Conflict

by M. S. Willis

  I listened attentively as he continued his explanation. “I asked you about him…me…fuck.” He was becoming flustered as he spoke. “I asked you about what you remembered because I wanted to know how you felt about me then. It was wrong and selfish of me to do, but I just had to know.”

  It still hadn’t sunk in that I was sitting here with Buddy, with the person I had been pining for since I was a child. The entire situation felt surreal. “Buddy had blonde hair…” I stopped and studied his eyes.

  Oh my god.

  His eyes were the same crystal blue that I remembered. I’ve spent so much time in the past few months staring into a set of eyes that I should have recognized instantly. My body jerked from the shock and it became hard to breath. My head pounded from the rushing blood and my eyes burned with unshed tears. The shock had completely overtaken me and I couldn’t make sense of the sudden revelation.

  “My hair darkened as I got older, Paige. I’m the same person you remember, I’m just that person in adult form.”

  I was being torn apart by the conflicting emotions racing through my head. I wanted to throw my arms around him and ball my eyes out with tears of joy for having found him, but at the same time I was so angry because he lied to me. His cryptic message from earlier suddenly made sense. Of course, he couldn’t be mad about the fact that I lied to him, he’d been lying to me all along.

  I began to push up from the chair and Daemon moved to prevent me from getting up. I glared down at him as I said, “Please let me up. I need to move around and think. You’ve been lying to me this whole time! That is so fucked up, Daemon. How could you do that to me?!” Daemon moved and I shot up from the chair.

  “Paige, we both have lied.”

  I turned to face him and pointed my finger in his face. “No! That is not fair. You lied about your entire identity. I lied about what I was doing today. There is a HUGE fucking difference between those lies and you know it! Do not even try to deny it!”

  Daemon’s face went blank and I knew I had touched on a nerve. His entire demeanor became more lethal and predatory. “You lied about more than your day, Paige. You also lied about the fact that you were risking your life!”

  I started pacing the floor, but stopped when one question suddenly came to mind. I turned on my heel to face Daemon when I asked, “Why didn’t you come back?”

  His body froze and his gaze remained trained to a spot behind me. I turned to look and found that Daemon was staring at his favorite painting. I looked back and was startled by the intensity of Daemon’s eyes. His stare was almost palpable and my heart rate quickened.

  “Paige, maybe we should call it a night and pick this back up in the morning….”

  My voice grew louder to interrupt him. “Why didn’t you come back, Daemon?“

  He let out a resigned sigh and took a step towards me. My muscles tensed up as he approached and he refrained from reaching out to touch me. “It’s not what you think, Paige. I want to tell you everything, but you need to calm down before we talk.”

  “Please, Daemon. That question has been bothering me for fourteen years. Please, just tell me why you didn’t come back. All the other crap doesn’t matter right now. All I want to know is the reason you didn’t keep the promise we made to each other.” My voice was cracking from the sobs I was trying to prevent from escaping.

  His voice was so soft that I barely heard him when he responded. “I did.”

  My brows furrowed in confusion. “What?! I think I misheard you. What did you just say?”

  His eyes flicked to the floor and back to me. He cleared his throat before saying, “I did. I came back. But before I could talk to you, I was stopped.”

  He came back. All these years that I thought he’d forgotten me, I was wrong. He came back like he promised. Relief washed over me as a smile started to break out on my face. That smile faltered when I fully processed what he’d just said to me. “When did you come back?”

  “About a year after I ran away from foster care.”

  Daemon must have noticed that I was calming down because he reached out to lightly run a fingertip down my arm. This was the first physical contact we’d had since he’d returned home and my body reacted as it always had. Except this time, my mind and my body agreed. This was Buddy standing in front of me. The only boy that I ever loved. Tears began pouring from my eyes once again and I was annoyed at how easily they escaped. I looked up through my tear soaked lashes into the eyes of Daemon…of Buddy…and I was overtaken by the disbelief in this sudden turn of events. My knees buckled and as I collapsed to the floor, Daemon reached out and attempted to catch me but sank down with me to the ground. We sat there for who knows how long, just staring at each other. Almost of their own accord, my arms reached around his shoulders and I pulled him to me into the strongest embrace I could manage. His large arms came around me and he was gentle as he pulled me back against him.

  I felt his jaw move along my shoulder as he said, “I’ve loved you since I met you, Paige. I never forgot about you in all the years that we were apart. I always wanted to return to find you. Often I would fantasize about coming back to steal you away from everything, for it to be just you and me. But it wasn’t until I saw you again that I truly fell in love with you.” He pulled out of the embrace so he could look at me.

  “You were standing in the backyard behind The Center and the sunlight danced along your hair. Your face was angled up into the light and you looked so beautiful, so serene. When my eyes took in the woman that you were growing up to be, I knew that I would never stop loving you.”

  Daemon made a point to look up at his favorite painting. “You were the mystical woman in the field, and I was hopelessly lost after seeing you again.” He sighed and looked back into my eyes.

  “When I was kept from talking to you, it broke my heart, but I understood. I had to grow up, to learn things about life and myself, and I’m thankful that maturity was forced upon me. I had every intention to return to you once more, but then…you found me first. That night on the speaker, I was instantly attracted to you as you walked out into the pit. When you were almost crushed, I was actually relieved that I had a reason to grab you. I stared at you the entire time we sat on that speaker and those sassy little words of yours continually played through my head. I couldn’t understand why you were so captivating to me. Women did not affect me that way, there was never any emotion with any woman that I’d been around. But then, when I watched you get down and I saw the tattoo, I knew exactly why I was so drawn to you. When you verified who you were, I knew that fate had given you back to me; that fate meant for us to be together.”

  He grew quiet and his confession ran through my mind over and over again. His words caused pain, but at the same time, intense joy. My tears dropped from my face onto my lap. I was so confused about how all of this could be real, but I no longer doubted that I’d finally found my best friend, my only love. I ran his story through my head so many times as we sat there holding each other and questions began flooding my mind.

  “You came to The Center?”

  Daemon nodded his head “yes”, but averted his eyes.

  I was shocked to hear that he had come to The Center and hadn’t been able to talk to me. But then, something occurred to me. I pulled away from him so I could look him in the eyes when I asked, “What do you mean you were stopped? Who stopped you?”

  It took Daemon several seconds to answer. His jaw ticked beneath his cheek and I searched his face as I waited for a response. His hesitancy to tell me had me worried and I asked him again. “Who stopped you, Daemon?”

  He let out a long slow breath before looking back into my eyes.

  “Your parents.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The ground felt like it had dropped out from below me. My mind could not wrap itself around the words just spoken by Daemon. I couldn’t fathom why or how it was even possible. My parents? They’ve never lied to me, never done anything that could ever hurt me. I wanted to
call Daemon a liar, to tell him that there was no way the only two people I have ever trusted would have lied to me. It wasn’t in them to lie. Especially, to lie about something like this. The shock ravished my system and I broke free from Daemon. I scooted my body back so I could lean against the wall before falling completely to the floor.

  My voice cracked with emotion as I looked to Daemon and begged him to tell me he was lying. His eyes were forlorn and pained as he shook his head in response to my pleas. The type of pain that overtook my body was so much more than anything I had ever experienced. It saturated every cell within me and twisted itself within my soul. Tears did not flow from this pain because every single part of my body was frozen in response to the trauma. To say I was stunned, or shocked, or betrayed did not begin to describe the emotions that assaulted by body. Daemon’s confession rocked my reality, morphing and then tearing apart the basic building blocks upon which I understood the life I had lived.

  “I need to know what happened, Daemon. My parents wouldn’t have done something like that. They know how important you are to me. They knew I was waiting for you to return. They wouldn’t have done that!” My body suddenly released itself from its frozen state and, like a deluge, tears poured from my eyes. I was helpless to stop the violent sobs that shook every part of me. My thoughts raced in an effort to formulate a feasible explanation for what Daemon was claiming.

  My head shook in protest. “It’s not possible, Daemon. My parents looked for you, they tried to adopt you. They wouldn’t have sent you away. I don’t fucking understand!”

  Daemon scooted closer to me and took me in his lap. I buried my head into his shoulder and fought the urge to scream. I was taken prisoner to anger, grief, betrayal, and disbelief, all at once. My muscles quivered under the force of the warring emotions.

  Speaking in a hushed tone, Daemon tried to sooth me and calm me down. His hand stroked along my hair as he said, “Damsel. There are things you need to understand. I know you’re upset, but everything that happened was for the best. We’re together now, we would have been together regardless. I had every intention of finding you when it was the right time. But as usual, you decided to do things your way and found me first.” He let out a weak laugh and pulled me closer to him. I could feel his chest rumble as he continued talking. “Tomorrow we will go to your parents’ place. We can all sit down and talk about this.”

  I needed to talk to my parents. But, not with Daemon.

  This conversation had to take place in private. The feelings I was experiencing were not something that directly involved Daemon. They were a result of a tie being severed, the only anchor I had to the life I knew. A deep sense of loss assaulted me as I lost the only two people that I never had a reason to doubt.

  “I need to go to my parents’ house, Daemon. I need to go now and I need to go alone.”

  “No, Paige.” His response was instantaneous. He had no intention of letting me go to do what I needed to do.

  “Daemon, please. I’ll take my bike and I’ll come straight back here after I talk to them, but I need to go.” I was pleading with him to understand.

  He physically tensed underneath me as I begged. “Paige, no, damn it. Chris is still out there and even if he wasn’t, you do not need to be driving in the condition you are in.”

  But that was exactly what I needed. The speed and collision with the air were the perfect outlets for me to release the pent up emotions ravaging my system.

  I went to stand up and Daemon’s arms tightened around me. “Daemon. I know you are worried, but this isn’t negotiable. I’m going to take my bike and go see my parents. I’ll drive carefully, but I have to do this. The ride will help calm me so I can think before I talk to them. If you are worried about Chris, than you can walk me down to the garage and wait until I’m gone. I’ll call you when I return so you can wait in the garage to walk me back up. I don’t care. But this is not something I can put off. I need to go and I need to go now.”

  I looked up into Daemon’s blue eyes and saw a deep-seated pain within them. “Damsel…”

  “Please, Daemon. Trust me on this.”

  Daemon’s arms finally released me and I stood up from the ground. The muscles in my legs ached from having been in a crouched position and I stretched them as I walked to retrieve my keys from Daemon’s room. I walked over to his bureau and felt bad when I remembered having gone through his things. Even though my discovery brought about the very thing I’ve wanted for the majority of my life and delivered Buddy back to me, the violation of Daemon’s privacy was not right. I groaned as I moved to replace the items in the drawer but couldn’t help myself in picking up the stack of photos. I flipped through the stack and stood stunned when I found a worn photo of Daemon…Buddy…with his mother. He was around the same age in the photo as he was when I met him. His bright blues eyes shown in the sunlight and his hair was so blonde, it looked white. His mother kneeled down beside him and had her arms wrapped around his little waist. Both of their smiles were so bright and genuine; my heart broke to know what ended up happening to them. I was so absorbed in the image that Daemon took me by surprise as he walked up behind me. He reached around and took the photo from my hand. He looked so lost as he stared at the image and I could see several emotions playing over his features.

  “This is the only thing I have left of her. I carried this photograph and the necklace with me through every foster home, through my time on the streets, through…everything. They were and still are my most valued possessions.” He moved to stand next to me and he placed the photograph back in the drawer. He then placed the necklace back in the drawer and closed it.

  He picked up my keys from the top of the bureau and held them out to me. I opened my hands to accept the keys, but before dropping them in my palm, he said, “Please be careful driving out there, Paige. I don’t like the idea of you going alone and I wouldn’t be allowing this if I didn’t understand how important it is for you to work this out with them.”

  The keys hit my palm and I closed my hand around them. With my other hand I reached up and grabbed the back of Daemon’s neck. I pulled him down to me and placed a kiss on his lips. “I promise you, I’ll be careful. I’ll call you before I leave so that you can wait for me to return.”

  Daemon nodded once in response to my promise and turned to walk into his closet. He walked back out a moment later holding a large, hoodie sweatshirt in his hands. He crossed the room to stand in front of me and held up the shirt. “I want you to wear this for the ride. Storms have been threatening all day and it’s cold outside as a result. If you get caught in the rain, I want you to pull over and call me so that I can get you. I do not want you hanging around anywhere long by yourself. You are being watched, Damsel, and you need to remember that.”

  He lifted the shirt and placed it over my head. I pulled my arms through the sleeves and laughed when I saw how the material swallowed me. I remembered having thrown my phone in the kitchen earlier and inwardly kicked myself for having done so. “There might be a problem with me calling, Daemon. My phone is currently in a million pieces on your kitchen floor.” I looked up at him sheepishly while confessing.

  Daemon sighed and walked over to bureau on the other side of his room. He opened a drawer and pulled out a small phone. He moved to hand the phone to me. “This is a spare phone I keep around for my employees’ use when they need it. You can use it tonight and we will go out tomorrow to replace your phone.” He hesitated for a beat and asked, “Do I even want to know how your phone got broken?”

  “No.”

  He chuckled. “I didn’t think so.”

  Daemon placed his hand on the small of my back and walked me out of the room. As we entered the living room, I held up my finger to indicate that I needed a minute. I ran back to my bedroom and grabbed my backpack and then returned to the living room. Daemon was standing at the entrance of the kitchen looking down at the remnants of my phone. He looked up at me as I entered the room and shook his head in ex
asperation.

  Taking my hand and leading me to the front door, he said, “Damsel, starting tomorrow, we are going to work on getting your emotions under control. That poor phone didn’t stand a chance.”

  I laughed softly and said, “That had nothing to do with my emotions, Daemon. The phone was looking at me funny. It had it coming.”

  Daemon sighed and hit the button to call the elevator. We traveled down to the garage and Daemon walked in front of me to open up the bay doors. The door clinked loudly and echoed throughout the silent garage. My eyes widened at the sight of my bike, once again in perfect condition. My helmet sat on top of my seat and I hurried to get over to it.

  My focus on the bike was broken when Daemon said, “I’ve been coming down here to turn the engine on every couple of days. Your bike should run with no problem.” He moved up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. His mouth brushed against my ear as he said, “Please remember to drive carefully, Paige. If something happens to you, I’m not sure I will be able to stand it. You carry both of our lives in your hands, whether you realize it or not.”

  I nodded in response and was moved by his statement. My heart warmed at his words but quickly dropped again when I remembered where I was going and what I was going to do. I hoped that there was a perfectly good explanation for what happened and that, somehow, my parents would be absolved of the deceit they had committed against me.

  I climbed on the bike and started the engine. It purred underneath me and I revved the engine to warm it up before riding. I turned to look at Daemon one more time before I pulled the helmet on and kicked the bike into gear.

  ~

  The drive to The Center was exhilarating. It had been months since I’d experienced the feel of freedom from riding and crashing against the wind. I was driving at a higher rate of speed than I should have been as I wound along the roads through the state parks. Daemon’s request that I drive safely played through my head and I grudgingly slowed down.