by Kay Maree
“Husband,” she mumbled, twisting the offending circle around her finger.
“Is he the reason you’re here?”
She bit down hard on her lip and nodded her head before looking back up into the stranger’s eyes. “I don’t want to go back.”
Lucan dropped the leg he held in an arc and swivelled on his butt. “Move back here,” he beckoned to her, as he moved into the shade of the bridge’s underside, leaning his back against the concrete structure. She moved to sit beside him, both their legs sticking straight out, his several inches longer than her own.
Another truck thundered over-head, reminding Kiera they were hidden away from the world above. But sooner or later, Karl would come looking for her, and he would be furious. Right at this moment, she felt safe and protected.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, y’know.”
Kiera scoffed. That was pretty naïve. She had spent most of her adult life doing things she didn’t want to do. “I wish you were right.”
“You don’t have to go back to him. There are people who can help you. I can help you.”
“Why would you want to help me?” She turned to take him in, his face now shaded from the sun, his features appearing more gentle. He was a good-looking man. “Are you like, one of those missionary types that go around trying to help the homeless people?”
Lucan let out a laugh. “No, nothing like that. I’m just an ordinary person, going about my day.”
“Then, why are you here?” she asked incredulously.
“Lucky, I guess.” He shrugged. “Right place, right time. What would have happened if I hadn’t come along when I did?”
Kiera’s gaze turned back to the steel fencing, the only thing standing between her and her demise until Lucan came along. She knew what would happen. She would be dead now. Now wouldn’t exist. Everything would be blissfully black. All over. No more thoughts of Karl. No more worrying about what he might say. No more pain. “Nothing,” she mused aloud. “I would be nothing. Feel nothing. It would all be gone.”
“Is that really what you want?”
“Maybe. . . if only things had been different, all those years ago. . .”
Chapter Three
Math class had already started. It wasn’t her favourite, and she was running late. Caught up reading in the library during lunch. Most of the kids called her a nerd. She didn’t care. She’d rather read than listen to them talking about which boys they were dating or hoping to.
Mr. Thompson, the math teacher, peered over his glasses at her, and she held up her dog -eared copy of The Lord of the Rings by way of explanation. Rolling his eyes, he nodded toward the back of the class and the only desk available before she scurried toward it.
Reaching her destination, fifteen-year-old Kiera was confronted by a scruffy-looking boy, leaning so far back on his chair, she thought it might tip. “You know you could break your neck if you fall?” she asked, sliding in beside him.
The boy shrugged his shoulders in a gesture that showed he didn’t really care. He was different from the other boys. With his shoulder-length dark-hair, his dark brown eyes, and wayward attitude.
“I haven’t seen you before, are you new?” she asked in a whisper, as Mr. Thompson scratched arcs of chalk over the blackboard.
“Yeah, probably won’t be here long. Don’t get attached.” The boy grunted in return. “Just until they kick me out.”
It wasn’t long before Kiera learned what he had meant. Within weeks she and Karl had been inseparable. He had confided in her that this had been his eighth high-school and “probably not his last.” He had been in and out of foster homes since his drug-addicted mother died from an overdose when he was eight-years-old. Her heart broke for him as he spoke of nights when he cried himself to sleep, longing for someone to love him.
“I’d see shows on the telly,” he told her, “with a mum, dad, and a family full of kids. People would laugh and say it was dysfunctional. To me, it was the dream. If they had dysfunctional lives, that’s what I wanted, too, because it was a truckload better than what I had.”
He told her of the one time he been moved to live with a single lady. “She was old, like sixty or something. She hadn’t had kids of her own, something about her husband being too old. She would bake every day, and I could smell it as I walked in the front gate. I could invite friends over to play with games she would buy for the PlayStation. It was the best home I ever had,” he recalled with a faraway look in his eye.
“What happened? Why didn’t you stay with her?”
“She died,” he shrugged as if it were expected.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I just came home from school one day, and she was dead on the kitchen floor. She still had a muffin tray in her hand.”
“What happened to her?”
Karl shifted uncomfortably in his seat, clearly not happy to discuss the matter further. “How would I know? I was shipped out to my next foster home before the ambulance had even left the house. No one spoke of her again. When I asked my new foster parents, they said it was none of my business and that I lived with them now.” Then his voice lowered, and she had to strain to hear. “Maybe they thought I might kill them next.”
Kiera came from a good, loving home. Her mum was a single parent, but she had wanted for nothing. Her sister and she had always felt loved, wanted, and adored. Her mother worked hard to provide for them both. She didn’t bake, but that was okay too. “When we have kids, I want to be just like your foster-mum. I want to bake for you and our kids,” she resolved that day. They were still only teenagers, but she wanted to give Karl the family he had missed out on. He deserved that much. It wasn’t fair that he had been treated so poorly by so many people.
“I love you, Kiera,” he had whispered to her.
She’d taken his hand in hers and squeezed it tight. “I love you, too, Karl.” They might be young, but they both knew at that moment that they would be together forever.
* * * *
School had barely finished before Karl announced he had a job. The construction company liked his attitude and was willing to take him on as a labourer. If he worked out, they would hire him as an apprentice. He glowed as he announced this to her. Someone had finally seen his potential. This hadn’t happened too many times in Karl’s life, and she couldn’t have been happier for him.
He was knocked down again soon after when the foster family he had been with for a year, told him it was time to move on. As he had turned seventeen, he wasn’t required to stay in the system, but he still needed a family to take care of him.
“Absolutely, no way,” Kiera’s mother had said adamantly when she asked if he could move in with them. “You’re too young, Kiera. That boy is trouble. We don’t need that kind of strife around here.”
“But mum,” she pleaded, “he has nowhere to go. No family.”
“Not my problem.”
Kiera was crest-fallen. She wanted to help him more than anything in the world. He deserved it after the life he’d had.
“How about we move in together? We can get a little place up on the cheap side of town. I can still ride my push-bike to work. You can stay home and read and bake,” Karl had suggested. “We won’t make much money, but at least we will be together.”
It had sounded like a dream come true for Kiera, although she knew her mother would never agree.
The day came for Kiera to tell her mum; she had waited until she had everything packed. They had picked out a small place that needed a bit of cleaning, but they had secured a deal with the owner, cheap rent in exchange for a bit of painting, and fixing the back deck. Everything was ready to go.
“Mum, there’s something I need to speak to you about.” Her mother looked up from the mess she was cleaning on the floor. “Karl and I are moving in together.”
Her mother looked up at her from the floor, then back to the mess. Dropping the cloth, she stoo
d and straightened her back. “Now, you know I don’t think that’s a good idea. Maybe in a few years, if you are still together, you can think about it then, but not right now.”
The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” her sister called from the living room.
“No, Mum,” she insisted. “We are moving in together. We already have a place.”
“Hi Mrs. Thimby,” Karl called from behind Kiera, and she spun on her heel to see her boyfriend standing in the hallway, dressed in his signature all-black, tight denim jeans, and a similarly tight black t-shirt.
Her mother’s lips tightened into a straight line. It was a look Kiera knew well, the one she gave right before she gave a piece of her mind. “I think you should leave, Karl,” Mrs. Thimby stated firmly.
“No, Mum,” Kiera argued. “He’s not leaving. He’s come to help me pack my stuff. I’m sorry, mum, I know you’re not happy about me leaving, but we can still see each other. I’ll be just across town. We can still visit. You can come for dinner, and when I get my car, I can drive over here.”
“He’s trouble, Kiera, with a capital T. I don’t want you anywhere near that boy.” She raised an arm and pointed a finger straight at Karl’s chest. “He’s no good for you. It’s bad enough that you want to date him, but moving in with him?” Her voice was rising with every word, and her cheeks flushed.
“I love him, Mum,” she retorted, moving to wrap her arms around Karl’s waist. He’d had so much rejection in his life, so much hatred, she couldn’t believe it was now being served by her own mother.
Karl’s body straightened, and she felt him stiffen beneath her arms, drawing his shoulders back and lifting his head high. “Kiera is with me now, Mrs. Thimby. She has chosen me. We love each other, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
“I forbid you to leave my house, Kiera.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Karl said as he took a menacing step toward her mother. It was the first time she had ever seen him like that, and she sucked in an anticipating breath.
Fiona Thimby must have recognised the threat in his voice, as she took a step back, her eyes darting between the two of them.
“You will regret it if you leave with him, Kiera,” she tried, this time her voice was weaker like she was resolved to the inevitable.
“I love him, Mum. I’m sorry.” She offered the other woman a sad smile. She hated to hurt her mother. She loved her, but her heart was torn between her family and her boyfriend. Her mother was a strong woman; she would be alright. Karl needed her more.
Chapter Four
Kiera set up house and home, and they quickly settled into life together. At first, it was like being on vacation, everything was new and exciting. As promised, she would bake for Karl while he was working. In a way, it was a necessity as there was limited money to buy food.
Before long, the drain of paying the rent and bills each week started to take its toll, and the cracks began to show.
“Would you stop asking me for things? I only have a limited income, Kiera,” Karl had screamed at her when she called and asked him to pick up a tub of margarine on his way home from work. Yet when she offered to look for a job herself, he wouldn’t hear of it. “A real man provides for his woman,” he explained later that day when he brought the margarine home anyway.
“I don’t mind. I could get my sister to help me whip up a resume and take it around to the local cafes and shops.”
Karl rolled his eyes at the mention of her sister. “We don’t need your sister, or your mother, interfering in our lives, Kiera.”
That hurt. “They wouldn’t be interfering,” she tried to argue. “They like to help me . . . us. They’re my family, Karl.”
Karl slammed his fist so hard on their tiny kitchen table, the glass top threatened to topple to the floor. Kiera recoiled, frightened of him for the first time ever.
“I said . . . ,” he seethed through gritted teeth, “I will provide for you.”
She knew he meant well, and he hadn’t meant to scare her. If providing for her was so important, she would let him. She was privileged to find someone so passionate about looking after the girl he loved. Her own father hadn’t been that way. He had left her mother to raise two young daughters alone as soon as times got hard. She barely remembered him now.
“Sorry,” she had whispered.
“You know how much I love you, don’t you?” Karl asked, wrapping himself around her.
“Of course,” she agreed, even though she fought back the tears.
She missed her family. Her mum worked six days a week, and every time she organised a catch-up, Karl would surprise her with an important work event they had to attend. It had been almost two months since she had visited with her mum, and although she phoned when she could, it wasn’t the same.
Her sister, a few years her senior, was training to be an air hostess. She would drop by once a week. Karl would always get annoyed, saying he wanted peace and quiet when he arrived home from work. He would then park himself on the couch and play video games, loudly. She didn’t understand how that was peaceful and quiet, but she understood he worked hard and needed to unwind.
“So, your eighteenth birthday is next weekend,” her sister announced at one of her visits. “I want to take you night-clubbing.”
“She can’t afford it,” Karl barked from behind.
Her sister, never one to be put-off, thrust a hand to her hip. “I said, I want to take Kiera out. I will pay for whatever she needs. She doesn’t need money.”
“It’s okay, sis,” she tried to placate her. “I don’t think I’d like it anyway. You know me, not one to be around too many people.”
“Oh, rubbish,” Haley waved her hand in the air, brushing away her excuses. “It will be fun. It’s a rite of passage. You’ll come, won’t you, Karl?”
Kiera shifted her eyes between the two of them, waiting for his response.
“She’s not going anywhere I’m not.”
“Right, it’s settled then. You’ll need something to wear. How about I take you shopping the day before?”
“I’ll buy her something,” Karl grunted in return.
Haley’s lips formed a tight line, and Kiera couldn’t help but notice how much like their mum she looked.
“Right, then,” she said tightly. “I’ll be in touch and work out the deets, ya?”
Kiera nodded, looking past her sister to her boyfriend, concerned about his reaction.
* * * *
True to his word, Karl took her shopping for a new dress, he even bought her a pair of heels. They had only spent fifty, but she felt like a million dollars when she saw her reflection in the mirror. Gone was the gangly looking little girl, replaced with a young woman dressed in a short black dress, complete with a plunging neckline. The length bothered her; it barely covered her behind, but she had seen her sister and friends dress the same when clubbing. It was normal.
“Do you like it?” she asked Karl as he emerged from the bathroom, smelling delicious, dressed in new slacks and a crisp white button-up shirt.
Karl’s eyes grazed her body, making her feel naked. “You are one hot woman, Kiera. I knew the day I met you, you would be mine.” A smile tugged at her lips. She loved when he spoke like that. “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you tonight. Every man in the place will want a piece of you.”
She made her way across the room and extended her arms around his neck, looping her hands together. “They can’t have me. Because I’m all yours, Karl Kingsley.”
With that, he grabbed her hips, lifting her effortlessly and tossing her onto their bed, bringing his own body to rest on top of hers.
“I am the luckiest man in the world.”
* * * *
Kiera couldn’t see what the appeal of night-clubbing was; the music was loud, there were too many people bumping and prodding in a small space. As promised, Haley bought her drinks. Karl bought his own, and he knocked back glass
after glass of whisky.
As the night wore on, she began to feel the effects of the few glasses of vodka Haley had given her and was hoping they could catch a cab home, but Karl had disappeared.
“Have you seen Karl?” she asked her sister's friends, who all gave her blank responses. Hoping he hadn’t passed out in the bathroom, she made her way through the crowd.
“Are you alright, love?” a man asked as she neared the men’s room.
Leaning in close, she called into the man’s ear, “I’m looking for my boyfriend. I think he might be in trouble.”
The man nodded and leaned into her ear to respond. “Tell me what he looks like, and I’ll go look for him if you like. You don’t want to be going in . . .”
He hadn’t finished speaking before he drew back from her violently and hit the floor. Kiera watched on in disbelief as out of nowhere, Karl landed on top of him, fists flailing in the air, raining down into the man’s face and chest.
“Karl!” she cried out, as the immediate area cleared, leaving a space around the two men now sprawled on the floor. “Stop it!”
Within minutes, two burly security guards had Karl by his arms and were forcing him toward the door. The crowd closed in again, and she had to fight her way through to see where Karl was being led.
“Kiera!” She spun on her heel when she felt a warm hand on her arm. “Where are you going?”
“They’ve got Karl. I have to go,” she explained to Haley, who followed her to the front of the club.
“I need to get back in there. My woman is in there,” Karl’s face was red with anger when she finally saw him.
“You need to go home, mate. Sleep it off,” one of the men tried to explain, but he wasn’t listening.
“Was that you?” Haley pestered, moving into Karl’s space.
Eyeing Kiera, he pushed past Haley and enveloped her in his arms.
“Is this guy with you, Miss?” the security guard asked, and Kiera nodded. “I think you better get him home.”