Prey of Desire by J. C. Gatlin Page B

surprisingly good for me.”
    Natalie
made dinners and would set the table in the formal dining room. She used
Mother’s good china. She reorganized the kitchen and redecorated the family
room. All her mother’s knickknacks gradually disappeared, one by one. Mother
could never convince her Dad to join the health club, but somehow, Natalie did. And then grocery shopping together. Then
salsa dancing. A friend spotted them together late one night at the Danceteria and told Kim all about it. Every
little disgusting detail.
    And it
didn't end there.
    Kim came
home one afternoon to find their framed family portrait that hung proudly over
the fireplace mantle was replaced with a water color painting.
    “That
portrait is over ten years old,” Natalie shot back. “You all have Eighties hair.”
    Kim
didn’t care. The water color painting came down and the framed family portrait
went back up. But it was a futile attempt to hold onto the past, and Kim knew
that. And, she knew there was no stopping the inevitable.
    “We’re
getting married,” her father told her, in the formal dining room, over a dinner
served by Natalie on her mother’s good china. “Your mother would want me to be
happy.”
    Happy? Yes.
Replacing her with their trusted shrink? Moving into her home and
into her bed with her husband before her corpse was even cold and
buried? No.
    Kim was
inconsolable. Until that day, she had wondered how she would ever go away to
college and leave her home and her father. Now she counted down the days till
she would pack-up and leave.
    Once she
did, she didn’t look back.
    The day
after the wedding, Kim moved into the cozy townhome with her Grampa . He needed help with chores around the house, and
needed someone to take care of him ever since Nanna passed. He paid for her to take some classes at Stillwater University.
    Life was
good here. She made friends with a crazy redhead named Mallory, who lived in
the townhome next door. And Zeus loved to terrorize the little Pekingese that
lived in the townhome across the parking lot. She also enjoyed the University;
she could walk there from the townhome. In fact, she could walk almost anywhere
in town – to the grocery store, to the bookstore, to the downtown restaurants.
That was one of the things that she loved most about charming Stillwater. She
was happy here. And even though she missed her mother and thought about her
often, she felt like she was putting her life back together and moving on.
Still she was lonely, and she missed Ross.
    That’s why, one fall afternoon while she studied in the library,
Kim was so surprised to find another poem slipped inside her school books.
Again, it was beautifully written.

 
    “Oh, Love
rips the heart in pieces,
    When
distance fills the empty creases
    Of time
    And days become
long stretches
    Of pain
and wretches
    Of
torment
    When our love ceases.”

 
    Kim
promptly stood up in the quiet library with a noisy, boisterous rumble and ran
to the large windows. Gazing outside, she looked down on the campus to find
Ross standing there on the grass. He was waiting for her with flowers in hand.
    She
rushed out the library, bolting down the stone steps to the lower level and
rushed to the doors. Then collecting herself, she calmly stepped outside and
approached him. She suppressed a smile to coldly acknowledge him.
    “I made a
terrible mistake,” he pleaded. “Can you ever forgive me?”
    Of course , she said silently in her head. Out loud, she wanted to
make him suffer a little. “We shouldn’t even be talking,” she told him, hitting
him on the shoulder. “After what you did, I can never forgive you.”
    But she
did, and that led to passionate make-up sex in the dark, empty auditorium. The
four o’clock Dramatic Arts Class interrupted them, but they snuck out undetected.
      Ross moved to the small college town to be
with her. She introduced him to her grandfather and to Mallory. Zeus was happy
to see him again. He found a job downtown