Black Swan Affair

by K.L. Kreig

To everyone who has loved and lost then loved again. It’s there. You just need to be open to it.

Some things happen simply because they happen. And in the end knowing why doesn’t change a damn thing anyway. The damage is already done.

My gown sells false truths. Makeup covers the lies. Fake smiles and soft words divert and deceive. Three carats on my left hand blind all, except me. I know the truth.

I’m anything but innocent. My soul is lost. My heart cold. I’m a devil in angel’s skin, trapping a man for life who could have any woman he wants but for some reason wants me.

“Well…bleeding out on the inside tends to make me snarky and bitter.”

“Maybe it doesn’t need fixing at all, Mavricky,” she replies just as softly. “Maybe it just needs nurturing.”

“I may be completely out of line saying this, but anyone who marries that woman can’t be worthy of you.”

“When life hands you lemons, you don’t make lemonade. That’s for pantywaisters. No. You pucker up, suck them dry, then throw the used rinds back in life’s face with a giant fuck-you and a gesture for more.”

My eyes water. She tugs on me until my head falls to her shoulder. We used to sit like this on the playground sometimes when we were little. Backs up against the brick wall. All the other girls wanted to do was cause drama, but MaryLou and I…we couldn’t stomach it, even then. We plotted how we were going to conquer the world when we grew up. We would ban dresses and bubble gum and any shoes except tennies. We’d burn every pair of tights. We’d extend recess by two hours and cut out social studies because social studies was stupid. And we’d make outdoor survival a mandatory class. Everyone should know how to thread a fishhook and load the barrel of a gun.

But this kind of sadness is like a slow-growing cancer. Pretty soon it will consume you entirely and smother all the good out of you.

Kael deserves all of me—not half a woman.

“It’s the way I’ve imagined you looking at me my entire life, Maverick.”

“I know it’s soon, Swan. But at the same time, it isn’t. I’ve been by your side our entire lives. No one knows you better than me. You breathe, so do I. You hurt, I ache. When you smile…fuck, Mavs, it’s hard to see through the stars blinding me. Every time you laugh, I fall a little more in love with you, if that’s possible. I want to be with you until we’re gray and wrinkled and don’t give a shit if what we say offends people. No one will love you like I do, Swan. Your soul belongs to me. Everything you need is here, staring right at you. If you’re not ready, I understand. But know that I’ll be waiting. I’ll wait as long as it takes. As long as you need. But if you are…then put me out of my misery and be my wife. I promise you won’t regret a single second of our life together.”

With his lips melded to mine, there is little doubt in my mind what’s beating wildly in the center of my chest. In the depth of my belly. I am falling for my husband.

“I want to kiss these fucking lips, Maverick. And not a kiss of a boy who has been friends with a girl for almost thirty years. But as a lover. I want to bite and suck and own and devour. Whenever I want. However I want.”

“Are you kidding me, Maverick? You were self-destructing. Pining away for a man who threw you away like trash when Kael has always stood on the sidelines admiring you for the treasure you are.”

“I like to think we all end up in the place we’re supposed to be eventually,” Sheila answers wistfully. “The sum total of our choices carries us to our destiny.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Maverick! I know everything and I still don’t care. That’s how much I love you. That’s how wound around the very fucking center of my soul you are. It’s the same place you’ll be until I close my eyes and take my last breath. You are rooted in here”—he pounds his chest—“in the bowels of me so far I will never be rid of you. No matter how much I’ve tried. No matter how much I wanted to while I knew you were with him.”

“While he was the sun that lit your world, you were the darkness that shadowed mine.”

“Why anything? Why are you here with me? Why do you want me? Why did you marry me?” Please explain it to me, because I just don’t get it. I don’t deserve it. I never have. He simply shakes his head as if I’m the densest person on the planet. “Because I have enough love for the both of us. I always have.”

“I’ve been in love with you my whole life, Maverick. Even before I knew what love was. But that day…” He chokes up. The waterworks start fresh. “God, that day I watched you let the real Maverick DeSoto completely out and I thought…She is all I want. She has to be mine. I want her to be mine. That was the day I knew I’d never love another the way I already loved you.”

“We can’t help who we love, Maverick,” he tells me softly.

But while you’ve put all that focus on Kael, Killian’s still breathing in the background. And that breath is toxic, Mavs. It’s fucking poison. It will slowly strangle you and you won’t even know it because you can’t see it and you can’t smell it and you can’t taste it until it’s too late.”

“You choose me?” She smiles. It’s bright and stirs my cock something fierce. “When I thought about it, there was no choice, really.”

“I want a crazy man who melts me with songs of love and who will watch North by Northwest with me a hundred times even though I know he hates it.”

“I want to make pillow forts until we’re too old and decrepit to get ourselves off the floor. I want to find a new Tastie’s to walk to on Saturday mornings. I want to have sex in roadside bathrooms and talk about nothing and everything with the man I know I can’t live a day without because I’ve never been without him until just recently. And I was miserable, Kael.”

“I thought Killian’s love defined me, but your love changed me forever. I’m so sorry it took me so long to figure that out.”

My Maverick. My swan. My wife.