Her head comes up, and she opens her full lips. “Are ...”
“Please, let me have this.” I wish I could massage my throat or drink some water; my throat stings every time I use it.
She nods, but I can tell she’s not happy about giving this to me.
I nod. “Thank you. Now, I know what happened was not ideal ...”
“Ideal? They were going to kill us, and with you, they nearly succeeded.” Her mouth twists into a grimace.
“Fine, it was a fucking disaster. Better?”
“More realistic than ‘not ideal’.” She makes quotation marks as she says it. When she rolls her eyes, I can feel my lips turn up, and her returning smile eases something in my chest.
The sinking feeling doesn’t stay gone long, and I adjust as best I can before I start to speak again.
“What if I never get over you?” I search her face, and find her looking back. “What if I wake up, every day of my fucking life, and want you so badly I destroy who I am because I no longer want who I am without you?” My heart starts to race as her face twists into another grimace.
“I don’t deserve you, not after what happened, but I also can’t be in the same place I was in when you left me in that hotel room. I can’t not know where we stand. I need to know that you won’t run again. If I'm left to hope, I'll waste away with my bones still gripping on, waiting for my phone to ring, a message to come, a letter to appear, or for God to grace me with a sign that never comes? What if you were my one, but I wasn't yours? So, if you’re not sure I can call you mine, then I need you to walk out of this room and never look back.” My throat is on fire, but so is my whole body. It burns with uncertainty, and the few seconds it takes for her to answer may do me in, letting the flames consume me. Anything would be less painful than hearing the words that I know will come.
“But you are,” she whispers. My heart freezes in my chest, and my ears have a conversation with my head to double-check.
“You want me?” I question.
Her giggle is unexpected, and she brushes the hair that’s fallen in her face. “Why wouldn’t I?”
I pause, my heart in my throat. “How …?, I mean .... After what I let happen.”
Her expression softens. “Don’t be a martyr. You’re not Almighty or God. You didn’t have much say in the matter. If you recall, I even made you go into that fight without your weapon. Most things happen without our control.”
“Didn’t take you as the religious type, and you couldn't have known they would be there lying in wait.”
“Exactly! I didn’t, and neither did you. I’m not religious, but it’s still true. We had no control over what they did to us, just as we hadn’t on the day we met. I wouldn’t be willing to trade one if I couldn’t have the other. You changed me in that hotel room back in South Carolina, but I couldn’t admit it until you were out of reach. Did you know I went back for you?” Her eyes search my face. I was too afraid that if I spoke, she would stop, so I shake my head. I’m relieved she goes on.
“That little girl that kept showing up in the hall...” She waits for my nod. “She and her mom stopped me at my terminal while I was in line to board. Her mom's face was so serious as she gripped my arm that I thought she might attack me, but before I could get a word out, she whispered in a harsh voice that I was making a mistake, that I had let go of one of the good ones. I stood there like a child scorned, her mother telling her for the last time to clean up her room. However, this lady was telling me to do it for my life. I left that terminal hoping to find you, but you’d already left. Even missed my flight and had to wait for a different one.” We must have missed each other by minutes at some point when she went back for me.
“That too, I believe was meant to be, because we grew towards each other even though we were apart. If that’s not showing we are meant to be something more than we are, then I don’t know what would be.” She moves over to the side of the bed, and her hand slips into mine.
"So... I begin, but the door swings open.
"You've got to be kidding; he’s been awake for ten minutes ..."
“Ma’am, I’m doing my job.” A young officer, resting his hand on his gun holster, looks between Emma and me. His tired eyes and five o’clock shadow betray his state.
“What do you want to know?” I ask as I squeeze Emma’s hand.
“A statement of the events as they transpired. I was able to get Ms. Baker when you two came in. And ..”
“Ger was the man that killed my father, and when he got out of prison, sought revenge.”
“Revenge?” He grabs for his notebook, flips it open, and scribbles something down as I continue.
“I was the one that tackled him and detained him until the police arrived.”
“How long ago was that?”
“About six years ago.”
“What about a Mr. ...” He looks at his pad. “Brian McCullin? He was shot and found dead on the scene.”
I sit up straighter. “I shot him after a fight for the firearm.”
He peers over and then to Emma before looking back to the notebook. I continue before he can. “I tackled him off of Emma in his attempt to …” I swallow around the pain in my throat and my pride. “rape her.”
The questioning went on until I had told the story twice. My mom and sister had come back to hear the second telling, and I was thankful that I wouldn’t need to retell it a third time.
“I think I have it all. We’ll be in contact if we need anything else. Thank you for your time.”
“Wait, I have a question.”
“Sure, if I can answer it.”
“How did he get in? I searched the room myself before Emma went in.”
“A joining room next to yours, your door wasn’t locked, so it was a matter of him unlocking his to get access.
The door closes, and of course, it barely clicks shut before Mia opens her mouth. “Dude, you killed someone! Are you going to start a gang now or become an assassin?” She looks excited by the prospect. I can see Emma’s mouth twitch from the corner of my eye. Remembering as I am when she questioned the same thing about me, I'd bet.
“Mom dropped you on your head as a child.” I tease.
My mom gasps aloud. “I most certainly did not!”
At the same time, Mia bites back a “Hey!”
Movement catches my eye. Emma is rising from her seat and gives me a tentative smile. “I’m going to visit with my parents now. I’ll be back later.” She chances a glance over at my family before deciding to bend down and place a kiss against my mouth. Reluctantly, I let her hand go. Even with the threat of Ger and Brian gone, there is so much I wish I could keep her protected from. Watching her leave, the door swinging shut, I suspect that the tightening of my chest will not release until she walks back through it again. I wonder if this is how it will be from now on. Watching her go, then to be ever in suspense, until she returns.
“She’ll come back,” my mom says, and I finally look over. “She hasn’t left since you two got here.”
“She was starting to smell.”
I look over at my sister, who is walking over to take Emma’s vacant seat. “Shut up, Mia. You don’t look all that pleasant either.”
“No shit! My brother was shot, had to leave my vacation to sit around in a hospital waiting room instead of naked on a beach.”
“I could have lived without that image.”
She laughs. “Serves you right for scaring the shit out of us, and let me tell you, it was not the way we wanted to meet your woman.”
“Yes, that was unfortunate. I can’t believe what almost happened to her.” My mom shivers in her seat and rubs her hands up and down her arms.
That reminds me. “Ger said something.”
Her eyes focus on me, and they are wide. If I wasn’t looking at her so closely, I wouldn’t have seen how the blood drained from her face. Could I be right …? ”Mom,” I say with the tone of someone trying to coax a small animal from under a porch.<
br />
“Liam …” she protests.
“What am I missing?” Mia sounds annoyed.
After a moment of looking at both of us, Mom looks defeated, and she takes a deep breath. “Your father and I never wanted you to find out.” She looks at both of us in turn.
“Find out what?” Mia is still confused, and her tone reveals her growing irritation. I already have my suspicions, she’s going in this blind, but it’s time for us both to know the truth.
“Your father loved you. You were both his in every way that mattered. I want you to know that before ...”
“What are you saying … dad wasn’t our …?” Mia hesitates, and I don’t blame her. It’s a hard realization.
Mom shakes her head slowly and connects eyes with me before looking over at Mia.
“Then ...” Mia starts.
“Ger,” I interrupt. I look forward, but before I close my eyes, I see the denial in Mia as she shakes her head.
A strangled noise comes from my mom before I hear her start to cry. With eyes closed, my hand searches for hers. When she takes it, it’s shaking. After a minute, her body slows to a hum, then she takes a few deep breaths until she’s able to speak again.
“Ger and I went to school together, and we were …” I squeeze her hand, encouraging her to get it out. “Friends, but he wanted more. One night while I was out at a party, he found me and …”
“He raped her,” I say as I open my eyes a slit and see Mia still shaking her head, her eyes wide, tears filling them.
“Your father was the one to find me. He was so kind.” Mom’s mouth tips into a smile as she wipes away the tears on her cheeks. “He took care of me afterward, even though he wasn’t happy that I refused to go to the hospital or report Ger for what he had done. So, your dad married me after I found out I was pregnant.”
“You trapped him,” Mia spits.
Mom shakes her head, her eyes wounded. “I never asked him, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I worried for a long time I had taken something from him, but he was so happy when he was with the two of you. We found out later when we tried to get pregnant again that he couldn’t have children, and that made him only more grateful that we had you both.”
The chair scraps against the linoleum as Mia jerks out of it. “I … I just can’t.” She swipes her hands in the air, the tears finally coming down, and she swings the door open, scaring the nurse on the other side about to knock. We all watch her as she barely misses the nurse and stalks out of sight.
Looking over at mom, I grip her hand harder as her chin wobbles. “She’ll come back. She always does.” She gives me a nod.
“Is she going to be okay?”
I nod at the nurse’s question. “Yeah, she’s fine.”
“Alright, well, I’m here to unshackle you and give you some pain meds.”
She comes over, and in only a few minutes, I’m free. “Thank you. Can I also get some water?”
“Oh! Of course. I’ll be right back with that.”
“I’m sorry,” my mom whispers when we’re alone again.
“It’s alright, it’s not your fault, but we could have handled the truth sooner.”
“It wasn’t our truth: your father’s and mine. We raised you as if the two of us had made you and your sister. Ger never made a ripple in our marriage to each other either. I grew to love Harold, and he blocked out everything else for me. He helped me heal when I thought there was no coming away from the shame I had felt. He was the best thing to ever happen to me, and in my opinion, for both of you.”
“The man you married was my father, there’s no question about that, not to me, and Mia will come to realize that once she has time to let it soak in.”
“I hope so.”
“She will.”
The doctor was right. The breathing treatment is the most loathsome thing I endured during my stay at the hospital. Most days, I wanted to throw the damn thing across the room, but what I wanted more was to get out of here.
Being cooped up in bed most of the day is not what I'm used to. It takes time to adjust in the first week. I struggle to catch my breath before getting to the bathroom to take a piss. It isn’t until the second week that I take a full breath in and then out without trying to hack up the other half of my lung.
Emma is there every day. After the second week, mom and Mia made up and are there together instead of trading shifts. Mia came to her senses after talking to me on a bad day of breathing therapy.
“You’re being a bitch,” I snap, and I continue before Mia can talk over me. “You know what you’re doing? You’re punishing her after she’s already been punished, not once, but twice by Ger. She decided to make her first trauma a positive thing, and to rub her nose in it, after being violated like that, is a real shit thing to do. And you know what? She doesn’t deserve that.”
“So, I don’t get to feel anything about it?”
“No. No, you don’t. Ger was a shit excuse for a man. We were lucky that dad became what mom needed and raised us like we were his. That took courage, from both of them, to move on. So, no, you don’t get to feel anything but grateful that mom decided to keep us and for dad to have loved us even though we weren’t his blood. Grow the fuck up, Mia.”
She didn’t come to visit me for a few days, but neither did mom. I suspect I caused some heart-to-hearts between them at home, but when they came back their relationship seemed closer to normal.
On one of the rare nights that mom and Mia aren’t there to visit, Emma slumps in the chair; she’s fallen asleep mid-conversation. She told me she hasn't been sleeping well, and it doesn’t surprise me. After watching someone die, it takes its toll. Even before, I'd experienced night terrors, so I know what it is to be trapped in one, but it is something else to watch someone else go through it.
When she screamed, it woke me from a drug-induced sleep. Her hands thrash, seeming to need to brush something from her skin. Calling out to her gets her eyes to snap open, but her eyes are unseeing. It takes several anxious seconds of calling her name for her to focus.
"You alright?" I ask as she catches her breath.
She nods, wiping sweat coating her brow.
Peeling back the blankets, I hold out my arm. "Get in." After she climbs in, I get her tucked into my side, and it's only a few seconds for her to fall asleep. From then we sleep like this every night while I'm in the hospital.
After another week, I'm finally allowed to go home as long as I promise to follow up with my primary physician. Since I hadn’t thought to get one since moving back, the surgeon set me up with one in my area before she would allow me to leave.
Once I'm home, I reach my limit for visitation. The urge to roam around my own space, alone for a while, has me pushing my mom and sister out the door as soon as they bring me home.
Though being alone is what I wanted, as I walked around my house, sitting on my furniture, drinking my water, wishing it's coffee, it only takes a few hours before I realize solitude is no longer an option for me. I wanted my life to start.
Pulling out my cell from my back pocket, it's as if she knows too, I click accept, and her voice fills the otherwise quiet room.
“Can I come over?”
“Can you move in?”
“Oka ...! Wait, what?”
“Move in with me, Emma Christine Baker. We can figure out the rest as we go.”
“Are you serious?”
“As serious as a bullet through the lungs.”
“It’s too early to make jokes.”
“Is it?” I question.
She snorts. “Who made you lord and executive joke timeline maker?”
“I’m the one out of the two of us that's been shot. I’m pretty sure that qualifies me in this case.”
I can feel her pouting the whole two blocks over the phone. “Look,” I start. “It can’t be much of a surprise to you, can it?”
“That you make horribly timed jokes?”
I laugh, only cough for a few sec
onds, and I note the progress. “That I don’t want to live another day where you are not within arm’s reach.”
She is silent for so long that I’m sure she will turn down my offer, but when she whispers out her reply, my chest swells. “Yes.”
“I love you.” As soon as the words are out, I realize we haven’t said them out loud. But even if she’s not there yet with her feelings for me, I can’t turn back from this moment; or how I feel for this woman, and even if she never gets to where I am, I will never regret saying them.
“I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”
“Hello?” I pull the phone from my ear and see that she’d hung up.
I admit in that fifteen minutes I’d paced around my house enough that I am out of breath when I open the door.
“Liam, are you alright?” She comes in and touches around the brace I still have to wear from the surgery. “Are you in pain?”
She looks up, her face pensive, but as I shake my head, her features start to relax. She straightens, “I love you too.”
“You made me wait fifteen minutes for an I love you too?”
She shrugs. “It’s not something I wanted to say over the phone for the first time.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
She shakes her head. “Not when I’m only two ...” Gripping the back of her head, I kiss her so hard that we’re both breathless when finished with her.
“I love you so damn much, now get out.”
Her eyes grow wide. “What?”
“I want you moved in by the end of the day. You have four brothers; get them to do the heavy lifting.”
Her smile is bright, and she gets on her tiptoes. This kiss is sweet, and quick before I watch her click the door shut behind her.
Another few weeks go by, my brace finally comes off, and I forgot my rib cage could expand this much as I breathe.
My family decides to throw a party, inviting Emma’s family over, since they would be family soon as far as I was determined.
I’d met her brothers weeks ago when they brought her stuff around. It took longer than a day, but that first night she was in my arms as we slept in the same bed again.
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