Benevolent (18 page)

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I cried. I curled up in a ball in my cell and quietly let the tears fall for Gabi. They leaked out of my eyes as I thought about the girl that had no one. As much as I tried to protect her, I didn’t. It all happened under my nose, while we were together, and I didn’t stop it. She had an abortion and didn’t even tell me. Why didn’t I know about it? I had always known something was wrong, but I never pushed her to tell me. I should have pushed. I should have made her tell me. Did she not trust me? Did she not think I could do something? I knew then that she could not go back to her mother’s house. Marie was cancer and Gabi needed radiation. I could be the chemo for her. I could save her.

I finally fell asleep on the small, thin cot and was awoken bright and early by a warden. My lawyer was there waiting for me. Sometime during the night, Todd woke up and spoke to the detectives. I was informed that he had asked that no charges be pressed against me. From what I understood, the state could have charged me with aggravated assault, but the two guys that tried to intervene recanted their statements.

“I don’t understand. So nothing is going to happen to me?” I asked as I was escorted out of the jailhouse. I was confused and the lack of sleep from the night before didn’t help matters at all.

“You’re not completely in the clear. The cops want you, but the district attorney said there isn’t enough to go after you. The only thing they have is you on top of him with a pipe in your hand. But since none of his injuries was caused from the pipe, their hands are tied. As of right now, the guy you decided to use as a punching bag is protecting you. I don’t know why, but wouldn’t mind an explanation,” he explained as we made our way over to the impound lot to get my car.

The news crews were still lining the street, reporting on my behavior from the day before.

“I’m not in the mood to talk right now. Maybe later. I have things I need to take care of at the moment. Just tell me what to expect. I’m not in the clear, but what does that mean for me?”

“It just means to keep your nose clean and don’t talk to anyone but your team about this. No commenting on reports or answering questions. I’m going to try to figure out what this Todd guy wants and why he’s insisting on you not being charged. If someone did that to my face, I would be out for blood.”

“Just drop it,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter. Is there a chance they could charge me with something later?”

“From what I’ve been told, this Todd guy refuses to cooperate with the prosecution. It also helps that you are a stand-up guy in the community and have no prior record. Todd, on the other hand, has a record a mile long. Someone upstairs is looking out for you. I don’t know who, but you have an angel on your side.”

I nodded and then got out of the car as soon as we pulled in to the lot. I had to go to the main office to take care of the car, and told him to leave me. I needed to take care of a few things before talking to him and my team.

Once I got my car, I grabbed my phone from the cup holder where I had left it and plugged it in. The first person I called was Eden. I needed to explain everything to her. I knew she had to have heard about it by then since I never showed back up to the office. But she sent me to her voicemail. I tried again and again, all the way to the hospital, but she never answered. She eventually turned her phone off and it stopped ringing all together. I felt so lost. I didn’t know what to do anymore.

I raced to the third floor and found Marie still in the waiting room where she was the day before. She noticed the blood on my shirt immediately. Her eyes grew large on her face and she covered her face with her hand. I knew I needed to change before going anywhere else. I just had to talk to her before going home, and it needed to be face-to-face.

“Before I say anything, how is she?” I asked, taking a seat in front of her.

She nodded and seemed to calm down some. Her hand fell from her mouth as she began to talk. “She is awake and doing well. She’s been heavily sedated, though. She talked to a shrink today and I think they will be releasing her to a program tomorrow. It’s what is in her best interest. She needs help.”

I couldn’t agree with her more. She answered all of my questions at once.

“What kind of program is it?”

Marie took in a deep breath. “It’s a mental health facility. The doctor that spoke with her for a while this morning says she’s being cooperative. Which is good. He thinks that as long as she stays that way, she will only have to be admitted for two weeks. Anything beyond that is up to her.”

“Once she gets out, she’s not living with you. The only contact you will have with her is if she decides it. Don’t call her, don’t text her, no emails, or anything else.”

“Where will she go?” I could hear the anticipation in her voice.

“My house.” And with that, I got up and walked away.

My mind was all over the place. I couldn’t focus on one thing without obsessing over another. I know I told Marie that Gabi would be coming back to my place, but did I really want her there? Sure, I wanted to protect her, but did I want to fall back into the same place I was before? The answer was no.

I had finally found a sense of happiness with Eden. I had tried so hard to block the word love out of my brain, but it was always there. Especially after our weekend together. She made me feel things I never remember feeling before. Even in the early days with Gabi. I didn’t want to lose her, but I knew I had a decision to make.

Decisions always came natural to me. I made them all the time at work. Even the toughest decision could be made using rationale. But the one I was faced with lacked all rational thought. On one hand, I had Gabi. She had been abused and neglected all of her life. It began to register that all of her depression stemmed from being sexually abused.

During Sean’s trial, she attempted suicide. Her mom was nowhere to be found while she was in the hospital. She was abandoned. Then there was the guilt she felt over her decision to not help her mother after her stepdad died. It ate at her. I couldn’t understand it then, and probably should have asked more questions about her decision. But I didn’t. She was probably torn between the fact that she was her mother, and the fact that she was never there for Gabi when she needed her the most. That couldn’t have been easy on her.

The miscarriage. I never understood why it was so hard for her. I mean, I did understand, but it confused me as to why it affected her for so long. With the realization of her abortion, it all made sense. I did some research after I got back home and found that the abortion could have affected future pregnancies. She lost our baby and probably felt guilty over it. She more than likely blamed herself for losing the baby. And that only made me feel even more insensitive to her. The guilt just built and built.

But then there was Eden. She had a way of calming me, and I needed to be calmed. She made me happy, and I was desperate to be happy again. I hadn’t known her for long, but when I was with her, I felt like I wanted to spend my entire life getting to know her. I never felt obligated to be with her. I was with her because I wanted to be, not because I felt I needed to be.

I thought back to when I first met her at the bar. I could vividly remember everything about her. I hated that she wasn’t answering my calls and ignoring my texts. I just needed to explain, but first, I needed to make a decision. I couldn’t go to her without all the answers.

It was Gabi or me. If I chose Gabi, I would be giving up any chance of feeling the way I did when I was with Eden. There was a possibility that after treatment, things would get better. But I knew it would never be the way it was with Eden. I may or may not be miserable, but I knew I would never be truly happy. If I chose me, that meant I’d be choosing Eden. And with that comes the possibility of Gabi harming herself more and the chances increase of her not making it past the next time. It would mean I would be abandoning the girl that has been abandoned her entire life.

Thinking of abandonment also made me think of Eden. She had just confessed to me that people always leave. And I would be no better. To her, I would look like I had gotten what I wanted and left. But that’s not what happened. If I had gotten what I really wanted, I would be spending the rest of my life with her. Not just one weekend. Either way, someone would be abandoned. Someone would be hurt. The way I saw it, I could choose Gabi and we could all end up being hurt, or I could choose Eden and only one would be hurt. But that one would be hurt in the worst possible way.

Fuck! I didn’t want to have to make a decision. But I knew I had to. So, after thinking long and hard for a few hours, I made my choice. I had to go tell Eden what that was.

I went to the office but found her desk cleared out. I hoped she was only moving offices because she had decided on a transfer. I headed down to Human Resources to find out where she had gone to. They informed me that resigned via email without notice the day before. While I sat in a jail cell for beating the shit out of a rapist, she quit her job and left.

I raced to her building. As soon as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw her loading boxes into her car. I quickly parked, not caring that I was blocking cars in. I threw open my door and ran to her. She saw me as soon as I pulled in and began to hurry.

“Eden!” I yelled as I got closer to her.

“I see you got out of jail.” She seemed so nonchalant about it. Her tone was soft but her words were slightly clipped. She couldn’t even make eye contact with me. “What did you come here for?”

“Where are you going?” I asked, panicked.

“Back home. There’s nothing for me here anymore.”

“What about your job?”

She looked at me with a surprised look. “What job? You really think I want to work for a man that broke my heart? Does that sound like fun for me? Does that sound like something anyone would want to do?”

“Just give me a second to explain, Eden.”

“Explain what? That you’re going back to Gabi? That we just had an amazing weekend together where you told me you weren’t going to leave me, and then left me? Was is it you want to explain, Dane? What about how you left me at work all day while you ran to her aid? Or how you were arrested for violence against her stepbrother? An explanation would have been nice yesterday. Not so much now.”

I grabbed her hands to keep her from packing more things into her trunk. “She tried to kill herself. What did you want me to do?”

“That’s just it. You’re always going to go running to her because she’s always going to be depressed. She’s always going to do something to hurt herself or make you feel bad. I can’t live like that. I can’t sit around and wait for the next phone call to let you know that she’s done something else to herself. I deserve better than that, Dane.”

“I know you do. But I wasn’t expecting that to happen yesterday.”

“You left her. How did you not expect her to do something to herself?”

I debated about telling Eden the truth about what happened. It wasn’t my business to tell, but it was Eden, and she deserved the truth from me. “I found out that although she lied about her neighbor raping her when she was seventeen, she wasn’t lying about the rape. Her stepbrother was the one. And it wasn’t the first time. It had gone on for almost two years.”

“I commend you for beating the shit out of him; I’m sure he deserved worse for that. But that doesn’t change anything. I can’t live like this. I can’t and I won’t. I’m sorry, Dane, but you made your choice when you went after her.”

“No, I made my choice today.” Wrong words. Wrong fucking words at the wrong fucking time. I could have kicked myself for saying that. I tried to fix it. I tried to explain what I meant but she wouldn’t let me.

She held up her hands in front of her and took a step back. “I deserve someone who would have made a choice a long time ago. Someone who would have put me first, or at least my feelings. But you didn’t. You waited until she gave you an out. You left her because she gave you a reason to. I didn’t give you a reason, she did. You didn’t come to me because I was what you wanted. But I thought I was okay with that because in the end, you still came to me. But then you walked away. Sure, you had your reasons. You had to go play the hero and defend her honor. Very noble of you. But that was all for her. That wasn’t for you, for me, or for us. So again, you put her first. I don’t deserve that.”

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right about that. And I’m sorry. But I’m here now, doesn’t that mean anything?”

“You’re a little late. When you went chasing after her, who was there to defend my honor? When you spent the night in jail because you were doing right by her, who was there doing right by me? No one.” She slammed her trunk closed and moved the luggage cart back to the elevator.

I followed her and grabbed her by the arms to make her look at me. “Please, Eden. Don’t leave. Let me make this up to you. Let me prove to you that you’re the one I want.”

She wiped a tear from her cheek; it was the only one. It was the only thing to show that she was even the slightest bit upset over the whole thing. “You only want me because I make you happy. It seems that for the first time in your life, you’re making a very selfish decision. You want me because it benefits you. Even if it will hurt me. I could spend the entire duration of our relationship afraid that you’ll go to her aid again and never come back. But as long as you’re happy, right, Dane?”

“It’s not like that at all. I make you happy, too. I know I do. You know I do.”

“You did. Before things became overly complicated. You should have never come to me on Friday. You should have just walked away from Gabi, gone to work, and done your thing. You should have never brought me in the middle of it. In fact, you should have never hired me to begin with. You should have scared off that guy at the bar and gone back to your seat and left me the hell alone.” She was crying by then. I knew she didn’t mean what she was saying, but the anger allowed her to feel better. I owed it to her to let her feel that.

“Okay. But just know this. I won’t give up. I will give you time, but this won’t be the end of me. I will find you, and I will make you see that you love me. I will make you realize that we belong together and should be together.”

She started crying harder as I held her face in my hands. I pressed my lips to hers, but she didn’t kiss me back. I held her there for so long, not knowing when I would get the chance again. When I finally let go, I kept my forehead on hers and whispered to her lips, “I love you, and I know you love me, too. You’ll see.”

I dropped my hands and walked back to my car. I couldn’t look at her face again. She was the only one to make me happy, and apparently the only one capable of shattering my world at the same time.

I backed out of the parking garage and headed home in a fog.

I grabbed a bottle of liquor from my cabinet and walked down to the pier. After sitting and drinking alone for about an hour, the sky opened up and began to downpour on me. It matched my mood quite perfectly. The sky was filled with dark clouds and so was my head. It rained heavily, soaking my clothes, and that’s just how I felt. I felt as if I were drowning, unable to keep my head up long enough to catch a breath. That might have also had something to do with the amount of liquor I had consumed.

Little things started to hit me—the way Eden smiled when I told a joke and she didn’t want to laugh, the way her eyes always found mine when we were in the same room, the way I could smell her hair as she walked past me. They were the small things that aren’t thought about often until you realize you won’t see them again.

Then the other things I wouldn’t get to see again started hitting me. The way her ass looked in those lacy scraps she called underwear. I took a swig from the bottle. How her fingers traced my tattoos as we laid together after sex.
Another swig
. The way her Monroe piercing tickled my lip as she kissed me.
Two swigs followed by a chug
. The way she said my name as she came on my cock. I tipped the bottle back and didn’t let it down until it was empty. It would have burned had I not been so numb.

Just the thought of Eden gone killed any sign of life within me. Over the last ten years with Gabi, I slowly felt the fire die. The light grew dimmer and dimmer within me. Then I met Eden and she brightened everything up. With her gone and fearing I may never see her again, things weren’t just dark, they were pitch black. It was like I had lost my sight and would never get it back again.