Exodus

by Stewart , Kate

  It’s here that I know I never will.

  Seconds after I destroy my wedding dress, reality sets in.

  I’ll never be free.

  As long as I dream, and as long as these dreams can destroy me, I’ll never be free.

  Studying the ruined dress in my hands, I bury my face in it to muffle my defeated cries.

  I could try to rationalize this act in a thousand ways but can only draw one conclusion.

  I’m mourning a future I can no longer allow myself to have.

  As long as I keep our shared secrets, as long as my questions go unanswered, as long as the heart I have keeps beating, the more I’ll lose myself inside my web of lies. Full of despair, I stare into space, my heart refusing to give me an inch of release. I don’t know how long I sit in the wake of my own destruction, but I get lost in between my dream and reality, intent on feeling every part of the aftermath.

  It’s the sound of the front door and the familiar call of my name that has me scrambling to get my ruined dress back in the plastic garment bag before tossing it into my closet. For years I’ve been rationalizing these dreams. For years I’ve denied my emotions, compartmentalized them, tucked them away while telling myself that perspective and release will eventually come. For years I’ve promised myself that rationalization and reasoning will one day allow me to make peace with my past and lead to some semblance of salvation.

  But it’s simply not the truth, and time has proven as much.

  And so, when my fiancé pushes open our bedroom door to see the wreckage of those empty and unfulfilled promises, I do the only thing I’m capable of, I stop lying to us both.

  Time doesn’t fly—at least it hasn’t for me. It ebbs and flows between the parts I want to remember and the minutes I would give anything to forget. The flow is tricky, especially between the past and present. I’ve got to tread carefully around it because I can get swept-up between the parts I romanticized and the brutal reality of what transpired. When I left Triple Falls, that was very much the case for me.

  It took some time for me to see just how wronged I’d been in my time here, and just how manipulated I was. A few years after I left, I got angry to the point I forced myself to face the excruciating truth.

  No matter how much they proclaimed to care for me, I was used by the men in my life in an inexcusable way.

  I should never have let them have so much power over me.

  I should have been stronger.

  I should have fought a lot harder for myself and for what I deserved.

  I shouldn’t have let them keep so many secrets from me.

  To this day, the woman in me still ridicules the girl I get glimpses of in my reflection.

  I resent that I still dream of them so often, dragging myself through our memories, which only aids in maintaining my self-made prison. I hate that in the waking hours, I’m a woman intelligent enough to rule my life in all areas with an iron fist, but when I dream of them, I’m too weak to bring myself to begrudge them for their collective crimes against me, the way I should.

  Anger should win, but it doesn’t. It never has.

  Most people mourn intending to move forward, but some part of me knows I grieve in my sleep to keep my memories close, and they come to me vividly, aiding in deconstructing the world and walls I try to resurrect day by day. But it’s a different world and has been since I left. Over the years, I fought hard to earn my self-respect back, while nightly forced to give in to the whims of my heart.

  A battle I fought since I left.

  A war I lost last night.

  So, today I’ll let myself go and ride the drift, let the flow consume me. I’ll live in the past, unpacking my memories trying carefully to not give absolution to those who don’t deserve it.

  But it’s the loss that stifles my progress. It’s always the loss.

  Because no matter how much I resent them at times, I was lucky in a way few get lucky.

  I was loved in a way few get loved.

  So, naturally, it forever changed me.

  Parking at the edge of town, I exit the car in the freezing wind, the clouds covering the day in grey, the gravel crunching beneath my booted feet as I make my way toward the entrance at the foot of a small hill.

  Though my time here is limited, I’ve purposely sabotaged my future to the point I’ll have zero direction once I leave. It was on the drive back to Triple Falls that I realized my course was always going to be reverse. Even with all the milestones I’ve accomplished, with all the living I’ve been forced to do, sadly, and deep down, I feel the best part of my life is already over. When I lived here years ago, I constantly dreamed of a future. My purpose here, now, is to suspend time and concentrate on then.

  All I have of them now are the remnants of our time together. Over time I’ve realized all that happened in those months I spent with them was enough to seize and lock my heart away. And it’s the battle between my temples that gnaws at me, my unyielding loyalty that refuses to let me forget while the rest of me begs to be set free.

  But it’s truth I seek, and I’m steps away from it now feeling the full weight of our collective mistakes as I enter the small cemetery, the creak of the waist-high iron gate making my presence known. A few steps into the secluded yard, I find him and kneel, pulling off my glove to trace the bold letters on the top of the heavy stone.

  Prince Déchu Fallen Prince

  It’s been over two thousand days since his departure, since he was stolen from us, from me, leaving an irreparable and permanent hole in my heart. I can still recall the curl of his dark lashes when I closed his eyes. I can still remember the weight of him in my lap as I cradled him to me, the feel of his lips when I kissed him goodbye. No matter his crimes against me, all I feel for him is love, longing, and gratitude.

  He died to protect me. He died because he loved me, but damn him for not knowing how hard it would be for me to try and live with it. His sacrifice has left me—more often than not—feeling unworthy of such a love. But love him I did. Wholly. For all that he was and the gift he gave me with his selfless sacrifice.

  If only I’d trusted in him enough to believe his love was the truth, he wouldn’t be here.

  Of all the mistakes I’ve made in my twenty-six years, the only one I can’t live with was being fearful of my protector the night I lost him.

  If only.

  Seeing his grave only makes that night more real, our conversation and his parting words more precious. He took sure steps toward his demise, his only request to spend a rainy day with me. A day I would give anything to have shared with him.

  “I wish you would have taken me with you,” I manage through a voice full of ache. “But, I guess, in a way, you took us all with you.”

  The image of him the first time we locked eyes flashes through my mind.

  “You terrified me,” I sniff, as my eyes water and begin to leak with the budding ache. “You were such a motherfucker.”

  When I met Dominic, he had barricaded himself behind his purpose, the brotherhood. Still, somehow, I managed to be the one lucky enough to find the undetectable space in his armor because he let me.

  “You are in.”

  His words from our last date. I can still hear them so clearly.

  Pressing my hand to my forehead, I do my best not to fall apart as I speak.

  “You left before I had a chance to tell you about the future I dreamt up for you. Maybe it had a little of my dreams mixed in with it too. Maybe it was a daydream for us, but it was a good one. It wasn’t a plan so much as it was a place. A place filled with music and laughter, books, and long kisses, and endless rainy days. It was a place where you didn’t have to hide your smile anymore.”

  If only.

  Cupping my mouth, I stare down at the stone as a soft sob escapes me.

  “I pray now, Dom. Often and for you. Sometimes I pray selfishly, but just for the chance to see your face in my dreams. You never let me see you, not fully. A hint of your profile here and
there, but it’s not enough,” I choke on the words, “but I keep trying. I keep chasing after you.” I’m convinced I haven’t seen him fully because I haven’t voiced the one thing I want so desperately to ask him for. And the hardest part, I know the answer is up to me.

  “Please, if you can, let me see you,” I choke up, a gut-wrenching cry bursting from me as I wipe the tears from my cheeks and kneel to press them into the freezing ground where he lies beneath the stone, permanently, a truth I’d give anything to change.

  I’d imagined none of it. That, I already knew, it’s the mere sight of his stone that makes it more real. I’d fought my way back to some semblance of sanity without an ounce of proof of what happened that night, and finally I have it, but it doesn’t comfort me. Instead, it’s an excruciating ache. One that will never leave me. I never got a chance to mourn him properly. Not the way I deserved to, not as the woman he loved and who loved him in return because everything became distorted before he was killed. But I am thankful for the minutes we spent together, even if they were precious and few.

  My eyes drift to the grave next to Dominic’s, and I address the woman who rests by his side, having joined him just months later.

  I swallow as I think of the fear in her eyes that night we met and wonder if when she died if she was afraid. “Tell me, Delphine, did you find the back door? Did your nephew open it for you?” The wind kicks up, and I shiver in my jacket, thinking for the first time in a while about my own mortality. I’d come face to face with it just before I left Triple Falls. I don’t fear much of anything anymore, and I’m determined to see my thousand dreams through.

  My eyes drift over the cluster of headstones.

  The whole of Tobias’s family rests here, and if I have any fear at all, it’s the thought of his mortality. That one day, he’ll take his place beside his family.

  I avert my gaze back to Dominic’s grave, and another rush of grief strikes me, and I tamp it down, refusing to let it consume me so soon. I can’t go into this grieving, or I won’t survive it.

  Not yet.

  “Repose en paix, mon amour, je reviendrai.” Rest, my love, I’ll be back again.

  Following the route home, I adjust my rearview as flashes of the day I fled come back in torturous waves.

  The gunfire, the smell of my fallen love’s blood, and the feel of it on my hands on the drive home.

  The adrenaline disappeared after the first hour or so, leaving my limbs aching before giving way to utter devastation. They were the most agonizing hours of my life.

  “You leave. And you never come back.”

  I left a war zone not knowing if the men I loved were alive, if they were hurt, if they blamed me, or if they’d forever hate me if they survived. But those damning orders made me feel as if I were the poison, the cause of all that had gone wrong.

  The details of that drive are still murky from one hour to the next. Once I got to Atlanta city limits, I stopped at a bustling gas station and turned down my visor to see Dominic’s blood smeared on the corner of my mouth. I found an old—inch full—water bottle left in my car, using my fingers to clean what I could from my face. I peered back at my reflection and saw bloodshot eyes and dark circles, my skin pale and clammy. When the bottle was empty, I raced inside the station, my hands tucked beneath my armpits as I kept my head down. I locked myself in the bathroom. Inside, I relieved my bladder before facing myself at the dirty sink, fully expecting to see what I felt. The only thing out of order was the stain on my hands, the blood of a man who pledged his love for me only minutes before he took his last breath. I turned my hands over and over, wanting to keep the stains, to keep the only part of him I had left, as sick and irrational as the thought was.

  Unrelenting tears dripped from my chin as I scrubbed the caked blood from beneath my fingernails, watching the tinged pink water go down the drain.

  When a gentle knock sounded a foot away, I quieted my cries and splashed cold water on my face. When I opened the door, I was greeted by a woman in a collared shirt and tennis skirt holding a little girl in a matching outfit. They’d smiled at me in greeting, and the shock of seeing them so neatly polished, so unassuming, their eyes alight with so much life, easy smiles on their faces let me know just how far down the rabbit hole I’d traveled. Instinctively I returned that smile, knowing it was a new mask. I remembered hating the feel of it, it didn’t fit, and from that day forward, I was stuck with it. That smile was the first lie I told after leaving Triple Falls.

  Cecelia Horner died that night, the totality of her naïve innocence eradicated along with all her silly and foolish dreams in a reality where she was made painfully aware that evil exists, lurking in the shadows just waiting to prey on innocents just like that little girl in the Polo. The girl I used to be.

  A reality where the wrong side often wins, where bullets are real, and the people you love can take their last breaths, and you could be the one to bear witness while their light goes out right in front of you.

  And I asked for it, to be a part of it all because I was too greedy loving men who continually warned me away, and I refused.

  Dominic died.

  For all the questions I asked, for all the begging I did, I got few answers. I got secrets and a story, both I would never be able to share. The punishment behind the knowledge was unbearable. I knew I’d have to use the mask every single day for the rest of my life because I could never let anyone see what’s behind it.

  I had to forget that girl existed.

  For endless hours I sat in my car on top of a parking garage overlooking the Atlanta skyline, a world away from the small town that changed everything I thought I knew about life and love. My phone clutched in my hand, all I could do was pray to a God I cursed just hours earlier for taking my dark angel. Prayed that Tyler would keep his word, prayed that the people that had become a part of me made it through the day, hearts beating, still breathing.

  The wait was unbearable and riddled with anxiety. Struck by nausea, I opened my door, spilling the contents of my stomach on the cement next to where I parked. Once the wave passed, I wiped my mouth and resumed staring at my cell phone, willing it to ring when I got a notification of an email from my father.

  Cecelia,

  I was delighted to have gotten your email yesterday that you’ve left early to prepare for the coming school year. I’m pleased to find you have enjoyed your time working at the plant. I’ll consider our agreement satisfied due to the good news and your dedication to further your education. Attached is the address and contact information for management concerning your new apartment in Athens. I do hope you see this gesture as intended with my congratulations. I will see to it that all your expenses are covered for the duration of your stay.

  Please keep me updated on your performance at school.

  Roman Horner

  CEO Horner Technologies

  Gesture as intended?

  I read the email over and over in disbelief. After, I searched my sent items to find it was a reply to an email sent from my account hours before I confronted Sean and Dominic about my tattoo. A response to an email I never sent.

  An email that gave me an alibi, placing me in Atlanta before a gunfight broke out in his home.

  Roman knew. He had to have known what was happening.

  Just like Tobias and Dominic knew Miami was coming.

  The clues started trickling in the more I x-rayed that night and started piecing them together.

  The first was Dominic’s sudden appearance moments after I got home, that along with the fact that his car was parked outside the clearing and mine had been moved to sit next to it, probably minutes after I pulled up and resumed packing.

  And I was always the last to know.

  That’s where some of my residual anger lies. If Dominic had only told me what was happening, if he had trusted me…but it was my reaction to him that had him handling me with kid gloves. But keeping me in the dark is what caused Dominic to make his fatal mistake—tossing h
is gun on the stairs, leaving him defenseless while Tobias quietly searched the house for the threat.

  Tobias must’ve been the one to send that email. I assumed that was one of the reasons why he never came to me as he promised. He was planning my exit strategy, giving me an alibi for my whereabouts in case things went south, in case the authorities got involved.

  It was Tyler’s strict instructions that hammered that point home. He’d given me cash so there would be no trail as to when I traveled. “You were never here.”

  Tobias was always a step ahead of me while keeping me in the dark.

  But other pieces perplexed me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make them fit, no matter how many times I flipped them and tried to push them together.

  Even if Tobias had unlimited resources to right the damage to Roman’s house from the wreckage, there’s no way Roman wouldn’t notice. Clearly, he’d played his part in covering it up, which enraged me to no end. Was he that intent on keeping his nose deceptively clean? He had to have known something. Had to. Matteo said Roman’s car was parked in the garage.

  But how?

  Or was a similar car used to lure Miami in?

  Either way, Roman must have known.

  The day I left was the day I knew they hadn’t lied about Roman Horner and his filthy business dealings. It was all the proof I needed to believe the man was as corrupt as they had portrayed him to be. His hands were just as bloody as far as I was concerned, but I was done with him before that night. I’d already written him off.