by Amanda Dick
She whimpered in the darkness as he approached the bed. She screamed again, short and shrill, suddenly thrashing about so much he wondered if someone was trying to hurt her. His mind raced as he felt for the bedside lamp, flicking it on only to see her alone in bed, pillows scattered around her. She was clearly dreaming, her eyes firmly shut, face contorted as the whimpering continued.
He leaned over and tried to grab her arms. “Hey, come on, wake up.”
“I’m burning!” she sobbed, pushing him away.
“No, you’re not, you’re dreaming, Ally – wake up.”
“My legs!”
He glanced down at her legs beneath the blankets. “You’re alright, nothing’s burning.”
She whimpered again, still fighting him off.
“Wake up, Ally – come on, wake up for me now.”
Her eyes flew open with a sharp intake of breath, followed by a coughing fit. He pulled her towards him, rubbing her back rhythmically. “You’re okay, you were dreaming. Just take it easy, breathe slowly, that’s it. You’re okay.”
After a few moments, she struggled free of him and reached down to push the covers off her legs. She stared at them for a moment, as if reassuring herself. There was no doubt that her body had changed since the accident, but what did that matter? Something like this was merely physical. What was important went so much deeper than that.
Shuddering, she quickly drew the blankets over her legs again. She turned to gaze up at him in confusion. “Am I dreaming?”
“You were, but you’re not now. You were having a nightmare.”
She struggled through to consciousness. “Are you real?”
He smiled in spite of himself. “I’m real.”
He saw the light slowly returning to her eyes as the tension in her body eased. She wrapped her arms around him, and he pulled her in close. They sat, safe in each other’s arms, for the longest time. It felt so familiar, so comfortable, his body relaxed into hers. All thoughts of Jimmy and his previous life were washed clean away, and he found himself wondering how he could have lived without her all this time.
“I think I can feel them sometimes,” she whispered. “My legs. Just for a few seconds, when I wake up.”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know if it’s… it feels so real.”
He tried to imagine the torture of fleeting sensation. “What were you dreaming about, just now?”
She pulled him closer, fitting herself even more tightly into his body. “The accident.”
He smoothed her hair gently with his fingertips, remembering his conversation with Callum. “You thought your legs were on fire.”
“It felt like they were burning.”
“Can you still feel them?”
“No,” she sighed. “It’s gone now.”
He held her tight.
“I’ve never had a dream like that before, where my legs were on fire.”
He gently rubbed her back.
“What do you think it means?” she whispered, vulnerability oozing out of her and soaking the air around them.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled, remembering the night of the accident and the fumes that had turned his stomach and forced him into making a choice that changed both their lives. Did she remember too, somewhere deep down in her subconscious? “It’s gonna be okay, I promise. I’m here now.”
He held her until his arms began to go numb. Her slow, rhythmic breathing indicated that she had fallen asleep again, as he gently eased them both back onto the pillows behind him and closed his eyes.
The night of the accident came back to him in Technicolour and he let it play out this time, conscious of every move he made. From leaning over to turn the radio down to dragging Ally out of the car and across the damp grass, he relived all of it. The pain in his chest had nothing to do with Ally leaning against it and everything to do with a decision he made that night that he would never forget.
Ally woke up slowly, her back aching. After a few minutes, the ache turned into tiny fingers of pain, like daggers burying themselves deep in the vertebrae. Opening her eyes, she realised she was in Jack’s arms, half-lying and half-sitting against the headboard. He breathed slowly and evenly beneath her and every rise and fall of his chest caused the daggers to dig deeper. After several minutes, she could stand it no longer. She braced her hand on the mattress as she tried to move but a sudden stabbing pain in her spine forced out a gasp of surprise, stopping her in her tracks.
Jack squirmed beneath her and the movement buried the daggers deeper still, settling them in her bones until she didn’t care about anything but making the pain stop.
“Jack, wake up,” she hissed through clenched teeth, her chin quivering as she tried not to cry out.
“What is it?” he murmured groggily, stretching the arm that wasn’t draped over her.
She sucked in a breath, the pain instantly intensifying with the movement. “You need to move.”
“What?”
“Please – you need to move,” she pleaded, not caring how she sounded anymore. “Need to lay flat.”
He froze, then began to ease out from under her.
“Slowly,” she ordered, sucking in the curse words that were building beneath the pain.
“Okay.”
That one word was infused with both confusion and fear. She knew she would have to explain this later, but right now she needed to do something about the pain.
He moved out slowly from beneath her. Each tiny position change was agony. She cussed liberally in her head, although she was incapable of saying much aloud.
After what seemed like an eternity, he sat next to her and she was sprawled, half on her front and half on her side, in utter misery.
“What can I do?” he said gently. “How can I help?”
She tried to breathe evenly, clenching her teeth, staring at the pillow she was half-buried in.
“Pills, table, behind me,” she breathed.
Jack climbed off the bed carefully as she lay there, even the tiny movements caused by breathing sending pain rocketing through her spine.
“They’re not here,” he said desperately. “Oh wait – I think they’re still on the coffee table. I’ll get them.”
Careful to keep her breathing shallow, it felt like he was gone forever. When he finally came back with them, he knelt down on the floor beside the bed with the bottle of pills and some water.
“How many?”
“One,” she ground out through teeth clenched tight against the pain.
“Just one? Are you sure?”
“For now.”
He uncapped the bottle and she released the sheet she had clutched in her fist and opened her hand to take the pill from him. Carefully slipping it into onto her tongue, she fought the urge to cry out against the pain that simple movement caused. He handed her a glass of water and she slurped at it, spilling some on the pillow beneath her but swallowing enough to take the pill with it.
“Now what?” he murmured.
She pinched her eyes shut. “Wait.”
She felt him slip his hand into hers and squeeze gently. She hadn’t meant it as a question, but as a statement of fact. If she were in her right mind, she would have insisted he leave her alone to deal with this, but she wasn’t in her right mind. The pain overwhelmed her, sucking up every other emotion she had, including humiliation, and viciously discarding them. She kept her eyes shut to block everything out, even as Jack whispered something that she didn’t catch over the blood rushing in her ears. The only sense that hadn’t deserted her was touch, and she felt him softly stroking the side of her hand with his thumb. She concentrated on his gentle, smooth strokes as the pain slowly receded.
Eventually, she opened her eyes. Jack sat on the floor, his head resting on the bed, still holding her hand. His face was drawn tight with anxiety and a wave of love rose from deep within her belly as she felt herself fighting off tears.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better
,” she sniffed, trying to recover her self-control.
“Did I do this? Because if I did, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she murmured, meeting his worried gaze out of the corner of her eye. “I should have known better than to fall asleep all twisted up like that. It’s my fault, not yours.”
“You said you had back pain sometimes, but I didn’t expect this. I thought… well, I don’t know what I thought, to be honest.”
He looked so miserable, she wanted to smile, to sit up, to tell him that she was fine. But she wasn’t capable of any of that yet.
“It’s the metal rods,” she mumbled into the pillow. “Hurts sometimes.”
“Can you see them?”
“See what?”
“The metal rods.”
“No. Just the scar.”
Jack’s gaze flitted to her back for a brief instant. “Can I take a look?”
The aftermath of the pain and the effect of the medication wore down her defenses. She reasoned that it was only a scar, and she was hardly in a position to argue. “Knock yourself out.”
He squeezed her hand again before letting it go, moving carefully around the edge of the bed until she couldn’t see him anymore. Slowly, she moved her hand to the hem of the t-shirt she slept in and pushed it up. Anxiety worked its way through the haze of medication like a cold knife. She waited for him to say something – that the scar was huge, that it was ugly, that it looked painful.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he gently pushed the t-shirt higher and the cool morning air hit her bare skin. His fingertips touched her back, so gently it almost tickled. The area around her scar was hyper-sensitive and she knew immediately when he was near it. She sucked in a breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to hurt –“
“It doesn’t – hurt, I mean,” she swallowed. “The pain, it’s not coming from my scar.”
She held her breath as his fingertips floated over her skin with incredible tenderness, electrifying the nerve-endings.
Why doesn’t he say something?
Then he was lowering her t-shirt again. The seconds stretched out, her heart pounding against her tender spine so violently, she wondered if he could see it.
He crawled around the edge of the bed, settling into the same spot as before, reaching out to enclose her hand in his again.
“That’s pretty impressive.” He squeezed her hand, offering a weak smile. “But I thought it’d be bigger, for some reason.”
That’s it?
She looked deep into his eyes. If he was hiding something from her, she couldn’t see it, unlike his reaction when he had seen her sitting half-naked on her bedroom floor. Then, it had been obvious. Now… nothing. Wasn’t he bothered by the scar? Or was he just getting better at hiding it? Suddenly, she had a burning desire to know.
“What do you see?” she asked. “When you look at me now?”
“What do you mean?”
Her pulse raced. She couldn’t take it back now. “I want to know how you see me.”
He was obviously shocked. She couldn’t blame him. She was shocked too, but she had to know. She took a deep breath and tried again. “Do you feel sorry for me? Do you feel guilty, when you look at me? Does it turn you off, seeing this – seeing me, like this?” The words tumbled over one another. “The scar, the meds and the metal rods. The nightmares and the giant hole in my memory. The fact that we can’t hold hands when we walk down the street together anymore – that I can’t do a lot of the things we used to do together. The way I look, the way other people look at me –“
Her breath caught in her throat, her lungs unable to keep up with her mouth.
“Should any of that matter?” he said, interrupting her as she was about to launch into another list.
But does it?
He held her hand tight and she found herself hanging on just as tightly.
“I don’t know what it is you’re asking me, exactly, but I think you’re one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, did I ever tell you that? Now, when I look back on it, I think you kind of scared me. You were so confident, so much more adventurous than I was – you weren’t afraid of anything. You took risks and you threw yourself into things, heart and soul. We were opposites – when I was scared, you were brave. When I was reluctant, you were already committing. You took me places and showed me things that I never would’ve seen if it weren’t for you.”
Tears filled his eyes, and his expression took on an exquisite tenderness that made her heart ache for him.
“And then I let you down in the worst possible way,” he whispered. “But you gave me a chance to make it up to you, even when I didn’t deserve one. So you want to know how I see you? Beautiful, courageous, determined, generous, loyal and so much more, I don’t think there are even words that cover it.”
She felt so light-headed, she couldn’t tell if it was from the medication or from the sheer love she saw in his face.
“So, you don’t mind… about all of this?” she whispered, choking back tears.
“I mind that it hurts you, and I mind that you thought it would make any difference to the way I feel about you. I also mind that you still feel like you have to hide things from me. But I hope you’ll come to trust me again, because all I want is to be here, with you. Nothing else really matters.”
There was no mistaking the sincerity – in his heart, in his eyes, in his words.
She stared at him across the bed. “It’s like we’re starting all over again isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” He squeezed her hand, resting his chin on the bed.
She wanted to climb into his arms and have him wrap his body around hers.
“You don’t have to worry about this thing with Jimmy. I’ll work it out – it’ll be over soon, I promise.”
She nodded into the pillow. The pain had driven out all thoughts of Jimmy and the whole sordid mess, but now that the pain was receding, the worry seeped back in again. Once all this was over, she would ask him more about what had happened to bring things to a head like this, but first they had to get through the next two days.
“How’s your back?” he asked, interrupting her thought process.
“Much better.”
“Good.”
He smiled, one of those rare, sweet smiles that lit up his eyes from within and made her forget where she was and what she was doing. They would get through today, and tomorrow night the money would be in Jimmy’s hands and all this would be over.
Jack stared at Ally’s empty bed. Beneath it, a pile of cash was crammed into a canvas sports bag, hidden from prying eyes. He felt like he was in a dream world.
Callum had been in touch with Mrs. Watson, his Dad’s neighbour, and she had reported that nothing had seemed out of place in the neighborhood, which should have set his mind at ease. Instead though, it had the opposite effect. He was paranoid that they were there in the shadows, watching their every move. He refused to leave Ally’s side.
He felt like a stranger who was doing more harm than good. The catalogue of things he felt he should know about her was mounting. Nightmares, pain medication, exercise, massage – and he was the reason for all of it. He needed to calm down, but the very last thing he felt right now was calm, especially with the rendezvous rapidly approaching.
“Look, you need to relax,” Callum said from behind him. “Keep it together – it’s nearly over.”
The sentiment was so similar to what Ben had told him the day his father died, he cringed.
“You messed up – big deal. It’s just temporary, we can deal with temporary.”
“We?”
“It’s like Ally said – you’re not on your own anymore, you don’t have to deal with any of this shit alone.”
Jack threw him a quick look over his shoulder. “Thanks.”
“Come on, let’s go over the plan again.”
“I’ll take the
money over to the house. You stay with Ally. I’ll call you when they’re gone.”
“See? Sounds simple doesn’t it?” Callum insisted. “The only thing I’m not over the moon about is the fact that you’re going over there alone.”
“I don’t have any choice – I’m hardly in any position to make demands.”
“I know, but you’ve got no back-up. What happens if it all goes south somehow?”
“It won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know Ben,” Jack insisted, with slightly more confidence than he felt. “He’s a businessman – that’s what this is about, Jimmy said as much. I stepped all over his street cred when I took off, so he wants his money so he can tell everyone I didn’t get away with it. It’s business, that’s all.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“I am.”
“Then relax. If it’s as straightforward as you say it is, it’ll be fine. Come on, we’ve still got a few hours before you need to head over. Let’s get something to eat.”
Pulling up outside his house, Jack felt the tension coiled inside of him, searching for an outlet. He wanted this over, and quickly. He glanced at his watch. He was ten minutes early. As he made his way up the front path, his gaze swept the front of the house and up the street on both sides. Nothing was out of the ordinary but it didn’t help to dispel the knot of apprehension that sat in his stomach.
He unlocked the door and walked into the hall, closing it behind him. Switching on the hall light, he walked into the living room with the bag of money and stopped dead.
Jimmy and his gorilla were standing in the eerie half-light, watching him. Jimmy glanced down at the bag he was holding, and Jack immediately put it down on the floor, stepping away from it. He fidgeted with the keys in his hand, prepared to use them as a weapon if the need arose, but Jimmy just smirked at them pointedly.
“How did you get in here?” Jack demanded, with more bravado than he felt.
“Irrelevant,” Jimmy said, indicating the bag at Jack’s feet.
“It’s all there.” Jack shoved the bag towards them with his foot, his heart racing. The gorilla picked it up and unzipped it, showing the contents to Jimmy.
