My mind, as it always did in conversations such as this, flickered to Laurie. Even though years had passed, fresh agony ripped through my midsection with the memory of my friend being gone. I sucked in oxygen through the pain. “Pain is a recreational hazard in the job of life, Luke,” I said. “You’ll only be able to protect me from it if you’re willing to end my life.”
The words hung in the air bitterly, their truth polluting everything. Not that it was untainted. It had never been clean and fresh. Even when it began at five years old, the time in life where everyone was supposed to experience pure naivety, it was blackened, dirty. Gray. I was born into a gray world.
Luke had been holding a hard jaw while I spoke, it setting like marble the more I said.
“I know you were makin’ a point,” he gritted out, stalking toward me. “But don’t you dare make it with mention of your death at my fuckin’ hands. Ever. Again.” He was in front of me now, fury rippling behind him like some kind of cape.
He didn’t wait for me to reply. Didn’t seem like he wanted me to speak at all. “You’ve seen a lot of shit, Rosie. Ugly shit. The kind that slithers into the core of you, coils up and routinely clutches onto you, hurting you. Sometimes when you expect it to, other times when you’re unprepared, happy.” His gaze glittered, the words making my own blurry. “I know I can’t protect you from the thing that hurts you the most: yourself.” His hands framed my face. “But I’m gonna try so hard to distract from that, to give you so much sweet to hold onto that it drowns out the bitter.” His breath was hot and minty on my face. “And when I can’t do that, I’ll make sure you’ve got someone to share your pain with. But in no fucking way, figurative or literal, am I going to let any part of you die. Is that understood?”
I nodded. “Understood.”
He picked me up and I didn’t hesitate to wrap my legs around him, my sensitive core pressed to his hard length.
“Now I’m going to remind us both just how fucking alive we are,” he growled.
And he did.
Twice.
“Have you told anyone, babe?” Luke asked the ceiling.
“What? That you quite possibly just broke my vagina? Dude, it just happened. Gimme a second to tweet it to my fans,” I said, also to the ceiling.
It was two weeks after the big… whatever Luke fucking me on the floor and spewing out all our truth was.
He’d been over often.
In other words, every night.
Luke’s arms tightened around me. He did that often too. Squeezed me like he wasn’t quite sure I was real and needed to make sure I wouldn’t fade away into smoke. I knew it because I did that too.
“No, babe,” he said softly. “About what happened to you that day. That night. The one before you left.”
His words were soft. Their impact was not.
Dirt settled over my skin as the memory rushed into every cell of my body. I wanted to escape. Cover my nakedness so my skin didn’t touch Luke’s. I tried. Luke had clearly anticipated that. He didn’t let me go.
I chewed my lip. I really wanted to say something flippant and dismissive. Something strong. But I couldn’t. I was naked now, in every sense of the word. I didn’t have the energy to lie to Luke. I was using it all to lie to myself.
He waited, for me to get my shit together, to find something inside me to push the words out. “No, no I haven’t,” I choked out, barely above a whisper.
I expected him to reply immediately. To chastise me for bottling things up, not asking for help, all the clichés. He didn’t. He just let us lie there, tangled in each other, staring at the ceiling, staring at the past.
“Let’s say if Lucy, or Ashley or Polly went through something like that on their own,” he murmured. “How would you feel for them if they didn’t have the support you know they’d need?”
The question somehow wasn’t accusing or confrontational.
It hit the right spot, though.
He didn’t wait for me to answer. “I’m never going to completely understand what you went through, babe. I only know what I went through witnessing the aftermath. And that was the worst hell I’ve ever experienced. Knowing you went through something worse?” He shuddered. “I wish there was something to do to take that shit away. But there isn’t. Know there isn’t. I’m gonna love you. Be here. Let you deal with this in whatever way you can. I’m not forcing you to talk to me. I’m never going to force you to be a certain way around me. I do want you to think about talking to your girls, babe. Doesn’t have to be about us, though I would like that to be on the future cocktail agenda.”
He kissed my head. “I know your girls are your soul mates. Biggest compliment I’ll get, apart from knowin’ you love me, is you sharing us with them. When you’re ready. But this isn’t about me. This is about the girl who lives for her sisters, her family. Who makes herself up from those people. I know you’re not whole, keepin’ these big chunks of yourself from them. Want you whole, babe. Want to be the man who makes you that way, but I’m not stupid. I know that one person can’t make another whole. Not with you, at least. Your heart’s too big for that. I’ll settle for a corner. A large one.”
Tears streamed down my face and I couldn’t control them. I hadn’t cried, really cried, since that day they found Bex.
I was at the wharf.
It was the only place I could think of… after. After I’d seen Bex brought into the club.
Or more aptly, Bex’s body.
She was breathing.
But it was still her body.
Something important had been taken. You could tell by looking at the emptiness in her eyes. Her body was beaten, broken. Her spirit was all but ruined.
As was Lucky’s. The man who lit up the lives of so many people, reminded us all not to take life so seriously, was gone.
How could you stay inside your own optimism when the person you loved was raped? Beaten? Tortured? Taken from you. Despite being able to retrieve her, she was gone.
It was too soon to tell if she was coming back.
And I couldn’t handle it all. I was weak. But I couldn’t let my weakness show. I wouldn’t.
So I came to the place where I could be weak with only the ocean to witness it, to wash it away, like it had never happened.
Like always, he was there. When I was at my lowest, he was there to shield me from it. From the worst of it all. From the worst of myself.
He didn’t touch me at first.
Didn’t speak.
Just stood beside me, watching the wild ocean.
I wondered if he was wishing it would wash away all of the pain my family had to endure. That Bex had to endure.
Probably not.
He was practical. Practical men knew the frivolity of wishing.
It came out of nowhere. The wave. Not out there in the ocean, but in there, in me.
My feet just stopped holding me.
He caught me. Easily swept me into his embrace, like he’d been expecting it. And he held me while I clutched at his shirt and sobbed, broke down. He held me, kissed my head, murmuring everything and nothing at the same time.
And somehow, by doing that, he stopped my whole world from falling apart. So then I could help Bex put hers back together.