Learning To Fly

Jaime V's Marshall Part One.

Following two members of Marshall’s security, I move my feet slowly, shuffling along behind them. My early bravado wearing off with each step closer to his room I get.
They leave me outside of his door and I knock gently once they are out of sight, Marshall answers, quickly stepping aside and letting me in his suite. The room smells of him and it’s a potent reminder of how we were together. I’m not so sure this was such a good idea after all. Sarah is furious with me she thinks I’ll give into whatever he wants from me, she thinks I’ll roll over and cave in to his demands, I think she might have something there.

He gestures for me to take a seat and  I take a seat on the couch nearest to me and he sits opposite me. I look everywhere but at him, I can’t look at him.
My body is raging with desire for him and being this close to him is like a punch to the gut because I realize nothings changed. As disappointed and upset as I am with him. I still feel the overwhelming love and passion for him. I want him and I hate myself for it.

“What do you want from me Marshall?” My voice is weak but I need him to get to the point, I’m not sure how long I can sit here and endure this.

“Jaime, I need to explain why I did what I did and we need to talk about what happens now with the baby”

At the mention of Archer I begin boarding up the defense’s around my heart determined to keep him out and at arms length.
“Go on then, explain” I sound uptight because I need to get away from the close proximity of him.

“It was Kim!” he mutters quietly and catches my attention. What does he mean? Did he sleep with her?

“She guessed about us after we came to the school for Whitney’s report, she said if I didn’t end it with you she’d go to the press and school, tell them about us” I can’t help myself and I laugh loudly in his face, covering my mouth with my hand to try and mask my laughter. He looks hurt.
“It would have ruined you Jaime and I didn’t want that for you. You didn’t deserve to be dragged through the mud because my ex wife fucking hates me and can’t bear to see me happy, I said those things to you to make you believe I didn’t love you” his voice is pleading and I can’t help but keep on laughing, it’s bordering on hysterical now.
“It ruined my career anyway asshole, what the hell did I do to her to make her try and destroy me?” I manage to get out before trying to breathe slowly and stop this stupid laughter bubbling away inside me. The hysteria turns to anger quite quickly.

“I would have fought for us, given the chance Marshall I would have fought” I shout suddenly, making him jump and thumping my fist against my chest to try and get my point across, the long time shoved aside anger from that night settles in the pit of my stomach, its here to stay.
“I would have given up everything for us, I thought we both felt the same and that we were worth fighting for.” 
I stand now, bending over and yelling at him, two years of pent up anger and frustration pour out of my body, the more I let out the better I start to feel.

“You should have told me Marshall, I should have had a choice but you took that from me. Did you enjoy being a martyr? Do you expect me to just drop everything and forgive you now I know the reason behind it? If you do then you can forget it, it’s not happening ever!” he winces but I don’t think I’m running out of steam any time soon, he sits and takes it, takes everything silently that I throw in his face.

“You had a second chance to tell me when it finally came out, my life was ruined anyway despite you calling me a slut and telling me you lied to me. Why didn’t you tell me then?” I pause giving him the chance to explain his actions.

“The night I came over with the bracelet, Kim followed me, she leaked it to the press soon after that!” his reply explains nothing other than now I know who leaked my name and address to the paparazzi.
“I was going to tell you the night you called me to come over but then you dropped the baby bombshell. I couldn’t believe it. My head was fucked up Angel”

“You have shitty taste in women Marshall” I include my slutty self in that because that’s clearly what he thought of me. 

His head snaps up and he grabs my hand “No Angel, just her, not you. You are perfect for me, the love of my life Jaime” I start crying because nothing makes any sense and he called me Angel.

“I came here for you Angel, to see if you can forgive me for making the biggest mistake of my life” he starts sobbing and it’s all I can do to stop myself from moving over to him and comforting him, but my resolve hardens he didn’t comfort me when he ripped my heart into pieces and then later demanded that I get rid of our baby. I was left alone.

I close myself up and baton down the hatches, taking a deep breath before speaking “That’s not going to happen, I’ll never forgive you. If you want to talk about Archer that’s fine but there’s no way I’d ever trust you with my heart again” I sound hard, inside I’m dying, I want to hold him.
I want him to hold me tightly and to tell me this was all a shitty, horrible dream.

On the outside I’m uncrackable. He gets up and leaves the room crying only to return five minutes later seemingly having gotten a grip on himself.

“I’ve missed too much of his life already Jaime, I don’t want to miss out on any more” I look at him for awhile considering how it must have felt finding out I didn’t get rid of his baby and I feel sympathy towards him for this before reaching down in my bag and pulling out the photo album I’d been keeping since my very first scan.

“Here, I was doing this for him but maybe subconsciously for you too. It’s got everything in there from his first scan photo to a photo I took yesterday, I have videos of when he first did things like walking and his first words, I’ve captured everything that I could, I want this back but you can get a copy of anything you want” he takes the album from my hand and opens it at the start, his tears start to fall again.

I can’t bare it! His emotions are so raw and out there, he can’t hide them because it’s simply too much for him to mask.

“I know you’ll be wanting to spend some time with him from now on and I hope we can reach agreements without having to get anyone else involved” my voice is calm as I begin the discussion about our son.

“I agree” he whispers

“Be careful with my baby’s heart Marshall, I don’t want you hurting him” his head snaps up his red eyes looking into mine. My mask is firmly in place he can’t see through it.

“I’m sorry I made you like this, I miss your smile. You’re so closed off to me right now” he says sadly. I stand up, I need to get out of this room and I’m heading towards the door when I’m stopped by a warm hand wrapping around my wrist. He pulls my back to his front and kisses the back of my neck, goosebumps break out all over my body and a tremor runs through me head to toe. I can feel myself weakening as his arms wrap around me “Angel please” he pleads with me and I’m so tempted to turn around and kiss him but instead I shrug him off.
"Loving you unconditionally did this to me!" he visably finches at my petty statement, I'm in no mood to feel bad about it though but I knew in the early hours of the following morning I would regret it.

“You can see Archie here for now, weekends would be best. You’ll need to speak to Paul, I don’t want us plastered all over the gossip columns again, that scared me last time and I don’t want him frightened by anyone” I need him to understand how frightened I was by the fucking media circus that lasted for months around me.

“Jaime I don’t want it to be like this between us, if we’re together it’d be better for him surely”

I turn on him, angered by his statement “let me get this straight you only want me so it’ll make things easier for you, ease your conscience Marshall” anger is making me irrational.

“I called you, that day they were all waiting for me outside my place, I was frightened to death. You must have known but you did nothing to help me” I yell again, my voice getting hoarse from too much shouting.

He sighs his shoulders sagging in defeat “That’s not what I meant Jaime, I came here for you remember, I didn’t know about Archer. I came for you” he states firmly his intention for coming to Kauai and I know he’s telling the truth because he didn’t know, but I can’t leave it at that, I want him to suffer like I did. 

“And I did do something, I got Paul to sort it out for you” he rightly looks ashamed by his reply to me, it sounds lame because it is. He still isn’t fighting for us though. I just need something from him but it’s like drawing blood from a stone.

“No you came to clear your conscience and now typically of you, you see something else that you’ve tagged as yours and you’ll do anything to get him and I needed you, not Paul. You!” I shove him hard in the chest and he stumbles backwards on to the couch, he looks at the ground briefly before looking back up at me, he looks bewildered and I know that he assumed he’d apologize and everything would be good again he didn’t factor my having been changed so much by my experience with him.

The air in the room shifts and the room takes on a different atmosphere as we continue to stare at one another. I need to get out now. Desire and rage swirl about my body and I’m no longer clear if I want to shout at him or fuck him.
It’s a dangerous situation I now find myself in.

He stands and steps towards me again and I don’t move, but I should. My heart pounds in my chest, I’m getting weaker by the second in trying to keep all of these barriers up, he takes another step forward and I wonder how it would be to feel his body against my body again, another step and I think about how good he used to make me feel and the final step and I cave.

I’m ashamed of myself for caving in but maybe it’ll be closure for me, I don’t know anymore but what I do know is that the moment his lips touch mine, I’m lost again, I’ve gone back in time to two years ago. All of the suppressed emotions fly between us, his touches on the bare skin of my arms causes sparks to fly. This is happening to whether I want it or not, but I realize soon enough that I do want it badly.