by Lily White
It didn’t matter what Ensley told me or what any of the kids were saying, I knew Kyle had done something to Ens that wasn’t okay.
“She’s fine.”
And, God, I hoped I was right about that, her mom looked ready to cut off several of Ensley’s body parts to sell on the black market when she caught us having sex.
“Just turn the fuck around, and leave me alone.”
Jennifer sneered, her eyes widening with surprise at how angry I was. Thankfully, she listened and went about gossiping with some other girl, the teacher walking in a while later to start class.
I didn’t hear a word of that lesson either. My head was too full with questions, with worry, with panic about how Ensley was feeling about me and what we did. My teeth bit down on the inside of my cheek, and I screamed at myself inside my head for taking advantage.
Ensley didn’t want to have sex with me. I knew it the first second she kissed me, could hear her thoughts like she was singing them in my ear, but I did it anyway.
It wasn’t that I didn’t care how she felt or what it would do to us. I was just desperate to show her that we could be together, that we could work, that we were perfect, that the universe had created us for one another.
I thought if we had sex, she would finally let go of whatever issues she had with me, that she would fall in love and recognize we were destined to be together.
But it was still taking advantage.
Because I knew she didn’t want what I did.
I knew she was doing it for me.
The guilt was drowning me; especially since it had felt so fucking good.
Just seeing her body for the first time - okay, the second time, but I didn’t count the first - was enough to rev my heart up like a damn jet engine, but to touch her, to feel her soft skin and explore every part of her, it was a moment I’d dreamed of since I could remember.
It was Heaven and Hell all rolled into one. Heaven because there was nobody like her. And Hell because I was terrified she wouldn’t want me afterward and would never let me touch her again.
And I’d been a punk.
Fuck. I was hoping that for my first time, I would know what I was doing. Obviously, that didn’t happen. I was like a little bird trying to learn to fly, my body taken over by the rush of every feeling. I tried to make it good for her, but it wasn’t.
The entire time, Ensley kept her eyes closed and wouldn’t look at me.
I kept telling myself she would look at me the next time. That there would be a next time. That when I saw her again, she would smile and admit she wanted me as much as I wanted her.
School wasn’t happening for me today.
Not when I needed to talk to Ens and make sure she wasn’t hurt or scared or angry.
I left after second period, hiked through the shortcut Ensley showed me a long time ago and emerged into our yards to find her sitting in that little strip of grass between the two chain link fences, damn near on top of where we’d buried that cat. Her was head bowed and shoulders shaking because she was crying.
Dropping my bag at the tree line, I ran full speed to Ensley, crouched down and reached out to hold her.
She flinched back, her head lifting, hair all in her face, and eyes so red they were swollen.
“Ens?”
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered, the words a plea more than a warning.
My world dropped out from beneath me, every hope I’d had about her seeing we were meant to be marching off like a line of doomed soldiers on their way to die in battle.
“Ens, I’m sorry.”
I reached for her again, and she jumped back, her body held like a wild animal preparing to run or fight its way free. She shook like she was in pain. Glared at me like I had been the one to hurt her.
Had I?
She needed to talk to me. I wouldn’t leave her alone until she admitted what was wrong.
“Did I do this to you?”
She shook her head, her shoulders hunching more as tears fell from her eyes to water the grass beneath her. Ens’ answer only made me feel a little better. Even if this wasn’t about the sex itself, I had been the cause for her mom getting mad and taking her back home.
Glancing up, I checked her hair to make sure it hadn’t been chopped again. Seeing that it was the same length, I relaxed a little.
“Did your mom do something?”
Ensley nodded, her eyes clenching shut as she backed away even farther. Meanwhile, every muscle in my body went taut, my fingers curling into the dirt to keep from racing to her house to kill the bitch who raised her.
“Did she hurt you?”
She shook her head, opened her mouth a few times to answer me before the word finally slipped out. “No.”
Lie.
I could tell like I was an Ensley Bennett interpreter, the only person in the world who spoke her language. And the fucked up part was I knew she wouldn’t tell me the truth, no matter how long I sat here demanding she admit it.
Ensley was a locked trunk when she wanted to be, heavy iron bolts latching down over the front of it with chains wrapped around, the kind that even a bolt cutter wouldn’t break through regardless of how hard you tried. She had a place deep down, dark and damp, silent and impenetrable, where she tucked all her secrets away until they were eating her insides.
It wasn’t healthy for her to hold it all in, so I racked my brain trying to think of a way to force her to let it out. Any way at all, so that those secrets didn’t get so big they destroyed her.
Like shuffling through storage bins of old files and records, I flipped through my thoughts and memories one after the other before landing on one.
One night, long ago, when my mother and I had been homeless, I was terrified of all the danger that surrounded us, my fears tearing me apart so bad that I couldn’t close my eyes.
Mom had pulled my little body against hers, a soft whisper against my ear telling me that it would be all right. She promised me that if I took all those bad thoughts in my head, planted them somewhere and watered them with hope that they would spring up into a field of beautiful flowers soaking up the sunshine.
That’s what Ensley needed: flowers.
I didn’t want to leave her, but I needed something she could use to rip that secret out of her body and plant it in the ground.
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
There wasn’t an Olympic runner out there who could outpace me with as fast as I ran to my house to collect a few sheets of paper and a pen, my body practically bouncing off walls as I went from room to room looking for something we could use to bury her confession. An empty glass jar sat on the kitchen counter, and I grabbed it before running back outside.
Dropping all the items in front of her, I said, “Fine. If you won’t tell me what happened, then you need to let it go another way.”
Swollen grey eyes peered up at me with storm clouds full and heavy behind them.
“What do you mean?”
I stabbed a finger at the paper.
“Write it down. Whatever your secret is, just write it down on the paper so you’re not carrying it all alone. Then we’ll bury it and forget about it, but at least it won’t be trapped inside you.”
Ensley shook her head, refusing.
I nudged the pen her direction.
“You write yours, and I’ll write mine. We’ll bury them so that it’ll be both of us combined. In a way, it’s like telling me without saying a word. I won’t know what you’re thinking, but I’ll still be right there beside you. So, write it down, and let’s bury it together.”
“This is stupid,” she argued.
“I know. So, let’s be stupid. Together.”
She rolled her eyes. “What secrets do you have?”
I laughed at that. “I have plenty.”
Her mouth twitched, and I knew she was holding herself back from knocking me down and demanding I tell her everything.
“You promise not to dig it up and read it?”
“I promise. But neither can you. They stay planted and eventually they’ll grow into something beautiful.”
Ensley looked at me funny and took a few minutes to decide, but eventually she nodded her head and said, “You go first.”
So, I did.
Grabbing the pen, I sat on the ground and used my leg as a hard surface to write. I had plenty of secrets, enough to make this entire yard into a garden. The only problem was deciding what to write first.
But then I knew, the words coming to me as fast and sharp as lightning because it was the first secret to whisper in my head every morning when I woke up to look at such a beautiful girl.
I love you, Ensley Bennett. And I don’t care what you do or say right now; I will marry you someday and take care of you.
Rolling the piece of paper tight enough to fit in the jar, I handed Ensley the pen and waited for her to write her note.
She sat back like me, glanced up to make sure I wasn’t looking at the paper, and then scribbled a messy note so fast there was no way I could have read it from where I was sitting. Finishing that, she rolled it up, and I handed her the jar to stick it in with mine.
It was done.
Using my hands, I dug a hole, not caring about the dirt jamming beneath my fingernails, just kept digging deep enough that an animal wouldn’t dig it up, and I buried that jar between us.
Minutes passed in silence, but at least Ensley’s tears had stopped.
“What happens now?”
“Flowers will grow,” I promised her.
It didn’t matter what I had to do to make that happen, but they would grow come hell or high water.
“Pretty ones?”
I nodded.
“What color?”
“What’s your favorite?”
Blue. I already knew the answer to that. I knew everything about her. But I asked the question anyway because I wanted her to keep talking.
“All of them.”
I smiled. “Then all of them.”
She smiled, too, such a beautiful expression, even if it was lined with the pain leeching out of her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Noah
Present
Ensley slept soundly at my side that night, her body curled in a ball next to mine, her hand gripping the sheet while whimpers of memories escaped her. I’d tried to close my eyes a hundred times, but no matter how long or how hard I tried, I couldn’t relax enough to fall asleep.
Part of it was because this moment reminded me so much of the years we’d spent sleeping in the same bed that I didn’t want to wake up and realize I’d missed this night.
Twenty-two years I’d spent on uncomfortable cots in prison cells, a man sleeping above or below me, a steel sink-toilet combo only feet from my head that always stunk and had flies.
There was never enough silence in those prison dorms so that a man could think to himself, not even at night when the lights were dimmed and the footsteps of the guards lumbering overhead reminded us we were always being watched.
The only escape in all of that was pretending I was back in my bed, in a small house next door to a girl I loved and her body was wrapped up with mine. I’d tried to punch my pillow into an Ensley shape, tried tucking it beside me instead of under my head, but it was never the same. Never enough to help me sleep better or soundly.
So, this night, with her body right here and her warmth mixing with mine, I didn’t want to miss even a second of it.
I wondered if these few hours would be all I had left.
Naturally, my thoughts drifted as the hours wore on, my mind running back to those years I spent living beside her.
A vision rose up in a wash of reds and yellows and greens, and I could see that garden between our two houses, remembered where every jar was buried beneath the ground, knew what was written on every hastily scribbled note inside them.
My secrets were often the same, a chorus of thoughts pouring from my head and heart, pleas screamed into the darkness of night begging Ensley to just stop.
To look.
To notice what was standing in front of her.
To see me.
She never did. Every so often, she stumbled and fell into my arms, but she never looked deep enough to discover what waited for her. She never saw how viciously I fought to hold on to her and keep her from harm.
Not once.
But she couldn’t be blamed for being blind.
I only wrote those secrets, but I never told them to her.
That was my fault. My shame. My pride keeping me from grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her until she would listen.
I remembered all those secrets, a crescendo of thoughts revealing the pain and the torment she put me through.
Love me, Ensley. Just open your eyes.
Trust me, Ens. I can help you.
Run to me, Ensley, I will take you away.
Stop letting them hurt you!
I only spoke one of those secrets to her.
If you go, I go. I can’t live in a world where you don’t exist.
I told her that one. Repeatedly.
Outside, the sun was beginning to edge over the horizon. We couldn’t stay for much longer because that’s the other thing I thought about while the stars moved above our heads and the moon continued in its orbit: I’m a wanted man.
There were no two ways about it; I had escaped prison to chase after Ensley. I’d almost killed a guard, and I’d left that place when I couldn’t wait any longer for fear the day would come when she would discover she’d had enough.
Men were looking for me, and after what I did to their buddy, they would shoot upon first sight.
I knew that.
I accepted it.
Finding Ensley, that had been trickier. But it wasn’t long after I made the request that a team of women had looked high and low, finally locating Ensley in Central Florida living a life by herself. I almost laughed at how quickly they’d done it.
I wasn’t sure why there were so many men in law enforcement and not as many women. A woman with an agenda can find anybody they wanted with a few clicks of a button and a car.
These women had not only located Ensley within a week of my request, but had also figured out her pathetic schedule, the places she visited, the people she talked to. Hell, they could have probably told me her bank balance down to the last digit if I had asked for that information.
Women are scary creatures.
But I already knew that. I’d lived next door to the worst of them and had spit on her dead body.
I couldn’t thank that group of women more, though. Without them, I wouldn’t have these last few days with Ens.
It started with a letter from Melinda. At first she’d written because she was lonely - Ensley had been right about that. Melinda was the type to make pen pals with condemned men in the hopes that some love affair would start. Being young and locked up, I had nothing better to do than write her back, and eventually, she believed that I didn’t kill Ensley’s family.
Melinda gathered up a group of her friends and made it her mission in life to free me. It wasn’t easy to coordinate our efforts given that the guards read every piece of correspondence going in and out of the prison and listened to every phone call. But we were allowed face to face visits that took place in a loud cafeteria with a hundred other prisoners and their families surrounding us. It was the only way we could hatch our plan without getting caught.
She stopped writing for a long time, at least a year before everything happened. So, I wasn’t sure she would still be there on the day I broke out.
Yet, there she was.
Waiting for me.
I was given money for this trip, clothes, a car, everything I needed to grab Ensley from that library parking lot and make her do what she refused to do when we were young.
She was going to finally see me, and it didn’t matter what I had to say or do to make sure of it.
Those damn women also had a plan f
or secreting me away to Mexico and helping me create a new identity, but I highly doubted it would happen in the end.
I was distinctly aware that I was on borrowed time. I wondered if Ensley knew it too.
She stirred next to me, and I glanced out the window to see that the sun was three quarters over the horizon, a splash of color painting the sky as birds began their morning chatter.
We had to go as soon as I could get her up and out the door to drive to Colorado next.
Without the information Sadie had given me, I wasn’t sure that any of this would have been possible.
Ensley’s eyes opened and tipped up at my face, a scowl pulling at her mouth when she remembered she hated me. I knew she would feel that way, but I’d hoped for at least a second or two of her smile.
“Morning.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she pushed up to sit next to me where I leaned against the headboard, her body still naked because she’d fallen asleep after crying next to me for an hour.
My eyes slipped down to her chest, and she smacked my arm...then grinned. Ens tried to hide her lips by looking away real quick, but I saw it...and grinned too.
“So, is this it? You wanted to bring me here to see Sadie, and now I’m supposed to believe you didn’t kill my entire family?”
Exhaling a deep sigh, I shook my head.
“No. This is just the first stop on the way.”
“The way to what?”
“Figuring out who did.”
I wouldn’t have killed her father, and I wouldn’t have killed those kids. Her mother? Yeah, that was a different story.
There was a puzzle that Ensley needed to put together, memories she had to face. I wouldn’t stop until that happened.
“You did.”
I laughed. “If you say so.”
She surprised me when she moved to straddle my lap, her knees pushing up next to my hips while her hands gripped over my shoulders. I took a slow, unapologetic look at her body, hands gripping the sheets at my sides to keep from touching her, my eyes lifting again to find her staring intently at my face.
“We could pretend.”
“Pretend what?”
“That we’re teenagers again. That none of the bad stuff happened.”