Filed to story: The Lingering Kiss of Farewell Novel
He was sitting tapping his fingers on his desk, and he knew deep down he wasn’t wrong, Marilyn was going to in fact be his Marrin. He chewed on his lower lip as he sat and thought about that very thing. That he’d not been wrong about it at all. He could feel it, the tightening of his chest as he actually came to the realisation of everything he’d done to Marilyn, who was in fact Marrin.
He’d hurt her, stalked her, assaulted her and forcibly made her expose herself to him, and then she’d fallen down those stairs and gotten a head injury as well as broken bones. He’d done all of that to her. He’d harmed her, and not just physically, but he’d scared her that first time they’d been face to face, been menacing towards her on purpose. He had intended to scare her to get her to out herself, thinking she was playing some selfishly cruel game with him. Only she couldn’t give him what he wanted, because she didn’t recall him at all.
He closed his eyes as he realised just how badly he’d screwed things up. He had no one to blame but himself. Wil had tried to contain him, pulling him into line, but Calvin couldn’t be contained. He’d been in the throes of his obsession and now that was all Marilyn could see where he was concerned. That he was a monster and not the man she’d once loved. He scrubbed a hand over his face and pushed it up through his hair, he didn’t know what to do about that knowledge right his, minute.
But already he could feel the guilt of it all. How was he going to get her to come to him, to even explain his own actions when he couldn’t even understand them himself? There was no way right this very minute that he saw Marilyn even considering wanting to speak with him, let alone allow him to be near her, or their children.
Everything he’d ever wanted was right there in Bedford, Virginia and he couldn’t even do anything about it, without being arrested. He didn’t even know how he could convince her that she was Marrin after all of this. She was never going to believe him, not after all he’d done, and she certainly wasn’t going to smile at him the way she used to. Or let him be a part of her life. His own actions towards her only brought about fear from her.
The w woman he loved was afraid of him, and he’d done that all on his own. That first encounter he’d aimed to put fear into her, and he’d more than succeeded. The question now was how did he go about fixing it? To right the wrongs he’d done to her, and have her see him in a different light.
Calvin sat there and thought about that, how to go about getting what he wanted, and realised that first and foremost he needed to get solid proof that she was Marrin, that the twins were his. Something that he could put in front of Wil to shut him up when he realised Calvin was still stalking the woman from a distance.
He knew Wil was going to be pissed off about it, but solld proof, if he could get that, he could make Wil help him where Marilyn was concerned. He picked up his phone and called his guy, Phillipe. He was a private Investigator that he sometimes used to help him out, when he couldn’t find something suspicious with a company or someone he was dealing with.
He would get him to go and take photos of the twin boys to see just what they actually looked like. He needed to get confirmation of what he now suspected; that they were his and Marrin’s or Marilyn’s. But seeing as he wasn’t allowed anywhere near her, and he didn’t want to upset her or scare her, by just turning up at her door and claiming her or the boys as his, something she was not likely to appreciate at all, he had to use someone else. Someone he could trust to do the job as asked,
He was now fighting a part of his brain that was screaming at him to go to her home in Bedford and not only confront her, but tell her she was Marrin and bring her and the boys here to Cliffside Manor, so they could all be under the one roof. That obsessive side of him was still there, he could feel it, and he was going to have to fight it off, because he couldn’t do it.
Not only would it just put more fear into her where he was concerned, it would likely see the twins be scared of him as well. Calvin also knew he would be arrested for the k********g of not just her but the twins, and there would be charges laid against him once more, ones that would likely see him go right to jail, regardless of who he was.
And all because Marilyn had no idea who she actually was; that being Marrin. All Marilyn would see, know and feel was the terror of her stalker having found her and come for her once more. The twins would also only see that as well. If he just went and took them and there was no proof of who he was to them, Marilyn and the boys would likely never understand him, and always hate him, he couldn’t have that, didn’t want that.
/10) >
Marilyn
The third file she opened showed her Calvin in another airport. He was wearing a full three??lece sult, and there was a very large bouquet of brightly coloured flowers handed to him by a man waiting for him. She saw him walk through that airport, a smile on his face.
He stopped and waited by a gate. She could only imagine it was the one that the flight he was waiting on was going to taxi to, for disembarking. Marilyn watched him pull a small box from his inner jacket pocket and open it, look at the contents and then close it once more. She saw him standing there waiting for a plane to land.
It was all true, she realised, that Calvin had been going to propose to Marrin when she got off that plane. It was all there for her to see, the tale William had told her of Calvin’s plans for a grand gesture of his declaration of love, was all laid out before her to see, undeniable proof of his intention that day.
Then she got to see, to her own horror, as the plane Calvin was waiting on, the one he had put Marrin on, crashed landed. The footage of it was from a camera on the outside of the terminal, and she saw it all. Then the footage switched to inside the airport, before the crash even happened, and she was watching Calvin’s reaction to what he himself was seeing on that day.
He’d picked up the sound of it before turning to see the crash. She saw the way he looked at the plane, the way those flowers and the small box fell from his hands, as he registered what he was seeing, the very plane
Marrin was on crash landing.
He’d just let go of everything in his need to track that plane down the runway. She saw him as he ran through the airport, his eyes never leaving the windows, the sight of that plane, in his disbelief of what he was seeing. The way, he came to a standstill, both his hands on the glass of the window before him as he watched that plane burst into flames.
His shake of the head, the way he kind of just fell down to his knees as he watched on. She could only imagine in his grief, a hand still pressed to the window before him, as the other kind of just went limp and dangled at his side, as he watched the tragedy of everything unfold before his very eyes. He didn’t really move for many minutes and then something out there caught his attention, and he was just up and gone, racing off down the airport once more.
It was hard for her to watch that, and tears welled up at seeing him in such a state, trying to comprehend how he must have felt at that moment. She didn’t think she could understand how he felt, but she knew it was terrible, just from watching him.
The fourth file, something she hesitated to open, due to the last one… did she want to know anymore of what he went through? She had to take breath and blot the tears away from watching the last file before clicking into it.
It was filled with many things, mostly footage of Calvin all over the airport in Italy, trying to get answers as he looked for Marrin in those first few hours, as survivors were taken off the plane and the few days that followed, then there was some footage of him at the hospitals over there, she could only imagine where the survivors had been sent to, as he searched for her.
There were newspaper articles about all that happened, including ones about Calvin searching for his wife,
Matrin, who was supposed to be on the plane. Then flight plans logged of his own private jet, as he tracked and traced Mamin backwards to America and that fight she never got on. She knew he was trying to find out where she had gotten off the plane. When he realised, she wasn’t on the one that had crash landed
Marilyn bit her lip as she watched him. She could actually see his distress and the way he became more and more dishevelled over the days and then weeks of trying to find Marrin. He’d been clean shaven and all dressed up that day, and when he’d returned to America, he’d been in jeans and tee shirt with a beard. growing, looking a right mess compared to how even she herself had seen him weeks ago in Houston.
Marilyn closed out of the file, knowing she would never ever watch it again. His pain had been real, and she knew she’d just watch him lose the woman he loved. She’d just seen many things that made up the timeline of her disappearance.
William had presented to her all the facts as he’d known it, and he’d told her the reason why Calvin had divorced her, it was just to get out of that contract marriage so he could propose properly and tell her he loved her. Everything she’d just watched aligned to everything she’d read and been told by William
There was a recording of what Calvin had heard when she called him. In the next file, the answering machine in Calvin’s apartment, it was labelled. Marilyn recognised her own voice stating his name, and then she heard the sound of what she knew to be her own car accident.
Of her screaming as the car hit other cars and then ran off the road and rolled down the embankment. All things she knew from watching the dash cam footage herself of that very accident. Her scream was cut off, and she thought that was due to her phone being destroyed. It had never been recovered.
Marilyn couldn’t even begin to imagine how Calvin must have felt during that time in his life, and then to find out that she wasn’t even on the plane, all his grief and trauma of what he’d seen, and felt that day, the days that followed, about putting her on that plane, she couldn’t even begin to comprehend it all.
Only for him to come home and hear that message of her screaming and being in an accident, knowing she wasn’t on the plane, but it sounded like she was. She knew it was that one recording in his apartment that made him hate her. He thought she’d done it on purpose to make him feel guilty and that he’d killed her. Likely where his obsession had started, she thought sadly.
Marilyn sat there and wondered if she knew she was pregnant when they were getting a divorce. She didn’t recall anything from that time. She had no idea if she’d been keeping a secret from him or not. But right this very minute she hoped not, that man, it appeared had been through hell already. She didn’t want to cause him any more pain than what he’d already suffered.
From what she had seen, her own younger self’s reaction to him, before all of the fall??ut, out the front of the airport here in Houston, her tears and anger, the way she had kissed him back, a part of Marilyn, even though she didn’t recall it, already believed that woman she used to be, Marrin. Had been in love with Calvin.
Marilyn sat and thought about it that moment, the clauses she now knew Marrin or her younger self, had put into that divorce; it was because it was something she wanted to know. How it would feel to kiss him, seeing as their marriage contract stated there would be no kissing.
She could also imagine just how emotional one would be, when finally kissing the man you love, for the very first time, but also knowing that it would be the very last time, you ever got to do it as well. It would be a roller coaster of emotions.
Marrin had cried, dashed her own tears away, she had stood staring at Calvin prior to that kiss even. Marilyn
CH.63 rewatched that very moment and, yes, she realised it was very hard for Marrin, and she’d been upset before Calvin had grabbed a hold of her, spoken something to him and that moment, Marilyn rewound and watched several times.
The very moment between the two of them, she saw what looked like anger and then her younger self half laughed. Before speaking to him, she saw herself blink rapidly and realised even at that moment Marrin had been trying not to cry. Marilyn moved it back to watch the words and try to catch them herself, what she was saying to Calvin.
“Is it really so hard Cal, it’s just one kiss. Popped right into her mind in her own voice, and she heard the anger, and the pain of heartbreak in her own tone. Tears were suddenly falling from Marilyn’s eyes as she sat on her own bed as a glimmer of her past, a memory roared into life, and she could see Calvin before her, as if she was standing right there herself before him..
