Bless This Broken Road

He never finished his sentence. I'd like to say my left hook knocked him out but it probably didn't do anything but surprise him. I'm not much of a fighter but I'm also not totally clueless. My punch may not have put him down, but my knee to his balls that followed it sure as hell did.

I jumped on him and got in several good shots before Tim and a couple other ex-friends pulled me off. As they drug me off of Prendergast, I got a couple more good kicks to his ribs and at least one good stomp on his balls before I was completely pulled away.

"Get your fucking hands off me!" I yelled breaking away from them.

"Some fucking friends y'all turned out to be!" I barked at the crowd. "Of course I shouldn't be surprised since I know at least three of you are cheating as well. Damn! I didn't know this was some kind of a wife swapping party."

Actually I didn't know anything. I suspected one husband of cheating but the rest of my rant was a bluff, meant just to spread doubt and pain.

"Y'all can just go to hell!" I shouted as I forced my way out of the room.

I don't remember walking home that evening. I do remember nursing a bottle of Patron as I waited for the cops. Surprisingly they never showed. Unfortunately, Brit did. She didn't say much, just went upstairs and packed. On the way out she stopped.

"I'll be staying with Anna for a little while," she said with tears streaming down her cheeks, "I'm not sure what's going to happen after that. Brad, the paperwork has all been prepared. You'll be served tomorrow. Do you want it done here or at work?"

"What do you think?" I snarled.

She stifled a sob. "I'll tell them to come here then. Brad, I'm so sorry. When Derek told me in college his family had already arranged his future career and wife it destroyed me. He was the love of my life. I know he had a bad reputation back then but he's changed. He's his own man now and we have a chance to be together again. I ... I just have to try. I didn't want it to end like this."

"How did you think it would end? Did you think I'd give you my blessing to go off with him? Damn, you really are a selfish slut aren't you? Don't let the door hit you in the ass as you leave, bitch."

With a loud cry, she was gone.

A couple days later she was back. However her mood had definitely changed. Now things were ice cold between us and neither of us had anything to say to each other.

The next day when I got home from work I was met at my front door by two police officers and a restraining order. Apparently Britney feared for her safety. I was removed from my home and I have no doubt Derek moved in that night. Derek and Brit had played me perfectly.

I did find out why there hadn't been any charges filed against me after the party. Apparently Tim found his balls shortly after I left. When Derek threatened to call the cops, Tim responded that if he did that Tim and several others would claim Derek hit me first. Tim told Derek he'd been lucky. If he'd gotten what he really deserved for stealing another man's wife, he'd be dead and his family would still be looking for his body.

Tim's discovery of his conscience made little difference to me. I'd been thrown out of my own house, lost my wife and all my friends. I'd thought about trying to get revenge but what could I do? I couldn't embarrass them. Everybody already knew, so I was certain her family did as well.

Derek was already filing for divorce so I couldn't ruin his marriage. I was sure Daddy Prendergast already knew what a piece of shit his son was, so there wasn't much I could do there either. I'd also found out Derek's thing for married women was the reason he'd been sent up to Dallas from Houston in the first place. Seems he hadn't changed despite what my soon-to-be ex-wife believed.

Britney had apparently made her decision to trade up so I sure as hell didn't want her back. I wasn't in a position to hurt Derek professionally or financially at the moment. So I had to settle for kicking his ass as my only revenge at the time. It sucked but at least I had something.

That left me sitting in a crummy motel room with no wife, no friends and no home. I watched my life spiral downward. I wasn't sinking in my self-pity. I was taking a swan dive into it.

The next several months were hell. The pain and frustration kept eating me from the inside and in order to escape it I self-medicated. My so called friends tried to apologize but I told them all to go to hell. I'd never trust them again so I didn't just burn my bridges, I nuked them!

One woman, Karen, asked me if her husband was one of the people cheating that I had referred to that night. Everyone knew her husband, Jeff, was a flirt and if anyone was cheating it was probably him. I told her that wasn't the real question she should be asking. The real question was which one of her friends was he sleeping with? She left crying. I should've felt bad, but they had all betrayed me and with the tequila, I wasn't feeling anything anyway.

By the time my divorce was final, I needed a fifth of tequila every two days just to function. My personal life was a living hell and my job performance was quickly deteriorating.

Not surprisingly, I saw Britney and Derek got married a month after our divorce was final. I thought about crashing the wedding but by then I was just barely hanging on to my job. I knew any legal issues would take away the only thing in my life that was keeping me sane at the time.

Seven months later I learned Britney was pregnant. That's when I completely stepped off the deep end and went on a drinking binge.

I guess Fate decided it had shit on me enough because for some reason my company didn't fire me. Instead they forced me into a rehab with plans to relocate me so I could get a fresh start. I suspected Tim may have had something to do with it but I never knew for sure.

The rehab they sent me to was a two month, military boot camp like ranch in the middle of nowhere. Shit, I'd ended up back on the ranch! As much as it sucked it was a turning point in my life. I came out of it sober and looking forward to a new beginning.

With my restoration background, my company sending me to New Orleans was a natural. After Katrina, there were lots of old properties that the owners had just taken the insurance money and bailed. The new owners would restore some of these beautiful, old places as they were financially able to. It was a slow healing process for the area and it matched my life perfectly.

****

I laid there for a while just enjoying the closeness before I could feel her begin to tense. I knew my wife was thinking about something and it was upsetting to her. A few seconds later I knew what it was.

"Would you do it again?" she whispered just loud enough for me to hear. "Would you go through all that just to find me again?"

I cupped her breast and pulled her even closer. Holding tightly I nuzzled her hair and gently kissed the back of her head.

"Yes, "I whispered, "I wouldn't enjoy having to go through that again but if I knew you were on the other end of it ... I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

I could hardly breathe as I waited for her response. She could be so passionate and loving but she could also be melancholy and morose. I hoped she'd let my love blanket her and not go down a darker path. When I heard her stifle a sob, I knew the answer.

"Jordan?"

"I'm sorry," she said in a small voice. "I'm so thankful you'd do that for me. But I don't think I could... I just couldn't..."

"Sweetheart stop, I know how much you love me. I would never expect you to... no one should ever have to go through what you did. I'm just thankful you can still love. I'm even more thankful you can love me."

"I do love you," she said her voice getting stronger.

"I know. It's what keeps me going most days. It keeps me sane."

As I held her I felt the tension leave her body. She began to relax again as she took my hand and gently kissed it.

With my wife resting I was able to regather my thoughts.

I could hardly breathe as I caressed the more than a dozen small circular ridges covering her arms and shoulders. As she pressed against my chest, I could also feel the scars that covered her back. The thoughts of her nightmarish past made me silently scream in rage. I took a deep breath to calm myself and make sure I didn't alarm my wife.

****

Shortly after her mother had died in a car accident, Jordan's stepfather had turned both physically and sexually abusive. She was only fourteen the first time he visited her bed and forced himself on her. After she'd told a neighbor about it, he'd started beating her, trying to break her already fragile spirit. The circular scars she bore were reminders of when he'd used her as his ashtray.

Jordan finally ran away from home when she was seventeen. She'd lived on the streets for a couple of years. She wouldn't talk much about what happened while she lived there; those memories were best left to the nightmares which occasionally plagued her. To escape her situation, or to at least numb herself from it, she'd begun drinking and using drugs. She'd become an addict before she'd been rescued by Stan, her ex-husband.

Stan was a trucker out of the Big Easy and had picked her up in a truck stop outside Kansas City. He was a big boy, six-foot-four and over 280 pounds, although a good 60 pounds of it was fat. He was her knight in shining armor; at least he started out that way.

Jordan had told me her marriage was good for the first year or so and then the abuse began. They were both alcoholics and Stan was a mean drunk. Jordan had tried to use the booze and drugs to buffer her from the harsh reality of her situation but the beatings kept getting worse.

Things finally came to a head a couple months before their third anniversary.

One of Stan's friends, John, had his own tattoo shop a few blocks off Bourbon Street. He had offered to do a tattoo for Jordan at a fraction of the price he usually charged, if she would act as a walking billboard for him. Jordan was thrilled but Stan wasn't. He had always suspected John was trying to get into Jordan's pants.

Even with their twisted, toxic marriage, Jordan knew Stan loved her. Reluctantly he had agreed but still wanted to talk more about it after he had returned from a long haul. He was headed out to the west coast on a long run and would be gone for a couple weeks. Unfortunately being drunk, Jordan didn't hear anything past his okay.

When Stan returned, Jordan had already sat topless for hours letting John create his masterpiece. It had mostly scabbed over and was healing well. Even sober, Stan went ballistic. He accused her of sleeping with John among other things. If she'd been thinking clearly she would've moved out that night. She wasn't and didn't.

The next night a drunk and enraged Stan caught her getting out of the shower. He had already paid a visit to John earlier that evening and had left his friend badly beaten, both hands broken.

The beating he gave Jordan was worse. He'd taken an extension cord and had tried to beat the tattoo off of her back. The attack was so vicious it put Jordan in the hospital for several days and forever disfigured her back. Stan had packed up and fled the state before Jordan ever regained consciousness.

****

I stared down at the intricate, multi-colored fairy covering my wife's left shoulder blade. It had once been a work of art, something people would have stopped and admired right there on the street. Now it was marred.

I gently stroked the long reddish ridges that disfigured the tattoo and striped her upper back. Her breath caught and I could feel her stifle a small whimper. Her scars from being whipped were much deeper than the lines that marked her back.

Fighting back a tear, I began covering her back with kisses.

Jordan's stepfather had died several years earlier and we hadn't heard from Stan in years. I hoped he was dead as well and they were both burning hell!

I tried to keep my mind on Jordan and not on the bastards who had done this to her. I couldn't change her past but I swore I would do my damnedest to give her a good future.

****

Jordan spent three days in the hospital. Her wounds would heal but the scars, both on the inside and outside, would remain. They caught up with Stan somewhere out in Arizona. Since he'd crossed state lines, he ended up doing time in a federal prison out there.

A couple of weeks after she had gotten out of the hospital, John showed up on her doorstep. With both hands broken he wasn't able to work and with no money he had no place to live. Whether it was guilt or just the fear of being alone, Jordan let him move in. Within a month he was sharing her bed as well. Apparently Stan's suspicions about John weren't too far off.

Jordan and Stan weren't insured so without Stan's paycheck and the uncovered medical bills, Jordan wasn't able to keep up. John saw the writing on the wall and as soon as he was able to work, he left. The bank foreclosed on Jordan's small house a little over a year later. Jordan was facing being homeless again and that fear pushed her even deeper into the bottle.

It was the old hippie couple Jordan worked for that she finally let help her. Jonas and Starr had hired her shortly before she'd actually married Stan. She'd worked in their art studio for four years and they were as close to family as she had. After she lost her home, they moved her into a backroom in the studio and forced her into rehab.

She'd been clean and sober for two years when I'd met her at an AA meeting. That's where our two roads had crossed.

When I first met Jordan I was less than impressed. She had her shoulder-long, curly, dark brown hair pulled into a simple ponytail and wore a ball cap to hide her face. She also wore extremely baggy clothing that mostly hid her body. Those few glimpses that the clothes allowed showed an anorexic figure. Those things combined with her standoffish personality basically gave off a stay the hell away from me signal.

We had been going to the same AA meetings for about two months before I noticed her standing near me. After that I noticed she would typically stand or sit near me, not close enough to have a conversation but still somewhere in my vicinity. I spoke to one of the women who had been there awhile and she'd given me some basic background on her.

It didn't take a genius to see she didn't trust men so it was more out of curiosity than physical attraction that made me want to meet her. When I first approached her I thought she was going to bolt like a frightened animal. Thankfully she didn't, however, she wouldn't look me in my eyes the first several times we talked. When she finally did, my world changed.

I don't think I fell in love with her at that moment but I wanted, no ... I had to find out more about her. One night she missed a meeting, so I used it as an excuse to go to the art studio to check on her.

When I got there I was blown away. What I witnessed wasn't the timid, scared rabbit I'd expected. What I found was a confident, out-going, young woman who even though extremely thin, was quite attractive. When she first saw me I thought she was going to have a heart attack.

I walked over and began speaking as calmly and softly as I could. She stared at me like a deer caught in the headlights. I apologized for visiting her at work but told her I'd missed her at the meeting last night and was worried.

It wasn't until I asked her about some of the artwork being exhibited that she came out of her stupor. Slowly she began describing each piece and by the time we were done she was truly back in her element. When she flashed that huge, beautiful smile and laughed, I knew I was hooked.

Dating Jordan was an adventure. It was like tap dancing in a minefield. I never knew whenever I'd say or do something that would remind her of her past. Slowly I learned those areas which were upsetting to her and avoided them.

When our relationship turned physical I wasn't sure how she'd react. She was understandably timid when she first let me see her body. She was painfully thin, to the point that her bones were visible. However it was the scars on her back that ended up actually cementing us as a couple.

I realized immediately how much she cared for me. She was letting down her defenses and at that moment I had the power to devastate her by simply rejecting her. That kind of trust broke down whatever barriers I had. My fears and distrust crumbled as I watched a damaged, fragile woman show incredible strength by overcoming her fears enough to trust me to see the one thing she was most ashamed of ... herself.

I gently kissed her back, then slowly turned her around and made a show of looking her up and down as if I was appraising her like a piece of art. She'd ducked her head waiting for my harsh judgment. I lifted her face so she had to look at me.

"Incredible, simply beautiful," I whispered.

I then kissed her as if my life depended upon it. I hadn't realized it at the time but my life, or at least my happiness, really did depend on her.

She responded to my kiss by rewarding me. Honestly, I would have been happy with just sex since I hadn't been with anyone but my right hand since we'd started dating. However, what we did that night was nothing less than an unforgettable night of making love.

Jordan likes to tell me that was the night she went from being in love with me to being completely mine. I always correct her by telling her that was the night we stopped being Jordan and Brad, and became ... us.

We dated for a little over a year before I got up enough courage to ask her to marry me. She'd made it clear months earlier her answer would be yes but I couldn't help but have doubts if we could make it. It wasn't that I questioned our love, it was the fact that we were both so messed up.

****

I found myself still lazily stroking my wife's back. I reached over and gently caressed her cheek. Staring into her eyes I softly sang the rest of the chorus.

"This much I know is true, that God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you."

Tears formed in her eyes as she fought back a small smile.

"Really Brad?" she whispered, a hint of desperation in her voice. "Are you really happy you found me?"

How do you tell someone how important they are to you without scaring them? I thought to myself. And if you do tell them the truth it leaves you open and vulnerable to their actions.

It had been Jordan's love for me that had given me back my life. Because of her I'd dared to trust ... to love again. She was the center of my life. This strong but fragile woman both needed and desired me. Because of that there was absolutely nothing I wouldn't do for her. I'd love and protect her till my last dying breath. That kind of love is intimidating to many and more than a little scary to most.

"Without you," I said kissing her gently. "Without you my life would've been colorless like one of those etchings you have in your art studio. You brought my world to life and I thank God for it every day.

"You're like some artist painting my future. With each stroke, every tear, every smile, every touch you make my life richer. Am I glad I found you? Is a drowning man glad when a life preserver is thrown to him? More than he could ever describe!"

She surprised me as she launched herself towards me. Before I could even react I felt the soft, warmth of her lips on mine. I could taste the salty remnants of her tears as her kiss turned more passionate and her tongue invited mine to dance.

As she pressed her body into mine trying to meld our skin together, I thought we were soon to be making love but she paused. Pulling her face away from me she stared deep into my eyes and whispered.