Worthy of Redemption (37 page)

*~
Kyle~*

The penthouse felt dead without Lily there. I missed the sound of her little feet padding down the hall to my office, or her talking to the chefs on The Food Network while she watched the little television in the kitchen when she was cooking. I hated the silence that followed when I would close the door, so unlike the sound of her voice greeting me or cursing me - depending on what I did or didn't do that day. Her intoxicating scent that hung lightly in every room was now stale. The bed was especially empty and cold without her body in it. When I was startled awake in the middle of the night by a nightmare, Lily wasn't there to convince me that I had been dreaming, that I had not hurt
her or hurt Emmy again.

I felt as if I
was in a tomb, and that was only two days without Lily in the house. It made me sick to believe that she had been enduring similar feelings for well over two months, and I was the one making her suffer. I compounded things however by popping into her life, giving her hope only to rip it away. The fact that she was pregnant and most likely terrified probably made her feel ten times worse.

After leaving Lily naked and hopeful in bed again, I went to Marco's place. He
took the beating I gave to him and then offered me a beer. We drank in silence for a long time before he finally said “Get your shit together. Next time I won’t just kiss her, I’ll take her heart.”

Even though I had wanted her to move on, the thought of Marco or anyone else winning her heart was almost too much to imagine. The idea of someone raising my child pissed me off. I couldn’t imagine Lily with anyone else but me, but I was fucked up and didn’t believe I’d be any good for her. I still didn’t know my next step whenever she walked her little bullying ass back through the door.

When Corsey told me what she had done to his tires and how she had bullied him into letting her go, I couldn’t even blame him. Lily was a bully sometimes, and Corsey adored her. He would never do anything that may hurt her. I paced the penthouse, waiting to hear something – anything. I blamed myself for pushing her to this point, and if anything happened to her or the baby, I would hold myself responsible and no one else.

Corsey had informed me a couple of hours ago that the GPS had kicked back on in the Cadillac and it appeared that Lily was headed back to Philly. I knew when she finally walked through the door I’d have a fight on my hands, and I’d be lucky if she only ripped my balls off. I had to make sure she took steps to keep her and the baby safe, without me, beca
use the more I thought about it the more I knew I couldn’t stay.

The images of Emmy’s injuries plagued my mind and haunted my dreams. The video of her walking into Larkin’s office looking every type of broken played in a loop in my m
ind. Sometimes in my nightmares I saw Lily’s face instead of Emmy’s. What was going to push me over the edge next time? How much would it take before I beat her and possibly injure or kill our baby? It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

As I was considering this, the doorbell rang, which pissed me off. The concierge should have called me to let me know someone was stopping by, especially so early in the morning. I couldn’t even imagine who it could be. I didn’t exactly attract many visitors, and I couldn’t imagine Lily ringing the doorbell.

I threw the door open, prepared to scare away the person on the other side, but instead I just stood there, staring. I blinked a few times, rubbed my eyes. Were my nightmares now haunting me as I was awake? Was I losing my fucking mind?

“Are you going to let me in or are we going to stand here and have a staring contest? Because technically, I’ve already won. You blinked like half a dozen times.”

Emmy didn’t wait for me to invite her in. She pushed past me, leaving the scent of her hair that I once loved so much in her wake.

~~~

I stood in the kitchen at a suitable distance watching her with apprehension. Emmy stood at the stove, apparently very much at home, barefoot, making pancakes. She had exclaimed that she was starving as she made a beeline for my kitchen.

"I love this kitchen," she said for the fourth time. "I love this whole place!" She looked at me with a big smile that made my heart skip a beat
. Actually, my heart had not beaten correctly since it stopped at the sight of her at my door.

“Emmy, why are you here?” I finally asked her.

“Aren’t you glad to see me?” she frowned now and stared at me with the spatula in her hand.

“Do you really even need to ask me that?” I asked tiredly.

She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before turning back to the stove.

“You look terrible,” she said. “Have you been sleeping?”

“No, not really,” I sighed and rubbed my forehead wearily. “My girlfriend happens to be MIA. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

She turned her
brownish green eyes on me. “You mean the mother of your unborn child that you deserted because of your sudden case of Mangina? How does it feel to have a vagina of your very own?”

I gave her a warning look and asked again “Why are you here, Em?”

She had turned back to the stove, but her shoulders slumped. “I need you to be happy, Kyle,” she said softly.

I stared at her back, surprised. I wanted to see her face, to see what she was feeling. Three years ago I would have walked up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist and nuzzled her neck before making her turn to face me. I could practically still taste her skin on my tongue.

“You came all the way from Chicago to tell me you need me to be happy?” I asked sourly. “You couldn’t write that in a Hallmark card and mail it?”

“Hallmark doesn’t sell ‘Sorry
the Second Most Important Man in Your Life Is a Dumbass’ cards,” she snapped.

“Finally, we know where I rank,” I retorted.

She looked over her shoulder at me, and I saw how hurt her eyes were. “Don’t do that,” she whispered. “You know what you meant to me, and if my presence is any indication of what you still mean to me…”

“You wouldn’t even give me an opportunity to explain anything to you,” I yelled, surprising even myself. “You heard what you wanted to hear, gave me back the damn bracelet and left.”

“You had a whole year to explain,” she yelled back and then she closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “I didn’t come here to argue about us – or what used to be us. We weren’t meant to be, but you and Lily…”

“What do you know?” I snapped. “Lily spends a few hours with you and now you’re an authority on our relationship? You think you can just walk in here and say ‘Kyle, I want you to be happy’ and that fixes everything? It doesn’t fix everything!”

She looked at me patiently. “No, saying that doesn’t fix everything, but it can be a start.”

“Go home
. Go back to your
husband
,” I spat and turned to walk away from her. I made it only a few steps before I felt the spatula smack me on the back of the head. I spun around. Emmy stood at the stove, looking angry as hell, the green in her eyes flashing.

I stormed over to her. Ignoring her squeals of protest, I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder. I carried her across the living room to the foyer. I opened the door and dropped her on her ass in the hallway.

“Hey!” she yelled, but I had slammed the door before she could finish the word.

I started back towards the kitchen to turn off her burning pancake
s, but I forgot to lock the door. Emmy was through the door and literally on my back in a matter of seconds. I flipped her off of me and onto the couch and kept moving to the kitchen. I turned off the burner, but when I turned around Emmy was standing in the middle of the kitchen, ready to pounce. Her hair was a little wild and her shirt was hiked up over her belly button. When she advanced, I moved away from the stove to avoid burns, but otherwise held my ground.

When she wrapped her arms around my waist and fiercely hugged me, I was too stunned to move at first. I was even further stunned to feel her crying against my chest.

“I forgive you, Kyle,” she said through her tears. “Now you need to forgive yourself.”

Before I understood what I was doing, I wrapped my arms around her and held her tightly. I couldn’t help the few tears that squeezed out of my eyes.

Kyle sat on the couch with his legs stretched out and his feet on the coffee table. I sat beside him, facing him with my legs drawn up in front of me. His arm was across the back of the couch and his fingers
absently wove through my hair and his free hand was linked with one of mine.

“Why did you make Larkin give you the pictures?” I asked him quietly.

“I couldn’t just go on with my happy ending as if I had not done something terribly wrong,” he said, watching his fingers in my hair. “I couldn’t pretend that I had not become a monster on more than one occasion and physically hurt you on more than one occasion.”

“I never meant for you to know exactly what you did that night, Kyle,” I said sadly. “I didn’t want you to live with that.”

“You had to live with it,” he said, looking me in the eyes. “Probably still live with it on some level.”

I looked away. “
Sometimes I dream about it,” I admitted. “But I can’t help that no more than you can help your dreams. Why did you keep me in the dark about Sterling Corp and the jobs you were trying to save?” I asked, changing the topic. “You lead me to believe that you really wanted Jess on some level, and you were trying to cover your dad’s ass. Why didn’t you tell me you were on a mission to save thousands of employees’ jobs?”

“That part of my life was complicated and stressful
, especially with Walter and Jess thrown into the middle of it all. When I was with you, I didn’t want to live in that part of my life. I wanted to keep that part of my life away from us as much as possible. I just wanted my time with you to be my time with you, and not all of the other bullshit that went on in my life at that time. Em, when I was with you, I was able to forget about all of that. I felt at peace when I was with you. I felt like a different man – a better man. I felt like I could be something more than I was, something more than I was set up to be. I didn’t want to tarnish our time together with my reality.”

I looked away from him and looked at our interlaced hands. I felt extremely bad that I had been that place of peace for him, but all of my whining and complaining aided in its ruin. The fact of the matter was that it was impossible to keep Kyle’s ‘reality’ out of our little bubble for very long, but before the bubble burst, I could have made him happier.

“It’s not your fault,” Kyle said softly, sensing how I was feeling. “I should have told you all of that and more. I should have told you about my brother, my sister, and all of the bullshit I endured growing up in that house, but I just wanted to pretend none of it happened. I just wanted to focus on us and our future once everything was settled, but I fucked that up. I fucked everything up, Em. You deserved better than what I gave you.”

I still could not meet his eyes. I continued to stare at our hands, a sight I’d never thought I’d see again.

“I wasn’t enough for you,” I whispered.

Kyle started to object, but I finally looked into his startled face and repeated my words.

“I wasn’t enough for you. If anything, I made matters worse, gave you something else to worry about. If I was enough to keep you grounded and somewhat happy, you wouldn’t have felt the need for the drugs.”

“I turned to the drugs because I’m a drug addict, Emmy,” Kyle said firmly. His hand that was in my hair was now on my cheek. “Don’t blame yourself for my stupid actions.”

“I pushed you too hard,” I said. “I made things harder than they needed to be. I knew you were struggling with some things, I wasn’t sure about everything at the time, but I knew that you were having a hard time and I pushed anyway.”

Kyle turned around to face me. He released my hand and put both hands on my face, forcing me to look into his sad, chocolate eyes.

“None of that shit was your fault, Emmy,” he said firmly. “None of it. I found
you
in the bar that night. I pushed
you
into our fucked up relationship.
I
held you prisoner there. You weren’t the cause of my problems and
I
should have been straight with you from the beginning.
I
chose to take drugs.
I
broke your wrist and
I
broke
you
. I am a terrible, dark, fucked up person. You are and always have been perfect to me, Emmy. Please don’t blame yourself.”

His thumbs caressed away my tears. Through Kyle’s eyes and his fingers and his words, I felt an overwhelming sense of love…and regret. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he pulled me into a tight embrace. It was a few minutes later before we released one another and settled back down on the couch. Kyle’s eyes were pink and his cheeks were just as tear stained as mine.

“Kyle,” I started and then paused for a moment, unsure how to proceed. “You’re going to break Lily if you leave her again.”

“I’ll break her if I stay,” he said flatly, his brow furrowed. “I don’t trust myself not to hurt her like I did you.”

“Kyle, those were different circumstances. You were under a great deal of stress.”

“Who is to say I won’t find myself under a great deal of stress again? What will stop me from calling up my supplier?”

“You’ve been clean since September, and before that you were clean for almost two years. I have no doubt in my mind that you can stay clean. You’re not using now and you’re under a great deal of stress.”

“Yes, and the craving is strong, Emmy,” he sighed. “After I saw those pictures and the video of you…I still don’t know how I managed to stop myself from getting high.”

“It’s Lily,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I was just…I just made you feel better while we were in our bubble, but Lily isn’t in a bubble, is she?”

He hesitated a moment before answering. “No, she isn’t.”

“Lily
is
your reality,” I said softly. “She has encompassed all aspects of your life.”

Unlike me
, I thought sadly.

“I don’t want to hurt her or the baby,” he whispered, looking terrified.

“You won’t,” I promised. “You have to forgive yourself for what you did to me.”

“I could have killed you or Lucas,” he said.

“But you didn’t. Kyle, Lucas is a semi-normal two year old. He’s hyper and he drives me up a wall, but he’s not emotionally or physically damaged from anything that you did.”

“I’ve scarred you,” he said in a choked voice that made my heart clench. He reached up and ran a finger over the little scar in my hairline, a scar that was a reminder of that New Year
’s morning when Kyle lost his mind.

“
I’m not going to bullshit you and tell you that I don’t have physical and emotional scars, Kyle,” I said and then took his hand into mine. “They are a part of me and who I am today, but I’m not broken, okay? I’m happy with my life and I’m able to live with what happened in my past. I made my own mistakes, too. As much as you want to take the full blame for everything that happened between us, you just can’t. No matter what you say, I will always know that some of that was my fault, and I will always have to live with what I did to Luke. But that’s just life, Kyle. I keep on moving forward and I don’t let the past drag me down. You’re letting the past drag you down, except you’re taking Lily and your baby with you.”

He stared at me wide eyed. “I love her so much it fucking hurts,” he said
, his voice raspy. “I never thought I could love anyone again after you, but I do, and I love her more than…” He closed his mouth and looked away from me.

“You love her more than you’ve ever loved me,” I confirmed.

He put his head in his other hand.

“It’s alright,” I said softly and rubbed his hand.

“She’s the complete opposite of anyone I’ve ever wanted before,” he said, staring at the floor now. “It doesn’t even make sense.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense.”

“I keep trying to let her go and can’t.”

“Then you shouldn’t,” I said. “She really loves you, Kyle, and she’s really hurting now.”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised that she came to you,” he smiled faintly. “She thinks she’s living in your shadow. I haven’t done a good job convincing her that you and she are on different planes. No offense.”

“No offense taken,” I smiled. “She asked me if I knew all of the facts back then if I would have taken you back.”

He looked at me curiously. “What did you say?”

“I said no.”

He looked a little taken aback my answer.

“
The fact is if I was right for you, there wouldn’t have been any secrets between us,” I said quietly. “If I was the one you were meant to be with…well…things would have been different, but I’m
not
the one you were meant to be with. Lily is. She’s healed you in ways I was never able to. In fact, I never healed you. I simply drugged you.”

Kyle looked away for a moment with a loud sigh. When he looked back at me, his eyes were again teary.

“I will always love you, Emmy,” he said gently. “I will always feel a connection with you that I will never have with anyone else. You will always be a part of me. No one will ever overshadow the strong emotions I have for you.”

I leaned forward and gently and chastely pressed my lips against his.

“Thank you,” I murmured against his lips. “I will always love you, too.”