Filed To Story: The Lingering Kiss of Farewell Novel
“Can we please talk like civilised people?” Calvin muttered as he reached out to grab her arm.
She turned and walked away from him. “I think you’ve about done enough, don’t you? You shouldn’t drink so much,” she stated and banged into the stairwell.
Marilyn
Calvin followed her right into that stairwell a few seconds after she did, and as she turned to look at him, about to ask him to just go away. Her surroundings seemed to shift, and her vision blurred, and a full memory of that night they’d had in a stairwell flooded her mind, along with the events that led up to that moment.
At Anabell and Wil’s engagement party, the day they had signed the divorce papers even, the way he’d still been all over her in that apartment, trying to play the loving doting husband, when all she’d wanted was him to stay away from her.
The way he’d followed her from their apartment to the elevator. The only thing different was he’d pulled her into the stairwell that night instead of following her in now. She’d left that apartment without him that night, to go home, just like she’d done just now.
Marilyn looked up at him as he stood staring at her, and she realised that this place, it was the place they’d last had s*x. It was also the day she’d signed the divorce papers. He’d told her as he’d pinned her to the wall, she’d belonged to him. Even after they were divorced, she’d still be his, and then he’d bloody seduced her right here in this fire escape, as if to prove it, that she’d never be able to say no to him. He’d been, for the first time ever, uncaring of where they were or who could have seen them in a position like that.
She turned around and looked at the very spot it had occurred, and then back to Calvin himself, and she watched it register in his expression, that he understood just what was going on, that she was actually remembering that one moment between them right this very second.
Even then, after the papers were signed, he’d not kissed her, had denied her the one thing he knew she ying to possess wanted, she’d put it right there on the divorce papers, and yet he’d still not kissed her wh her.
“This,” she stated as something else occurred to her. “Is where the twins were conceived.” She gasped out at him. It could only possibly have been here. She’d been religious about her birth control, had a bloody alarm to make sure she never missed taking it.
But the day he’d turned up at the house and asked for the divorce. That was the day she’d officially stopped taking her birth control, but… she closed her eyes as she saw it, them at the dining room table at Cliffside, and her asking him for a baby. She’d been hesitant in asking him for it, because it was a contract marriage, but he’d once stated after their third anniversary, and they’d just had that.
Calvin had stared at her and then told her there would be no baby inside their marriage, been firm with his words, had repeated himself to her even, just to make sure it was clear to her, she’d left the house after he had and not taken her birth control that day and hadn’t realised it until the following day.
When she’d gone to take it after she’d been handed the divorce papers and had thought what’s the point, we’re over, there is no need to take it anymore, so she’d just put it back in the bathroom cabinet and walked away.
So, here in this stairwell was the only time they’d had s*x when she was off birth control. Been off it for three days by then, and missing just one could see one get pregnant. Calvin was just standing there staring at her. He didn’t seem to know what to say, or maybe he was trying to let her just recall everything.
“We’d already signed the divorce papers, any you… you seduced me right here in this bloody stairwell.
Divorced me and then seduced me on the same day.” Her hand struck his face without much thought, because it was what she, as Marrin, had wanted to do to him that day. As she’d made her way down all those stairs, all she could think about was slapping him.
She watched his own hand touch his face where her hand had connected with his cheek, and he took two steps back from her and just stood staring at her. She’d never once in her life hit him, never wanted to hurt the man she’d loved, but as those floodgates opened, on all her pain from those six weeks of her life, leading up to the day she’d vanished, she realised something.
She as Marrin, had wanted to hurt him that day, cause him any kind of pain she could, but never had. It had been a long walk down all those flights of stairs, and though a part of Marrin had been numb, another part of her way down deep inside of her, under all the pain and sadness of her broken heart. She’d really, truly wanted to slap him for seducing her after divorcing her. She recalled slapping herself at one point in that stairwell, for allowing him to have her, had yelled and screamed at herself on the 9th floor landing about how stupid and weak-willed she was.
She’d wanted to hit him for being a man that had shown her what family was supposed to be like. Hit him for being a man that had effortlessly gotten her to fall in love with him. Hit him for not loving her in return and hit him for abandoning her, back to the world where she was going to be on her own and alone once more; after finally learning what it meant to have a family.
Marrin had turned away from Calvin after that moment, knowing it was wrong of him to seduce her like that, knowing it was even wrong of her to want him like that. Knew they were divorced, but she’d been so bloody weak she couldn’t say no to him. Didn’t really want to, and she knew it, because she had loved him and didn’t want to be divorced from him.
> were open, and Now, she turned away from him as Marilyn, because she recalled it all, and the floody she remembered and felt everything about their lives together. All the pain he’d caused her in the lead up to that bloody grand gesture he’d planned, all that pain and for what? Just to declare he loved her and wanted to marry her for real, so they could have that family she’d craved to have with him.
She looked up at him from the landing below, “The children you said you didn’t want with me,” she stated, and felt the pain of those words as if he’d said them to her just now and not eight years ago. “They were conceived right here, after you divorced me.” she told.
“Marilyn please.” He stepped down towards her, and she held out a hand to stop him, and he actually stopped walking.
“Do you know how much I loved you? wanted a family with you? And you go and divorce me because you love me. That is utterly insane Calvin… Do you know how much you hurt me? I changed who I was to be able to start over and hold no connection to you. You had me believe not only that you didn’t want me, but that you didn’t even care about me.
“I thought there was another woman. You did all of that to me. You ruined us, and all it would have taken, Calvin, was just one kiss, before divorcing me, and I’d have told you I loved you, just one kiss, is all it would have taken, and I’d have torn up that contract and just let myself show you how much I loved you.”
“We can still have that Marilyn, I love you.” Calvin stated “I’m so sorry, I never wanted this. For us to be apart and broken. I just wanted you to see, I truly meant it when I told you I loved you and wanted to marry you,” he sighed.
“I didn’t need that grand gesture. Did I ever ask you for anything at all?” she questioned him.
“No.” Calvin shook his head.
Points
“Do you know why?” she asked in return, and he just stared at her. “Because I didn’t need anything monetary, I didn’t want anything other than your heart. I never cared about your money. I knew how to stand on my own two feet and support myself, learned at a very young age to look after myself, to not need anyone.”
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.