Warning(s): mentions of drug abuse. I am so fucking sorry for this.
"I thought I'd find you out here," Vince cleared his throat, stepping over to the bench that Christine had settled on.
She was the absolute quintessence of sorrow while she sat against the oak, her right leg carefully crossed over her left to save the satin dress from wrinkling.
Caramel curls were pinned to her head with thick, pink rollers, plump lips smeared in the signature coat of crimson she always wore, her black, smoky lids completely exposed as those miserable, bleak hues focused on the cigarette between her frail fingers. He didn't even know where to begin.
A day where she was supposed to be delighted for her friends, was reserved for crippling anxiety and wallowing in a cesspool of self-pity.
Taking a long, hard drag, she leaned backward in her seat and tried to make eye contact with him. But she couldn't. Not without crying.
Never one to feel sheepish in the presence of a friend, Vince simply went against his better judgment and sat down next to Christine, taking out a small hip flask that she could only assume was full of whiskey. He nudged her a little bit when she refused to articulate a response, offering it out to her, hoping she would take it.
Her dainty hand coiled around the top as she began to unscrew, Vince taking a moment to light a cigarette for himself--just trying to imagine how he was going to repent and or convince Christine that he wasn't going to deliberately let her secret slip.
Undoubtedly leaving a matte red smudge around the lip of the flask, she began to take a pull of whatever it was that the blonde had presented to her.
An overwrought aura clouded around the duo as Vince continued to smoke, and Christine put away the rest of the fiery spirit, fighting against the burn that seared through her mouth and down her throat.
"How do you do it?" She broke the raucous silence, rubbing her lips together. The subtle notes of honey pushing her to internally recoil, recognizing that the cheap whiskey she had guzzled wasn't the mid to top-shelf kind that Nikki would get for her. But it was understandable. Vince wasn't supposed to be drinking and he was just taking whatever was being given to him.
He pushed his sunglasses to the very tip of his nose, squinting in her direction as the brutal glow of the morning sun began to burn much too bright for his liking. But he didn't want to be rude and resist eye contact--which, for Vince Neil, not wanting to come off as impertinent was certainly a first.
"Do what?" He responded in an uncharacteristically subdued tone, almost as if he was testing the water because he didn't have a clue what was about to be asked of him.
"Live with yourself?"
Shocked, and slightly bewildered, Vince's eyebrows fused together while he proceeded to wonder what it was that she was implying.
He couldn't pinpoint just what her question was about--he had accomplished several questionable things that could've caused a change in the way that he viewed himself over the years.
"What are you talking about?" He queried, a flash of discomfort rooted deep within his words.
Christine's line of sight was nowhere near his, nor would it end up coming close to being. She pushed her focus to the lush greenery surrounding the patio, feeling momentarily distracted by the colorful hues and flowers that decorated rose bushes and planters along the walkway.
Blossoming buds and vibrant verdures were a stark contrast against the looming devastation that would make Tommy and Heather's wedding day memorable for all of the wrong reasons.
Realizing that Vince wasn't picking up on what she was putting down, Christine tried to find the words with which to elaborate her inquiry without sounding too harsh on the blonde.
"How do you live with yourself, Vince?" She repeated herself. "After all that you've done, how do you manage to maintain such a cool, breezy facade? Because I have tried my damn hardest to make it seem as though I'm not currently sitting on a throne of deceit and dishonesty, lying to my husband and some of my friends because I'm petrified of the repercussions of my stupidity, but it is fucking hard."
He scoffed out, taking offense to her words, but he knew that there was truth in what Christine was saying.
"I cheated on Nikki once and ended up getting hooked on heroin because I thought that was gonna help me confront my guilt head on without actually having to face what I did. And then the second time was just a moment of madness. I don't know what came over me that day...maybe it was because we'd argued and he left me at your place with no way of getting home, but Tommy was there and--and I just wasn't thinking."
"And what about last night?" He asked cautiously, like he knew the reason but didn't want to hear her say it.
She, like whenever nerves had set in, began to fiddle with the diamond-encrusted wedding band that sat around her ring finger.
Christine felt as though she had taken a blow to the chest. Her heart battered so viciously against her ribcage, she was convinced that Vince was able to hear it thumping out of control.
"Last night I wanted it. More than anything," she finally admitted, watching his face fall completely. The shame and embarrassment that she proceeded to feel, amidst the deafening silence, was almost debilitating.
Usually, she didn't care about what people thought of her all too much. But when it was a friend, a dear friend such as Vince, seeing the look of disappointment slapped upon their face after admitting her most heinous doings stung a little bit.
"You don't need to say anything, because you pretty much got it covered last night when you called me a slut," Vince sighed out. He regretted that majorly. "I just want you to know that I'm going to come clean to Nikki, but I'm begging you not to say anything to Heather. She doesn't deserve it."
"Chris, you don't need to, " he offered a warm, reassuring smile--though laced with apprehension--trying to gauge a positive reaction. "If you're worried about me telling Nikki, then that's futile. I'm not gonna let slip, so don't feel like you have to."
She licked her lips, grimacing a little bit. "I do. He needs to know that his wife is a stupid slut," her laugh was completely humorless, but Vince knew that she was only trying to hold back tears.
"Okay," he uttered slowly, "and what about Heather? You said she doesn't deserve it but does Nikki? And what about Tommy?"
It had kept her up all night. It was all that she could think about all morning. Her mind had raced for hours as she tried to imagine the best and worst ways in which she could unload such a secret onto her husband, all the while he was sound asleep next to her.
"Heather won't know about this for the simple fact that she is Heather, " he quizzically raised a brow, "she has been nothing but kind to me, Vince. Even after she found out about me and Tommy, she wasn't weary or standoffish with me like what I would've been with her if it was the other way around. And that's what makes this whole thing so much harder because, if it was anybody else, I wouldn't be feeling this awful about it. She is like a fucking sister to me, after everything that's happened in this last year that we've known one another, and I still fucked her over the night before her wedding."
Misery bled through her silk-clad frame, forcing her already unstable breathing to grow sporadic.
"Of course I hate myself for doing this to Nikki, especially because Tommy is his best friend, but it's not like he's been a goddamn saint throughout our whole marriage, or even our relationship."
"But Tommy?" He reclined in his seat, shaking his head, "Tommy is like his brother, Chris. It's like you wanted to intentionally hurt him. Did you want to hurt him?"
Suddenly, it was almost comical. He was acting as though he had never slept with one of his wife's best friends--not Chris, never Chris--and kept it from her for the entire span of their marriage, only admitting his wrongdoing when said best friend turned up at the airport when he had promised her that she could attend the tour the band was about to embark on.
Vince was simply in no position to judge or even attempt to take the moral high-ground.
"I didn't think it would hurt him because he cheated on me the night before I screwed T-bone," she uncrossed her legs and put a hand to her purse, "but the more time I've spent dwelling on it, the more I realize that Nikki will never be able to forgive me for this. And I can't live with myself any more."
Ringed fingers clamped to her hand as she rose from her space, forcing bloodshot eyes to burrow into glistening hues.
"What do you mean?"
"What I said," she told him sternly, trying to pull her hand away, "I cannot live with the idea of what I did. He deserves to know and to be able to decide where we go from here. If he wants a divorce then," she sucked in a shallow breath, her chest restricting, "then that's what will have to happen."
Despite putting on an excellent show of concealing her inebriation, he was still well aware that Christine was just as high as what her husband was--only she didn't know that Nikki was spending his morning with his back pressed up against the bathroom wall, heroin decorating his veins and Jack Daniels blanketing his tongue.
She isn't thinking straight, was what Vince continued to tell himself, noticing the way her pupils had suddenly come to be a lot less prominent.
"I'm gonna go and get these fucking rollers outta my hair," reassuringly, Chris squeezed his hand--noticing the way he had started to get lost in contemplation.
"Chris," she smiled in response, "don't do it."
"Don't do what?"
"Don't tell Nikki," he began to plead, Christine wondered why he was so nervous all of a sudden.
"What?" She queried in that same confused tone, taking a slight step back when he shot to his feet before her.
It was almost as if his conscience was leading his actions. He sighed out, "do not tell Nikki about what you did. I don't care how much you think you can't live with yourself, because you can--you have."
Her matte lips parted in awe.
"Don't look at me that way, I fuckin' mean it," he growled, "I'm telling you now, Christine. If you even think about telling Nikki, today of all days, then you're gonna get your ass handed to you by Heather because he's gonna explode and let every single person at this place know. Do you want that?"
Guilt. Oh, the guilt she was feeling.
But then it was like a lightbulb had flickered inside of her brain, and a disgusted snarl ripped from the very pit of her throat.
"You don't give a damn about the way that this is gonna make Heather or Nikki feel. I know you well enough to know that you're only thinking about the fuckin' money--"
"--Money? What money are you talking about--"
"--The money that you won't be making if Nikki and Tommy are at one another's fucking throats and spend all day every day fighting! The money that you certainly won't be fucking making if this band ends up splitting because Tommy Lee fucked Nikki Sixx's wife and carried on as if nothing had ever happened! For three goddamn years!"
"You really think that low of me?!" He barked straight back. She nodded without hesitation. "You know what, maybe you should just tell Nikki. You've already fucked this band over enough, you might as well just stick the final nail in the coffin."
"And you'd just love that, wouldn't you? You'd love to see Nikki hit rock fucking bottom just like what you did when you were hurled into jail and nobody gave a fuck about you!"
"Don't," he warned, Christine's lips pulled into a vile smirk.
"You just want him to feel that same way as what you did, don't you? When everyone only seemed to care about whether or not Mötley Crüe had a future, and not the fact that you were rotting away in a jail cell, while your wife and kid were left alone to cope with the aftermath of the shit that you did!"
He couldn't believe that she would bring up such a thing. Especially after everything that she said about understanding...she didn't understand. Christine didn't get the way that he felt.
"Do you know how badly Beth was treated that whole time you were away?! Do you?! Because Nikki took everything out on her, despite it being your carelessness that got her there in the first fucking place!"
She's high. She's drunk. She's way too jacked up to even realize that what she's saying is hurting me, he continued to tell himself.
Arguing with her won't make this any better.
"I felt so fucking bad for you, Vince. I felt so damn guilty that none of them bothered to visit you the whole time you were away, so I ended up falling out with Nikki because I went along to pick up your sorry ass from the fucking rehabilitation center! You were the fucking reason he left me at the house with no way to get home! You were the fucking reason--"
"--Don't you fucking dare blame me for what happened that night! Nobody told you that riding Tommy in the back of his car was a good idea, Christine! Not a single goddamn soul spurred you on to do that! That was all you and Tommy, and the fact that you couldn't keep your hands off of him no matter how much you KNEW that'd fucking hurt Nikki!"
"Fine! You didn't!" She relented, "but you were the reason that Nikki wouldn't talk to me."
"And did I ask you to go with Tommy and Doc to pick me up?"
Chris shook her head. "No. And I fucking wish that I didn't go that day. It would've saved so many arguments."
"So you regret helping me?"
"Yep," she shot back on instinct.
Vince strode closer to her, closing the gap between the pair of them, grimacing.
"Well that makes two of us then, because I sure as hell regret ever fucking protecting you."
She scowled at him with such fiery emotion, anybody would be surprised that the singer didn't turn into a block of stone.
"So do you want me to tell him or not?" She spoke up, though her words cracked as she trembled.
Vince shrugged. He shot her that same icy glare, "do whatever the fuck you wanna do, darlin'. I told you last night: I'm fucking done with you."
It was as if her heart had stopped beating. Hearing those words was like venom to her ears, poison bleeding through her weak, feeble, frame.
"Get outta my fuckin' face before I really say something I'll regret."
"Go to hell."
With a very sudden, intense, resentment for the blonde, Christine fumed her way back indoors. The heels of her stilettos slapping against the wooden floor made the most boisterous of noises, but she didn't care while she seethed back to the makeup room she had first started in.
A newly abandoned space forced a slither of happiness to percolate within her, allowing herself some time to touch up whatever makeup had smudged, and to remove those God awful rollers.
But being alone with her thoughts meant that her mind constantly strayed back to the initial plan; to tell Nikki. She definitely understood that maybe blurting it out on Heather's wedding day was not the right time, but was there ever a right time?
She snapped herself from those erratic notions and quickly pulled herself together.
Although holding a remarkable amount of hatred for herself in that very moment, Christine could hardly deny how good she thought that she looked. Taking pride in her appearance was always something she had been taught, and she certainly pulled through once more.
She smiled at herself in the full-length mirror, letting her hands run down the seam of her dress, admiring the silk that she was confident she'd hate wearing. But she didn't. For a brief moment, her eyes fluttered and she let her mind wander, wondering what it would have felt like if she and Nikki had decided to do the big, traditional wedding that their friends were doing.
While Christine was left to reevaluate some of the most important life choices she had ever made, Nikki was being reprimanded by Vince the exact same way that she had been a few moments prior.
"I'm just saying, Nikki! It's your best friend's wedding, and here you are with a goddamn needle plunged in your arm! And not to mention your wife--"
"I don't give a fuck, " he hissed, leaning back against the couch. His iris' clouded over, pupils the size of pinpricks, dark, borderline purple, circles underneath both eyes made the blonde almost certain of his day-long heroin binge.
"That's starting to become a regular thing now, isn't it?" He pointed at Nikki, snarling, with his beer bottle. One more snide comment from him, and Vince was convinced that he'd be launching the bottle across the room and into Nikki's head.
"What?"
"I said, 'that's starting to become a regular thing now, isn't it?!" Vince yelled, repeating his words exactly, "you don't seem to give a fuck about anybody else besides yourself these days!"
As Nikki went to revolt, attempting to pull himself away from the plush cushion, Vince's hand met his chest and pushed him back down. The force with which he shoved him left the pair slightly speechless--but for different reasons.
"You're not fuckin' going anywhere, Sixx. You're gonna sober up before Tommy sees you, or before Christine realizes that you're getting jacked up without her!" He continued to scold, watching him struggle to sit up straight.
Nikki cleared his throat and let his head fall backward, "where is she?"
"Who?" He responded, flippantly.
"My fuckin' wife, " Nikki snapped, "you know, the woman that you made cry last night."
Vince scoffed before their eyes met, a sudden notion of pressure forcing a lump to inflate at the very back of his throat. Nikki noticed the sudden friction.
"I didn't make her cry," irritability laced his tone.
"Sure you did," Nikki continued to press on, "she came into that party with mascara all under her fucking eyes after you yelled at her. And don't even think about denying that, because I saw you in the hallway with her."
He thanked his lucky stars that Nikki was so intoxicated that his eyes abstained from focusing on any one thing for longer than twenty seconds, but the man was an expert at reading the room.
"You're delusional, man," Vince stated defensively, "I didn't make her fuckin' cry--"
"--Well why the fuck else was she sobbing like that, huh?" His eyes flashed open, jaw clenched, "because she said that she got her period, but I know she was lying."
"Maybe she did get her period! She said she was hormonal last week when we were all out at dinner and you blew her off for 'your dealer'--who we all know was Vanity--and she was pissed that she was having to spend the night with me and Tommy!"
"She fucking didn't, Vince! I know Christine like the back of my hand, I know her damn well enough to know when she's lying to me!" He argued straight back.
"You clearly fucking don't, " Vince rasped under his breath in an attempt to go unnoticed by Nikki.
"I do. I really fucking do."
"What?"
"I know," he lifted his head after letting it rest in his hand for a few moments, eyeing Vince. For a brief moment, all intoxicants had seemingly oozed straight from him, presenting a sober version of Nikki that Vince had not seen for a while.
"You know what?"
Pleading eyes met Vince's, almost begging for him to say the words so that Nikki didn't have to.
Taking a deep breath in, standing up with great difficulty, he grabbed the half-empty whiskey bottle from the glass table and held it to his lips.
"I know about Christine and Tommy," he took a quick pull, rubbing his mouth with the back of his right hand when the bottle left his lips. "I don't know what to do about it because Chris hasn't said anything yet, but I know. And, unless you already have, don't bother lecturing her. Just fuckin' leave me handle it."
"What the hell are you gonna do?"
Vince took a step backwards, flinching, at the sudden movement from Nikki. He ran a hand over his face, realizing that he had to make a choice.
"I already fuckin' told you. I don't know what to do about it, " he shrugged, "I can either corner the pair of them and spew out my feelings, letting them know just how much I fucking hate them for what they did, or I can just carry on as normal and wait for it to fizzle out."
"The fuck do you mean 'wait for it to fizzle out'?"
"Exactly what I said."
Snatching his suit jacket from the back of the couch, Nikki trod across the carpet, leaving Vince completely alone with an abundance of disgruntled thoughts. But he, himself, had only one thing on his mind.
His wife.
"Sixx!" A familiar voice exclaimed from the other end of the hallway as Nikki strode his way across the carpet, the dark figure growing more and more prominent with every askew step that he took.
"Hey, man, " he shot back, watching Robbin saunter towards him with a bottle of Jack, and a couple of Ziploc bags of a substance that he could only deduce as heroin and or possibly cocaine. "When did you get here?"
Robbin checked his watch, "like twenty minutes ago. I was looking for Chris 'cause I hear she's back on smack now," Nikki glared at him, "but I can't find her anywhere."
That makes two of us, he thought. Maybe I should go looking for her...or maybe Robbin will be of better company.
"Heather doesn't know where she's gotten to either," the blonde continued to chew his gum, insufferably loud, "I don't think anyone knows where your better half is, man."
Better half. Ha.
"She's probably just in our room, " he waved Robbin off as his mouth almost physically began to salivate.
"Oh. You wanna go check on her?" He asked, eagerly, clearly excited to see his favorite rockstar's wife. Nikki shook his head. "Dude, what's gotten into you? You're usually all over Chris whenever we see one another."
Where was he supposed to start?
Of course, he knew that explaining himself to Robbin wasn't mandatory. It was his issue and his alone, but he was one hell of a persistent bastard when he set his mind to it.
"She was upset yesterday, she didn't even want me to go down on her last night, so I'm just giving her some space," he lied and rubbed at his nose, almost as if the sight of cocaine was burning his nostrils.
"You sure you don't wanna look for her? I've got her favorite--"
Is he fucking her too? Why is he so eager to find my damn wife?
"--No. I'll go see her when we're done" he gestured to the baggies in his hands. Robbin simply nodded--though the confusion that spread across his features was fairly distinguished.
Instead of leading the blonde to his hotel room, knowing that he was right in assuming that Christine would've been there, Nikki ushered Robbin to the bathroom attached to one of the lounges.
Had Nikki known what irrational behavior his wife would display in the following moments, he definitely would have made an effort to traipse back to see her.
But he didn't. And that, among a fuck ton of other things he could've done differently, was something that played on his mind the entire span of his grueling downward trajectory.
Vince's eyes grew wide as he scoured the hallway, just expecting Christine to pop up out of nowhere. He made a beeline for his hotel room, hoping to find Sharise, desperate to get a clue as to where the half-cut brunette could've gotten to. But he came up blank.
His heart was throbbing in his chest, dreading the thought of Nikki finding her before he did. Little did he know, of course, the second that Sixx got his sights set on heroin, his wife was last priority--which had seemingly come to be a regular thing.
But then, as if by a stroke of magic, Chris appeared at the door of room 146. His heart rate quelled, an exaggerated, relieved breath escaped his lungs.
Her back to him as she tampered with the lock, trying to get the key into the hole despite her remarkably tipsy state, Christine hoped that she would open the door to find her husband on the other side, completely ready to spill her guts. But maybe him not being there was for the best.
"Hey, I need to talk to you--"
"--Fuck off, Vince," unbothered, she retorted. Her focus was wholly on trying to find the packet of cigarettes that she could've sworn had been placed atop of the vanity. "I could do without another lecture from you."
"I'm not here to lecture you, smartass," he put a hand out when she went to close the door in his face, offering a somewhat exhausted smile. She looked defeated.
Christine moved aside to let him in, watching as he, sadly, strode in with both hands stuffed deep within his pockets. He appeared to be rather contemplative.
"Are you okay--"
"--I'm fine," he cut her short, lowering and tilting his head as he continued, "are you? Have you talked to Nikki?"
"No," with a brow raised, she sat down atop of the bed, "why?"
"Because he was looking for you," a jittery tone caught her completely off guard.
Suspicion began to deplete her but she didn't want him to know that she was suddenly concerned about his shift in demeanor. She had guessed that, maybe, he had talked to Nikki already and whatever that conversation had entailed inspired his pursuit of her.
"Can you just spit it out? The ceremony is starting soon--"
"--He knows."
Those two words. The two words that, despite knowing she would hear eventually, she refused to believe were true. How could he know? There was no way.
"What?" She choked out, smiling because she couldn't quite come to terms with the idea of her husband finding out about her infidelity.
Vince got closer to Christine, not being sure if comforting her was the best way to go.
That's when she realized he was not trying to instill fear into her. Her heart began to plummet to the depths of her chest, hitting each nerve, battering her insides as it hit, what felt like, rock fucking bottom. She couldn't bear to hear any more.
"He knows about you and Tommy, and that's why I'm here. To tell you before he does--"
She shot from her space, stumbling to the bathroom. Her hair swiftly tucked into the back of her gown, she hunched over the toilet bowl, and let vomit flare from her mouth. With every involuntary wretch, Christine could feel tears spurt from her eyes, smearing mascara down her cheeks and onto the satin, leaving small puddles of misery in their wake.
Humiliation. Complete and utter humiliation.
She was humiliated because Nikki was, as suspected, aware of the blatant sin his wife had perpetrated, knowing the unavoidable consequences of her actions. She was also humiliated that Vince had gawked at her shivering frame as she puked her fucking guts up while sobbing uncontrollably over something that could have been readily avoided. But it wasn't. And the fact that it had happened on not only one, not two, but three different occasions, really showed him that it was more than just a "mistake."
Christine knew what she was doing. She always knew what she was doing.
"I know, " she rasped when his brows raised, heading straight for the suitcase that Nikki had left in the middle of the room, "I feel worse than I look, that's for fucking sure."
"Woah, woah, woah," he put his hands out when she unzipped the back of her dress, about to let it fall to the ground, "what're you doing? Don't strip in front of me."
"You have walked in on me showering, your eyes have bared witness to my pussy on several occasions, I'm pretty sure you watched Nikki fuck me in my kitchen, but you draw the line at me getting changed in front of you?"
"If Nikki--"
"--At this point, fuck Nikki, Vince," she continued to strip down to her underwear, grabbing a flouncy pink dress as she bent down. He didn't know what she was doing, but changing out of her bridesmaid's attire wasn't a good thing, surely.
"Christine..."
"I'm gonna go. Tell Heather I'm sick or something. Or tell her I have a family emergency--"
"--You don't have any family here in LA, Chris," completely beat, she sighed "what're you doing?"
Those long loose curls that Vince, and just about anybody else, would always say defined Christine, were tangled and dull--their shine now completely a thing of the past.
She sighed, letting tears spill over her lashes once again. There was no use in suppressing her agony.
"Leaving."
"What?"
Shaking her head, for what felt like the hundredth time, Christine felt her chest begin to tighten as her heart battered at an irrational pace.
"He's better off without me," Vince's eyes, in an instant, welled up upon getting a glimpse of the pain and sorrow that was starting to eat that woman from the inside out.
He knew that she was drunk and high and completely out of her mind, but he also knew that she was doing what she thought was best--even though it would, definitely, destroy her husband.
"Don't say that," he tried to reason with her, but his words failed him as his speech came out broken, "he isn't better off without you. You both need to just talk about this because running away from your problems isn't gonna solve anything--"
"--This isn't something that's gonna be solved with an 'I'm sorry' and a fucking blow job, Vince! I've hurt Nikki so much that he's written a song about murdering me! I think that says it all!"
"But what the fuck are you gonna do now, huh?! You gave everything up to be with him, Christine. You fell out with your family, your friends, you dropped out of college and then didn't end up pursuing a damn career because of Nikki," she gasped, about to cut him off, "don't tell me that it wasn't because of him. Everyone knows it was because you didn't plan on falling in love with him that you didn't end up going back. You've got nothing, Chris! If you walk out on Nikki now, you're not gonna have anything!"
"I don't care," she told him flatly, picking up all of the bits and bobs she placed on the dresser next to the bed, stuffing them into her purse. "I can figure something out. He just needs to forget about me and move on with someone else who won't fuck him over--"
"--But what about all the times that he fucked you over?" He began to plead, wiping harshly at his eyes because he knew that she was dead set on walking out of that hotel and never turning back.
"I hate him for everything that he did to me. I hate him for fucking Vanity right under my nose, I hate him for being an egotistical prick, I hate him for the way he has talked to and treated me, I hate him for the solitary reason that I love him so much I was willing to give up my whole entire livelihood just for him to fuck me over and enable my drug addiction!"
She spewed very single word without missing a beat, tears clouding her vision.
"So maybe I'm doing this for myself just as much as what I'm doing it for him."
Silence. The harsh lull was almost sinister. Vince was almost completely speechless.
"Where are you gonna go?" He asked, realizing that he wasn't going to be able to sway her. She was going.
With an extremely heavy heart, her frail pointers were sliding the wedding band from her finger, trembling viciously, weeping so harshly that no sound was being emitted.
She cleared her throat and held the ring close to her chest for a few moments, "I'll head straight to Beth and go from there."
"And what about cash?"
"I'm okay," Chris sent him a reassuring nod, "thank you. So much."
"For what?"
"For not straight up telling Nikki about all that I did, even though he's your brother and he comes first. And for being so kind to me this whole time," she beckoned him closer, running her hand underneath her eye. "I really love you, Vince. I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot all those years ago, but I just think I was so mean to you because I was jealous of you and Beth."
"Don't," he let his fingers tangle through her thick strands, pulling her closer to his body.
The signature Chanel scent that everybody tied to Chris, caused a calm, comfortable sensation to ooze through his body. He found himself smiling through an abundance of tears.
It was all happening too soon. He wasn't allowed enough time to collect his emotions, to get a sane enough grip on reality to be able to talk her out of quitting her marriage. Vince had to just let Christine go through with it.
"What're you doing with the ring?" He asked, noticing the way she was still clutching it as if her life depended on it.
"I was going to ask you...to give it back to him."
He could only imagine how this was going to kill Nikki.
He swallowed sharply, "is this goodbye?" Doe eyes, bloodshot and smeared with jet black liner, glanced up at him. "Chris, please don't go. I don't think Nikki is gonna be able to cope without you, darlin'."
Her head buried deeper against his chest, tears soaking through his shirt.
"He loves you so much, like, he's nauseatingly in love with you--"
"--Stop," she managed to choke out through tears, "please stop. This is hard enough as it is."
"You're not thinking straight," Vince blurted out, while soothingly running a hand up and down her back, "come on. Get your dress back on, fix your makeup and let's head back down--we can still make time, nobody will suspect a thing."
With a hopeful beam, though reddened eyes truly displayed his ineffable sadness, he hoped that she would do a full 360 and change her mind.
The embrace that she wished would last an entire lifetime and then some, came to a regretful halt the second she peeled herself away.
"I'm truly sorry that you're the only person that knows what I'm planning here," a short laugh did a poor job at disguising her crippling despair, "but I trust you, Vince."
He quirked a brow, "don't you trust everyone else?"
"Of course I do, " coolly, she conceded, "but it's different with you. If it were Tommy in this situation, he'd barricade me in this room and go get Nikki before I could make any rash decisions. If it were Mick, I would end up relenting and staying. But you, " her bottom lip began to quiver, "you're not gonna sit back and watch your brother get hurt by some slut that he should never have even set his sights on, let alone marry."
How the fuck am I supposed to answer that? He wondered. Puffing his chest, looking upwards to prevent that overly familiar stream of tears, Vince couldn't help but stay silent.
"I know that this is something I'll regret, because I already do. But, like those wise ass, old ladies say..."
Vince could virtually feel her anguish, chewing the side of his mouth, struggling to hold himself together.
"If you love someone, you've just got to set them free. And I love Nikki a lot, more than I ever knew possible, actually. So I need to do this."
"You don't..." he argued, again, weakly.
Christine had never seen him so dismal, not even when he and Beth were being yanked through the deepest shit with one another during their catastrophe of a marriage.
Maybe she and Nikki weren't that different to them after all. Drugs, lies, deceit, hatred, infidelity. The similarities were endless.
"Vince, do me a favor."
He cleared his throat, straightening himself out, "of course. Anything for you, Chris."
That familiar heartache, that she had started to feel when guilt overtook devotion, made it's presence known as she sucked in the deepest of breaths, hoping to hinder another breakdown. As expected, she failed dramatically.
"When he realizes that I'm gone, just tell him that I love him......That's all I need you to do."