Chapter 22 #2
“No! Demi, no!” Charlie shouted, crying as he stood in her face, fuming, breathing so hard he felt like his heart would explode.
He couldn’t even see her sincerity he was so livid.
Knowing Justin had been inside her, remembering the chemistry he had witnessed between them, thinking about Charlie letting somebody else in the place where he sought refuge.
.. Demi was going to murder somebody. The nigga Justin.
He could go. He could catch every single bullet in Demi’s chamber.
Demi had done a good job of keeping his temper in check over the years.
He didn’t bring this side of him home when he was with Lauren.
Hadn’t cared enough, or perhaps, she didn’t provoke him the way Charlie did.
Charlie giving her love away was motivation for murder.
Charlie was gasoline to an uncontrollable fire.
“Demi, please. Please, Demi. I just want to feel safe. You’re hurting me so bad. ”
He took her face in his hands, pressing her into the wall and meeting his forehead to hers.
“I know,” he said. “I know, Bird. I fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up. Burn me, baby. Sing me a song, Bird.”
Demi was riding a line between sane and insanity and Charlie could feel the clock of her life ticking down.
Demi was dangerous. A fucking lunatic. He killed people.
He had told her in so many words. He had warned her, and she hadn’t heeded his words.
Staring in his eyes where she saw nothing but rage, she feared that he could very well kill her.
“Demi, no,” she whispered, turning her head away from his persistent lips.
“I’m sorry, baby. I fucked up. My head is fucking spinning. I can’t think of you with that nigga, Bird. I’m on another level with this shit. I’ma kill niggas out here over you. I need to go there, Bird. To Charliezonia. Take me with you, baby. Sing to me, Bird.”
Charlie was sobbing. He was scaring her. He knew it, but if she sent him into the streets tonight, Justin was dying.
This is insane. This is NOT right, she thought.
This isn’t love. Only it was. It was love, unlike any love Charlie had ever felt.
It was the kind of love that didn’t make sense.
The kind that hurt just as much as it healed.
The kind you needed space from but craved when it was gone.
Charlie loved and hated this man. Felt calm and fear around him.
Demi was everything. He was her everything.
Every possibility of emotion, he made her feel. Charlie trembled she was so terrified.
Her face was a mess. The prettiest fucking mess and he swiped her tears and her snot, craving her dirt.
He kissed her, forcing his lips on hers as she moved her head from side to side.
“Demi, stop, Demi, stop,” she protested.
She reached for the knife block on the counter.
She didn’t even realize what she was doing until he released her.
He took a step back and looked down at the blood as Charlie dropped the knife.
“You stabbed me,” he said in disbelief. It was the calm in his voice that made him crazy, like he was okay with dying if she was the one doing the killing.
Weird-ass fucking psychopath.
“Oh my God, Demi,” she whispered. “Demi! Demi, what do I do?”
Demi stumbled to the wooden chair and sat, his legs weakening by the second because Charlie hadn’t only stabbed him, she had pulled the knife out and blood was gushing everywhere.
“I’m so sorry, Demi; don’t die, don’t die,” she cried.
She scrambled for a towel and came to her knees in front of him, pressing the towel to his wound. Huge tear drops clung to her lashes and Demi took her hand, pulling her into his lap. “You gon’ have to get me to a hospital, baby. Shit kinda deep.”
He dug in his pocket and pulled out his key, handing it to her.
He didn’t know if she was nodding in agreement or just completely in shock, but she helped him from the chair. With his arm around her shoulder, he left a blood trail through the house as they made their way to the car.
“Fuck!” he hollered as she helped him into the passenger seat.
Charlie hurried to the driver’s seat and threw the car in reverse, clipping the curb as she pulled out.
“You don’ fucked enough shit up tonight, Bird. Try to keep my whip in one piece,” Demi grunted. The towel in his lap was soaked.
“I didn’t mean to. I just grabbed it. I thought you were going to hurt me. Demi, I’m so sorry,” she stammered.
“Bird,” he moaned. “Sing, baby.”
“I can’t, Demi,” she was panicking.
“A nigga in hella pain, Bird. Just sing me a song,” he insisted.
What have you become? What have you becomeeee?
Matter fact, nah that’s what you’ve been
I was blind. I was in it. I was blind. Ohhhhh
Charlie glanced over at Demi and her stomach sank at the sight of his closed eyes.
“Demi, wake up, wake upppp,” she cried. She punched him and then shook him. He groaned in pain.
“Fuck, Bird!” he shouted.
“I’m sorryyyyy, I thought you were dead!” she shouted, completely overwhelmed. Terrified as her adrenaline terrorized her.
Demi sat up, struggling, blood-soaked towel in his hand as he leaned across the armrest. He arrested her face between pinched fingers, denting her cheeks, and pulling her toward him. He kissed her. He kissed her like he was okay... like she hadn’t just put a hole in him.
“I ain’t gon’ never die on you, Bird.” He whispered the words like they were true.
“You’re not invincible, Demi,” she sniffled.
“Sing to me, baby. That shit make a nigga feel invincible. Sing to me and a nigga gone be A-1,” he replied, leaning back into the seat.
“Let it go, let it go-ooo.”
“Fuck Summer Walker, sing something else,” Demi interrupted.
Charlie laughed as relief flooded her. Even in this moment, he was trying to make sure she was okay. Even though he wasn’t. Even when he was hurt, he didn’t want her to feel the weight of it.
“Ma’am. The longer you continue to lie to us, the longer this will take. We can tell from the wound that he was assaulted. Telling the truth will make this easier for everyone.”
Charlie’s eyes were wide with fear as she shook her head. “I...I...”
“Ayo, my man, she said what she said. It was an accident,” Demi said as the doctor stitched his side.
“As a matter of fact, y’all can get the fuck out.
Ain’t nobody going to jail today. I was walking with a knife and tripped.
There’s nothing more to the story, so quit asking her the same shit over and over again. ”
Charlie couldn’t believe he was lying for her, but she was grateful.
“Yes, well, this is a pretty deep cut. You’re lucky it wasn’t worse,” the doctor said.
The police officer closed his notepad and gave Charlie a skeptical glance before exiting the room.
The doctor wrapped Demi’s stitches, taking it around his entire mid-section.
“Keep these clean. I’m going to prescribe you something for the pain and you should be all set. It’ll heal completely in a few weeks’ time. Until it scabs, don’t submerge in water. I’ll go have the nurse discharge you.”
“That’s a plan, Doc,” Demi answered. Charlie looked on; guilt-ridden. The doctor walked by her.
“Demi, I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Come here.”
Charlie walked to him, standing over him as he sat on the examination bed. His stare held no disdain, but it was brooding as he inspected her.
“I’m not fucking him,” Charlie said. “I haven’t even spoken to him.”
Demi nodded and then lowered his eyes to his hands.
“I got a problem, Bird. When it come to you. I just lose it. A nigga ain’t right in the head over you,” he admitted.
“You scare me,” she whispered. “You kicked me out of your condo, Demi. You dragged me out, kicking and screaming. You said you loved me and then you treated me like I wasn’t shit.”
“I’m wrong, Bird,” he said.
Tears built up in her eyes, but she held them.
“I been going crazy, baby. I been living in hell, Bird. Going through the motions, sleeping in a bed where I don’t belong. Living in a house that don’t feel like mine no more.”
“You’re married, Demi,” she whispered.
“I told you where I’m at with that,” he revealed. “That can be over.”
“If I tell you to leave,” Charlie said, scoffing and shaking her head. “If you wanted to leave you would be gone already, Demi.”
Charlie closed her eyes.
“I’m not a homewrecker,” she said.
“Nah, you a Demi wrecker, Bird. You just knocking my shit down. Every rule. Every wall. You just come in a nigga life and do what you want. Let me come home. It’ll never happen again, Bird, but you got to come back to me.”
Charlie shook her head. “No, Demi. I’m not coming back.”
Demi hit his chest with a balled fist, like he was trying to get an old vending machine to work, like his heart had clunked out and a knock in the right place would get it to work again.
Charlie had broken his shit. He had tried to stay away, tried to let it go.
He was fine until he heard her voice, until he heard her pain in a song. He had come running.
“Bird...”
“It’s not just you, Demi. It’s me too. You lied, I lied. We’re both wrong. We argue and we fuck and then we argue some more. We don’t belong together. The shit is toxic,” she argued.
“So be toxic with me! Who the fuck we comparing our shit to? I want this toxic shit. Whatever it is. I want all of it. I want to fuck and fight. It’s the best fucking and fighting a nigga ever did, Bird.
I’ma do better by you. The lies and the hiding shit and losing my temper.
I ain’t gon’ be about none of that no more with you.
You can’t let this shit go. I’m up like a fucking teenager, sick and shit.
You can’t tell me you been good?” he asked.
“I’ve been dying,” she gasped.
“Then why you running, Bird?” Demi asked. “Huh?”
“Because I have to do better than this. I’m on a journey, Demi, and you are disrupting that. I am trying to get my shit together. Trying not to keep making the same mistakes...”
“We ain’t no mistake, man,” he said, hanging his head and rubbing the back of his neck.
“We are. All of this. I should have never given in to this. I was fucked up before you came along, and now, I’m even more fucked up,” Charlie said hopelessly. “I can’t do this with you, Demi. I can’t be with someone who chokes me and manhandles me. I don’t feel safe.”
“I’m in love with you, Bird,” Demi said, shame and desperation transforming a gangster to a man.
“Stop saying that,” she whispered.
He reached for her balled fists and brought her hands to his face.
“Say, man,” Demi said, holding her in place with a strong hand to the small of her back.
“Say, man,” she repeated, shaking her head as her eyes betrayed her, exposing just how much this hurt.
She caressed his face. He didn’t even flinch.
The man who resented human touch embraced hers.
It was an honor. To be the recipient of his comfort was incredible, but he wasn’t hers.
She couldn’t keep him. He had given her something she couldn’t claim.
“Oh, babe,” she soothed. “Love doesn’t hurt.
I don’t know what this is that we’ve built but it hurts me, Demi.
This feeling I give you, hurts you. Like a burn.
You said it burns. That’s not love. I stabbed you tonight.
How much worse does it have to get before we let it go? You have to let me go.”
He nodded. He knew he had to. He didn’t want to, but he knew it was necessary to let birds fly. If he tried to hold onto her, she would die, and he just wanted to admire her heights.
“There’s a deal with the label. Day will be in touch.
If you want me to let it go, you got to take the deal, Charlie.
I can’t walk away without leaving you with something, and I can’t live a life without hearing you sing to me, baby,” he said.
“Can you do that for me? To ease my mind, Bird. Leave me with a piece of you at least.”
“I can’t, Demi,” she said. “I can’t take a deal. My face can’t be out here like that,” she whispered. “Just let go. I don’t want anything from you except that.”
Her words scraped away at his manhood. He nodded, biting into his bottom lip, restraining his anger, his hurt.
He reached for his bloody shirt, slipping it over his head.
He pushed by her and Charlie felt herself choking as she reached for his arm to pull him back.
Why couldn’t love be simple? Free? The price of love was too expensive.
They had done too much to one another. They had mixed in too much hurt to the pot and ruined their recipe.
“I’m never going to love a woman the way I love you,” he said. He caressed her face and Charlie closed her eyes, holding her breath. His goodbye was her defeat.
She watched him walk out of the room and her legs gave out. She sat on the edge of the bed, chin to her chest, as she finally let her anguish flow.
“I’m in love with you too,” she whispered.
It took everything in her not to go after him.
The way she loved him was terrifying. The way she forgave anything, sweeping all his missteps under the rug like they hadn’t happened at all.
She would love him to her detriment. She would forgive him over and over.
Charlie felt it in her soul that she would love him so much that she wouldn’t have any love left for herself.
That scared her. That stopped her from telling him how she really felt.
He would have to learn to let go because Charlie was certain that they were over.
The overwhelming urge to work things out were thwarted with the idea that this pain was self-inflicted.
It was her karma for sleeping with someone else’s man to begin with.
Demi had never been hers, and even though he was willing to leave everything behind to change that, she would always feel like a second choice.
Their relationship was stained with lies.
No matter how much love was present, no matter how good they could have been, karma never would forget how they began.