This Is Me (Cover Girlfriend, Book Three)

Episode Twenty-Seven

Carlos

I never expected to stumble on Terri singing to a song I’d all but forgotten (obsessed over when The Mask of Zorro came out) as soon as I stepped in the house; up the stairs to ask her if Linc said anything about coming home late today.

But the moment I did?

There’s no way I could deny myself the duet with her perfect, dulcet tones; never found a more exquisite partner for my own voice.

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME?!?

And now?

I know I wasn’t wrong to do so.  Her voice harmonizes with amazing precision to my own.

My joy is killed by her confession.

Truth?  Total honesty?  I want Linc to want to spend a lifetime loving me.  The same way he must have, at one point, sworn to adore her.  I hadn’t realized, until the moment she’d confessed, that Linc and I don’t have a song.

God, I wish I could hate her.

But I can’t.

So like fucking Ali.

Bullies everywhere; family.  Friends and loved ones.

And just like Linc?  I’m one of them.

She’s a woman trapped by a man she can’t get away from.  Because of me; my desire to cling to him, because of his relationship to her.

That vengeance that used to cling to my soul?  That hatred that dripped with every drop of blood.  Is gone. 

Wiped away by the reality of the woman in front of me; the struggles she endured.  The love she gave away, and allowed me to have.

Fuck I want to hate her; loathe myself, instead.

“I don’t hate you either, Mr. Rickerts.”

And though her tone is soft - compassionate - I can’t help but flinch at the deliberate use of my title.

Mr. Rickerts.

For the longest time I’d never felt I could live up to the name, so had discarded it whenever possible.  But the last couple of years have made me aware of so much more.

Like the fact I don’t want to be my father.  His coldness.  His out-dated social antiquation’s.  The way he manipulates and compels people to do his will.

Since falling in love with Linc, I can’t go back to being that little mini-me he’d done his best to make me become.

Feeling her palm on my cheek as she redirects my gaze to hers, I know she witnesses the absolute sorrow in my eyes.

“I used to be so jealous.  That Lincoln replaced me with you.  But.  You’re nothing like I expected, either.”

I try to turn from her piercing stare, but find my other cheek palmed by her opposite hand, “That first night I met you, I saw how much it hurt to have him away.  With everything I’d known, up to that point, I had no doubt Lincoln had fallen in love with a man that would never return his affections.  And I wanted him to see that.

“But now.”

She drops her hands; takes a step back.

Leaves me compelled to ask, “But now...?”

Terri sends me a smile wrapped in a face cloaked with sadness, “Now I know Aliya was right.  That you two belong together; that it’s so much more.  And I owe Lincoln.”  She takes a moment to think, then, “I owe him for everything I put him through.  The lies I told myself, that bled into him.  And despite that this situation is difficult for me, I’m going to see it through.”