Chapter 36: Chapter 36

Chapter 36: Revelations

Daniel’s P.O.V:

“You knew?”

It broke my heart to see the distrust in Grace’s eyes, but I knew it was more shock than actual distrust. I nodded my head. “This weekend, when you’d been on your conference, Kendra came over to the club.” I rubbed my hands on my face. “You should’ve seen her, Grace. She was a mess. She wouldn’t stop drinking and she could hardly walk. I had to call in a doctor to stabilize her. It was in that drunken state that she confessed she had a relationship with your brother.”

Grace sat on the bed beside me, looking a bit calmer. “For how long?”

“It didn’t sound like it was something new. In fact, I had tried not to pry but when your brother came over for Thanksgiving, I saw it then too. There was something between them...a tension of sorts and it seemed like they had some unfinished business between them.”

Grace took it all in, her face completely blank of emotions. I’ve noticed before, she had a habit of doing that when she was too stressed.

“You warned me about this on Thanksgiving,” Grace said, defeated. “I should’ve listened to you then but I didn’t think it was possible. Daniel, they’re four years apart!”

“And we’re six years apart.” I told her while taking her hands in mine. “Did that stop you from loving me? Or me from loving you?”

She shook her head, her movement’s jerky. “But it’s different with us...”

“Now, if you tell me that it’s because your brother’s the younger party, it’ll be wrong. There are several men who are in a relationship with women older than them and their age difference has had no impact on their love life.” I told Grace sternly. “And Kendra is only four years older than Victor.”

“I know...I just...” Grace shook her head, at a loss for words. So I explained it for her.

“Kendra is your best friend and Victor is your brother. You’re afraid that if what’s going on between them doesn’t work out, one or both could get hurt and you won’t know who to defend and whom to comfort. Not to mention, you’re afraid that it’ll affect your friendship with Kendra.”

“How do you know me so well?” Grace sighed, leaning against me for comfort as I wrapped my arms around her. Grace wasn’t exactly petite but compared to me, she was smaller. But we fit. It was a perfect match and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.

“It’s because I love you. You complete me, Grace, as I do you.” I told her, resting my chin on top of her head.

“Yes, you do.” Grace snuggled up closer to me. “I love you so much, Daniel Romano. Thank you for being mine.”

We sat quietly for a while as the world went on around us. Grace was quiet for a while before she looked up into my eyes. “I just want both of them to be happy, Daniel. And if they find happiness with each other, then I have no problem with it. Ken’s been suffering for so long and I never understood the depth of it until today. I just hope everything works out for them.”

“It will,” I told her confidently. “I’m sure it will.”

Kendra’s P.O.V:

“Will you tell me now?” Victor asked as soon as we’d reached my apartment and shut the door behind us.

All the while we’d been in the cab, on our way back from the hospital, I’d tried to stay calm and think of ways in which I could explain to him what had gone down in the hospital, without having to reveal too much. But I knew I’d run out of luck.

I threw my purse on the coffee table and collapsed on the sofa with my head in my hands. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell him my story and expect him to look me in the eye without any disgust, or regret. I knew I had fallen in love with Victor. More than anything, I wanted to be with him forever. To sleep next to him and wake up next to him. But if he finds out...if I tell him about my past before I even have the chance to tell him that I love him...No. He’ll leave. He won’t stay with me after that.

“So you can share your problems with Daniel but not me?” Victor’s tone had gone rough from anger. “Is this some kind of trap? Is this the game you’re playing to get Daniel away from Grace?”

The blow had been deliberate...and it hit me right in the heart, leaving me gasping for breath. I felt my hands go numb as I stared at Victor’s angry green eyes.

“W-what?” I was rendered completely speechless. “You think I could hurt Grace like that? You think I have it in me break her heart?” I asked when I could finally speak again. How could he think like that? Even after all the time we’ve spent together?

“Yes, I do.” He said right away, not withholding his temper. “I’ve tried my best to figure you out Kendra but you’re an enigma that gets even more complicated the more I try to understand you. When you came over that summer, I saw how you never let Grace or Tatiana out of your sight, how you just had to be a part of all of their conversation, all their secrets. You followed them around like a shadow, like if you let go, they’ll disappear. And that night at the carnival, I saw you fight with Grace’s ex. You wouldn’t even let him talk to her!”

“That proves nothing!” I screeched. “How dare you accuse me of something like this based only on insensitive assumption?”

“If you can’t trust me with the truth, then I can’t trust you at all.” Was his simple, calm answer. And I knew my time was up.

I gave a bitter laugh. “Good job, Victor. Making assumptions so I’d spill the beans?” I shook my head and patted the seat beside me. “You’d want to grab a seat before you get to know all of Kendra Millar’s dirty little secrets.”

Victor didn’t say anything, just walked over to me and sat down on the sofa beside me. From the corner of my eye, I saw him raise his hand slightly in my direction, but then he lowered them back into his lap and balled them into fists.

So without waiting any further, I started my little sob story.

“When I was young, I was so glad that I had the perfect little family. My mom and dad loved me and most of all, they loved each other. They were like the typical couple, you know, kissing goodbye before my dad went to office, dancing in the rain, making peach pies on weekends. But all of that stopped when I was ten.” I balled my hands into fists. This was the hard part. And even though it’s been well over thirteen years, I could still remember the flames, the panic I felt...and my mother’s maniacal laughter.

“My dad used to run a small business and then he’d had gotten this huge deal with a big company. He was so excited, he wanted to make things even better for us, but the CEO of that company had been a woman and my mom hadn’t liked it one bit when my dad started spending a little too much time with her during the course of the project. They started having these ugly fights and my mom would always accuse him of cheating, when he hadn’t even done anything...at least not yet. I remember him coming up to my room after those fight and taking me in his arms and telling me how sorry he was that I had to hear it. I used to get really scared when they fought. But after a few months, he stopped coming and started drinking. There would be bottles lined up everywhere and he would stay away from home all day, only coming for a few hours during the night. My mom was a mess too, she stopped being the perfect wife, the perfect mom that I’d grown up knowing and she’d be cooped up in her room all day, depressed and suffering from severe anxiety. I didn’t know how worse her condition had gotten until one night, she did the unthinkable.”

I rubbed my hands up and down my arm to get rid of the chill. “I had gone over to a friend’s after school, but when I came back home, I found my mom back in the kitchen again, baking. I was so happy to see her look so beautiful after almost a year, to see her smile and sing that I didn’t realize at that moment that the entire house smelled of alcohol. I thought that maybe, the nightmare had ended, that everything had gone back to normal. But that night, when my dad came back home, surprisingly not drunk, she served him food, acted like nothing had ever gone wrong with them. That was the first time I had dinner with my parents in almost a year...and the last. Because that night, when we had gone to bed, mom set the entire house on fire.”

“What!” Victor’s harsh whisper snapped me out of that night’s nightmare. But I shook my head before he could say anything else.

“I can still remember how the fire had burned everything in its path, how there had been smoke everywhere I looked. Maybe me and my dad would’ve slept right through it, if my mom hadn’t started laughing. It was like...the woman I knew my entire life had died in that fire. She just kept on laughing and laughing as the fire began to rise to the first floor where my room was.” I shook my head again, fighting the chills, the fear. And then Victor wrapped his arms around me, as if he understood what this was doing to me. So I continued on.

“Nothing happened to me though, because my mom’s laughter and the smoke had woken my father and he’d fought his way up through the flames so he could save me. He threw me out of the window and into the bushes on the ground, so I escaped with minimum damage. He even managed to save my mom from the fire.”

“But?”

“The fire had reached the gas and there was an explosion.” I looked up directly into his eyes. “My mom’s in a mental asylum; has been for the past thirteen years...and my dad’s on life support. I didn’t know why my mother did what she did, not at first, but when I went to visit her in the asylum one day, when I was in my senior year of high school, she told me it was because my father had asked for a divorce the previous night. She couldn’t stand the thought of her perfect family shattering, so she decided to end it all. That was the last time I ever went to visit my mother...and my father. I just didn’t have it in me to visit them again.”

I was expecting anger, I was expecting disgust, even regret...but I wasn’t expecting understanding.

“You’re worried you’ll turn out to be like your mother.”

I sucked in a breath. Because the story wasn’t over yet, only the hardest part remained.

“I’m not afraid to turn like her, Victor. I am like her.”

“Explain.” Victor demanded right away.

So I did. “I had a boyfriend back in school. I’d known him since middle school and we’d been friends forever and he’d even helped me get through my parent’s ‘accident’ and foster care. I thought we were forever...you know. I truly loved him. But when I found him sleeping with another on prom night, I decided to do the exact same thing my mom did.”

“We were at a friend’s house and by the time I found him with this girl, it was well past midnight and half the people were beyond drunk. So I went straight to the kitchen and turned all the burners on...and waited for the gas to fill the room with a lighter in my hand.”

Victor sat silently beside me for a long time, his arms unwavering steel bands around me. Finally he asked. “What made you change your mind?”

I gave a startled laughter. “There was someone in the house who started laughing hysterically after getting dead drunk. And it made me remember my mom and how she’d ruined her own life because she’d given one man complete control over her heart. Since then, I’d decided never to fall in love, never to give anyone that much power over me that I completely loose myself and become a puppet to emotions. It was a choice I made long ago and I-“

“You don’t think that you can change it even for me.” This time Victor did let go of me with a harsh laugh and the chills were back full force. “So you never stopped to think that maybe I’m not like someone who would cheat on their partner once they’d made a commitment?”

Victor got up from the couch and began to pace the room, running his hands through his hair occasionally. He looked pissed as Hell but I didn’t know what I could say to comfort him. Luckily, I didn’t have to, because Victor wasn’t done yet.

“Yeah, your parents screwed up. Yeah, your boyfriend screwed up. But how can you be so sure I’ll be the same?” He turned to me abruptly; his green eyes now the shade of a brilliant emerald in its anger. “I’ve been in love with you from the second I laid eyes on you, Kendra Millar. I didn’t need to know the real you because I could see right through you. But when I tried to tell you about my feelings back then, you slipped right through my hands. But I didn’t give up then, I knew I’d have another opportunity. So I waited. But not before I shattered a few bone of that bastard you slept with that night.”

“What?” I don’t know Victor could be violent, that he had it in him. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I was pissed off and because that man was cheating on his wife.”

“He had a wife?” I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling filthy and disgusted at myself for the first time in my life. “He said he had no one...that he was single...”

“He lied.” Was Victor’s curt answer before he saw my face and a string of curses left his mouth. “Damnit, Kendra! It wasn’t your fault.” He came to kneel down before me and took my hands in his. “I knew he was a cheating scumbag. Hell, the entire town knew that and no one felt an ounce of remorse when he had to spend the next six months at home, at his wife’s mercy.”

But that fact didn’t give me any comfort. “Oh y God! What have I done, Victor? I didn’t mean to...I swear...I-I didn’t know...I only wanted to keep you away from me...What have I done?” I covered my face in shame. I knew Victor was right, it wasn’t fault. The man had lied to me, he didn’t even have a wedding band on. But still, not only had I done something completely wrong, I’d also broken Victor’s heart in the process.

So many emotions clouded my mind. Guilt, remorse, regret...and it was slowly draining me of my strength.

“It’s not too late, Kendra.” Victor told me gently. “We can start over. Just us and no one else. No complications this time. I know you think that you’re wrong for me, but I don’t think there’s anyone better than you for me. You’re perfect, Kendra. We’re perfect together.”

But I shook my head. I couldn’t do this right now. I felt physically and emotionally drained. “I...I’m...I need some time, Victor.”

Victor remained silent for the longest time, this time. Then he just stood up and walked towards the door. My heart felt heavy with each step he took, but just as he opened the door, he turned to look at me.

“I won’t wait forever, Kendra.”

With that, he walked out the door.