by Lily Zante
NINA
* * *
I feel bad about that video clip going viral. At first I was angry because it invaded my privacy. It showed me and Callum talking after the fight, and that will only fuel the rumors about him and me.
The waitress and the actor.
Harper does love to come up with her taglines.
I can’t imagine that this will work out well for him. People will forget who I am. They probably already did the second the video clip finished.
Soon the papers will stop mentioning me. The circus will leave town and he will be free to continue with whatever story he wants. In a way I feel sorry for him because he won’t get his life back, he’ll never have it belong only to him. His fans will always want a piece of him.
I did consider going over to him the other day when he came to the diner, when he and Frankie seemed to be talking for ages. She wouldn’t tell me what it was about, though. Maybe I should have gone over to him but my pride—for the sake of my sanity—got the better of me.
I understand what Elias and Harper have said, about me needing to fix things, about moving on and talking more about what happened, about seeking help, but I’m not ready yet. I’ll get there soon but I’m not there yet. I sense that they are keen for me to make things up with Callum. They think he was good for me.
Maybe he was, but I don’t want to depend on anyone and I was starting to with him. I can’t rely on anyone for my happiness because that’s a slippery slope. I can’t allow myself to be that vulnerable so I’ll do what I do best, and that means staying away from him.
This is my way of handling things and its always worked well for me.
* * *
CALLUM
* * *
I’m not sure about the outcome, but I am sure about this, about me going to Nina’s place. Frankie said Nina had left the diner a short while ago and was going home. I’ll take my chances because Frankie’s always been right before.
She looks surprised when she opens the door, but she composes herself quickly. “You’re still here?” she asks. I smart at the coldness of her question and then I remind myself that she’s a ninja at the art of not giving a fuck. That’s not the question I would have expected from someone I can’t stop thinking about, even someone as aloof as Nina. “I wasn’t going to leave without saying goodbye.”
She lifts her chin defiantly. Already I feel defeated. I wasn’t expecting her to be ecstatic, but I was expecting her to be friendlier than she is.
“Have you come to say goodbye?” she asks. I try to find some semblance of warmth in those dark eyes. It’s only the tight press of her lips that gives me an inkling that all isn’t as smooth under that exterior as she would like me to believe.
“Do you want me to say goodbye?” This is the type of question she hates—personal, slightly flirtatious, with double-meaning.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you and me to be seen together.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“The clip went viral.”
“It did.” I wonder if we are destined to have this conversation on her doorstep. “Let me in?”
She hesitates.
“I’m not asking for a way into your heart, Nina. Just get me through the front door, please.” I glance around for signs of any paps with their telephoto lenses.
She opens the door and grants me access.
“Was that really so hard?” I ask her as we stand in her living room.” She’s changed things around, rearranged where the sofa and TV went. This isn’t going anywhere like how I expected it to. I was prepared for her being icy, and standoffish. I was prepared for her to not be willing to give me a chance. I wasn’t prepared for this level of nothingness.
“How are your assignments going?” I opt for niceties.
“I ditched night school.”
This is a shock. “What? Why?” Her night school kept her busy, just like the diner.
“I missed so many classes, and after the fight, I just lost interest. I’ll probably start them up again when the course opens for registration again. The tutor said they’d give me a ten percent discount.”
“Ten percent? Is that all? Frankie says you’ve gone through the A to Z of courses at that place.”
“You and Frankie seem to know a lot about me.”
“You don’t talk to me much anymore, the only way I get to find out how you are is through Frankie or Harper.”
She jerks her head to me. “You’ve been talking to Harper?”
“To ask about Elias. He must be feeling low after losing the fight.”
She sits down, and suddenly she looks less guarded. Weary. As if she can’t keep the cold facade up any more. I walk over and sit down beside her a few inches away, and not touching her, but close enough that I want to touch her face, and hold her hand and have to restrain myself.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.”
“You don’t have to keep apologizing for that.”
“I feel like you’re not hearing me,” I tell her.
She stares at her hands. This is it. I have to have the courage of my convictions and I’m almost a hundred per cent certain. “I know what happened to you.”
She doesn’t turn her head towards me. Instead, she shifts her hands in her lap, picks at a seam on her dress.
“At the children’s home,” I say.
A tiny crease, the only telltale sign that I might be in the right track, forms in the middle of her brow. “I know it wasn’t just Elias. There were other kids, and it happened to you.”
“Did Elias tell you?” Her voice is unsteady.
“He never said a thing.”
She pales. I literally see the color drain from her face. I’ve hit the truth. She seems to crumple before my eyes, her shoulders hunch, her head lowers. It’s a fight to keep from putting my arms around her, from giving her the comfort and reassurance I so badly want to give her.
“Then how do you know?”
“Elias’s biography. There were always rumors of abuse at that place. Never substantiated. Your scars. Small signs. These things added up.”
“When did you know?”
“After LA, but I didn’t know for sure ... until just now.” It’s the reason why I never took things further with her when we were making out even when she begged me to. I needed to know she was sure. I needed her to tell me, I needed her to trust me, and she never did, so I was willing to wait for when she would, just like I’m waiting for her to say something now.
Her lower lip quivers.
“It’s okay, Nina. It’s okay. You don’t have to hide it anymore—”
“Okay?” she spits out. Venom in her voice, pure hate in her eyes. She changes in an instant. She’s protecting herself. “How would you know? It’s not okay. It never was.”
“I didn’t mean that. What happened to you was never okay. But you don’t have to hide it from me. You don’t have to close yourself off from me. I care about you.” I’ve fallen for her, but I can’t tell her. “Let me in, Nina.”
“I don’t want to let anyone in.”
“You were starting to let me in before.”
“I thought you were different.”
What am I supposed to say to that? She still doesn’t completely trust me. She still needs time.
“I’ve apologized about the fight, Nina. I don’t know what else I can do to make you see that I’m sorry and that I want to get back to how we were before.
“And how were we before?” She glares at me, startling me with the acidity in her tone.
“We were getting to know one another. Tell me you didn’t feel anything in LA? Tell me you didn’t feel anything back here during those evenings you spent at my hotel? Tell me the night you stayed over was a mistake.”
She can’t.
I take her silence as a sign that all is not lost.
Chapter Sixty
NINA
* * *
It was easier when he was trying
to get me to deliver lunch. When his pursuit of me was based on some semblance of attraction, or whatever he claims it was that drew him to me.
I feel as if I’m going to hyperventilate. Or scream. And yet I have to sit here and pretend to be calm.
I can get through this.
Elias knows, and that was the worst thing. Callum is temporary. I can handle him knowing. I think I can trust him not to blab to the world. He’s no Gerry.
But he knows, and I don’t want to deal with him knowing.
Talking about it helps.
That’s what Elias said.
He doesn’t say anything. We sit in silence..
I was going to tell Callum before, but I hesitated. Do I tell him now? Do I do this?
It’s going to take a leap of faith.
Maybe I can try to.
I clear my throat. “I was eight years old when it happened. He told me that he would leave Elias alone if I let him do things to me.”
I can’t face Callum, but I hear the subtlest of gasps.
“So I did. How could I let him do anything to my little brother?” I tell him about the game the janitor used to play with me, how he would get me feverishly looking for sweets, how he would count quickly, and how I would always lose.
“Nina,” he whispers, his voice hoarse, not like the voice I am used to. He puts his hand on my arm, but it feels as if he’s the one who needs to hold on.
“He didn’t just take my innocence. He took my childhood. He chewed up the thing that made me human, and then he spat me out.” There are days when I don’t feel so good, but I put on my mask and I get out there.
“That monster didn’t take away your humanness. He took away a part of you, but you’re still whole, Nina.”
“And all that time, he was telling Elias the same thing, that if he used Elias, then he would leave me alone. Neither of us knew, not until a few months ago. I only found out about Elias when his story broke, but he found out mine when I told Harper, just before the fight.” I bite my lip, shivering at the moment Elias found out.
“Elias never knew?
“No one did.”
“Then what made you tell Harper?”
You did. Something must have changed in me enough to make me open up to her. “I don’t know.”
“When?” he asks, softly.
“After we came back from LA.” Something changed inside me from the moment me and Callum started to get close.
He exhales a long breath. “So that’s when Elias found out.”
“He wasn’t supposed to. I never wanted him to know. He walked in and heard us talking.” I pick at the seams of my dress. “And that’s why he lost the fight” My voice is all wobbly and weak. “I messed with his head.”
“You didn’t mess with his head,” Callum is quick to say.
He doesn’t know the damage that telling secrets can do. “That stuff, knowing that stuff, it messed him up.”
“No way, Nina. No way.”
“You’re only saying that, like Elias did, because you don’t want me to blame myself.”
“You live your life blaming yourself, and you have no control over what Elias does, when he chooses to walk in and listen to a private conversation or not. That’s on him, not you.”
“But he heard, and he lost.”
“He’s a fighter. He’s lived through moments as bad as hearing what happened to you. He gone into that ring plenty of times, with all of his past in his head, and he’s won. This. Isn’t. On. You.”
I feel his arm around me and at the same time I inhale the merest hint of sea breeze and mint. For a second I’m back in LA, on the sun-lounger in the balcony, with the sun caressing me.
Callum hugs me closer to him. It’s not what he says, it’s what he doesn’t say. It’s what Callum does that tells me he gets me. That he cares. We sit like that without speaking. I don’t have the energy to tell him all of it. I feel lighter for what I have told him, but right now, with his arm around me, with his chin just above my head, this feels like home.
After a while, because my body is slightly twisted, I move away from him and lift my head. To my shock, his eyes have welled up. I can’t be sure, but it looks as if tears might spill over his lashes. “Why do you look so sad?”
“You … “ he says in a voice that doesn’t sound like his. I chew the inside of my cheek, contemplating, because the sight of this world famous man—this larger than life movie action hero, who has been stripped right back so that he is as raw and as vulnerable as me—this is something I am unprepared for.
This is the real Callum, the one I have come to know. He cares about me, he feels for me, he understands all my fears and flaws.
“You’re the bravest woman I know.” Furrows crease his brow. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I look at you, and think of the times we’ve met and talked, and the things I didn’t understand, I see them so clearly now. I had a feeling that you had experienced horrors, had lived through a childhood that must have been tough, but I never imagined this for you. Your wounds and scars, at first I thought they were because of Elias. I believed your guilt was because you couldn’t be there for him, and then I started to think there was more.” He gently trances over my wrists with his fingers. “Your wounds, your refusal to give me a chance, I knew there had to be another reason, and now I know. All I want to do is hold you forever and make things better again. I wish I could take away your pain. I wish I could make it all go away.”
“You can’t.”
He touches my face, his fingers trembling, everything about him less sure and less confident. “I want to help you get over this, Nina. Don’t push me away. I want to be by your side. I want to do whatever it takes. I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.” I touch his lower lip. “You make me happy.” I drop a light kiss on his lips, and he hesitates. I feel like he wants to kiss me back, but he’s stopping himself.
He sees through me. Seems to understand me in a way no one has before. And he looks at me in wonder, wiping away the stains of my past. He waited, and was patient, and kind when he didn’t have to be. He is the kind of man I can trust. The kind of man I want to be with.
“Come and lie down with me,” he says, lying back on the sofa in a more comfortable position, his legs all spread out.
I lie on my side, against him, and we stay like that for the longest time. Hearts beating against one another, bodies pressed as if we were one, lying together in the stillness. I can feel and almost hear the beat of his heart against mine, with his arms wrapped around me. I don’t want him to ever let go.
* * *
CALLUM
* * *
I once believed that Nina didn’t trust herself with me. That was my fault, for thinking I was the big ass movie star who no one could resist. Turns out it wasn’t that she couldn’t trust herself with me, turns out she couldn’t trust herself to open up.
Turns out her demons were bigger and darker than any I’ve had to deal with. I love her. It may be too soon to say it to her, but the way I feel about her, the way I would do anything, anything to protect her, to stop her from getting hurt, the things I feel, I’ve never felt them with such intensity for anyone before. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.
Losing that last picture of Ben was a huge loss, but I gained something so unexpected in return. Otherwise, how else would I have ever met Nina? Our paths might have crossed, I might have gotten fed up with Rudy and I might have walked into Elias’s gym and met him and Harper. But I can’t see how I would have pursued Nina without having experienced her indifference towards me from the start. That in itself was eye opening. She wouldn’t have caught my eye.
I fervently believe that some things happen for a reason and going down that alleyway and getting mugged were a reason for me to meet Nina.
She has told me things that are hard to hear, but I listen, because she needs me to. She’s healing herself by getting it out, and so I stay put. This won’t be all of it.
There will be more, and when she’s ready she can tell me.
Now she’s lying in my arms, lying on top of me. I never want to let her go. My heart aches for the girl she used to be and the woman she can be—the carefree and happy woman I saw in LA.
I want to punch this nameless faceless monster who did this to her. Not just her, but Elias too. My heart bleeds for both of them and I finally understand their bond, their closeness. She lies on top of me, light as a feather. I put my arms around her, needing to protect her and keep her safe.
I love her, and it’s nothing to do with what she’s told me but because I felt a connection to her right from the start. It’s taken many different guises but this is what it is now.
Love.
Love that doesn’t come from lust and desire because that’s not how our attraction began. She was a stranger first, then a waitress, before she became a wary friend. Now she trusts me. She trusts me enough to tell me about the debris of her past.
We stayed like that for the longest time, and then we ordered food, and watched TV. I slept in her bed and I held her all through the night. It all makes such perfect sense, why she froze before. Why she pushed me away.
Sex is the last thing on my mind. She’s hard to resist, especially when she puts on one of my big, baggy T-shirts and slips into bed with me. But she sleeps peacefully, even though I lie awake thinking of everything she’s told me.
I will be there for her. I’ll be the one to love her and help her to heal.
Chapter Sixty-One
CALLUM
* * *
The studio was pissed off with me when I refused to stop seeing Nina and so defied their orders so brazenly in public, but then a funny thing happened as the weeks rolled by. The fans seemed to like the story about me falling for the waitress, and a waitress who just so happened to be Elias Cardoza’s sister.
I’m leaving Chicago for a few weeks, doing some post-production stuff, and then taking a break. And Nina’s coming with me.
