Every Last Beat

by Nicole S. Goodin

  “I’ve never done this before,” I whisper back as he places soft kisses along my collar bone.

  He pauses and looks up at me. “Never?”

  He doesn’t seem shocked – maybe a bit surprised, like perhaps I’ve just confirmed a lucky guess.

  I shake my head no.

  No one has ever wanted me the way Rylan does. No man has ever got to know the real me like he has.

  “I’m broken goods.”

  I’m embarrassed that I’m still a virgin at twenty-five years old, but there’s also a small part of me that’s glad, I may not have known I was saving myself for him, but it sure feels that way now.

  I can’t think of a better man to share this first with.

  “We’re all a little bit damaged, Violet.” He looks right into my eyes as he speaks.

  I like that he doesn’t argue with me about it, or try to deny the obvious.

  This is one of the things I love the most about him, he doesn’t lie to me and he doesn’t try to make me feel better by filling me up with untruths. He simply reminds me that I’m not alone – that we all have our flaws, we all have a story… he reminds me to forget the rest.

  He kisses me on the skin just below my ear and the sensation is so sharp it feels like broken glass.

  I’ve never been kissed like this before.

  He wants me, in all the ways a man wants a woman. It’s pure desire and primal instincts that are driving him to me.

  I want this so badly I can hardly think straight, but I’m still afraid of what he’ll think when he sees every part of me. I feel like the shy little girl in the changing rooms at school all over again.

  My scars aren’t red and angry looking like they once were, they’ve healed and faded somewhat, but for him – seeing them for the first time, it’s bound to be a shock.

  He tugs on the hem of my shirt, pulling it from the band of the denim shorts I’m wearing.

  “Leave it on.” I can’t stop myself whispering.

  It’s my shield – my last line of defence, and if he takes that away, he’ll never be able to unsee what’s beneath it.

  He pauses and lets go of the fabric before tipping my chin up so I’m looking right at him.

  “You can’t hide from me.”

  “But—”

  He shakes his head. “There is nothing you need to hide from me, Violet, I see you.”

  He’s right… I know he’s right. I want this with him and I know I can’t stay hidden forever – not if I want this to work, and I do… more than I want anything else.

  I nod, just one small movement.

  Ever so slowly he reaches for my shirt again and one by one unfastens the buttons until it’s hanging open in the front.

  His eyes are no longer on my face, but on my body now, and the weight of his stare threatens to make my knees buckle.

  His strong hands slide the fabric off my shoulders and I watch as it falls to the floor and lands at my feet.

  I’ve never felt this entirely exposed to a person. I know full well I have been – rooms full of doctors have looked at my body in far less than what I’m wearing now, but this is different.

  He’s not a professional who is looking at me as a patient.

  He’s just a man who is looking at me as a woman.

  I gasp as his fingers run ever so gently over my scar.

  “This is what you were worried about?” His voice is raw, it sounds like sandpaper.

  I nod – I can’t speak. It’s taking everything I have just to breathe as he exposes more of my secrets one by one.

  “You really think I’d scare that easily?”

  He doesn’t wait for an answer; instead he leans in and kisses my collar bone again, before moving lower and kissing the very spot where the heart I was born with vacated my body.

  “Let me help put you back together, Violet.”

  They’re the exact words I need to hear in this moment.

  I almost feel stupid for worrying the way I did. I should have known that he wouldn’t run… that he wouldn’t care about something as superficial as the marks on my skin.

  “Rylan,” I whisper.

  “I’ll never leave,” he whispers back and I feel his lips move against me. “I might need you to put me back together too.”

  He hears my unspoken fears and soothes them instantly.

  I run my hand down his bare front until I reach the waistband of his jeans.

  I’m scared, so scared, I think I might be more afraid of doing this than I’ve ever been of anything that came before it, but I take that leap, because it’s not just some guy in front of me.

  It’s Rylan.

  I love him, and he loves me back – every last broken bit of me.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Rylan

  I can’t recall us having the conversation, but it seems something unspoken has passed between us this past month.

  I haven’t spent more than twelve hours away from Violet since the night she gave me another of her firsts.

  We’re joined now – bound in a way I can’t even begin to understand.

  I’m not the same man I was a few months ago. He’s still there, deep inside me, but he’s evolved somewhat.

  I no longer live and breathe my job – I still love what I do, but for the first time ever, I love something else more.

  I love her more.

  I love her more than I love anything else in my life.

  She makes my pulse speed up and time slow down.

  Our two separate paths have been diverted to flow alongside each other almost effortlessly.

  It seems too easy most of the time – we fit together so naturally that it almost seems too good to be true.

  We laugh and play, we watch movies and talk about books, we take Bear for walks and lie out under the stars, we discuss everything from politics to fan fiction theories and cook together nearly every day.

  I don’t have to worry about missing out on time with her because of my job – she’s more than comfortable adjusting to the long shifts and erratic callouts. When I work, Violet paints or volunteers and when we sleep we do it together.

  Painting, I’m beginning to learn, is Violet’s escape from the world.

  Sometimes my phone rings in the middle of the night, and when I return to her place, there’s a jar of dirty brushes sitting in the sink.

  I don’t know if she paints to fill the time that I’m gone, or if she paints because I’m gone.

  She’s never offered to show me her work, and I know her well enough to know that it’s not a slip of her mind.

  She’s not ready to show me yet and I can respect that for now.

  There’s things I’m not ready to share with her yet either – things like my sister.

  Every now and then something will happen and the pain of losing her hits me like a slap to the face.

  Today was one of those days.

  An old friend of Daisy’s – a nurse that had worked with her, came back from overseas this week. She didn’t do anything wrong, but she obviously didn’t get the memo that all my other colleagues did.

  She talked about Daisy, she laughed and reminisced about the good times they’d had together.

  I know that’s how it should be – that years after someone’s gone you should be able to talk about them, but it doesn’t seem to work that way for me.

  Where others seem to light up at an old memory, I feel like I’m being filled with lead, and I’m about to be dropped into dark, murky water with no way out.

  It’s moments like these that I feel most lost and alone. Only I’m not alone anymore.

  I’ve got Violet, and right now I need her more than I ever have.

  ***

  I arrive back to a sight that steals all of the breath from my lungs.

  Violet is sprawled on her couch, Bear on the floor next to her. She’s sketching in a book that I’ve never been allowed to look in and she’s dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a tank top – the type of top that
doesn’t cover the marks on her chest.

  I know her scars still bother her, but this small step where she’s chosen not to cover up feels like huge progress in my mission to assure her that I don’t see her for her struggles.

  As much as I want to celebrate this incredible milestone, I’m so emotionally spent that I don’t think I can manage anything more than to hold her close.

  She’ll make everything better just like she always does.

  She hears me come in and there’s already a smile on her lips before she even raises her gaze to meet mine.

  I’m not sure what she sees when she looks at me, but judging by the look on her face, it can’t be anything good.

  “Rylan.” She scrambles up off the couch and the normally treasured sketch pad falls to the ground with a thud.

  She doesn’t say another word until she’s in my arms.

  “What is it?”

  I want to tell her, I do, but I don’t know how. I can’t figure out how to make my mouth open so the words can come out.

  I try, over and over, but nothing happens, so I give up trying.

  Instead, I bury my face in her hair and just breathe. Each breath is more calming than the next and I find the tight coil inside my gut loosening with each fill of my lungs.

  She’s gripping me tight, like she can’t get close enough.

  I hoist her up and she clamps her legs around my waist, her arms are wrapped firmly around my neck, holding me as close to her as I possibly can be.

  When I’m here like this, with her in my arms, the thought of talking about my sister doesn’t seem so life shattering anymore – I can’t help but consider the possibility that I could do anything as long as Violet was right there with me.

  “Rylan?” she whispers after what feels like forever.

  “I’m okay…”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  As much as I want to tell her yes, I can’t right now, I’m dead on my feet and I know I’ll need every ounce of strength to share my story with her.

  “Could we just go to bed?”

  “If that’s what you need,” she replies softly.

  “I just need you.”

  “You’ve got me, Rylan.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Violet

  I clutch my chest and drag in a deep breath.

  “You scared me,” I tell him as I pull my ear buds out and hit pause on the playlist on my cell phone.

  I can’t work without music. I prefer it blaring over the sound system in the corner, but when I’m up here in the middle of the night, that’s not exactly possible.

  His intense blue eyes watch me carefully as a wide smile graces his full lips.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” His gaze shifts, and his apology is lost. “Are these yours?”

  I feel the blush colour my cheeks – I don’t make it a habit of showing people my work and he’s still no exception to the rule.

  Even Lucy, my best friend since we were in nappies, has never seen the entire collection of my work. I’ve shown her only two pieces, one of which she begged for until she wore me down and I agreed.

  That particular piece sits proudly on the wall in the entry to her and Emmett’s house, with a pinky promise from her that she’ll never spill the beans on where she got it.

  Rylan has never seen anything more from me than a doodle on a napkin and the ‘safe’ paintings my mum and dad have on their walls.

  “Yeah… they’re mine. I thought you’d be sleeping… I didn’t mean to wake you. Do you want to go back to bed?”

  “You didn’t wake me,” he murmurs as he slowly walks past me, his eyes studying one canvas before moving onto the next, ignoring my question about returning to the safety of my sheets.

  I normally don’t paint when he’s here, but ever since he came home broken, I haven’t slept much at all.

  It was a rookie error on my behalf – leaving myself exposed this way, and even though I don’t want to hide all of this from him forever, I’m not mentally prepared to have him in here right now.

  This room is filled with my work and as he slowly takes appraisal of each piece, it’s almost as though he’s stripping me bare of an item of clothing.

  These are my inner most thoughts and feelings – some of the images on these canvases are so raw and real they take me right back to the specific moment in time and the feelings hit me with such force it can literally knock me backwards.

  That’s why I keep it all up here, in the large attic, with a locked door.

  The light provided from the huge skylights makes it the perfect place for me to paint –it’s my happy place. But right now it feels more like a prison cell I can’t escape.

  Rylan’s gently flicking through the stack of canvases against the wall now.

  I suck in a ragged breath because I know exactly what he’s seeing.

  I haven’t laid eyes on those paintings in close to two years, but each and every one of them is burned into my memory for all eternity.

  Those are some of the hardest hitting works of art I’ve ever created.

  I’m paralysed, almost gasping for air as I wait for him to question me on them, for him to ask things I can’t answer.

  But he doesn’t.

  When he reaches the last one, he rubs forcefully with the ball of his hand at a spot on his chest and glances around at the collection I have displayed on the far wall.

  The relief I feel almost brings me to my knees.

  These I can talk about, mainly because they make little to no sense to me.

  He turns to face me for the first time in what feels like an eternity. He raises a dark brow at me. “What’s with all the flowers?”

  I shrug. “I’m not sure to be honest… I just started painting them one day, and I’ve never stopped.”

  “I like them,” he whispers, his voice thick with an emotion I can’t place.

  “Thank you.”

  I don’t tell him about the dream or vision, if you want to call it that, that I had a few years ago.

  I don’t tell him about the fields of daisies that everything important to me, including he himself was in.

  I don’t tell him that as soon as I was allowed home, I was back in front of a canvas, painting daisy after daisy, with no real idea why they were so important.

  I can’t tell him all of that. If I do, he’ll have questions, and I’ll end up telling him that he was there in my dreams – that I’ve been picturing him in my mind for nearly four years.

  I’m still not quite ready for that revelation yet.

  He strolls back over to me, leaving the other half of the room and the work in it safe from his intense stare.

  There’s a lot of memories over there too and a pair of blue eyes he was bound to recognise as his own, but I don’t feel relief knowing he didn’t see that particular painting, instead I still feel stripped bare as though he’s already seen everything.

  If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about him in these past two months, it’s that he misses nothing.

  His mind is sharp, his eyes are focused, and his soul is curious.

  He sees everything, even the things I don’t say or show… he sees them too.

  “Can we go for a walk?”

  I’m surprised by his request, given that it’s after midnight, but I’d give just about anything to be out of this room right now, so I nod eagerly, and when he holds out his hand to me, I take it.

  Chapter Fifty

  Rylan

  We’ve walked for four blocks in total silence.

  It’s just us and the moonlight – much like it was after our very first date.

  It’s ironic really, that we’ve found ourselves out here again, only this time we’re so far from strangers it’s almost laughable.

  She might not know everything there is to know about me yet, but right now, in this moment, I feel like I’ve seen every part of her soul.

  Of course, I knew Violet painted.

  I also knew
she liked to keep her work to herself.

  I’ve been dying to see even a glimpse of the magic she creates behind that door, but nothing could have possibly prepared me for what I saw tonight.

  I’m under no illusion that me viewing her work was anything other than terrifying for her, but I had to do it.

  There’s this invisible barrier between us that’s growing higher with each passing day we don’t talk about our secrets.

  On her side, it’s her heart, her scars, her insecurities, and who knows what else.

  On mine, it’s the secret I’m keeping from her, it’s my grief, my anger and my pain.

  But that’s about to change. Right now.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Her grip on my hand tightens and I feel terrible for my choice of wording.

  I can’t even imagine the things that might be going through her head right now, but instead of addressing all the things that I’m not holding back, I’m just going to come out with the thing that I have kept from her.

  “You know our blind date?” I question her, and I see her nod out of the corner of my eye. “I didn’t realise right away… but that wasn’t the first time I’d ever seen you.”

  She stops walking and pulls me to a stop with her.

  I’m expecting questions, confusion, and disbelief maybe… what I’m not expecting is for her to whisper the two words she does.

  “I know.”

  She’s looking down at her feet and I don’t like it. Violet is the embodiment of the saying ‘eyes are the windows to the soul’. Her eyes can conceal nothing, and I need to see them right now so I know we’re okay.

  I reach for her chin and tip it up so she can’t hide from me any longer.

  “You remember me?” I murmur. “From outside your hospital room?”

  She nods, and I see her eyes begin to well up. “I recognised you the minute I saw you.”

  Suddenly it all makes sense. The panic attack she had on our first date – it was because she recognised me as the man from outside her window.