Flaw Less (26 page)

“I wasn't trying to hurt her, honest, Angel. I've just been in such a dark place for so long. I thought that once E'Bell was gone, I'd have this wonderful life with my son and my new career.” She shook her head. “Nothing turned out the way I thought it would. I've been so lonely and confused that most of the time I don't know whether I'm coming or going. I was just tired of feeling rejected and alone, and the pastor's been so good to me . . .”

“I'm sure he has, but that's because he's a good man, not because he's in love with you. As much as she infuriates him—and us—Charles is crazy about his wife. Maybe that makes him just plain
crazy
, but he loves her.”

“I know that now. Heck, I knew it then. I just can't stand the way she treats him. He deserves better.”

“That's between him and Sully. We may never understand it, but I do believe that she loves him, Kina. I've watched her take care of him. She loves that baby too.”

“She's going to hurt him again, and we all know that. I just couldn't bear to see it happen again.”

“God would've revealed to Charles what He wanted him to know. He's never asked us to help Him do His job. It's when we decide to help Him out that we get into trouble.”

Kina began bawling. “Sullivan is never going to forgive me, is she?”

“Never say never,” cautioned Angel before being interrupted by a knock at the door. Lawson peeked inside with Sullivan in tow.

“Can we come in?” ventured Lawson. Angel nodded.

“Sullivan, I'm so sorry,” blabbed Kina. “I never should've tried to interfere in your marriage. I'm sorry I betrayed your trust and went after Charles. I wasn't a friend to you and wasn't much of a Christian either. I can't tell you how awful I feel about the whole thing. I love you, and I just want you to forgive me.”

Sullivan cleared her throat and crossed her arms in front of her. “You know I'm not used to being on this side of the fence. I'm usually the one who messed up and has to ask everyone else for forgiveness. I want you to know that I love you too, Kina, and I forgive you.”

“Thank you, Sully! You're a good friend.” In elation, Kina reached out to hug Sullivan.

Sullivan patted her on the back, stopping short of a full embrace, and gently pushed her away. “Like I said, I forgive you, but . . .”

Kina backed away a little. “But what?”

“Kina, I realize I have to take responsibility for most of this. I'm the one who cheated on Charles and set all of this in motion. If I lose him, it won't because of what you did. It'll be because of what I've done.” Sullivan dropped her head. “That said, I don't think we could ever go back to being friends again, not like we were.”

“Why not?” Kina asked, her voice breaking. “You said you forgave me.”

“I do.”

“I don't understand. Sullivan, you're one of my best friends. You know I'd never do anything to hurt you.”

“See? That's the thing. I
don't
know that, Kina. Look what you tried to do to Charles and me. You told him about Vaughn and the baby for no other reason than to hurt me.”

Kina shook her head. “It wasn't like that.”

“In all honesty, I don't really care what it was like. Yeah, I'm sure you rationalized it in your head, but the fact is that your sole purpose for going to see Charles that night was to take my husband from me, to destroy my marriage. When seduction didn't work, you upped the ante and told him the baby I was carrying wasn't his. You didn't care how much that would hurt him; you certainly didn't care if it hurt me. Your actions could've killed him! How can things ever be the same between us after that? How could I ever trust you again?”

“Charles forgave you and gave you another chance,” noted Kina, wiping a tear from her eye. Lawson draped her arm around her cousin's shoulder.

“Yes, he did, but I have an obligation not only to protect myself, but also to protect my husband and this baby. I can't risk having you so entrenched in our lives that you can hurt us again.”

Kina wiggled away from Lawson. “Sullivan, that's not fair! You're talking like I'm a threat to your family, and I'm not.”

“I don't intend to let you get close enough to us to be one. I want you to go to the church tomorrow and hand in your resignation. There's no way I can continue to allow you to work on Charles's behalf.”

“Why are you being so mean?” bellowed Kina. “After all we've been through, after all the years we've been friends!”

“I'm not trying to be mean, Kina. It just is what it is. I'm not putting all the blame on you for what happened to Charles. I know I've gotten very good at screwing up my life, I'll be the first to admit that. One thing I haven't done, though, is try to screw up anyone else's life, especially not my friends'. Kina, I trusted you. I bared my soul to you, my deepest, darkest secrets, and you used that to try to destroy me.”

“I was upset and confused,” defended Kina.

“I can't risk everything I love on the possibility of you getting ‘upset and confused' again. I'm sorry. I can't take that kind of chance. Now, I don't plan to make any formal announcements about the change in our friendship. When I see you, I'll still speak and be cordial. You and Kenny will always be in my prayers, and you don't have to worry about me trying to turn anyone here against you. They can still be cool with both of us. I just can't be cool with you anymore.”

“What about the baby? Are you going to ban me from her too?” questioned Kina.

Sullivan nodded. “I think the best thing for all of us is to have a little distance right now. I hope you understand.”

Kina appealed to Lawson. “Tell her we can work this out. That's what friends do.”

“Just let it go, honey,” whispered Lawson.

“I need to get out of here,” mumbled Sullivan. “Lawson, call me later. Kina,
don't!”
Sullivan left Angel and Lawson alone to comfort Kina.

“I've never seen her so angry with me,” Kina said quietly. “What if things can never go back to the way they were?”

“Sully just needs some time,” concluded Angel. “Leave her alone and let her have it.”

“She hates me, doesn't she?”

“Of course not. She loves you; she just needs the space to wrap her head around what happened.”

Kina disagreed. “You didn't look in her eyes and see what I saw. She hates me. Little does she know, I hate me enough for both of us right now.”

—
Angel King

 

 

It had already been a stressful day, made even more stressful by the fact that Angel had to alter her plans in order to pick Morgan and Miley up at noon due to a faculty planning meeting. Feeling overwhelmed, she did the one thing that seemed to allow her to flee from the pressure these days: logging on to pornographic Web sites.

Initially, she only logged on when chatting with Channing. Now, she spent several hours out of the day perusing photos and viewing uploaded videos whether Channing was on or not. She conceded that it was a compulsion, but still wasn't convinced that it was a full-on addiction.

“Y'all stop running around in there,” called Angel to the girls, who were scurrying in and out of the rooms upstairs while she hid away in the master bedroom.

“We're playing,” returned Morgan, shrieking with delight.

Angel found the noise to be a distraction. “Well, go downstairs and play,” she ordered them. “I can't concentrate with all that screaming.”

Miley poked her head in the door. “Can we fix something to eat?”

Angel slammed her laptop shut, afraid that the tot would spy the explicit images on her monitor. “Yeah, just don't make a mess,” she said before shooing them away.

“Can we make some apples and peanut butter?” asked Morgan.

“Yes,” Angel responded hastily.

Miley stepped in front of her sister. “Can you come help?”

“Miley, just get the apples out of the fridge. You don't need me to help you do that.”

The girls disappeared to race each other down the stairs. Angel soon became engrossed in her pornographic world again. Living vicariously through the characters on the screen was intoxicating. They were free to do the things she'd secretly thought about but would never act upon. She knew it was wrong to watch but decided that it was still better than carrying out the physical acts. After all, this was just fantasy and would end the moment she shut down her computer.

“Oww!” yelped Miley.

Angel was jarred out of her trance by Miley's scream. She rushed downstairs to the kitchen and found Miley crying and holding her bloodied hand. Morgan was mopping up the blood with a paper towel.

Angel hurried to aid Miley. “Oh my God, what happened?”

“I was trying to cut the apples,” sobbed Miley.

Angel examined the cut. “What were you doing with the knife? Why didn't you come get me?”

“I did,” she cried. “You told me to do it myself.”

Angel couldn't believe that she'd been that careless. She gulped, riddled with guilt. “You're right . . . I did. I'm sorry, baby girl. I shouldn't have told you that.”

“It hurts,” Miley groaned.

“Come on, we've got to get it cleaned up. I don't think you'll need stitches—”

“Stitches!” cried Miley.

“It'll be okay. I'm a nurse, remember?”

That's when Angel remembered who she was, a nurse, a Christian, a mother to the girl, and fiancée to Duke. She'd traded in all those roles for a dirty, senseless thrill on the Internet. Now Miley was being punished for it.

Angel eventually calmed Miley down enough to bandage her hand and send both girls off to bed for a nap. When she returned to her room, the Web site was still posted on her computer screen. Disgusted with herself, Angel deleted her profile and closed her account on the site. In doing so, she had to acknowledge that she had a problem. She also knew she couldn't resolve it alone.

“God, what has become of me?” she asked aloud, plunking down on the bed. “I don't even recognize this person I've become. I need you to help me find my way back. I've not been a cheater or a pervert or a negligent mother, but I've become all three because I've allowed this sin into my life. I honestly thought I wasn't hurting anybody, but I see I was. I was hurting you, and without realizing, I was hurting myself.

“I've let this lust interfere in my relationship with the man I love, and I've let it interfere with my relationship with you. God, I'm so sorry for not watching after those precious girls you and Duke have entrusted to me. Miley could've seriously hurt herself. If anything had happened to her, I don't think I could forgive myself.

“Cleanse me, Lord. Take these thoughts and this lust out of my heart. I can't do it without your help.”

Angel hugged her pillow and quietly cried into it. Even though she wasn't sure what she'd become, she knew who she was in the eyes of God. With Him, she could always go back, start over, and get it right.

—
Reginell Kerry

 

 

The video set in Atlanta was nothing like she expected. Reginell envisioned being shuttled to and from Savannah via a top-of-the-line limousine service. She thought there would be a glamour squad working on hair and makeup, whose only job was to make her beautiful. She pictured tables overflowing with delectable trays of lush fresh fruit and vegetables to sink her teeth into at will. She imagined brushing elbows with celebrities as they were scurried on and off the set for cameos. In short, she was expecting the star treatment.

Instead, what Reginell received was an order to make the three-hour drive to Atlanta, a makeup artist with an attitude who hastily slapped some powder on her face, slung a wig on her head, and thrust her on the set, and an overworked production assistant screaming at her between takes while she was being herded back and forth to the main stage with a dozen or so women like cattle.

Mark had called her that morning before she left, pleading with her to ditch the video and join him for dinner. She passed up the offer, reminding him that she had to strike while both she and the iron were hot. That's when he told her their lives were going in two different directions and wished her the best.

“Make it sexy . . . shake it faster . . . bend over . . . show some skin . . . take it lower,” ordered the director over the blaring music on the sweltering set. “You, in the red,” he motioned to Reginell, “we need you over in the hot tub with her. Lather each other up. Make it sexy.”

Reginell ambled over to the tub in her red bikini. Where was a drink when she needed one? Was this really the life she wanted? Was this worth losing Mark over? More important, was it worth losing herself?

When the director yelled “Cut” for them to rearrange the set, Reginell took solace at the snack table. She struck up a conversation with the young lady she was forced to share a tub with.

“Can you believe this?” fired off Reginell to the other video vixen.

The girl's eyes lit up. “No, I mean we're actually going to be in a
real
video!” she squealed.

Reginell frowned, still outraged by the degradation of the women on the set. “No, I mean the way they're treating us. It's ridiculous!”

The girl shrugged nonchalantly and bit into a celery stalk. “I don't see nothing wrong with it.”

“You don't see anything wrong with being treated like some hood rat?”

She laughed a little. “At least we're getting some camera time, right? We could be stuck in the back like those other chicks.”

Reginell peered into the girl's cherub face. She didn't look a day over sixteen. Mentally, she didn't appear to be a day over six. “What's your name?”

“Peaches.”

“No, what's your real name. Don't you know who you really are?”

She shrugged again. “Everybody calls me Peaches.”

Another scantily clad video extra rushed over to them in excitement, almost stumbling over her six-inch stilettos. “Peaches, guess what? That road manager over there just said the band is going to be shooting a reality show and they want about four or five girls to go on tour with them and be on the show. Girl, we gon' be famous!”

Reginell shook her head in pity.

The new girl looked Reginell up and down. “What's
her
problem?”

“You honestly think you're going to be starring in some TV show?” asked Reginell. “Sweetheart, you're just going to be one of the jump-offs who get tossed around the bus whenever somebody needs to get their rocks off. They're not trying to make you a star, just a groupie.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she said dryly and drove a few hairpins through her hair to hold the piece in place and turned back to Peaches. “He said we've all got to audition first, though. They're only going to pick the baddest chicks to be on the show.”

“I bet your audition starts right there in the back of that tour bus too,” stated Reginell. “Do you think you're the first girl to come in here all wide-eyed like this? They'll tell you anything to get you to do what they want.”

“I don't care,” she declared. “We're about to get paid!”

“This is really going to help my acting career,” Peaches added dreamily. “Once the show airs, the producers are going to really start calling.”

“Is that what you think?” asked Reginell. It was scary to hear Peaches saying those words. They sounded like her own. “Intermission promised me the same thing if I did whole crew.”

“Well, I guess you didn't do it right!” quipped Peaches, laughing.

“Wasn't nobody even talking to you,” interjected the woman. “You ain't no different or better than the rest of us. They're calling you a ho just like they're calling us one. Come on, Peaches. They've got some drinks in the back.”

Peaches started to follow her friend. Reginell stopped her. “Is this really what you want to do with your life? Being some chickenhead who gets tossed around by a bunch of egomaniacs?”

Peaches looked down. “Yeah, it's what I got to do to be famous, right?”

“What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?” quoted Reginell, remembering that Bible verse and finally coming to understand what it meant.

“What?” Peaches looked confused. “Look, I got to go.” She left to join her friend.

“All right, everybody back on the set,” cued the director.

Reginell dragged herself back to the center of the action, which involved yet another hot tub.

“You.” The director pointed to Reginell. “Take off your top and turn your back to the camera.”

“It's not like you haven't done it before,”
she told herself. The problem was, however, that she couldn't do it anymore.

Maybe it was Mark. Maybe it was God. Maybe it was seeing girls like Peaches get caught up and lose sight of who they were as women and daughters of the King. All Reginell knew was that she'd lingered in the gutter long enough. No contract was worth her soul. Reginell climbed out of the tub and scurried across the set, covering herself with her hand.

“Hey, we're not done with you yet! Where are you going?” yelled the director.

Reginell turned around and proclaimed, “I'm going home!”

 

 

Reginell came back to Savannah with a new resolve and idea for a new ministry to help women like Peaches and herself get out of the game and start seeing themselves the way God saw them. She asked her sister to invite her friends over to share her idea and get their input.

“What is she doing here?” demanded Sullivan, walking in and seeing Kina.

“She's here because I asked her to come,” replied Reginell. “I know you two have issues, but you're going to have to put them aside for a few minutes for the sake of the sisterhood.”

Sullivan begrudgingly sat down, and they all listened to Reginell's spiel on the new outreach ministry she wanted to create. The conversation ultimately led to the women questioning how they ended up in their current situations and what they could do to help someone else.

“I saw myself in those girls today, y'all, and it wasn't pretty,” revealed Reginell. “I finally realized that God has more planned for me than what I'm doing. I know we can't save every woman, but we can try to save some. We've got to do something to reach out to these women who are in the sex industry, who've been abused, who are lost, and who don't know how much they're worth.”

“Look at my little sister,” crowed Lawson with pride. “I don't think I've ever been more proud of you than I am right now.”

“What you're trying to do is really inspiring,” commended Sullivan. “You work out the details and present it to Charles's administrative staff. I'm sure the church will be happy to support you in this.”

“Thank you, Sullivan. I just want to be able to make a difference.”

“You will, Reggie. I know what it's like to feel like nobody cares and it's all you can do to get out of bed in the morning. This is wonderful thing that you're doing.”

“You're amazing, you know that?” said Lawson. “I haven't told you that enough lately. In fact, I haven't told you enough of anything lately. I'm sorry.”

“It's cool,” she assured her. “I knew we'd get back to normal eventually.”

“It's not cool, Reggie. I haven't been a very good sister to you.”

“You've had a lot on your plate.”

“I'm talking about before Garrett moved out. The truth is, I was jealous of you.”

Reginell was taken aback. “For what?”

“It's kind of hard to explain, but seeing how much Mark cared about you made me a little crazy. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind, I wanted him to feel that way about me. I'm the one who had his baby. It felt like you were creeping in on my territory with him, and it felt like he was creeping in on mine with you. I just couldn't stomach the two of you together.”

“Well, it doesn't matter now,” grumbled Reginell. “Mark and me are done.”

“Reggie, you know I was very happy when you found Jody last year. I want to see you happy like that again, and I've always wanted Mark to find a good woman. If the two of you can make each other happy, more power to you!”

“What about your feelings?”

“My feelings are my problem, not yours. You go on and be happy. Not that you need it, but you and Mark have my blessing.”

“Thank you, Lawson.” Reginell hugged her. “I just hope Mark still wants me.”

“Mark loves you. Don't give up on him.”

“Don't you give up on Garrett either,” issued Reginell.

Sullivan joined them. “I'm praying that my husband doesn't decide to give up on me.” She paused. “I've decided to tell him the truth about the baby.”

“Are you sure want to do that?” asked Lawson. “Can his heart take it?”

“I have to tell him,” said Sullivan. “I was crazy to think I could keep this a secret indefinitely. You all have been telling me all along that he has a right to know. I created this mess, I've got to deal with the consequences.”

Angel patted her on the back. “I'm very proud of you for coming to this decision, Sullivan. It's very brave of you.”

“I'm not trying to be noble. I just think he deserves to know. If he still wants to raise this baby after I tell him, I'll be eternally grateful. If he doesn't, I'll just have to accept it.”

“When do you plan to tell him?” asked Lawson.

“As soon as possible. I don't want to put it off anymore.”

Angel pulled Sullivan into an embrace. “Be strong, my sister. It takes a lot of strength to do what you're doing. We're praying for you.”

Sullivan turned to Lawson. “If Charles can forgive me, you darn sure can forgive Garrett!” She laughed, then turned serious again. “Of course, in my case, that's a very big
if
.”