by Jordan Marie
“Matthew had left my chains off that morning. I don’t know if it was by accident or if he thought he left me too weak to be able to do anything. Grandfather had left his gun lying on the table when he decided to choke Katie. I crawled to it and emptied the chamber into him…”
I want to concentrate on what she’s telling me, but all thought stops when she says that one word that leaves my blood cold.
“Chains?” I roar.
Beth pales. I know I should rein it in and get a handle on it. I’m just not able.
“What the fuck did they do to you Beth?”
Why didn’t I think while I was talking? I start to pull away from him. I need distance from him. I need to… Oh, God. His face is a mixture of fury and misery and I know I’m the cause of it. I try again to pull off of his lap. His hands dig into my hips, refusing to let me get away.
“Tell me, querida.”
“Skull, it’s not important now,” I tell him, trying to calm him. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say because his face is almost red with fury.
“It is! You’re important! I need to know what they did to you!”
“Why?” I cry, wanting this entire conversation to just disappear. “Katie and I got away, we survived, and that’s all that is important! I’m here with you now. We have our daughter and a second chance!”
“Because I have to know, Beth. It’s something I need to be able to share with you. I need you to give it to me to carry so you can be free of it,” he tells me, and I know he’s making an effort to be calm.
“I am free. It’s over.”
“You’re hiding your body from me,” he states, and he is much calmer now, but that’s bad news for me because he is methodical.
“Skull…”
“Torch mentioned torture, but fuck me, I glossed over it in my head. Even knowing what kind of monsters I had been dealing with, I thought since they viewed you as family, you’d be mostly safe, especially after Torch promised me they didn’t rape you…”
“They didn’t rape me,” I whisper, seeing the question on his face.
“Then tell me why you hide your body from me Beth. Trust me this time, mi cielo.”
His words threaten to undo me almost as much as the pleading look on his face. I take a breath because I know this is going to take every ounce of courage that I have. This may destroy me.
“Let me up,” I whisper, hating that I have tears in my eyes, yet unable to stop them.
He lets me go and I slide from his lap and slowly pull myself up. I stand in front of the bed, facing him. My legs are shaking and it’s all I can do to remain standing. I bite the inside of my cheek and use that to concentrate on the pain, anything but what I’m about to do.
“Skull…”
“Créeme,” he tells me. Trust me…
With shaking hands I gather the ends of the long-sleeved shirt he left on me. I fist them in my hands, hating this, hating everything about this…
“Créeme,” Skull urges again.
I close my eyes and pull the shirt over my head in one quick movement, and even when I hear Skull’s curse, even when the cold air hits me, I keep my eyes closed. I squeeze them closed so tight they may never open again.
Bile rises in my throat as I see the horrible marks that scar her delicate skin. They move up her stomach and over her chest and from her elbows down. They’re crude and some are much worse than others. The worse ones are on her stomach. I figure the majority of that is because she was pregnant at the time. I tap down my anger, wishing I had someone in my grasp to take out my anger on, to make them feel the pain that my woman obviously endured. I push that away for now, though. Now’s not the time for anger. I will do that when Beth isn’t around to see it. Now, I just need to concentrate on Beth and making her feel good—reassuring her.
I drop to my knees quietly in front of her. Her eyes are still tightly squeezed shut. I want to scream at the injustice of everything she’s gone through—of everything we’ve gone through. Instead, I put my hands on her hips, squeezing her reassuringly.
She jumps in surprise, her hands coming to cover mine.
“Mi pobre tesoro,” I whisper… my poor treasure. A better man would have protected her more. She slowly opens her eyes and I see the dread there. Does she expect to see revulsion? There can be none. This is my woman.
I don’t give a fuck about the scars.
“Skull…” she whispers pleadingly. “I can have surgery. The worst of them could be gone… I…”
I pull her down to the floor with me, and before she can say anything else, I stop her with a kiss. It’s a pressing of lips, firm and hard, a reassuring touch. A vow to her. It’s salty from her tears and the memory of it bores into my soul. Honestly, they’re not all her tears. They freely roll down my own face as I imagine the hell that she has lived through. Her little hand comes out and tries to dry them from my face, shaking as she does so.
“Is this why you were afraid to come home to me, mi cielo?” I ask her, my voice hoarse with emotion.
“Skull…”
“Tell me, Beth. Let it out and we’ll put it behind us. It will be gone.”
“Skull, even if I have surgery, they will never be gone, not completely.”
“Mi cielo, you need to listen to me. I want you to watch my face so you believe what I am saying. I don’t give a fuck about the scars except that you were hurt and I failed to keep you safe.”
“Skull, it wasn’t you. I made choices. I…”
“Saved your sister,” I finally acknowledge, and here on my knees my face in tears, I finally understand the choices she made. I release the anger I’ve been holding inside. Beth closes her eyes once again and she whispers words that are deeply soaked with pain and guilt. It’s so thick I can hear it with every syllable.
“And nearly destroyed the man I love.”
“You give me life, mi cielo. Your heart is so big, so full of love… that it makes mine beat. You gave me life, you gave our daughter life…”
“Skull…”
“You kept her safe and you found your way back to me. You made it in time to save me again, mi cielo. That’s what those scars mean to me.”
“I let fear make me run,” she whispers.
“I won’t lie to you, mi cielo, not now. That’s the hardest part for me, but now I can mostly understand it.”
“How? I let my fear of you seeing me, of…”
“You are young, mi cielo, and you were scared.”
“I’m…”
I interrupt her, not wanting her to say anything else. “You saw those damn pictures Pistol fabricated and what confidence you had in us fled.”
“But…”
“Bottom line, mi cielo, it just doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Skull…”
“Do you want to hold the choices I made while you were gone and the threats and anger I had when I first saw you against me?”
“Of course not, but…”
“It is the same for me, mi cielo. I finally have you back and I’m not going to let our past come in and destroy the life we are meant to have. From now on, we think only of the future.”
“I love you, Skull,” she tells me. Her body is trembling and there are so many tears falling from her face it hurts me, but she’s never been more beautiful.
I pull her to the floor, gently kissing the largest of scars on her stomach. “Tell me about this one, mi cielo.”
“Skull… I don’t want to…”
“Tell me and let the pain out. Let me kiss them away,” I tell her.
“This was the first one…”
“And…” I prompt her when she seems lost in thought.
“Katie’s leg…” she starts brokenly. “The skin grafts from the explosion were still raw. I did the best I could to keep them clean, but they weren’t healing properly. Redmond wasn’t letting me have the proper bandages, and she needed medical care. Matthew came in one day and demanded I brand the wound closed. He even brought the branding iron and sta
rted a fire in the fireplace. When I refused, he threatened to do it himself… When I begged him not to…”
“What happened then, mi cielo?” I ask her, doing my best to keep my voice from showing the anger and disgust I feel inside.
“He asked me what I would do, to keep him from doing it…”
“Mierda,” I whisper softly, hoping she doesn’t hear it, but when she flinches, I know she does. I kiss the scar again. “Tell me.”
“I told him I’d take her pain. He handed me a knife… and told me to prove it.” Her body shakes from the force of her tears and I hold her as close as I can. “I was so scared, Skull. I was afraid I would hurt the baby. It hurt so bad, and there was so much blood. I can still hear Katie pleading with me to stop, but she was so feverish and sick. Matthew was laughing…”
“Shh… I have you, Beth. The bastard is dead. He’ll never touch you or Gabby again,” I tell her, and the tears in my own eyes blind me. “Te amo, mi cielo,” I whisper to her stomach.
I make my way to every scar, both small and large, kissing each one, praising her with each kiss for her bravery, for her courage, for just being her.
Finally when I am finished, I hold her until the tears begin to slow. Then I do the only thing I can. I slowly love her body, there on the floor, with the light on, showing her in ways no words could that she is beautiful and the only woman I will ever need or love.
Mi mundo…. My world … My pearl of great price…
“Explain to me again while we’re only twenty minutes away from the club, but having a picnic again?” I ask Skull. “I mean, really, there are picnic tables out behind the club.”
“I told you, as long as we’re on lockdown, I’m not going to let you and Gabby be far from home.”
“But you’re…”
“Even if I’m with you, Beth. I’m not going to risk you and Gabby for anything. But even so,” he says with a grin, taking a strawberry, dipping it in chocolate, then plopping it in my mouth. I open immediately because, well, they taste good, but more than that, I love when he gets that happy look on his face. “Even so,” he continues, “I want some alone time with my two favorite girls.”
“Daddy!” Gabby yells, as if on cue. She’s holding the bucket and shovel I brought.
Skull grins at her. “Mi hija is demanding me, mi amor.”
He winks. I shake my head as he goes and plays with our daughter. It’s been a week since I’ve shown him my scars, and each day, he proves even more that they don’t matter to him. It’s been a week, and I feel like finally everything is going to be okay. A week of nothing but… happiness.
I go over to sit beside Gabby and help them play in the sandbox that Skull brought. It’s in the shape of a turtle, and it was all he could do to fit it in the back of the truck. Then, when we arrived here, he added the bags of sand he kept in the back.
“Can I ask what you’re planning to do when she wants the sandbox at home?”
Skull turns the bucket upside-down to show the beginnings of the castle he and Gabby are building. “Make sure it’s at home for her, mi cielo. What else?”
What else? I shake my head at his simple answer. I have a feeling that if Gabby asked for the moon, he’d find a way to give it to her. Now that Skull and I have finally worked through our issues from the past, he’s much softer around Gabby. Gentler, even. She’s sensed the change and the difference in how they interact is night and day.
We play for an hour until Gabby’s laughter slowly changes to yawns, then we lay back on the quilt we brought and stare up at the sky, making shapes out of the clouds. Soon Gabby is sound asleep, snuggled between us. My hand goes to my stomach in sadness. I had hoped I was pregnant when Skull mentioned how he hadn’t been using a condom, but I started my period a couple of days ago. No baby.
“It will happen, querida,” Skull’s deep timbre whispers against my skin, and I look up at him. He’s smiling at me, even as his hand clasps mine and rests on my stomach.
“I want a sister for Gabby so she has someone who is always there for her, like I have with Katie.”
“God help me,” he says with a smile.
“I’d be offended … but I think you like my sister.”
“I plead the fifth.”
“Mmm…hmm...”
“Querida, I hope you don’t take this wrong, but I’m hoping our next child is a son. It’s going to be a fulltime job to keep men away from Gabby as it is.”
“Good luck with that,” I say, then laugh. I sit up to adjust a small blanket over Gabby. That’s when I notice she’s wearing the hair bow with the mini nanny cam in it. I just assumed that Katie had taken it out, but I can see it clearly. Actually, I’m sure she told me she did, which means she put it back in for today. She’s spying on me and Skull. “That bitch!”
“Querida?”
“I’m going to kill my sister. She’s spying on us!”
“Beth?” Skull asks, still confused.
I gently disengage the hair bow from Gabby’s dark hair to show Skull.
“When we wanted to know what you guys had found out about Colin and Matthew, Katie put this little pinpoint camera in Gabby’s hair bow. It’s a little better than a voice recorder, so when you took her into the meeting, we would know what you were discussing.”
“You what?” he growls.
“We had to know what you were talking about and you wouldn’t tell me otherwise. You left us with no choice.”
“Except to not listen into private conversations and wait for me to tell you what’s going on.”
“If I had done that, would you have told me where Matthew was so I could help kill him?”
“Probably not, but he still would have wound up dead.”
“Then I rest my case.” I shrug his complaint off. “Anyways, back to the camera.”
“I should spank your ass,” he grumbles.
“Feel free, later,” I tell him. “I remember she clearly told me she took the camera out after you gave it back to me. Which means she put it back in on purpose, just for today.”
Skull sighs, taking the hair bow and putting it in his pocket. “Soon, mi cielo, we will discuss your tendencies to think you are a detective, but not today. Today, I think I’m the reason she’s spying on us.”
“You are?” I ask, confused.
Skull stands up and reaches his hand out to me. “Walk with me, Beth.”
“Gabby…” I remind him, but I stand and take his hand, wondering what’s going on.
“We’ll just walk a few steps. She’ll never be out of our sight,” he answers.
We go about ten feet. He smiles at me, and it’s the type of smile that makes my heart flutter in my chest.
“Skull…”
“Just a little over three years ago, my world was rocked to its core. I saw this girl with sparkling spun-gold hair blowing in the wind, in this pure white dress looking like an angel. Mi ángel. She was a picture of something in my mind that I dreamed of when I was a child, and then her eyes… As a child, I wanted a woman with sky blue eyes that reminded me of a happy memory. But this woman’s was a combination, a gray that look like the sky just before the rains open up. Much more interesting… more captivating.”
“Skull, sweetheart…”
“Te amo, mi cielo.”
“That’s why you call me your sky?”
“I love you, my sky,” he repeats in English. “You are it for me,” he says, his voice thick with emotion, and I can feel each vibration inside of me.
He reaches into his other pocket. I watch him and, almost as if everything is in slow motion, he goes down on one knee. I can’t stop the tears that fill my eyes. I don’t even try. When he looks up at me and shows me the most beautiful princess-cut diamond I’ve ever seen, I think my heart stops beating.
“Will you marry me, Beth?” he asks. “Will you have more children with me? Will you give yourself to me forever? I swear that if you do, I promise I will bust my ass to make sure you never regret it.”
> All my dreams coming true in one moment… everything I’ve ever wanted, here within my grasp. When he holds my hand and slips the ring on my finger, I’m shaking my head up and down over and over.
“Yes! Yes! Oh, God, yes! Of course I’ll marry you!” I drop down to my knees and fall willingly into his arms.
“I can’t believe you got on your knees for me,” Beth says as we’re loading stuff back into the truck.
She’s got this silly grin on her face and her eyes are full of happiness. Mission one accomplished. From this moment on, I will bust my ass to make sure all Beth ever has are smiles. That’s my goal and my promise not only to her, but to myself. She has no idea the lengths I will go to just to make sure that all she feels is happiness from here on out, but she will.
“You can return the favor later,” I tell her, and I’m rewarded with a deep blush on her face.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Is this what normal feels like? Me, the woman I love, and my daughter. This right here is all I need. Fuck the rest of it. I’m buckling a sleeping Gabby in the car when I hear the squealing tires of another vehicle getting close. I secure Gabby quickly and look up just in time to see an old black truck come barreling up the road from the small picnic area we’re in. This is a private road and the only cars on it would be the ones the guards would allow in the club. When the driver spots us, they throw on their brakes. The car heaves at the abrupt change, the tail-end sliding a little in the gravel.
In the next second, I see Teena get out. She’s wearing a white dress that’s been ripped along the side, revealing her bra. Her face is bruised and there’s blood dried around her nose.
Someone has worked her over pretty good.
“Skull!” she hollers, running towards me.
“Fuck,” I hear Beth mutter. To be honest, I’m thinking the same thing.
“Skull!” Teena cries again, running until she plows into me. My arms go around her in reflex.
“Teena, what is going on?” I ask, very conscious of the way Beth is watching us. I don’t see jealousy in her eyes, but there’s a definite dislike of Teena evident in them, which admittedly I can understand, though I thought we’d put that behind us.