Beast: An Anthology

by Amanda Richardson

  Thunder rolled through the hospital walls, and shook the locks Lucas had sealed around himself years ago. This night, this storm, he’d thought it earlier, it was exactly like that night, and maybe he was supposed to confess his truth in the dark to a beautiful stranger. Maybe she was sent here to take his sin and absolve him so he could breathe, just fucking breathe one day without the ache of his loss and the flames on his skin. Maybe he was just tired of hiding, and maybe she was a safe bet, a person here today and gone tomorrow.

  The hallway fell completely quiet, and he thought, if only for a split second, he could hear the rapid beat of Eva’s pulse as she awaited his confession. She was sitting with her feet crossed below her, atop the jacket he’d loaned her like the gentlemen he’d once been, and she said, “Dr. Prince, we all have a history that’s slowly suffocating us, but we can only come up for air if we allow ourselves to swim.”

  Evangeline didn’t smile. It was as if she could sense that what he was about to tell her was something that could drown them both, and before he could stop himself, before he could leash the words with years of practice, he told this stranger his sin.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LUCAS SWALLOWED DEEPLY, his eyes fell on the ravaged skin of his arm, and Evangeline’s heart stopped. She didn’t know this man. She didn’t know if he liked cream in his coffee, or even sugar. She had no clue what his favorite color was, what kind of car he drove, or if he preferred reading books to watching television, but when he finally lifted his eyes to hers she was able to see it all. Able to see that he was, in fact, suffocating. She could see straight through the mask. She saw pain and fear, and love and hate. The disgust, the hope, and every little ounce of pride spilled over his dark lashes. He suffered, and so had she. They were the same. Something inside of her clicked into place, something that had always been hidden and quiet, awaiting a moment like this. Something so innately human and pure and real pulled her from the comfort of her side of the hallway. She moved to where Dr. Prince was sitting, his legs unfolded on the cold floor. His eyes widened as he watched her settle in beside him.

  “I’m responsible for the death of my family.” He choked on the last few words and without a second thought Eva placed her hand on his shoulder.

  He didn’t shrug away from her touch, but his slight shudder almost shook her resolve. She lowered her hand, let her fingers trail over the scars as she whispered, “I don’t believe you.”

  This time he pulled away, his voice filled with bitterness. “You don’t know me.”

  “Tell me,” was all she said.

  He exhaled a shaky breath, and his right arm fell to his side lightly resting in the seam between their outstretched legs. Her fingers itched to touch him, to soothe whatever anger churned and tormented him. She didn’t know him, not really, but she wanted to.

  “Tell me,” she repeated and boldly laced her fingers with his.

  His head turned quickly, and his gaze pinned her. She remained still, ready for the attack, ready for him to rip away from the hold. Instead, Lucas gripped her tighter, holding her as if he was falling, like she was the only thing able to anchor him to the present as his eyes closed. “Five years ago, I lost my fiancée and my parents in a car accident.”

  Evangeline pressed her lips together, holding back her gasp—her emotion. She watched his chest rise and fall with each strained breath until his eyes opened, and he looked at her, begging her for some sort of resolution.

  “That night… it was a lot like tonight. The weather… it was our rehearsal dinner. Rose and I were going to get married the next day.” Eva felt nauseous as he continued, “I’d had a few glasses of wine, nothing more than normal, but the roads were… and the ice… I lost control. One minute everyone was laughing, and then the next it was silent as the car careened off the road. It was surreal. I did everything I’d been taught. I pumped the brakes, but it was a blur. I’d been driving too fucking fast…” Eva realized she was squeezing his hand so tight there was no color left in his fingers. When she tried to release some of the tension, his hand clamped down, holding, almost crushing her palm to his. “We were talking about our future and wedding plans, laughing about my father’s inability to hold his own liquor when it all went to shit. I was supposed to be responsible, I was supposed to be sober.”

  Lucas’s voice began to rise as the tears trickled from Eva’s eyes.

  “The car was… it was an antique, my father loved old things, but when we hit that tree, not even the rain could put out the flames. I was trapped and forced to listen to them scream… I listened to them die, and I was helpless. I was useless… and when the flames finally came for me, everything had gone quiet again, and I knew they were gone… my life, my future was taken from me in less than five minutes. So when it was my time… I welcomed it. I needed the pain because it was all my fault.”

  “Lucas I-I’m so—”

  “Sorry?”

  She didn’t flinch at the interruption. But, she didn’t know what to say. What did you say to a person who had lost everything? No one had ever been able to say the right thing to her. So, instead, she shook her head before resting it on his shoulder. “How did you survive?”

  “I didn’t,” he said so softly she almost thought she’d imagined it.

  ****

  Lucas let go of her hand, leaving it to rest on her thigh. It was so small, appeared so fragile, and even though he hadn’t deserved the support she’d given him, he was glad for it. He was glad for her warmth. Her faint smell, the sweet fragrance of wildflowers, seemed to pull him from his nightmare.

  “I was lucky they said. When I woke up in the hospital, the next day, they told me I was fucking lucky.”

  “The burns?”

  “My chest, and the entirety of my right arm, all third-degree burns, but I was lucky because I lived, because I still had the use of my hands. I still got to be a doctor.” He couldn’t hide the animosity in his tone, the regret.

  She traced her fingers along his arm, and again, his heart hammered as the animal inside of him tried to claw its way out from under his skin. It felt wrong, but right at the same time. He was numb, but he could feel the heat of her fingertips. The repetitive trail she dusted up and down his forearm somehow calmed him.

  ”It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.

  He tamped down his anger and evened out his tone as he said, “I shouldn’t have been driving.”

  “Were you drunk?” Her brows knitted together. Skeptical.

  He searched her eyes for blame, but there was none, and it pissed him off. She should hate him, move back to her side of the hall but instead, she looked at him with empathy, empathy he didn’t deserve. “I wasn’t drunk, but—”

  “But… the weather was bad. If it was like tonight, I don’t think Mother Theresa would have made it through the streets. Sober or not, you are not to blame.”

  It wasn’t that simple. He’d lost everything and she was boiling the last five years down to a simple sentence, a lie. You are not to blame. The muscle in his jaw ached as he clenched his teeth together. This woman… this girl had no idea.

  “I was driving,” he shouted, close to completely losing his temper. Lucas stood. He needed the space, needed to think. “They died and I did nothing… nothing, to prevent it.”

  He began to pace the small hall, leaving her on the floor. He wouldn’t look at her, couldn’t see the judgment forming in her eyes. He barely heard the rustle of her clothing as she stood, but he sensed it before she touched him. Her small hand felt steady on his shoulder blade and stilled his movements. He refused to turn around, refused to face her as she said, “I’m sorry, I was just trying to—”

  “Don’t. There’s nothing you can say or do that will change anything.” Lucas spoke with venom before he let his head fall into his hands, and let the tears fall as he remembered the screams and how they’d gone silent. He had been trapped. The smoke prevented him from seeing Rose just mere feet from him in the passenger seat. He’d thanked God
every day for that small mercy, but he also cursed him for not letting him see her one last time.

  Evangeline dropped her hand from his back and the heat of her touch dissipated. A chill covered his skin as Eva’s sweet scent faded, as well.

  Her voice was distant. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be you, Lucas. But I know death, and I know the blame game.”

  The doctor finally turned, only to find Eva on the other side of the hall, her back against the wall, her eyes cast down and her shoulders pulled inward as she continued, “You feel sorry for yourself, you let yourself believe it’s all your fault. You allow the events to twist and corrode into what you think happened, until the pain becomes your oxygen, and self-imposed punishment is the only way you know how to survive.”

  Evangeline raised her head. Her cheeks were alabaster and stained with tears. Her lips trembled and something dark flashed behind her eyes. Loss, fear, and something more… something Dr. Prince couldn’t riddle out. It straightened her posture and hardened her gaze. He took a few steps toward her and she shook her head. “You have to know… you have to know deep down if you could’ve moved, if you hadn’t been trapped, you would’ve freed them from the wreckage. You know, somewhere in there…” She pointed to his chest. “That the weather spun those tires, took control, not the few glasses of wine you had with dinner. You know it, Dr. Prince, but you’d rather suffocate than face it.”

  Everything she said was true. He took another step closer, closing the space between them despite her wishes for him to stay away. Her wounds were starting to show and he wanted to pick away at the scab, just like she had done to him.

  “What about you?” His tone was quiet. A barely concealed storm swirled in his chest as he breathed her in. “What do you know about loss?”

  Eva’s entire body shivered beneath his stare. He was tired of feeling pain and anger. She’d stirred something inside of him, something cruel and feeling. He wanted to taste her emotion as it seeped from her eyes. He wanted her to bare it all for him like he’d done for her. He wanted to wipe away that look in her eyes that said she understood, that she knew what it was like to die every day.

  She knew nothing.

  Evangeline’s hand shook as she placed a strand of her hair behind her ear and said, “I know enough.”

  The doctor finally saw it then, the darkness in her eyes that mirrored his own, and his heart sank. It was easy to hate and assume the world had chosen him, only him, to swallow whole, but she was breaking right in front him. He brought his hand to her cheek, and when she leaned into the touch his stomach hollowed. The lump in his throat strangled him as he demanded the same of her as she did of him earlier, “Tell me.”

  She tilted her head back. The dark brown color of her eyes blurred behind the tears. “I wanted to survive it, I wanted to swim… but I wasn’t ready… so I moved here.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE AIR IN the room thinned as she tried desperately to breathe. His hand felt too familiar. His touch brought her to a time when things were easy, nights were cool, and crickets sang about love and summer heat. She closed her eyes letting her story form on her tongue.

  “Are you running?” he asked as he lowered his hand from her face.

  Eva’s eyes opened, a few tears trickled past her lashes as she watched the doctor lean against the wall. She lifted her fingertips to her cheek and traced where his touch had just been. She thought to herself that maybe she was just tired, but the way his eyes scanned her own, awaiting the rest of her tragedy, she wondered if this whole night had been planned by a power greater than the storm and the winds it wielded.

  “I’m hiding.” She exhaled and shook her head. “No, that’s not entirely true.” She walked over to where he stood and leaned against the wall, as well. They both avoided the others’ stare and opted for the cracked foundation of the floor. “My mother died before I was even two, a rare stomach cancer.” The doctor’s breath hitched but she continued, eyes fixed on the crack. “My father raised me, he did the best he could. We lived in Dover, a smallish town outside of Tampa, east of the beaches and far enough away from a real life as possible. My dad was a butcher, and instead of drowning his sorrows in liquor like his father had, he disappeared… inside himself.”

  Lucas lifted his head and she did the same. His brows pinched together as he said, “That sounds lonely.”

  “It was.” Evangeline pulled in a deep breath as her childhood flickered through her mind. Fifties music, tobacco, dusty driveways, screened doors, oak trees, and Spanish moss. The heat alone had been enough to render you breathless, and the humidity, she could still smell it. When she’d first relocated to Massachusetts in the summer, it was hard for her to sleep without the white noise of the cicadas. “I was so lonely it was easy to fall for the first guy to pay me any attention.” Lucas’s body tensed. “Grayson was everything a teenage girl thought she wanted. Tall, popular, sporty, attractive, and had enough swagger a girl could forget that maybe he was too good to be true. I’d thought he was sweet, at first. Sweet enough to notice the bookworm who seemed invisible to everyone else, and smart enough to know that his smile—his attention—wouldn’t go unnoticed on a girl like me. We were together for almost two years before he started to cut me down, first with words and then…”

  Her voice caught in her throat, and just like she’d done for him, Dr. Prince laced his fingers through hers as he said, his voice dangerously low, “He hurt you?”

  Evangeline nodded and the doctor’s body became completely rigid. “I should have left. I never thought I’d be one of those women, the kind who put up with that. But, Grayson was all I ever knew… for a very, very long time.” Lucas squeezed her hand.

  “What made you finally decide to leave?” he asked.

  It was most likely the guilt that had spread like a disease in her heart, but she thought she could see the questions in the doctor’s blue-green eyes. Questions she’d asked herself endlessly.

  Why would she stay with a guy like that? How could she let herself go through that? Why had she been so weak?

  “We were on again, off again for so many years,” Eva explained. “After a while you forget your own worth. And my father, he had no idea. I was good at covering the bruises, just as good as Grayson was about keeping up facades. My dad had grown to love Grayson. Grayson was smooth, you know? Always helping Dad around with the house, the yard, and at times, once he was older, he even helped pay the bills.” Eva’s throat narrowed, her ability to speak was hindered to almost a whisper. “Then my dad, he got sick, and my whole world bottomed out. Grayson kept pushing me to get married, he wanted Dad’s shop, wanted the house, wanted to put my father in a nursing home. I couldn’t do it. My father raised me on his own, and I wouldn’t abandon him. So I packed up the house, put it and the shop up for sale, and planned to move closer to the city, closer to better medical treatments. My dad’s colon cancer was aggressive, but H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center was supposed to be cutting-edge. I hoped the money we’d get from the sales could help with the cost. But…”

  She heard the doctor swallow down the truth. The truth she’d learned much sooner than she had anticipated.

  “When did he die?”

  “This past summer. Two days after Grayson almost put me in the hospital.”

  The memory tore through her. Eva’s heart pounded furiously, and her hands began to sweat. The pain, that night, after Grayson realized her plan, he’d come unglued. He told her she’d never leave him, that everything was his. He’d said he “put in the time” that he deserved the money she’d gotten from the shop and the house. He’d been delusional to ever think he was entitled to anything. Thankfully all she remembered of that night was the first hit. Everything after that had been silent… black… and cold.

  Lucas let go of her hand, and rested his own on her shoulder, gently turning her to face him. “Breathe, Eva.”

  She sucked in a ragged breath, once and then again. Lucas cupped her face again, wiping away the
deluge of tears that poured freely down her cheek.

  “Grayson went to jail, and I buried my father. I wanted to put as much distance between me and Dover, my old life, as possible. So I took the little I had, and headed north.”

  “You started over.” He sounded so sure, but the fissures in Eva’s heart split deeper, uneven. She’d never healed properly.

  “After all this time… I’m still hiding.”

  “What you did… it was very brave.” He framed her face with his hands and watched her for a few seconds.

  The quiet moment was intimate, and the comfort of his hands soothed her uneven pulse. They’d both ripped open their wounds tonight. There was no judgment in his eyes, and she knew hers reflected the same as his. The space between them lit and shimmered with unspoken words and feeling. The longer his eyes grazed her skin, the harder it was for her to remember to breathe. The pressure in her chest crowded her lungs. Lucas’s lips parted, and when he spoke, their breath, his essence mingled with hers. His eyes fell to her mouth, and she bit her bottom lip as he said, “I’m tired of feeling lost.”

  It was such a simple statement, but it filled her with so much hope. Each breath came faster than the next as the space between them dwindled. Eva’s eyes dipped to his lips, finding home in the shape of them. She imagined that they were soft and liked how his upper lip was fuller than the bottom. She noticed the strict set of his jaw, and the strength of his fingertips as they moved deeper into her hair.

  The way his eyes devoured her mouth gave her the will to say the words, “I’m tired of hiding.”

  He’d been a stranger before tonight, and yet, she found a piece of herself in the small, light green burst that surrounded his pupils. This man, whether he meant to or not, had begun to unravel her, thread by thread. There was no such thing as time, death, and pain. In this basement, with him, there was an easy answer, a healing confession. His nose grazed hers, and she held her breath. The perfect tension in her chest threatened to burst if she didn’t feel his lips right then. Right now. With casual grace, he swept his lips across her mouth once. Eva’s skin was a fuse, and even that brief touch had ignited what had been lost inside of her. She leaned in as he exhaled a shaky breath and pressed his lips to her damp cheek.