by Kendra Leigh
“Yes.” I laughed. “I guess I must be. Living in the hell you’ve put me through does that to a person. I am what you made me, Nick.” I pressed my weight down again, applying more pressure with each word. “A. Sick. Twisted. Bitch. Last chance. Give me the keys.”
Thrusting his hand into his pocket, he rifled for the keys, but before I could snatch them from him, he launched them into the dark corner of the basement. It was crowded with boxes and old gym equipment from his younger days. The keys could have been anywhere. Despite his pain, he laughed again.
“Have it your way,” I said, kicking him again before limping past him up the stairs.
I could have broken a window or just waited for Jackson or the police to arrive, because I knew they’d be on their way. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted justice. So I hobbled through to the kitchen to where I last saw the gasoline cans. Tucking my hands inside the sleeves of my jacket to avoid prints, I picked them up and begin to splash the remainder of the contents around the floor as I moved back the way I’d come. By the time I reached the basement entrance, I was down to the last drop.
“What the fuck are you doing, you crazy bitch?” Nick looked terrified as he looked up and saw what I was doing and began to scramble back away from the bottom of the steps.
“You came to light a fire, Nick. So we’re having a fire.” I could hear sirens in the near distance. I knew I didn’t have long, so I went back to the table where I saw him put the lighter, and again, avoiding leaving my prints, I flicked the lid and threw the unlit lighter into the hallway.
“The police are on their way.” His voice sounded desperate, and I began to smile.
“But the doors are locked and they can’t get in, Nick. A fire will spread between here and the front door in mere seconds. We’ll be trapped. I’ll tell them that you were so desperate to see me dead, you were prepared to die with me. They’ll discover your broken body burnt to a crisp. Put what’s left of you in a casket and bury you in the ground. And I will come and I will dance on your grave.”
His expression was somewhere between raw fear and desperation and laughter. “What fire, Savannah? How are you going to light it?”
Reaching in to my pocket, I retrieved the book of matches Annie gave me with the address of the diner she worked at printed on the back. I opened it and tore out a single match.
Nick began to laugh. “But it won’t be just my body they find, will it? We’re both trapped, Savannah. Neither one of us is getting out of here if you strike that match.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
Smiling, I moved down a few steps, just enough to look off into the corner of the basement. A narrow ventilation window sat high in the wall, almost unnoticeable from the inside of the property. There was no way a fully grown man could fit through it, but a child, maybe. Or a very small woman.
Nick followed my line of sight, and his lip began to tremble. “Please, Savannah. Don’t do it. I beg you.”
The sound of him begging was one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
The sirens became louder, only seconds away.
“Not laughing now. Are you, Nick?”
I didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, I turned my attention to the match in my hand. With one steady swipe, I struck it against the rough edge of the matchbook, and the spark of fear in Nick’s eyes became a flame.
Chapter Forty-Six
Jackson
SHE GAZES DOWN AT ME like some sort of divine goddess, her blond locks tumbling over her shoulders like a waterfall, down over her perfect breasts to her waist. I’m still inside her, right where I want to be, her knees clenching tightly around my hips as she straddles me, owning me. She’s perfect.
“God, I fucking love you.” I’m breathless from the exertion of making love to her again. “I genuinely cannot believe how lucky I am to be with you.”
“I’m the lucky one.” Her voice is a caress, seductive. Something tells me she hasn’t decided if she’s finished with me yet. Then suddenly her expression takes a different tone. “Actually, I genuinely can’t believe how lucky I am to be here at all.”
Since the fire eight weeks ago, she’s been a formidable, unstoppable force, not just in the bedroom but in anything she’s turned her attention to. Sometimes I worry that, in the midst of her whirlwind ambition to eradicate her past, she doesn’t stop for breath long enough to really absorb what’s happened in the last few months. We haven’t spoken much about her setting the fire at the house, other than what she told me at the hospital. Needing to see him broken and in fear of his life was part of it, but it was more than that. Although she doesn’t regret using the evidence of her abuse as a bargaining tool to get back the company and the house, not to mention a divorce, she felt that Nick, in a punitive sense, was getting off too lightly. And I get that, I really do; I felt the same. She set the fire, not only to see him suffer but to ensure a prison sentence, and there’ll be no question of that. But, while I understand why she did it, I struggle to accept the risk she took with her own life. The outcome could have been so different if only one of the numerous things that could have gone wrong would have. I won’t even allow myself to consider the worst—if she hadn’t got out. If I did, I would drive myself insane with anguish. But what if he hadn’t got out and they found out she set the fire? It could be Savannah facing a prison sentence. Would she have cared if he’d died? I’m not sure she would. Would she have been able to live with herself if he had? I’m not sure of that either. I, on the other hand, find myself sometimes wishing he had, and then he’d be out of her life once and for all. I know more than anyone what it’s like to count down the days of a prison sentence in trepidation of a release. I don’t want that for her. So, all of the above is the reason we refrain from discussing it. Too many what ifs.
“Well, you are,” I tell her. “And that’s all that matters. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.”
She leans down to nuzzle my ear before collapsing on the bed beside me. “Do you believe in fate?”
Fate? I think back to Natalie asking me the same questions in that London wine bar all those months ago. “Yes, actually.”
She leans up on her elbow smiling, her fingers combing through the smattering of hair on my chest. “Do you think it was fate that brought you into my life to save me?”
“I didn’t save you. You saved yourself.”
“Yes I did, didn’t I? But it was meeting you that pushed me to find myself. A different version of myself, at least.”
“Actually, now I think about it, maybe fate did play a part. Me showing up as your … fantasy,” I say the word with caution, “was entirely circumstantial. I just happened to bump into an old associate on an impulsive visit to London, who talked me into stepping back in time twenty years. Your fantasy was supposed to be some young hotshot guy from LA, but he had a motorbike accident a few days before. I dread to think what might have happened if he’d got his hands on you.” The thought makes me feel vaguely sick.
“Oh …” she says, looking off thoughtfully. “A young hotshot with a motorbike from California. Sounds dreadful.”
“Hey!” I jab her with my finger, my lips pouting jealously.
She smiles. “Just kidding. It’s frightening though, isn’t it? When you think of how things might have turned out. Sometimes, I wonder what might have happened and where I might be now if you hadn’t found my folder under your car seat and read my poems.”
The comment surprises me. Apart from the lighthearted conversation about fate just now, we haven’t reached that far back into our thriving relationship since it began. Each day has been a step forward, rather than a side step or step back. Yes, each step has been fraught with complications; we’ve had mountains to climb, but we’ve always moved ahead. Revisiting feels surreal now, not only because that time was filled with uncertainty and constant worry, but because it will bring forth other conversations.
“The outcome would still be the same. We’d stil
l be here together.” I reach for my boxers and jeans and rise from the bed. Some conversations just don’t seem right when you’re naked.
“How can you know that? You might just have backed off if you didn’t know about the abuse. You don’t strike me as the type of man who would pursue a married woman if you thought there was a chance she might be happy with her husband.”
Referring to him as her husband riles me a little.
“I would never have backed off. I knew you weren’t happy.”
“No, you assumed. You couldn’t possibly know, and even if you could, you would still have been assuming it wasn’t reparable.”
“No, Savannah, I knew. In the first twenty-four hours, I knew. I just didn’t … know. ”
She wrinkles her nose in that cute way of hers, the one that says she doesn’t understand but she’s open to persuasion. I pick up her T-shirt and walk around to her side of the bed to pull it over her head. Then I take her hand and lead her into the open plan living/kitchen area to put on some coffee. Shadow rouses from where she’s been curled up in the chair, choosing instead to weave herself affectionately between my legs in the hope of food.
“When I read your journal, I was shocked, Savannah, horrified—but I wasn’t surprised. Back then, at the cabin, there was something about you that gave it away. There was that horrendous bruise on your hip and the way you flinched when I sometimes came near you or when you were overly apologetic for minor mishaps. But it was more than that. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. There was something in your eyes, your expression. Don’t get me wrong, you didn’t wear it all over your face for anyone to see. But I saw it. I just couldn’t name it at the time. Which is why I said I didn’t know-know. When I saw the poems, the idea of abuse began to form, but still … although so many things alluded to it, it wasn’t really until that night at the business event that I knew for certain. There’s something about men like that. They have a look. When I saw him with you for the first time, I knew he was capable of it. And then with what happened to your hand and Angel seeing the bruises on your back … it was then that I really recognized that look on your face, then that I realized it was familiar because I’d seen it before.”
Savannah’s eyes widen. She looks appalled. “Who?”
“My mum.”
“Oh my God, Jackson. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t find it easy to talk about. Actually, that’s not entirely true because I don’t know what it’s like to talk about it, not really. The first time I mentioned it to anyone was when I told Ethan and Angel on the night of the business event, when I showed them your journal. I had to tell them for the same reasons I just told you. To explain how I could be so sure. You have to be on familiar terms with something to be so certain of what it is. On top of that, I guess I was also being mindful about any possible doubt it might cast on us. I’d painted a picture of a rosy childhood that day in the woods, and I didn’t want you to think that everything about that time was a lie.”
“Oh, Jackson. I thought we decided that all that didn’t matter?”
“We did, but our priority was you, dealing with what you were going through in your present life so that we can be happy together in our future. What happened in my past is not our main concern. I would have told you eventually when the time was right. Well, I have so … I guess the time is right.”
She sighs helplessly, her face an abundance of questions. “Was it your dad?”
I nod. I can feel my heart rate speeding up, my body heating with unease. I have to tell her, but I can’t think of any way to say it other than blurting it out. “He killed her.”
“Oh Jesus!” She pushes off the barstool she’s been perching on, her complexion suddenly pale. Her eyes glimmer with instant tears as she shakes her head. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure you’re ready for this, Savannah.”
“Yes, I am. We’re a team. I love you. I’m here for you just as you are for me, and I’m more than ready for that. If it’s because you’re not ready, then that’s fine. We’ll take it slowly. You set the pace. But don’t hide from this thing because you’re protecting me. We’ve dealt with my present, and we’re working together for our future. This is about you now. The time is right, Jackson.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Jackson
I’VE LEARNED MANY THINGS ABOUT myself and about life in general since having Savannah in my life. But chiefly, I’ve learned this. You can’t change the events of your past life, but you can change the way you feel about them. You can change your perception. Reframe it so that it no longer impacts negatively on the way you live your life in the present.
Of course Savannah was right. She always is—only don’t say I said so. The time was right. I hadn’t actually realized how much of a part my past had played on the way I’d lived and the choices I’d made until I began to look at it. I chose to make violence part of my formative years when I got myself involved in illegal fighting. Eventually, when I was earning big money at it, it had become a means to an end—the only way I could afford the care my sick grandmother had needed; she’d come through for me when my mum died, and I was going to do the same for her. But in the beginning it wasn’t about money. It was about power. About gaining back control of my feelings. Proving to myself that I was capable of fighting back, that I wasn’t that helpless little boy hiding behind a locked door anymore. Every face I ever hit was my father’s. It didn’t matter who they were, I didn’t see them. I just saw him.
Later, when I met Ethan and then Angel, my role changed. For the first time since my grandma died, I cared for someone, and I would go to the ends of the earth to keep them from harm, whatever the cost. My entire life became about protecting them. Even more so than either of them realized. I had to make up for failing to protect my mother and my sister. No one would die on my watch again.
But it wasn’t a healthy way of living. I had to learn to deal with my feelings a different way. So that being a fighter, a defender, a lover became a choice rather than a necessity. I watched Savannah’s heart break for me when I told her about what my father had done. It was only when I finished the story that I realized my heart was broken too. It was the first time I can remember crying for my mum and the sister I never had the chance to know. The first time I’d cried for the boy I once was. And once the floodgates were open, I knew I had to go with the tide. There was only one place my journey could begin. Right back at the beginning.
London.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Jackson
SOUTH EAST LONDON ISN’T A place I ever pictured bringing Savannah. It’s like showing the woman you love the ugliest picture you can find of yourself. Like her walking in when you’re sitting on the toilet after—well, you get the picture. I’m not sure the place is as bad as I make it out to be. Maybe it just feels like the arsehole of the world to me because every memory of it is so fucked-up. It seems bizarre that I might find him here after all these years—could it really be possible for one person to be stuck in the same place doing the same thing, for decades upon decades, the only break a spell in prison? I suppose it is. It must be. Because when I made my impromptu visit to London earlier this year, it confirmed it. That scruffy figure in the trench coat walking toward the tower blocks, the one that turned by blood to ice, was unmistakably my father.
So, here I stand just inside the entrance of the Stag’s Head pub. It’s as good a place as any to start, the main boozer for the estate’s residents and the place he spent most of his time when I was a kid. It’s like I’ve been transported back in time thirty years. If they’ve made any improvements to this place, even a coat of paint, there’s no evidence of it. The air still smells of stale beer and cigarette smoke, even though smoking in pubs has been banned for years. Since when does anyone round here take any notice of the law, though. The place is dead, just a handful of people scattered throughout the old fashioned layout. The bar is dead center, a square with a hatch in three corners lea
ding off into three separate rooms: the lounge where I’m standing, the games room, and the snug. There’s a woman behind the bar, late thirties, dark curly hair, eyes trained on a small TV on a shelf above her head as she dries a glass with a towel. It’s some kind of daytime game show. The volume is down low, but you can just about make out laughter and clapping. If I close my eyes, I could be ten years old again. The concept is so disturbing, I almost turn around and walk out, but then I feel the warmth of Savannah’s hand on my back, her touch so light but radiating an army of strength into my dwindling resolve. You can do this, it says. I’m here with you. I’ve got your back. And I know that with her by my side, I can do anything.
Stepping forward, I clear my throat. “Excuse me.” The woman behind the bar notices us, her eyes flicking over us in judgment, her expression indicating that she’s decided we don’t belong here.
“What can I do you for?” she asks, a half smile exposing a space where a molar should be.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Oh. Aren’t we all.” She laughs mirthlessly. “Someone owe you money? ’Cause there ain’t no point looking in here if they do. No one in here’s got nothing. What’s his name, this bloke? Who I don’t know round here ain’t worth knowing. I ain’t no grass, though, so if you’re filth, I can’t help you.”
“Vince Dean.” I ignore the rest of her garbled bullshit.
“Vince Dean? What you want with him? He’s definitely got nothing.”
“Not his money, that’s for sure. Do you know where I can find him?”
“Yeah.” She points to a door in the corner. “He’s in the snug.”
The information punches me in the face. I was certain someone here would know him and would point me in the right direction to find him, but I didn’t think he’d actually be here. Common sense should have told me he would be, though. Stupid.
