The Debt

by Karina Halle

  “You had to?”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You didn’t mean to?” she sneers. “Keir. You meant to. You’ve kept yourself closed off from me from the moment we met and now I know why. You wanted every bit of my heart and soul but you couldn’t spare a single ounce of yours.”

  “That’s not true,” I cry out gruffly, displaying my palms. “I gave you my heart, that’s all me, all real.”

  “Lies!” she yells. “It’s all lies now! How can I believe a single word you’ve told me?!”

  I don’t have any answer for that. I’m pitiful, speechless.

  “Why did you lie?” she goes on. “Why did you keep this from me, that you knew the man, that monster, that shot me?”

  I look away, at the clouds skirting over the mountain tops, the velvet green valleys below. It’s too beautiful for this scene.

  “Because,” I say quietly. “I created that monster.”

  A pause hangs in the air. I hear her breathing heavily, trying to grapple with it.

  “What?”

  I angrily run a hand through my hair, knowing there’s no stopping the truth now. I’ll let her know just how ugly it was. “I’m the reason you got shot.”

  She sucks in her breath. I finally turn to see her. If it weren’t for her cane, she’d topple over. She’s as pale as a ghost. “How?” her words float away on the breeze.

  “He was in my unit. We were attacked. I lost two men. Brick survived. So did Lewis Smith. So did I. But Lewis, he…he lost his mind. He let the darkness take him. He…he told me he wanted to kill people. And I didn’t do anything to stop him.” I inhale, the air hurting my lungs. “I hunted you down. I felt nothing but guilt for what he did to you. I wanted to…I just wanted your forgiveness, that’s all. You were a debt I had to pay back.”

  I cover my face with my hands, rubbing at my forehead. “I wanted to tell you the truth, Jessica,” I whisper. “I did. When I first met you, that was by accident, I swear but I was looking for you and I wanted to do right by you. I didn’t expect…I didn’t expect for the lie to continue and then it was too late.”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “Soon. So soon.” I look up at her. “Please believe me. I almost told you last night but I told you something else I was holding close to my chest. That I love you. And it’s true, I love you so much.” I walk over to her, reaching out.

  “Don’t,” she whimpers, turning her head. “Don’t touch me. Keir, you broke my trust. This whole time you pretended to be someone else. Did I ever see the real you?”

  I grab her arms and shake her slightly, the desperation ripping out of me. “This is the real me. All of this, everything I’ve said.”

  She stares at me point blank, tears falling down. It’s breaking me into a million pieces, all jagged edges. “How am I supposed to believe you now? How do I know what’s real? Keir, you said that you came after me because you felt you owed me. How do I know that this whole trip, this entire time we’ve known each other, didn’t happen because you were trying to ease your guilty conscience? How do I know that what you feel for me is because you love me and not because you feel obliged to?”

  “Jessica, please,” I whimper, my hands going to her face, her beautiful face, but she’s flinching, turning away like I’m hurting her. “Please, I’m sorry. I knew it was wrong and I shouldn’t have lied but the truth is here now. You can’t tell me that if I had told you myself, earlier, that you wouldn’t have acted the same way?”

  Her eyes narrow. “If you had told me earlier, there would still be a chance that I’d be hurt. But that’s the risk you had to be willing to take, the risk to tell the truth. You lied and I found out because of someone else. I’ve never felt more betrayed in all my life, especially after yesterday, especially after all I told you, all I showed you. I gave you every inch of me, Keir. Body and soul. I let you in. And you never intended to do the same. You’ve broke my trust, you’ve broken me. And I was already so broken.”

  She brushes my hands off her and starts to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” I ask her, panic climbing inside me.

  I can’t lose her. I won’t lose her.

  “To the car,” she says.

  I quickly walk after her. “I’ll carry you.”

  She whirls around, hatred in her eyes. “You don’t get to touch me anymore. You don’t get to carry me. You’re nothing but a stranger to me now.” She comes forward and raises her cane, poking me right in the chest. “I was real with you. Raw. Vulnerable. I let you see every ugly part of me and I asked for nothing, nothing, but to get the same in return. Just a little fucking honesty. And you couldn’t even do that. I don’t know you at all…I never did. And it’s going to stay that way.”

  I can’t breathe. The edges of my vision start to blur. It’s like a panic attack, a hallucination, a flashback, but it’s all real. It’s my world, blown to pieces, my heart included in the rubble.

  “I’m going to the car,” she says as she reaches the edge of the hill. “And you’re going to drive me to the hotel. And then I’m getting the next plane out of here.”

  “Jessica,” I cry out, choking on her name. “Please. I’ll drive us home to Edinburgh.”

  She doesn’t say anything to that and I watch as her red head disappears over the edge.

  I suck in my breath, trying to hold it together. In all my training, all the drills, in all my fighting and combat, I have never been blindsided like this before. Never felt like I’ve so completely lost everything because I never had anything to begin with.

  But I had her. For a few weeks, I had her.

  Suddenly Jessica’s yelp fills the air.

  I run over to the edge to see her roll down the last few feet of the hill and onto the flat grass, sprawled out.

  I bound down the hill in a few jumps and in seconds I’m at her side. Some people are walking over from the nearby stone circle to see if they can help.

  Jessica is trying to sit up but she’s crying, bawling, the tears streaming down her face, the sobs ripping out of her throat.

  “Jessica,” I say softly, putting my hand at the back of her head. “Are you hurt? Let me help –“

  “Get away from me!” she screams, pushing me off and I nearly tumble backward. As quick as I’ve ever seen her do it, she scrambles to her feet, staring at me with such venom as the tears fall.

  “Please,” I beg her, aware that people are watching this all unfold. I try to grab her arm but she whips around and whacks her cane against my shoulder.

  “Fuck off!” she yells. I’ve never seen her so angry before, it’s like all her years of pain are finally coming out, looking to maim.

  “Is there a problem here?” some fucker asks, coming over with the kind of swagger that makes it look like he’s about to make it his problem.

  I glare at him. “Stay the fuck out of this, buddy.”

  The wanker looks at Jessica. “Is this guy bothering you?”

  Oh, are you fucking serious?

  She looks at me like she wants to spit in my face. “I barely know him,” she says to him, wiping her tears on the back of her arm. She looks at the guy, the real stranger. “I need to get to the Flodigarry Hotel.”

  “Oh, come on!” I yell. “Jessica don’t be a fucking idiot.” I point at him. “You barely know this guy. You’re not going with some stranger. I’m driving you. You’d just said so seconds ago.”

  “And who the fuck are you again?” the guy asks.

  I’m the guy about to fucking beat your head in, that’s who.

  “I’m her boyfriend,” I tell him through grinding teeth.

  “Was my boyfriend,” Jessica snipes, looking away.

  Holy fuck. Is this really how this is?

  “Then you better leave her alone,” the guy says, crossing his arms.

  I can’t help but give him a bitter smile. “Oh yeah?” I grab on to her arm, not about to spend an extra minute here. “Jessica, please. Let’s just
be adults about this.”

  “Get your hands off her,” the fuckhead says coming over.

  I snarl at him. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “I’ll make it concern me.”

  He grabs my shoulder and tries to rip me away.

  I don’t even think.

  I just swing, my fist cracking against his jaw with all the force of a fucking missile, rage powering me all the way through.

  The guy yelps and stumbles backward onto the ground, holding his jaw.

  I realize how this looks now. Her screaming at me, her leg. I look like a fucking monster and I am a monster. In their eyes, I’m not better than my father.

  I’m breathing heavily, my fist still curled. Everyone else starts to back away.

  “Keir,” she says, sounding shattered, broken. She sniffs deeply. “The man I know, wouldn’t punch another for trying to help me.”

  I can’t say anything. The anger is suffocating me, my face red hot with outrage, with hopelessness, with pain.

  “Let me go,” she says. “Whatever I have in the car, you can keep. Just let me go, find my own way back. Please. You owe me at least this.”

  I don’t want to leave her. I look over the crowd, mainly families and couples. I jerk my thumb at them, “As long as you go with someone else.” I glare at the guy who is getting to his feet. “Not him.”

  “I will. Just please, go.”

  I hold her eyes for a moment. So blue and clear, even when frightened, even when she hates me, even when she thinks she’s looking at a stranger.

  I know I’ll never see those eyes again, except, maybe when I catch the news one night. They’ll talk about the brave girl who survived the attack and how resilient she was in the face of death and they’ll show her picture I’ll have to stare at her through that screen, like everyone else in the world, only I’ll be the only one knows how truly brave she is.

  I swallow the lump in my throat, nodding. “Okay,” I say but it comes out gruff and garbled.

  Her eyes are pleading me to go and so I go.

  I turn and walk away.

  Leaving all the jagged and deadly pieces of my shattered heart behind.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Jessica

  “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” Christina asks me. Again. Like she has since she and Lee picked me up from the airport.

  I shake my head, not uttering a word.

  “Just let her be,” Lee says and it’s the smartest thing I’ve heard him say in a long time.

  Christina sits back in her seat in a huff but still gives me the occasional pleading look through the rearview mirror.

  I can’t even talk about it because I’m not even sure what happened. I’ve been crying ever since I got in the car at the Fairy Glen with a family traveling from Germany. A family who took me to the Flodigarry Hotel where I got access to the room and gathered my things. Where I then got a ride with one of the waiters who lived in Portree. Where I then caught a bus heading out of Skye and straight to Inverness. Where I then caught a plane no bigger than my hand that led me to Edinburgh.

  I’ve done a lot of crying, to say the least.

  But I’m done now. At least, I don’t want to do it again. I’m getting that deadened heart that I’ve been craving, where that blanket of Novocaine settles over you like tar and you cease to feel anything. The pain I felt earlier, when I discovered Keir’s truth, was so excruciating, it felt like I was shot all over again, but this time the bullet dived deep inside, to a place I couldn’t ever dig it out. It sits there now, blackened and festering and it’s only this numbness that’s letting me breathe.

  Everything that happened…it’s almost like I blacked out. I guess that’s how I deal with things. I black it out and bury it. It’s so much easier that way then to stick around and face the pain.

  But I can’t forget it, not yet.

  Keir lied to me.

  His past was like nothing I imagined.

  Well, not quite. I did ask him if he was in the army because some of that had made sense to me but when he said no, I believed him.

  And when he didn’t answer me when I asked if he hurt someone, I had no idea that the person he hurt had been me.

  Past tense. Present tense.

  He’s hurting me in ways he can’t even imagine.

  The thing is, when he told me that Lewis Smith was his fault, I knew that was bullshit. That would have never been an issue between us if it had come up from the start. Lewis Smith, who I’m now seeing more as a man than a monster, was a soldier with his own battles, forgotten by the system. Whatever Keir did or didn’t do, say or didn’t say, to try and stop him…Well, I feel like I know Lewis too. I looked into his eyes and I saw a man who would have never listened to reason, never listened to Keir, never gotten help.

  Part of me aches for Keir, for the burden he carries.

  Part of me hates him, for his lies, for throwing my trust in my face.

  I’ve been burned so many times in my life and he was the one person who…

  It doesn’t matter.

  It’s over.

  The safety net is gone and I’m putting my life together all over again.

  We get back to the house and I go straight up to my room, putting my bags away without unpacking. I can’t deal with it right now. I don’t want to take out my clothes and find heather I plucked from a meadow, or grains of sand in my sandals from a walk on the beaches of Durness, or a shot glass I had picked up at a petrol station in the middle of nowhere. I don’t want to see any of that. I just wanted to rewind my life to last month and pretend I never met Keir McGregor.

  There’s a knock at my door. I sigh, and, like a petulant teenager, say, “Who is it?”

  “Your sister,” Christina exclaims in annoyance. “What do you mean, who is it? Open the door, you troll, I have scotch.”

  I give an even more exaggerated sigh and get off the bed, stomping over to the door and opening it.

  Christina is peering at me with big eyes. With her hair pulled back, her face looks rounder, younger. It’s like looking at her when she was ten, constantly hounding me to play with her. I did because I felt bad, because it was the only way I knew to be a sister. I couldn’t be a sister in the way that counted – I couldn’t protect her.

  My heart relents. “Fine,” I tell her, plucking the bottle out of her hands. “Come in. But no questions.”

  I go over to the bed and sit down. She holds out the glasses she brought with her and as I pour the scotch out, I’m reminded of Keir. When we would sit in his apartment and drink, when we did our scotch tasting flight in Scourie. My hands start to shake. I have to pause for a moment and take a deep breath before I resume pouring.

  When I’m done, Christina holds up her glass.

  I hold up mine.

  “Cheers to having you home,” she says and even that hits me hard, the way Keir and I used to cheers over everything.

  Fuck. Stop fucking thinking about him. He lied. He fucked up.

  It’s over.

  I clink her glass and finish the scotch in one burning gulp that goes straight to my nose.

  “Fucking hell. Jessica,” Christina comments, wide-eyed, her glass having not touched her lips yet.

  I cough and immediately pour myself another. “What can I say, this country is rubbing off on me.”

  She takes a small sip, grimaces, but her eyes never leave my face.

  “And so are the men,” she comments.

  I glare at her. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fine. Then I will.” She sits down on the floor at my feet, cross-legged and my heart pangs when it reminds me how the way she used to do this growing up. “You know I wasn’t too happy with you going off with him. I mean, I didn’t know the guy, you didn’t know the guy. I wanted to like him but no guy is ever good enough for you, Jess, especially now. But you know what? Lee’s the one who put things into perspective. He told me that lately you’ve been the happiest he’
s ever seen you and that’s counting all the years before you had the accident. So you know what I did? I listened to my husband. And I decided that he was right. Because he often is. You know, I know you don’t like Lee but he actually thinks the world of you.”

  I can’t help but laugh. It’s sharp and sour-tasting. “Lee? He hates me.”

  “No. You hate him.”

  I sigh, feeling shitty. “I don’t hate him…”

  “You don’t like him. And that’s fine. You don’t have to, as long as you respect the fact that I love him.”

  I’ve never heard her sound so brave. I give her a sad smile. “Of course I respect that. I know he treats you well.”

  “He does. And more than that, he’s in my corner. He knows when I’m being a brat and when I’m sinking. He can tell the difference between the two. With one, he gives me shit. With the other he offers a hand and he pulls me up. That’s what I thought you and Keir had. He pulled you up when you needed it the most.”

  I hear what she’s saying. I know it’s true. And I know that Keir did pull me up. Way up. And then I went crashing down. But that’s not what my mind is fixated on.

  “What do you mean…when you’re sinking?”

  Christina takes a bigger gulp of the whisky. She swallows it down and gives me a wry look. “Jessica. Come on. You know we’ve never talked about it. We’ve never ever talked about it.”

  I can only stare at her. She’s telling the truth but I’m not sure I can handle anymore truths.

  “And I know why,” she goes on. “Because you’re afraid. You’re afraid it’s going to hurt, so you bail, and that’s kind of what you’re doing right now with Keir.”

  The words nearly choke me on the way out. “What?” I blink at her.

  She tilts her head sympathetically. “He called me earlier.”

  “What?” I can’t seem to say any other word.

  Keir called Christina.

  Oh my god. What did he tell her?

  She reads the fear on my face. “It’s okay,” she says quickly. “He just asked if you’d gotten home safe. I told him we were picking you up from the airport. He sounded more relieved than you could imagine. Like he thought you were dead. He said that he’d been lying to you. He told me the truth. Said he was sorry and that you were something special and wished us all well and that was it.”