Chapter 15

Alex swallowed hard, his face becoming strained, his pupils fixed as he recalled that dark day so many years ago. Samantha watched his face as he slowly formed the words to begin.

“Things hadn’t been going well for a long time-at least a year,” he told her. “Hell, we were just a couple of stupid kids. We didn’t know what we were doing. This one day, I got home early from work and I saw this UPS truck parked in the driveway.

“Somehow, I just knew. As quietly as I could, I unlocked the front door and crept into the house. The minute I got inside, I could already hear them going at it, my wife moaning her head off in our bed. In our bed. You’ll never know what that did to me.

“I’ve never felt such rage before. I never would’ve guessed I had it in me to want to kill another human being, but that did it for me. Something just snapped, and I went to the hall closet and grabbed my shotgun, then I went up the stairs as quietly as I could.”

Without meaning to, Samantha gasped, her eyes wide and staring. Alex turned his face toward her, an ironic little smile playing on his lips.

“Yeah, you have every right to look at me like that, Samantha. It was animal - brutal - what I did next.

“I slowly climbed the stairs, listening to my wife moaning away the whole time like that guy was the best lover she ever had. And when I pushed open the bedroom door, they didn’t even hear me, they were so into it. They didn’t even look up until they heard me racking the shotgun. Well, that got their attention in a hurry.”

“Oh, Alex.”

“I said the same thing you said, Samantha. ‘The UPS man?’ I said. ‘The UPS man?’”

He shuddered involuntarily and Samantha placed a soothing hand on the nape of his neck. He bent low over the steering wheel again, shame-faced and disgusted with himself.

“I didn’t know what kind of man I was until that day.”

“What did you do, Alex?”

“I stuck the gun in that bastard’s chest and gave him five seconds to run.”

There was a kind of smile on Alex’s face she’d never seen before, a smile of mixed regret and glory.

“You should’ve seen him then. He snatched up his clothes and lit out of there like his ass was on fire.

“When I turned back to that slut Jennie, she’d managed to pull a tee shirt over herself, and believe me, that’s just about the only thing that stopped me from shooting her in her tracks. I leveled the gun at her, and I stepped over the bed, pinning her up against the wall.”

A sob broke loose from his throat.

“I hate myself for what I did next.”

“You don’t have to tell me, Alex. Not if it hurts this bad.”

“Yes I do, Samantha. Yes I do. Then you’ll see why I can’t waste any more time trying to love you. Not when there’s not a scrap of love in my soul to begin with. Not when you find out how fucked I really am.”

He gulped for air and gathered his wits about him, then he continued.

“She was crying by then, Jennie was. She was begging me not to kill her, and to tell you the truth, I really kind of enjoyed that. It was thrilling to see her beg after what she’d done to me, and I wanted to prolong it, so I made her get down on her knees.

“And she did, Samantha, she did. And I made her open her mouth, and when she did, I stuck the barrel of my gun in it.”

“Oh, no, Alex.”

“‘You want to live?’” I screamed. “‘You want to live, you worthless slut?’

“She said she did, so I told her she’d better open her eyes and look at me, then. When she did, her eyes were so pleading and helpless it almost pissed me off more than anything else.

“‘I want you to suck on this gun,’ I told her. ‘And bitch - you’d better make it believable, or I’ll blow your goddamned head off right here and now.’

“Jennie just stared at me, so I screamed at her again to snap her out of it. ‘Do it,’ I screamed.”

“What happened, Alex?”

“She took the gun out of her mouth and then she said no, just like that, in a quiet kind of voice. And then she stuck the gun back in her mouth, shut her eyes, and quietly waited for me to kill her.”

“Did you?”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here right now if I did, would I?” he asked reasonably. “They’d have locked me up forever, like the animal I am.

“No, what I did was, I flung the gun down onto the bed, gathered up my typewriter and a few of my things, and I left. I left her, I left my house, I left everything. And I never went back. When the divorce papers came, I signed them and mailed them straight back and I’ve never heard another word from her since.”

He laughed bitterly.

“The joke was on her, though, ’cause I published my first novel about a year later and she didn’t get one damned dime from it.”

He grew quiet and Samantha knew he was staring at her, was waiting for her reaction. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say, so she just sat there, speechless.

“Now you see why I can’t love you, Samantha? I’m afraid of what I’ll become. I know what I am now. I know what kind of man I am. And I know I can’t be trusted not to hurt you.”

She laughed, despite herself, and threw her arms around him.

“Oh, Alex, you idiot.”

“Why do you say I’m an idiot, Samantha? Don’t you see? Don’t you realize the worse thing you could ever do is get with me?”

She bent her head to his and kissed his cheek, feeling the rough razor stubble once more.

“You’re a better person than you think you are, Alex, if it bothers you this much. You did what anybody would do. You were right to have those feelings. The important thing is you didn’t follow through on them.”

“How can you love me, Samantha? How can you sit there and listen to all this and still love me?”

“It’s because I see you in a whole different light. I can’t explain it, Alex. You’re just the most wonderful man I’ve ever met. Now give yourself a break, will you? You deserve to be loved as much as anyone else does.”

He didn’t say a word and Samantha began to realize that perhaps she’d already lost him. Her life seemed to be coming apart in her hands and there was nothing she could do about it.

Too bad she couldn’t take the thirty-six thousand dollars he offered. It would go a long way towards setting her up in her new life, and then she needn’t go home and explain herself to her father. But she was no whore, and there was no graceful way she could possibly accept Alex’s money.

She knew then there was nothing else for it but to leave him, to strike out on her own and depend on nothing more than her own resourcefulness to get by.

She couldn’t think of anything else to say to him, but at least now she knew it wasn’t she who he despised, but himself.

This was something she knew he’d have to work out on his own.

My parents, though, she thought. I can’t go back to them like this.

Samantha did have some money saved. There’d never been anything to spend it on, he’d been right about that, but she still had nowhere to go.

Or had she?

“Look, Alex, maybe...I hate to ask this of you, but do you think I could borrow the keys to the condo for a few days? I can’t go home like this. My dad’ll never forgive me for losing this job. You met him. You know what he’s like.”

Alex turned his eyes in her direction.

“Please don’t hate me, Samantha.”

“No. No, I don’t. That’s why I want to go now. I don’t like feeling so used.”

“I never was using you. Not the way you’re thinking. I...I tried so hard to fight my feelings for you, Samantha.”

“Yeah. Looks like you won, too.”

That nearly set him off again and he turned toward the steering column, flustered and confused.

“The keys, Alex.”

“Yeah.”

He took the keys out of the ignition and pulled off the two Samantha needed.

“Please don’t go, Samantha.”

“I have to, Alex. I can’t make you feel. It has to come when you want it to, and you’re not ready yet. Not for me. Not for love.”

He sighed in defeat and handed her the keys.

“Sure you don’t need any money?”

She shook her head.

“No. I’ve saved up, and you’ve always been more than generous to me, Alex. Oh yeah. Don’t worry. I’ll clean the place up before I go and you’ll never even know I was there.”

These words brought a lump to her throat. Her lip was trembling, so she bit it. She had to be strong, even if it killed her.

And it just might kill me, Samantha decided. She knew she’d miss Alex P. Shannon and love him to her dying day.

“Thanks for the keys, Alex. Now we’d better go. We’re going to attract some unwanted attention if we stay parked here like this.”

He replaced the ignition key and started the engine. When they got to the airport, he carried her luggage over to the Hawaiian Airlines gate and peeled off a few fifties to pay for the ticket.

Samantha’s heart felt like it was breaking in two, so she laughed instead of crying.

“I’ll bet I never see another airport this small,” she joked, letting their eyes meet one last time.

Alex turned away and Samantha watched him get into the Jeep and go.