Sitting down again next to Emma, I smile sadly as I think about her small cute cherub face and the way it held my whole heart when she would look up at me. She’ll always be my little princess. And a part of me will forever stay dead inside without her.
“There once was a girl whose name was Emma,” I begin, as my voice shakes and I do something I haven’t done since I held her in my arms for those two months I was blessed to have her in my life. I tell her a story. A story about a Princess and a Prince, who lived in a village destroyed by hate and only healed with their love. And a secret pact they made to one another to “never let go.”
For the first time ever since I held her in my arms all those years ago, I realize just how strong love can make you feel. I know that is something I will always feel for her, my princess, and for Charlette. For that whole entire time in my life and no amount of pain can ever take that away from me. For the first time, I begin to smile, as I retell her a story I whispered years ago as she nodded off to sleep every night in my arms. A story as old as time, and one I know is the root of hope in a world that too easily surrenders itself to darkness.
Chapter 20
Rose
“I’ll get it,” Levi says, as he kills the engine, jumps out of the cab of the truck and makes his way around the side of the car to open my door.
Erica looked at me as if I had grown two heads when I asked her to watch the kids and told her just who I was going out with earlier. The lecture that followed was miserable as I agreed with every single word she said and wished I could take back the fact that I actually told Levi I would go out with him.
I force a smile as the truck door at my side swings open and he reaches out to help me down. My skin crawls as his hand brushes against my skin. Not for him, he has always been a good friend and he has never given me any reason to doubt him. But for me. For leading him on when I know this could and would never go anywhere.
“Thank you,” I whisper, once my feet hit the floor, but he still doesn’t release me. When I realize he has no plans to, my heart begins to hammer in my chest as I look up and into his eyes.
“Thank you,” Levi says, as his grip on my arm tightens and his hand begins to trail to my waist. I jolt back from his touch and end up smacking myself into the side of his truck. His laugh rings through my ears but the beating of my heart almost cancels it out as he takes a step closer and cages me in against the vehicle.
“Never knew you to be so jumpy, Ro.” He suggestively growls causing me to suddenly feel anxious. “But makes sense, seeing it’s probably been a while since a man has touched you.” He leans forward and my stomach turns. I’m seconds away from forcibly kneeing him in the balls when someone behind us shouts his name and I thank God for my guardian angels watching over me tonight.
He turns his head and I take that exact moment to sneak out from around the side of him and start to walk towards the restaurant. What the hell was that? Well he did tell me at work earlier that he’s always harbored these feelings for me. But that, was way too forward for the Levi I know. He yells a quick hello to whoever it was that just saved me, before quickly running to catch my side.
“I’ll have to remember that,” he says, as he pulls the door to the diner open and waits for me to walk past. “Remember to take it slow. You’d like that, wouldn’t you Rose?” I can’t help the way I feel his slimy voice grate over my every last nerve as I force myself to walk through the door in front of me.
Slimy? Since when have I ever thought of Levi as slimy? Probably since he started laying on the charm good and thick making me realize just why probably none of his other relationships ever worked out.
“Table for two,” I hear him tell the hostess as he wraps his arm around my waist and I try not to act too offended. The hostess gestures for us to follow her, but I am too focused on the man’s hand around my side. The one that is dangerously falling lower as I swallow hard and count to 10. I have no idea what the hell I am going to do when I get there, but I can’t let this go any further without at least putting up some boundaries. Right?
We reach our table and the hostess sets down the menus. I don’t know why it shocks me, but Levi doesn’t even try to pull out my chair for me to sit down and quickly makes his way around the other side of the table to sit himself. I stand there and watch him as he takes off his jacket and flings it around the top of the chair. He looks up and smiles, a mischievous smile that hints at just what he has planned for the two of us. My mind blanks, I can feel my expression is completely void of any emotion as I wait for … it. The voice in my head that never fails to show up and tell me just what I am doing wrong and how bad I have managed to fuck things up.
His smile begins to fade as he waits for me to take my seat. But I am so focused on …the silence. The calm. The quiet.
I look to the floor and count to 10 again, and then wait.
Nothing.
It doesn’t hurt forever you know. I remember Justin saying the night we went out for sushi. The pain. The hurt. The way I see you torture yourself grasping on to any last memory like you’re afraid one day you’ll let it slip away. Believe me when I say, you won’t. Trust me.
Trust. The word sticks to my mind as a smile spreads across my face and I look back up at him and laugh before realizing he lied. The pain. The hurt. I saw them in his eyes Saturday night. But the strength, it’s always there if you try and find it.
“What is it?” Levi asks as my laugh continues. He laughs with me nervously for a moment before his eyes fall on the hostess at our side. The one that is still waiting for us to take our seats so she can tell us about the specials, ask us what we want to drink, hell I don’t know what but she obviously has some special something she is supposed to say before she can get back to work. Normally that would bother me. Make me nervous. Anxious. Worry that someone is looking, staring, judging.
Does it bother me?
No. No it totally doesn’t.
I laugh harder as I close my eyes and hold onto my chair.
“Rose,” Levi says, slightly with a laugh himself but also very annoyed as I open my eyes and see him gesture for me to take my seat. I look around me and notice almost everyone is staring. But I could care less.
I don’t regret anything. Trust me. I never could. I hear Justin’s voice repeat from the same night, clear as day, almost as if he is here standing right beside me. It’s better this way. But I know it is not. One night be damned. He stood by me more than one night when I fell apart, when I needed strength. All I ever truly wanted was to be able to one day do the same for him.
“Rose,” Levi repeats again, this time his annoyance is evident as he motions one more time for me to take my seat.
“Give me a minute,” I whisper, as my smile grows wider. “I am going to use the restroom, just… give me a minute.”
I feel him with me, even though he’s not, as I turn and make my way back towards the front. Strength. Courage. A daring bravery courses through me. He held me when I was lost. He stayed with me when I was broken. Now, it’s time I returned the favor.
Justin
With my hands shoved in my pockets, I hang my head low and look both ways before I cross the road. The streetlamps are the only thing illuminating the way, and I worry for the hundredth time since I made the decision to come here if it was the right thing to do. I see a figure move on the porch as I open the gate that leads its way up the front path and look up.
Erica, Rose’s friend, catches my eye and my gut churns as anxiety sets in because if I know women, and if I was her, I wouldn’t hesitate in telling my ass to get lost and never come around here, or her friend, ever again. She says nothing, just leans against the pillar on the porch and shakes her head as I take a few more steps forward.
“She’s not here,” she states a little too harshly as my feet take me the couple more feet towards her. “She’s won’t be back for a while. Just left about 30 minutes ago.”
I hang my head as I take the steps slowly and climb my way
to the porch.
“She went out with Levi,” Erica states, making my head snap up and the blood rush through my veins in a jealous rage. “She didn’t want to, trust me. But maybe something someone did, someone said, might have pushed her over the edge.” I hear her say with a shrug.
And she’s damn right. I know I am to blame, and I will make sure I am here when the bastard brings her home so I can finish the ass kicking he deserves. One that I intended to give him Saturday night and he won’t be able to dodge for long. If I am here when they get back, then I can talk to Rose. Then I can make this fucking right. Because even though I fucking hate the thought of her being with him right now, I know I was the one that pushed her to it. For some damn thing I said that I don’t even remember.
And although I had wished she’d be here, I am actually kind of relieved that she is not. Maybe then I can get some answers without having to sound like an asshole for not remembering whatever it was I said that pushed her away Saturday night.
“Did she say if..”
“Oh she hasn’t said much,” Erica sharply adds. “At least not as much as she has cried since whatever the hell you did to her Saturday night.”
My heart breaks because I never intended that. I can’t bear to watch her cry when her tears fall for someone else, something else. But because of what I did? The reality that I’m a fucking idiot hits me harder than before as I look into Erica’s eyes and plead with her to please, even though I deserve it, not take it out on me. Help me. Let me understand. When I can’t even begin to understand myself.
Right now I need answers. Hell I even have fucking questions. And I have to make this right. As much as whatever the hell I said hurt her, damn it I don’t remember it, as cliché as that is. If I was in Italy I could blame it on the alcohol, after all as they say, “in vino veritas,” but that shit won’t work here and coming to terms with the idea that I might get nowhere when all I want, all I need, is to make this right, it’s almost too damn much for me to take after the trip I made up to Knoxville earlier today.
“I’m sorry for that,” I whisper, needing her to know everything that I intend to say to Rose as well, if I ever get the chance. “It’s just that…”
“Rose likes to remember her marriage a certain way,” Erica blurts out catching me off guard. I stare at her dumbfounded and wait for her to continue. “You see, Rose blames herself for a lot of things. Always has. It is sort of one of her self-destructive habits. And Lord knows we all have a few of those.”
She gestures for me to take the seat beside the one she was just rocking in and I move forward cautiously, staring at her the entire time and trying to understand and prepare myself for what she might say next.
“I mean, I can’t blame her. Not after the life she’s lived. The hell she climbed out of and marrying the first guy that ever made her feel special. But Michael was far from perfect.” We both take our seats and I stare out across the lawn to gather my thoughts. “I liked to think of them as Adam and Eve.” Entirely lost now, I turn back to look at her and shake my head in confusion. She laughs a little and pushes back in her chair as she gets comfortable in order to enlighten me.
“You see they were constantly playing ‘the blame game.’ You’d look at one of them when something went wrong and they would blame the other. They never took responsibility for hurting one another, and I think that is the load that Rose carries most in Michael’s passing.”
Oddly, her comparison makes sense as I try and understand the woman I have fallen for more.
“Rose remembers Michael at his best, their good times I guess you could say, except she also remembers how she failed him and never once lets herself remember how he failed her, repeatedly.”
“So you didn’t like Michael?” I ask, it seems like a logical question seeing where this conversation is going, but she just snorts as a sour expression comes across her face and doesn’t answer. “I was married young too,” I continue when she doesn’t answer. “It can be hard and sometimes you don’t get that chance to make it right. I can sympathize with both of them.”
“That’s just the thing,” Erica says, as she leans forward and captures my attention. “For the first time in every couple I’ve ever seen, there is no wrong or right when I look at the two of you. There is just understanding. Compassion. Empathy. You can sit there and say it’s all because of what you two have been through,” I look at her confused and wonder who told her about my past, but she waves my anxious assumptions away as she raises her hand. “It is evident in the load you carry. We all have stories, Justin. The difference is, up until Saturday night, from what Rose told me, she never let her load get in the way of how she felt about you, and you shouldn’t either. What you share, that compassion, empathy, people go their whole lives wanting and needing to find someone who understands them that way and fail. I know because I’ve tried. Don’t make the mistake the rest of the world does and throw it away because of something in your past.”
The gate to the fence creaks and we both look over. Rose stands there, a startled expression on her face as I jump up and immediately feel weak in the fucking knees, as odd as that sounds. She does that to me, she’ll always do that to me, and I don’t want to miss another second of what could be just because I was hung up on what was. Even though I still fear a curse I may never outrun.
“She needs you,” I hear Erica say as she stands from her chair and begins to make her way inside. I look in Rose’s eyes before glancing behind her and thanking God that she is alone. That he isn’t with her. “And I can tell you need her too. Whatever happened in your past, whoever you have lost, don’t lose each other. Promise me that!”
I glance her way and give her a tight nod as she opens the screen door. She looks back once at her friend and smiles before making her way inside.
The night feels silent. Too silent, as I stare back at the woman before me. The one that has captured every damn part of me and won’t let it go, no matter how hard I’ve tried to make her. I take a step towards her and watch as she flinches.
I hate myself because I know I put that there. I know even though I have attempted to handle her with “kid gloves,” knowing she is broken, like my Charlette, that I hurt her. I harmed us. I did everything I never intended to do when all I ever wanted was to watch over her. Keep her safe. Make sure she knew someone was there, if she needed it.
What I didn’t plan on was needing her, more than I have ever needed anything in my life. I need her more than I even needed Charlette after my mother. And that guilt of knowing I love her more, that thrill of a love I never expected and never knew existed, it scares the shit out of me.
She takes a step towards me and a small piece of my soul warms inside. “Hi,” she whispers carefully, as if talking may spook this moment. As if just saying anything at all will take away the fact that we are here. Together. And neither of us seems to want to go anywhere else any time soon.
“Hi,” I smile back, as I take a few steps down towards her. She begins to walk, hesitantly at first, before she catches me off guard when she suddenly picks up the pace and runs towards me. My soul fucking soars, comes back to damn life, as I open my arms just in time to catch her and I release a hard sigh as she nestles her head in the side of my neck.
I hold her for a moment, scared to jinx anything, before I whisper, “whatever I said,” but she stops me as her head shakes no in my arms.
“You said ‘one time.’” She whispers, and panic sets in because I slowly begin to remember. Fuck, I did say that. But she needs to understand. She needs to know why. But just as I am about to explain the next words she is about to say, the ones I remember, hit me in my gut and make me feel sick as they start to fall from her lips. “You said ‘it was…’”
“Better this way,” I finish for her, finally understanding why I woke up the next morning feeling like the scum of the fucking earth. I never intended one time with her. Hell, that was just the ramblings of a drunk man falling over the edge and grasping at
any last thing he had to keep him from completely collapsing headfirst into something he knew he’d never recover from. “Rose, I…”
But she shakes her head again and I can’t help but smile. This woman has me wrapped around her damn finger, and she doesn’t even know it. That changes right now as I silently make a promise to only show her nothing but my full commitment from now on. I wait for her to continue as I wrap my arms around her tighter and breathe her in. Vanilla and sweet oranges. A smell that is quickly becoming home to me and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“But you also told me you don’t regret anything, and you never could,” I do remember that, and so I clutch her a little tighter and hold on for fucking life as I wait to see where she is going with this. “You told me it doesn’t hurt forever, the pain, the torturing myself,” my throat grows tighter because I was wrong, so damn wrong and I just hope she knows it. “But you’re wrong,” she shocks me with saying. “You never forget, not ever,” she whispers, as she pulls away and looks in my eyes. “But the difference is, one day, if you’re lucky, you find someone to help you breathe again. Live again. And that is something you don’t let slip away.” She rests her forehead against mine and sighs. “Trust me!”
I smile as I sway her back and forth a few times and just enjoy the damn feeling of her in my arms. No guilt. No remorse. Just the feeling of us, the way it should always be, and the way I plan to make it for as long and as far into the future as I can see.
“I went out with…”
But I shake my head. I don’t want her to say it. I don’t need her to apologize, because hell I was the one who fucked up. “I know,” I whisper and feel her pull back from me to look in my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, I…” but I shake my head again.
“Don’t apologize, I’m the one that is sorry Sunshine,” I say, before I drop my forehead to hers and a grin spreads across my face. I go to speak, just as she does, and we both laugh in unison.
Resurrection Page 15
