by Holly Hart
I close my eyes and I’m taken straight back to the desert – to the smell of aviation fuel in the air, the buzz of helicopters, of trash burning in barrels and of unrelenting Middle Eastern heat. I’m taken back to the day she died, the day I heard that Ashley’s Humvee hit an IED on the way back to base.
To the day I talked my way onto a helicopter to be by her side, only to get to the base hospital to find no one there.
“She died a hero,” I say with my eyes squeezed shut – telling my daughter the truth.
And then I hear myself, hear what I’m saying – just a useless platitude. People have told me the same thing for a decade, that Ashley died a hero. They mean well, every one.
Yes, it’s true. And yet it isn’t.
Ashley Wolfe didn’t die a hero. She died a mother, and a wife – a woman who had so much more life to live, and so much more love to give. She died without ever hearing her daughter speak her first words. She died without seeing Poppy walk, or go to school for the first time.
A tear rolls down my cheek.
“She died loving you,” I say, hugging my daughter tight. “The people who killed her, they weren’t so bad, just misguided. Your mom told me off every time I said they were bad. They were just ordinary people in a horrible place. But believe me, Poppy – your mom died loving you. Don’t ever wonder about or be ashamed of that.”
I wait there until Poppy’s sad, broken breathing becomes smooth, then peaceful with sleep. Until the end, every time it hits that hitch in her chest where her breath catches on her grief, I feel the same lance of pain burn through me.
Then I pad out of her room.
This time it’s my turn for hot tears to burn their way down my cheeks. I’m a strong man. I’m a proud man. But I’m not too proud to admit that what just happened in my daughter’s bedroom cut me right to the bone.
It cut deeper than that, even.
I walk back to the kitchen and pour a tumbler of whiskey – my body acting on autopilot. I knock it back, and then pour another, shaky hands spilling droplets to either side. The alcohol burns its way down my throat. It hurts, but the pain is just a fraction of The Grief I’ve carried for the last decade.
It’s The Grief that’s rearing its ugly head once more.
Then I see it…
…The Journal.
Damn, I’m even thinking about it in capital letters.
The gray notebook sits there on my counter, fucking daring me to open it. The alcohol simmers in my veins, and I know it’s affecting my emotions, but I can’t help myself. I’m burning up, bubbling over. There’s one question I can’t keep in the dark, one question I can’t dodge.
What the hell am I doing with Skye?
I have to raise a daughter. Maybe I should swear off women for good. Or at least until Poppy turns eighteen…
I stride toward the journal, blood boiling. Somehow it’s a symbol of every pain that has been inflicted on me all these years – of losing Ashley, of raising Poppy alone.
Of everything.
I pick it up. I throw it across the room. It hits the glass walls of my penthouse suite. It slides down. It lands in a crumpled puddle on the floor.
Read that.
7
Skye
My legs are aching by the time I make it back to my cramped – but homey – apartment. The elevator is out – unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence – so I’m forced to trudge my way up three flights of stairs.
Just a few more steps, I reassure myself. Then you can curl up in bed and forget everything…
Instead, I’m greeted by the sight of a man slumped against my front door. His hair shines with a thin layer of grease, and his neck is cricked at an angle that is sure to leave him aching in the morning. I flinch, and let out a sigh.
The man’s body doesn’t react to the sound. In fact, the only evidence that he’s alive at all is the faint rise and fall of his chest.
“Oh, dad…”
As I groan, my head falls forward with dismay. This isn’t the first time my father has turned up here like this, and I would put money on it not being the last.
But that doesn’t make it any easier. This isn’t how family is supposed to work – parents aren’t supposed to become alcoholic wrecks. And if they do, they are sure as heck not supposed to let their kids find out.
I guess I’m not a kid any longer.
I stop just shy of the landing, one foot teasing the final step. I try to figure out what the hell I’m going to do. I breathe against the back of my hand, and smell the sweet mixture of rum and Coke on my breath.
“Crap,” I mutter. My mind races, a faint hint of adrenaline quickly clearing my tipsiness. I start to react – body moving on autopilot. My legs are still heavy, but I push through. I’ve been here before. I’ve lived this life a thousand times.
I cross the landing and carefully step over my dad’s prone, unconscious body. The smell of alcohol spills off his clothes in waves – acrid, burning. It grates against the inside of my nostrils. I wrinkle my nose.
My key tangles with the lock, giving off a metallic grinding sound. I wince at the sound. I can’t wake dad, not yet. He’s not a mean drunk – but I don’t want him to smell the alcohol on my breath.
It’s better that way.
I inch the door open, scarcely daring to breathe. My shoulders hunch forward, as though I’m hiding from something or someone – the man slumped beneath me. I feel like a cat burglar entering my own home.
Dad coughs, and then chokes, as his body slowly slides down my wooden front door. I look down, desperate for him not to wake up, not yet. He comes to rest against the floor. One heartbeat, another, it looks like he hasn’t awoken.
I’ve got time.
I step through the open doorway, biting down on my need to breathe. I tiptoe across the room, and turn the tap in the kitchen on – but just to a trickle.
But even that’s enough.
“Skye!” Dad shouts, as though he’s been startled out of an awful nightmare.
I spin around to see an awful, macabre spectacle playing out in the doorway to my apartment. His body jerks upward, and then his head collides with the wooden landing floorboards with a thud. He moans in pain.
“Skye,” he croaks again. His hand forms a fist, and he thumps it against the floorboards. The wood resounds like a drum. “I know you’re in there, Skye…open up. Don’t make me – ”
I get my head under the stream of running water, fill my mouth and quickly rinse my teeth. The last thing I need is for my dad to smell the alcohol on my breath. Right now he’s coming down. But if he realizes that I’ve been drinking as well, I know what’ll happen. He’ll try and cajole me into drinking with him.
I never would, of course. It’s just that I can’t stand it when he begs. He’s never less of a man – a father – than then.
“Keep it down out there, asshole,” a voice calls from somewhere else in the building, “or I’m calling the cops.”
I spring into action, strangely spurred on more by the prospect of getting a noise warning than anything else. It’s hard to invest myself too deeply in dad’s made up problems, these days. I’ve been burned way too many times to care.
“Why don’t you shut up,” my dad mumbles. Then, louder: “Skye, open up girl. It’s your daddy.”
“Dad!” I hiss as I cross my living room, biting my lip as I wonder whether to even let the man in. He’s my father – but more in body than spirit. The man he once was disappeared a long time ago.
“You’ve been drinking again, dad,” I say. My lips move through the now rote sentences. It’s hard to get too invested into what I’m saying. We’ve been down this road so many times before. “You promised me – ”
My dad looks up. From down there on the floor, he looks like a baby. His face – aged by alcohol – suddenly seems childlike.
“I let you down again, baby,” he moans, fingernails scrabbling against the wooden flooring in a desperate attempt to move him into a seate
d position. “I know I did. Will you let your daddy in… just this once?”
He moves slowly, reactions worn world-weary by the alcohol coursing through his system. Yet strangely he doesn’t seem too unsteady. I guess he has spent so many years pouring liquor down his throat that it doesn’t affect him like ordinary men, not anymore.
I glance up at the living room clock. Damn it. It’s already a quarter past one in the morning. I know from long, bitter experience that this night is only just beginning.
“Okay, get in here, dad,” I say. “Now!”
I try hard to bite it down, but a hint of my irritation comes out. More than a hint. And yet it seems to work. He winces, and then at least attempts to apply some kind of discipline to his expression.
“Can you give me a hand up, baby,” he whimpers, looking up at me helplessly. “My legs aren’t working like they used to.”
“That’s the drink, dad,” I grunt irritably. And yet … and yet I do it anyway. Because what the hell else am I going to do? What the hell else can any child do but help their parent?
For all his sins, despite whatever Robert Warren has done in his life, he’s still my father. And I know that I’d never be able to forgive myself for not helping him.
I reach out my hand. My dad takes it with blubbering eyes, and I pull him up to wobbly feet.
“Thanks, baby,” he grunts, sending a stream of super-heated, alcohol-laced breath crashing against my face like waves colliding with boulders on a rocky beach. “Just … just don’t look at me, okay?”
His tone is quiet, low, even ashamed.
“Why not, dad” I ask, struggling for breath as I help carry him into my apartment.
“I know what you think of me,” he says, slurring for the first time. “I know I’ve let you down.”
“You haven’t, dad,” I say, kicking the door shut behind me. It’s a lie – a white one, maybe – but a lie nonetheless. The truth is, my father has let me down – tonight, and so many other nights, and he knows it.
It might even be the guilt that’s eating him up inside – the guilt that he hides from through the haze of alcohol, or the guilt that’s driving him to drink.
“I wasn’t always like this, you know,” he says, head slumped forward. “A drink –,” hiccup, “– a drunk.”
“I know, dad,” I say.
With a grunt, I heave my father forward onto the couch. He falls in a heap, and I glance up at the clock once again. Another five minutes has passed. I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow, a complete wreck.
“I mean it,” he sniffs, looking back up at me, helpless once again. “It’s just, after your mom died – ”
“Dad, please,” I beg, cutting him off. “Don’t!”
I don’t want to hear my mom’s name. I don’t want to hear dad’s grief yet again, because it’s an unpleasant reminder of the emotions I’ve forced down, forced into the darkness, into a place I seldom venture.
It’s as if he doesn’t hear. I see a wetness glistening in his eyes, then silent tears streaming down his wrinkled, dirt-smudged face.
I look at my father – angry at what he’s become. I’m battling with an overwhelming desire to help him out of this hole he’s in, but I want to turn away. The professional inside me knows that I can’t make him overcome his problems with alcohol – he has to want to fix himself.
“She was the best woman I’ve ever known,” dad says, a whimper cracking his tone. “The most beautiful girl at prom, the smartest woman at any dinner party, the best cook, the best mother…”
“Dad – ”
He carries on, unhearing. The tears are flowing like a river now, relentlessly coursing down his cheeks, wetting the couch cushions beneath him.
“I’ll never forget the day you were born,” dad says. His voice, though weighed down with grief, seems stronger now, as if he’s taking strength from the memory. “Seeing your mom hold you in her arms was the most beautiful site any man could ask for. But now – ”
“– she’s gone,” I murmur, slumping down onto the floor and resting my back against the couch.
I can’t leave dad like this. I can’t leave him here alone, stewing in his grief.
At least, that’s the lie I tell myself – The White lie. Because the truth is that I might be every bit as broken as my father. I’m just concealing it better.
And that thought scares me more than anything.
8
Skye
I get into the office early. The rest of the world barely even seems to have started turning. Tyler’s not in yet, that’s for sure.
As I approach my office door, eyes still half-lidded from lack of sleep, a flash of color catches my eye. There’s a gift-wrapped box sitting on top of Tyler’s desk – black, with a knotted pink ribbon. It’s strange, out of place, and yet I almost ignore it as my legs plod onward, still weighed down by exhaustion.
Thank God I don’t.
I stop and turn.
Tyler’s a by-the-book kind of guy. Even if he could, he wouldn’t receive personal items at work. I take a couple of paces over and look down, reaching for the tag peeking out from underneath the ribbon.
It’s addressed… to me.
The card tag feels expensive. It’s a thick, heavy cream card, beautifully textured. I pluck it out, and turn it over to read.
Skye, I meant what I said last night. You’re going to fix me, and I’ll repay the favor a hundred times over. I’ll keep repaying the favor until your hips buck against my face, and you’re begging me to stop. I hope you like my gift.
Oh. My. God.
Did I just read that, or are my eyes playing tricks on me?
The little note is unsigned, but I know exactly who it’s from. I snatch the box up, being careful not to drop the tag, and hurry into my office, casting anxious looks over my shoulder. My cheeks are burning with the heat of embarrassment … but maybe also a touch of desire.
The second my office door closes behind me, the phone rings. I sprint for my desk and answer it. “Hello?”
Harlan’s voice is on the other end of the line, crystal clear. “Did you get the gift I sent you, Skye?”
“No…” I say.
I don’t know why, but my brain automatically reached for a lie. I feel like I’m playing a game of cat and mouse with Harlan, only, I’m the mouse and he’s the cat. He’s playing with me as surely as a tiger might with its prey.
“Don’t lie to me, Skye,” Harlan growls down the phone. I feel stuck on the spot, thrilled by his commanding tone of voice. And then he delivers a bombshell. “I’m watching you…”
My head snaps round. “What –?” I squeak. “Where…”
Adrenaline flows through my veins. I peek around my office, half-expecting to see my boss hiding behind a stack of books, or even the therapy couch his perfectly-toned body once rested on.
“I’m not in there with you, Skye,” Harlan whispers, his voice pitched so low that I’m forced to strain to hear his delicious, tempting tones. “Look up.”
Then it hits me. My neck springs upward, and I see the slow, flashing red light on the security camera, whose slow, lazy, metronomic movement has patrolled my office for so long I’d almost forgotten it existed.
“But – ” I croak.
“But what, Skye” Harlan asks in a whisper. “I’m watching you, Skye.”
“Sessions are supposed to be private,” I say, searching desperately for something to say, even as my brain appears to have departed me. “You can’t –.”
“I don’t care about your sessions, Skye. I won’t watch them. Just you. I’m addicted to you.”
“What are you talking about?” I whisper, staring directly up at the lens of the security camera. I noticed that it has stopped moving, and is instead focused directly on me.
It’s an unsettling feeling knowing that Harlan is watching me, yet being unable to see his face. He’s watching me with those eyes – those perfect, ice-cold, searching gray eyes.
Harlan doesn’t r
eply.
Not directly, anyway.
“Put it on,” he says. “I want to see you wearing it.”
He can’t possibly mean…
But he does. Of course he does. He’s Harlan fucking Wolfe – Wolfe by name, killer by nature. And I’m in his sights, I’m his prey.
A shocked, electric tingle runs up my spine.
“Harlan…” I whisper. “I can’t.”
“Can’t?” My boss growls down the phone. “Or won’t? Because those are two very different things, Skye.”
My heart beats, my thoughts – both pounding away at one hundred beats a minute. It feels like a caged animal now lives inside my chest.
“Are you recording me?” I ask.
Oh my God, if I’m asking Harlan a question like that, then I must be considering it!
“Do you want me to?” Harlan asks dangerously.
We both know that he’s already won. We both know that however much I might protest, I’m going to do exactly what he tells me. I’m his already, whether I know it or not. Because what I want – what I really want in life is worth so much more than a little embarrassment …
… especially when it’s this hot.
My chest rises and falls in ragged breaths as my mind races. My career – my life – flashes before my eyes. The rational, sensible, staid side of Skye Warren begs me not to entertain this fantasy.
But that Skye’s voice’s volume level reverberates quieter and quieter.
“Turn it off,” I whisper down the phone.
Harlan pauses for a second before replying, a pause that resounds with satisfaction. “Done,” he says. “Now, I’ve carried out my end of the bargain, Skye…”
He breaks off, daring me to argue. But I can’t – I won’t. I know exactly what he wants from me.
It’s your turn.
I close my eyes. One hand holds my phone pressed against my ear, and all I can hear is Harlan’s slow, measured breathing. The sound of his breath is completely at odds with that of mine. I hear my own panting, awkward nervousness replayed through the phone’s speakers.