Genesis Lost - Books 1 - 6, page 120
He did let me do it, but he didn’t shut up, continuing with his complaints about how he could do it himself.
Back in the room, I grabbed his fresh briefs, kneeled down, and helped him step in before I pulled them up, depositing his cock behind the tight fabric. We did the same with a fresh set of sweatpants.
He slouched back into bed, exhaustion lining his eyes. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“You want me to send your mom to wash your cock?”
That shut him right up.
I helped him swing his legs back into bed, bringing up the blanket again as he shoved on his pillow with his face scrunched up in pain. Then he turned his head toward the window, ignoring me, shutting me out.
“Max said you can go home tomorrow.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Mom and I will come and pick you up around ten, okay?”
His head swung around, something dark burning in his eyes. “Don’t call her that. The only reason why I didn’t tell everyone the damn truth is because it would break her heart.”
My breath hitched. “Which I appreciate. I don’t want… her… to know what I did.”
His eyes drifted toward the window once more. “I want you out of my cabin, Kim. Out of my life.”
What he said turned me awfully aware of every single one of my ragged heartbeats. Fake or real, he didn’t want this marriage anymore. He was fed up with me and my bullshit. And what excuse could I possibly have come up with? There was no excuse for what I had done. So I clasped to the only thing I hoped might change his mind, or at least buy me some time until I could fix this.
“What are we going to tell your parents?” I asked. “I can’t just go to your mom and tell her we split up. What if she asks why?”
He laughed. Not the funny ha-ha kind of laugh. It was more like the sarcastic go-fuck-yourself type. “Shouldn’t be difficult for you to come up with a lie.”
There they came. My vision turned blurrier by the second, only temporarily improving whenever a big, fat tear rolled down my cheek. “Oriel, I swear I never planned to shoot you.”
“Yeah, you already said that.” He didn’t turn to look at me and instead continued to stare out the window. “Guess I’m weird or something because that’s not even what I’m upset about. It’s your dishonesty. One moment we’re together in bed, and we’re just fucking fantastic together. And when I wake up, you’re gone. You promised me sixty days, Kim.”
I hurried around the bed, kneeled down and grabbed for his hand. “Give us another sixty days to make this right. I swear I won’t ever leave you again.”
His eyes slowly sought out mine, sending an electric impulse down my spine. “Why?”
“Because…” I sniffed, gulped, and cleared my throat all at the same time, turning it into an ugly snort. “Shit. Because I love you, okay?”
When he said nothing and just stared at me, anxiety had me ramble on. “I panicked, okay? With you telling me that you love me, a-and the necklace, the, the… I can do better. I swear, I can.”
My voice broke off, and all I could do was stare at him, my stomach such a mess I feared I’d throw up right there in front of him.
He took a deep breath. “You can do better?”
“Uh-huh,” I breathed, nodding frantically.
His hand squeezed mine. Only a little, but it was there, and I felt it.
“If you want to do better, you have to be honest with me,” he said, then he waited for an overlong moment, driving panic into my bones before he continued. “Can you? Be honest with me?”
Memories choked my throat.
They clasped me and turned my breath shallow.
“Y-yes,” I stammered, my voice still shredded from tears and sobs.
“Alright.” He pulled our intertwined hands closer to his face, his breath tickling across my skin. “We both know you weren’t a virgin when we married. Were you married before? Is that it?”
Gosh, even now, he had the sweetest thoughts.
Another husband? No.
Other men? Hundreds.
This would have been a great moment to come clean. Tell him everything and move on from it together. But what were the chances of that? He might have been okay with me being married before, but what if I told him his wife worked as a Lily? That every hole of my body had already been claimed by many, over and over again?
“Kim,” he said, his tone firm, demanding. “The truth.”
I wiped off my tears, forcing a smile onto my lips. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ve… I’ve been married before. That’s exactly it.”
Was this a good idea?
Starting into this truth thing with a lie?
It didn’t matter.
Oriel let go of my hand and flung it back at me, a shake on his head, a pout on his lips, and a knowing stare in his eyes. “I know you’re lying. Why won’t you just once tell me the truth about you? What happened to your parents? Were you raped? Is that it? Did someone —”
“Stop it,” I screamed, my fingers trembling and the room around me twisting. “I told you from the beginning my past is mine, and mine alone. You agreed, Oriel.”
He turned his head away and stared at the ceiling, his gaze empty. “Yeah, I know. I made a mistake, and I’m sorry. The truth is, Kim, there’s no future for us without your past. I can’t trust you like this, and I’d like to be able to trust my wife just like she can trust me.”
“But you can trust me,” I cried, I wailed. “Maybe I can’t give you my past, but I did give you a truth. I do love you. I really do.”
He scoffed. “Have you ever considered that you’re saying that because you can’t even distinguish anymore between what’s true and what’s a lie?”
Seventeen
Oriel
At ten in the morning the next day, sure enough, Kim showed up at the clinic together with my mom. Her red-rimmed eyes spoke volumes about how much she had cried yesterday because, apparently, my wife wasn’t just a master of pulling lies out her ass at any given moment. No, she could also produce massive tears on demand.
I had to get that woman to leave my life.
“You look so much better, honey,” mom said, gave the standard cheek-squeeze because being shot by your own wife wasn’t already embarrassing enough. “Kim and I spent all morning preparing meals for the week. It’ll make it a bit easier on her to care for you.”
“I don’t need her to care for me.”
“Oriel, there’s a time to be courteous, and a time to be stubborn.” She grabbed my bag, then cocked her head at me. “This isn’t the time for neither one of those. You took care of her, and now it’s time for her to take care of you.”
I grunted.
Guess it made sense that Kim didn’t purposely shoot me. I mean, why else would she have dragged me onto the ATV? But still, the fear she might push a pillow onto my face back home while asleep was there.
Kim walked up to me, her hands clasped in front of her stomach. “Hey.”
I grabbed my jacket, swung it over my good shoulder, and left her standing. If I had known this woman would end me up at the hospital, lied to, and fucking broke, I would never have married her.
I took the bag from my mom and left the clinic, making sure I’m always one step ahead of my wife, preferably two. Ignoring the shooting pain in my shoulder, I swung my bag in the back of the truck.
“Keys,” I said.
Mom and Kim exchanged a quick look.
“Kim drove your truck down here. Don’t you think it would be —”
“I don’t think so. Now, would my wife please hand me the keys?”
Kim gulped, then walked around and handed me the keys before she got on the passenger seat, while mom made herself comfy in the back.
Closing the door was easy.
Starting the engine, not so much.
Putting this thing into gear?
Kim grabbed for the gearshift. “Let me —”
“No!”
I shoved her hand away, struggling a while longer with the gearshift while an awkward silence settled onto the cabin. Kim said nothing else but stared out the window instead, as I drove us up to my cabin.
“Oh, I didn’t even see that yet,” mom said and tapped the window. “Oriel, your carport is broken. Did you know that?”
“Yup, I know.”
“How did that happen?”
I put the truck in parking and took a deep breath. “Kim, care to explain how my carport broke?”
Kim swung around with wide eyes, but quickly got a handle on herself as she forced her voice into the sweetest sound. “I might have backed up a little crooked a few days ago. You know, Oriel’s truck is so big.”
“Oh, yes, it is a big truck.” Mom unbuckled herself and slipped out of the cabin. “I keep telling that boy he doesn’t need such a big truck. They are not efficient, you know, and gasoline is difficult to produce for us.”
We all went inside, where I flung the bag in the hallway before I sat down on the couch and took a deep breath.
This was bad.
After yesterday, I figured Kim would be gone by the time I came back home. Why was she still here? All this time, I wanted her to stay. Now that I wanted her gone, she stayed put.
“You call if you need me,” mom said. Not to me. To Kim. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take his dirty laundry? I have been doing it for years, I don’t mind another two weeks.”
Kim smiled and hugged her. “Nope, I’ll take care of it. You already did enough.”
Mom stroked her chin, gave her the sweetest smile, then turned her head to look at me, the smile replaced with a frown. “You are so lucky to have such a good wife, Oriel.”
“Ha, yeah.” I tossed my head back and crossed my legs on the coffee table. “I’m so lucky, I’m practically blessed.”
Kim showed my mom out but remained in the shadow of the closed front door for a while longer before she stepped back into the living room. “I can make you tea if you want.”
“Yeah, or you could pack your shit and leave. How ‘bout that?”
Her face turned to stone, the only indication of emotions the way she sucked in her cheeks. For a moment, I thought I saw pain in her eyes, agony, but that wasn’t possible. Thirty days into the deal, and I had achieved nothing but an empty wallet, a broken shoulder, and a heart close to bursting in my chest.
Eventually, Kim sat back into motion.
She walked over to the kitchen and grabbed two mugs, making us fucking tea. Whatever.
I got up and hurried to the bookshelf, grabbing my notebook from the top. Unable to hold it with both hands, I had no other choice but to sit down at the dining table with it. I grabbed my pen from the center, struggling with the book to stay open while I wrote down the expenses of the last days. And would you know it, things were exactly like I thought.
After paying Max for not letting me bleed to death, which I hadn’t done yet, I would be fucking broke with a capital B. All I could hope for was that Kim wouldn’t get her period for real this time, or she would have to roll up my socks and shove them between her legs.
“What’s wrong?”
I slammed the book shut and draped my arm over it as Kim came with the two mugs. “Nothing.”
I should probably have told her. Maybe it would have been some motivation for her to run, and this time stay away because I sure as hell wouldn’t go after her ever again.
But something inside my chest made me clasp the book. Male pride, I guess, because what kind of man was I if I couldn’t even provide for my wife? Fake wife.
The moment she had the audacity to reach out for my hand, I grabbed the book and jumped up, the tremor of the motion shooting deep into my shoulder. “How much longer do you intend to stay around? You don’t have to take care of me because you feel guilty, you know.”
Her shoulders slouched, and she wrapped both hands around her mug. “I will stay for another sixty days, Oriel. If you still don’t want me gone by then, I’ll find somewhere else to go. That’s only fair, don’t you think?”
“This is ridiculous.”
I put the notebook back on the shelf, unable to turn around and look at her. She never shot my knees, but they quivered as if she had. What would I have given a few days ago to hear her say that? To confess that she loved me?
“I love you, Oriel.”
Aw, shit, there it was again.
It got me all warm and tingly inside, and I doubted that feeling came from the beginning of an infection. Though it could have been. This woman faked being happy with me so well, she made me think our marriage was solid rock. Chances were she could fake loving me just as well. But why?
Probably a conscience thing.
Or perhaps that night out there showed her she was nowhere prepared to make it out there alone. If she would ever be…
I slowly turned around and sat back on the couch, watching how the billows of steam over my tea mug grew smaller. “I don’t believe you. If you really loved me, why on earth would you run from me? Again?”
She leaned against the back of the chair and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Because you are an amazing husband, and way too good for me.”
“Whoa, whoa…” I shook my head, tapping my lips, trying to make sense of her words. But there was no sense. Just lies. Always lies. “Are you saying you wanted to leave me because I was a good husband?”
“Nooo, I wanted to leave because —”
“What you’re saying makes no fucking sense, Kim. Wives leave their husbands because they’re shitbacks, not because they’re too good.”
“I didn’t want to leave you because you were too good, idiot, I wanted to leave because I am not nearly good enough.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, that’s probably the one thing I can confirm as the truth. Honestly, I think you’re probably not made out to be a wife.”
Whoosh.
All color drained from her face, leaving her pale and with a trembling chin. She lowered her head and her chest deflated as if choking down a sob.
She grabbed the mugs, fed the content of both to the drain, left them there, then grabbed her jacket. “I’ll be outside. Call me if you need help with anything.”
“You’re moving out?”
“No, I’m not fucking moving out,” she snarled, pain lining her voice. “There’s food in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
Bam.
She slammed the door shut behind her.
I quickly walked over to the window behind the dining table, watching how she wiped a tear from her cheek before she grabbed the little shovel from the garden bed. There she kneeled down, digging neatly-spaced holes before she lowered young vegetable plants into the ground.
As much as I expected the room to breathe now, each and every inhale hitched between my ribs, making me struggle for oxygen. It’s not that I didn’t know why.
Kim could have shot me a dozen times because I was an idiot, as she pointed out so nicely, and no bullet would have made me love her any less. But what was I actually in love with? It couldn’t be the woman herself, because I had no fucking clue who she was. For a moment, I wondered if I had fallen in love with something that didn’t really exist.
Anyhow, my scalp itched, reminding me of how long it must have been since I washed my hair the last time. I walked over to the bathroom, struggled myself out of my shirt one-handed, and placed the shampoo by the sink.
Taking a shower on my own to wash my hair wasn’t an option, and I definitely wouldn’t ask my wife for help. So I bent over as much as I managed with my height, lowering my head between sink bowl and faucet. At first, everything went well, and the water trickled over my head. It went downhill three seconds into it.
I bumped my shoulder on the sink, which made me wince and jerk my head up. Then the back of my head crashed into the damn faucet, making a sting radiate across my skull. One rasped breath later, everything turned dark. I quickly pressed my palm against the wall, the tiles cold against my skin while my entire body began to panic and sweat.
My body slumped to the ground, and there I sat with the water still running somewhere above, the only thing in my vision the edges of white porcelain.
“What happened?” Kim’s voice screeched into the room. “Oh, no. Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
Kim’s beautiful face came into vision, her brows furrowed and her cheeks lined with concern that actually looked sincere.
“I’m fine,” I grunted. But really, I was not. “I wanted to wash my hair.”
She gazed around the room, then her eyes locked with mine, and she nodded. “Alright. Let’s get you up first. You think you can do that?”
I took a couple of deep breaths, then pulled myself up on the sink, hoping it wouldn’t come off the wall because I had no money to fix it.
Once I stood, Kim grabbed a towel and dried the area around my bandage, which had gotten wet during my failed attempt at taking care of myself.
“Hold on to the sink and hold your head over it. Only as much as you can without getting dizzy.”
I did as told because, at this point, I had no other choice.
Kim flung a towel across my back and tied it at my neck. “Be right back.”
Less than thirty seconds later, she returned with a mug, which she filled at the faucet and slowly poured it over my head. Her fingers rubbed my scalp, wetting my hair.
She squeezed shampoo onto my head, slowly massaging it between my strands. “I’m sorry for running out on you like that. My dad didn’t teach me a whole lot of stuff, but he sure taught me how to run when things got tough.”
And just like that, Kim had given me a snippet of her past. If she had done so by accident or purposely, I couldn’t say, but I took it gladly.
Eighteen
Kim
Perhaps I wasn’t made out to be a wife, but I sure had the instincts to play the part. My guts roiled, telling me one thing: if your husband’s hiding something from you, it’s probably worth finding out what it was.
