Loved You Always

by Natalina Reis

  “I’m going to try and clean your wounds a bit, Jem,” I told him, studying the blood-covered injuries on his face and stomach. “It will hurt.”

  Jem held back the screams from the pain he was undoubtedly feeling while I ministered to him. In place of ice, I drenched the towel in the very cold water from the faucet and placed it on top of the worst bruises, hoping it would bring some of the swelling down. There was no way of knowing what was going on beneath his skin, and I hoped to God he wasn’t bleeding inside.

  Once he was as cleaned as I could manage with the resources I had, I stretched out alongside him, my head gingerly lying on his shoulder. “Is this okay? Does it hurt?” I asked, lifting my head slightly to look at him. I couldn’t tell whether his eyes were open or closed.

  “It feels heavenly,” he whispered, his hand coming to rest on the arm I had draped across his chest. “I think I probably died and went to heaven.”

  “Don’t joke around,” I said, sobbing anew. “You’re seriously hurt.”

  He caressed my arm. “I’m not joking.” His voice came out labored. I hope his lungs are okay. “But seriously. Do I have to get beaten within an inch of death for you to touch me like this?”

  I buried my face into the crook of his neck and cried in earnest, my sobs shaking him as much as they shook me. “Sorry, Jem. I—”

  His hand went to my head, and his swollen lips brushed my forehead. “Don’t cry,” he whispered. “I’ll be fine. The scars will make me look sexier.”

  On that note, I think we both fell asleep, physically and mentally exhausted.

  When I woke up, it was dark in the room. What looked like an emergency light on the wall had lit up and was shedding a sickly glow into the utterly depressing space.

  I lifted my head slowly, afraid to wake up Jem, but he was already awake. “Did you sleep at all?” I asked, worried.

  “I did,” he said. In the semidarkness, his bruises looked even gloomier. “I was watching you sleep. You looked like an angel.”

  My heart fluttered a little. Lifting myself on one arm to better look at him, I giggled. “Flattery will not get you anything from this girl.” I tried to slide out of the bunk without moving him. “Are you in pain?”

  He nodded. “A little,” he lied, the mere effort of moving his head making him flinch. “Do you think I could have some water?”

  When I came back with a cup of water, he had managed to sit up on the bunk, supported by the wall. He took the cup to his lips and drank it all in one go. He was so bruised it hurt me just looking at him.

  “Why did they do that to you?” I asked, taking the cup away from him.

  “Tina,” he replied, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “They’re still under the impression I know where she is. They beat me up to get the information out of me.”

  I sucked in a gulp of air. “What stopped them?” Had Jem given them any information at all?

  “I think they wanted to be sure I was still alive,” he said with a chuckle. “You know, so I can handle another round of torture later.”

  My legs buckled under me, and I had to grab hold of the wall in order not to fall. “You think they’re going to do this again?” An uncontrollable tremor started making its way up my legs. “Why won’t they believe that you know nothing?”

  “Five years on the lam with Tina,” he muttered. “They think we were an item and that there’s no way she didn’t tell me. They’ll come for me again.” His voice trembled. “They may come for you, too, Emily Rose.”

  It was too much. I sat down on the edge of the bunk, shaking as if an earthquake was ripping me apart. “They’ll kill you.”

  “They’ll kill me regardless,” he said matter-of-factly. “They also think I know what Tina saw, and that I can be used as a witness against them. As soon as I’ve served my purpose, they’ll kill me.”

  Forgetting his injuries, I practically threw myself in his arms. “No, Jem, I won’t let them!”

  “I’m worried about you,” he said, his lips close to my ear. “I got myself in this mess. You just had the misfortune of knowing me.”

  My face was only a few inches away from his, and I could just see the glint of his ocean-blue eyes peeking through the swollen tissue. How I loved getting lost in those eyes! Even as kids, I would catch myself staring into his eyes and wondering what it would be like to lose myself in that expanse of blueness. Not much had changed. I still felt butterflies in my stomach and a burning in my lower abdomen every time I looked into them.

  “I missed you.” The admission came out of my mouth before I could stop it. It was true, of course. But it didn’t mean I wanted him to know it. I also didn’t want to do what I did next.

  I kissed him. Full frontal, lip-to-lip kiss.

  He winced but then relaxed into the kiss, his arms tightening around me. He tasted like blood, and I remembered how badly his lips had been hurt. With a gentle tug, I pulled away from him.

  A moan escaped his lips, and I wasn’t quite sure if it was from pain or disappointment. “You had to pick a time when I’m a walking wound to kiss me,” he joked.

  Shame and guilt took over. “I shouldn’t have done that,” I said, flustered. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”

  He grabbed my hand in his. “I’m not complaining and I’m not asking why,” he said. “I’m just happy you did it.”

  As I slid off the bunk and my feet hit the concrete floor, I felt dizzy, as if all the revelations of the last few hours were too overwhelming for me. “What do we do?” I asked, pacing the floor. “What can we do?”

  Jem’s breath came out a bit wheezy, and I worried again that his lungs had been compromised during the beating.

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Short of knocking them out senseless—which we won’t be able to do—I have no clue what to do next.”

  Those words brought a foggy memory to mind. My hand went to my neck where a little red bottle was hanging from a chain. “How many men are there total?” I asked, the kernel of an idea taking seed in my brain.

  “I saw only two,” Jem said. “But they’re built like freaking rocks. Trust me. I tried to fight them.”

  “Do you think we could take one?” Two against one. It could be done, right?

  It was hard to decipher any expression in Jem’s face right now, but I guessed he was looking at me with suspicion. “I guess we could. Why?”

  I squeezed the red vial a little tighter. “I have an idea.”

  ***

  With a sketch of a plan made, we were both able to rest a little. We slept in spurts, followed by periods of total alertness during which we reviewed our plan, trying to convince ourselves it would work. It had to work!

  Whenever Jem was sleeping and I was awake, I watched him with growing concern as his breathing became more labored and sounds of crackling echoed in his chest. Something inside his lungs was not right, and I could only hope and pray it was nothing terribly serious. The thought of losing him was as unbearable as the thought of losing a limb or my heart.

  Morning found us wide-awake, Jem lying flat on his back and I stretched beside him, my head on his chest listening for his heartbeat, as if to assure myself he was still alive and well. My stomach grumbled with hunger and my bladder begged to be emptied. I hadn’t used the toilet once since we had been brought there, and even my teacher’s bladder couldn’t hold it that long.

  “I have to use the toilet,” I said, my demanding bladder winning over my embarrassment. “Can you look the other way? Please?”

  With considerable trouble, he turned to the wall, offering me the privacy I needed to relieve myself. I didn’t remember ever having gone in front of anyone other than my sister, and that’s when we were kids. I was mortified.

  “This definitely takes our relationship to a whole new level,” Jem said, his back toward me. “Sharing a bathroom moment puts us level with married couples.”

  Annoying man! “Stop, Jem. This is embarrassing enough as it is. Ta
lking through it does not make it better.”

  “Emily Rose, we’ve known each other since preschool.” His voice reflected surprise.

  “That doesn’t mean I want to share my private… moments with you.” I hated to sound so whiny, but this was too much.

  Jem laughed. “For God’s sake, Em! Everybody pees. It’s not a big deal,” he said.

  I flushed and gave a silent thank-you that they had left us some toilet paper. “Well, it is for me. You can turn around.”

  While I rinsed my hands in the sink, Jem slowly sat up. From the corner of my eye, I watched him stretching his muscles and wincing in pain with each move. I hadn’t checked his legs. “Did they hit your legs, too?” I asked.

  “Nothing terrible. A kick here and there.” He sounded nonchalant and I knew he was doing that for my benefit. When he stood up I noticed how he favored the left leg and I knew something was wrong. Added to his earlier sprain, another leg injury would complicate things if we succeeded in fleeing this place.

  “You should let me see that.” I pointed at his leg. He was about to deny it. “I’m not arguing. Let me see it.”

  “Bossy as usual,” he said under his breath. “Can I pee first?”

  Heat rose to my cheeks and I turned my back on him. “You should have told me about your leg.”

  “The pain in my chest made me forget it,” he said, flushing. “It’s nothing. Just sore and a bit stiff.”

  He had walked to the edge of the bed where I was standing. With a big theatrical sigh, he pulled down his pants just enough to show me the alarming bruise on his right thigh.

  “Hell, Jem,” I exclaimed in shock. “We have to get out of here and take you to a hospital.”

  He looked at me through the slits that served as his eyes and chuckled. “You’ve got me with my pants down and that’s all you can say?”

  He was seized by a fit of coughing, and I couldn’t hold it anymore—I cried, again. Jem hastily pulled his pants up and took a step to hold me against him.

  “I’m okay, Emily Rose. Really,” he whispered in my ear. “Do you remember that time when we were about fifteen and I fell off a moving bus?”

  Did I ever! We were coming back from our first concert together and were late catching our bus home. When we got to the stop, the bus was already leaving. In a panic, we both ran and jumped inside. Except Jem lost his balance and rolled off the moving bus into the gravel road. By the time I managed to get the bus driver to stop, Jem was lying in the middle of the road, a bloody mess.

  “You scared the crap out of me back then, too.” I had no energy to sound flippant. I hid my wet face in his T-shirt and smelled blood.

  “The point is that it looked a lot worse than it was.” His hand cradled the back of my head. “When we got to the hospital, they cleaned all the scratches and gashes, and sent me home with antibiotic cream and some bandages. I was fine then and I will be fine now.”

  He rocked me gently and began to sing a familiar tune. I recognized the words and melody from an old favorite of mine.

  I laughed and cried at the same time. “How do you remember that? I’m Kate Bush’s biggest fan and I had almost forgotten that song. ‘Rubberband Girl.’” The memory of all the times I had listened to and sung that song just to annoy him came flooding back, and an overwhelming sense of nostalgia took over.

  A quiet laugh reached my ears. “Please, how could I forget it? You in a red wig, fake microphone in hand, singing your heart out…. No way will I ever forget it.”

  “I called myself the Asian Kate.” I was laughing out loud now, momentarily forgetting where we were. Jem had always had the gift to make me forget hard times and bring a smile to my lips. I pushed myself apart from him just enough that I could look him in the eye. “I’m sorry, Jem, for all the nasty things I’ve said to you these past weeks. I was very angry.”

  He brushed a hand over my face. “I know. You had a right to be,” he said. It was so hard to see his beautiful face so damaged. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Emily Rose. Sorry for being a fool. Sorry for having left you without a good-bye. Sorry for putting you in this much danger.”

  We stared at each other silently for a moment. My heart was exploding out of my chest. There were so many things I was dying to say to him—words I had kept inside for so long they had grown roots inside my heart and soul. Words that if freed would, like a river, carve the geography of our future. I thought it better to keep them unsaid—for now, at least.

  “Are you sure you can do this?” I asked him, worried about his strength.

  “I distract one of them, you allow yourself to be caught by the other, knock him out, and then we both take the first one down.” I laughed. He made it sound like a fight scene from an old movie. “Did I get it wrong?”

  “No… you just made it sound like I’m going to punch the daylight out of him.” When in fact the plan was to get him to take a whiff of Marcy’s potion.

  “Semantics—” His head popped up as the sound of a key turning in the door reached us loud and clear. “They’re here!”

  A shiver went through me. The time had come.

  CHAPTER NINE

  __________

  Escape and Rescue

  One advantage of doing yoga was the fact that I could bend my arms and legs in ways most people couldn’t. As we waited for the two burly men to make their way into the room, my heart beating so loudly I could barely hear anything else, I bent my arm all the way behind my back. The silver chain holding the little red vial was hanging over my back, and I had wrapped my fingers around it, waiting for the right occasion to tear it off my neck.

  Jem was next to me, holding on to the wall for dear life. His breathing was made worse by the anxiety of what was about to happen. We had one chance, and with Jem hurt and my lack of muscle strength, it was not a terribly bright one.

  The door clanked open and the same two guys who had taken us from the cabin walked in. First thing I noticed was they carried no guns. At least not visibly. I was pretty sure they had one somewhere hidden. They knew our strength was no match for theirs. I gulped, suddenly very aware of how foolhardy our plan really was. We had to try though.

  The biggest one went straight to Jem, hands up. I watched as my best friend flinched in fear and my heart just burst. No way! They were not going to hurt him again.

  The second one was slower, probably relaxed in the knowledge that I was just a skinny, tiny Asian woman with no muscle and no girth to give him any trouble. “All right, lady,” he rumbled. “No funny business and I won’t hurt you… much.” He laughed as if he had just told the funniest story in the world.

  His companion, now holding a struggling Jem, also laughed. “This one already went one round,” he said. “Round two is up.”

  The thug reached out and pulled me to him. As his arms went around to hold me against him, and before he could turn me around, I pulled on the chain and broke it. I brought my hand forward just as he roughly twirled me around to face him. I wasted no time. With my teeth, I uncorked the bottle and brought it quickly up close to his nose. Surprised, he first opened his eyes wide, then laughed, obviously unaffected by the potion.

  I shoved the bottle closer to his nose. “What’s that? It smells good,” he said, laughing. Unfortunately for him, he also took a deep whiff of the sweet-smelling potion, and I watched as his eyes rolled back in his eye sockets. His trunk-like arms went slack and his body slid to the floor in a slow-motion movement that left me frozen for a moment or two. I held my breath for fear of inhaling it. That was some powerful stuff!

  With no time to waste, I jumped at the other guy, who now had Jem in a headlock and, for lack of anything better, kicked him hard on the shins. He buckled a little and loosened his hold on Jem for a moment. Taking advantage, I stuck the bottle under the giant’s nose while Jem took a knee to the man’s privates.

  We didn’t stick around to see what happened next. I grabbed Jem’s hand and pulled him along with me out the door, closing it behind
me. “Run, Jem, run,” I yelled before taking off as fast as my legs could carry me. Unfortunately, Jem couldn’t move very fast, and I soon had to slow down so he could catch up with me.

  I looked around us for the first time. We were in the middle of a huge walled courtyard. The high walls were topped with barbed wire and crumbling. The red-brick buildings had no windows other than tiny little slits spaced out evenly, and a couple guard towers flanked the yard. We were in an abandoned prison somewhere. The gate had been broken a long time ago and it stood wide open like the gaping mouth of a toothless monster. On the other side there was a forest—a thick wall of trees as far as the eye could see.

  I took a quick glance behind us. We were not being followed. Yet. “We’ve got to move fast before they come after us,” I said urgently.

  Jem was not doing well. His leg injury, added to his twisted ankle, made him drag his leg rather than walk on it. I stopped and draped one of his arms over my shoulders. “I’m heavy,” he protested. “I’ll slow you down.”

  “If you think I’m going to leave you behind, you are even dumber than you look,” I said, supporting him and resuming our labored walk into the bowels of the forest. I looked at the looming evergreens with apprehension. Would we be able to find our way out? Following the road would be easier, but the odds the guys back in the cell would catch us were also a lot higher. Sticking to the woods was a calculated risk.

  I lost track of time after the first half hour or so. Jem’s crackling breath was a constant worry, and he was becoming heavier and heavier on my shoulder as his strength steadily waned. I knew he needed to rest, but I was afraid we were still too close to the prison to be able to breathe easy. I pushed on, in spite of my many misgivings.

  To his credit, Jem did not complain once. He had to be in considerable pain, but he didn’t utter a word. “We’ll stop soon,” I promised, looking behind us. There was no sign of anybody.