Don’t Love, Don’t Lose

Strangely, she didn’t feel triumphant, as she’d thought she would. She only felt relieved. The nearly mythical figure she had built in her mind, the one always looming over her, was only human. He couldn’t do anything to her anymore.

Relief, and some pity. That’s all she had to feel.

“You hacked into me. You can’t use any of that. It’s inadmissible.”

“In a court of law, perhaps. But there’s enough to get search warrants, and court of law isn’t the only court there is. There’s the court of public opinion. Do you think your subterfuge is good enough to stand up to an investigation?”

“This is Baltimore. You have no power here.”

“You will find that I do. And you will find that the Simones do. Della Simone has the kind of power that you will never understand, Sanders. I will need you to sign those papers, and a non-compete clause, or I will have no reason to keep any of this to myself.”

He looked like he had shrunken. He looked defeated and old.

“This is blackmail. This is extortion.”

“No, this is business. Remember what you told me about business, Sanders? That’s all this is. Please, do sign. You can have your lawyer look over this if you like, but I suggest you hurry.”

Jasmine smiled.

“I’ve attached the results of my investigation to emails I’ve drafted. Anonymous, of course. They’re all set to send to the major newspapers, local as well as national within half an hour if you don’t sign by then. I can’t turn it off by phone. I have to do it on my system. I’m simply offering you a deal, Mr. Sanders. I suggest that you take it.”

She didn’t feel the victory she thought she would when he took the papers in his shaking hands and started signing.

“You will never be happy. You will never have happiness.”

His parting shot didn’t faze her, either.

“I already have happiness, Mr. Sanders. I let you take it away from me for too long, but finally, I have it again. There’s nothing you can do about it anymore. There’s nothing you can do to me anymore.”

They waited in silence as he finished signing.

Quickly, Anthony sorted through the paperwork and saw that it was all in order.

“You will have your copies within an hour, Sanders. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

And that was that. They got up, still holding hands, and walked out. The whole business had taken about twenty minutes. It had, thought Jasmine, almost been anticlimactic. Surely something that had been about twenty years in the making should’ve had more bang!

“He’s done,” said Anthony, his voice gentle.

Jasmine nodded.

“I know. He is. He won’t control us anymore.”

“He won’t. I promise. Now I have something else to do. I have more amends to make.”

Jasmine frowned.

“What?”

“I hope you aren’t expected back this afternoon, because we have somewhere to be.”

Jasmine realized where they were going before they were halfway there, of course. Of course she did.

“Home.”

“It is, isn’t it? Rita gave me the address.”

“I bet that’s not all she gave.”

“It’s not, no. My ears are still ringing. There’s a cheesecake and a bottle of wine in the car.”

Jasmine smiled.

“Aunt Della will appreciate that.”

“I want to tell her that we’re together, Jasmine. I don’t want it to be up in the air anymore. We’re together. You’re mine. There’s no more question about that. It’s not negotiable anymore. I’ll give you whatever you want. Give me a few months and I can shift base here. I’ll figure it out. I’ll manage something.”

Jasmine smiled and nodded.

“Stop explaining. We’ll figure out the details. We don’t need all the details to be sorted out right this moment. We can figure it all out, Tony. We are together.”

“Good,” he breathed, and Jasmine leaned against his shoulder as he drove them both home – their real home.

“I got Roger to take the cats over, too. I thought we should all be together.”

If she hadn’t already loved him, thought Jasmine, she would’ve fallen for him in that moment. Because he’d thought of her cats, because he had understood what it had taken for her to take them in. What they meant to her.

They were the ones who had started knocking her defenses down.

“Thank you. Wait… Roger? Rita?”

“They can sort their own stuff out. I don’t know what’s going on between them. You know what? I’m glad that for once, I can be the smug one. I can tell him that I’m happy with my woman and he can deal with the fights and the drama.”

“Have you had much fighting and drama?” asked Jasmine, curiously.

They hadn’t really had any of the usual couple fights. Their fights had been big and dramatic, driven by things that they couldn’t really controlled, pushed by people who shouldn’t have had anything to do with them. Maybe that had made them stronger in a way, but the idea of a normal domestic spat appealed to her strangely.

She had changed. She would’ve shied away from any drama at all a few weeks ago. Just a few weeks, and Anthony Malone had changed her life.

She was happier than she’d known she could be.

“I don’t think that’s an appropriate conversation for this time. I think we should focus on what we have, and the time we are going to spend with our family.”

He wasn’t the one who had done all the giving. She had given him something he needed, too. She was giving him a family. Maybe given time – not too much time – she would give him their own family, too.

Jasmine decided she was too happy to needle him and tabled it. He swung into the driveway of the house where she had grown up, and she saw that they were expected. As they heard the car driving up, they spilled out of the house – Aunt Della, Rita, Roger. Rita held the two cats, and was glowering at Roger.

Jasmine turned to Anthony and smiled.

“Welcome home. Welcome to the family,” she told him, and she knew that it meant to him as much as she’d known it would.

He held her hand, and together, they walked to their family. Stronger together, and forever.

The end.