Seeing Red - Chapter 25: Chapter 25

"Remember that time," Liza snorted, spilling some of the wine on the bed , "when we snuck out to go to that panic at the disco concert?"
I wheezed. I had already finished my glass and reached for her, only to be swatted away. "Yeah and Dad caught us sneaking back in and threatened to tell Mom and take away our car privileges, but then we turned around and told him if he did it we'd tell her that he and the maid were having a secret affair?"
Liza slapped her knee. "The proud look in his eyes, as we blackmailed our first family member?" She sighed, wistfully. "Life was simpler back then."
"Yeah, children don't know how they really do have it," I said. "They can be as idiotic, irresponsibly racists and as sexist as they want and then when they get older, just say that they were young and stupid. High school means literally zero, I mean it's useless, and every tv show you watch is awesome, despite how shitty you will come to realize it is when you get older."
Liza shrugged. "Being an adult sucks donkey tits, and I wish someone pushed me in front of a moving train the day before my eighteenth birthday."
I stared. She blinked. "Too soon?"
"Here I thought at least one of us in this family would have some respect for the dead," I muttered.
"It would make sense that it would be me," Liza said with a light shrug. "I am not actually a Red, after all."
"You sure got the last name," I muttered. "And the steely resolve, and the business savvy, the looks, the brains. You're more of a Red that I might ever be." I lowered my head a bit. "It makes me wonder why Dad gave me his shares and not you."
Liza waited for a moment. "Well, not only do we live in a male-dominated society, not only are you his white male heir and not-"
"In any of this supposed to be making me feel better?" I cut in.
"Not really," she admitted, playing with the ends of her hair. "Dad loved you. Way more than he loved me."
"Oh stop," I grumbled. "That's not true."
Liza shook her head. She raised the wine to her lips, but didn't drinking it. The glass went back to her lap. "'Lilibeth is my Pride, but Margaret' is my Joy, King George said of Queen Elizabeth The Second and her younger sister Margaret." She shifted closer on the bed, and rested the glass on the nightstand, next to the dimly lit lamp. "Our parents are proud of me, but they loved you, Reece. Mother loved you so much, she cried when you left you left for college even though she wouldn't do it in front of you. Dad refused to disinherit you from becoming principal owner of RED because his personal feelings for you – his love – wouldn't allow him. He always said that you were his heart strings."
"That doesn't mean they don't love you," I said. "Or at least did." Our mother was incapable of love at this point.
"Maybe," Liza said with a frown. "Sometimes I wish I was as free to do what I want as you are."
"I'm not free," I answered. "None of us really are while we're shackled to this company."
"We-" Liza began, but a knock at the door cut her off. She sighed, and picked up her wine glass again and rank the rest of it. "Come in."
Ellis, my maid poked her head in. "Sir, an Ashley is here to see you?"
My eyes bulged. Liza's eyes bulged. Ellis's eyes remained the same. "She said it's important and could not possibly wait."
"She?" both Liza and I said together, my voice higher than hers.
The door opened wider, and Ashley – the female Ashley, blonde  haired, blue eyed Ashley, who worked at RED and was set to replace Lola as my assistant.
She stepped in around Ellis. "To be fair, I had the name first," she said. She looked at the both of us, huddled on my bare mattress, in our pajamas, with three empty wine bottles on the ground and John Mayer playing softly in the background. "I'm going to assume you already heard the news?" she asked. I flinched at the solemn tone in her voice. "I was told no one notified you."
"Tell me what?" I asked, sitting up in the bed.
Ashley looked like she didn't know if she should tell me. "It's Ashley – your fiancé Ashley that is." She waited. For dramatic pause, because she was fucking scared, I didn't know why and I didn't care. Spit it the fuck out. "He's been shot."
"Mr. Red!" shouted the reporters when we ran outside. I had on two different color shoes, I don't know if this pants could be called a pants and not boxers and I picked up my Dad's old prescription glasses instead of my shades in our rush. "How is your husband!?"
"Don't talk to them," Liza grumbled as she took out her keys and stalked towards her car. But we had been blocked in by a limo. One I didn't recognize.
Not until Mother stepped out, wearing a pair of black gloves, big black shades and what looked like lion's fur.
"Move your ugly ass limo," I growled at her when she got close enough.
"Mom, you have to move," Liza, who had jogged to the other side of the car where we were, said. "We need to get to the hospital now."
"I know," Mother answered, taking off her gloves and throwing them to the side and into the grass. "Liza, be a doll and get your mother's gloves?"
I don't know if she did or not. I was too busy staring mother in her eyes. Those eyes were smiling, laughing, cackling at this. "What do you want?"
Mother hummed a sung under her breath. "I'm just here to offer you my heart-filled condolences in the event your engagement falls apart because your fiancé dies."
"Ashley could be dead and you come here to gloat?" I barked at her. "What kind of monster are you?"
"The kind that comes to gloat when someone could potentially be dead," she replied. She smelled the air, like she was The fucking Rock. "Do you smell that Reece?" she asked. "It's the day everything dies. Your love story, your company, your relationship with your parents, your da-"
Mom stopped. She stopped because Liza had come up beside me.
And slapped her. In front of the cameras. "Move your limo, bitch," my little ass asian adopted sister – scratch that ­– blood sister, spat at mother.
Holding her cheek, Ella Red stared at her daughter – at her Pride – with her lips slightly parted. "How dare you strike me, Liza?"
"Move it, or you'll see how daring I can be, mother," Liza roared at her. "And pick up your own damn gloves."
"My husband," I said but I was so frantic that it must've only made sense to my ears.
The nurse squeezed her eyed shut, cocked her head, and grumbled something underneath her tongue. My breath was hitting her auburn hair hard enough for it to blow slightly. "Can you speak a little slower, sweaty?" she asked, age or annoyance making cracking sounds off her voice.
"Look you old crone, I don't have the fucking time to play this game – my fucking husband to be was shot and if you don't find him for me in the next six seconds in that rundown computer system of yours, you might as well enter your name into that computer check yourself into room 301-B because I am going to ruin you in ways so creative that the President of The United States will have not other option than to reward me the purple heart."
She stared for a moment, mouth slightly parted, eyes bulging open, frozen in time.
I cleared my throat. "Please."
She nodded slowly. Then quickly. "Name?"
"Ashley King."
"He's in room 9."
"Thank you, but also fuck you," I spat at her, and took off running down the hall. Nearly crashing into two men on IV drips; four old ladies – one with a cane, one in a wheelchair; a sick girl with cancer (I accidentally dropped her candy onto the floor) and sprinted down the halls until I came to the door that held the number written in blood: 9."
I broke into the room. The door bounced and hit the wall, forcing everyone to stare over to me.
Kenzie looked up first, and I half expected him to rush at me, but he did nothing. He, that Nikko guy, Lola and Pete all just stared. They all looked like they had been through a warzone. Cuts and bruises, the black of their suits and dresses stained with red, and brown, and white,
"What the fuck wasn't I told that my freaking fiancé was in a hospital bed!" I shouted at them. I couldn't see Ashley. Kenzie was blocking him at the foot of the bed. But in my rage fit, I could at least hear the heart monitor beeping. "Why do I have to be informed by someone on my team that he was fucking shot?!" I shouted. I heard my voice hit the wall and bounce right back at me.
"Reece," Liza said from behind me, but I heard nothing she said after that.
"Can someone please tell me why?" I pleaded. "Is it because I'm white? Is it because you all still think I'm some privileged no good male? That I don't have the capacity to care about Ashley? That I don't like him? That I'm not almost in love with him? Is it not in enough for you guys that I made my peace with Dennis?" Kenzie flinched. "Is it not enough that I am here, right now, standing in this room, wanting to know what is going on with him? Am I not entitled to-"
"Reece."
I stopped breathing for a moment. "A-," I started, but stopped. "Ashley?"
Kenzie finally moved.
Ashley was sitting up in the bed, shirtless, a bandage wrapped around his shoulder. His hair was still a curly volcano made of curls; his eyes were still bright brown, even if everything else on him was the exact opposite of bright right now.
"Can we have the room?" he asked.
Without any words, they all filtered out of the room, with Kenneth King being the final one to leave, head hung down.
After the door closed, I stood there by it, with him staring over at me. If there was one thing he was unafraid of, it was awkward staring.
"Why are the beautiful always so much trouble?" I asked him, after a minute.
"Prince did warn you," he said, softly. I didn't know his voice had that volume adjustment.
"Is there any chance you heard my long, drawn out love confession just now?" I asked, kicking the tiles with my blue left sneaker and then again with my orange right one.
"My ears work fine," he said. "It's my eyes that don't."
I frowned so deep, my head felt as though it got heavier, and threatened to snap off of my neck and fall to the ground. "Did...the bullet hit a nerve?" I asked. "What's wrong with your eyes?" Was he blind now? Is that why he wasn't afraid to stare so long?
"No," he said. "The bullet was a through and through." He touched the bandaged lightly. "I'm okay."
I dared to step closer to him. When he didn't object, I dared myself to take another. Then another and another, until I was sitting on the edge of his bed, out of dares and close enough for his locks to tickle my nose. "Then what's wrong with your eyes?" I asked.
"I can only see in black and white," he said. "Every year since my second birthday, I have been losing the ability to see colors. The only color I have left is red."
"Huh?" I didn't know what to say. What could I say?
"I didn't tell you because I didn't think it would be necessary to," he tried to explain. Tried.
But it didn't make sense to me. I thought we...were connecting. I thought that he trusted me, even a little bit. At least enough o tell me he only saw in black and white.
"Getting that job at RED was no accident," he said.
I closed my eyes. Anna was right. Anna was right. Anna was right. Anna was right.
"So, you never liked me?" I dared to ask him.
His eyes, for the first time, slipped away from me. That was answer enough.
"At first," he began, blowing his hair slightly out of his face, "I hated you. I don't think I hid that fact."
"That's why you went along with the marriage plan?" I asked him. "To get on the inside?"
"Yes."
"So you were using me?"
"Yes."
"Fucked with my feelings?"
"..."
"Did you ever start to feel anything for me, like at all?"
"..."
"Are you going to answer any of these questions?"
"..."
"You know what, fuck this," I mumbled, and went to get up.
But the sound of his voice –his voice – it froze me next to him. Like a magnet, I had no choice, not really. "Don't you want to know why?"
I couldn't even feel anger anymore. Just sadness. "Does it even matter?"
"Yes," he replied. "Your parents helped the officer that shot and had my father arrested."
"What?"
"Mrs. Red, specifically, bribed a judge. She got him to declare a mistrial."
"How do you know this?" I asked him, voice softer than his now.
"There are files in the room that your Dad stays inside," he said. "Your mother keeps them stored there. I guess in the event she ever went to jail, she'd use it to take everyone who was involved down with her."
My head slipped to my lap, and to my hands, palms up.
"What's that on your arm?" he asked. "A burn?"
"No," I mumbled. I bit my lip. It was too late to turn it over.
He touched my arm, and wrapped his hands lightly around my wrist. I allowed him to tug it gently to him and presumably read it. I wouldn't have known, since I kept my eyes in my lap.
"..............Who?" he sneered.
I didn't answer. A hand rested under my chin and forced me to look up at him. There was a lightning storm happening in his eyes.
"Who the fuck marked my fiancé?" he growled.
"Preston," I said. "Fiancé?"
"Why isn't he in a fucking body bag?" he barked at me. He tried to over in his bed, but he ended up wincing and clutching his shoulder. "I'll kill him."
"Why did you call me your-"
"Because that's what you are," he said, before I had a chance to finish. And then it came. It came loud and clear. "I like you, Reece, goddamn it."
I blinked and stared, and blinked again, then resumed the staring. "You do?"
He rolled his eyes. "I think it's obvious."
"Not really?"
"Well, if it's not exactly obvious based on the current circumstances, I have learned to turn off the switch in my head that produces melodrama, or attachments," he admitted. "It's easier for when a friend gets shot, or when you get shot, or when he cheats on you or when she betrays you."
I nodded. "Declan and Erika are working together," I told him.
"No shit," he grumbled. His eyes softened again, and he took a few seconds before he spoke. "Erika killed Anna."
I swallowed. "Declan...was the reason Dennis was killed."
Ashley let my arm slip from his grip. He closed his eyes and took a breath deep enough to deprive the room of all its oxygen and then kill us with carbon dioxide when he exhaled. "Erika," he spat, laughing through it.
"Is she the reason you got shot?" I asked him. "What did she do this time?"
He shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "I saved her from getting shot."
I guffawed. "The fuck? Why?"
"Maybe I am brainwashed. Maybe I love her. Maybe I don't want her to die. Or maybe I'm too good for my own good," he said. And for the first time, I heard Ashley King sniff. And I saw the lightning storm in his eyes subside and watched as it started to rain inside of them. "I wanted her to die, but I can't." A tear slipped from his right eye and streaked down his cheek and didn't bother to wipe it. "I just want everything to go back the way it was, when she loved me and I loved her, and we were a big family."
"Even if that family was a lie?" I asked him. I wiped the tear from his cheek with my thumb.
"I'm not strong enough for any of this," he hiccupped and the tears started rolling faster than my thumbs could wipe away.
"No one thinks they are strong enough," I whispered to him. "Nelson Mandela spent decades in prison. How many times do you think it ran across his mind that he wasn't strong enough? The same thoughts ran across the minds of Martin, of Malcolm, of Harriet, of Rosa, of Maya and of Oprah. The truth is no one thinks they are strong enough to get through something, until they get through it." I kissed the tears on his cheeks away. "And if you ever need someone to be strong enough for you, I will be that person. This isn't about a white man asserting he's stronger than a black man. This is about someone who cares about you, your well-being and your happiness, telling you that I'm here for you."
He bumped our heads together. "I'm sorry," he said, soft as the wind on a quiet summer's night.
"Don't be," I said and rubbed our head together, rough enough for the heat to warm my forehead, soft enough to not start any fires.
Our foreheads melded together, and then our noses touched, then our hands found each other's cheeks. Then ours lips greeted one another like they were old friends.
His lips were soft, warm, trembling slightly, sweet, scared of mine, unsure of mine, but not so much that they ran from me. I felt the warmness escape his mouth and enter mine, I felt him, I felt him, I felt him.
He pulled at my shirt, and ripped it out of my pants, hands racing underneath them. I lifted them to the ceiling and he tried to lift it over my head, but he hissed against my lips, forgetting he was wearing a cast. So, I did it for him. I threw it to the side and got into the bed, on top of him, never letting us to stop the kissing. I straddled him, and his right hand explored what it could on its own. He let me slip in my tongue and I allowed him to do the same. My hands went to his hair, pulling at it. He growled and moaned, and asked me to do it again. We went on and on and on, and on, and on. Until we somehow lost all of our clothes and our mind; our bodies molded together – black on white, white in black.
"Don't hurt me, Reece Red," he whispered into my ears.
"I won't, Ashley King," I whispered back.
"Hello?" he answered.
"Hey," I said, biting my lip.
"What, Reece?"
"I'm done here," I said into the receiver. "I'm done with all of this Declan. I'm done being called racists for no damn reason; I'm done feeling ashamed for being white. I'm done trying to suck up to these people." I huffed. "I just want everything to go back to the way it was before I ever met Ashley fucking King."
Dec took a moment. "Then come home, Reece. Forgiveness is readily available to you, brah. We're your family and we love you, man."
"I wasn't ready to yet, but I think I am now," I said. "I'm coming home."
"Good," Declan said. "I'll let Preston know, man."
I hung up first. I looked over at Ashley, fast asleep in his bed. I pulled on my last shoe, and fastened my belt knuckle, before standing up, and heading over to the door. I opened it as softly as I could to not wake him, and have him ask any questions I couldn't answer right now. And then I stepped through silently, not looking back at his sleeping face, or the engagement ring I took off and rested on the stand.
The 20 page climax of Seeing Red debuts next week Friday, at 7am.