by Kendra Riley
And so that was exactly what Damien had done. He’d started off by telling him all about Tom and the guys that had first gotten him into it all. Back then, him and Wesley had actually been friends but it was around that time that a drift had started to come between them.
“I remember that,” Wesley said, “I’d told you to get out of it early before you got into it too bad and you had told me to mind my own business and that it was just a bit of fun. Then you told me that I was incredibly boring and that I had never known fun in my life.”
Damien chuckled. “I remember that, too. I hated how together you always seemed. I was far more jealous than I let on. The only retaliation I knew was to just be mean to you.”
Damien then told him about the Poison Ivy gang and how, after twelve years, he had finally decided that he wanted out. He’d never let it get too bad but he’d been close and he had still done many things he was not proud of.
“And then, two years after I was on the straight and narrow, I met Hazel.”
“Hazel?”
“Yeah. Hazel Josephine Rose. The prettiest girl I’ve ever met – inside and out. I’d never known a girl to be like her. Just such a good person. Her biggest crime was stealing a book from the school that she worked at so that she could read it before reading it to her kids. A book she would still take back once she was done with it. Those were the types of things that made her feel guilty in life. She made me see how life should be.”
“So, you guys were a couple?”
“Not at first. At first, we were friends. Her dumb ass boyfriend had left her for another woman and she’d never fully recovered from it. He’d been her childhood sweetheart and he had broken her heart into pieces. So, naturally, she’d been wary of taking things too far with me. So… we stayed friends, even though it was obvious we wanted more.”
“And then?”
Just then, the food arrived and Damien literally felt the drool come out of his mouth. The burger was huge. The plate of fries was huge. The milkshake was huge. But he knew that he would finish every single bit of it.
“Enjoy, you two.” The waitress grinned and walked away.
“Oh dear. I’m going to have to work so hard at the gym this week. But you know what, Damien old friend… this looks like it’s going to be worth it.”
Damien took a huge bite, closed his eyes and smiled. “Oh, it is.”
It took several more bites for them to carry on with their conversation.
“Anyway, so you were saying. You guys started dating?”
“Yeah, and she even introduced me to her family. A proper family. Like the mother and father are still together and still happy. The brother is a nice guy with a cool wife and two cute kids. That type of thing.”
“How did you feel being there?”
“Actually, I felt good. I felt like I belonged. Actually – I thought about you a lot that night. I thought about contacting you.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, Tom happened.”
“The guy that saved you.”
Damien told Wesley all about the phone call that changed his life.
“I don’t understand. You were out of it. Why didn’t you just say no?”
“It’s hard to explain if you haven’t been involved with people like Tom before. I owed him one. And if I had said no, I promise you my life would’ve become a living hell. I don’t owe him anymore at least. But unfortunately, I had to pay for it. Two damn years of paying for it. Looking back, I should’ve at least done some research on the whole thing myself instead of just believing that he knew what he was talking about. I took a chance and I lost.”
“What happened with Hazel?”
“I never got a chance to tell anybody where I was. I know she found out though. And, Wesley… well… there’s more.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know that Hazel came to see me because I heard the guards talking about it. People talk in prison. There’s nothing else do. But we weren’t allowed visitors no matter how hard they tried. The guards said that Hazel was adamant that she had to see me because she wanted to tell me something. They refused and then asked her what it was that she wanted to tell me. She said she was pregnant. And that I was the father.”
“What? Is it true?”
“As far as I know. I mean, she could’ve been lying but I don’t know man… I’ve thought about it over and over again… and I think she was telling the truth.”
“And they still wouldn’t let her in to see you?”
“Nah, there’s no way of visitors in that place.”
“So you had to sit for two years there knowing that you had a child?”
“Yeah. In a way, man, it became a blessing. I was originally given four years. It wouldn’t have been so long if we’d tried to rob a store or something. But a bank is a different thing altogether. But I was let out after two for good behavior. And there are only two things that kept me on the straight and narrow Wesley – and that was Hazel and our child.”
Wesley sat back, trying to absorb it all. “So what’s the plan now?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to try find her.”
“Listen, Damien, it’s not going to be easy, but you have to find her. You have to. I’ve never seen you talk about anyone the way that you talk about her.”
“I know. I messed up badly. She was the one.”
“She IS the one,” Wesley said.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, what about Tom?” Wesley asked him after they had paid and were headed to the car. “What ever happened to him?”
“That’s the crazy thing… he never got caught. Damn bastard.”
***
Wesley dropped Damien off at a motel in the area where he used to stay. He still had a bit of money in the bank and planned to stay there for a few days while trying to figure out what to do. He wasn’t sure what had happened to his old place and all his things so he had a lot of figuring out still to do. But he had a suspicion he’d be starting all over. Wesley offered for him to come and stay with him but he didn’t want to. Wesley had a family and a life of his own and it felt too soon to impose on them like that. Wesley pressed a few notes in his hand, which would give him a few extra nights at the motel if he needed and made Damien promise to stay in touch.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I missed you,” Wesley said.
“Yeah… I didn’t realize how much I needed this. Today was good. Thank you.”
Damien then showered and fell into a deep sleep. A tiny, springy motel bed had never felt so good before. The next day, he popped out to get some breakfast and then headed out to his first destination; the one place that he thought he might actually find Hazel and the one place in which she couldn’t run away easily from – her school.
He’d never been to her school but he had heard a lot about it and he knew exactly where it was. He didn’t particularly want the kids to see him but he knew that he might not be able to avoid it. He walked down the tree lined pathway up to the school. There were no kids on the field so he figured they must all be inside, but the moment he stepped in, he heard a bell go off and suddenly saw kids coming out from all directions and running out. He asked the secretary where he could find Hazel and she pointed down the corridor and told him two doors to the left. He walked slowly.
When he arrived, he stood back and waited for the last of the kids to come rushing out. Then he walked in with tentative steps. There she was. Hazel Rose. Hazel Josephine Rose. She hadn’t changed much in two years – other than her hair, which was now cut short to her shoulders. It suited her. He knocked slightly on the door and watched as her face turned ashen the moment she locked eyes with him. She held onto the desk as if she were going to faint.
“Hey, Panda,” he said.
Chapter4
Hazel
Hazel was going about her day as usual. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the day and no reason for her to feel anything but normal. And yet she had a strange
sense that things were going to change and she couldn’t quite understand why. But she had always believed in intuition and her gut told her that something big was going to happen. And yet, despite all these feelings, she was still taken by complete surprise when she turned around and saw Damien Carson standing in front of her.
She held onto the desk for support and could feel the color drain from her face. She quickly looked around and was glad to see that the children had left the room. They didn’t know about Damien and she wasn’t quite ready to explain him to them. If they knew that this was the man she had once been in love with, they would never stop with the questions. And she certainly couldn’t tell them that he had gone to jail. She’d be inundated with letters from parents and she wasn’t sure how she was going to explain herself out of that one.
“Da – Damien?” she stuttered. Her voice sounded strange – as if it didn’t quite belong to her. She wondered briefly if she might just be in a dream. She’d had a lot of dreams about Damien coming back.
“Hazel. I’m sorry to come in like this. I just wanted to see you.”
“When did you get out?”
“Yesterday.”
Hazel looked at him then. His hair was cut short and the scar across his eyebrow looked even more visible to her than before. He looked like someone that went to jail. He was all rough around the edges. He couldn’t disguise it – not even with his clean clothes and the aftershave that she could smell from where she was standing. Why had she not seen this before?
“I was told you’d be there for four years.”
She remembered thinking to herself that surely after four years she would’ve gotten over him. It had been two and looking at him now, she realized that she was nowhere near over him. Nowhere near.
“They let me out on good behavior.”
She scoffed then, a weird rasping sound bursting through her lips. “Bit late for that.”
She looked at Damien, unsure of what to do next and fully aware that in another twenty minutes the kids would all come rushing back. She couldn’t bear all the questions that they would have for her if they saw her talking to him.
“Hazel, can we talk?”
“Damien, I’m at work.”
“Okay, I know, I understand that. But I have so much to tell you and I need you to please hear me out.”
“Seriously? Hear you out? After you just disappeared on me like that? Do you have any idea how worried I was about you? I eventually called the police because I couldn’t get hold of you and they were the ones that told me that you had been taken to jail because you tried to rob a bank. Seriously? SERIOUSLY?” She could feel her heart racing as her voice got louder. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down. “I thought Robbie had hurt me bad. I thought no man would be able to hurt me like that again. I was wrong. I was so wrong. I thought I knew you. You broke my heart, Damien.”
“I know. I know I did. I know that nothing I say will ever take away what happened. But I need to talk to you. Please, Hazel.”
“No. I’ve moved on. I need you to leave.”
“But…”
“Just leave. Before I get you removed. Please, Damien, don’t let the kids walk in with you still here. Please go.”
She saw that he was about to say something but then he changed his mind and walked out.
Hazel spent the next few hours trying to get through her day without thinking about him. It wasn’t easy and she was grateful for every distraction that came her way. At the end of the day, as she was about to walk out, little Ruby came up to her. Ruby was one of the smallest in the group and certainly one of the sweetest.
“Yes, Ruby? Is everything okay?”
Ruby looked at her with big brown eyes. “Actually Miss Rose, I wanted to see if you were okay. You looked sad this afternoon. I didn’t want to ask you in front of everyone else because I know I hate it when someone asks me if I’m okay in front of everyone else.”
Hazel tried not to burst into tears. “Ah, I’m going to be just fine. Thank you, Ruby.”
She walked Ruby out and pretended as if everything was okay. But as she was about to step outside the secretary called her.
“Hazel! Wait, don’t leave yet. I have something for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Sorry things were so busy here and I almost forgot. Some guy dropped this off for you. Man, who was that guy? He’s cute.”
“Just an old friend. Thank you.” Hazel took the note and rushed out.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone about Damien because she couldn’t trust her emotions and knew that the tears were just inches from falling out. Nobody at the school had even known about him. All they knew was that two years ago Hazel got very sick and wasn’t able to come to work for a few weeks. Then she got better. She tentatively opened the note and her heart lurched at seeing his handwriting again. All neat and tidy and so completely unlike who he was. It was something that she had once teased him about. Thinking about that moment felt like a lifetime ago.
I would love the chance to talk with you. Please.
Also, I’m so sorry.
Damien
At the bottom he left his phone number as well as the address of the motel that he was staying at. She saw the address and sighed – it wasn’t far from where she lived. She wanted to tear up the note but instead she just folded it up and put it in her pocket and then tried desperately not to think about it.
Then, she walked over to the other side of the school, where the younger kids were, and went to collect her son.
Ben was two years old. Hazel didn’t think that she could ever love anyone as much as she loved him. It had been hard not to think of Damien each time she looked at him – he was the splitting image of his father – but he had developed his own little personality that soon he was just ‘Ben’ to her. But now that she had seen Damien again she couldn’t believe how much Ben looked like him. She swallowed hard when she saw him running towards her.
“Mommy!”
She scooped him up and hugged him tight. She knew that there were only a few more years left of her being able to do that before he found it too embarrassing. So she made the most of it. Now, he giggled and he held out a picture for her. It was mostly just lines and squiggles but it immediately made her happy.
“Wow. Did you do this?”
He nodded and pointed to himself. “Me.”
“All by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“It is beautiful. You’re my little artist. Now, are you ready to have some fun?”
“Fun? What fun mommy?” He was just starting to formulate sentences and took great pleasure in any new word that he heard. “Fun,” he said again.
“We’re going to the park!”
It was a decision that Hazel had only just made. She wasn’t even sure why. She just wanted to keep the distractions coming. She could feel Damien’s note burning a hole in her pocket. The park would at least bide her some time.
Ben knew the word park well. To him the word park meant swings and sand and dogs. He smiled at her and she knew that in that moment she was his world. They took a walk to the park, which was halfway between school and home and Ben stopped to say hello to every single dog that came his way.
“Dog! Dog!” he would say and point whenever he saw one.
He had an absolute fascination with them and she knew that it wouldn’t be long until he was asking for one of his own. He took barely any interest in cats or birds but the moment he saw a dog he would get excited. She didn’t mind – she wanted one, too – but their lives were so crazy at the moment that she didn’t want another responsibility on top of it. Hazel had been determined to bring up Ben without any help from anyone. She was lucky enough to have a place for him to stay during the day while she went to work and because it was on the same premises, it had made it very easy for her.
She didn’t have to worry about hiring a nanny or dropping off Ben with a stranger. It hadn’t been all smooth sailing, though. Hazel ha
d always wanted a child but hadn’t felt nearly ready enough for it – and doing it on her own had obviously never been something that she had foreseen. But Ben was a good boy and she never regretted having him. She watched him now as he played in the sand, his little whoops of delight as he threw the sand in the air. She wanted to be happy. She knew that she had so much more in her life than other people. But the more she heard his whoops of joy, the more sadness seeped inside of her.
She had tried not to think about what would happen when Damien came back and now that he was here she had a million thoughts rushing through her mind. She had to tell him about Ben. And one day she had to tell Ben about Damien. But what was going to happen when Damien found out? When Ben found out? And how was she ever going to explain to her son that her father had gone to jail? It wasn’t a subject she was looking forward to dealing with. She could barely deal with it herself. She hated that she didn’t have any of the answers.
“Come on, my boy, time to go home!” And she smiled as Ben just nodded, took her hand and went home with her. He was an easy child. She was lucky.
She put on a brave face and started the walk home. Surely the day couldn’t get any worse. Of course, she regretted the thoughts the moment they came into her head because she knew something else was about to happen. And sure enough, when they were almost home, she turned the corner and found herself facing her past once again. Only this time it wasn’t Damien. It was Robbie.
“Hazel!”
“Oh, hey Robbie. Wow, uh… this is unexpected.”
And it was because since they had broken up, she had not seen him once. She hadn’t even bumped into him at the shops. Nothing. There was no surprise that she would bump into him today because that is just how messed up her life seemed to work.
“Hazel,” he said again. He looked different. He’d picked up quite a lot of weight, his shirt was disheveled and he just didn’t seem to ooze the same sort of confidence as he had when they were going out. She hated to admit it – but it made her feel good.
“How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“I know. I actually moved overseas for a while. To London. But, I’m back. I got back a few months ago. It’s strange being back here.”