To Where You Are

by K. A. Hobbs

  Arms close around my waist, strong and frantic, and for a moment, I’m certain it’s Ben coming to take me back with him. I twist to try to breathe in his scent, but instead, my mouth fills with salty water that gushes in and down my throat. I want to cough, but somehow, my body can’t raise the energy to do it. Even moving is difficult, so I allow Ben’s arms to embrace me, holding me against a chest that feels different somehow, stronger, more toned. He tows me through the water, and I feel a rumbling in his chest against my rapidly numbing skin and wonder what it is he’s grumbling about.

  And then the water is gone, gushing from my body as it hangs limply in Ben’s arms. I can hear sounds that might be words, but I don’t have the energy to decipher them. I just want to bask in being back in his arms again. I have just enough left in me to mumble a protest when they disappear from around me and I’m laid on something soft but not terribly comfortable. I have a stern talk with my eyelids about lifting so I can see his beautiful face, but they remain stubbornly closed despite my best efforts.

  I have no understanding of what’s happening around me as my body is jostled and moved about without my assistance. All I can focus on is trying to lift those lids so I can see Ben. It’s all I’ve wanted for so long and now he’s here and I can’t even see him.

  “What the hell, Molly?” a voice growls at me as strong hands tear away my soaking wet clothes and attempt to massage heat and life back into my numb body.

  I feel soft fabric being wrapped tightly around me before I’m lifted once more from the ground and drift along at somebody else’s pace.

  Heat and light infiltrate slowly, and for a moment, they bring comfort.

  And then the pain starts.

  Agony, as a million knives cut at my skin all at once while my insides churn and ache, and stabbing pains slice through my chest. I try to cry out but no sound comes as I strain, my throat searing and burning. How can everything hurt so much?

  My hands try to move, to rub at the scorching pain that’s taken over every inch of my body, but they won’t move. They’re pinned to my sides. My renewed attempts to force my eyes open yield some fruit, and I wince as light floods my senses. The beach is gone, the sound of the waves no longer lulling me gently. Instead, I’m surrounded by familiar things—my fireplace, my couch, my piano. I’m in my living room, wrapped tightly in a blanket, and a stern sounding voice begins to echo in my ears as I slowly adapt to my surroundings.

  “I don’t care. Just get here. She needs you.”

  There’s a moment of quiet, and I realise the voice is on the phone.

  Struggling against the blanket that’s practically binding me in place like a swaddled baby, I finally find my voice and a strangled cry erupts as claustrophobia builds up inside me.

  The voice ceases mid-rant, and I hear hurried footsteps on the wooden floor in the hallway then see a pair of boxers, now soaked through, and scan upwards to a sodden black t-shirt that clings to every muscle he possesses.

  And then stunning green eyes meet mine, sharp and intense, as he crouches down beside the couch and reaches out to brush my hair back from my face, since I’m immobilised in this blanket and can’t do it myself.

  “Seb?” I croak out, my eyes flashing over his shoulder looking for Ben, even though I know logically it’s impossible that he was ever there.

  “Yes,” he clips, his eyes turning to ice as he surveys me carefully with a cool, doctor’s precision. His hand reaches inside the blanket as though it’s not tighter than a life jacket around me, and pulls my wrist free, pressing two fingers in to take my pulse. I keep quiet, feeling like a naughty child under his brusque care.

  Hard plastic rummages its way into my ear and stays there until a sharp beep sounds out followed by a tsking sound from Seb’s lips.

  I wither under his glare when he turns those eyes on me once more, fire raging behind the ice he surveys me with. “What the hell were you thinking, Molly?” he questions fiercely.

  “I…” I splutter, every word I know abandoning me in the face of his unexpected anger.

  “Yeah, you weren’t. I figured.” He pushes up from his crouch to tower over me, pulling the blanket up higher around my neck and turning to mess with the fire he’s built up in the fireplace that hasn’t been used in years. “You could have been killed, dammit.”

  Figuring I’m not required to actively participate in this conversation, I wisely stay mute and watch him carefully, waiting for his anger to dissipate or explode. It does neither. He just begins to pace up and down in front of the fire, his hands clasped tightly behind his neck as his elbows flap backwards and forwards irritably.

  “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? Do you even care?” he questions, rounding on me and standing like a sentinel over my enforced prone form. I want to stand, to meet him face to face instead of lying here like an errant child being lectured, but I’m so tightly tucked in that it’s all I can do to squirm while he goes back to pacing.

  Finally, his shoulders lose some of their tension and he drops to his knees beside my couch, his fingers moving to take my chin in an almost bruising grip. “Why would you do that, Molly? Tell me.”

  “I… I’m sorry,” I force out through a painful throat and lips that are beginning to chatter once more with the cold. “I just wanted…” I trail off, withering under his intense green gaze.

  “You just wanted…?” His tone softens at the sight of my cringe, and his grip on my chin turns to a caress. “I’m trying to understand here.”

  “I just wanted it to stop,” I whisper, closing my eyes against the torrent of emotions flooding me, both his and mine.

  “Wanted what to stop?” he asks, his voice choked as his forehead moves to rest against mine, infusing me with just a little of his warmth.

  “Everything. All of it.”

  I can’t breathe. There’s no oxygen in the room, no room to move or air to breathe. I want out of this blanket. Out of this room. I want to run away and hide, to curl into a ball until I have myself under control again. But I’m trapped in place, unable to do anything but allow him to force a confession out of me.

  His nose traces over mine slowly, his breath fanning over my skin, warming it as he goes until his lips meet mine and he gently kisses some life back into them. “I need more,” he says softly, his hands moving into my hair and slowly grazing through it, easing the tangles out. “I need you to tell me what was going through your head. Because you scared the shit out of me, Molly. I can’t lose you. Not when I’ve only just found you.”

  Traitorous tears bead in the corners of my eyes, and for the first time, I don’t have the energy or the will to force them back. I can’t even swipe them away. I have no choice to allow them to fall, to expose my pain to him and leave myself vulnerable.

  “It hurts,” I let out on a small sob, my body curling inside the cocoon as he cradles my face gently in his hands.

  “Tell me where it hurts,” he croons, shifting his lips to the shell of my ear and whispering, “I can’t help to fix it if I don’t know where it’s broken, sweetheart.”

  “I can’t be fixed,” I cry, twisting my head, the only free part of my body, to hide my face against his neck. “I’m just pieces, Seb. Nobody can ever truly want pieces. I ruin everything.”

  “Shh,” he murmurs as his strong hands move to lift me from the couch, and without my permission, I find myself cradled in his lap, my head resting against his chest where his heart thrums almost as frantically as mine. Can it be that tonight was as scary for him as it was for me? Does he really care that much?

  “No,” I protest weakly, squirming in his grip in an attempt to pull away. “You can’t.”

  “Yes, I can,” he replies simply, his hand lifting to pull my head gently back to his chest. “I can and I will. And you’re going to sit here, get warm and talk to me, tell me what’s going on in this head of yours.” He taps my temple lightly to emphasise his point, chasing it with a soft kiss. “Now, tell me. What do you believe you�
��ve ruined?”

  I don’t deserve to be here—don’t deserve his sympathy or his kisses. I ought to be left to face up to what I did and live with the consequences. Alone.

  “Stop thinking, Molly,” he commands in that doctor voice he uses on his patients when he needs them compliant. “Stop thinking and talk to me. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. You can’t scare me away with your horror stories.”

  I’m silent for the longest time, not exactly waiting him out but unsure what to say, how to go about explaining everything that rattled around in my head as I ran down that beach and threw myself into the water.

  “Cold,” I finally throw out, feeling his arms tighten around me, lifting the blanket higher.

  “You’ll warm up. I have you.”

  “N-no. The cold in the water. It makes things… disappear. Somehow. I don’t understand it. I don’t. But it’s the only place I find any peace.”

  “Go on,” he prompts when I fall silent again.

  “The cold and the waves, it just silences… everything.”

  “Everything,” he pushes, his head pulling back to survey my face as I attempt to explain.

  “Yes. Everything. All of this.” I bury my face in his chest and try to push it deeper and deeper to escape the cacophony of emotions that just won’t leave me alone.

  His hands move to my hair, stroking through it gently as he rests his chin on the crown of my head.

  “You can tell me, Molly. You’re safe.”

  “Tell you?” I mumble into his chest, wishing he were inside the blanket with me, wanting him closer, always closer.

  “What it is you keep locked up so tightly inside that you’re allowing it to destroy you. What it is that has you throwing yourself into the ocean in the middle of winter instead of talking it through with somebody who loves you.”

  “I can’t,” I whisper, my fingers clawing at the blanket in a bid for freedom. How will I ever hold on to him, keep him close, if my hands aren’t free.

  “Why not?”

  Silence.

  I can’t do what he wants me to. The moment I do, he’ll want no more to do with me, and while I know that’s what I deserve, I can’t bring myself to make it happen.

  “Molly?” he prompts, nudging me slightly in his arms as my tears flow freely down my cheeks, partly for Ben, and partly for what I’ll lose when I tell this man I caused his death.

  “You’ll hate me,” I whimper as my fingers slowly wind their way free of the blanket and instantly reach for his t-shirt, clutching it tightly in a single fist.

  “That could never happen,” he throws back. “Unless you’re a murderer or something.”

  I stiffen, my hand curling tighter around his shirt, gripping on for dear life. I’m not a murderer but I might as well be.

  As though he can sense the tension flooding through my body, he redoubles his embrace around me, making soothing sounds as his fingers tangle in my hair. “And even if you were, I’d probably still negotiate.”

  Warmth floods through me at the thought of sharing this burden with somebody—of having somebody understand the weight of the guilt I’ve been carrying around. But how do you tell the man you’re falling for that you got the man you loved killed? It might not have been deliberate, but I killed him as surely as if I’d driven that car off the road myself.

  When I still fail to speak, he begins to rock from side to side like he’s soothing a baby and not a grown woman. “You know, that night at the hospital, I’ve never seen anybody so brave. I saw you sitting in that chair with blood seeping out of the wounds on your face, and you never once complained or even cried. You were so stoic. I knew, even then, that something wasn’t right. Nobody is that calm. Not without something else going on.” His fingers smooth over my cheek, swiping away a few stray tears. “Molly, you’ve carried this around long enough. Let me in. Let me help.”

  “Did he suffer?” I finally let out, my eyes fixed on the grip I have on his shirt.

  “No. It happened so quickly for him that he would have felt little if any pain. I doubt he even had time to register what was happening before it happened. He was peaceful. I promise you that.”

  My chin wobbles as I breathe deeply, digesting his words and letting them sink in deep to my bones. “I loved him. I loved him so much.”

  “You always will,” he states simply, his hand covering mine over his chest and squeezing lightly.

  “I betrayed him,” I assert hoarsely, my grip on his t-shirt turning to a push that’s almost a punch. “I killed him and then betrayed him.”

  “No, Molly.” His voice is firm, controlled. There’s no outward emotion there as he speaks, but he can’t hide it from me anymore. He’s angry and frustrated, upset, hurt and more than anything else, he’s worried. It’s all there in those eyes the colour of lush winter foliage. “He died from trauma injuries. I can reel them off to you now. I’ve never forgotten. Nobody killed him. It was an accident. A tragic, terrible accident.”

  Irritation begins to itch at my slowly warming skin. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know. How could he?

  Wriggling myself free of his lap, I shake the blanket free, my hair flying haphazardly around me, sending drops of sea water spraying all over the room and down my now naked form. But I don’t care about the water or my body being on display. All that matters is that he finally understands the truth.

  “A tragic, terrible accident that I caused,” I yell in his face. “It was my stupid car that wouldn’t start, even though he’d been nagging me for months to get it fixed. It was my stupid music that was playing in his car after I dragged him out of bed because God forbid I should be late for work. And it was my ridiculous need to pretend to conduct every piece of music I heard, as though I was Sir John fucking Barbirolli or something, that took his concentration away from the icy roads. And dammit, I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to smile at me because when he did, the world always seemed beautiful and safe. My pathetic need to feel that, to see him smile at me in that way that told me how much he adored me was the reason he missed the bend in the road. He died because I wanted a bit of goddamn attention.”

  He stares at me in all my naked, crazy glory, with my hands on my hips, hollering at him like a banshee while he just sits there and takes it all, absorbing every verbal blow as though they’re just water off a duck’s back. He isn’t the least bit fazed. He ought to be running, or treating me like the criminal I basically am, but he isn’t. He’s just sitting there, hands on his knees, fingers tapping away quietly as though he’s more bored than pissed off.

  Finally, perhaps sensing that I’m done, or at least running out of steam, he shifts forward on the couch, his mouth opening as he pulls in a deep breath, ready to speak. My entire body freezes, desperate to hear what he has to say to me now that he knows what I did. His next words will be everything, make or break for what we’ve started to build. I can’t breathe, waiting for him to say something, but just as the first sound emits from his mouth, the house rings with a sudden crash as the front door flies open and smashes into the plaster board behind it.

  Both our eyes dart instantly to the doorway, where the harassed looking figure of my best friend comes into view, her eyes moving quickly between myself and Sebastian before she lets out a seriously unladylike snort, dissolving the tension in the room in a way that only Imogen.

  She takes a step forward, tilts her head to the side, scrunches her nose up adorably and lets out a laugh. “Wow, Mol, that’s a little more of you than I usually like to see.”

  What on earth have I just walked in on?

  Molly’s startled eyes meet mine and I see for the first time what my absence has done to her.

  I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have taken so long to get my shit together because she needs me and I’ve let her down.

  “Come here,” I tell her, opening my arms and giving her a look that leaves no opportunity to decline.

  I stand there for ten seconds while she looks at me
blankly like I’m the one standing naked in her lounge screaming like a banshee. “Molly…” I say softly but with authority because I know she responds best to it when she’s hysterical.

  “I’m naked,” she sputters stupidly, apparently only just realising that she’s dressed in her birthday suit, letting it all hang out while she tears strips off Seb. Astian. Not that he looks remotely bothered.

  “Yeah, I know that.” I snicker. “But I’ve seen it all now. A hug can’t make this any more awkward. Here. Now, please.”

  She hesitates for a moment, her manic eyes drifting between her own body, Seb’s strangely calm face, and mine. She’s like a deer trapped in the headlights, unsure which way to turn. I can see pain and anger in her eyes but also a tiny bit of desperate hope shining through her despair.

  Finally, she rolls onto the balls of her feet before taking three long strides towards me and collapsing into my outstretched arms with a sound that hovers somewhere between a sob and a hysterical giggle.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur, running my hands through her crazy hair and down her back. “I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry you’re sad and I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I love you, you little hermit. Do you hear me?”

  She sniffs and clutches me tighter, the tears I’ve been waiting for for so long finally starting to roll freely down her flushed cheeks. She doesn’t say anything, but the tiny nod I can feel against my neck is answer enough for me.

  I look past her crazy windswept hair and at Seb who still hasn’t said a word. His jaw ticks and his eyes burn with so many emotions I can’t decipher which one is going to erupt from him first.

  “We’re going to go get a shower and put some clothes on.”

  He meets my eyes and nods once.

  “Some tea would be good, if you don’t mind?” I all but drag a bewildered looking Molly to the stairs and she scampers up them with no prompting from me, probably eager to get her body off display. I follow at a more sedate pace, and by the time I reach her bedroom, she’s sitting on the edge of the bed with her duvet tugged around her, holding it to her face as she cries.