Parachutes Book Three: The Impact

by Takerra Allen

Life is humbling and teaching us constantly. Love is saving us as much as it can from life’s brutal lessons. The people who care about us, acting as parachutes to make the impact after we fall and glide, a little more bearable.

you convinced me that parachutes were made for brave lovers. The kind of love we craved would require one.

But if I wanted to… If I chose to be loved to love’s capacity… I’d board a bird and soar the skies. Leap into trust and fall in faith, holding hands with danger and passion.

“We will jump,” you warned. “We will fall. But we won’t crash,” you ensured.

“I know.” “I loved you.” “Me more.” “But love doesn’t hurt. Love doesn’t crash you into the earth. Love doesn’t bring fear, or pain, or uncertainty.” “Baby love. Love doesn’t protect you from those things. Love only heals from the damage. Love ensures you don’t go to battle alone. But with great love comes notable risk. With the fall. With the glide. Comes the impact.”

Then I prepare. I brace for what’s to come. Succumb to my destiny. I accept the memory. Because in the end, I would have rather gone up on that parachute with you than remained on the ground with anyone else.

There is a man I love. He dwells in my bones. His leaves are in my hair. His roots are in my toes. My unescapable shadow. Wherever I go, he goes. His kisses taint my wind. Wherever I blow, he blows. To break free, I’d spite my face, cutting off my nose. But even then, I’m senseless. Still in love, I suppose. So, I carry him with me. Like a secret untold. Until the day I am released. The day I part with my soul.

“Are you adoring me?” Tahli teased. “Always.” No forced laughter. No autopilot. Just honesty. “Promise me you’ll always know how much I love you,” Vin urged in his bedroom tenor.

“Promise me you’ll do whatever you need to be happy. If for any reason I’m not here to make you happy...promise me, you’ll still find a way to be.”

Tahli loved him with no blood ties and against everything she feared about love–the abandonment issues from her mother, infidelity trepidation from her father...her own standards.

“You know it, too. None of this would’ve happened if we would have been a family. Why couldn’t we be enough? Why couldn’t you make it work with me? Why…why couldn’t I be your parachute?”

That’s how Vin had viewed his life. One monster-ass vending machine displaying countless options and possibilities, until Vin stood in front of it, ready for his turn to pay the cost and get his reward. But his dollar wasn’t good enough. It was too wrinkled or too old and therefore rejected. He was sent to prison at his young age with his wrinkled dollar and regrets.

To him. She was Vin’s fucking soul.

“Well…that would require testing and ensuring the one you’re left with is fully viable–” “Take them both,” Vin demanded with arid, enflamed eyes and a constricted chest, desperation surging through his veins. “Take it all. My blood, bones, my fucking brain. Just save her.”

“Tahli doesn’t want me to fight for her. She wants to marry the perfect nigga that never fucks up–” “I didn’t give her to the perfect nigga!” Robert surprised him by bellowing, commanding Vin’s gawk. “I gave her to you. So, if you’re the man that you said you were...the man that I think you are... you’ll fight for her.” That rendered Vin speechless. “If- No, when…she makes it through this. You better do just that.” “Do what?” Vin dared for clarity, and Robert met his glower. “Fucking fight for her, Dalvin.”

“Tahli.” Her eyes shot up in an instinct with her gasp. The call of her name in that voice was something her ears had trained to respond to for the past 16 years. Tahli hadn’t looked at Vin – really looked at him – since Valentine’s Day. Since he’d bled himself dry in a final attempt at forgiveness in that empty steakhouse.

Her eyes rose from that hand. Met those eyes that used to be her hiding place. Deaths and health scares, parenting problems and work ordeals, those eyes were always waiting for her at the end of the day.

“Is this what you really want, Tahli? Be honest with me. Tell me, baby love. Because…I’m willing to do anything. Like, if it’s even a fucking fragment of a chance, I’m a take it. But look in my eyes and tell me that this is real, Tahli. This is really happening.”

She stared at him. Captively. Her baby. His onyx irises, with so much adoration reserved for her, now packed with a desperate pain. It stung to see him this way. Because this time last year, nobody could tell her shit about Dalvin Hayes.

“This is really happening, Tahli?” Vin begged. “This is what you want? Because I don’t. I’m fucking…” He reached for her hand and Tahli yanked it from the table. She watched his slow blinks process it. “I’m fucking dying, Tahli. I don’t want to be divorced. I want to be with you. I wanna…I wanna be with you until I fucking die, and I…I wanna wake up to my kids every day,” Vin sniffed, waterlogged eyes pleading into hers. “But is this…?” His ...

“But it is what I’m going to do,” sorrow quavered Tahli’s voice. “Because unlike you, Dalvin, I know that there are things bigger than what I want. I know that I can’t go around doing whatever I want and there not be consequences. That I can’t fuck somebody in the middle of an argument, make a baby, hide a baby, and think life can just go on. That as much as I want to move past this and keep our family – and I do…I really do want that,” Tahli nodded, aware of everyone’s focus on her words, especially Vin.

“Now... Every time I look at you, I can’t help but remember how happy you made me all these years and how good you were to me. Then I wonder if that was only the case because you were living this whole other fucking life I knew nothing about.”

“I was good to you because your happiness was, is, and will always be my biggest priority, Tahli.”

“But that’s the thing about lies, Dalvin. Once they come out, they poison the truth. All of our memories are tainted. I’ll never believe any of them. I’ll never trust my own fucking memories. I’ll never trust you.”

“So, yeah…I’m fucking with it. I love you, baby. But I owe it to myself to love me more. Don’t think that doesn’t kill me to say, Vin, because of course what the fuck am I gonna do without you?”

“Maybe we served our purpose to one another and maybe now is when I consider the quality of life I have going forward and not spend it worrying and second-guessing and doubting you or myself or my own fucking judgment or self-worth. I want to heal. I want to stop replaying the past 15 years over and over,” her finger circled at her temple. “Analyzing every missed phone call and flight delay. I’m so, so sorry. Because even after you hurt me, I still don’t want to hurt you,” Tahli was too honest, watching his eyes cram with tears that his bravado wrestled.

“It kills me to see you broken. But I want you to love me enough to let me go, baby.” Vin looked like he had stopped breathing. “I want off the parachute.”

“I ruined your life, Tahli.” Her wide, wet eyes flared on the table. “I knew I ruined it 15 years ago, and I’ve been trying to make up for it ever since. For a while, I thought I did. But in the end…I ruined your life, baby love.” He repeated. “I’m sorry about that.”

Because if you’re reading this, you’re not my wife anymore. But you’ll always be my parachute.

Vin didn’t play about family. Tahli figured he’d gone long enough without a traditional one that when they built theirs so young, Vin guarded it.

No, they weren’t perfect by far. Like any married couple, quarrels were inevitable, and complacency crept into their routines. But undying passion trumped it. Tahli would mouth her goodbyes while Vin took a conference call, and he wouldn’t hesitate to put the whole meeting on hold. He’d draw her back, whispering something like “let’s try that again”, before kissing her deeply. A second later, he’d be back to barking orders on the phone, running his boardrooms like a G, and send Tahli off to work on a cloud.

Vin is so big, Abby. He’s so woven throughout my life; the only way I

can heal is with finality. There can be no blurred lines because I don’t trust myself not to cross them.

I love Vin. I really do. But Dalvin did not love me in the capacity that I deserved. And looking around this place, with the daily reminders of wh...

Tahli Hayes had been his parachute for the past 15 years, and now, the strings were cut. And Vin was plummeting with nothing to grasp onto.

Fingers tingled with anticipation for her velvet skin. His heart ran laps, sensing its counterpart, eager to reunite.

“You’re gorgeous. Your sweat is my fucking aphrodisiac. Come on, now. You know this.” Vin pleaded, the need for her surrender mounting. Regret suffocating him. Crave choking him. “I need you, Tahli. I thought I could do this. I can’t do this shit.” She clamped her eyes shut.

“I don’t need you to take care of me, Vin.” “I will always take care of you. Always. Fucking always. But this isn’t about you. This is about your heart.”

“I love you so much, baby love. I will never, ever, ever, ever stop. You hear me? You may have gotten off the parachute, but it’ll always be here waiting for you.”

“Just let me look at you a little longer. I can’t do this shit, Tahli. You know how there’s some things you can do and some shit you can’t? Like I fucking can’t. I’m trying. I’m really fucking trying. But I’m losing my mind. I got headaches all the fucking time… I’m losing money. I’m…” Sick. Depressed. Lost. “What the fuck did I do?” He muttered the last part to his fucked-up self, but she answered anyway.

The only threat was you! Sophie knew that shit. You were the only one for me, will always be

the only fucking one for me. I never laid a finger on her ass after that night!”

“Okay.” Vin took one knee and then two, Brunello slacks to polished wood floors. “Okay. I only bowed once in my life, to ask you to be my wife. I’d die on my feet before I bow to anyone. But Tahli Celine, you are the only person in this fucked-up world that can bring me to my knees. So, here I am. I’m here, baby.” Vin slapped the floor. “I’m on my fucking knees begging you. Please. Stay. Just stay, Tahli. Please. I’ll fix everything.”

“Sometimes the people we think we need so much…the ones that we think we can’t live without, they leave us. And guess what? We keep living anyway.”

“Drew is-” “Oh, I know who Drew is,” her sister’s brows jumped. “College boy layover in between connecting parachute flights with Vin,” Leah made a funny that earned her an eye roll. “Didn’t Vin literally throw him through a television? Brave soul.”

“Jalen Hurts,” she corrected. “Mine is Jalen Hurts.” “Mm,” Leah nodded. “You definitely have a type.” “What are you talking about?” Tahli laughed. “Have you seen your ex-husband?” Leah cracked. “They could be cousins with Vin’s big, football player ass.”

Dalvin Hayes. The supplier of her greatest love and greatest heartache. He made her float from earth to heaven. He knocked her back down to the pits of hell beneath it, too. There was no love like Dalvin Hayes. There was no torture like Dalvin Hayes.

‘Grief is the price we pay for love’. Sometimes you have to let the pain run its course.” “People say that shit like I scraped my knee.

The real shit…is the lie. Finding out that unlike you, I don’t have sweet memories to live off. Because all of those memories are tainted.”

“Shit, Tahli. You so fucking wet, baby. I’m a take care of you. I got you, baby. You gonna finally be mine?” Every word came with frenzied power, until the grinding hum of a rising elevator sobered her a little.