She gasps, holding a hand over her lips. “Oh god,” she says, squeezing my hand even tighter.
“My parents died on the spot, but my sister…” my throat clogs up when I remember the moment as if it happened yesterday. “She had this piece of metal, right here—” I rub the side of my neck, a spit right under my ear. “She couldn’t breathe. There was so much blood. I was the only one that came out with no injuries, can you believe that? I was safe. What crock of shit is that?”
My eyes blur, thinking of my sister’s young face and her long hair coated in blood. “She looked at me, unable to speak. She tried. She kept trying to talk to me, but her throat was crushed. I held her hand and waited for help to arrive, but by the time they did, she had already died.”
Mary is crying, big tears wetting the sharp edges of her cheeks. “Knives, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” She throws her arms around my neck and buries her face in my shoulder. It takes a second for me to react, because I can’t remember the last time someone hugged me.
I wrap my arms around her, too, pulling her tight and enjoying the way she feels against me. I inhale her scent, getting lost in her comfort, and a tear falls, dripping down my cheek until it lands on her shoulder. I haven’t cried in a long time, but Mary brings me to my knees. She opens me up, and I think she always has. It’s one of the reasons why we fight so much. She makes me vulnerable.
I hate being vulnerable.
I hate… feeling. I’m not used to it. With Mary around, it’s like the walls I built around me crumble and welcome her home to heal me.
But I miss what my life could have been. I miss my family. I miss my best friend. I hate what my life turned into after my parents died, but now, my life isn’t so bad. It took too long to get here, though. Way too long, and I’ve pushed the pain away, locked it inside, thrown away the key, and lost hope that my beat-up heart can be anything other than rundown and tired.
Mary is breathing life into me, and it terrifies me more than death itself.
Death is easy.
And I think I’ve been waiting for it to come back around for me.
I’m not afraid of a lot of things. I love making people afraid of me, but emotions bring even the strongest men to their knees.
She pulls away and sits back down in her spot, sooner than I was ready to let go, but I don’t want to make her stay in my arms. I want her to want to be there. “I need a drink,” she says, taking the bottle and taking a gulp. “No one should have to experience that.”
“It didn’t stop there,” I say in a small whisper, hoping she doesn’t hear me, but at the same time, hoping she does. “Foster care sucked. I bounced around a lot. I wasn’t the kid that everyone liked. I was a loner, a weirdo, scrawny—”
“—You were scrawny? No way, I don’t believe that for a second.”
“Believe it. I was short too. And the damn butt to everyone’s joke. I ran away for a bit when I was thirteen. That’s when I learned to build fires.” I can’t believe I’m telling her this. No one knows this about me, but she makes me want to talk. She makes me want to heal. “Most of the foster parents I had, they were in it for the paycheck. They would have so many kids and all of us shared a room sometimes. We could only bathe once a week, eat certain times during the day, so I was skinny and smelled a lot of the time.”
“That should be illegal. The system shouldn’t allow that to happen.”
“System fails everyone all the time, but there was one good thing that came out of it.” I smile when I remember his face. “Mason. Reaper knows about Mason, but only because Mason hung around the club when we were teenagers. When he aged out of the system, he was going to prospect, but that never happened.”
“Why?”
“Because of me,” I admit, hanging my head. I deserve the shame and guilt to wash over me. “I wasn’t always fit. I wasn’t always six-foot-three. And there was this group of kids, three of them, and they loved to beat the hell out of me every chance they got. Mason, even though he was a foster kid, no one gave him shit. He was big for his age, strong, nearly looked like a man, and was only a year older than me. He was my protector. My brother, when I had no one else.”
Her hand slides over my thigh and squeezes, telling me that she’s here and listening. How long has it been since I talked to someone and they willingly listened? I can’t even remember.
“He was all I had, and at fifteen, that’s a big deal. Especially when it seemed like the entire world was against you. He tried to protect me all the time, but he couldn’t always be there, and I’d get the shit kicked out of me.”
“If they only saw you now…” she says, letting it be known that I’d be their worst fucking nightmare.
Rain continues to pound the tin roof, and I open the oven to shove another piece of the nightstand in there, along with hay, to keep the fire roaring. “I was walking home from school one day, and I decided to take a short cut. It was this old back road, I’m sure it’s still there, but I haven’t checked. I haven’t been able to go back. They called it Miscellaneous Way because that’s where people dumped anything and everything. If I had just gone the other way home, everything would have been fine, but I didn’t, so Mason came looking for me.” I let out a big exhale until I have no air left in my lungs and wrap my arms around her again and pull her close. Our knees touch, and her hands fall to my legs. It probably isn’t comfortable for her, but I need to be close to her. I fought it before by fighting with her, and I hope tonight gets us past it.
“I protected myself with a few old knives, stabbed one kid, and right as I was about to attack the others, Mason was there, saving me like he always did. Only this time, he didn’t use threats to scare off the kids. He had a gun, and he shot all of them. He told me to run, but I wanted to take responsibility, yet, he wouldn’t let me. He said, ‘always take responsibility for your actions,’ and the police came. I ran into a shed and watched as the officers drew their guns. When they asked him to drop the weapon, the barrel was pointed to them, and they fired.”
Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.
I can almost hear the ringing in my ears still.
“I watched him die and fall on the guys he killed. For me. It was always for me, and that pissed me off. Before he died, he told me to go to the biker bar we always passed by, and that’s where I met Reaper’s dad, who was the President, and Reaper was only a few years older than me. They’ve been my family ever since, but it still hurts like hell thinking about the family I’ve lost.”
Her hands lay on my chest. My heart thumps with the sad memories coursing through me and the way the warmth of her soaks into me, wrapping around the ache in my soul like the fire coming from the stove or a blanket.
I never thought sorrow could be thawed and warmed until it reached relief, but here we are. I lay my hand on top of hers and rub the top. I’m cut open, raw, and I feel weak.
A feeling I never wanted to feel again, but she’s here, and the weakness isn’t so bad when she’s touching me.
“That shouldn’t have happened to you,” she whispers, lifting her eyes from the middle of my chest to meet mine. She’s trying not to cry, but tears spill anyway. “Bad shit happens to everyone.”