by J. L. Berg
“I need some air,” I said finally, walking hastily toward the front door of our apartment.
“Please don’t leave angry with me, Everly,” he begged.
“I’m not angry—I just need some time.”
“Okay,” he answered, the sound of rejection and defeat clear in his voice. He’d learned not to argue when I uttered this phrase. Needing air was my way of pressing pause, or asking for a time out. Sometimes I just needed to get away and I tried not to think too critically about what that meant.
I don’t know how long I wandered around the city. Everything passed by in a blur until I found myself in that familiar spot by the bridge. It was nearly spring, and the bluff was blooming with wildflowers. As the rest of San Francisco went on with their busy lives, new life was blossoming right here on this hillside.
From here, things seemed much simpler.
The Golden Gate Bridge rose high into the heavens, its red pillars a stark contrast to the grayish blue sky. As I found a seat among the tiny yellow buds, I reached out my hand. The bridge felt so close, its enormity giving it an almost unworldly appearance to the world below. But my fingers only grasped the cool air. Nothing else. My mighty bridge was where it always was, stable and secure in the water beyond.
I’d been coming to this spot since I was a tattered little girl, moving from one foster home to another, wondering when my real mom and dad were finally going to rescue me from the hellhole of a life I’d become accustomed to. I wondered how many foster kids secretly watched Annie late at night, hoping they’d be just like that little redheaded songstress, only to find out that dreams like that never happened outside of the movies, and real life heroes are never what you expect them to be.
I guess at some point I could have figured out why I’d been placed in foster care, but after so many years of being considered a problem or a paycheck to others, I stopped caring. That Annie-like hope eventually leaks out like dirty car oil and all you’re left with is remorse; remorse and regret for the life you could have had if your real parents had been someone else. Someone kind and loving—someone better.
I’d thought my someone better was August. Turned out he was just another version of something even worse.
* * *
I met August when I was eighteen. I stumbled into a nightclub — I was too young to be drinking—too young to be doing a lot of things that night—and when I saw him, he was like the knight in shining armor I’d never had.
Or at least what I’d always envisioned one to be.
He was four years my senior, and at the time he’d seemed so mature and sophisticated. Twenty-two was old enough to drink legally and walk into hotels without a second glance.
It was love at first sight. For both of us. From that singular moment, as the bass boomed in the club and we took our first dance together, we became inseparable.
I never had a mother growing up. Or a big sister or brother. Sometimes kids are lucky and find a good foster family in it for the real reasons.
I wasn’t one of those kids.
I did all right by myself, and had a good head on my shoulders—most of the time—but there was never anyone around to tell me that you should be consumed by love, not the other way around.
Within months of meeting August Kincaid, I was consumed. So consumed, I couldn’t remember where he began and I ended. He became the family I never had, the lover I’d always dreamed of and the friend I’d longed for. He was my everything. He took care of me and made me feel safe. He never made me feel trashy or let my shitty past define me. He was all I’d ever wanted, and soon I couldn’t remember what life had been like without him.
We could have floated away into our perfect fairy-tale love story and that would have been the end. The newspapers could have printed our perfect wedding announcement and everything would have been wrapped up in a neat tidy red bow.
But nothing having to do with me is ever neat. Or tidy.
And that’s where my fairy tale derailed and I found myself living something closer to a nightmare.
Several years into our romance, August became very successful in business—very quickly. Whenever I asked what he did he always just smiled, patted me on the head, and answered with something vague and ambiguous.
“I’m a stockbroker—you know that,” he’d said.
But part of me worried that whatever “business” he’d become involved in was illegal or at least not legit. I should have listened to that part more—she’s one smart bitch.
With the addition of wealth he began to change. He became more possessive, more clingy and domineering. A sideways glance at a party and suddenly I would be pulled into an empty room and fucked ten different ways just to be sure I understood who owned me. If another man looked at me, I was immediately taken home, like an errant child.
My fairy tale became a nightmare and I lived in a constant state of fear. Each and every day, his behavior worsened. It was as if success had made him crazy—pushing him into some sort of manic behavior where he believed everyone in the world was out to get him and I was their means to do so.
Parties and social events became a thing of the past, and I eventually became a prisoner in my own home, unable to leave because he was too paranoid to take me anywhere.
“You’re mine. Only mine,” he’d chant over and over as he pinned me against a wall and came hard and long inside of me. “I love you, Everly. Forever.”
Ryan once asked why I’d never run, why I didn’t seek help.
I knew the answer, but I just shook my head and said I didn’t know, averting his gaze.
Because sometimes the truth hurts worse.
* * *
“How are you feeling about your decision today, Everly?” Tabitha asked, in that soothing tone that used to drive me up the wall but now seemed to have the opposite effect.
I curled my feet under me on the worn couch, holding a cup of hot tea in my hands as I contemplated my answer. We were never supposed to blurt out an answer in therapy. Think before you speak—that was Tabitha’s motto, and as much as I’d despised it and everything about this place years ago, when I’d entered and found her sitting in front of me with her weird, frizzy gray hair and long, flowing skirts, I had to admit it worked.
Because of this woman and her soothing ways, I’d managed to break out of the rock hard tortoise shell I’d buried myself into after August vanished from my life. Although his coma had been something of a blessing—pulling me out of a life no one should ever have to live—suddenly I’d been forced back into a world I no longer understood.
As much as I hated to admit it, I’d been lost and alone without him. The world was scary and far too big. I wanted nothing more than to run back to the confines of my prison and never come out again.
But somehow, I’d found Tabitha. Attempting to venture past my own driveway, I’d gone for a walk that turned into more of a hike, and found her sign in a little neighborhood not too far from the one Ryan and I currently live in. Her eclectic ways and throwback looks were mind-boggling at first, but I soon found a home with her, or at least a place to return to once a week.
Slowly, she gave me a direction in life. I got a job at a coffee shop nearby and months later, I met Ryan. I took each day as it came, and eventually I stopped wondering when life was going to come crashing down again.
And then it did—or it was about to.
“Everly? Your decision regarding visiting August? How do you feel?” Tabitha asked once more, bringing me back to the present.
“Honestly?”
“That’s all I ever ask for,” she stated.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s okay to be unsure.”
“Even about this?” I asked, biting my bottom lip with uncertainty.
“What are you unsure about?” she questioned, tapping the butt on her pen against her crisp yellow notepad.
“Everything. What will happen if I don’t go? Will he come find me—invade the life I’ve made for myself? I
f I go see him in the hospital, can I avoid all of that, or am I just perpetuating it? I feel like I’m stuck in this damned if-you-do, damned–if-you-don’t scenario. No matter what I do, he’s going to destroy everything.”
“So you’ve thought about seeing him?” she asked.
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
“You don’t have to feel ashamed in front of me,” she consoled, the smooth tone of her voice giving me the comfort I’d come to find within these four walls.
“It’s more than that. Admitting it makes me feel like I’m betraying Ryan. Just saying the words—Hell…even thinking about the action of doing so makes me feel like I’m cheating on him somehow.”
Silence settled between us as I let my words evaporate into the air.
“Have you ever thought that maybe this is the closure you need?”
“What do you mean? I’ve had my closure—you went with me. You held my hand as I said good-bye to that man,” I pressed, my hands wrapping around my knees like a child.
“I know, but perhaps you need to hear him say the words as well. See his face as he says them,” she suggested.
The idea of seeing him again made the air seem to dissipate around me. What would he look like? What would he say? And how would I react?
My hands shook just thinking about it. It scared the living hell of out me.
And yet, a small part of me still wanted to go. To get in the last word maybe, or to see him weak and fragile in a hospital gown…or maybe just to see him after all this time.
That was what scared me most of all. That after everything, there was still a fraction of me somewhere deep down that missed him as much as the rest of me hated him.
* * *
I’d finished up my session with Tabitha and had been staring at my cold cup of coffee for hours when Ryan walked in after a long day at the office.
Cold coffee…such a waste.
“Did the coffee do something to piss you off?” he asked, loosening his tie as he set his keys and wallet into the glass dish on the counter.
“I’m thinking about going to the hospital,” I blurted out, unable to look up at him. I took the coward’s way out and instead chose to continue reading the words on my mug over and over again.
Just call me Sassenach. I loved this mug. It usually made me smile and giggle like a giddy school girl. Ryan would just groan and roll his eyes at my obsessive fascination with a certain Scottish book series.
The door to our bedroom slammed, telling me exactly how he felt about my remark.
Obviously that wasn’t happening today.
Moments later, he reappeared, ready to fight. Sleeves pushed up, with his eyes set straight ahead, he was ready for business. Ryan never walked away when it came to me. I’d pushed him away more times than I could count, fleeing arguments and needing air more times than I could count, and yet he still came back.
He’d always fought for me.
“Why, Everly, why? After everything we’ve been through together, can you at least do me the courtesy of giving me an answer?”
“I need to see him.”
The look of devastation on his face was like a blow to my gut, making me feel like the worst kind of human on the planet. If there was an award for that type of thing, I was pretty sure I’d be in a three-way tie with whoever invented the selfie stick and those pants that look like jeans but really are pajamas. That’s just all kinds of wrong.
“I need him to hear it from my own lips that it’s over between us—that I’ve moved on, that I survived after everything he put me through. I don’t want him interfering in our lives, Ryan.”
“He doesn’t deserve it,” he said through gritted teeth.
“No, he doesn’t. But I do,” I pressed, my emotions taking over as I gazed up at him.
He ran his hands through his wavy blond locks and finally nodded. “Okay.”
I went into his arms, letting him believe he’d just won an argument and granted me some sort of blessing over the situation.
“Don’t sweat the small stuff,” Tabitha had once told me when I’d come to her complaining about the way Ryan left the seat up and never washed the dishes. I guess this fell in that category.
I would have gone to the hospital regardless of his opinion on the matter. I needed this for me. Having his agreement obviously made the situation easier, but by no means swayed my decision.
I would never be owned again.
Chapter Four
August
In the few days since my miraculous awakening, I’d managed to make several leaps and bounds toward my eventual recovery and release.
Release. This was what Dr. Lawrence had called it.
Soon I would be released back into the world. Like a fish, or a wild animal set free into the wild again.
“What will I do?” I’d asked, like a puppy looking to its mother for guidance.
“Whatever you want,” he’d suggested.
Whatever I wanted… The thought lingered in my mind like a loose thread in the wind. What did I want? How would I even know?
What I’d learned over the last seventy-two hours wasn’t much, but it was enough to know I at least had some security when I left this building. My house was still mine.
In my former life, I had been a wealthy man. While I’d wasted away in this hospital bed, my estate and finances had been taken care of.
How? I didn’t have many personal details, but according to the paperwork I’d been sent from my law firm, there was nothing to worry about. At least I had someplace to return to when the hospital deemed I was fit enough to be discharged. Until then, I celebrated such successes as moving on from applesauce and chicken broth for breakfast to oatmeal.
I briefly wondered if the old me had hated oatmeal as much as the new me did.
The watery, tasteless applesauce suddenly didn’t taste nearly as bad as it once had.
Pushing the oatmeal aside, I grabbed the file box that held the contents of my personal belongings once more. I’d opened and looked over each item a dozen times now, choosing to bury myself in my unknown past rather than dwell in the confusing present I’d currently been thrown into.
Dr. Lawrence said the brain is a curious and complex thing. While I couldn’t remember anything about myself and the life I’d led, I did somehow recollect trivial things such as what a Starbucks was or when the Gulf War occurred. I understood modern living, could write and speak, but had had to ask what day and year I’d been born.
It turned out I’d had a birthday last month. I’d breezed through the end of my twenties and landed in my thirties without a party or hangover to show for it. The only thing I had as proof for the milestone was a hospital bracelet declaring my age.
If my life wasn’t my own…whose was it?
I reached into the box, shuffling around the neatly folded clothes I had not previously touched. Something fell out of one of the jacket pockets. I pushed the suit jacket and slacks to the side until I found it. Wedged into one of the corners was a tiny green stone.
I picked it up, rolling it between the smooth pads of my fingers, and held it up to the light. It was drilled through as if it had once been a set on string, and appeared to be a raw emerald or perhaps a piece of jade.
Why it was in my pocket the night I ended up here, I’d never know.
Much like everything else.
Feeling the familiar feeling of frustration seeping through my pores, I decided there had been enough show and tell time for the day and set the box aside. Closing my eyes, I tried to block out the world and my thoughts but was abruptly interrupted when the door swung open and I found myself staring into a familiar set of blue eyes.
It was her.
Everly—the girl from the picture.
I’d asked the nurse on duty if she could find her and she’d assured me she’d try, but after several days, I’d assumed she’d been unable to complete the task or had simply placated me to keep the unpredictable coma patient calm.
; Yet, here she was.
She entered slowly, her steps hesitant and timid, and I took the extra time to absorb every detail.
Her hair was different—shorter maybe, but still that same fiery copper color. She’d aged since the photo was taken, and rounded some, transitioning from a gangly girl to a waiflike siren.
“You’re here,” I managed, grasping at straws. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know anything about this woman beyond her name.
“Yes,” she answered curtly, her lips barely moving as she formed the word. “Dr. Lawrence called me.”
“I didn’t know if they’d be able to find you after I found the photo.”
She looked slightly confused by my statement but didn’t say anything more. I looked around the room awkwardly, feeling like a showpiece at the zoo. Her eyes roamed all over me, no doubt noticing my lack of muscle and reduced appearance. The insecurity I felt in that moment was tangible.
“Why don’t you take a seat? I know I must look different from the last time you saw me.”
She silently took the seat farthest from me, but didn’t relax in the slightest. Her posture remained rigid and on edge. Was she afraid of me?
“I’m sorry to have bothered you by asking you to come here, but I just wanted to—” I started, but was quickly interrupted.
“August, please don’t. I came here for one reason and one reason only.”
“Okay.” My eyebrows furrowed in confusion as I tried to sit up properly. Setting the box on the metal tray, I placed my hands on the bed and pushed myself upright. The effort caused trickles of sweat to form at my temples.
“I wanted to tell you we’re over. All of it. Done. I’ve moved on. I’m engaged. I have a new life—without you. Please don’t contact me anymore.”
I looked up at her, and while I should have felt nothing but confusion, her words caused me a physical pain I wasn’t prepared for. My heart jolted and I reached up, touching my chest as her words sank in. I didn’t know this woman but my heart obviously did, because in that moment—it was breaking.
