31: Keithe
CHAPTER 32: Marcus
CHAPTER 33: Stoney
CHAPTER 34: Michelle
CHAPTER 35: Gracie
CHAPTER 36: Michelle
EPILOGUE
READER’S GROUP GUIDE QUESTIONS
Prologue
The sky split down the middle, pouring rain from the seams as he pulled out of his driveway. Headed toward the highway in order to leave Houston, the nonstop rain seemed to follow Keithe for the entirety of the four-hour drive into Dallas. The gray clouds that followed seemed to promise no let up anytime soon.
For the past twenty-four hours, Keithe had had an ongoing battle within himself to find the courage to do what was right. Against doctor’s orders, Keithe fought for the gumption to get into one of his vehicles, his Porsche, and start on his journey that would finally set him free. Each time, it was Michelle and the love he had for her that halted his steps. But today was different. She had finally pushed him to his limits.
Michelle, his wife of fifteen years, had betrayed him in ways that he couldn’t believe someone would do. With all the cheating, the lying, and manipulating she had done, through all of that turmoil, he had made up his mind to stand right by her side, regardless. Not just because she was a socialite, a respected judge in the community, but because he had made vows to her that he had actually taken to heart. After fifteen years of a rocky-road marriage, it all seemed to be in vain.
Driving, Keithe replayed the scene in his head of the last moments of what he was sure to be the end of his marriage. Reaching over to the passenger’s seat, Keithe dug around in his medicine bag. Retrieving his daily seizure medication he’d been taking for the last five years, Keithe hoped his meds were able to calm the jitters, ward off the onset of a seizure he felt deep in his body. No matter what, he had to go.
He couldn’t think of another way the entire scenario could have gone. He wondered if he should have just spent the rest of his life ducking and dodging, blinding himself about his wife’s mishaps, as she had, but he knew he couldn’t. Years had already gone by without him really considering himself, thanks to his ever-loving wife and her ability to persuade him with her gift for gab. The years full of denial that had passed were long enough to make him feel as if he’d wasted an eternity.
Not one time had he messed up, and if he had, she would have shot him down, making him believe his correspondence with another to be the ultimate marriage betrayal. But no, he stayed. And what did he get in return? The scene that had taken place in front of his home earlier that morning.
Screaming at the top of her lungs while standing on their wet and cold lawn, Michelle had made it known that she wouldn’t forgive him if he left the house.
“Whatever,” he had roared back, allowing the then drizzling rain to seep onto his bald head. Standing toe-to-toe with his wife in front of their million-dollar home, Keithe felt daggers in his back as he turned to continue a wide-legged stride toward his prized vehicle: his Porsche. Just because she loathed the car he had bought himself for his fortieth birthday, he made sure he loved it.
Just when he’d thought he was in the clear to leave for his route to work, once more, and relieve himself from the rain that had started to sprint from the full clouds, the fists she had balled to her sides were put to use. Michelle, almost fifty-five years old, used her physically fit ability to run and jump on her husband’s back, landing punches anywhere they would stay. Keithe, like many times before, had to pry and push her off his body and restrain her from doing any more damage. He didn’t care for another argument or another fight. Enough was enough.
“Enough, Michelle,” Keithe had let slip through his lips without the parting of his capped and pearly white teeth. Looking down at his wife, who had landed violently on the wet ground, Keithe fought the urge to help her up and make it all better. Her hatred had finally reached into his heart and furnished him a rite of passage to give her a taste of her own medicine.
The demands of who, why, when, and where were way too much for him to get into, especially when he’d gotten information that let him know Michelle definitely hadn’t been who she had claimed to be. For all the questions she had for him, he had once had the same for her. There had been fifteen years’ worth of unanswered questions as to why he wasn’t enough for her, or why she wouldn’t love him the way he loved her. Today had changed everything.
“Michelle, you’ve brought more men to our bed than I care to imagine. Should I remind you?” He had taken a step forward with his foot landing in a grassy, muddy puddle. With splats of residue landing on her silky apparel, Michelle struggled to rise from her wet seat and rid herself of Keithe’s presence.
When he had reached for his wallet, Keithe’s shoulders eased of the tension, but it was replaced by heartbreak. The faxed paperwork, which was folded enough times to make a home for itself, was his weapon. Michelle’s eyes landing on the paper caused enough embarrassment to make her turn and hurry back toward their home.
The piece of crinkled paper that lay in his wallet housed creases of his disbelief. More than twenty times in the few hours since he’d owned the results, Keithe had opened and refolded the test results his doctor had faxed over to him after he’d given him the details over the phone. The results told of his wife’s latest tryst. The latest scum must have been his clone twin, because from where he was standing, Keithe had inherited the same residue: an inherited pile of gonorrhea he was sure Michelle forgot to tell him about.
Deciding to keep the paperwork would come in handy for a time such as this. If he couldn’t forget, he surely didn’t want his wife to forget how she had given him a disease that someone else had let her borrow.
“Crazy self!” Cutting his verbal fight short, Keithe then headed toward his car, making sure she didn’t come back at him before he made it to his black-on-black Porsche.
When he pulled out of their driveway, Keithe was soaking wet, with fresh scars on his arms and hands on top of the ones that had barely healed. He could see Michelle standing under the threshold of the entrance door with her arms folded across her chest. In her damaged silk champagne-colored outfit, she stood without tears, but with a glare that once burned holes right through to his heart.
“That’s right, get out of here,” is what he thought she might have said if he hadn’t sped off so quickly. Instead, her longest finger was the wave that sent him gliding over the puddles on their street.
Keithe made his way to the office but his mind just wandered back to his homelife. Half the day had passed before he realized his body was there but his mind was still on the other side of town. He left with no real sought out plan. He just knew he had to get away.
The forced, almost four-hour drive allowed him to think back on his life and how he had spent it. Wasted. Yes, he was the number-one sought-after attorney, living in the lap of luxury, but he was just as depressed as a homeless person would be. Instead of being penniless, he had no happiness.
Coasting on the highway, re-familiarizing himself with Dallas’s surroundings, Keithe retrieved his BlackBerry from his holster. Scrolling to a text that he had gotten hours ago, he was glad he’d gotten the information, because he hadn’t a clue exactly where he would land while in Dallas. Nighttime had greeted him as he proceeded into the live city, and just as they had been along the route there, the thunderstorms were treacherous. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t stop
