I turn quickly, my hand covering hers. “Gina,” I gasp. “You never told me that.”
“Well, of course not,” she scoffs. “You’ve lived it, Jameson. Why would I need to regale you with stories of such horror?”
“But still…” My mind races. “Is that why you knew to save me?”
“Yes, and no.” Her smile is soft, spreading the lines of age and experience in her cheeks. “Simon is how I could tell about your abuse, but Conrad Howells is how I knew to save you.”
I turn to her fully, sitting on my heels. Chin raised to look in her eyes, I implore, “Tell me everything.”
Gina laughs a little, setting the brush back in its place. “Simon and I met in high school…” she starts, her gaze distant. She recalls the story, from beginning to end, and I smile with her, cry with her, as if I’m experiencing it all right along with her.
Gina’s what if goes like this:
She was born and raised in Missouri, met her husband in high school, and did what so many barely-adults did back then. They got married right away. Simon worked, Gina took care of the house. Simon drank, and Gina took the brunt of his anger toward him having to work, and her doing nothing to contribute. Obviously, she’d never seen that side of Simon prior to marriage and living together, and even when she voiced her concerns to her parents, they didn’t believe her. When she pushed the issue, their advice was to “suck it up” because no one would love her or give her stability like Simon could. He was your typical abuser—a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
One night, after weeks of daily abuse, Gina awoke to Simon standing over her with a hammer. She’d finally had enough, and she ran. It was the first time she’d ever run from him. Barefoot and barely clothed, she made it all the way to her neighbor’s house, where she banged harshly on the door. She knew her neighbor couldn’t physically save her—she was an elderly woman who lived alone—but the man who answered wasn’t her neighbor. It was her neighbor’s grandson—an off-duty police officer who took one look at Gina and opened the door for her. He took her to the guest bedroom, where he’d clearly been sleeping, and told her to wait there while he retrieved his gun.
For hours, she sat on the edge of the stranger’s bed with her neighbor beside her, holding her hand and consoling her. She heard the yelling, the crashing of objects, saw the red and blue lights just outside the window.
When the grandson returned, the sun was almost up, the lights were gone, and the street was quiet again. He told her to go back to the house and gather her things because it was likely that Simon would spend a night in jail to “sleep it off” and return the next day. Back then, that was the punishment fit for the crime.
The off-duty officer took Gina to a hotel, paid for a week in advance, and then left.
The next day, he returned to check in on her.
The following day, he came back with food and coffee.
The day after that, he brought a deck of cards and some magazines. He admitted that day that he was only meant to be in town for one night. The night she came knocking on the door.
The next time Conrad Howells left that hotel room, it was with Gina by his side. She never saw Simon or her parents again. They moved in together to his home in Tennessee... the same home where we sit together now.
When Gina finishes telling me the story, she sits back in her recliner, a wistfulness in her eyes that brings on my own. “So you married Conrad and—”
“Well, no, I think I’m still technically married to Simon, wherever that evil soul is today—six feet under, I hope… Conrad did ask me to marry him, but…”
My eyes widen, and I lean in closer, completely enthralled by her every word. “But what?”
“Well, he died, sweetheart.”
My gasp is long, loud. “Gina!”
“Yep,” she says, nodding. “Two years after he saved me, he was killed in the line of duty.”
“Nooo!” I’m a sobbing mess again. “That’s a horrible story!”
Gina giggles to herself. “Well, you didn’t ask for a happy ending. You asked for my what if.”
I scoff. “What if the love of your life hadn’t died?”
“No.” She draws out the word. “What if I hadn’t chosen that specific night to finally run away? What if Conrad hadn’t been there at that exact time when I needed him? Then I never would’ve gotten to live the greatest two years of my life. Even if it was only two years.” She’s slow to stand, taking her empty teacup with her. “What if Holden is your Conrad, Jamie? The love of your life... and you get to be lucky enough to experience it twice in a lifetime?”
34
Jamie
Sometimes I wonder how things might have changed had Holden and I met under different circumstances.
Like, maybe we both happen to be at the same place at the same time, and our eyes lock from across the room, and the attraction to each other is immediate. And intense. So intense that we move closer, drawn to each other in ways neither of us understands.
That would be a story worth telling.
The first time I laid eyes on Holden, he was being dragged out of the principal’s office by his ear, courtesy of his mother. It was the day before our senior year of high school. I watched their exchange with open curiosity, and when he noticed, he winked.
Gross.
We didn’t exchange words until the following day when he accidentally bumped into me. I’m pretty sure the first words he heard out of my mouth were, “Who the fuck taught you to stand?”
Stellar first impressions, if you ask me.
I was a lonely teenage girl who’d unwittingly replaced my grief with anger, and he was cocky little shit.
That was almost six years ago, and it seems that not a lot has changed.
Holden opens the car door for me with a wicked smirk on his lips, and the first thing he says is, “I knew you’d show up.”
And I say, glaring at him as I get out of the car, “Yeah, well, you buy a girl a plane ticket, and she’s bound to feel obligated.”
As soon as I’m standing opposite him, I’m enveloped in his arms, wrapped in an embrace so strong he practically lifts me off the ground. I’m almost embarrassed by the loudness of my childish giggle. He loosens his hold, just slightly, when he says, “I’m kidding, by the way. You had me scared for a second.”
I crane my neck to look up at him, my palms flat on his stomach. “Scared of what?”
The driver hands Holden my luggage, and he takes it, saying a quick thank you before turning us toward his house. He keeps one arm around my shoulders as he leads us away, saying, “You never contacted me after I gave you the info, so I wasn’t sure how you felt about coming here.” He stops just outside the door and faces me. “I know it’s a long way to come for a first date.”
There’s an uncertainty in the way he watches me, the way he smiles—almost as if unsure of what to do next. “I’ll be right back,” he says, entering the house.
The second the door’s closed between us, I take my first full breath since we pulled into the driveway. I’m nervous and scared, and about a million other emotions I’m too afraid to show. In the days since Holden sent me the flight details, I’ve gone back and forth on my decision more times than I can count. But, in the end, I was only fooling myself. I always knew I’d be here.