by S. L. Scott
She loosens her hand from mine and reaches for the cup on the tray next to me. I take it and hold the straw to her mouth. She turns away when she’s done. “Thank you. I need sleep. I need to close my eyes to this nightmare.”
The move away from me feels purposeful and strikes my heart, as if it came back for more punishment. “Sara Jane?”
“I need to sleep, Alexander.”
“You do need to rest, but it’s not going to be any different when you wake up. I’m sorry. So sorry, but please don’t block me out.”
“I couldn’t protect the baby.” She glances my way. “Now here I am, and I’m not strong enough for the both of us. I can’t deal with my grief and yours. It’s too much.”
She presses the pain meds button latched to her bed. I don’t have much time to break through her nonsensical thoughts. “I love you. I’m here for you. Whatever you need, however you need me, Firefly. I’m here.”
The name draws her eyes back to mine. “King.” The name comes out on the sharp edge of a bladed tongue. “What’s a simple firefly to do in the presence of such greatness?”
“Set his whole world on fire.”
That brings a small smile to her sweet face. I overlook her slight eye-roll. She adds, “You always did believe you could own the universe.” The animosity in her tone is hard to miss this time. Her eyelids dip closed for a long moment before she looks at me again. “I was supposed to die today. It would have been easier than living with the hollowness consuming my body.” The accusation buried in the deepest ocean of her eyes is clear, a fire burning in the blue. She closes her eyes, but I remain staring at her until her breath deepens and sleep takes hold.
“I heard she was awake.” Her mother rushes around the corner with tears in her eyes and a crack in her voice.
I stand, my arms hanging by my sides. “She fell asleep.” I can’t take my eyes off her, her anger toward me still crushing my love like a wadded-up piece of paper that remains in her hands long after the words left her mouth.
Her mother is crying, stroking Sara Jane’s face. “Look at her, David. The swelling. The bruising. My baby.”
The swelling?
The bruising?
I open my eyes and see her, really look at her. How did I not see the blackish purple bruising on her cheekbone, around her lip, and around her right eye? How did I not see the way her bottom lip juts out, or how her eye can barely open it’s so swollen? I’ve been here hours. Checking my watch, it’s been well over ten, and yet, her beauty is all I noticed.
Until now.
Backing away from the bed, I catch her dad’s eyes on me. He grits his too white teeth together, and says, “Look what you’ve done to her. Are you happy now?”
I stop and strike him with my own glare. “She was pregnant.” Her mother gasps, her hand covering her mouth. “With my baby, but she lost it. Whoever did this to her killed my baby.” I walk to the doorway, but stop before leaving to ask, “Are you happy now?”
This time I don’t stop by the nurses station as I walk out. This time I keep walking until I’m standing on the sidewalk. I go to the corner of the building and lean against the bricks. Sliding my back down, my ass lands hard on the concrete. I bring my knees up and drop my head down.
Ambulance sirens whistle through the air, car horns sound in the distance. The air is humid, thick, sticking to my skin. This time the tears come, and I don’t fight them. “Fuck.”
My life was so wrapped up in her well-being that I lost who I was along the way. Even with her absence the last couple months, I didn’t move on. I didn’t need to. I knew she’d come back to me . . .
“How long are you going to let her stay away?”
I tap the baseball in my hand twice before rounding my arm overhead and throwing it to Cruise. “I don’t own her. She could be gone for good for all I know.”
Cruise catches the ball but throws a verbal curveball my way. “Jason says she seems content.”
My defenses go up. That some stranger seems to know what’s going on with my girl more than I do stings. I used to think it was best she was gone. I found pride in it, but after seeing her a few weeks back, I’m not sure she will come back. “What does he know about her anyway?”
He throws the ball back. I catch it in my glove and throw it right back to him. He catches the ball but shakes his hand. “Touch a nerve there, King?”
“Fuck you. Sara Jane’s her own person. She’s the only one who gets to decide where she goes. If that’s here, I’ll fucking rejoice. If it’s not—” I catch his lame throw.
“You’ll go to her. You’ve always been weak to that pus—” With all my strength I throw the ball. It slams into his chest and he keels over in pain, his breath knocked from him. When he looks up, he yells, “What the fuck, Alex?”
Storming across the grass I shove him to the ground. “You want a fight? You’ve got one.”
But he doesn’t get up. The anger in his eyes doesn’t match his gaping mouth. I finally take a breath, calming, and offer him a hand up. He’s been good to me. He’s been by my side without question for years. I can let this slide. One time. “Don’t ever refer to her as less than my fucking everything.”
Pushing up on the ground, he snubs my offer. He dusts his saggy-jeaned ass off and says, “You’ve changed because of her, man.”
. . . It’s true. I have. I just never considered it a bad thing.
6
Alexander
“Kingwood.”
I look up and find Langley standing a few feet away. Fuck. I get up, keeping my back to him and wipe my eyes covertly. Shrugging at my shirt to straighten it, I ask, “What do you want?”
“I come in peace.”
“No cop comes in peace these days.”
“We’re not all bad.”
Looking around the corner, I ask, “Speaking of corrupt, where’s your partner?”
With a chuckle, he replies, “I didn’t say corrupt.”
“I did.”
“You have a lot of reasons to hate the world. You’ve gone through a lot in the last four years, but not everything has to end with you behind bars.”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I smirk. “Who says I’ll end up behind bars?”
“I do if you stay on the path you’re on.”
“And what path is that?”
“A destructive one. Help your wife recover and give us a chance to do our jobs.”
“Like you did with my mother’s murder?” My jaw tics, an ache in my chest replaces the heartbeats I’ve grown accustomed to since Sara Jane came out of surgery.
“I wasn’t on that case. I am on this one though. Help us. Don’t hinder us. It will only be bad for you.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No. I want you to know that despite Officer Brown’s behavior earlier, we’re working to solve this case, and we intend to find who did this to her.”
I shift. I want to trust him. Langley has the kind of face a mom makes spaghetti dinner for on Sunday night. He probably coaches T-ball on the weekends. “Let me ask you something. If I had a different last name, do you think this would have happened to her?”
“Truthfully?”
“Yep.”
“What happened to your wife wasn’t an accident. We both know that, but you can’t run off looking for revenge, or you’re going to fuck up this investigation.”
The way his dark eyes look at me, his pupils scanning for the answers to unasked questions, he knows more than he’s letting on. I’m not offering anything though. “I’m buried in Kingwood Enterprises paperwork. If you haven’t heard, my father blew his brains out at the holiday party. Left me with a shitload of decisions and even more problems to handle, including his fucking body, or what remained of it.”
“You weren’t close.”
“He tried—” I almost took the bait, but he’s not my friend. He doesn’t have my back. Langley’s badge alone excludes him from open dialogue that leads to personal business being
shared. “I should go back in.”
Walking behind me, he says, “Despite what you think, we’re on the same side.”
I could argue that with a million points, but I don’t bother and keep walking. Grabbing a coffee on the way, I return to Sara Jane’s side. Her remarks earlier cut deep, but not deep enough to keep me away.
She’s hurting.
So am I.
She’s in pain.
So am I.
She’ll need time.
I don’t have that luxury.
Sitting back in the chair, I watch her until I become tired. I’m beyond tired. Tired of the day-to-day shit I’m dealing with. Tired of feeling like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. My beautiful firefly. I’m so tired of feeling alone. I rest my head on the bed, needing to be closer than the hospital allows, and close my eyes.
The leaves rustle and the birds sing. It’s as if the whole world got the memo that it would be a perfect spring day. I almost fell asleep under the large tree, the solitude of the park giving us some much-needed time alone. I could listen to Firefly talk all day. Her voice is comforting, so I close my eyes while resting my head on her lap. She says, “I used to dream of being a princess locked away in a castle. Then one day, I would be rescued by my one true love, and we would ride off into the sunset.” Her fingers fall away from my hair where she’d been rubbing soothing circles. I open my eyes to see her above me staring out across the nearby lake. “I just never thought . . .”
When she pauses, I ask, “Never thought what?”
The tainted innocence of nineteen—not quite a woman, not a girl any longer—caught somewhere in between with her childhood dreams. “I just thought my Prince Charming would be a knight in shining armor, riding to the rescue on a white horse.” She looks down at me, a soft smile reassures the twisted feeling in my stomach until she says, “I never imagined a black horse at midnight.”
She never saw me coming. She never imagined the bad guy would get to her first.
. . . My neck hurts, a sharp pain eased by soothing circles in my hair, a familiar touch taking me back to a day in my life that I would have called perfect at one time. The curse of my life finally caught up with me the day Sara Jane accepted she was never going to have an ordinary life. Maybe it wasn’t going to be extraordinary, but it would never be boring. She leaned down that day and kissed me. “Lay your head down on me . . .”
When I open my eyes, my beautiful queen is awake and touching me. Her fingers don’t leave me this time, and she repeats what she said to me so many years ago, “Bring on your darkness, Alexander. Bring on your burdens, lighten your load, and let me love you.” Her voice is whisper-soft, yet her words are strong. Determined.
I close my lids, wanting to get lost in her words, in her, in our love that always feels cocooning and safe. She says, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Taking a deep breath, I open my eyes and lift my head. “I lay my love at your feet. I pray at your altar for forgiveness. Please don’t hate me. I won’t survive your hate.”
“I don’t hate you, Alexander. I’m hurt. Not by you, but by the world I used to think was good. It’s not. You were right. The darkness will always win in the end.”
“It doesn’t have to. Don’t let it change you.”
“I’ve already changed. I don’t even remember who I was before.”
Pushing up, I stand and move closer, caressing her cheek. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“Remind me. I just want to go back days, months, or maybe years. I want to see the sun as if it wasn’t trying to blind me to the pain I was in. I want to remember what it’s like to see a blue sky and not feel like it’s the last one I’ll ever see. Like it will be the last time I talk to Chad or feel whole with a baby inside me that I didn’t even have a chance to know.” Her eyes are watering.
I kiss her cheek, leaving my cheek pressed to hers after. When her arm comes around me I know I haven’t lost her. Although I wonder if I lost the girl she once was. I wonder if that’s why her parents hate me—if they blame me for taking away their little girl.
“Don’t cry, Alexander.”
My forehead drops to her shoulder, and I hold back the rest of my pain, the tears that fall for who she used to be, who we used to be. Like her youth, I stole her innocence. I stole her hope. She whispers, “You promised me I’d get here eventually. Here I am. I accept this, my fate, like I accept you.”
“Do you?” I ask, tilting my head back to look into her eyes.
There aren’t tears threatening to fall or watery eyes any longer. No, she isn’t lying. Acceptance lies in the unstressed skin of her face and the determination blending into the color of her eyes. Strokes of heavy emotions have painted her canvas black. Everything I warned her about, everything that threatened to rip us apart now binds us together, tainted by the scorched earth left behind by demons hidden in the shadows. The light dimmed.
For now?
Forever?
Her eyes don’t leave mine. “I do. I think I always have. I just never understood what that entailed until now.” I kiss the soft skin of her hand and the underside of her wrist. “You always said I was strong. I wasn’t strong. I was naïve.”
“You should rest, Sara Jane.” She’s lost her way and morphine coursing her veins isn’t going to help her find it. “Get some sleep.”
She doesn’t fight me. She closes her eyes, and I set her hand down, which she immediately rests across her stomach. When I sit in the chair, leaning back and watching her, she reopens her eyes—the movement lethargic, her words unhurried. “The nurse called me Mrs. Kingwood and referred to you as my husband. Something you want to tell me?”
“I thought they wouldn’t let me in here otherwise.”
Her lids are heavy, and I can see the struggle she’s fighting to keep them open. “I always thought being married to you would be different. You’d be in my bed, not beside it.” She cracks a sly smile. “We never even got a honeymoon.”
“I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Anywhere you want to go, I’ll make it happen.”
“I dream of visiting places that only exist in the past—lakes on sunny days. Cool breezes under the sun’s warm rays. Beautifully broken souls that could lie for hours under trusting skies. Tell me, King. Did we ever exist before this pain? Were we always destined for this ending?” For as groggy as she sounds, her mind seems to understand the gravity of our reality.
“It’s not ending, Firefly. You have to believe we can make it back, back to the place where it all began, back to lakes where the swans once swam, back to who we used to be.”
When she reaches for me, I take her hand between both of mine and she asks, “Who did we used to be?”
“Alexander and Sara Jane. Under the cloud cover that seemed to follow them, they were good. They were pure beauty, a sight to behold. I never knew love existed in the shape of a blessing meant just for me. But there you were, needing me.”
“Wanting you,” she whispers. The smile from earlier comes back. Her voice is soft, sleep taking hold. “I thought love was enough, but want and need are not that simple to satisfy.”
“You are the only happy I know.”
“Oh Alexander. You sound like me, the me I used to be.” Her eyes close, and within seconds she falls asleep.
Sitting down, I rub my face, wishing I could give her the dreams she once had. There is no going back. All I can do is hope she finds peace in this new life—two reincarnated souls fighting for their future.
Watching her anguish flicker across her face even in sleep, I pull my phone out and call Cruise. Fuck Detective Langley. We’re not on the same side. What does he know anyway? Nothing. When he answers I say, “I want everyone involved with hurting her dead.”
“You know what you’re asking, right?”
“I do. They will suffer for what they’ve done.”
“King—”
I hang up. There’s nothing more to discuss. I will do anything to giv
e her the peace she needs. The moment I saw her I wanted her. Greedily, I took her innocent beauty and shrouded her in my darkness, but I was smothering everything I loved about her, so I tried to push her away before I destroyed the rest of what made her so special. How could I ever be so foolish to think she was safest with me? Now I wonder if my selfish deeds are now indebted to a fate we can’t control.
7
Sara Jane Grayson
My mother has been going on about a blanket she wants to bring here to keep me warm. I’ve told her, repeatedly, that I’m fine. A blanket isn’t going to fix anything. A blanket won’t heal the emptiness I feel inside me.
Dad has kept a quiet distance, trying to solve the problem I’ve become. He doesn’t have to say anything. I see his disappointment. I see him struggling between feeling angry about my accident, the sadness of almost losing me, and aggravation of my apparent marriage to Alexander. The latter definitely causing some confusion on my part as well.
I think he’s struggling most from the outrage caused by my getting knocked up by the one person he had begged me not to date. Who knows? I don’t care. My wounds run deeper than my liver or this healing wound that will one day scar my skin.
As my mom pulls the sheet taut over me, I grab one of her hands, stopping her. “I’m okay.”
Tears well in her eyes and her lips quiver. “Okay.” I can hear the sob that threatens to surface, so I turn keep my hand over hers another moment, hoping she can find comfort in the small gesture, even if I can’t.
“We thought we lost you, Sara Jane.” My father finally stops at the end of the bed and grips the metal footboard. “You’re all right and . . . we’re here for you.”
Am I?
Am I all right?
I don’t feel all right. I don’t feel anything due to the medicine. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Maybe it would be easier to feel, to feel everything. My baby surely deserves the emotional devastation the meds are keeping at bay. The one thing I know is the avalanche of feelings are going to come crashing down eventually. There’s no way to hold back such tragedy without a true response.