by Lili Valente
Standing there on the porch, that kid clinging to me like I was the only thing standing between him and losing everything he cares about, I realized how deeply I’ve fucked things up. I have fucked them up so badly I don’t know how to start making them right, but I’ll start here, now, with Caitlin. By finding a way to help her stop crying.
I draw a bath in the chipped claw foot tub while she sits on the toilet, watching me with her red-rimmed, shell-shocked eyes, then I help her out of her clothes and into the hot water. Like earlier tonight, when she was walking around Pitt’s attic wearing nothing but black bikini panties, her nakedness doesn’t affect me the way it usually would. Now, it only makes me more keenly aware of how vulnerable she is, how easy it would be for someone to hurt her, no matter how strong she is, or how well she held it together while we were cleaning up after the killing.
Killing. We killed a man. Together.
It hits me like a slap in the face every time the thought drifts through my mind.
I never dreamt things would go this far, I never intended to lead Caitlin to such a dark place, but I don’t regret it. Pitt had to die. If he’d lived, I would never have been able to trust that Caitlin was safe. I just wish I’d been able to finish the job, that another mind-blowing episode of vertigo and pain hadn’t hit at the wrong time and left Caitlin to pick up where I left off.
I will never forget the way she looked, the intensity and agony and determination mixing on her face as she straddled Pitt and locked her hands around his throat. She was different after, transformed. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but something was born inside her when Pitt died, something savage and raw I can sense humming in her bones as I brush a washcloth over her back, washing away the soap clinging to her skin.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I reach for the soap again and draw one of her legs from the water. I start with her toes, lathering each one before moving up to her calf and knee, finding it soothing to do this for her. To take care of her, even in this small way.
She leans back in the tub, the hair hanging loose below her shoulders turning into darker tendrils of blond as she sinks lower in the water. “What’s there to talk about?”
“The fact that you can’t stop crying,” I say in a gentle voice, easing the leg I’m holding beneath the water and reaching for her other foot.
Caitlin lifts her hands, swiping her palms across her cheeks. “Oh.” She sniffs, blinks, and after a moment the tears finally stop. “There. All better.”
“I highly doubt that,” I say. “It’s been a rough night, to say the least.”
Caitlin huffs, a sound that is almost a laugh, but not. “You think?” She sighs, leaning her head back on the edge of the tub, staring up at the ceiling. “You know the worst part?”
“What’s that?”
“I wouldn’t go back and undo it, even if I could,” she says, eyes still flicking back and forth across the ceiling, as if reading some great truth on the water-stained paint.
“You shouldn’t,” I say, massaging her calf. “Like I said before, he had to die, or you and the kids would never have been safe.”
“No, I don’t mean that.” She drops her gaze, staring into me with such a naked look I forget what I’m doing, forget everything but this girl, my girl, who is such a part of me her emotions echo inside my chest. “I mean us. Everything we’ve done. I wouldn’t take any of it back. I wouldn’t give up a moment with you, even if it could keep tonight from happening.”
Tears well in her eyes again, but they don’t spill over, even when her lips pull into the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “But I’m afraid, Gabe. I’m so afraid. I know we promised to have one more night, but I can’t stop thinking… I can’t stop worrying. I can’t lose you, I just can’t. I don’t know who I am without you anymore.”
I swallow and it hurts like hell, like I’m swallowing a strawberry stuffed with razorblades, forcing it down whole.
But that’s good. That’s what I deserve. I deserve pain. I deserve to suffer for how epically stupid I’ve been.
“I never meant for this to happen,” I say, my throat clenching so tight it feels like the muscles in my neck are going to snap. “I didn’t think feelings like this existed. I’d never been in love and I never imagined… I never meant to get so lost in you, and I certainly never meant for you to get so lost in me.”
“I’m not lost,” she says, sitting up, cupping my face in her damp hands. “I’m found. In you. In us.”
I hold her gaze, unable to speak for fear I’ll start crying and never stop. I haven’t cried once since March, not a single time since the morning the doctor told me the hellish headaches I’d been having were caused by a tumor in my frontal lobe, a malignant monster with tentacles spreading out into the parietal and occipital lobes, ensuring surgery would be a roll of the dice with the odds not at all in my favor.
I didn’t see the point in weeping like a baby over something I couldn’t change. But back then I didn’t have near as much to live for.
I didn’t have love; I didn’t have her.
“You helped me find myself,” Caitlin continues, thumb brushing lightly across my lips. “I was so afraid of turning out like my parents that I spent all my time trying not to be like them, instead of trying to be me. I had no idea who I really was until you walked up to me on the dance floor and put all of this in motion, and I am grateful to you for that. No matter what.”
I press my lips together, teeth biting into my flesh, fighting for control before I speak. “Even if I’m a liar?”
“Even if you’re a liar,” she says, fresh tears sliding down her pale cheeks. “As long as you didn’t lie about loving me.”
“Never.” I choke on the word and lose the battle with the stinging in my eyes. “I love you so much. I love you more than anything, but I’m going to hurt you, Caitlin.”
“Stop,” she whispers, pulling me closer, pressing a kiss to my cheek.
“I never meant to.” I thread my fingers through her hair, pulling her close, gluing her forehead to mine, wishing she could absorb everything I’m thinking and feeling, that she could know without me speaking another word how much she means to me.
She is everything, and I would live for her if I could. I would walk through fire for her. I would face every fear, stand by her side through everything life would throw at us, because I would know I’d never find a better partner than this girl. This woman.
And she could have been mine. She could have been mine, and it shatters what’s left of my heart to know we have so little time left.
“I thought it would all be okay,” I say, pulling away to look into her sad green eyes. “I thought we could have some fun, do some good, and walk away without getting hurt, but I’m a fucking idiot and I hate myself for it. And I’m sorry, but I know sorry will never be good enough to make up for what I’ve done.”
She shakes her head. “Just tell me, Gabe. I can’t take the not knowing anymore. Are you sick? Is that it?”
I bury my face in my hands, wishing I could keep up the lie, and spare her this for another day, but I can’t. She deserves the truth. She deserves better than the truth, but at least I can give her that.
I lift my head, feeling like a balloon with all the air leaking away. It all comes out—the tumor, the large size and troubling shape, the location that makes it impossible to operate without shredding my memories, my personality, maybe everything that makes me who I am. I tell her about the decision not to operate, but to accept my six months to a year and make the most of them. I tell her about the hospice reservations my mother made today, and the plane flight I’m supposed to take the morning after next.
“But I’ll stay if you want me to,” I say, the urge to cry vanished, replaced by a massive hollow feeling. I’m a pillar of ash, all my life nearly burned away. All it will take is a strong wind to scatter what’s left of me to the far reaches of the earth.
Caitlin watches me with a strangely calm expression, but her eyes are d
ry now, too, and I can see the wheels turning in her mind. “What about the surgery?” she asks. “Why not try it now?”
I shake my head. “The chances of survival aren’t even fifty-fifty. The doctor gave me a thirty percent chance, and that was back in March, before the tumor had more time to spread.”
Caitlin’s brow furrows. “So? Thirty is better than zero. Ten is better than zero. You have to at least try. You can’t give up on us without a fight.”
“I could be a vegetable, Caitlin. I could end up needing help pissing and shitting and rolling out of bed in the morning for the rest of my life,” I say harshly, needing her to understand. “And even if there were a miracle and I made it through surgery relatively whole, I would lose huge chunks of my memories, my thoughts, my opinions. I wouldn’t be the same person. I…I might not even love you anymore.”
“So?” she says, but I can see the hope leaking from her expression. “Then I’d just have to make you fall in love with me all over again.”
I smile even though it hurts. “Not if I’m not me. Not if I go back to being the same arrogant, self-involved asshole who sat behind you in study hall for a year in high school without realizing the most beautiful, fascinating person he’s ever met was sitting three feet away.”
Her face crumples, but she fights through the wave of emotion, sucking in a ragged breath as she shakes her head. “I won’t believe there’s no hope. I can’t. There’s still a chance, and if you love me the way you say you do, then you will fight for it. You told me that love like what I feel for the kids is worth fighting for. Love like what we have is worth fighting for, too. You know it is.”
“I do. But what if I wake up from surgery with a memory of you choking the life out of Pitt, and no context to place it in?”
She pales and I know she’s already traced that hypothetical to its logical conclusion.
“There are so many potentially dangerous memories inside me,” I say. “And I don’t know what kind of moral compass I’ll wake up with. I could still be the same old me, or I could wake up a monochromatic person, with a black and white view of the world, who thinks anyone who steps outside the law should be punished.”
“I would risk it,” she says, lower lip trembling. “I’d rather be in prison, and know you’re alive, than be free, and live without you.”
“I love you too much to risk it,” I say softly. “And I like who I am. The person I’ve become is important to me. I don’t want to lose myself. That’s part of the reason I made the decision not to have the surgery in the first place.”
She watches me for a long, silent moment, evidently reading the determination in my face. Finally, she sniffs, draws her knees to her chest, and drops her chin to rest on top. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Cancel the flight,” she whispers. “I want you to stay.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, wanting her to know what she’s signing up for. “It will probably be bad at the end. Maybe too much for you to handle alone.”
“We’ll hire a nurse if we have to,” she says, still refusing to look at me. “I want you to stay. I want every minute I can get.”
“I want that, too.” I reach out, brushing her half-wet hair over her bare shoulder, needing to put this conversation away. “And right now I want to wash your hair. I’ve never washed a girl’s hair.”
She blinks and takes another deep breath before she stretches out her legs, lying back in the lightly soapy water, wetting the rest of her hair before sitting back up to lean against the side of the tub.
I fetch the sandalwood shampoo from the bottles in the basket latched onto the side of the tub, realizing as I remove the lid that it is the source of Caitlin’s spicy, earthy smell. I spill a cool dollop of light brown liquid onto my palm and work it through her hair. I scrub every inch of her scalp, massage the tight muscles behind her ears and at the base of her skull, funneling all the love I feel for her into every touch, every caress.
I tell her with my hands that I never want to leave her, that I will love her forever, in whatever place I end up after my life is through, and by the time she dunks her head to wash away the shampoo, tears are streaming down her cheeks all over again.
“I wanted to help you stop crying,” I say as she emerges, swiping soap and water from her face.
“You’re really good at washing hair,” she says, sniffing as she reaches down to pull the plug from the tub. “Like a professional.”
“I could have made a career of it, you think?” I tease. “If the lawyer thing hadn’t worked out, and I hadn’t grown myself a tumor?”
She turns to me, the ravaged look on her face banishing my smile.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m an asshole.”
“You are an asshole,” she says as she reaches for me, snatching my face in her wet hands and pulling my lips to hers.
The kiss is desperate and hungry and sad, but it’s hot, too. It’s electric because Caitlin and I are electric together, no matter what the sad ass circumstances. In a moment, my blood is pumping faster, in two, my cock is rock hard and pulsing between my legs, dying to be inside her, to shove into her tight heat and lose myself in the woman I love.
“Bed,” I mumble into her mouth as I pull her out of the bath and into my arms.
She wraps her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and clings to me, dampening the front of my clothes with her fresh-from-the-bath body. She is hot and wet and smells like flowers and smoky spices and Caitlin, a potent combination that makes my head spin.
But it’s a lustful head spin this time, and the pain and vertigo blessedly leave me the fuck alone as I snatch a towel from the overflowing door hanger and throw it around Caitlin, concealing her nakedness from any kids who might be wandering the halls as I carry her from the bathroom into her bedroom.
But as soon as the door shuts behind us, she squirms out of my arms, pulling me toward the bed, helping me strip out of my clothes with shaking hands. I can feel her desperation echoing through my bones, and I know this isn’t going to be slow or sweet. This is going to be me and Caitlin, raw and hungry, affirming that we are still alive and still in love and neither death, nor murder, nor pain, nor anything else is going to steal that away from us.
Not yet. Not fucking yet.
I fall on top of her on the bed, swallowing her cry of need with another kiss as I spread her legs with a sharp nudge of my knees and guide my cock to her entrance. I shove inside, groaning at the feel of her body fighting me as I push through her only slightly damp outer folds, but then I reach the core of her and she is molten hot and wet and as crazy for me as I am for her.
She arches her back, taking me deeper, coating me with her slick heat and then I am gone. I am soaring above it all with the only girl who has ever made my blood rush like this, made my heart break open, and love I didn’t know I was capable of come spilling out.
She is my match, my partner, and the only girl I will ever love for however much longer I will live.
CHAPTER FIVE
Caitlin
People live in each other's shelter.
–Irish proverb
He drives to the end of my unprepared body and it hurts, but only a little. It’s not enough, not near as much as I want it to hurt. I want to be bruised by the force of our coming together. I want my body to feel as ravaged as my heart. I want to come screaming for mercy, not begging for release.
I dig my nails into his ass, forcing him deeper, faster, harder. I arch my back, shoving my hips into him until I start to feel sore and tender, and still I fight him for more. I score his skin with my nails, dig my teeth into his lip, his neck, the thick muscle of his bicep. I mark him, crying out in relief as he marks me back. His teeth dig into the sensitive skin between my neck and shoulder, and his fingers pinch my nipple hard enough for the sting to go rushing out along every nerve ending.
“Yes,” I growl into his ear. “Harder. Fuck me like you mean it.”
“I always fuck you
like I mean it,” he says, shifting the angle of his penetration until his cock rams even deeper inside me, the thick head of him slamming against the entrance to my womb, sending sharp waves of discomfort coursing through me with each battering thrust.
But I don’t want discomfort. I want to hurt. I need to hurt.
“More,” I beg, wrapping my legs around his waist and lifting my hips. “Fuck me, Gabe. Please, fuck me. Don’t hold back, don’t fucking hold back.”
He grips my hips in his hands, taking control of my body, jerking me up and down his cock as he slams home again and again, taking me so hard and fast my breasts shake and my spine twinges from the reverberations of each brutal thrust. My jaw begins to ache and my temples pulse as every muscle in my body strains closer, closer, until I’m tearing at him with my nails, gritting my teeth against the dark wave of pleasure-pain rolling in to pull me under.
My orgasm slams into me with the force of a tsunami hitting shore. It is savage and cruel and beautiful, all at the same time. The pleasure is smothering, blinding. It sucks me down to the sea floor of myself, down into the utter blackness where there is no light, and no place to hide, and it is so cold and lonely there. It is barren and bleak and empty, a post-apocalyptic landscape where nothing will ever grow again.
No matter how fiercely I cling to Gabe as he loses himself inside me, down here, down at my very core, I’ve already let him go. He’s already gone, already dead, and I am a shell of a person who will have to find some way to keep going without him.
“God, I can’t,” I whisper, tears streaming down my face for the thousandth time tonight. “I can’t do this without you.”
And then I am crying my eyes out again and Gabe is holding me close and whispering that he loves me and that he’s sorry and that I’m beautiful and strong and he’s going to make everything as easy for us both as he can. He doesn’t promise everything will be okay; he doesn’t say I’ll be fine. He just keeps repeating that he loves me, and believes in me, and that he will love me forever.
