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Devil In The Waters 10-2
🕑 Added 2023-05-15 01:00:02 +0000 UTCKimmy stood at his hotel room door.
Four-thousand miles from home, across an ocean, a whole other continent. There could be only one reason she was here.
“Oh no,” he croaked, wincing, tortured, falling away from the open door and stumbling into his room, his insides, viscera, heart and soul, all choked by an ache wringing him dry of his already diminished spirit. “Why are you here?”
Behind him, Kimmy’s voice, just a gentle whisper calling his name. The whisper followed him, lashing at his back like the crack of a whip. He spun around, lurching forward, hands clenched in fists, growling at her through clenched teeth. “I said, why are you here?”
Kimmy stepped into the room, still eclipsing her body with the half-open door, shielding her from his anger, her narrow eyes now wide and trembling. “I had to come,” she whispered.
His shaking fists raised above his shoulders, he roared at the ceiling in agony, “Why are you here?” Then the fists hammered down on his thighs and he twisted away from her in torrential rage.
“I missed you,” she cried behind him, her voice rising from a whisper now to a warbled plea. “I missed you, Josh,” she said, her renewed statement breaking into breathy sobs.
He spun around again to face her, his back to the wall next to the sunny window. Kimmy couldn’t come near him. Too afraid. Standing now inside his room, the door closed, her back to it, hand on the lever, ready to bolt to safety if she had to.
And why?
They stared at each other from across the narrow room, both of them backed against walls. He grimaced and beat the back of his wrist against his forehead, voice thick with heart-wounding, lamenting, “Why— why did you have to come here?”
Kimmy covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes glistening wet, flooding, tears spilling her cheeks. She could barely form words, her voice a tightened squeak. “I missed— I missed you so m-much.”
“Aw, Kimmy,” he cried, and beat his thigh with another fist, then recoiled, pivoting to the side, staggering past the window, wishing his room had another exit so he could run far, far away from what his wife’s presence meant.
Kimmy called his name again, coming deeper into his room.
The panties that had betrayed her lay in a crumpled ball in the corner where he’d thrown them, and he lunged for them, snatching them up from the floor before Kimmy saw them, before the panties revealed to her his own shame. He faced her, the panties clutched to his stomach. Kimmy stood at the foot of his bed, only a half-dozen feet away. Her hands were open, reaching to him, wanting him to come to her because she was afraid of what he might do if she went nearer to him. Tears narrowed her black eyes, head cocked at a pleading angle as her pouting lips mouthed the word, “Please.”
He raised his fist toward her and opened it. Showed her what he hid. Her balled panties unfurled to drape over his held out palm.
When Kimmy saw them she buckled and howled in silent pain, folding in two with both hands between her knees. He stepped toward her again. “Why, Kimmy? Why did you come here?”
Still hunched over, she said, “I missed you, Josh. I missed you so much.”
Slowly, she stood upright before him, face to face and close, crying, wiping at her cheeks with hands half hidden in the sleeves of her cotton sweater.
The woman revealed to him when he’d opened his hotel door wasn’t the Kimmy Chang he’d left at home. Not six-feet tall in expensive heels, not with black-lined eyes and blood-painted lips. Not with the superior stare of a woman born with cold dragon’s blood.
This Kimmy looked like the woman he’d married. No heels, only canvas lace-ups. Cotton pants, cotton sweater. Her hair wasn’t slicked back in a high-gloss bun, revealing the sharp angles of her jaw, her long swan-like neck. Now her hair was clean but tousled, framing her angelic face in waves. She wore no makeup. She looked like she did when she was in high school. She looked how she did when he fell in love with her.
He shoved the panties into her face, making her recoil. But she stood her ground, leaning away, features pinched, eyes closed, snuffling for breath as he mushed them into her mouth and nose.
He insisted on knowing: “Why, why?”
Kimmy’s shoulders shook with her crying.
He let the panties go and they fell to her chest, stuck on her sweater’s fabric for a moment before tumbling to the hotel room floor.
“There’s only one reason,” he said, his brow heavy with the weight of extreme sorrow, his cheekbones aching with the desire to burst into tears at this revelation.
“No,” she whimpered, shaking her head.
“You should have stayed at home. You should have stayed at home, Kimmy.”
“I couldn’t,” she said, unable to make eye contact. Then, a tiny whisper: “Don’t leave me, Josh.”
“Kimmy, don’t! Don’t say that.” He turned away and put his arms on the wall, hanging his head.
“Josh, please...”
He wheeled to face her, furious she couldn’t see what her arrival meant. “Kimmy, stop. Please, why? Why, Kimmy?”
She didn’t know what to say, looking up at the ceiling and still crying, her face beaming with hurt. “I don’t know...”
Arms hanging at his sides with the unbearable weight of his dread, he said, “You’re admitting it.”
Their eyes met and more tears streamed from Kimmy’s eyes. Her chin dimpled, her jaw trembled. She wanted to deny it but she couldn’t.
“You just killed me,” he said, his voice quiet.
“No, Josh, no,” she said, her voice rising, taking the place left behind by his diminished volume. She rushed to him, casting her fear aside, grabbing the lapels of his suit jacket. “That’s not it. That’s not it at all.”
He turned his face away, resting the back of his head on the wall.
If she’d stayed at home he could lie to himself more. He could fucking lie to himself more and more and more until he was bubble-wrapped in a fat padding of lies. The doubt, the vacillation, the uncertainty—they all clouded his vision, kept him from seeing. But Kimmy in his hotel room all the way in Rome was 20/20, 8K Cinemascope, crystal clear, high illumination.
He armed her away, broke her grip from his jacket and stepped away, showed her his back, turning to look out the window. Down on that cobblestone street below, people with better lives came and went with coffee, wine, pastries, and smiles on their faces.
In his periphery he could see Kimmy’s head bow, her neck emitting a teeny click. The tension deflated from the moment and she turned away, too.
When her footsteps receded he said, “Don’t go.” The footsteps stopped. She should go. She should get out of his life.
“I hate being without you,” she said toward the door.
He turned from the window to regard her standing near the door, shoulders slumped, head down.
For a brief second he wanted to hug her, but then pure heartache gripped him again, and his features pinched into a harrowed mask. “You should have stayed at home.”
She nodded, her shaggy black hair shaking.
He could never, ever trust her. She was here because she was guilty and if for a second he wanted to feel sympathy or some angle on happiness, all he had to do was consider his cousin Meyer was probably the world’s worst private detective and Kimmy had spotted him. Now she was here to convince stupid Josh she was a good and loving human being.
Only: what would Kimmy gain by coming here for that reason?
“I’ll go,” she said.
“Because you’re guilty?”
She stayed where she was, still facing the door.
“If you hid those fucking panties for me to find, then why are you here?”
“I told you I missed you.”
“I left on Sunday and it’s Wednesday.”
“We hardly talked last week. You didn’t want to stay in the same room with me. If I’d come in, you would go out. You stayed late at work every night. . . . You only called me on Monday to say you were here.”
She’d sown distrust, she’d sown his field with the bitter seeds of betrayal. But he wouldn’t say it. He would never say it out loud. If the words were spoken, if the words mixed with oxygen, they’d ignite, they’d burst into a fireball of total devastation, of self-immolation and utter exothermic ruin.
“I would have called tonight,” he muttered.
Kimmy turned and faced him, her face a mess, streaked with tears, features wounded by hurt, her eyes filled with pain, but she raised her chin, and though her words were weak and shaky, she said, “I never sh-should’ve hidden my underwear for y-you to f-find.”
Then they stared at each other for the longest time, not saying anything, Kimmy like a soldier at attention on a sweltering day, held upright by marionette strings, ready to crumple at any second. Such a lie. Such an obvious lie. Lying would be the only thing that would keep him alive, keep him walking, keep him breathing.
He turned away from her and looked out the window again, this time across the Renaissance sea.
“Josh, please...”
He chewed on his lower lip, trying to push away all the thoughts that wanted to jump him in the dark and kick the living shit out of him. “Everything was easier when you were home.”
A moment of silence, then: “I can leave.”
He shook his head, mouth a slim and firm line, his brow troubled lowered.
Again: “Josh, please...”
He turned, knowing this would be the moment he crumbled and fell to his knees, melting into a sobbing puddle. But nothing happened. No emotions came. He regarded Kimmy, his beautiful, smart, funny wife, best friend and companion, almost the mother of his child. A woman he’d loved. And felt nothing. No rage, no hate... no love. “I’m empty, Kimmy.”
Now it was Kimmy crumbling, looking to the heavens above the room’s high ceiling, new tears spilling, hands going between her knees, head falling forward. She emitted a tortured wail but choked it off, reducing it to quiet sobs.
He closed the distance, stood an arm’s breadth away, watching her skinny back heave for breath, finally feeling something. But feeling it for a woman he used to know. He didn’t want that woman to cry. He put out his hand like he would rest it on her back to calm her, but closed the hand and returned it to his side.
He turned and dropped to sit on the foot of the bed, hunched over and watching her cry. Tears dropped from under her black hair, twinkled in the sunlight before they fell to the carpet and melted away.
At last he touched her arm. She swayed toward him, not knowing where he was, staggering and tumbling onto her side in his lap, where he folded his arms around her shoulders and held her while she hid her face away.
Comments
L_S87
The more I read this, the more profound I find it. KT is right. My disgruntlement over Kimmy's gaslighting of Josh with the whole dress up as old Kimmy and play for sympathy by admitting to nothing had me blinded to the real importance of what is happening here. Josh really only has two choices. Lack of acceptance for what Kimmy has done and the woman she has evolved into which means leaving. Or... Acceptance that the woman he married had depths he never knew about, awful as they may be, and embrace what she has become. Because this new Kimmy certainly ties in well with Josh's own sexual evolution. She just went about exploring it in the worst and most evil way possible, which is why his heart feels so shredded right now. I do feel that the 2nd option only works as a possibility if Kimmy tells him EVERYTHING. She can't hide what she's done because it means hiding part of who she has become. Everytime a new truth would come out it would be another bullet to Josh's heart, creating this same scene over and over again until each new revelation collapses their marriage from the weight of her continued betrayal. He can't move on unless he knows the full extent of her debauchery. Once he knows it he can accept it, maybe even embrace it. Part of me hates that idea because I want justice. Kimmy deserves punishment. But if that punishment means Josh is destroyed, what does it really accomplish...
KT Morrison
I'm so glad it's back, too! Pregnancy: we'll have to see.
KT Morrison
This is lovely speculation—fantastic!
KT Morrison
And: thank you, too!
HTO
KT, thanks for bringing this back. DITW was a welcome distraction for me during Covid. BTW. What happened with Kimmy's pregnancy scare?
HTO
I have preferred to see Kimmy as a naive young woman just learning to use her sexuality for power and pleasure. As she has moved her marriage into an evolving D/s relationship she has taken advantage of Josh's trust. It is hard for me to believe they can't confront Kimmy's relationship with Devlin at this point.
CSH
Well I for one was surprised by that one. I also expected that scene at the beginning of the book. Nice surprise. Interesting how you are developing this. I get the sense that Josh’s love for old Kimmy is dying off as his sexual obsession grows with the new Kimmy. Or is that just me? Does this scene portend an emotional transformation in the marriage? End of the old marriage and entry into the new one, perhaps. Got to say though that the level of remorseless gaslighting required to keep claiming she set Josh up is mind blowing. Go evil Kimmy, go!
Tracey52
I must say, I thought it was Kimmy at the door in the last chapter, but was thrown by the “haven’t seen her in along time” line. Well done kt. I don’t think Kimmy is here to confess. She may have purposely hidden the panties, but we know what she was doing before. This will be more manipulation of Josh. Keep the chapters coming kt. Enthralling.
Wess
Wow KT. I could visualize that scene in painful detail. Beautiful descriptions of two people experiencing some brutal truths. No ideal where this is going but I hope Josh makes a clean break. Thank you for delving deeply on this one!
Mike Monroe
Well now the games really begin...Devlin and Kimmy have discussed a calculated way forward.. This is just the start of the manipulation they are going to do. Kimmy showing up to be Josh"s perfect Kimmy when she was truly his. What game players they are. Josh I hope hold his ground...but I think all the actions that the 2 lovers discussed are in play. I would hope Kimmy would come clean but she is only going to humiliate Josh further but if she can get him to sign on somehow she'll get her cake and eat it too!!!
L_S87
LOL! You got me, KT! So much for the Amy speculation. Never imagined Kimmy would go see him. We'll see where this goes. It's hard to trust anything that's done here because Kimmy has shown herself to be such a phenomenal actress while being a deceitful bitch underneath the facade. Are the tears real? Or are they a play for sympathy? Maybe a bit of both? It also feels like, as empty and unforgiving as Josh portrays himself, he's going to capitulate at some point. Kimmy just keeps wearing him down with the tears and pity play. Which burns me up, if only because, even in this moment, she can't tell the truth. Lies about the panties that Josh sees through, and a multitude of lies of omission about all the other horrible stuff she's done but won't admit to. What does she think is going to happen when he finds out about all the other stuff? Just ignore it? Even if he gives in here, I can't imagine he won't feel brutally betrayed all over again when he finds out how early she started cheating. I wish she would just come clean so the slate is clear. If Josh chooses to stay even with all that, at least his eyes are open about who he married and what she's capable of. Thinking that Kimmy could get away with this leaves me.... distressed isn't the right word. Unhappy? Frustrated? We'll see where this goes. Life isn't always fair. Bad people don't always get their comeuppance, though Kimmy surely deserves it.
