Playing With Fire

Chapter 33 - Betrayal

Jesus Christ, it hurt to say those words out loud. It hurt to say them to Angel. He hadn't planned on telling her everything, but he had to make her see. She looked at him with those big, honey, adoring eyes when he deserved her Anger, her contempt, her disgust.
Shahru pushed to his feet, intent on putting as much distance between them as he could. If he got too close, smelled her sweet scent, touched her sweet body, he wouldn't be able to get through this. As much as he deserved for her to hate him when he told her he was even worse than her ex, he didn't want her to. He would take any excuse he could to grab her and kiss her rather than tell her what a bastard he really was.

"Wh-what happened?" She spoke so softly he could hardly hear her. Finally, it seemed, he'd started getting through to her.

Tell her, man. It will make things easier. She'll walk away, and you'll have no choice but to leave her alone. "Her name is Juhi. We met when she was nineteen and I was twenty-two. She was nothing but a kid. Came from a really messed-up family like my own. Her dad was abusive, drank, all the same shit as my own. We understood each other. I sold her on how different I was from our fathers, told her how different our life would be, how I would never put anyone, much less a bottle, in front of a woman I loved or my kids, and she believed me. I believed me." Damn, he hated this, feeling so weak in front of her. "We were both so damn gullible.

"Juhi thought I could do no wrong, Angel, and that felt damn good. My whole life no one ever believed in me except my mum, and here I had this beautiful woman who loved me and believed in me. We were married not long after we met, and for a while there we were happy. Everything in my life finally seemed right. My life was perfect. We had the life we always wanted and one my mum always wanted for me. We didn't have a lot, but we had each other, and that's all that mattered to us."

"Sounds nice."

"It was until my father and I decided to screw it up." Angel stood and started to walk toward him. Shahru held up his hand. "No. Let me do this." If he let her touch him he'd never finish the story. He'd never let her know he'd ripped out the heart of the one person in the world besides his mother who'd ever gave a crap about him.

She backed away, but didn't go back to sitting on the couch.

"When I was twenty-seven my dad was up for parole. Jesus, I hated that bastard. For months before his hearing, I was on edge, angry, but I held it together. No matter how much I hated the fact he'd be free again, I was an adult now. He couldn't affect me, and he couldn't hurt my mum anymore, either. Less than a week after he got out he waited in the parking lot for my mum after work. Somehow—I don't know how he did it—he got her in the car with him. He was drunk as all hell and ran their car straight into a tree going ninety miles an hour."

Angel's hand came up to her mouth. It shook. "Oh, Shahru, I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, me too. I snapped after that, Angel. I completely lost it. This woman would have done anything for me, and I let her down. I should have been there. For years she took the beatings so I didn't have to, and when she needed me I wasn't there for her!"

This time when she came to him, he let her. He couldn't stop himself. The pull to feel her touch overpowered him. She grabbed his hands and looked up at him, her sparkling eyes glassy with unshed tears. "It's not your fault. There's nothing you could have done, Shahru. If not that night it would have been another one if he was that determined."

Why did it feel so good to have her believe in him when he knew he didn't deserve it? Hell, she didn't even know the whole story yet, but he still wanted to believe she was right about him.

"Is that when you started drinking?"

"Don't ask me how I rationalized it. Why I would revert to the very thing I hated, to become the very person who took away someone so important to me, but I did. I drank every day. I'd see the pain in Juhi's eyes as she watched me turn into what she hated too, and I'd drink more to dull the pain. The more I drank, the more pain I'd feel, the more I had to drink to forget it. It's a cycle. I hated everyone. I hated myself for letting my mum down, for letting Juhi down, but still nothing could make me stop."

Shahru dropped her hands and walked to the window, so he could get through this last part. He hated thinking of the betrayal he'd see in her face when he admitted what he did next, but he had to tell her. "We got in a fight one night. Juhi finally got sick of the drinking. She told me if I didn't go to rehab she wanted to separate. I was so angry, not at her but at myself, but still I refused. I tried to leave. Damn, I was so drunk, and she tried to stop me."

"I wouldn't listen. I needed out. She did everything to keep me home that night, telling me she was sorry, even though she had nothing to be sorry about. The last thing she asked me was to make love to her. I couldn't take it, so I took off. It was the hardest damn thing I'd ever done. I remember hearing my own voice in my head telling me not to leave, but it was easier to walk away than to admit I was just like my father, just like I promised her I'd never be.

"Of course I ended up at the bar." Shit, this part was going to be so hard. The look in Juhi's eyes when she'd caught him had just about killed him, and now he'd have to see the look again on Angel's face. She'd see he really wasn't the man she thought him to be. "There was this woman there. She wouldn't leave me alone, hitting on me all night. We practically drank the bar dry that night.

"The whole damn time she kept telling me how much she wanted me, how stupid my wife was for letting me out of her sight that night, and how Juhi didn't understand what I was going through. Shit, I knew it was wrong. I knew Juhi loved me, that she knew me better than anyone had, but I was drowning. Drowning in my life, my past, in the alcohol that kept feeding my sorrow. Her threat of the separation kept repeating through my head. I just couldn't help but feel she'd thrown me out, that she thought I wasn't worth fighting for, and that killed me, Angel.

Shahru rubbed his face with his hand, still unable to believe not only what he did, but that now he told Angel about it. The only people who knew were the people at AA, and even they didn't know it all. Just him, Juhi, Vijay and now Angel. "We ended up out in my truck. She kissed me, and I didn't stop her. I could hardly feel I was so damn drunk. Before I knew it we were ripping each other's clothes off right there in my truck in the parking lot of the bar."

Kajol dropped to the chair and buried her face in her hands. Shahru kept going.