear.

I’d been afraid – that Marshall would hate me, that the Keyes’ would be disappointed in me, afraid that Marshall would have resented me, afraid that my parents would hate me…

Afraid that I would have hated myself.

What would my baby have become? Who would he or she look like? Would the baby have had his or her father’s eyes or my own? I never gave it a chance. I never got to know what it felt like to have sheltered that baby in my belly; to have given birth; to have heard its first wail; to have felt how soft his or her skin was.

To this day, terminating my pregnancy has been my number one regret; that and ever dating Ryan
fucking
Baylor. His name still fills me with rage. He had tricked me, wheedled his way into my life, only to kidnap my best friend in Rick Mason’s wicked scheme of vengeance and obsession.

I can’t complain too much, though, because this unfortunate situation led me right back into Marshall’s arms. I need to make a decision – he wants all of me or nothing at all, and the latter is not an option. He’s given me a month to make my decision and I think that’s fair. We’ve spent so much time apart from each other through the years; a month is a kind concession to make.

I know that I can’t make a decision until all our secrets have been squared away, until I have confronted my parents; and that in itself will be a fight.

Delilah, Ben and I are having breakfast at a Mom and Pop diner on Fifth and Walnut. Ben has been teasing me all morning about Marshall and my screaming last night and now Delilah has joined in. I have yet to give them the finger, because I’m secretly enjoying hearing his name.

“So, you and Marshall,” Ben mentions around a sausage link. “Does the crazy monkey sex we heard you guys having last night mean you’re back together?”

I blush a deep shade of red – I’m sure – and duck my head to hide it. I shake my head, denying what everyone is already seeing.

“Things are still complicated with us. I don’t wanna jinx it,” I tell him. As I look up, I find Lilah’s eyes on me, giving me a suspicious look. She knows me more than anyone, if she gets to digging, she will uncover everything and I’m not yet ready to face those things in front of others. She knows my secret and I’m sure she’s wondering if and when I’ll tell him about the baby. I don’t want to be forced into telling him about it. I wanna tell him on my time.

“Let’s not talk about it,” I state weakly.

“Rach, I know for a fact that you love him,” he highlights the obvious. “And from the way he looks at you, I know he feels the same way. It’s only a matter of time before you stop fighting your feelings for him. He wants to move on with you, what’s holding you back?”

I know all of this, but things are so complicated and it’s not with him that it lies, it lies with me. It lies with the fact that I am keeping a terrible secret from him, one that could tear us apart. The thought terrifies me – as soon as I have him, I could lose him? I don’t want to think about it.

“Stop, stop, stop. I’m not listening. Blah, blah, blah,” I dismiss, tuning them out by putting my hands over my ears.

Understanding the gravity of the situation, Delilah breaks into a horrible rendition of REO Speedwagon’s
Can’t Fight This Feeling
, and to my utter horror, Ben joins her. I laugh loudly and it’s like a weight off my chest. I toss pieces of bread at their faces but it doesn’t stop them. In fact, they sing louder, causing the rest of the customers to laugh.

Ugh, I liked it better when they were at each other’s throats.

After breakfast, we cab it to Ben’s house in Belmont. The taxi we take was actually one Ben had previously been a passenger of. The guy begins to talk and I have to cover my mouth to keep from laughing. I’ve always loved Philly speak.

“Dis Big Ma-hoff, I’m tellin’ youse,” the cab driver comments, sticking his thumb at Ben. “’E was a real piece o’ work, no good comp’ny. ’E scared everybody on d’ damn road. Fusstrated dah fuck outta me.”

“Yeah, he can get a little crabby at times,” Delilah comments, smirking at her man.

“Yeah, but I ain’t complainin’,” he continues. “Moneybags left me wit’ two friggin’ hunnert ’ollars!”

Delilah and I giggle. It’s almost like he’s speaking a different language.

“How come you don’t talk like that, Moneybags?” I ask Ben, adopting the name the cab driver gave him.

“Dat’s ’cause my Moms would kill me if she heard me taawk dat way,” he answers, his accent thick and weird-sounding coming from him. “Goff-forbid, her money goes down dah drain–”

“Stop,” Delilah interrupts. “I like your voice deep and cultured. It’s sexier.”

“Is it?” He scoots closer to her and nuzzles her neck.

Gag.

The rest of the cab ride is spent laughing and talking, just an all-round great morning.

When we get to Ben’s house, we find the kitchen lively; Mrs. Keyes is entertaining as only she can. It’s a full house as Ben’s parents, his brother, and maid are all here. Immediately, my eyes find Marshall, standing regal, his presence a force to be reckoned with in faded jeans and a white tee. Marshall takes a sharp breath when he sees me and a dark, hungry look passes over his face. I stop in my tracks as I stare at him and, like an imaginary force, I run into his arms.