by Amber Burns
“Nina,” he breathed, reaching out a hand for her. “I do not understand…”
Nina slapped his hand away and stared at her knees. She ran her fingers over her legs absentmindedly and grated her teeth together. She took a breath, then spoke.
“Rowan,” she said. Her voice sounded like glass, cool, shimmering, possessing the magical and yet dangerous ability to shatter at any moment. “Rowan. I really have to be going now.”
The words hung in the air around the two, refusing to fall to the ground. Rowan stared at Nina, the stunning goddess that sat on his bed, all curving pale skin and freckled flesh, her golden red hair spinning down her back, licking her breasts with fire, her green eyes no longer electric and dancing but stagnant now, closed off, frozen. He tried to remember how to breathe but could not seem to find the way to make his lungs jump back to life. Finally, he found his words, but even they did him a disservice. He stuttered, rambled, finding that he could only trip over syllables.
“Ni… why but… I ca… You mus…”
Frustrated Rowan let the language stop attempting to slide out from between his lips. Instead, he threw back the blankets and pushed himself up and onto his knees in the midst of the puddles of quilts and bed sheets, kneeling before her, pleading, pleading, for some sort of an answer.
“Nina,” he begged, his words suddenly returning to him as his heart revved up to life with all the power his motorcycle had ever possessed. “Please. Please. Tell me how, tell me what, tell me where this is coming from. Nina, I love you,” he said, and he felt the shuddering truth of the words tumble around him, flood his insides with fiery emotion. “Nina, I really and truly love you.” He allowed his eyes to fondly caress her naked form, to follow the gentle bounce of her breasts as her breathing hefted them lightly up and down, up and down; he kissed her freckled cheeks with his dark eyes; he stroked her mane of fire with the tender glances of his ebony pupils. Then he reached out a tentative hand and touched the tips of his tattooed fingers to her knee caps. “Please, Nina, baby,” he whispered. “Please. Explain it to me. I can just not…” he gulped, finding that the words did not want to come out of his mouth; as much as he wanted to confess it to her, still his mind clung to the truth, unwilling to make him so vulnerable to this true goddess of a creature. “Please, Nina,” he said, forcing the words from his lips. “Please. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. You are my truth. Nina, you are the most honest bit of my existence. You truly are my everything, and I know how crazy that sounds, knowing that we have only spent a number of days together. I know that I love you more deeply than I have ever before known anything. You have got to feel it too. I know you do,” he dared, staring deeply into her eyes. He saw her shiver slightly and noticed that tears were prickling the corners of her stunning green glass orbs. He pressed his hands against her thighs, and she did not resist. “Please, Nina. Please, baby. Please. Just tell me what to do, and I will do it. Your will is my command. Because Nina, you are mine and I am yours. And I know, I know in my heart, that it was always meant to be this way. You were meant to lose your way and get yourself all confused and lost that day. I was meant to find you in the forest. And we, Nina, we were meant to be here now, to hold each other, to find each other in the midst of this crazy, confused world, and to love each other. I love you Nina so please, please tell me. What is going in inside that beautiful, goddess mind of yours, you babe?”
Nina stared at her hands for a moment. The sounds of birds chirping, welcoming in the early morning, fluttered through the window and tickled the two lovers’ ears. Yet the normally comforting noise did nothing to make Rowan feel at ease on this particular morning. Instead, he felt his heart pick up speed, thumping against his ribcage at such force that he felt a cold sweat begin to prick his muscular form. He ran a shaking hand over his beard, trying to distract himself from the pulsating anxiety he was beginning to feel squeezing his throat and bubbling to life in the pit of his stomach. He never once took his eyes off of the girl that sat before him, Nina, the morning light hitting her just right and making her look so beautiful, so soft and curved and perfect, even in her current state. For it was her current state that caused him such anxiety, her normally perky lips turned downward in a frown, the furrowing of her beautiful smooth brow. The way she cast those green sea glass eyes downwards at her palms, refusing to meet his gaze. Something was wrong, Rowan was aware of that much. But what on earth could it be?
Finally, after what felt to Rowan like hours but had most likely only been the brief passing of several anxiety-laden moments, Nina took a breath. She parted her pretty lips and looked up at Rowan. And instantly the feeling of her eyes upon his own sent butterflies dancing through his insides. He swallowed and met her somber gaze.
“Rowan,” she began, careful to keep her voice even and calm. “I truly do love you. Oh, I love you so so deeply, Rowan. These past few days have really and honestly been the best few days of my life. I would love nothing more than to stay here with you and to continue loving you. To wake up every morning to your body pressed against mine, well, that would be nothing short of a dream come true. But the fact of the matter is, Rowan, that I really can not stay here.” Nina shook her head, her fiery hair slapping lightly against her cheeks. “No, I really and seriously can’t,” she said again, almost as if she was reassuring herself of this fact. “I have to go. I mean, god, I have already been gone like what, days? And yea that might not seem like much, but the reality of it is just….” She swallowed and again shook her pretty head back to forth, more violently this time. “Rowan, my friends were expecting me to come back that day, no, fuck, they were expecting me to come back that hour. They probably got so worried when I never showed up back at that clearing where we had the picnic. And then there is the fact that I have not texted a single person since I walked away from the clearing that day, I have had, like, literally, no contact with any person. So basically to all those people, I am as good as dead.” She stared at him, her features washed over with distress, and Rowan saw the pain she carried plain as day upon her pale face. He swallowed as she took a breath to continue. “I cannot let all those people, like my friends, my parents, all those people who really fucking care about me, and love me, to think I am dead. They are probably so fucking worried, Rowan. Holy fuck, they are probably worried sick. They’re probably doing searches and having the police be all involved, and that is, like… Like knowing that I did that to them, that I caused them all that distress, that is just totally…” Nina paused, her voice faltering and cracking, tears threatening to pool in her eyes. She looked away from Rowan, and stared fiercely back down at her hands, forcing herself to regain her composure. After a silent moment, she took a swallowed, took a breath, and looked back up at Rowan. “That is totally not okay,” she finished, her lips buckling into a twisted, heartbroken pout.
Rowan looked back at Nina, feeling entirely helpless, and completely speechless. He understood what she was saying. He heard her so loudly, so clearly. He knew that she had to tell her family and her friends that she was alright, that she was still very much alive and very well, hell, better than well; she was better than she had ever been in her entire life. Yet a part of him wanted her to stay here, with him, forever. A part of him wanted her to never walk away, back through those woods, back to the life that she had come from. Because a part of Rowan was frightened, really and deeply frightened. Rowan was scared that if Nina left, she would never ever come back. And the thought of never seeing Nina again was something that made his guts turn to ice and made him wonder if life without this girl was something that was even remotely possible for him, after all the moments they had shared so closely together.
Nina placed a soft hand upon Rowan’s own rugged, tattooed fingers. She squeezed lightly and looked into his deep, dark eyes.
“Baby, I know,” she said softly, her voice tiptoeing the line between a coo and a whisper. “I know how bad this feels. Trust me, I do,” she said, tears springing up to balance on the
edges of her captivating eyes. “But you know it is right. You know it is what I have to do.”
Rowan nodded, sniffing, willing himself not to cry.
“I know it,” he said, forcing a half smile to cross his face, just for Nina. “I know you are right. You are very right.” Rowan nodded again, more to himself this time. “Alright,” he said, pulling his hand back away from Nina’s with a quick squeeze of his own. “Then it is settled. This afternoon, after we have got you all fed and packed some bags for ourselves. We will set off again. On the motorcycle, this time, so that we will be able to move quickly through those woods. And that way, as long as we stick to the path, which we will, this time, we can have you back to your car in the parking lot, safe and sound, in just under two hours. And then you will be able to get home and explain everything. How does that sound?”
A smile broke Nina’s face into a mask of joy. She leaped into Rowan’s arms and hugged him fiercely, rocking him back and forth with the power of her gratitude.
“Oh Rowan,” she said, her voice leaping with happiness. “Thank you so much.” She pulled back slightly and planted a warm kiss on his cheek.
Rowan smiled back at her. Then Nina stood and began to tug on the clothes that she had first been wearing when Rowan had discovered her, lost and hungry, in the forest. She pulled the tartan pants up onto her lithe legs and slid her shirt and jacket over the rest of her form. Rowan watched without saying a word, forgetting how different Nina looked when she was dressed in her normal everyday clothing. She almost looked like an entirely different person. The moment this thought crept across Rowan’s mind, he felt something bothering him, it felt as if it was biting at the back of his mind, slowly eating through all of the rest of his thoughts, until it was the only thing he could think of; until it had taken over his entire thinking capacity. Before he could stop himself from saying anything, he found himself blurting out:
“I just know that you are going to leave and then you will never ever come back.”
Nina turned sharply, her cheekbones catching the morning light that fell through the window and flashing Rowan with a fierce expression.
“What?” she spat, her face suddenly clouding over, her voice arching to a higher octave. She was suddenly defensive, something that Rowan had never before experienced her be, not around him, not here.
He stared back at her, forcing himself not to drop her fiery gaze, not to lose his integrity. He had said it, whether he had been willing to share that thought or not, share it he had, and it was something that he truly felt and honestly feared, so he now had to explain it, defend himself. He was instantly filled with the sickening feeling that they were about to enter a war zone of words. All the same, he powered on.
“You are going to leave here,” he began, standing up from the bed now. “I am going to take you safely back to your home. And then you are going to get home, reunite with all your beloved friends, and have a grand old time. You will have fancy cake, and fancy store bought wine, and your parents will probably shower you with gifts, which is all fine and dandy,” he added quickly as he noticed the look of disgust that had taken over Nina’s face. “But what is not okay is how quickly you are going to forget the man who brought you back home. You will go on with your daily life, never once thinking, hey, if he had not found me in the forest that night, I probably would not be here right now. No,” Rowan corrected, crossing his arms over his chest. “You definitely would not have still been alive. I am sorry, but it is the truth,” he said, his voice becoming a little more gentle. “You would not have lasted a night in those woods. And now, you are going to run back home, what a nice little vacation this was! Ooh, living in the middle of fucking nowhere for a couple of days, what a fucking adventure! And how nice it will be that everything is back to normal and you can go living your upper class, high society life. That is what is going to happen after you go home. You know it, I know it, so we might as well just face it,” Rowan said.
He stared at Nina, his hands resting by his sides, the snake on his torso seeming to writhe slightly as his muscular body heaved up and down gently as he tried to control his passion. Nina stared back at Rowan for a few moments, completely speechless. After several long hard moments of looking at him, she finally shook her head and spoke.
“Wow,” she said once, still staring at him, shaking her head back and forth quickly, almost as if she did not know her body was even completing the action. “Wow.” She shook her head from side to side several more times, simply staring at Rowan. Her lips were pulled into a tight purse, and her eyes seemed to glow with a fiery rage. “I cannot believe you just said that,” Nina said. She smiled, but it was not a smile of warmth. Looking at the smile that had just carved its way across Nina’s face made Rowan feel as if his insides had suddenly been filled up with ice. He stared at her as she took several slow steps away from him, raising her hands up in defense. “I seriously cannot believe you would say something like that to me,” she said again. “I cannot believe that you actually think that. After all that these last few days have meant to me,” she continued, and her eyes began to well up with tears. “How the fuck dare you. How dare you say that I don’t care about you!”
Rowan took a step forward, reaching out to her. “I didn’t say that!” he objected.
“You didn’t need to,” Nina shot back. Her eyes glistened with moisture, but the tears did not fall. She looked at him angrily. “You said everything you needed to say. About how I am just going to run away and go back to my awesome life with my awesome friends and never once think about you? Yea, you said all that,” Nina confirmed, pointing an angry finger at Rowan’s chest. He stared right back at her.
“I did say all that,” he confirmed, fighting to keep his voice level as frustration pumped through his veins. “I did, and I cannot say I regret it,” he told her honestly. “But I said it because it is what I believe. It is a fear I have, and I believe that relationships are dependent upon two people sharing everything, the good moments, of course, yes, but also their fears. That is what it means to be truthful. So yes, Nina, yes, if you want to know the truth? I do think you’ll leave and never come back. That is what I am afraid of. And I think that, deep down, you know it too. So why don’t you stop lying to yourself,” he said, his voice becoming louder. “And stop lying to me, and just fucking say what’s actually true?
Nina laughed, a cold, humorless laugh.
“You are truly incredible,” she said, crossing her arms across her breasts. “You are really something else. And I thought I knew you. I thought you trusted me.”
“I do trust you!” Rowan objected. “I think that it seems more like you don’t trust me; if you are not even willing to speak plainly and tell me the truth! It doesn’t seem like you trust me at all, actually, if you are just going to stand there and lie to my face!”
Nina shook her head and breathed out quickly, sharply.
“Oh, is that what I’m doing?” she asked. “Is that what you can obviously tell that I’m doing? Oh my god, thank you so much for telling me, because I totally thought I was just standing here being honest! Wow, I feel so much better now that I know I’m actually a lying piece of shit. Thanks for pointing that out, Rowan. You’re the best.”
“Nina,” Rowan said, his shoulders falling in hurt. “Don’t be like...”
Rowan reached a hand out to touch her, and she jerked her body away.
“Don’t you fucking touch me,” she snarled back. “Be like that? Be like what? You’re the one standing here telling me how it’s gonna be when I go back. You’re the one telling me I’m a liar and telling me that I don’t give a fuck about you. So who’s being like what? Don’t even with me, Rowan. Wow. Wow.”
Rowan stood rooted to the spot, watching Nina as she shook her head and laughed coldly, pacing in circles. After several moments she stopped, and, arms crossed, looked up at him again.
“You want to know something?” She asked, looking at Rowan, hard, deep in his eyes. “I’ll tell you
something. There will be a party when I get back. You’re right about that. There will be, because people care about me and because I work really damn hard at my job, and I make a lot of money for it. And so yes, because the people I associate with and the people who care about me also work in my industry, yes, there will be a party, and yes, they will buy me gifts. And let me tell you it will be a majestic fucking party. Champagne, for sure, and not the cheap stuff either, because I’m not fucking cheap. Because I’m worth more than that. And you’re right, I will be glad to be able to get home. Because I will be glad to wear more than a fucking piece of shit bathrobe all day long, and to have some nice shoes, and to put on some makeup and get my hair done and go out, like normal fucking people, and actually associate myself with other normal people. And you know what? I think that that kills you, I think that it makes you feel like utter and complete shit, knowing that you don’t get that. You jave any money. And you don’t have any friends. Well, here’s a newsflash, Rowan, it doesn’t come free. I work my ass off every day at the office to make the money I do so I can associate with the people I associate with, and so I can go out whenever I damn please. So don’t you look at me and condemn me for living my life just because you have never lived yours. Don’t you fucking dare.”