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“I love you, Derek,” I tell him. “I’ve missed you so much. I’m so ready for you to make me happy. I’m so ready to make you happy, too.”
“The doctors didn’t fix me, Chloe,” he reminds me.
“Good,” I say.
Two Weeks Later, Portsmouth, NH
“Oh wow. It’s gorgeous,” she exclaims, as we pull up to the house. “And it’s on the water!”
“Wait till you see it in the summer, little bunny. It’s a great place to unplug.”
“It’s amazing.”
Grace wanted us to come for Christmas. Dad came. So did Ash and Jonah. Grace laid the guilt on thick, but I couldn’t bear to share Chloe with anyone.
Her company shut down from Christmas Eve until New Year’s Day, so we spent most of that time in bed, other than putting up a Christmas tree together, and then painting the closet and master bathroom together, which devolved into painting my name on my wife’s naked body with my fingers.
I shared her on New Year’s Eve: with her parents, who came and spent the night, ringing in a new year with a cutthroat game of Monopoly. It was my throat that got cut the most.
The love and light in her eyes as she played a board game with me and her folks told me even more about the woman I’m obsessed with.
Now she smiles for me. She reaches for me. And as much as I can’t get enough of fucking her, she initiates fucking almost as often as I do. My dirty girl. My greedy girl. My good girl.
The Turners are cutthroat at the game of Monopoly, which I never played before New Year’s Eve. So is Chloe Steele, who bankrupted me without hesitation. I want her bringing that game here to the New Hampshire homestead next summer. Grace has already begun organizing a family week where we’re all here at the same time. I want Chloe to challenge my father to a game so he can see who he might be smart to leave his real estate empire to.
Chloe said she didn’t want to announce the pregnancy until after her twelve-week appointment, but she blurted it to her mother not five minutes after Pam and Hal arrived. She did it with so much excitement that if I hadn’t already fallen in love with my wife, that would’ve done it. Pam almost immediately got on her phone and began ordering baby gifts.
I found Chloe and her mother hugging and crying on New Year’s Day morning. I was concerned, but found out they were playing Yahtzee, a dice game Chloe’s folks brought, and it was discovered that the very last time the game was played, it was a game between Chloe and her late brother. The last used scorecard was in a teenaged Chloe’s purple marker, but her brother won the game and circled his name, writing “winner”, circling Chloe’s and writing “loser.” He drew a male stick figure with a winner trophy in his stick hand and a sad faced stick figure with a bow in her hair beside Chloe’s final score.
While it hurt to see the emotion on my wife’s face at these memories, those tears transitioned to laughter as memories of family game nights and stories of Bryan Turner’s competitive and irreverent humor were shared.
I saw love between Chloe and her parents. Not neglect, formality, or indifference. I saw a family trying to heal after enduring pain of losing one of their own. I think they’re still healing.
So am I. So is the rest of my family. Healing from wounds. Healing from trauma. I don’t miss my dead brother. Good riddance. I do miss my late mother. More than I thought I would. And the rest of us might not all be on the same page about everything; we might still be considered corrupt and elitist rich pricks, but I’m on speaking terms with everyone including my father, who is making an effort. So am I.
Naomi and Ash haven’t bridged the gap in their relationship, but they were much less hostile toward one another at that family breakfast the day after my mother’s funeral. It was their birthday on New Year’s Day and Grace told me Naomi sent Ash a happy birthday text. The first one in about a decade. It’s a start. Grace told Chloe during a one-hour phone call on Christmas Eve that Nay and Josh’s marriage is in trouble. My wife and sister seem like they’re getting close. Good. Gets Grace off my back.
Speaking of marriages in trouble – I don’t know what the deal is with Elijah and Sabrina. He dealt with his enemies while I was in the hospital, thankfully. He took her on a trip for Christmas, so I haven’t spoken with him since I’ve been out. Whether Sabrina went kicking and screaming on this trip or not, I’m not sure.
As for my state of mind, I haven’t had much stress, so I don’t know yet how I’ll react to it. I’ve got some stress management tools from my time in the hospital, so we’ll see. I agreed to continue to do one-hour weekly therapy sessions. For now.
My two months in the hospital wasn’t fun. I probably got worse before I got better enough for the doctors to not balk about me leaving. Between missing Chloe and feeling triggered by being in therapy, I very nearly walked straight through plate-glass windows every day for the first three weeks I was there in order to get out, in order to get back to my wife.
I didn’t know if Chloe would ever speak to me again without venom, hatred, and fear, and unlike when I first became focused on her as a goal, it bothered me deeply that she didn’t think there was any hope for us. I started to believe it. I was haunted by the notion she was terrified of bringing a child into this marriage because of me.
And I knew that my remorse might mean there might be hope for me. My developing feelings meant I might not be a complete sociopath.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away from her forever. I knew I wasn’t done with her. At no point during the two months apart did I think I would ever let her go. I fought my urges hard, dreading seeing the hate and fear in her eyes again. But when I finally set eyes on her again on the surveillance feed for the building after Ash’s text telling me he saw her in the parking lot, hatred and venom is not what I saw.
She was distraught, no devastated. Devastated that when she came looking for me, she saw another woman there.
She told me she was a wreck for the first few days that I was gone, traumatized from my meltdown, from everything we’d been through. But then she began to miss me. She couldn’t stop envisioning a family with me in the house I bought for her. She didn’t want to be anywhere else but in that house, with me, making memories together. And a few weeks after I committed myself, she was late for her period and got Alannah to bring her a pregnancy test. She said she couldn’t wait to tell me the test was positive. She decided to do that as soon as I got out. And then sought me out when I didn’t come to her.
She told me that even before she thought I’d replaced her, she was ready to give me another shot, which terrified her. Which still does. She didn’t just want to give our marriage a chance because I wouldn’t divorce her. She didn’t just want to give it a real chance because she thought the doctors fixed me.
She tells me she loves me for who I am instead of loving me in spite of it. How I love her is what she wants. And that’s good, because I don’t know how to love her any other way. She still has fears. I’m probably still far from mentally well, but maybe I’m closer than I was before her.
I asked her yesterday if she wanted me to pay Adam Hallman out the million bucks early. So we can close the book on him. She told me she didn’t want me to pay him at all. I’ve done all I agreed to do. The suits. Hooked him up with Josh who is looking at clinical trials for him. He’s been given all the things I told him he’d get, including a publishing contract for his book series. Chloe says that’s more than enough. She wants me to take out the cameras, stop tracking his online activities, and donate the million dollars to medical research. I’ll make the donation, but I’ll have to think about the rest.
