by Lena Fox
I knelt down beside Georgina. “I’ve got you.” I scooped her up, holding her close to me and wanting to take her from this place and erase the knowledge that this had ever happened, to go back in time to the beach and the sun and the happiness that felt so long ago.
Georgina gasped, “Watch out!”
I turned just in time to see a full beer can being swung at my head like a club. I dodged back, but it clipped my eyebrow, breaking the skin.
Georgina pushed herself out of my arms and onto her feet. She put herself between me and the man attacking us just as he swung again.
The blow hit the side of her head.
She crumpled. I reached for her, catching her as she fell.
No, NO.
The man had frozen above us, can in hand, as though shocked by the result of his actions.
I tried to rouse Georgina. She was completely passed out. But she was alive.
At least she wouldn’t have to see this.
I had barely any control of my body, or my emotions, but I could name the emotion I was feeling. Murderous.
I left Georgina on the floor, straightened myself back to full height, and glared at the remaining man from under eyebrows dripping in blood.
He scrambled back. I stalked across the room after him. My hands clenched into fists and released, then clenched again, as though champing at the bit.
“Who even are you, man? We were just having fun.”
I had no response but a feral growl.
“I … I’ll call the cops.” His eyes were wild.
Georgina groaned from behind me, drawing my attention, my heart, straight back to her.
It gave my target a chance to dash, and he ran for the other room.
I let him go.
On my way back to Georgina I spotted her purse on the floor near the couch and grabbed it, then lifted her too, cradling her into my arms, tucking her head under my chin.
I was glad the parking lot was empty as I carried her like that—apparently lifeless as blood dripped from my own forehead down my face—back to her car.
I rested her carefully down onto the passenger seat, checking over her scalp with my fingers. The blow hadn’t broken the skin, but a lump had formed where she’d been hit. I took the driver’s seat and squeezed the wheel like I was trying to wring blood from a stone.
Maybe calling the cops was the right idea. Those guys shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this.
But I knew how women in a position like Georgina’s were treated. I couldn’t put her in that situation. It would have to be her decision. And she still wasn’t conscious. I had to get her to a hospital.
I started the car, and she startled awake.
“He hit you,” was the first thing she said, staring at me with wide eyes.
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say anything, my voice lost in confusion and anger and relief.
She reached gingerly for the wound on the side of my head. I took her hand before she could touch it. “I’m fine. Head wounds bleed a lot—that’s all. It’s not that bad.”
Her face scrunched in on itself. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Do you want me to call the police for you?”
She seemed confused for a moment, guilt in her features clearly confusing my meaning. Her words were tired and slurred. “No. It was my fault. I just want to go home.”
“It wasn’t …” My hands squeezed the wheel tighter. The car sat idling, still and directionless. “I was taking you to the hospital.”
“No, no hospital. I can’t be in hospital again.” She looked as scared as she had when she lay on the filthy floor beneath two men. “I’m fine. Really. Barely a headache.”
She was lying. “I’m not leaving you alone tonight.”
“I can’t—”
“No, you’re coming home with me. And if you start hurling, it’s straight to the ER.” My mates back home and I had had a rough enough childhood to know the symptoms of concussion.
Her mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything. She lay against the car door, her head pressed to the cool glass of the window.
We said nothing else on the drive back home. But she was here, with me, and safe now.
I wondered though, with Georgina, if anything would ever be safe. Or if this was life—a constant series of challenges and hardships. How could I ever protect her from it, or protect myself, my heart, from whatever lay ahead?
I didn’t have any answers. I couldn’t see the future, except for one sure thing.
I wanted Georgina to be in that future, for as long as possible, no matter what.
Chapter Nineteen
Georgina
I dipped in and out of a tossing and turning slumber, tainted by sickening dreams. Rick stood over me, his dick hanging exposed. The head was swollen, the shaft engorged with blood, and a heavy vein ran along the side, pulsing with a kind of terrifying life.
“I bought you drinks,” he said in a mosquito-like whine. “You owe me.”
I tried to run but got caught in a giant web. A man in a white coat skittered to me along a sticky strand, telling me to relax, that everything would be fine. Austin stood below me, jacking off furiously while the doctor jabbed me with giant needles that turned into other dark and horrifically unknowable things under my skin.
Each time my eyes peeled open in fear, Blake was there, sitting on the side of the bed, watching me, brushing back my hair from where it clung to my sweaty forehead.
Finally, my stomach stopped roiling and my mind cleared.
Then the reality of the night before flooded in. Shame struck me. So did horror—how could I have done that? What if Blake hadn’t showed up?
He saved me.
What the hell did he see in me? I was a wreck, and I was wrecking him.
I could have gotten him killed.
Just like Julie. It was my fault. I was death. I was poison. I could have killed the man I loved.
I hated myself for endangering him like that, for not even considering that he would come after me, that I was risking him with my behavior as well as myself. Those two guys could have killed Blake. They could have had guns. They could have called the cops on us both. I could imagine dozens of different endings to the night that were so much worse than where we were.
Why did he come after me?
Of course he came after me. He’s Blake.
I lay there thinking all of this with my eyes closed, unwilling to open them and face the real world. But I knew every moment I stayed there, Blake was sitting guard over me, losing his sleep to keep me safe.
My eyelids burned with the effort of opening. Blake was the first thing that came into focus. He sat hunched over, elbows on knees, face in hands, hair hanging in golden strands like a curtain around them. He wore only track pants, and even in the dim light, the sight of his bare chest and shoulders was something so beautiful I wanted to cry.
He looked like he’d fallen asleep. I moved slowly, quietly, both for him and my aching body. I stood up, and my head throbbed. I reached tentatively for the place that hurt. An egg had formed there, but it was already smaller than it was last night. I pressed at it and hissed in pain.
Blake’s eyes flew open and he looked up at me.
He didn’t have to say anything. It was all over his face. I had hurt him. I had hurt him so badly.
My voice was a static hiss and pop. “I have to go.”
“Your car is out the front.”
My head gave off a few more sickly thumps as I tried to bend over to reach my shoes. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care.” I risked a look at his face and wished I hadn’t. He had grown hard, cold, and it was my fault. Before I could think of anything to say, he spoke again. “That stupid stunt you pulled could have ended a lot more badly than it did, you know.”
“I know.” My face flamed. “I didn’t mean for you to have to come and rescue me.”
Blake just shook his head. His eyes were swollen from lack of sle
ep, his features still blurred, almost smudgy. “Did you even consider that they could rape you? Or kill you? Do you ever, even once, stop to think about yourself? Your safety, I mean. Your life, not your stupid selfish list. Those guys were scum, and what pisses me off the most is that you somehow think they are all you deserve, that you deserve to be treated like that. I am so done with this, Georgina. Do you hear me?”
I winced away from his anger. I’d finally pushed him too far. I had gotten what I wanted, what I thought I deserved—his hatred. Him no longer wanting me.
I was ready to dig my own grave, and cry in that hole until death took me.
I tried to walk away but he stood in front of me.
I had never seen him this angry before. I stood there, to hear him out and take each stinging blow. Because that was what I deserved.
I knew he was right about those two guys. They would have raped me. They wouldn’t have even seen it as rape. I had offered them something, and they would have taken me up on that offer, even if I had changed my mind. I’d invited the worst to happen to me as though it was inevitable. Maybe it was never about completing the List. It was about making this life seem so terrible and cruel that the threat of cancer and death paled in comparison.
And it would have been terrible, being with those men.
To them I had been just a body. I had treated Blake the same way.
I was no better than those two assholes from last night.
That was a rude awakening. I prepared myself for the worst, waiting for Blake to lash me with words harsher than my own thoughts.
Blake’s face softened. “Do you even know why I came after you?”
His question confused me, and I didn’t have an answer. I shook my head.
“I came after you because you do deserve more. Because you should want more. Because I love you.”
Tears raced down my face. Blake pulled me to him, to his chest, where I could feel his racing heart through his warm skin.
I wanted to tell him too. I wanted to tell him everything—how I felt, how I feared.
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe I could deserve someone like Blake, that I could deserve his love. But I could only cry, and cry, for everything that had happened last night, and every moment since I found that damned lump.
“I want to break something,” I blubbered into his chest.
“Other than my heart?”
I thumped a fist softly against his chest.
“Come with me.” He held me as we went downstairs. He passed me a box of tissues then disappeared into a spare room, rattling around until he came back out with a cricket bat. “Let’s go out to the backyard.”
Outside, the sky shone with the shimmery pale blue of morning, too early for the sun to have brought warmth to the world yet. It was still hiding somewhere unseen.
Blake handed me the bat. I raised it like a weapon, my knuckles white around the handle. I looked for a target. I couldn’t spot the gnome, probably cowering from me in the untidy lawn. One of the trees caught my eye though.
It looked almost dead, its trunk gray and riddled with rot. Its roots were mostly above ground, and a long black streak showed on one side where it had been burnt. Had lightning struck it, or something more mundane? The leaves were overly large, spotted, and turning—not the spectacular reds and golds of the leaves of the trees around it, but a sickly brownish-yellow. It looked as though it was suffering.
I took off at a dead run, the bat over my head, grass rushing against my ankles. I brought my weapon down on the tree so hard that a shudder ran all the way up into my arms. The pain just made me angrier. I screamed and yanked the bat back before striking again.
The tree crackled and crunched, and dried rotten bark shattered away to reveal a ghastly white underbelly. The morning birds had fallen silent but my voice only grew stronger. I hit the tree again, swearing a blue streak, making up words when I ran out of known ones to hurl at the tree, the sky, and any gods that existed. I smashed dry branches off, splintering them with screeching blows.
I fell to my knees in front of that dying tree. The dirt and grass was soft under my knees.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” My words coughed out between sobs.
Blake knelt down next to me, put a hand on mine. “You don’t need to apologize to the tree.”
I wasn’t. I couldn’t speak any more. I wrapped my arms around Blake, wailing.
Crickets began their songs again nearby, and the lights went on in the neighbor’s yard.
“Shut up over there, you damn degenerates!” The old man next door had apparently had enough of us. Blake scooped up the sobbing mess I’d become and carried me back into the living room.
He put me on my feet, holding my hands, keeping me steady. I took deep, calming breaths. His hands felt so perfect holding mine. I still felt the urge to run from him, pull away. Instead I tried … just staying. It was one of the scariest things I’d ever done. Just holding his hand, lingering there, letting myself have that.
I cleared my throat. “I am sorry about your tree.”
Blake shrugged. “Did it help?”
I breathed out slowly. A calmness had followed my violent outburst. “Yeah. It helped. Thank you.”
He brought my hand to his mouth and gave it a light kiss.
I stuttered, averting my eyes. “Sorry for making your neighbor yell at us.”
“Nah, he’s already got it in for me. Probably because I nicked his garden gnome.”
I surprised myself by smiling. “You stole that poor old man’s garden gnome?”
“It brought itself home so I don’t think it really counts.”
“What?”
“There’s this garden gnome that moves all by itself. I swear it does, and it gives me shifty looks. I pinched the creepy-assed thing a few times and ditched it, but it just keeps coming back.”
“No wonder he was calling us degenerates.”
“Well, that, and the number of times he’s managed to catch me without clothes on. Honestly, I don’t think he’s ever seen me fully dressed. He came over one day when I was just out of the shower and since I had no clean towels I answered the door with nothing but a pillow case wrapped around my waist. Come to think of it, that’s when the gnome began to give me shifty looks. He and the old bloke probably talk.”
Laughter filled my mouth, stretched my chest open, and made my belly ache. It was the kind that makes everything fade for a moment.
“You need to learn how to take better care of your house and your relationship with your neighbors,” I said.
He pulled me closer to him. “You need to learn how to take better care of yourself.”
I put a hand on his shoulder, feeling his body heat, and I imagined what it would be like when I died, when the heat lifted away layer by layer until only an endless cold remained. Tears came back but I held them in.
I had never had to deal with so many emotions all at once: pain, fear, laughter, guilt, love. When I was fifteen and going through treatment, I’d been a child, really. Everyone else felt things for me. I had to keep my brave face on for my dad, for the kids at school, and even for the doctors sometimes. There had never been time to feel anything. At fifteen, death was such an abstract thing, it barely filtered in. I knew what it meant but not really. Now that I had lived a little, now that I had met someone I loved enough to not only live for, but wanted to create a future and life with, there was nothing at all abstract about it.
I started crying again, and when Blake reached for me again, I crumpled into him.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I lied to you. I’m such a coward,” I sobbed.
“What are you talking about?”
I could barely force words out, and they emerged as a husky whisper. “I lied to you about my results, saying I had the all clear. I don’t.”
Blake tensed, waiting, breathless.
“I didn’t have the results yet. I still don’t. The hospital called yesterday, but I’m not ready.
How can I go in there and face that? Because if I do have cancer again, how do I face what that means? Knowing the treatment might not work?”
“You’d prefer to just ignore it and risk dying sooner?” There wasn’t any anger in his voice, only honest, tired curiosity.
“People who jump from burning buildings don’t believe they’ll survive the fall. They just don’t want to burn.”
Blake held me by the shoulders, and placed his forehead down on mine.
It wasn’t just the treatment I was scared of. It was as though I believed treatment meant death. It wasn’t only the cancer that had halted my life at fifteen. The treatment and everything that went along with it had saved me, removed the cancer from my body, but it had taken so much from me as well. I knew I should be grateful that I had been saved, but I was scared, and my fear had been driving my every thought, my every action. My body had gone into fight-or-flight mode, and I’d been flying away from life faster than a peregrine falcon all the while trying to convince myself I was running to life, that I was living and being brave with that stupid, sexy list.
I saw my purse on the coffee table. I separated myself from Blake, picked it up, and pulled the little black journal out of it.
That list. I glared at it, sighed, then tore the page free from the notebook.
I ripped it in half, then half again, smaller and smaller until it was nothing but confetti. I threw it in the air and watched it drift down like snow around us, settling onto the old couch and the stop-sign coffee table.
“All done with?” Blake asked, his tone guarded.
“Done. All done.”
He walked up behind me, wrapping his arms around me, and kissing my neck. “Forget about that list. Forget about the results, for now. Let’s just be, just live, for a while.”
“We’re not over? You’re not done with me?”
“Are you serious? How many times do we have to go over this?”
“I lied to you. I’ve been horrible. I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done. I’m a mess and I’m trying to be stronger, but I can’t promise you I won’t hurt you again. How can you want that?”
He turned me around to face him. “Every life is just made of moments. Ups and downs. Pain and pleasure. No one can guarantee a happy ending. Yeah, you hurt me, but I can understand why. I know how fear can control you.”