by Elyse, Drew
Being out with Gwen was great.
She told me stories from college, about meeting Caroline, about a puppy that had come into the shelter that week who kept trying to bolt from the exam room and had a tendency to hide into the staff and volunteer’s bags if he got the chance. She talked animatedly as always and ate the same way.
Our food came, and it hadn’t taken much coaxing to get her to eat from both plates. I’d never been a sharer. Too much of my life had been every man for himself to want to share. With food, I’d only ever managed to do it with snacks, and even that went against my instinct. Sharing with Gwen hadn’t bothered me, though. It felt natural to let her get her fill.
It was as while the waiter was running my card that it happened. I don’t know what made me look their way. Maybe I could feel their eyes on us.
They were an older couple, seated a few tables away. As I watched, they each look at Gwen. No, not just looked. Stared. Then they turned back to each other, stealing glances her way as they talked with sneers pulling at their lips.
That was what she’d been talking about. Those people felt it was their right to look at her and judge her just because she had a scar she could have done nothing to avoid on her face.
I’d been at the receiving ends of looks like that, too many times to count. Nowadays, it was often because of my tattoos. I didn’t care, just ignored it. The backward, old-fashioned judgment of body art pissed me off, but that was their issue, not mine.
But this?
This was different.
I was ready to get up, to go tell them to mind their own goddamn business, when I felt Gwen’s hand settle on my fisted one. My attention snapped to her and she shook her head a bit.
“Just ignore it.”
So she’d noticed, too. That only infuriated me more.
“They shouldn’t—”
“I know, but you telling them off won’t change the way they look at the world. They’ll write it off as you being the asshole. Don’t let it ruin our evening.”
The sad look in her eyes told me, to some degree, they already had. I didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t want people like that to be out in the world casting their bullshit judgment on her.
“You know it’s not about you?”
The sadness didn’t leave even as she smiled at me. “I know.”
“Assholes like that, they dish it out for no reason. They see a beautiful woman like you and focus on whatever they find to be a flaw. They look at me and assume I’m a gangbanger because of my skin and my tattoos. They look at a hungry kid on the street and assume he’ll rob them instead of trying to help. It’s all about them and their fucked up beliefs. Not you.”
I saw it, the recognition of the weight of what I’d just said.
Oh yeah, I knew all about people like that. I’d been getting those sneers since I was that dirty kid on the street they swerved to avoid.
I kept my face neutral, waiting for her to drop it and confirm that she understood.
“I know, Park,” she whispered.
It wasn’t enough. Those pricks didn’t deserve their peaceful dinner when they’d brought that pall over ours, but her saying she knew it was all on them allowed me to drop it and not ruin our night any more.
Our waiter came back, returning my card and the receipt to sign. I scrawled out my signature and pocketed my wallet before I stood and offered Gwen my hand.
“Let’s go home, baby.”
She took it, and I walked out of that restaurant with fucking pride at having her on my arm.
Pride, and a burning in my gut that didn’t settle even when I glared at the fuckers as we passed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Park
“The fuck are you doing out here, you little shit?”
Crap. I was caught.
I thought I could sneak past, thought they’d all be high enough by now that they wouldn’t notice. I knew I shouldn’t have even tried, but I was so hungry. Saturday meant no school, so no lunch. I hadn’t eaten anything since my chicken tenders at lunch yesterday.
I would have waited until later, until the noise died down because they were all passed out, but I couldn’t. I felt light-headed, shaky. I needed food or I might pass out again. I couldn’t risk another concussion or anyone at the school catching onto it. Last time had been bad enough.
So I’d risked it.
And now I’d pay.
Mac got to his feet, demanding, “You hear me? The fuck you doing out here?”
I knew better than to not answer him. Still, I took a second to look around the dozen people in our living room. And there she was, removing the band around her arm while she kept the needle in.
“Answer me!”
“I… I needed a drink.” It wasn’t much better, but water was better than admitting to coming in to take some of the food he bought.
“Gave you access to the bathroom. The faucet not working?”
He wouldn’t care if it wasn’t.
“It is.”
He took a couple steps closer. “Then you got no reason to be out here, do you?”
My stomach clenched, the emptiness of it echoing throughout my body. But I said, “No.”
“No,” he agreed, coming closer still. I wanted to run. Every part of me was prepared to take off as fast as I could, but there was nowhere to go. Running only made things worse.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not yet, you’re not.”
The first blow came fast, cracking across my cheek. Then the second, that sent me to the floor. Two more, the pain exploding through my ribs.
She didn’t even look, just laid back while her only love made its way through her bloodstream.
Mac grabbed me, his hand clamping onto the back of my neck. My eye was already swelling, the other foggy with tears I wasn’t about to shed, no matter how much pain I was in.
“You’re thirsty?” He dragged me farther into the living room. “Have a fucking drink then.”
I had no choice but to swallow as he upended the whiskey bottle in my mouth. It burned and I choked, but he didn’t let up until I was coughing it up all over the floor. He shoved me down, making my head crack against the coffee table before I hit the floor, cough and panting and dizzy.
“Get over here, bitch.”
She was paying attention then. I heard the rustling of her jumping to his command. She had to be really lost in the fog of the drugs to not. He’d taught her that lesson.
I heard the clinking of a belt buckle being undone, and I winced. He was going to punish her for me stepping out of line. I didn’t like her, but I didn’t want him to whip her either.
“Don’t,” I rasped, but it didn’t carry over the chatter and music.
“You know what to do,” Mac instructed her.
I forced my eyes open, made myself focus. He was still sitting, but she wasn’t bracing to take his belt. She was pulling off her pants and climbing into his lap.
She was…
He grunted as she sat herself down, then looked at me, triumphant. I shut my eyes, but I couldn’t shut out the noise. Didn’t have the strength to move.
“She don’t even give a fuck you’re here,” he taunted.
I woke with a start, sweaty and nauseous. Realizing that Gwen was lying in front of me, right where she’d been every night for the last three weeks, I froze. Her breaths stayed deep and even. Once I was sure I had woken her, I carefully moved away and sat up.
I rubbed my palms into my eyes like they might erase the fact that I’d ever seen that shit.
Mac had been right. She didn’t give a fuck that I was there. Not just because he provided her drugs. Not because she was too high to understand. Because she just didn’t give a fuck about me. Period.
My own mother stood by and watched him beat me, then climbed on his dick while I was sprawled out right there, bleeding on the floor.
I’d been fifteen, and that was when I knew I had to get out, no matter what. Even if that meant. livin
g on the streets.
Why was this shit coming back up?
It was over. Done. I’d been out for years.
But I knew why it was surfacing.
Dropping my hands, I looked to the outline of Gwen, sleeping soundly beside me in the dark.
She wouldn’t let it go. She kept asking things, innocent-seeming things, but she knew what she was doing. It was a ploy to get me to talk, to spill the secrets of my past that I’d been avoiding with her since the beginning.
I didn’t want to be keeping things from her. I didn’t like the way her face fell when I shut down her lines of questioning because she was digging too close. But some things were buried for a reason, and they needed to stay that way.
I never fell back to sleep, so I was out of bed early. Well before Gwen woke. Even before Thaddeus could beg for his breakfast.
My second cup of coffee was down to the dregs when Gwen sleepily padded in. Her hair, as always, was a mess. Her eyes were only squinting open to see where she was going. Her face was a little puffy and had marks from creases in her pillowcase.
She still looked fucking gorgeous.
“You’re up early,” she commented, ending on a yawn.
I grabbed the mug I had out for her already, fixing it up. I’d been in my own head too much to hear her wake and have it ready for her, but I wasn’t going to pull that shit from last time and not make it for her because of my mood.
When it was ready, I held it out to her. She didn’t make anything of my lack of response, just came to me with her normal, but sleepy, smile and kissed the side of my jaw as she took the coffee. She stayed tight to my side as she sipped steadily until the whole cup was gone.
This had become our morning routine. Sometimes it started with me taking her early before she snoozed for a while, sometimes this was the start of it. Always it included me making her coffee, and her giving her thanks with a kiss and enjoying it close. Which meant my mornings always started good.
That morning, not even having her pressed up to me could shake the agitation from that memory popping back up.
Half asleep, she missed the tension. With the coffee and time upright waking her, I wasn’t so lucky.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
She eyed me. “Park, seriously. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
She straightened away from me, moving across the kitchen where she could see my face. “You know you can talk to me about anything.”
I knew she believed that. I also knew the truth that I could not.
“Know that,” I said anyway.
Her shoulders slumped. “But you won’t.”
I didn’t confirm what she already knew.
“I guess it’s useless to point out that it might help to get it out,” she said, dejected.
I didn’t bother confirming that, either.
Still slumped, she took her cup to the sink and rinsed it. Gwen was usually a two cup person. I knew she was looking to get some space from me. As much as that tore at me, as much as the whole defeated posture, she had ripped me apart, I didn’t try to stop her.
Instead, she did that of her own accord before she made it all the way out of the kitchen. She turned on the threshold, that despondence was mixed with worry. Regardless of the fact that I was the cause of her morning starting off terribly, she still wanted to help me fix mine.
The woman was too fucking good for me.
I wondered if the right thing to do was try to be the man worthy of her, or admit defeat and let her go when the time came for her to move onto a man that stood a chance of coming close.
She got a handle on what she wanted to say before she spoke. I watched, braced, but I still wasn’t ready.
“I’ve never been in love. I told you that,” she started. “But I think maybe, with you…” She let out a breath and shook her head before she forged on, leaving what she’s said open to the obvious conclusion that stole my breath. “I just don’t see how we can if you won’t even let me get to know you.”
With that parting shot, even if she hadn’t meant it as one, she turned and left, leaving me to feel lower than the fucking street trash I once was.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gwen
“Okay, spill. You’ve been off since you came in this morning.”
That was Caroline, ambushing me the first chance she got. We’d had meetings for most of the day, going over every part of operations from top to bottom. Throughout, I’d seen and felt her eyes on me. I’d known this was coming, even suspected that it would be the second we got back to our office.
I was right.
“Just had a rough morning.”
She gave me a flat look that said straight out that we both knew that wouldn’t cut it.
Maybe Park was wearing off on me.
I groaned, collapsing into my chair. I didn’t want to be that girl. The petty, passive-aggressive one, even if it was in my own head. Something had to give, and maybe she had a better idea what.
“Park won’t talk to me.”
Her brows came together. “What, like he’s giving you the silent treatment? How can you even tell?”
Normally, I might have laughed. Park was quiet, that was true. But he wasn’t with me, at least not as much. Except that morning, or any time his past came up, then I couldn’t get a thing out of him.
“No. I mean he won’t talk to me. We can chat, he’ll joke or tell me about work or whatever. He’ll listen to anything I tell him and ask questions and react. But he won’t tell me anything about his life before the last couple years. So far, I know that his dad wasn’t in the picture, his mom never talked to him about her family, and a sneaking suspicion that he might have been homeless at some point or at least close to. That’s it. From birth until he started apprenticing at Sailor’s Grave, that is the extent of what I know about the man I’ve been with for nearly a month.”
She grimaced, grabbing one of the extra chairs we had for people that came to speak to us and pulling it up. “Maybe Carson was right. You have to push if you want to get anywhere.”
I’d told her all about that our next day at work. Both because it freaked me out and in order to get her off of the topic of how Park was in bed.
“I’ve tried pushing. You know what happens when you push against a brick wall? Nothing. It doesn’t move, and you end up with your hands all torn up for trying.”
“What does that mean?” Her voice and posture had tightened up.
“Nothing like that,” I assured. “He doesn’t get aggressive at all. He just shuts down, stops responding. Sometimes he’ll just redirect things to safer topics, but sometimes he’ll stop answering until I give up.”
“Then don’t give up.”
Like it was that simple.
“How do I not when he doesn’t respond. Because that isn’t an exaggeration. It’s not about being evasive or talking without really saying anything. He will straight out not answer. Complete silence.”
“Then you push more,” she insisted, and I was barely repressing the urge to reach across the desk and shake her. “If this is important to you, and I know it is, then you don’t give in. He goes silent, you keep asking until he doesn’t have a choice but answer, or you tell him straight that communication is a deal-breaker for you.”
“I kind of already did that,” I admitted, spilling the whole story from that morning.
It didn’t say good things when she looked sad as I finished. “I think that’s pretty clear, so you’ve given him something to think on. All you can do is see if he takes it to heart.”
Deep down, I knew that already.
What terrified me was what might happen to my heart if he didn’t.
I was shutting down my computer for the day when the knock came to our office door. Caroline had already taken off, but I was dragging my feet about it. I called out to whoever was there, and Shawna, one of our volunteers, popped her head in.
“Gwen, you’ve got a visit
or.”
I held in a sigh, barely. I wanted to be done for the day. Although, I had to admit that going home didn’t hold a whole lot of appeal either.
“You can send them in. Thanks.”
A second later, the door opened all the way to reveal Park standing there. He looked…I wasn’t sure. Nervous, maybe. It was hard to put my finger on it. His face wasn’t giving away anything, just the same neutral expression he wore most of the time, but there was an energy about him that felt unsettled.
“Hey.”
Maybe it was sensing his nerves, but for some reason, I felt compelled to give him a small smile as I replied, “Hi.”
Neither of us spoke right away, but he took a moment to look around my office. He hadn’t been back here before, but I’d showed him a couple shoddy, cell phone pictures of the before and after of the makeover we gave it. I wondered what he made of seeing it in person.
“What’re you doing here?” I finally asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and I had to admit the outright apology was nice. A lot of people didn’t give those so easily. They’d go for ‘I’m sorry your feelings were hurt’ or some other evasive pseudo-apology that was at least half blaming the recipient. “I was a dick this morning, and you didn’t deserve that.”
He looked so tired. More so than he had when I’d left this morning. I wondered if it had been weighing on him all day. I didn’t know where we would go from here. He was obviously remorseful, but he hadn’t promised to fix things, either. It was like Caroline had said, all I could do was see what he would do next, but for right then, it was time to let go.
I got up, walking over to where he’d remained in the doorway, like he thought I might tell him to get out. When I reached him, I slid my arms around his waist and burrowed against his chest. He didn’t hesitate to wrap me up, rest his cheek against my head, and squeeze me like he was affirming I was really right there.
“Why come here?”
He understood that I mean rather than meeting me at home. “I don’t know. My last appointment had to cancel, so I was done a couple hours ago, and I was just waiting for you to be done. When I got in the car to go home, I ended up here instead.”