by Leddy Harper
“I see men, like me, who’ve lived through war, only to be left on the streets, begging for food and shelter.” He dropped his hands and stared right at me, piercing me with his intense gaze. “I see people walking past them, their noses stuck in their own worlds, turning a blind eye to the very people who have risked their lives to give them theirs.”
I tried to swallow, but it became stuck around the large knot lodged in my throat, and my eyes prickled with the tears caused by his vivid depiction of war.
“Fights and war are happening here, on our turf. Only it’s not between enemies. It’s our own people, killing each other—shooting up schools and video taping fights.” He paused, and the complete despair apparent in his tortured eyes gutted me. “There is nothing beautiful in this world. Nothing worth getting a second chance for.”
No longer worried, I moved toward him, getting as close as I could without scaring him away. “That’s when you have to be strong enough to see past it and find the good. There is plenty to live for. Plenty of things to find importance in. You only have to open your eyes to find them. You may have lost a leg, but you didn’t lose your sight. You didn’t lose the ability to see what’s right in front of you. Don’t close your eyes, Nolan. Don’t waste your second chance. You’re not guaranteed a third.”
He grabbed the sides of my face and dropped his forehead to mine. His eyes were closed. He refused to show me the emotions that riddled him, but I could hear it the second he spoke. “Then show me, Novah.”
My nerves ramped up the closer I got to the condominiums at Cape Harbor. When Nolan suggested I go to his place for dinner, I had been elated. Hope filled me at the prospect of spending time with him, getting to know the man he’d turned out to be. It took an hour and thirty minutes for the nerves to hit me, but even then, they were giddy. After hearing him recount personal, horrific things to me, all I wanted to do was heal him. Take away his pain. Remove the darkness from his life and fill it with peace. And I knew just how to do it. But once I got in my car, heading for his condo, apprehension began to set in.
I worried he wouldn’t see the same things I did.
I feared he’d be too broken.
All I could picture was the boy behind the camera, taking pictures of flowers and nature. And it troubled me to think of him being too far from reach. Too far gone to bring back.
But I had to stay positive. I had to push the negativity out of my head…otherwise, he’d see it. He’d pick up on my hesitation, my doubts, my concerns, and I’d lose my opportunity. He’d given me this chance, and I would not mess it up.
I stoned my expression once I pulled into the parking lot, stepped out of the car, and opened the umbrella to shield me from the heavy downpour I found myself in.
With a bottle of wine in hand, I ran into the fancy lobby, hoping to spare my shoes from the puddles forming on the pavement.
Nolan said he’d meet me at the elevators, so I stood against the wall, the marble cool against my back, and waited for him to come down. My mind drifted to how we’d gone from fighting to dinner in one evening.
“Then show me, Novah.” The way his forehead pressed to mine, the tips of our noses touching, sent a wave of peace through my veins. My heart slowed to a bearable beat, and my breathing evened out, oxygen no longer rushing in and out of my lungs.
I grabbed his forearms and kept his hands trapped in place on my face. “Give me a chance, Nolan. Stop arguing with me. Stop fighting me. Let me show you what I see when I look at you. When I’m around you. When you touch me. Let me show you that.”
He flexed his hands against my head. His thumbs dug into my cheeks and his fingertips burrowed into the back of my neck. His breathing turned harder, labored, and the heat rushed across my parted lips.
A war had been waged in his mind, and I prepared to go to battle with him…for him.
“I’m not who you see,” I said quietly, hoping I had enough strength left in me to get it all out. “I am not the person you’ve accused me of being, much like you are not the person I’ve pictured since you left me all those years ago. We are not the same. And I want to know the man beneath the scars. The one who walks around with all that pain. I want to know him. And I want him to know me, too.”
“Why?”
The desperation and pain in his tone gutted me, nearly impairing me on the spot. But I couldn’t give in. Not when I had him so vulnerable and open. “Because I’ve spent fifteen years hating him. And I don’t want to hate him anymore.”
“Then come to my place tonight and have dinner with me. If you really want to know me, there is no better place than my home.”
A loud bell sounded and the reflective elevator doors opened before me, bringing me back to the present. The butterflies and nerves took hold the moment his face came into view. A smile spread across my lips, pulling my cheeks tight, but quickly fell when his expression remained unchanged—tight and thin.
“I didn’t think you would come.” His rich eyes bore into mine and caused me to shift on my feet before taking a step toward him.
“I told you I would.” I waited in silence as he turned a key on the panel and pressed one of three buttons: PH. The other two were for the lobby and garage, and it suddenly hit me we were in a private elevator, leading to his private room. “Is this elevator only for you?”
“Me and the two other suites on the top floor. I don’t like to be bothered.”
“I can see that.” It was a poor attempt at a joke, one he didn’t find funny. After moments of watching him stare at the closed doors, I began to fidget in place. “I brought wine.”
A short nod was all he gave me in response, and I suddenly became extremely insecure. I no longer wanted to be there, wishing instead I had turned around and gone back home.
The doors opened and Nolan stepped out into a long, softly lit hallway. He didn’t bother to see if I followed, only stepped out and began walking, leaving me to timidly trail behind him with caution.
His place was on the far end of the hall, large double doors on an otherwise empty wall. I lagged behind by about ten steps, wary to follow him further. But then he opened the door and stepped through, not once glancing behind him. Without a word, he left the door wide open, but kept his back to me.
I wanted to turn and run. Flee from the twisted emotions running through me. My fingers itched to touch him, to pull him close and hear the sound of his breath as it left his lips. Feel the pounding of his heart beneath the palm of my hand. I sought to find the flecks of gold shine through the intense green as his eyes searched mine, as if sifting through my soul for the pieces that were missing in his. Yet my heart yearned to shut down, protect itself from the inevitable break. My defenses wished to reconstruct the wall that had been indestructible prior to his sudden reappearance in my life. I fought the need to protect myself against the desire to protect him.
It came down to him or me.
My heart or his.
And then he turned around. Standing just beyond his doorway, he pivoted on his heels to face me for the first time since the elevator doors opened in the lobby. His gaze caught mine, and my choice had been made.
He won.
My feet moved and my heart followed. I didn’t get two steps inside before the air stilled in my lungs, causing them to burn in my chest. It left me with the sensation of being scorched by a thousand fires. The entire place seemed lifeless, empty, void of existence. Walls were bare, the furniture seemed stiff and unused, the floors gleamed as if they had never been walked on. The silence in the room grew stifling, suffocating, and hot.
“Did you just move in?” I asked as my eyes fell on the emptiness around me.
“Six months ago.”
“And you haven’t unpacked yet?”
He didn’t answer, so I turned to look at him, hoping he hadn’t heard me. But his eyes scanned his living space; his brow furrowed as if deep in thought. Then his gaze met mine as his shoulders pulled up and then dropped. “I’ve unpacked.”
“Where’s all your stuff?”
Nolan took the wet umbrella from my hand and placed it outside the door before closing it. “This is all my stuff, Novah. I’m sorry, is this not enough for you? Do I not own enough fancy things for your liking?” His tone became harsh and it hit me hard, as if being lashed with a whip.
“You’re misconstruing my words,” I argued defensively. “I only meant it seems like no one lives here. It’s practically empty aside from a table, a couch, and a TV.” My gaze trailed to the open French doors opposite me, leading out to a large, uncovered terrace. “You don’t even have curtains hung. No rugs on the floor. No pictures on the walls.”
“Maybe I don’t like those things. Maybe I’m a simple man with simple tastes.”
“Or maybe you’re nothing but a shell of a man, living in a shell of a home. I know where you grew up, Nolan. I saw the things inside your parents’ house, the one you lived in all your life. How do you go from that to…this?” I held my arm out, waving it around the room as if I were Vanna White and his living area was the board of half-filled letters.
His scrutinizing gaze narrowed and his jaw grew tight. The muscles in his cheeks flexed as he closed the distance between our bodies. “Then by all means, princess, redecorate for me. If this isn’t to your liking, then go ahead and fix it. After all, isn’t making things pretty your MO?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My grip tightened on the bottle of wine in my hand. I had to fight the urge to push him away—physically and metaphorically.
“You want to fix me. You want to fix my home. Is there anything about me you like? Is there anything about me you don’t want to change to fit your fucking mold of perfection?”
“You couldn’t be further from the truth if you tried. I don’t want to fix you…I want you to heal. I want you to bring back the boy who made me feel special for an afternoon. I want to find him and bring him back.”
“He’s gone!”
“No he isn’t!” I fought back, my words clawing their way through my throat and leaving it raw. “He’s not gone. I see him in there. I hear him when he talks to me. I sense him when he touches me. The same way he touched me before. You want him to be gone. But he’s not. And it’s why you live in this empty space, because you think you’re filled with empty space.”
Nolan reached out to me, causing me to flinch away at the force in which his arm came at me. But instead of touching me, he grabbed the bottle of wine from my hand and ripped it from my fingers. His body twisted at the hips as he threw it to the floor. Glass shattered into millions of pieces as the burgundy liquid coated the pristine tile, instantly staining the grout.
“Is that better?” he shouted, his voice causing me to take a step back. “If you think I’m living in a space reflective of how I feel inside, then let me show you what it would look like.”
I stepped back against the cold door, my breathing labored and uncontrollable. My hands pulled to my chest in a vain attempt to save my crumbling heart. The man in front of me, the one turning over the dining room table and chairs, knocking pots and pans over and spilling its contents onto the floor, was so broken. Beyond shattered. And no matter how much I wanted to save him, I finally realized I might not be able to.
“Is this better? You want to see what it’s like in my head? Inside me? Well, sweetheart, here it is. Messy. Disheveled. Upturned. This is what it’s like in here!” He pounded on the side of his head with the heel of his palm, and hot, scorching tears filled my eyes.
But the one good thing about the heat filling my veins was how it fueled my fight. Hearing the pain in his voice, the brokenness of his tone, tore me from my fearful state. I knew, beyond a doubt, this man wasn’t to be feared. He was to be saved. To be brought back amongst the living, and given a reason to fight.
I wiped away the falling tears from my face and moved toward him—ran for him. He may have been a burning building in that moment, but there was something within him worth going back inside to battle the flames for.
I reached him and immediately began to tear at the shirt on his chest. My fingers slipped between the buttons and I pulled it apart with all my might. The black plastic pieces spilled to the floor, bouncing off the tile at our feet, but I kept pulling, wouldn’t stop tugging until I uncovered what was beneath.
My eyes were met with thick white scar tissue and black ink. My hands traveled up his chest, to his shoulders, until my fingers were beneath the sleeves, clinging to his masculine form. I pushed them down his arms until his shirt fell to the floor, joining the lost buttons that had once kept it in place. My gaze never left his chest, the reminders of what he’d lived through. The raised flesh kept him trapped—imprisoned—in the nightmare he called life.
One breath, one beat of my heart, and my mouth found the space in the center of his chest. The unforgiving pounding beneath my lips grew stronger, and his ragged gasps at the crown of my head became heavier.
“You’re still in here, Nolan. I can feel you. I know you’re here,” I said without completely taking my lips from his skin. “It’s not messy in here.”
Without warning, he backed away, leaving me unsteady on my own feet. He didn’t bother to step over the mess he created or even walk around it as he made his way to the balcony. And all I could do was watch as he left me alone, surrounded by food, glass, and buttons.
Chaos.
For a moment, I couldn’t hear the pounding of the rain on the terrace over the stifling silence surrounding me. But then a loud roar broke through and stilled my heart, stole the air from my lungs, and forced my feet to move.
I ran to the open doors just as Nolan overturned the small, wrought-iron patio table. He wrapped his hands around the back of his head as he curled into himself, his shoulders shaking in the dim light coming from the top of the building. I moved to him on unsteady feet. Pain radiated off him in waves and slammed into me with the weight of a freight train.
“Nolan…”
He turned around, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring and jaw ticking. “Is this what you wanted? You said you wanted to know the real me. Are you satisfied?” His hoarse words broke, barely intelligible over the sound of the rain behind him. His chest puffed out with each labored breath, and the shadow over his face made his eyes seem dark and tormented—more so than normal.
“No.” I walked closer still, moving until I could physically feel the emotion emanating from him. “I’m not satisfied, because this isn’t the real you. I know it…I only wish you did, too.”
“You don’t know me, Novah. Don’t pretend you do. Spending an afternoon with me a lifetime ago doesn’t qualify as knowing me.”
I grazed the smooth skin on his face with the tips of my fingers and heard him suck in air before holding it. “You’re the boy who hugged your mom after every game. The boy who shook your opponents’ hands with a smile on your face, even if you lost. You’re the boy who saw something in a plain, ordinary girl who—”
“That boy died in war,” he whispered and closed his eyes.
My mouth met his bare chest once more, the heat of his skin burning my lips and restarting my heart. “No he didn’t. He didn’t die. He’s still in there, trapped by the weight of the world on his shoulders.” I pulled away an inch and glanced up into his eyes, watching the muted light from around us glisten in them. “I know this because when you look at me, it’s the same as before. You’re still that boy, looking into the eyes of the invisible girl in your parents’ back yard.”
“You’re not the invisible girl anymore, though,” he rasped, his hands clinging to my waist.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. But it doesn’t mean she’s gone. It only means I’ve changed, morphed. Like a butterfly.”
His head shook side to side, yet his shimmering eyes never left mine. “That’s where you’re wrong, Novah. You’ve always had wings. But you’re hiding them right now.”
Nolan didn’t give me a chance to respond before pushing me until my back settled against
the concrete wall surrounding the terrace. His hand slid from my waist, up my side, and gripped my shoulder. He pushed my upper torso over the ledge. Panic filled me for one brief second, knowing this four-foot wall was the only thing keeping me from falling twenty stories to my death. But the way his hands gripped me—one on my shoulder, one on my hip—I knew he wouldn’t let me fall, and the fear evaporated, washed away with the rain on my face.
I released his forearms as I slowly spread my arms out wide, allowing the cold water to land in my opened palms. I closed my eyes and relished the raindrops pelting my skin, realizing I hadn’t experienced this kind of freedom since childhood. A heavy presence covered my chest moments before wet warmth coated my neck. The heat of his bare chest and lips warred with the chill of the rain and left me in an unstable state of fluctuating body temperature.
“Take off the mask, Novah.”
His deep, rugged voice caused my head to snap up, trapping his stare with mine. Confusion filled me. One minute I felt as though I was suspended mid-air, free falling into contentment. And the next, I had fallen, hard, his intense tone splattering my heart on the ground beneath me.
Mask? What mask?
In a flash, his hands were beneath my shirt, scaling my bare sides as he pulled the material over my head, righting my body once more. But he didn’t toss the shirt aside; instead, he wrapped it around his hand and used it as a rag to dry my face.
Except he wasn’t drying my face.
He ran the material over my eyes, down my cheeks, and rubbed it over my lips. He repeated the action a few times, keeping a hand beneath my chin so he could turn my head when needed, tilting it back a few times to rewet my face after each swipe of the shirt.
After a few times, he pulled my face to his and examined every inch of my now clean skin. His fingertips ran from my forehead, over my nose, to my lips. I couldn’t move. It was like I’d been put in a trance by staring into his softened eyes. The only sensation I had was how raw my face was.
I felt raw.
“What was that for?” I asked softly.