by Lili Valente
Now, it’s time for Olia to push me outside to the curb, where my mother is waiting in the new van, the one specially equipped to fit my chair. The doctors don’t know how long it will be before I recover the ability to walk. It could be weeks, months, years.
Or never. Some people never rebuild the bridges their tumors ate away. Some people stay lost in the wilderness without ever finding their way home.
Home. Staring at the blonde’s retreating form, I realize it isn’t a place. It is a touch, a gentle word, a tender look. It is knowing that there is someone out there who knows all your secrets, has looked into all your dark corners, and loves you anyway. It is realizing that you are not alone.
I am not alone. Someone—that ghost with the moon-shaped toes—loved me, once. And I loved her, with all the ferocity I’ve done my best to keep hidden from my parents since the moment I opened my eyes after the surgery. I loved a girl who cherished my rough edges and dark corners, who took me as I am, who kissed me in the shadows and taught me that even the most jagged puzzle pieces have a place where they will fit. Just right. Flush and snug and suddenly whole.
I can’t remember her name, or her face. I can’t remember when we met, or how long we loved, or why she isn’t here with me now, but the fact that she existed is enough to steady my hands and calm my racing heart. I found her once. I can find her again. I can search for her in the jungles of my mind until I find a clue, a trail of breadcrumbs, something that will lead me back to what I’ve lost.
Back to her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
One Year Later
Caitlin
“The face of all the word is changed, I think,
Since I first heard the footsteps of they soul.
Move still, oh, still, beside me.”
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I’m falling again.
I’m always falling.
In my dreams, I’ve taken that one wrong step a hundred thousand times, my subconscious mind struggling to go back to the moment I lost my last link to Gabe and rewrite history.
But even my dreams turn against me. Sometimes I make it down the stairs to the loft, only to trip on the stone path outside the front door to the cottage, and go tumbling down the hill. Sometimes I make it down the hill and into the car, only for the tires to skid on the rain-slick streets and send the car hurtling through the guardrail, into the sea.
Sometimes, I’m back in Pitt’s attic, strangling the life out of him, and the moment he dies, the cramps hit, ripping through my core, taking a life for a life, every wave of pain assuring me that monsters don’t live happily ever after. Murderers don’t get to have a baby with ten perfect fingers and toes. Murderers get pain and misery and blood for blood.
No matter how the dream plays out, the end is always the same. I am always on my back staring up at the ceiling or the sky, with pain rocketing up and down my spine, agony fisting around my abdomen, and horrible, wet heat flowing between my legs. I always lose the baby. Every single time.
I wake up from the dreams with tears on my cheeks and my heart aching like it’s going to explode and a scream pushing at my lips, struggling to fight free of my mouth. But I never let the scream out. If I do, I know I might have trouble stopping.
Tonight, I sit up in bed, trembling in the darkness, listening to the island wind whip the palm trees outside my window. I swipe the tears from my cheeks, and take deep, silent breaths, fighting to get myself under control before I wake up Isaac. But I should know better. Most of the time, Isaac sleeps like a rock, but it’s like he can sense it when I’m really upset, even when he’s unconscious. He calls it his Caitlin-dar, and it is almost always dead on.
“Bad dream?” he asks, his voice a sleepy rumble as he reaches out, running one big hand up and down my spine through my thin sleep shirt. The trade winds keep the lower floor, where the kids sleep, cool, but it’s warmer up here in the loft. Warm enough that Isaac sleeps in nothing but his boxers, and I in a tee shirt and panties.
“Yeah.” I take another shuddery breath. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
I don’t tell him that I’m starting to think I won’t be fine, that I’ll never stop reliving losing Gabe, then losing our baby four months into the pregnancy. I don’t tell Isaac that I’m afraid I’ll never feel whole again, or that no amount of happiness or love or understanding will ever make up for the things I’ve lost.
I don’t want Isaac to know. After all he’s done for me and the kids, I don’t want him to realize that one half of the life we’re making together is built on a lie, and that I’ve only been pretending to get back to normal. In truth, I’m not sure I know what normal is anymore. Most of the past year has felt like a dream, a mix of nightmares and wishes come true that have left me feeling permanently off-kilter.
The day after I lost the baby—a little boy so tiny he never had a chance of living outside my body once my water broke—Isaac flew to the island. He sat by my hospital bed and coaxed food and water between my lips. He carried me to the car and then up to my bedroom at the cottage. He called his parents, said he wasn’t coming home, and got a job at the local flatbread company making pizzas until he could find something better. He shifted his entire life around to help Sherry take care of the kids during the month it took for me to emerge from my haze of despair and grief, and never once complained.
And when I was finally up and doing better—going through the motions, if not living the way I had before—he rented a room in a house of Australian surfers down the street and stayed on the island. He did it to be close to me and the kids, to be the kind of friend he’s always been, the kind who loves with his entire heart. It took a few months, but by the time the winter rains battered the roof of our cozy new home, Sherry had moved in with her new boyfriend in the next village over, and Isaac was sleeping over at our house once or twice a week.
At first, all we did was hold each other. He would pull my back against his front and curl his big, warm body around me, and I would feel safe for the first time in longer than I could remember. Eventually, cuddling turned to kissing, and then to painfully gentle lovemaking so different than what I had with Gabe, but sweet, and good. I can feel how much Isaac loves me in every kiss, every caress, and I can hardly fault him for treating me like I might break if he kisses me too hard.
Since I lost the baby, I haven’t been as strong as I used to be. I enrolled in college and am working on getting my degree in social work. I’ve been taking care of the kids, making new friends, and spending time with Sherry, but I have done it all while walking on eggshells, as if I’m balancing on a razor’s edge and this new life could come crumbling down around me at any moment. I have been distant, colder, too careful, and so much less than Isaac or the kids deserve.
I want to change. I want to lock the past away and only visit it when I choose to page through those beautiful, painful memories, but so far I haven’t been able to. I am a shadow, and I don’t know how to firm myself back up again.
“Same dream?” Isaac asks, still rubbing my back, though now he makes slow circles between my hunched shoulders. I nod, but don’t say a word. I don’t want to talk about it. Talking never helps, but sometimes touching does.
I push the covers down to the foot of the bed before I turn and straddle Isaac’s hips, not surprised to find him hard, his cock straining the front of his boxers. I tease him that he has a perpetual hard-on; he insists there are much worse problems, and I agree. There are much worse problems, and I like the fact that he’s always ready, always hot and hard and eager to give me the oblivion I crave.
“Off.” I curl my fingers around the waistband of his boxers and tug.
“Yes ma’am.” He lifts his hips and I drag his underwear down his thick, furry legs and toss the boxers to the floor before straddling him again. I lean down, capturing his lips for a kiss as I roll my hips, sighing as his bare cock rubs against me through my panties.
“God, you feel good,” he mumbles against my lips as hi
s big hands move beneath my tee shirt, smoothing up my ribs to capture my breasts, one in each wide palm.
He teases my nipples into tight points, sending waves of desire crashing between my legs, dampening the crotch of my panties. I moan into his mouth and increase my rhythm, grinding faster, harder against him, until he grunts and his hands drop to my hips stilling me with a gentle squeeze.
“Not so rough, tiger,” he says, hooking his thumbs into the sides of my panties and tugging them down.
I straighten my legs and curve my body to one side, helping him dispose of my underwear, trying to ignore the disappointment that flashes through my chest. I remind myself to make an effort to be the kind of lover Isaac wants me to be, but when I spread my legs again, sliding my slick center up and down his bare cock, I’m not as gentle as I know he would prefer.
I don’t want gentle tonight. I want to bruise him with my want. I want him to spread me wide and drive inside me until I cry out. I want him to fuck me hard, not like I’m made of glass, but like I am strong and wild and his equal in every way. Isaac has over a foot on me in height, but I could handle anything he could dish out. I crave the feel of him pounding into my core, taking me hard, banishing my awareness of everything but how good it feels to come together without either of us holding back.
But when Isaac’s hands circle my waist and he shifts my hips, he positions his cock at my entrance and lowers me with infinite care. He pushes into me, inch by careful inch, so slow and easy my body has plenty of time to accommodate him and it doesn’t hurt at all, even when he reaches the end of me and we have to shift back and forth until we find the angle that lets me accept his entire length.
Despite the difference in our heights, Gabe and I fit perfectly together, no matter what position we chose, but with Isaac, it’s difficult. Only one angle works, and in any position but one, I am smothered by his chest, or in need of dozens of pillows to prop up my knees. And so, I am on top.
I’m always on top, but I’m not calling the shots.
Isaac takes the lead when we’re in bed together, in a big-brotherly sort of way. He watches out for me, takes care of me, and makes sure I don’t get hurt, but he isn’t controlling my pleasure. He isn’t demanding I spread my body and finger myself while he watches; he doesn’t warn me not to come until he says I can, or he’ll punish me in a thousand wonderfully wicked ways. For all his immense size and strength, Isaac isn’t a dominant partner. He’s a gentle giant, a caregiver who doesn’t seem to mind that when lovemaking is this careful it takes at least twenty minutes, and endless teasing of my nipples with his fingers and tongue, to get me off.
He is patient and determined, and when I finally come—throwing back my head, squeezing my eyes shut, and trying my best not to see any face but Isaac’s in the darkness behind my lids—the sound he makes is pure satisfaction. Even before he comes, his cock jerking languidly inside of me, even his orgasm a hundred shades less violent than Gabe’s, he sounds fulfilled. My pleasure is his pleasure, the way it should be between a man and a woman, the way it was between me and Gabe.
I sag forward onto Isaac’s chest, catching my breath, wishing I felt the same way he feels. I wish I could love him the way he deserves to be loved. I wish he could be everything to me, but no matter how hard I try, the love I feel for him remains a warm, complacent thing.
This love doesn’t burn inside of me, threatening to consume me even as it builds me up, making me something stronger and better than I was before. This love doesn’t reach down deep and awaken the wild side of me, that part that will fight to the death to protect the things it holds dear, that part that is both beautiful and vicious, as terrifying as it is intoxicating. This love is a spark escaping from a bonfire, and Gabe and I were the sun, burning hot enough to light the world.
Suddenly, I can’t stand to be in Isaac’s arms another second. Tonight, making love isn’t enough. I need to get out. I roll to one side, sending Isaac’s limp cock sliding from my body, eager to wipe the stickiness from between my legs.
“Go back to sleep,” I whisper as I drop my feet to the cool hardwood floor beside the bed, and reach for tissues from the box on the bedside table. “I’m going for a run.”
“I’ll come with you,” Isaac says, sitting up.
“I’d rather go alone.” I toss the tissues in the trash and grab a sports bra from my top dresser door. I tug it on, shifting my tee shirt up around my neck to fit my arms through the bra straps before pulling it back on and reaching for a pair of gym shorts.
“That woman was abducted right off the highway not far from here,” Isaac says. “It’s not safe for you to go out by yourself in the middle of the night.”
“I’m careful. I stick to the back roads,” I say. “No one ever sees me.”
“I’m coming with you,” Isaac says in his stubborn voice. “I spent half of last week filing reports on the guys they think might have taken the girl. I’ve got a better idea of what kind of scum live around here than you do.”
I doubt it, I think, but I don’t say the words aloud.
A few months ago, Isaac applied to join the Maui P.D. and was accepted into the police academy. Just last week, he started work full time at the station in Kahului. He’s already making friends and impressing his superiors, but he’s still new on the job. He hasn’t had time to do his research, to look into our community’s dark corners and take notes on what the bad guys have been up to.
I, however, have three binders full of material on possible targets. Information I’ve cobbled together from the mothers at the school, the ladies who gossip down at the local pool during open swim, and the bits and pieces I overhear on Isaac’s police scanner. I’ve got intimate details on a shipping mogul who’s helping smuggle underage mail order brides into the country for his buddies. I have the names and addresses of fathers who are delinquent on their child support, spending their money on motorcycles and beer, while their children walk around in Salvation Army flip flops two sizes too big. I even have an inch-thick file on a sexual predator in Makawao, who attacked a girl last month, only a few weeks after he was released from prison.
Late at night, when I can’t sleep, I fantasize about the jobs I could pull here if Gabe and I were still partners in crime. I think about the people we could help, and the rush of moving silently through the darkness dressed in my blacks, adrenaline coursing through my veins.
If Isaac knew the things I daydream about, he would be horrified. Isaac doesn’t believe in vigilantism and would never support anyone breaking the law. He wouldn’t have been okay with me taking the law into my own hands before he was a cop, and he certainly wouldn’t be okay with it now. He would throw my lock picking set into the sea, burn my blacks, and forbid me from even thinking about indulging that side of myself ever again. Hell, he might even leave. I know Isaac loves me, but I’m not sure how long his love would last if he ever opened up his eyes and looked at the big picture.
Isaac loves the Caitlin he’s created. He loves the palatable pieces he’s pasted together, not the complete person, and that’s why our relationship will never be as real as what I had with Gabe. I’m keeping too many secrets, secrets that keep me isolated, sad, and longing for something I’ll never have again.
I will never meet another man like Gabe, a man who is ruthless, but kind, lawless, but true to his own code. A man who can kill a monster without remorse, and still spend an hour in a petting zoo with a two-year-old girl on a hundred degree day, dripping sweat until his shirt’s soaked through because he refuses to force her away from the baby bunnies. A man who will admire my love for my family, and my taste for breaking the law, and love me better because both of those things exist inside the same person.
I know some people find true love more than once, but I think they must be better than I am. They must be people with soft edges, who can easily shift and slide and reshape themselves until they fit with someone new. I am not soft. I am hard and my edges are chiseled in stone, hammered out in a craggy shore
line only one ship could ever sail through without getting smashed against the rocks.
Hard. Hard. Hard. Made to slice or shatter.
The mantra drums through my head as Isaac and I slip out of the house and hit the darkened streets, jogging down our gravel country lane before turning onto the narrow road that leads toward the town grocery store, the community center, and the school, where the kids are doing so well.
Sean has dozens of new friends, Ray is the top reader in his class—and the librarian’s pet—and Danny has been keeping out of trouble and getting decent grades for the first time in his life. He even has a girlfriend, a sweetheart named Sam with a raunchy sense of humor who loves skateboarding as much as Danny, and is teaching him how to surf. My family is thriving, and I’m well on my way to getting a college degree. I have a boyfriend who loves me, an adorable house, and no worries about making rent, or paying my bills. And I live on a tropical island where it’s warm enough to go jogging in the middle of the night three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
I should be melting into a puddle of contentment, but I’m not.
I am hard, and I prove it by pushing Isaac to the limit during our run. After the police academy, he’s in better shape than back when he played football in high school, but despite his longer legs, he has a hard time keeping up with me. Since I lost the baby, I’ve run almost every day, and I’ve gotten fast. Fast enough to join the college track team if I wanted, fast enough that Isaac has to struggle to keep pace when I’m going full out.
I know he’s suffering by the end of the first mile, but I don’t slow down. I push and push, until sweat is dripping down my forehead into my eyes, and Isaac is pulling in hoarse, labored breaths beside me, and still, I don’t ease up.
I keep running like my future depends on it, even though I know I will never be able to run far enough, or fast enough, to escape the ghost of the love I lost.
