27 Kierra
27
Kierra
Present Day
I returned home to find a dining room table filled with flowers. The house felt eerie as I walked inside. Sitting at the head of the table was Henry, who had a glass of dark liquor in his hands. He was wearing the same outfit as the night before, but his white button-down was undone, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.
He leaned back in the chair and raised his head to meet my stare. He huffed a little. “About damn time you came home.”
“I needed space to clear my head.”
“Let me guess, you still want a divorce.”
“Yes. But you’re drunk, and you look like you haven’t slept. We can talk about this—”
“My deal fell through,” he mentioned. “With the team in China.”
I nodded slowly, uncertain of what Henry I was going to get that morning. “Tamera mentioned that.”
“It was a nine-figure deal. I found out yesterday. That’s why I was acting out.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Henry. But that doesn’t excuse—”
“Have some compassion, Kierra. I had a bad day. The worst day. And you expect me to just be okay after that? Listen, I didn’t mean to do what I did last night—”
“Which thing are you speaking about? The sleeping with Ramona on my birthday thing or the hitting me on my birthday thing? Which one didn’t you mean?”
He grimaced. “Both? But more so, the second thing. I didn’t mean to do what I did.”
“You mean hitting me?” I cut in. “You didn’t mean to hit me?”
He cringed at me stating what he’d done. Saying, “I didn’t mean to do what I did,” was a way for him to not use words that might make him feel guilty.
Hit me.
He hit me.
He closed his eyes and took a deep inhale. “I thought you would be more understanding. With your job and all.” When he opened his eyes, he looked so sad. Broken. Like a lost little boy searching to find his way home again. For a moment, I felt guilty. I felt as if I saw the same broken boy who’d told me about the trauma his father had caused him. I saw the hurting soul who needed comfort. I saw the pain that he used anger to cover. I saw his pain in his eyes.
But he hit me.
How was it my responsibility to comfort the one who caused me pain? Why was it my job to fix the broken man who time and time again took a sledgehammer to my soul?
“I can’t do this, Henry. I can’t do this,” I said, gesturing toward the dozens and dozens of flowers. “I can’t keep pretending that this life is normal. That we are normal. I’m not your wife, and you’re not my husband. Truthfully, I think you’ve known that for a long time.”
He lowered his head again before chugging the brown liquor in his glass. He poured himself another from the bottle sitting on the table.
“Where were you last night?” he whispered.
Was he even hearing the words leaving my mouth?
“I just needed space to clear my mind,” I told him, scared of what the next few moments would unlock within him. He was acting strange. Sure, I’d seen him be strange before, but he seemed freakishly quiet and calm as his hands wrapped around his glass.
“Where did you clear your head?”
“I stayed the night at Rosie’s.”
“You’re lying,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“No,” I countered. “I’m not.”
His eyebrows knit together as he poured himself another glass of bourbon. “I tracked your phone,” Henry whispered. The calmness of his voice sent chills down my spine. “It’s just odd to find out that Rosie lives at the same location as Gabriel Sinclair.”
My heart dropped to my stomach. “You track my location?”
He laughed. “That’s enough of a confession to me.”
“Henr—”
“Fuck you, Kierra!” he shouted, throwing his full glass of alcohol across the room, hitting a wall and making the glass shatter into a million pieces. My system went into high alert. My eyes darted around the space. I needed to figure out which direction was the quickest way out. Escape routes. I needed an escape route.
“What is it?” Henry barked, his rage echoing off the bourbon-stained wall. “I fuck Ramona, so you screw the boss? Is that how you deal with your issues? You try to get back at me?”
“I want a divorce,” I echoed again, trying my best to not show my fear. “It doesn’t matter what I do, or you do, because we aren’t together, Henry. We haven’t been for a very long time. I just want this to end.”
“No,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What?”
“I said no. You can’t leave me. If you do, you’ll lose Ava, and I know that’s the last thing you want.”
“I don’t want this to be messy, Henry. We both love Ava. So, let’s do what’s best for her.”
“What’s best for her is our family staying together.”
“No, what’s best is happy parents.”
“You aren’t even her real parent. I am. It was me and her before you, and it will be me and her after you.”
I didn’t want to play dirty, but he was making it hard. He was cutting me deeply with his words, and all I had in my mind was that I needed to protect Ava. I needed my daughter. “I don’t want to get messy, Henry, but our prenup talks about infidelity. And I know how important your social image is to you. I don’t want to, but I will reveal the fact that you cheated on me, now that I have proof of it, to the court system. And those would be public records. I don’t want to do that, so just let me go. We can make an arrangement so that we both have time with Ava. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”
“Are you threatening me? You’re saying you’ll smear my name?”
“I don’t want to…” I argued. “But I will do whatever it takes to have Ava in my life.”
He laughed and shook his head. “You don’t even have proof of my infidelity. You have nothing to go on…but I do. I doubt anything you say will be as powerful as the footage I have of you actually hooking up with Gabriel.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
“You think I only had a tracking device on your phone with no recording abilities? I’m fucking Henry Hughes, Kierra. I’m master at technology. I see everything you do. Every step you take. Every breath you breathe. I see it all. You think last night was the first time I noticed you running off with him? No. It’s just the first time I mentioned it to you.”
I felt as if my heart sank to the pit of my stomach as I realized the one form of leverage that I thought I had against my husband was now in his hands. He’d been watching me? For how long? That sent a wave of fear soaring through me. I felt exposed in a way that I would’ve never expected.
I shook my head in disbelief. “I don’t get it. You’re not even happy with me. Why are you doing this? Why can’t you just let me go?”
“Because you’re mine,” he said. “I’ve built plenty of machines, but you’re my favorite little robot.” The way he claimed me made my skin crawl. It dripped of control. I wanted to blame the whiskey, but truthfully Henry had acted that way for a long time—as if I was his. Not his wife, but his property. I was one of his little robots that did exactly what he wanted, whenever he wanted, and if I stepped out of line, he tried to tweak me just enough to return to his favorite version of me—the one who didn’t talk back or speak up. The one who stood in his shadow at his dinner parties. The one who didn’t have an ounce of confidence in herself because he’d drained it all. Only now he couldn’t control me, because I was waking up from my deep slumber. I was waking from the nightmare of my past years. Henry was losing control over me, and that terrified him. But I didn’t care.
I was breaking free.
Which meant he was losing grip on his reality as I began to step within my own.
“You can’t leave me,” he stated.
“Yes, I can and I am.” I said the words, yet they were filled with uncertainty. I didn’t know what he’d do next or how he’d react. I didn’t know the thoughts swirling through his head. I didn’t know the panicking of his heartbeats. All I knew was I couldn’t live another year the way I’d lived the past decade. I knew I couldn’t make it another four years until Ava was eighteen—let alone another week, truthfully.
He lowered his head and placed his face in his hands. “Don’t you see?” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Everything’s falling apart.”
“Or maybe for the first time ever, everything’s coming together,” I said calmly, still feeling unsure of what his next outburst might be. That was until he began sobbing uncontrollably into his hands. His heavy cries broke a part of my heart that I didn’t know still beat for him. Even though I studied emotions and feelings on deep levels, I still didn’t always understand how they worked. How was it possible for me to feel the amount of guilt I did in that moment for the man who’d hurt me for so long? Why did I feel a need to comfort my demon? Why did it feel as if I were the one who betrayed him, and not the other way around?
“Henry,” I whispered.
His body shook as he choked on his inhalations. I’d seen him cry before during drinking bouts. That wasn’t uncommon. But this was a new level of panic shooting throughout his whole system.
“I don’t want to be like him,” he sobbed between his violent trembling. “I don’t want to fucking be like him,” he repeated over and over again.
For a second, I felt my own chest tighten. For a second, I saw the little boy with daddy issues sitting before me. I saw the broken child whose father messed up his brain so much that he made it damn near impossible for Henry to grow up without suitcases of trauma. For a second, my motherly instinct kicked in and I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to wrap him in my arms and tell him that he could get help. That he could heal from this. And that we could learn to coparent in a healthy, safe environment.
I moved over toward him to comfort him. Not to be his wife, but to be a fellow human who saw another hurting. I knelt beside him and placed a hand against his shoulder. “Henry. We can get you help. We can—”
Before the words could finish falling from my tongue, he placed his two tear-soaked hands against my shoulders and shoved me hard, sending me flying against the wall where his broken glass had shattered. I fell to the floor, a piece of glass slicing through my hand. I yipped and picked up my hand, trying to shake off the dizziness from the impact of the crash. I pulled the piece of glass from my hand and looked up to find Henry staring my way. He still had tears rolling down his cheeks, but he looked wild. As if he was no longer there, and all I could see was his father staring back at me. A switch had been flipped, and Henry was gone.
He stood from his chair and moved over to me. He knelt and placed his hands above me on the wall, boxing me in, and lowered his face to mine. “You’re not leaving me, just like she didn’t leave him. Do you understand, Kierra?” he said as he crouched over me. He gripped my chin in his hand and pulled my face toward him. “You said the words. ‘’Til death do us part.’ So, either you die or you stay . You’re mine.” He then forced his lips against mine, kissing me with his whiskey-drenched tongue, infecting me with his threats that felt like terrifying promises. I sat still as his mouth engulfed mine. Once he finished kissing me, he shoved my face away, making my head hit the wall behind me. “Stay away from Gabriel Sinclair, or I swear to God, you’ll regret it and I’ll make his life as miserable as yours.”
He walked over to the roses on the table, pulled out a handful of them, and threw them at me. “And to think I bought you all these roses.”