“Holy shit,” she breathes, sliding off my lap and straightening herself up.
“Stay here,” I tell her as I adjust myself and rise from the bed, walking toward the sound and standing where I can see him, rummaging through the cupboards, most likely after the stash of gambling money he used to keep there along with his alcohol. He looks smaller than I remember him. Older too. His clothes are a mess and what’s left of his hair is sticking up all over the place.
“You’re too late,” I state, my voice cold as I see him again for the first time in eighteen months.
“It’s my fucking house. I’m never too late,” he says, turning around to face me, his eyes travelling higher than expected as he takes in the difference in my size.
“In this case you are. One fucking day too late.”
“Watch your language, boy,” he growls. “You’re not so big that I won’t give you a whooping for being disrespectful.”
“One. Fucking. Day,” I repeat, my growl more ferocious and accusatory than his.
“What are you talking about? Where are your brothers? And your sisters?”
“One fucking day!” I yell, stepping toward him. He holds up his hands, sensing the danger he’s in and starts to back away from me.
“One day too late for what?” he asks finally.
“One day too late to stop social services from taking all the kids. If your selfish, poor excuse for an arse was here one day sooner, they wouldn’t have been taken. They’d be here. Where they belong, you fucking cunt of a man!”
I lunge toward him, seeing red and wanting nothing more than to take my anger out on him the way he always took his out on me. In the background, I can hear Evie, calling my name and telling me he’s not worth it, but the voice in my head, the drive to make him pay, is so much stronger.
He crouches down, always willing to fight and springs out at me, tackling me around the middle and throwing me off balance so I stumble into the island bench. My side cracks against it, and I feel that blinding pain that comes from reinjuring my goddamn ribs and I groan, throwing a punch that lands in his gut and winds him momentarily.
He stumbles back, hitting against the benchtop on the other side and knocking over the strainer, sending cutlery and crockery shattering and clattering to the ground.
“Zac!” Evie screams just as the bastard lunges at me with a fucking carving knife. I push his hand away, but not before he’s nicked my arm and the warmth of my blood begins to seep from the wound.
“Not so tough now, are you, you little fucker? Now, give me my money and I’ll go. You won’t ever see me again.”
He holds the knife up, making slashing gestures to me every time I move closer.
“Pay up,” he demands. “You’ve got cash stashed here somewhere.”
“There’s nothing here for you.”
“That’s bullshit. I saw you. I fucking saw you win that fight last night. That’s ten fucking grand. And I want some.” His eyes grow with his greed, and all I can envision is crushing his skull.
“Get. The fuck. Out.”
“Give me my money.”
He jabs out with the knife, making a point with each word, and on the last jab, I make my move, grabbing his wrist and knocking the blade from his hand, pulling him forward and kneeing him in the guts. He bends forward from the blow and just like in training, I raise my hand, holding the knife, ready to end this.
“NO!” Evie screams, rushing at us and gripping my wrist as she lands a blow behind my knee, buckling it forward and giving her control of the weapon. “You don’t want to do this,” she pants, stepping away with the knife in her hand. “Don’t ruin your life over him.”
I step back, glancing between Evie and him, my head throbbing as my anger surges through my body. Feeling out of control, I grab my head on either side and I roar. The sound fills the air around us and seems to make it vibrate.
Evie begins to sob, shaking her head as tears stream down her face from where she’s pleading with me to let that bastard live.
I look down at him again, wanting more than anything to end this. To end it now and make him pay for every moment of pain, every moment of fear, every moment of torture and struggle.
But I don’t. Instead I turn away and walk out the door. Not feeling sure that I’m ever going to walk back through it.
PART FIVE
‘The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.’
Philip Roth
Thirty – Six
Evie
Three days.
“Evie, you can’t sit here on your own. Come home.”
Three days, I’ve sat in this house. I’ve sat in the dark, and I’ve waited for him to return.
“I promised I wouldn’t leave him,” I whisper, my eyes sore and swollen from crying but seeming to never run out of tears.
“You aren’t leaving him. You’re just going to wait for him with your family,” Mum assures me.
I turn away, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand.
“I need to wait here,” I state.
I don’t know where he is but I made a promise. I promised I wouldn’t leave. I promised I’d stay.
Perhaps I should have made him promise the same thing…
***
Seven days.
A seemingly eternal darkness filled with the hollow ache of my body and my mind as my soul screams from its separation.
“Jesus. What’s wrong with her?”
Arms slide beneath me and I’m lifted into the air. My head rolls to the side and hits against a hard, but comforting chest. I can’t stop crying.
“Can’t you tell, Damien? She’s heartbroken.”
I’m carried through the house and outside, the first beam of sunlight burning a bright light into my eyes.
I squeeze them shut tight as I sob in protest. “Don’t make me leave.”
I’d fight physically, but all of my strength seems to have left me, instead replaced by this heaviness that makes it impossible for me to move.
The arms around me tighten.
“We’re just going to take care of you, sweetheart.”
I’m placed in the back of a car and my head is so heavy, and the light is so bright. I close my eyes for one moment against the sun and when I open them I’m in a darkened room and there are hushed voices outside the door. I can see the silhouettes of my parents as they worry over me. I wish I could tell them I’m ok. But I don’t feel ok. I feel broken.
“I told you that boy was bad news.”
“Damien, don’t even get me started. He’s a good kid. He just had more responsibility than an eighteen-year-old boy should have and he’s lost his entire reason for fighting. The boy is troubled. He’s had a hard life. You, out of all the people in the world, should be able to understand that.”
“But look at her.”
“She’ll come out it. She’ll be ok.”
“But when? How long is she going to be like this?”
“I don’t know. It took me years to stop crying.”
My father wraps my mother in a tight embrace and I wonder if it’s them sobbing or if it’s me. Either way, my heart aches like a boulder on my chest.
***
Sunlight. Someone sitting in the room.
“She’s awake!” my sister Rose calls out. I blink twice, squinting against the light.
“What day is it?”
“Thursday. You slept for a whole day.”
I sit up in bed and my brain pounds against my skull as I look over at my fourteen year old sister who is watching me with great interest.
“Shouldn’t you be at school?”
“I already was at school. It’s almost five.”
“Oh.”
“So…this is what happens when you fall for some guy is it?”
“Looks like love sucks.”
I roll over and lie down again. “Love doesn’t suck. It’s the leaving that sucks.”
“So, is it over between you two? I mean, is he gone forever?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, a tear sliding down my face and absorbing into my pillow. “I hope not.”
***
“Looks like the curse of the women in our family is still alive and well,” my grandmother says as she enters my room the next day.
I roll over to face her. “What do you mean?”
“We love too much.”
Sitting up, I run my hands over my face. “How do we stop?”
“In your mother’s and my experience, we live as best we can until our love comes back to us.”
“What if he doesn’t come back?”
She sits at the foot of my bed and pats my leg. “They always come back, sweetheart. It’s just a matter of when. Here,” she hands me a glass of water and some ibuprofen. “They’ll help the swelling around your eyes.”
She watches me as I swallow the pills and drink the water, not realising how thirsty I really was until I’ve gulped down the entire glass.
“Why don’t you tell me all about this boy? There’s no one here but you and me, everyone is at school or work. So I can promise you, that anything you say now will go into the grandmother vault of secrets. And maybe, just maybe your old Nan might be able to help you.”
“You’re not old Nan, you’re barely sixty.”
“Well, I feel old sometimes. Especially when I’m seeing the third generation of women going through severe heartache. You know, I went through it with your grandfather and your mother went through it with your father. We’re drawn to men who are fighting demons. But it’s only through our love that they learn to overcome them.”
“You seem so sure about that.”
“That’s because I am. I’ve seen it happen before, and I’ll see it happen again. You’ll have a daughter one day and she’ll go through the same thing. Now, tell me, what’s so special about this boy, Zac?”
“He’s everything to me,” I start, and she smiles knowingly and quietly listens as I tell her the entire story. Starting with what he was like at school, how he disappeared for a while and reappeared out at the Londonderry fights. Then how he kissed me, and how it made me feel, how I looked for him, how I found him, and everything else that happened since then. I tell her about his family, about his parents. I tell her about his scars and his drive to keep all of the kids together. I tell her how he loves, how he cares, and how he takes the weight of the world and carries it around like it was meant for him but how, when we’re alone, I know he’s struggling, and that I’m his strength. I tell her about what happened with his stepfather. About Zac’s rage at seeing him again. About the knife…and about him leaving.
“Losing the kids, it broke him,” I say to finish, pressing my lips together as I wipe at my eyes. “He left, and I don’t know where he is.”
“Where are the kids now? Do you know?” she asks.
I shake my head. “With social services. There’ll be a custody hearing but they said it’s unlikely Zac will be granted custody of them.”
She reaches forward and cups my cheeks with her hands, looking into my eyes with the faded blue of hers, her greying hair, falling forward as she leans toward me so I can clearly see her expression.
“You have chosen a boy with a beautiful but broken soul. Be patient. I believe he’ll come back.”
Thirty-Seven
Evie
It’s now been two weeks since Zac left. I’m out of bed, out of the lowest point of what him leaving did to me. I supposed I had survived on his air for so long, that I didn’t know how to breathe without him. And when he walked out that door and left me behind, I felt like my life would end if he didn’t come right back.
I go over the moment again and again in my head. The way he stood over his stepfather, so ready to follow through and put that knife in his side. I had to stop him. I couldn’t let him have a man’s life on his hands, even if that man was the monster who terrorised him for years.
When I stood back with the knife in my hands and told him to stop, the way he screamed like a tortured animal shattered my heart.
“Zac,” I called when he turned and left, giving chase but not fast enough to keep up with him. He got in the van and drove away, and no amount of yelling from me was going to stop him.
Shocked and in tears, I made my way back down the driveway, the bloody knife still in my hands as I re-entered the house.
“You saw what happened. You saw what he tried to do to me!” his stepfather said indignantly.
I looked at him, my lip curling in disgust as I faced the man who tortured the mind and body of my love. “What I saw, were scars. The scars that you put on his beautiful skin for whatever sadistic reason you had at the time.” I raised the knife. “This is his blood. The only blood that was spilled here tonight. And it was by your hands. You are alive right now, not because I saved you, but because I love Zac enough to save him. Now, I suggest you get the hell out of here before I finish the job for him, you sick son of a bitch. And don’t you dare come back because I’m going to make sure that Zac reports you for everything you’ve ever done so that you never have the option of seeing any of those kids again. Men like you don’t deserve to live. But men like Zac don’t deserve to suffer from ending you. Now fuck off. I don’t ever want to see you near this family again.”
He backed away from me, holding his hands up as he moved toward the door. But he was smiling, looking at me like there was some sort of joke I didn’t know about. “Take a good look, girly. This is what that little bastard is going to turn into. I raised the cunt from a boy. He’s going to grow up and be just like me. Or, better yet, he’ll be just like his old man and he’ll keep on running. Either way, don’t think you’re saving him. He’s already lost.”
“You’re wrong,” I insisted, holding the knife out threateningly as he continued out the door. Then I locked and dead-bolted the door, leaning against it as the reality of the situation hit me. I dropped the knife, sliding to the door as sobs began to wrack out of my chest as I cried for all that had been lost and swore that I wasn’t going to leave him too. I’d promised him that.
And true to my word, even though my parents came and took me home, I’m still waiting for him. Every day, I go to his home in the hopes that he’s returned. And each day, there’s no sign of him.
Until, of course, there is.
Thirty-Eight
Zac
“Drunk and Disorderly. Drunk and Disorderly, and another one for…Drunk and Disorderly. I’m assuming the only reason you’re back is because the cops brought you here to sleep it off?”
I open one eye, seeing her standing beside my bed with the fines in her hands. My head pounds with the worst hangover of my life. Actually, maybe I’m still drunk. I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve spent a lot of fucking time in bars, drinking and picking fights. And this morning, I woke up in the drunk tank of the police station and was brought home just after the sun came up. I couldn’t bear the emptiness of the place, so I went to the top of the cupboard and pulled out a bottle of bourbon and drank my way back to the oblivion I came from.
“Go home, Evie,” I groan, rolling back over and burying my head in the pillows. They smell like her. God I still want her so much. But I don’t deserve her. Not after what I’ve done.
“No, Zac. No fucking way! I am furious with you. You can’t do this. You can’t scare the fuck out of me and take off without a word. You can’t come back and pretend I’m some annoyance that needs to go away. I made a promise to you. I promised I wouldn’t leave you. No matter what happens, I promised I’d still love you. And I’ve stood by that promise. I waited here, in this bed. I waited for you and you didn’t come back to me. And I’ve come back here, every day, still waiting, hoping that you loved me enough to return. And now you ha
ve and I’m relieved, but I’m so damn angry at you, Zac.”
I turn to face her, my arm reaching out of its own accord to catch her hand, needing to touch her, needing to hold her. But she snatches away.
“No. It’s not that easy. I’m sorry about what happened to you. I’m sorry the kids are gone, and I’m sorry that you’re hurting. But by leaving, you told me I wasn’t good enough for you. You told me that you weren’t willing to trust me to stand by you through your pain. You don’t get to leave me, Zac. You don’t get to leave, and come back without telling me, and then when I find you, treat me like an annoyance and then touch me with your fucking touch that stops my heart. That doesn’t fucking work. I am stronger than that. I am strong enough for the both of us. You would have known that if you had have leant on me instead of running. You. Left. Me. Remember that. I never left you. But right now, I’m walking out that door. I’m going to work and after work, I’m going home. When you can give enough of a fuck to take back your life, finish what you started, and to fight for me, then you know where I’ll be waiting.”
She wipes angrily at her eyes and stalks toward the door, stopping for a moment to turn back and look at me.
“You’ve hurt me, Zac.”
Then she’s gone, and I let her leave, her words searing into my heart. I’ve hurt her. I scared her. I left her alone with my stepfather like the worthless piece of shit that I am, and I’ll never forgive myself for not staying to protect her. I told her I’d be there to fight for her and be by her side when she needed me. And the first chance I got to prove that, I took off and left her to fend for herself.
I thought I could make it work. I thought if I could fight well, if I could win, then we’d have enough and we could all be happy. Even with Meg, I thought I could talk to her and make her understand that love will wait. That love doesn’t go away in time. She didn’t need everything right now. Right now isn’t always the right time. I should know that more than anyone. Because if I had waited, just a few more months until the Rumble circuit was over, then we’d have the money, Meg would still be at home and so would the kids. And maybe I still would have had a chance with Evie. But I was impatient, and my desire was too strong for the girl I’ve loved for years from afar, and I wasn’t strong enough to resist.
Drawn to Fight: Zac & Evie Page 20
