Love Renewed (Entwined Hearts #3)

by Maria Macdonald

  Reaching down he pulls the lid from the small black box. I wait for him to decide how he wants to progress, because only he knows what’s hidden inside.

  “This is a photo of you when you were about fifteen. You were such a pain.” He chuckles passing me a photo. I suck my breath in and look at it. I can see what he means when he says I haven’t changed that much. I’m not so different now to what I was back then, a bit younger, a bit more innocent, but I still look the same.

  “Here, this one was when Ryan moved out and got a dog, you wouldn’t leave the dog alone, always asking to go over to his flat.”

  “Ryan?” I question taking the photo from his hands. I’m sticking my tongue out in the photo, mimicking the cute dog sitting beside me.

  “Yeah,” Dane says standing up. He rubs the back of his neck and looks toward the ceiling, his muscles at the top of his arm bunch, and automatically I lick my lips. “I sometimes forget that you don’t remember.” He shakes his head. “We lived in a home, I’ve told you that much. The home was always for boys until you came along.” He smiles down at me and I can see the warmth swimming in his eyes. “Ryan was one of the guys, he was a year older than me, Mikey was a year younger.”

  “Ryan.” I roll the name around my mouth. It feels familiar, but I can’t place it.

  “Anyway, Mikey left after a bit and you came and replaced him. It was just before your fourteenth birthday—”

  “Christmas,” I interrupt him. I didn’t realise I’d been placed into foster care at Christmas. The thought feels like a slap in the face.

  “Yes, Christmas. You know what happened to your parents?” he asks me and I look up to him.

  “No,” I whisper shaking my head. Dane swallows and sighs.

  “Shit, I didn’t think I’d have to go so deep,” he says softly.

  “I know I told you a bit about me losing my memory, but not everything. The truth is I remember nothing before the accident. I only found out I was fostered through a fluke of tracking my previous address, but that’s all I know because when I got there the occupant told me that I was a foster kid, that they had nothing for me, then slammed the door in my face.” I watch and he frowns and clenches his fist.

  “Shelly,” he snaps

  “Who’s that?” I ask.

  “She was the foster parent, the other was a dick,” he tells me and clams up.

  “Who was the other one?” I ask not sure I want to know if his reaction is anything to go by.

  “Kurtis.” That one word slams into my chest. Hard. Almost taking the breath out of me.

  What the fuck?

  “How do I know that name? Why has that name just made me feel panicked and breathless and not in a good way, Dane?”

  “Take a second, baby. Listen, I have to lay everything out for you but to do that I need to know what you know? What happened? I need to piece the puzzle together so I can explain it to you.”

  I nod my head at his words. They make sense, he needs the whole picture so he can paint me into it. “Right, yes, okay…” I babble. “So I woke up in the hospital a little under twelve years ago. It was Christmas time. I had a cracked skull, broken bones, lots of bruising and the doctors told me I had old bruises and breaks too. When I came around the police wanted to talk to me because I’d arrived under dubious circumstances. I was found in the street unconscious and nobody knew how I’d gotten there. I had no purse, but strangely I had a passport in my back pocket, with a one-way ticket for a flight to America inside it, booked for the coming January. That’s all I had on me.”

  Stopping to catch my breath I realise how long it’s been since I’ve explained every little detail about that time. I tell people I had an accident and that I don’t remember my past if there’s a reason to, but I never tell them all the details. It’s actually pretty hard reliving it all again, knowing I can’t remember anything.

  “When the police looked into my passport and history, all they could find was the foster home I’d lived at. Two weeks later I left the hospital and I went to that address first. One of the nurses had been sweet and bought me new clothes as the ones I had on had been torn and were covered in blood. I think she realised when I had no visitors that I would be released into the world naked if she didn’t do something. She was a sweet older lady…Sally. She said that her daughter was my age.” I watch as his jaw clenches and he looks like he’s about to hit something. “Please don’t break anything because you’re annoyed.”

  Nodding at me. “Finish,” he grinds out.

  “Okay,” I whisper placing my hand over his, immediately he stops clenching and grasps my hand like I’m his lifeline, holding tight but saying nothing. “So I went to the house, I was hoping they could tell me where I came from, or where I lived so, I could find my belongings…find myself. The hospital had already told me to go to the local council so I could be placed in a shelter, but I went to the foster house first. A woman answered the door, sneered at me and asked what I wanted. No, let me correct that, she didn’t ask me she spat at me, literally. I mean she seemed so annoyed to see me, that when she spoke her spittle shot out. Ugh.” I shake my head at the memory, my hand moves to wipe the spit that’s not actually on my face. “I knew I wasn’t going to get any answers so I left. I went to the council and got put into a temporary shelter. It was full of drug users and I needed to get out of there. I knew I had a passport and a one-way ticket so I decided to jump on that plane and take my chances. When I got here I managed to get into a shelter, they put me on a programme to get a job. I wasn’t sure if they’d help me, being from Britain, but my passport is a duel one so that must mean one of my parents was American. Anyway, the woman who looked after me was like a gift sent from heaven, as my own personal angel. I honestly believe that if she hadn’t have been there for me, when I needed someone, that I would have ended up God only knows where. On drugs? Worse…a prostitute, or dead maybe.” I watch Dane close his eyes and he tightens the grip he has on my hand. “Over the years I worked my way around, up through jobs at different places, and managed to get the one I have now, which is brilliant pay for the position and it meant I could secure a tenancy here,” I say gesturing to the room.

  Dane nods and clicks his neck a few times. Clearing his throat he asks, “Name of the shelter and the woman, baby?”

  “What? Why?” I ask.

  “Just want to thank her for looking after my Nova,” he answers and it makes my throat swell.

  “I visit her every January, it’s her birthday then. She’ll be sixty-two this coming birthday but she still works at the shelter,” I tell him, proudly.

  “Name, baby?”

  “Okay, big guy. Edna, her name is Edna.”

  “Surname and shelter Nova?”

  Huffing I answer, “Edna Maranello and All Saints.”

  “Good,” he tells me but doesn’t write it down anywhere, I guess he’ll just remember it.

  “So now are you going to lay things out for me?” I ask.

  He catches my eyes with his and stares, it’s penetrating and I feel like all my layers have been peeled away. “You’re right,” he says suddenly then stands up. “Your mum was an American, your dad met her when he came over here to study. They got married and had you.” I gulp down the emotion and he comes to sit on my coffee table. He’s facing me and he takes my hand. “Baby, you also had a brother. Spencer. He was ten.” I can feel his thumb rubbing the back of my hand, but everything else is numb.

  “Had?”

  He nods. “Your parents died in a house fire. Your brother too, baby.” I shoot to standing, feeling torn between sadness at losing these people and desperation that I don’t feel strongly enough because I don’t know them. I can’t mourn them properly.

  “Why not me?”

  “You were staying at a friend’s house that night.”

  “Okay.” I sit back down. “There’s more isn’t there?”

  “There is more Nova, but if you need time, I can do the rest on another day.” His eyes hol
d compassion now. Reaching up he strokes his thumb across my hairline and down my cheek.

  “No, I want it all now, laid out, so I can deal with it all,” I tell him, clenching my toes to try and release the tightness I feel.

  “We were inseparable, you know? You and me.” He nudges me, which is so unlike him and I can see glimpses of what I suspect is the boy still living inside. We became an item baby, I never left you, even at school. Our foster parents were arseholes. She was a prostitute and he used his fists to get the boys to do things.”

  I feel a pang in my chest that ripples through the rest of my body.

  “There’s a time, baby, a time that I wish I didn’t have to remind you of, but I need to tell you everything. Brace Nova.” I do once again clenching my toes. “There was a reason they never usually fostered girls. Kurtis was that reason.” His name once again elicits an unexplained fear in me. “He tried something with you one night, tried to force himself on you.” I watch with fascination as I see in Dane’s eyes, he’s reliving that night himself. “He had you in your bed, Nova. I heard him, came in, pulled him off, kicked the shit out of him, Ryan pulled me off. I wanted to kill him then, Nova.”

  Something strange happens, something I’ve never experienced before, I have flashes of pictures, so quick that I can’t make them out properly, they’re like blurs, like a remnant of a dream.

  “Are you okay?” Dane mistakes my thoughts for me being upset.

  “I’m fine, is there more?”

  “Unfortunately yes. You need to know that I regret what happened, I’ve regretted it my whole life. Every. Fucking. Day.”

  “Dane, you’re scaring me now,” I whisper.

  “Sorry baby. Things went along day in day out. Ryan moved out. We were good. Then I got offered a job. It was a breakthrough for me. It meant I could earn money, a lot of money and we could get our own place. I made a mistake, though.” He stops, standing up again and pacing back and forth.

  I give him a few minutes then speak, “What? What happened Dane?”

  “I left you.”

  “What?…W…why? I don’t understand.” The words are no more than a sorrow-filled exhale and I feel betrayed, I don’t understand why, but I do.

  “The job I got was modelling, it was good money, they asked me to come to the US, to do a shoot for three weeks, I agreed without speaking to you. I knew. I fucking knew!”

  “Knew what?”

  “I knew that I shouldn’t have left you. All I could see was the money I was going to make, knowing it would have been enough for a deposit on a flat and the first month’s rent. I couldn’t see past my own fucking goddamned nose.” Whatever happened it's clear this is a burden he’s carried for many years and he’s still broken over it.

  “Dane…tell me.”

  “I went, you hated me for it. There was no confusion about your feelings, it was written all over your face. I went anyway. When I came back, you were gone.” I watch as this big strong man reveals his vulnerability and am amazed to realise that it’s me…I’m his vulnerability. “I looked everywhere I could think of. Asked Kurtis and Shelly, but they said you’d run away in the middle of the night. I spoke to Ryan and he didn’t know where you were. Nobody knew. Every turn I took was a dead end. Then about a month after I lost you, Ryan sat me down, told me that Kurtis had attacked you…again. That I wasn’t there to protect you and he had given you money to get away when you’d begged him to help. He was scared to tell me the truth, because of my reaction, in case I took it out on him for helping you.” Dane shakes his head stopping pacing for just a moment. “I was a dick and I lost you. I never want to feel that pain again. But I knew I had to tell you everything. That box…” he walks over and picks up the box tipping it over and emptying it on the coffee table, “has nearly all our memories. Look through it, take as long as you like.”

  I reach forward and grab something that catches my attention. “What’s this?”

  Dane laughs and its soft, deep and manly and it wakes up my lady parts. “This is a tape,” he says pulling it from between my fingers.

  “Well, I can see that. I mean what’s on it?”

  “Various songs, it’s the typical romantic mix tape. There’s one song on it that’s special, I haven’t listened to it for years…our song. We used to play it on my Walkman, each having one earpiece from the headphone and we would slow dance together.” He smirks. “Well, we’d try to slow dance, it was more of a shuffle.”

  “Can we dance now?” I ask.

  He reaches down, grabbing my hand pulling me up. “I’ll set it up from my phone, baby.”

  “Your phone? I thought you hadn’t listened to it for years?” I question.

  “I haven’t, but I needed to know it was there. I’ve never been ready to let it go…to let you go.”

  After fiddling with his phone, he pulls me into him, holding me against his chest like I might disappear at any minute. Looking down at me he smiles. “This was always for you, it was always you, Nova.” I feel his words reverberate through me. This man loves me, of that I now have no doubt, even without him saying the words.

  Suddenly the music starts and a thousand things happen at once. I recognise the song from the Dirty Dancing film, Otis Redding’s These Arms Of Mine. It’s slow, sexy and completely doused in love. That’s how it makes me feel. On the back of my sudden emotion, the flashes start again. They bang in my head, hundreds of them, over and over. Oh God, the memories, they assault me and my tears crash down my face. Sobbing I collapse on the floor, I vaguely hear Dane calling my name, but he can’t penetrate the constant stream of flashbacks in my head.

  My mind starts clearing and I look up and straight into Dane’s eyes. “You left me,” I whisper. His face blanches. “You left me to him?” I watch as horror rises to the surface of his eyes. “Do you know what he did to me?”

  He says nothing, anguish contorting his features.

  “Do you know?” I shriek.

  “Nova.”

  “Don’t you call me that!” I shout standing up and backing away from him. “Don’t you dare fucking call me that. You lost that right when you walked away from me when you left me to him. You knew…you fucking knew what he was capable of.”

  Dane hangs his head and looks completely broken apart, it’s almost enough for me to go to him. But I can’t, I just can’t. I don’t know how to get past the fact that he left me.

  “He raped me!”

  Dane’s body locks, but I take no real notice as I continue to get washes of new pain flowing over me.

  “Kurtis raped me. Oh my God, everything is coming back to me, Dane. You wanted this, you wanted me to remember, but maybe there was a reason my brain didn’t want to remember. Maybe I felt like I’d had enough abuse, maybe I just wanted to forget all the shit of my past.” I watch as his shoulders drop.

  “I’m sorry, Libby.” The name sounds so wrong on his lips and I want to wrap my arms around him, but if I did I would just resent him later. I need to work out what all this means, I need to sort out my head and my life. Shit.

  “I want you to leave, Dane.”

  “Lib—”

  “No, you’ve done enough, just go. I don’t…I can’t even look at your face anymore. Please do something for me, if you still have any love for me like you used to, please just go.”

  He takes a step toward me and I take a step back. I watch as a single tear slips from the corner of his eye and quickly rolls down his beautiful jawline.

  “I’ll always love you like that seventeen-year-old boy did. You’re it for me. Just you. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you. I’m so sorry, Nova. So sorry.” He turns around and walks away, softly opening my door and closing it. I start crying again, my sobs take my breath away and I lean over throwing up over the table, just missing the contents of the box still strewn all over it. I grab the items throwing them back in but stop when I see a photo of a much younger Dane and me. There are huge smiles spread across our faces, we have our arms w
rapped around each other, our heads together. I don’t know what we’re laughing at, but it’s very obvious that we were in love. That we belonged together back then.

  I walk out onto my balcony and watch a figure in the distance walking away. I don’t know if it’s Dane. What I do realise, at that moment, is that I love him. Not just back then. I knew before tonight—before I remembered—I already knew I was in love with him. When he released my memories, all my old emotions came with them, including the love I once had for him. Standing on the balcony, I feel the first drops of rain hit my nose before the heavens open. I slide down the wall, wrapping my arms around my knees and sit in the rain, letting the pain show, letting the hurt drown me. Realising that I don’t know if I can ever get over this.

  Feeling like everything in my body has stopped working, I knew I might get this reaction. Even so, it hurts more than I thought it would. It’s like the last shred of light I was clinging onto is gone. I’m lost, for the first time in my life I don’t know how to fix this.

  I woke up this morning resolved. There are things to sort out that I can’t do by staying in New York. I need to make sure the people I love are safe and that means getting back to London. I love Nova. I will always love Nova, but she needs her space right now. She can take some time to work things through in her head, and while she does that I can sort the storm that’s swirling. If she thinks I won’t be back to get her when I’m done, then she’s forgotten who I am. Even when we were kids, I was determined. First though I need to let her know I’m leaving. I’m not sure how she’s going to react. I left her once and now I’m doing it again. If she asks me to stay, I will. I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right. But if I know her at all, then or now, I know that she’ll push me away. That I’ll need to give her time. And I will, but that’s not an open-ended offer. There will be a limit. And when that time runs out I’ll show her where she belongs.

  Walking down her corridor brings back the words of last night, my chest tightens from the pain festering inside. Tapping on her door I wait for it to open.