He is trying to ignore me, but I refuse to let him walk away, and I am going to take advantage of us being trapped. I am sure, if there wasn’t a huge storm outside, he would have walked out the door without looking back, but I need answers. Besides, I told him about my shit. Now, it’s his turn.
“Why were you at the cliffs that night?”
Nate whips his head around as his body hardens in rage. The muscles in his arms contract and he squeezes his beer bottle so hard it threatens to break. He closes his eyes and tips his head back like he is trying to keep his emotions under control, but I keep on.
“Why do you go off on your own almost every day to the cliffs? What is it about that place?”
“Back off, Madison. I am warning you now, just back the fuck off.” As he warns me to stop, I can feel his breath grazing my skin.
Then Nate swiftly walks to stand in front of me. He is so tall, almost a foot taller than me, and he is furious. I cannot back down, though. I need to know what made him into the man he is today. I have to know what it is about that place and the need he has to fight.
“No, Nate!” I throw my beer down on the tile, demanding answers. The glass shatters, creating the smallest, shimmery diamonds across the floor. “I have to know why you were there. Why do you go there? Why do you fight? Just talk to me! You used to talk to me all the time; what happened? I want to help you, please. Just let me help you.”
“Why do you even care? It’s not like you will be around much longer.” His response surprises me because I haven’t shared my plans yet or the fact that I have a job starting in a couple of weeks. I haven’t told anyone that, so how does he know?
“How do you know when I will be leaving?”
“I overheard you talking the other day. You got an offer in San Diego, so do us both a favor and drop this shit. Then you can move on with the rest of your pathetic life, and I will do the same.”
“What the hell happened to you? You never used to be so cruel. Why are so mean and hateful now?” I am begging him now. I can tell he is about to bust, and I am not sure if it is from anger or pain, but I need to be there when he does. I need him to see that he needs to move on from the past and have a thriving future.
“I’m not the same person I used to be, Madison, so drop it! Just leave it alone!”
“I know you’re not, Nate! But why? Just tell me why!” I scream back, standing my ground, demanding to be heard.
“Leave it!” Nate turns, storming toward the door.
A cool gust of wind blows through the door as he opens it then goes out into the storm. It is dangerous outside as the wind whips through the sky, making the trees sway violently, but it doesn’t stop me. I follow him out into the storm. I will not let him run from me. I know I have screwed up in the past, but I’ve apologized for leaving him the way I did, and he still hasn’t said a word to me. Before I can move on, I need to know what happened to him since I left, because I can’t leave him like this. Something in my gut is telling me, if I don’t help him now, there won’t be a Nate left in this world. He is reckless, more than he has ever been, and I don’t want it to get him killed. I know it has something to do with that night and the nights that followed. He just needs to talk to me.
I run up behind him, grabbing his arm and yanking it back. The wind is raging around us, and the rain pouring down is soaking our already wet clothing. Nate stops in his tracks, and I make him see me. I move in front of him and make him see that I will not give up on this. I can’t. I can’t run anymore. I know that now.
I don’t want him to live inside himself anymore. I know the old Nate is still alive somewhere. I just have to get him to see it is okay to have him around. He has to face his pain, and I have to help him see there is so much out there for him.
“Tell me!” I shout over the wind and rain. My left arm bumps up from the cold, and I wrap it around my stomach, attempting to hold back the shivers.
“No.” His voice is low and menacing.
He jerks his arm from my grasp and starts to walk toward his truck.
I shout in a last attempt to get him to talk to me. “Were you going to jump, Nate? Is that why you were up there? Do you want to kill yourself? Do you want to die? Is that why you fight?”
As he stops, the lightning flashes, illuminating his stone cold body. I can see his shoulders roll up and down as he takes deep breaths in and out. The rain pours and Nate finally breaks.
He turns, storming toward me. His feet are purposeful, and his face is ignited in a blind rage. I have seen this look before, and the end result was a man lying in blood. For the first time in my life, I am scared of Nate. With each long stride forward, I take another step back. He is coming so fast I have a hard time backpedalling away from his fury. I finally stop when my feet find the concrete of the porch, and my back is flush with the siding of his house. I have nowhere to go. He has trapped me.
Nate reaches down into his pocket and pulls out a piece of worn, yellow legal paper. My heart sinks because I know what is written on the page. It is a single word, one written by a scared nineteen-year-old girl.
“This, Madison. This!” Nate unfolds the paper and shows me the cursive script written on the page. The word is singular yet brutal. The word is definite. The word is a farewell. The word is no.
“I told you I was sorry. I am truly sorry for leaving you standing there like that. What else do you want me to say?” I plead with him, unsure why. Do I need the finality of that night to move on with the rest of my life? Do I need Nate in my life, and the only way to do that is to admit how sorry I really am? I am not sure what it is.
“Nothing, Madison! I don’t want anything from you!”
I snatch the paper out of his hand and throw it to the ground. “What is it about that piece of paper that has a hold on you?”
Nate looks down and takes a step back, looking as though he is on the brink of either killing or releasing me.
“Tell me, please!”
“It’s not the fucking paper, Madison. It’s you! You have the hold on me!” He walks up to me, grabbing my arms and squeezing. His grasp hurts, but not as much as the look he has in his eyes. “From the moment you came in to my life, it’s been you who has had this hold over me, and then you left and took the person you used to know with you! That’s what happened to the old Nate.”
“You have to let it go. I am so sorry about what happened, but you can’t hold on to it forever. You need to let it go. Let me go so you can finally find happiness.” I reach up and grab his waist, my eyes pleading with him to understand.
If I am the reason he holds all this anger inside himself, he needs to release it. He needs to be happy, and if forgetting me is the only way he will be, then so be it. I will risk my own happiness for him to finally get his back.
“I will leave, Nate. If that is what you need to get on with your life, then I will be gone and never come back. I just need to know you have let it go.”
“I can’t,” he growls at me.
“Yes, you can. I gave you your apology, and I will say it for the rest of my life. I am so sorry I did what I did, but you have to let it go. You have to release it.”
He gives me a desperate glare as his hands move from my shoulders to cup my face. “I. Can’t.” His tone is low, reverberating directly into my soul.
“Why?”
“I won’t let this go. I can’t”
Frustrated, I scream into his face, “Why not?”
“Because I love you!”
He looks down to my lips then back up to my eyes, and I can see the ache pouring from his. It is like someone reached into his body and stole his very last breath. The words he screamed were all he had left, causing his body to wilt toward me and the heartbreak he has been living with for so long to finally be unmasked.
As I study the sad look on his face, Nate faintly whispers to me, “I love you.”
I don’t hesitate. I don’t think. I clutch onto his waist hard and yank him into my body. The mom
ent we touch, Nate bends down, slamming his lips into mine. I fall over the edge as I feel his lips devouring mine. I match him kiss for kiss, stroke for stroke as we kiss for the very first time. Years after we met, years after we separated, I kiss Nate for the first time and hold on to him, never wanting to let go.
I always thought that being more than friends with Nate was something I could never do, but in all actuality, it was something I was afraid to do. That was why I ran ten years ago. I was scared to allow myself to feel the happiness I knew he would give me. Since being here and losing everything I thought was important, I finally realize it doesn’t compare to how losing Nate would feel.
Now I see what a mistake it was to leave in the first place. Nate and I belong to each other. This kiss, his words, and my feelings are proving only one thing—Nate and I belong together.
Nate pulls his lips from mine, and the look in his eyes is indescribable. They ignite the deepest parts of me yet frighten me all at the same. He is battling with something within himself, like he is trying to convince his mind that we are not supposed to be here.
He is palming my face, his eyes blazing a gray-blue fire, when he whispers, “Damn you, Madison. Goddamn you.”
What the fuck did I just do? What did I just admit to? Madison has this way of ripping everything from my deepest thoughts, and I can’t keep them from falling out of my mouth. She is infamous for breaking me down.
When she offered to help out with the marketing for the business, I should have told her no. I should have let her leave and go back to the life she had before me. Now my feelings are mirroring the storm surrounding us. They are lingering out in the air as my lips cover hers.
She knows now how I feel after I vowed to myself that I would never give her the satisfaction of destroying me again. Still, I allow my black widow to slowly start ripping me apart piece by piece as I am scarred by this kiss.
What am I doing? I can’t do this.
I pull away from our kiss and continue to hold her face in my palms. She looks utterly beautiful. Her rain soaked skin glimmers under the porch light, and I can feel her hard breasts as they push against my chest. Unable to stop myself, I lean down and kiss her one more time.
She is right; I have to let her go in order to move past all the shit I have held deep down inside myself. If I pursue anything with her, I will surely meet the same painful demise I did ten years ago, and I’m not sure I can survive it this time. Like I said before, Madison is my black widow, and I am not sure I want to survive it this time.
When she left, everyone left: my parents, my dignity, my happiness, and the one person I thought could bring me back to life. I can’t think of that right now, though. I have to leave, and it has to be now.
“Goodbye, Madison.” I turn away from her and walk through the stormy night to my truck, going to the only place I feel comfort, the only place that has been the determining factor of my future—the cliffs.
chapter eleven
NATE ABANDONS ME ON THE porch as he runs from my stunned body. He confesses his heart, and instead of allowing me to confess mine, he rips his body away from me and leaves.
Despite the horrible storm, Nate gets in his truck and races from the driveway. I don’t give myself time to think as I race to my car and follow him. I will find him at the cliffs—that much I know is certain—but what I will find is unknown. My heart is dying because I think he will be up there to do his last, stupid act. My gut is telling me he is going to jump, and I have to stop him. When Nate’s come home drunk, he has given me hints here and there that his life isn’t worth a thing, and tonight, I could actually feel his despair.
I run to the guest house and straight to my room. Then I yank my keys from my purse and fly just as quickly to my car. As I start to head down the drive, the rain is pouring, making it nearly impossible to see anything, but it’s the wind that is scaring me the most. I can feel it push my car toward the ditch, making it very hard to control. The roads twist as you drive up the steep route to the cliffs. The higher you climb, the harder it is to maintain control, but I hold tightly to the wheel, praying I will find Nate and soon.
As I get close to our old spot, a thunderous cracking sound begins vibrating through the car, and a large tree limb soon falls right in front of me. I slam on the breaks, screeching to halt, though not soon enough.
My front end collides with the wood, and my body is jolted forward then back as the airbag explodes from the steering wheel. The pain in my head rips down my spine, making it light on fire. I grab my head, clutching it between my palms. It hurts, but it will be nothing compared to the pain I will feel if I don’t get to the top before Nate makes a horrible decision.
I pull back on the door handle and ram my shoulder into it. It takes me a couple of hard nudges, but I manage to open it enough to squeeze out of the crack then fall to the muddy ground. The wind is incredibly strong, and it is extremely difficult to get to my feet, but I manage. Then I walk up to the fallen tree and begin climbing over it.
It has to be my adrenaline fueling my ability to move after slamming into the huge limb, because I don’t think I would be moving as quickly as I am, otherwise.
My bare legs scrape against the bark when I straddle the wood and flop over the side. I yank and pull small limbs and leaves out of my way as I drag myself through the fallen tree. After I make it all the way through, I pull myself up to my feet and keep moving forward, holding Nate’s broken, sad eyes in the forefront of my memory.
I make my way closer to the top yet fall several times to my hands and knees, my hair whipping against my face. It, as well as the falling rain, is acting as a veil, preventing me from seeing clearly.
I keep my body moving. I keep ascending closer to him. I am feet from the top when I see the bed of Nate’s truck. I step into a deep mud puddle, losing my sandals in the process, but I keep my feet going toward him. I have to get to him.
When I make it to the top, my heart sinks. I can’t see him. I approach his truck, and when I finally get to it, the engine is running, but the cab is empty. The saddest part of “Bohemian Rhapsody” is looping continuously over and over. The song once represented a happy time for us, but as I listen to the words, it becomes a cry for help, Nate’s cry for help.
The waves sound violent as they roll and slam into the cliff rocks below, and the wind is so strong I can hardly stand upright. It is way too dangerous for me to stand, anyway. One large gust will send me over for sure.
I fall to my hands and knees and crawl around to the front of the truck, desperately trying to find him sitting there. When I come around the wheel, Nate is sitting, leaning against his truck. He is holding on to a small piece of paper and a bottle of whiskey as he looks down at the raging ocean below us. There isn’t much space between the front of his truck and the drop off.
I inch my muddy body over to him, fighting the blustery wind, and sit down beside him. Nate lifts his hand and takes a sip from his whiskey bottle. As I get closer to his body, I wonder if he will be able to hear me. I need him to see, need him to feel that I love him, too. I want to be in his life, but it’s ultimately his choice what role I will play.
The wind is loud, and the motor of his old truck matches the sound as it idles and loops the sad part of the song over and over.
The headlights illuminate the black night, and that is when I get a better look at the piece of paper in his hand. It is hard to make out, but as I focus on the object in his grasp, I notice it’s not paper at all, but a picture. An ultrasound picture.
Nate’s … Nate’s a father?
And here I am again, standing on the brink of my sadness, wondering if it would be better to heave my body into the icy ocean and end it all.
Madison knows how I feel about her. If she is smart, she will escape, just like she did when I asked her to marry me. I have blamed her a lot for my problems since then, something that has been impossible to get passed.
If she would have said yes, I wouldn’t be holding my
son’s picture in my hand. I would have never slept with Lisa and got into a relationship I didn’t want. I would have never treated her as badly as I did when I pushed her in a drunken rage. She would have never had a miscarriage. I would have never killed my son.
As I hold his only picture in my hand, I remember how scared I was to be a dad, but I knew the time—the reason—to get myself together was upon me. I would spend so much time drinking and fucking God knows how many woman that, when I met Lisa, I just didn’t care about anything. I didn’t want to be alone, so when she told me several months later she was pregnant, I knew I needed to change.
I stopped drinking, and I had some respect for the woman carrying my child. I stayed sober all through the first five months of her pregnancy. I didn’t love her, and I didn’t want to marry her; I just knew what I had to do. As a man, I had to be there to raise my son.
Then the memory of Madison started to seep back in as it always did, and I began to feel the anger of her leaving all over again. She was the woman who was supposed to be the mother of my child, not Lisa. She was supposed to be the woman I was to marry and spend the rest of my life with, not Lisa.
As Madison overtook my thoughts, I needed to numb them. I needed to dilute them into a whiskey haze, so that’s what I did. I made a liquor store run, and for three days, I stayed at the cliffs, drowning in the life I should have had.
I thought about my parents who had been dead for three years, saddened they would never meet their grandchild. Drunk and disgusted with every single aspect of my life, I finally lost it.
When I went home, Lisa was threatening to leave me and keep my son from me. We fought. She hit me. I pushed her. Next thing I know, she is gone. He is gone. And now Madison needs to be gone. I need to be gone.
“Nate,” my voice slightly sounds over the wind as I crawl to sit beside Nate and see the man I need to save, just like he saved me four weeks ago. It is my time to return the favor.
Hold on You Page 11