Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set (224 page)

Misty Reigenborn

Copyright 2012

By Misty Reigenborn

A Better Man

He looked at her as she stood in the doorway of their bedroom.  She wouldn’t look at him.  She knew that he was going to try to talk her into staying. 

As she turned to leave he touched her back.  “Del, please.  We need to talk about this.”

Delphina didn’t turn.  “Kiefer we’ve had this discussion before.”

He sighed.  “So I guess this time you’re really leaving huh?”

Delphina wanted to groan.  It seemed pretty obvious that she was leaving.  Her bags were packed and she was ready to transfer everything to her car.  “I think that’s kind of a dumb question Kie.” 

“Give me five minutes babe.  Please.  Is three years not worth five more minutes of your life?”

She shook her head.  “I’m sorry.  I have an apartment and a job waiting for me.  I start work the day after tomorrow.  I have to go.”

“How long have you been planning this?”

“What difference does it make?  I can’t do this anymore.”

“I love you Delphina.  I can be a better man for you.  I promise.”

“I think that promise is a little too late.  I’m going to go now.”

“Baby please.  You’re breaking my heart here.”

“I have to go.”

“Can I call you?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.  Goodbye Kiefer.”

Delphina pulled out the handle on her rolling suitcase and slung her duffel bag over her shoulder.  She took two steps out of the door.  She heard the flick of his lighter as he lit a cigarette. 

“Del, wait.  At least let me help you take your stuff out.  You’ll let me do that much won’t you?”

Delphina sighed.  “I can do it Kiefer.  I think that we need to make a clean break this time.  It’s for the best.”

“Del I’m so sorry.”

Delphina said nothing.  She rolled her suitcase out the door and walked down the hall and through the living room.  He got to the door ahead of her and opened it for her.  She finally looked up at him.  His brown eyes looked wet.  She stifled an urge to bite her lip and instead rolled her suitcase out the door.  She had never seen Kiefer cry, not even when his grandmother had died, and they had been close.  But she couldn’t let it get to her now she thought, or she would let him talk her into staying like he had all of the other times she had decided to leave him.

He followed her to her car.  She popped the trunk and shoved her suitcase and bag inside.  The slam of the trunk seemed very loud to her.  It sounded almost final.  She was suddenly terrified.  She had never lived by herself before.  When she’d left home she’d went straight to college and lived in the dorms.  Then she’d lived with her sister for a while.  Then she’d met Kiefer.  They’d moved in together two weeks after they met. 

He put his arms around her from behind.  She tried to ignore the fact that her head was at the perfect level for him to rest his chin on.  She tried to ignore the way he smelled and the feel of his arms around her.  She tried to ignore the fact that he was the first man that she had really loved.  She made herself think about the lying and cheating instead, and the nights that he hadn’t bothered to come home at all.

She pulled away from him and looked up at him with ice in her blue eyes.  “Stop it.  I am leaving.  There is nothing you can say or do to make me change my mind.”

‘I’ll get down on my knees and beg you in the dirty parking lot of our crappy apartment building.  I’ll pay all of the bills for a whole year and you can do whatever you want with your money.  We’ll get married.  You can have a baby and stay home and take care of it.  I’ll get a better job, hell I’ll get two better jobs if I have to.  I will do anything Del, I swear.  Just please don’t do this to me.  I feel like somebody stabbed a knife through my heart.”

Delphina looked up at Kiefer.  He was six two with dark hair and dark eyes.  He had muscles and tattoos.  Her sister called him the personification of a bad boy.  He smoked too much and sometimes he drank way too much.  He’d cheated on her for the first time two days after they’d moved in together.  He’d get drunk and come out of nowhere and tell her some story about a woman that he’d been with since they’d been together.  Sometimes, she thought she hated him much more than she loved him.

“I’m breaking your heart?  Do you know how many damned times you’ve broken mine?  There is no comparison Kiefer.  You’ve made me feel worthless for way too long.”

“Baby I never meant to make you feel like that.  You’re smart and you’re so beautiful.  I know that you deserve a better man, but I promise you that I can be that man.  I can’t make all of the bad stuff that I did in the past go away, but I can give you a better tomorrow.  Please Del.  Just give me one last chance.”

Delphina pushed the button to unlock her car.  “No.  I’ve given you more chances than you deserved already.  Goodbye Kiefer.  Have a nice life.”

She got behind the wheel of her car.  Before she could shut the door, he stuck his foot in the way.  She gave him her dirtiest look.  “Move your foot.  Now.  This is not up for discussion.”

Kiefer sighed, but he did move his foot.  She slammed the door and started the car.  She put her seatbelt on and chanced one last glance at him.  He made the motion for her to roll the window down.  She sighed as she pushed the button. 

“What?”

“I want you to know that I love you.  I’ll always love you.  You were the only really good woman I ever had.  I fucked it up like I always fuck everything up.”

“You don’t mess everything up Kiefer.  You’ll do fine.”  She gave him a tired smile that she didn’t feel.  “You’re hot.  You’ll find another woman in no time.”

Kiefer shook his head.  “I don’t want another woman.”

Delphina figured that he’d have a woman in his bed by the end of the night and probably have another moved in by the end of the week. 

“Goodbye Kiefer.”

She put the car into gear. 

“Wait.  Just one last thing.”

She sighed.  “What Kiefer?  Make it quick please.”

“Don’t you love me anymore?”

“It’s not that Kiefer.  I just can’t put myself through the heartache of being with you.  It’s tearing me up inside.  Now I really have to go.  I’m already late getting on the road.”

Kiefer let out a huge sigh.  “You don’t have to go.  I’ll go.”

“No.  I already have everything worked out.  Goodbye.”  Before he could say another word, she put the car back into gear and pulled out of the parking lot.

The drive was not fun.  Her destination was six hours away.  Kiefer wouldn’t stop calling her.  Or at least she assumed it was Kiefer.  Her phone rang so many times that she’d turned it off and shoved it into the glove box. 

When she pulled up to her new apartment building, she let out a groan.  She figured that it would be a dump with the price, but the place looked like it would blow over in a strong wind.  She got out of her car and stretched.  Her back hurt, and she briefly let herself think of how good it had felt when Kiefer had given her a massage.  He had always been able to work all of the kinks completely out of her muscles.  She sighed.  She knew that she needed to stop thinking about him.  Where thoughts of him had once brought her immense joy, they now brought her nothing but pain.

She opened the door marked “manager”.  An elderly woman was sitting behind the desk.  She looked up, and stuck the pencil she had been doing what looked like a crossword puzzle with into her frizzy white bun. 

“How can I help you?”

“I’m Delphina Brooks.  We spoke on the phone.  You still have the apartment available don’t you?”

The woman nodded and her glasses slid down her nose.  “Yes ma’am.  Sure do.  Rent’s $450, $225 deposit.  We cover $50 towards the electricity.  You go over that it’s added on to your next month’s rent.  No drugs, no loud parties, no prostitution, no dogs.  You have a cat the deposit is $300 and it had better know how to use a litter box.”

Delphina wanted to groan.  She had a feeling that her new apartment might be even worse than she’d thought it would be by looking at the outside. 

“My shift starts at six o’clock in the morning.  I certainly won’t be having any wild parties when I have to work the next morning.  And I don’t know anyone here.”

The woman pulled a key off of a hook.  “Pretty girl like you is never short of male attention for long.  You’re more than welcome to have visitors.  They stay more than a few days, they’re considered to live here.  The rent goes up by $50 a month.”

Delphina shook her head.  “That won’t be a problem.”

The woman gave her a look and then came around the desk.  “Yep.  My daughter, she’s even prettier than you are.  Some people might not think so, but I’m her Mama so I gotta think so.  When you got a pretty face and more than half a brain between your ears, you gotta make damned sure you’ve got a heart of steel.  Men will use you and abuse you and then leave you by the side of the road.  You just hope that you don’t have a baby growin’ inside of you then.  ‘Cause a man that will treat you like shit and walk away like it was nothin’, well, it ain’t gonna be no skin off of his back not to pay you child support now is it?”

“Um, I guess not.”  Delphina got the feeling that the woman’s daughter had children that didn’t see their fathers and she didn’t receive child support for.

“Second floor, all the way to the right.”

“Okay.” 

Delphina opened the door.  The manager shut it and then locked it.  The woman walked in a stuttering gait that felt painfully slow to Del.  She felt like she could have run around the parking lot five times by the time they made it up the stairs. 

The woman unlocked the door and pushed it open.  She flipped a light switch.  Delphina took one step inside and wanted to walk right back out.  She hadn’t grown up in luxurious surroundings, and the apartment she’d lived in with Kiefer certainly hadn’t been high class, but this apartment looked to her like it should have been on the cover of bad housekeeping. 

The living room carpet was a rusty brown color.  There were stains that looked like bleach.  She wondered what had stained the carpet that someone had wanted to bleach out.  The walls were painted an off white color and it didn’t look like much care had been taken when the job was done.  The air smelled like someone had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for three years straight and had never bothered to open a window.  She walked into the kitchen and saw a fridge that looked like it belonged in the 1980’s.  The microwave on the counter looked like it belonged in roughly the same decade as the fridge.  The kitchen table was small, with a beat up chair with cracked upholstery.  When she walked into the bathroom, she saw that the shower curtain was paper thin and the tub was filthy.  The toilet seat was sitting crookedly.

The manager cleared her throat.  “I know it’s not the greatest, but it’s a roof and the rent is manageable even if you make minimum wage.  You put your furniture and some personal touches in here, it won’t be so bad.”

Delphina hid a sigh.  “I actually don’t have any furniture.”  She turned back towards the bedroom. 

The carpet in there was a yellow color that reminded her of the color her nephew’s poo had been when he was a newborn.  There was a dresser, but the drawers were mismatched and it looked like it was on its last legs. 

“There’s a thrift store up the road a bit.  They’re gonna be closed now though.”

“Oh.  I’ll take it I guess.”

The manager laughed.  “Don’t sound so enthused girl.  Whatever is goin’ on if your life right now, just remember that it’s not that bad.  You woke up this morning didn’t you?”

“I did.”

They left the apartment and walked back down the stairs.  Once they were back in the office, Delphina handed the woman her driver’s license.  While she made a copy on a copy machine that it looked like it belonged in an even more bygone decade than the furniture in her apartment, Delphina filled out a simple one page application form.

Once her license was back in hand, she dug her wallet out of her purse and counted out the money to move into the apartment.  She felt a little like screaming when the woman had to count it three times.  Finally, when she was satisfied that it was the right amount, the manager handed her a single sheet of paper that listed the property rules and the key to the apartment.

“Thank you.”

“You have any problems with your apartment, let me know.  The maintenance guy is slow, but he does a good job.  Grocery’s stores up four blocks on the left.  Discount store up another two blocks from there.”

“Thank you.”

“Yep.  Take care Delphina.  That’s a real pretty name.”

“Thanks.  I’ll let you know if I have any problems.”

Delphina left the office and went to her car.  She lugged her bags up the stairs and took another look around.  There was a part of her that wanted to run back to Kiefer already.  But she knew that she needed to stand on her own two feet and that she couldn’t let him break her heart again.

She opened the window as far as it would go, which wasn’t far.  She sat down on the chair and made a list for the store.  Air freshener and scented candles were high on her list.  It had driven her crazy when Kiefer had smoked inside.

Her trip to the store took forever, and it was full dark by the time she got back to the apartment.  She had picked up an air mattress.  She hoped that it would only have to serve her for one night.  She had a feeling it wasn’t going to be very comfortable.