by K. L. Jessop
With that, I nod a goodbye to Megan and leave.
The wind of the harsh sea breeze hits my face as I lean over, resting my hands on my knees, breathing through the anxiety that’s encased in my chest as the heavy rawness of this whole situation rushes through my body like venom. I desperately want to go to Tori but know I’m no good in this state. I need to be the strong one now, I need to be the one that holds her when she falls, and I need to show her that for once she can let every single guard down that she hides behind. But I can’t go like this. Sweat trickles down my temple as I inhale the sea-salt air as my mind goes back to the words that have been on repeat ever since they left her lips. Seeing a body being taken down can be so damaging and crucifying to an adult; she was only a little girl. I know what it’s like to see death. I know what it’s like to look into the eyes of a cold-blooded killer and I know what it’s like to look into the eyes of the victim with nothing you can do to stop the nightmare.
Tori can’t have gone through that. No one should ever have to go through that.
I suddenly find myself outside her gate and heading down her path, never even realising I’d started walking from the beach. The street outside her house is quiet, but the faint sounds of her falling tears hit full force when I reach her door. Resting my head against the wood, I’m completely crushed from the amount of hurt that is coming from my beautiful girl’s heart, still not knowing the full story but unsure if I want to hear it at all. I need to be strong for her now, only I don’t think I can be. I knock lightly and wait but get nothing. I keep my voice low. “Tori, baby, please open the door. It’s just me here.”
“I need to be on my own, Lucas. Just go.”
The anguish and emotion behind her words are unbearable to hear, and my shoulders slump as though my own body is already defeated. “You know I can't do that. I’ll stay here all night if I have to.”
Like a magnetic force that always draws us, I sense that she is now only a few inches away, barricaded behind timber. I can hear her scattered breathing, feel the desperation to hold her with my fingertips and the beating of my heart that increases whenever she is near, but the door still doesn’t open.
“Open the door, Birdy. I promise everything is going to be alright.”
“It’ll never be alright, Lucas,” she weeps. “Nothing ever is. Everything is falling apart, and I don’t think I have anything left.”
Tears sting my eyes; my chest tightens. My little raven bird has broken wings and all I want to do is protect her from the world. “You have me.”
“But you can’t see me like this.”
“And I can’t leave you like this either. I’m here, Tori. Just let me in, not just your home but in your heart. Let me in your heart.”
When I hear the safety bolts unlock, the sight in front of me when she opens the door rips me in two. She’s trembling heavily, thick tears streaming down her face. Her hair is all messed up like it’s been pulled at, as red nail marks cover the skin of her neck and arms as though she’s tried to scratch the torture and despair out of her body. The person standing before me is not the strong woman I’ve grown to know: she is absent, replaced with a terrified little girl that’s riddled with demons sucking the life out of her beautiful soul. It breaks my fucking heart.
“Birdy,” I whisper, trying to swallow the solid lump in my throat.
When I reach out to her, her arms fly around my neck, holding on to me like her life depends on it while she sobs uncontrollably against my neck, thick salty tears hitting my chest. “It won’t stop, Lucas. Please make it stop.”
“I'm right here, baby. I’ve got you.” I lift her around my waist and close the door behind us. Laying her down on the bed, the grip of her around my body tightens, as if she desperately needs the contact to remain. I let the majority of my weight fall on her as I rest above, knowing it’s what she needs to feel safe and secure as she stays buried in my neck. Her breathing convulses hard against my chest and our heartbeats shape into one. It’s in this moment, regardless of how deep her melancholy maybe or how many times the same question has crossed my thoughts, I know where I want my future to be, because now it’s my heart that has truly done the talking and taken over every thought, making me more certain than ever before. This woman is my forever and there’s no way in hell I can let her go.
Chapter Twenty
Victoria
I don’t know how long he’s been here, how long he’s laid over me, holding me in a tight cocoon, eliminating my anxiety, but I know it’s been too long for him to wait for answers. Only I don’t know if I can find the words. I knew as soon as I saw Marcus I wouldn’t be able to run anymore. I’ve finally been defeated in my chase. Why I decided to rebuild on old terrain is beyond me because everything about this place when it comes to my life just ends in disaster, and now it’s starting all over again. What’s hard to comprehend is that he’s friends with the man I’ve fallen for. What are the chances?
“How long have you known him?” I whisper against his neck, finally breaking the silence.
“A few years. I met him through Amelia. I’ve known her longer.”
Amelia. She said he keeps her safe with every breath. I had that from him once.
“He used to make me feel safe. He used to be the one person I would run to. When things were too hard to bare at home, Marcus became my lifeline. But then he left, and it killed me. Why is he back here?”
His arm tightens around me as he speaks the words I dread to hear. “He lives here again now. He owns a large number of properties in the town.”
“Tell me.”
“He owns The Grand Hotel, Rubies and he was the developer of all the builds on my street.”
A smile tugs my lips. I’m not surprised. Marcus always had his heart set on becoming a property developer since he won our first game of Monopoly. “He always wanted to build an empire. He promised to help me build my dream too. But they never came.”
“Why, baby?” he says softly, stroking my hair. “I need to understand what’s going on. I need you to tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know if I can,” I whisper. “I don’t think I’m strong enough.”
“You don’t have to be strong for me, Birdy. I’ve got you. Just be you.”
It’s not getting the words out that worry me; it’s the way he’ll look at me once he knows. His eyes have quickly become my home, my safe place, and if I don’t have them on me, I don’t know if I’ll survive.
Needing a little space, I push him off me and crawl up the bed. Curling up in the corner with my legs pressed against my chest, my hair is stuck to my face and my skin is sore from the pain I inflicted when drawing my nails hard across my skin—the pain I needed to feel in order to find some kind of relief. Silence falls between us as I try and find the words for him to hear.
“In the first year or so that Mum and Lawson were married, everything was fine. I was your regular happy kid and loved to run free in my spare time. Most days, Marcus and me, and a few other kids, would hang out at the beach after school or on a weeknight. I’d be jumping waves without a care in the world while Marcus rode them on his board. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening, my mum would work nights—a care worker at the hospital. When she was at work, Rubies was often the place where I’d end up, playing pool with Marcus and eating crisps, because Lawson propped up the bar. I loved going there, it made me feel older than what I was.” The building looks so different from when I was a girl. Now it has two solid doormen standing on either side of the door on an evening—Lucas being one of them—while a thick red rope rests between them and stopping access. The brickwork has been re-rendered and the windows look to be larger. I’ve wanted so much to walk through those doors since returning, to have the happy memories that place once brought come back to me, to see how much it’s changed on the inside and more importantly to see if I’m granted with a glimpse of a life that wasn’t all dark nights and torment. But my legs never get any closer to the building because
I know that the happy memories won’t come, they never do.
“Going to Rubies was the only time Lawson had his uses and showed any signs of compassion towards me. I guess he had to as he was in the public eye. The first couple years that he took me, everything was fine, but then Mum’s work hours increased to five nights. Suddenly, one beer became a bottle of vodka a night, and that act of kindness rapidly changed and his behaviour went beyond any level of parental guidance when one night I was taken home and beaten. One-night led into two and two soon became another year.” Most of the time I never understood why and tried everything within my power to think of what it was that made him so angry—what it was that I had done to generate such hatred from him on the nights we were alone. What it was that over time made him stop loving me as a stepdaughter, instead rejecting me like I was some feral animal. But I only ever came up with two reasons: everything and nothing. Because everything I did to upset him was nothing out of the ordinary for a child my age. “I still to this day never understood what changed him—other than the drink. I was eight when they first got together, they married the year later, and we were the perfect family. I guess I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when his life got twisted. I became a lone victim of his brutal hands and I had to learn to live with it regardless of how many times I cried myself to sleep, confused and utterly afraid, desperately wanting my mum and someone to protect me the times that Marcus couldn’t. But she was never there, and Lawson was first-class in making her believe that our relationship was like every mother wanted for her daughter: a happy one. But I was far from happy, Lucas.” Fresh tears begin to fall from reliving the nightmare to someone other than Lucy.
Marcus knows the majority, but he doesn’t know everything. Moving a little closer, Lucas reaches for my hand, stroking the back with his thumb.
“Even with a drink inside him, he manipulated my mum into thinking we were happy. When he lost his job and was home all the time the same sentence was screamed in my ear whenever I was punished: Your daddy didn’t want you, and I don’t want you either. The day I had the nerve to come back at him with attitude, he forced me under the water because I had spoken out of line. When he saw the fear he inflicted, he did it all the more.”
“Your fear of water,” he whispers.
“I liked water up until that point.” I smile, trying to find a little humour through my tears.
“Did the abuse get worse?”
I nod, wiping my face with the back of my hand, feeling sick to the stomach with what I’m about to unveil next. “I couldn’t understand why my mum never saw the change in me when Marcus could. He only had to look at me and knew if I’d been crying, so why was it different with her? It was almost like she became oblivious to everything: the nights I wet the bed because she was at work while I laid in wait for what was to come; the time when I was twelve and had to make out that I’d started my period, when in actual fact it was because Lawson let his younger cousin come into my room and take my innocence. She never saw the bruising on my body because I went to school when she slept during the day and never saw me get dressed. There was no love left in that home and nothing left in my heart other than fear. Fear was all I knew, and she was never aware of any of it. I never told her because I was desperate to keep her safe from him,” I sob, not being able to take any more. “I was a little girl, Lucas. How can one person inflict so much hatred and suffering onto a little girl?”
“Shhh, I’ve got you.” He covers me with his firm body, holding me so tight as his own tears fall. I’ve reduced this man to tears with my anguish when he should be running away knowing now that I’m nothing but tainted and unclean. “I’ve got you.”
Holding me against him, he strokes my hair and rocks me as every bit of energy withdraws from me, leaving a tidal wave of emotional exhaustion. I close my eyes, letting myself relax into his embrace, listening to the beautiful beat of his heart. I could stay here forever. We lay quiet, listening to the soft breathing of Charlie in his cot.
Lucas’s voice is barely a whisper. “Can you tell me what happened to her?”
I twist my hand tight in my shirt, letting the taut material dig into my skin. “It was late that autumn. I was fourteen and the nights had started to draw in. I wasn't feeling well one night, so mum told me to get into my pyjamas. She hadn’t gone to work that week, which was unusual, but I was relieved because it meant I’d be safe. Marcus had gone to London with his family as they were planning on moving and I was devastated. That night I’d woken up from a dream. I dreamt I was falling, and I hit the ground with a loud bang. I woke up startled, feeling sick and sweaty, trying to work out if my dream was real but knowing that it wasn’t because I was still in bed. I got up wanting a drink, needing to tell mum about it. The house was silent—too silent—and I knew as soon as my feet touched the top of the stairs that something was wrong. I felt it.” I remember the hard thudding in my chest that even now hits me from no whereas if it’s a reminder. I remember walking down the stairs on shaky legs, praying that I’d find her warm smile. Only I didn’t. “I saw the blood before I saw her. Thick sticky crimson covered the kitchen floor and the more I stepped away, the more it tried to catch my toes. I couldn't breathe, I felt sick as my eyes became blurred. My eyes travelled down her body, trying to take in what had happened as I begged for her to wake up. But she never did.”
I’ve never spoken of that night to anyone. When I was questioned by the authorities, when taken away, I sat in silence and I was soon classed as a disturbed child. Each foster home I was sent to, I ran from, ending up being found a few hours later and being taken back in the back of a police car. Once one family got fed up with me, I was carted off to the next. “She'd been shot in the head. Lawson was propped up against the table completely comatose with alcohol and the gun in his hand. It crossed my mind that he was dead too because he hadn’t even registered what had even happened or that I was there. When I heard the sirens in the distance, I panicked. I didn’t realise I was running until my bare feet hit the cobbles as I headed towards the bridge. I’ve been running ever since.”
“Jesus Christ, I wish I’d been there for you then,” he murmurs, his voice laced with sorrow. “I’d have never have let you go. You must have been so scared.”
“In many ways I still am,” I admit. “But I was a different girl back then. Back then I wanted to escape everything and everyone. No matter who I was standing next to or who offered to help me, I didn’t want it. I feared it, so I ran. When I had Charlie, I knew that had to change. The life I had was not safe for him and I wanted to come back to the one place I knew he’d love, regardless of how much it tore me apart.” I look up at him and speak with honesty. “But then I found you, and even though I tried so hard to fight it, I lost all the power I had, and you suddenly changed everything.” I don’t want to run anymore, because now I realise my life won’t be worth living if he isn’t a part of it. I need him. I want him, and I believe that the feeling he’s creating within me is what people class as falling in love. “I don’t like the way you make me feel, Lucas.”
He shifts us down the mattress a little, resting over me with eyes full of trepidation, his face slight aglow from the light of the lamp, haloing him like a guardian angel. “How do I make you feel?”
“Safe. All I ever wanted was to feel safe and protected, wanted. You provide all of that, and it's so overwhelming.”
He cups my cheek, wiping away the stray tear that’s fallen with his thumb. “The need to protect and care for you roars through me like I’ve never known before. And it scares the hell out of me, too, but you’ve seeped into every part of me, and I can't let you go now even if I try. I don’t want to try. Let me be that person, Birdy. Let me be the one that kisses you when you wake, stands by your side to make a stronger shield against the world and holds your heart for as long as you'll let me.”
I want him to hold me forever, and I believe he will, if I let him, but he hasn’t heard the whole truth of my past. I’ve
one little piece of me left to disclose, leaving me wide open to either a future with him or a world without him. “I’m not perfect, Lucas,” I whisper. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of.”
“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, baby. We just have to rebuild, make the best of who we are and keep going with life. No one is perfect.”
“What kind of perfect do we make out of damaged hearts and broken dreams, Lucas?”
“Our kind. We make our kind of perfect.” He kisses me with such intensity and depth, it sets my soul on fire. It's a kiss that tells me so much yet scares me all the same because of the security his embrace brings, and even though I want it, I'm not sure I deserve it. I'm not afraid to admit that I need him, but at the same time, I know what this means and what it will do to my heart. Everyone I've ever needed I've lost, and I'm terrified of losing him. Anxiety floods my stomach and I focus on the hem of his t-shirt, trying to find the words. “I haven’t told you everything,” I whisper, unsure if I need space in order to tell him, or have him on me so it’s easier.
“Then tell me. You know you can tell me anything.”
“I know, which is crazy because I’ve never spoken to anyone about how I left. I just bottled it up, put up my defences and shut people out in the hope that everything would fade. You’re different: you’ve restored my trust, brought down my walls and made me a better person, but I’m afraid that you won’t look at me like you always do, that you won’t want me, and everything will change once you know. I can’t lose you, Lucas, it will destroy me.”