by A. J. Downey
“Anybody tried to come up in here, they’d have a real bad night, Darlin’. You’re safe with me, but if it makes you feel better…” he reached back and flipped the deadbolt into the locked position for my benefit. It felt strange to be on this side of a locked door after so long.
“Thank you,” I uttered.
“No problem.”
A vast silence filled the room between us, as if time were suspended and all that was and had been, hung between us. I bit down on my lower lip and felt a rush of shame heat my cheeks. This man had silently and stoically endured the worst parts of me and it was as if I were finally awake and all of the embarrassment and humiliation had piled up and waited patiently for it to be so, before they made their presence known.
“Hey, stop. Don’t do that,” his tone was hasty but gentle, “There’s no shame here. No shame for any of it. It wasn’t you, Baby Girl. It was done to you… there’s a big difference there, Sweetheart. Huge. Okay? I knew what I was getting into. I committed. Don’t forget, I’ve seen it all before, I’ve done it all before…” he stopped talking, searching my face as I searched his, sighing he gave a shrug, “Truthfully, watching you come down off that shit was one of the bravest, most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.”
I blinked, bewildered, my voice hollow as it emanated from my mouth, “I don’t understand.”
I’d dropped my eyes to my hands, folded in my lap; to the boy’s wristband and the silver metal plate and old fashioned keyhole set into it. The boy had been incredibly sweet. Incredibly kind. Like Marlin, certainly, but…
The scrape and swish of denim was incredibly loud. The thunk of his boot heels on the hardwood dull, as he moved from the front door and came around to sit on the couch. He put distance between us and my heart cracked further under the weight of my stigma. Druggie whore…
“You were hurtin’ bad up there,” he said gently, by way of explanation. “Thing I remember most about when my brother went through it was him beggin’ me to kill him. He was hurtin’ so fucking bad –”
He stopped abruptly and stared sightlessly at the huge, dark, flat screen TV against the wall opposite us for a long time. “Ain’t never told anyone about this,” he confessed, returning his gaze to my face which I felt was set in solemn lines.
“You don’t have to…”
“Psht! Yes I do. You need to understand. What you went through, up there,” he pointed to the stairs, “Was fuckin’ awful, Girl.” He dropped his strong arm to the back of the couch and let it lie there casually as he continued, “It was fuckin awful, and you handled it. You handled it better than a grown ass man. Danny begged me to kill him. He begged me six ways to Sunday to put him out of his misery. All he could talk about was how much he wanted to die but you…” he sighed out harshly and looked at the ceiling and shook his head.
“All you could talk about was how much you wanted to live, and that’s sayin’ somethin’.”
I went back to staring at my clasped hands in my lap for a long time and closed my eyes, sighing out; my shoulders dropping. I didn’t feel brave or strong. I didn’t feel like I’d done anything particularly impressive.
“I just want to pull you into my manly bosom and just hold you for a while, damn.”
I startled and blinked, looking up at Marlin sharply. A halfhearted smile played on his full lips, framed by his golden goatee and it called up a tremulous answering smile of my own. His smile grew with mine and I was struck by how extremely grateful I was that he was here, and again that feeling of safety overtook me even as his words registered and I found myself laughing softly.
“Manly bosom?” I asked and his eyes sparkled with barely suppressed laughter of his own.
He flexed and it was an impressive display, “Come on now, I work hard for this.”
I laughed outright then, and it felt incredibly good. Marlin smiled, seemingly satisfied and winked at me.
For a glimmer of an instant… I felt almost normal.
Chapter 7
Marlin
I watched her sleep. It was so late at night it was early, and she was passed out. Dead to the world. The lines and grooves that sorrow had etched upon her face smoothed out when she was like this. She’s fucking beautiful when she sleeps, when she feels safe, and she dreams... I wonder for a fragment of a moment if she dreams of me.
I reach out a tentative fingertip and trace some of her long, fair hair out of her eyes, letting my fingertip linger guiltily against her smooth skin. She’s soft, and despite having been so violated, still so pure.
It amazes me, her resiliency. Her willingness to trust me after so many men, hell, and women too, had given her plenty of reasons to never trust another soul ever again. Her brow furrowed, and she moaned a little. I silently sighed and backed away to see if she’ll find an even keel again or if this was going to morph into one of the big ones. Rarely does a night go by where she doesn’t have some kind of nightmare or terror. Of course, she’s only been about three weeks out of hell, so it’s kind of to be expected.
She writhes and another moan creeps from her, cascading into a whining whimper that’s become familiar. It’s a bad one this time. They’re almost all bad in the end, but this one is particularly rough. She doesn’t always talk about them, but when she does… the shit is fucking awful, man. Her legs jerk, her knees making a rush for her chest and she cries out and I have a sinking feeling I know what this one is about. I switch on the bedside lamp flooding the room with golden artificial light in an attempt to chase back the shadows. It usually does the trick, chasing back the invisible ones inside her head too. The light goes on and those aquamarine eyes pop open and slay me all over again.
Not this time though. This time requires a little extra effort on my part.
“Faith!” I call out and I put my hands on my knees. I want to touch her. To gently shake her awake, but I know what a bad idea that is. You’re not supposed to touch victims. It’s a rule somewhere or something. Especially folks that have been victimized like her. She twists and sobs in her sleep and it breaks my fuckin’ heart every fuckin’ time.
“Faith! C’mon Baby Girl, you gotta wake up for me. C’mon Sweet Thing. Wake up!” I keep talking and finally it happens. She sucks in a breath like I tossed a bucket of ice water on her and those eyes of hers lock on mine. She half crab walks back on hands her feet sliding along the slick cotton sheets trying to find purchase and my heart sinks in my chest.
“You’re alright. You’re safe. You’re okay now, Baby.” I let my hands slide off my denim clad knees and straighten into a standing position as the tears well in her eyes, turning them jewel bright and beautiful. So wide, her face slack with realization of where she is, that it’s the here and now.
“I’m sorry!” She blurts.
“Hey, no. None of that, now. You hear?” I shake my head and swallow hard as she hugs her knees. Sliding the soles of her feet against the bottom sheet.
“Bad one?” I asked, already knowing the answer. They were all bad. She didn’t have good dreams, and when she did, they never stayed that way.
She nodded and I sat carefully on the edge of the bed, a fair distance from her. Giving her space. She looked at me, a little wild eyed, reminding me of these feral cats out at the marina… hungry little things. Half-starved bags of bones that’d look at me, hoping for fish scraps. I always gave them if I had them, but I wasn’t sure what Faith was hungry for and I didn’t feel right in askin’.
“Want to talk about it?” I asked softly.
“I have,” she said, averting her gaze, “Talking about it hasn’t helped, at least not yet.”
“Always willing to listen, you know that Baby Girl.”
“I know,” she says and smooths her long beach waved locks behind her ears. Most girls spend hours and hours in front of a mirror putting all kinds of crap in their hair to get it to do those soft waves. Not Faith, though. Far as I could tell, her soft wavy curl was all natural.
I didn’t miss how much her hands shook
as she smoothed back her long hair. Or how she pulled the ends until her ears bent. She let go and wound her arms around her shins and hugged herself into this little ball.
“I tried to run,” she said by simple explanation and bile rose, hot and fierce to tease the back of my throat. I nodded solemnly. She scrunched up her toes, curling them under and I tried very hard not to stare at her feet. They’d burned the soles with cigars and cigarettes to teach her a lesson on that one. She’d told me when I’d asked what the shiny pink pock marks were. Then she’d told me she’d never tried to run again after some more gory details.
I figured that if Faith had had to live it, then the least I could fuckin’ do was be a fuckin’ man and listen to it. She needed a box to keep her horrors in. A safe place to hold her nightmares so she didn’t have to hold them inside all the time. Until we could get her to that shrink her sister had the hook up for, I could be that fuckin’ box and I would be stone about it as she passed it off.
“I shouldn’t tell you these things…” she murmured.
“Why not?” I demanded and she flinched at the hard edge in my tone. I silently cursed myself and took a deep and silent breath, letting it out slowly.
“I don’t want to be this weak and wounded thing,” she murmured, averting her eyes, staring fixedly at some invisible point in the bank of bedroom windows. Or maybe it was at our reflection. Who knows? She laid her cheek atop her knee and those amazing eyes drifted shut.
“Wounded? Yes. Without a doubt you are that… but weak? Aw, hell no. Not at all.” Those eyes opened up and fixed on me, moving slightly back and forth to track the movement of my shaking head.
“I miss it,” she confessed quietly, “I dream about it, the not thinking, the numbness it brought. If I could go back to it I would.”
“Ah,” I nodded my head in understanding. “Danny used to say the toughest part about getting clean were the dreams. Said whenever he dreamt of anything for a long time, the best dreams were the dreams of him getting high. It’s normal, I guess.” I shrugged lamely. I didn’t know what else to do.
“Do you think I should go to a meeting or something?” she asked.
I chuckled, “Do you think it would help?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, “I guess I won’t until I try it…”
“I’ll find one for you if you want.”
“Okay.”
Silence slid between us but it was a calm one, a comfortable one. We sat quietly for a time before I cleared my throat.
“Ready to try and sleep again?”
“Yes, I think so.” That brave little smile she sometimes got tugged at the corner of her mouth and I felt an answering smile of my own.
“Let’s get you untangled.” I stood and grabbed the sheet and she squirmed her way out of it. I made her into the bed, and was rewarded with a giggle. An actual small laugh. It was sweet and clear, like a cool drink of fresh out among all the stinging salt and punishing sun of the open water.
“Sit with me?” she asked.
I dropped onto the edge of the bed and she took my hand, I startled and looked down where she’d fitted her small palm against my own, her delicate fingers curving around the deeply suntanned, broad back of my own hand, scarred and rough as it was from use in my trade.
When I looked back up at her face, it held apprehension. I gave her small hand a tiny squeeze of reassurance and she visibly relaxed.
“I wanted to say a proper thank you, but I’m not sure that simply saying ‘thank you’ is enough for everything you’ve done.”
“Don’t think nothin’ of it, Baby Girl,” I said, “You just work on you. Don’t worry none about me.”
We lapsed into a comfortable silence and I leaned back against the headboard, hyperaware of how warm and gentle her hand was in mine. It felt good, that small contact, but I couldn’t help but feel uneasy about it at the same time. I mean, she’d been through a lot, and I know it was just holding my hand, but she was in a bad place and needed to heal and I felt like this big dumb ox next to her… shit, I don’t know.
“When it was quiet, like this, they sometimes let us listen to the radio.”
I went very, very still. I swear it was like her light, clear voice stopped my heart right in its tracks. I felt my breath catch in my chest and I dared not breathe, waiting for her to continue. It wasn’t the first time she’d spoken about her time with those fucktards, but it was the first time she’d spoken with anything other than total anguish in her voice.
“There was this band that would come on. I liked their music; it was like their songs spoke to me. Encouraged me in my darkest hours to hold onto the light. Ever hear of Ashes & Embers?” she asked me.
I nodded carefully, “They’re that band from up in New England, aren’t they?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t know. I just know that’s who sings the song.”
“What song? Do you remember the title?”
She was quiet for a long moment and when she spoke it was almost too quiet to hear, “Hope Never Dies.”
I chuckled, “She is kind of a superhero isn’t she?” I joked and I was rewarded with a smile.
“Or a super villain, depending on the day and her mood.”
It was my turn to smile. The Captain sure had his hands full with Hope. She damn sure opened a can of whoop-ass on the bunch of us boys back when Tiny had run his mouth… which fuck, that seemed like ages ago with everything that’d happened between then and now, ‘cept it really was only like last month or something. Three weeks before on the outside.
“What was that?” Faith asked and I came up for air out of my deep sea of thought.
“A lot’s been going on the last few weeks. It all blurs together sometimes. You know?” Faith gave my hand a gentle squeeze and nodded against the pillow.
“I know. I’m sorry…”
“Oh, hey, no. Nothing to be sorry about. You don’t get to own none of this. We all know this was something that was done to you. Not something you picked to have happen, not something you got into without a fuck ton of help from all the wrong people. I know that, your sister knows that, the Captain and all the rest of the crew knows it too. You don’t get to go blaming yourself for none of it, Baby Girl.”
I watched storm clouds of emotion traverse her too-sharp features. Each one blooming and twisting, her thoughts whirling behind those bright, aquamarine eyes of hers before she finally murmured, “I want to believe you.”
“Well that’s up to you, Honey. I don’t expect you to. Hell, I never expect you to trust another soul let alone another man again, but I’m telling you, you can trust me. Okay?”
She settled into deep thought after that. Her eyes far away and distant while she presumably searched around inside herself. For what, I don’t know. For now, I was just content to watch her think. To watch those aquamarine eyes drift shut and to listen to her light breathing deepen and even out. Her sleep was slightly more peaceful, but by no means perfect, but I can say one thing… her hand in mine, it was oddly more perfect than I wanted to admit to myself.
When I was sure she was down for the count and wouldn’t come back up out of her slumber anytime soon, I extracted my hand from her light grip with a heavy sigh and moved myself over to what was becoming my customary post in the chair by the bed. I slouched down and closed my eyes, my lips hooking up into a slight smile at a particularly brilliant stroke of an idea that hit me like a bolt out of the blue.
Yeah.
I would get right on that tomorrow, I just needed to check and see if I had the money for it. I should. Business was good, sucking a little wind with my absence, but I could get by. I could do it while Hope took Faith clothes shopping.
Decision made I dropped off into a light sleep myself, but it wasn’t particularly restful. I didn’t get restful sleep anymore. Jerking awake at any movement or sound Faith made. From the moment I’d laid eyes on her, I’d sworn to myself I wouldn’t let her go down the way Danny had. Faith was my atonement fo
r how I’d treated my brother and so far she’d soothed the fiery torment of my guilt.
I couldn’t bring my brother back. I couldn’t save him from the grave. But I could save her. It wasn’t perfect. Hell, maybe it wasn’t even right… but it mattered and I needed to do something that really mattered at least once in my damned life because at the end of the day, successful business, pride of the family, none of it meant shit fuck all in the grand scheme of things. Not when you were willing to let a family member go. Willing to let them die, just because they pissed you off or disappointed you.
Hope belonged to the Captain, and my club was my second family. By extension, Faith was family too. Cutter’d put me in charge when it came to her care, I wasn’t about to let my Captain, my brothers, Hope or Faith down. It was just what it had to be. I was okay with that. My life needed a change up from the same old routine anyhow.
Chapter 8
Faith
“Faith?” I jumped and turned mutely back to my sister. I swallowed hard and she frowned. “You okay?”
I pressed my lips together and nodded rapidly. I wasn’t. I felt like they were all staring at me. Like everyone in the store knew. I felt dirty, ashamed and like the weight of the universe was pressing me inexorably into the floor.
“No, you’re not.” Hope said judiciously and hung the dress she’d pulled off the rack back up.
“I… I think it’s just a little bit much for my first time out.” I murmured and she nodded.
“There was this famous general back in the day, like world war one and two, right? He used to say that he didn’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbed or how good he was at anything. He used to say ‘The measure of a man’s success should be taken by how high he bounces when he hits bottom.’ You always did bounce the best out of the three of us. This is no exception.”
I rolled my lips together and thought about what my sister was saying, finally nodding. A measure calmer than I had been before, even though my heart still raced in my chest and every breath I took made me feel like I was going to explode.