Colour Series Box Set (68 page)

The gravel ends at the top of the hill and we walk into a field of soft grass. My feet celebrate the relief and Callum slows down a little. A small lighthouse sits perched on the cliff just visible through the mist. The salty air is thick and my lungs work hard to breathe from the walk and the fear that is ripping through me.  We walk a little further into the field towards the lighthouse. I am afraid of this man. I am terrified of this feeling aching inside me.

My heart stops when Callum stops.
This cannot be real.

There is a small blanket laid out on the grass and on it sits a picnic basket and another warm blanket. There is a bucket with wine chilling and two glasses. Before I can get my head around the fact that this is not what a murder scene looks like and I might just live Callum drops down on a knee and produces a ring. The darkness from earlier has left his eyes and I cannot read them, they say things that I don’t want to believe. Things, I know, are never going to be true. The sudden relief, at not being killed, is quickly replaced by the weight of what being married to Callum really means. Maybe being dead isn’t such a terrible option, after all.  There are far worse things than death.

I start to shake an uncontrolled rattling from my bones out through my entire body. I know this is not a real engagement, but something is off with this and my sixth telling me say no and run away.
You were ready to die today anyway. You are not prepared to marry this man.

No one could be ready for a relationship with Callum, he is sick. There is something so broken in him and he heals it by hurting me. He is the only man who has ever lived to kiss and tell after being with me, I wish I knew how to make myself kill him.

A FEW WEEKS AGO I received a shipment of what you would call blood diamonds, uncut raw and illegal. The unethical diamonds that are frowned upon by the world, mined by children with machine guns and sold for their souls. What could be more perfect for the ring I plan to put on my murderous girlfriend’s finger the thing is I am beginning to like the permanence of it, I am less likely to beat the shit out of her because I have to see the marks next morning. I see the damage my monster inflicts and then I want to fucking kill him. Shannon has stirred something in me, and I am afraid of it, this is new to me a different kind of madness than I am used to. I find myself thinking of her, wanting to be with her and imagining the future with her that I should not want. I am feeling – things I do not know how to feel. Good things and they hurt just as much as all the bad things that came before them. I am in constant agony over her.

The monster is still there, the madness still consumes me and I still hurt her just not as often and I can control it more than I have been able to before. The overwhelming shame at the sight of her broken body, when I do it, consumes me for days after, I have to find a way to make it stop. I spend hours in the gym beating the crap out of punching bags and anyone stupid enough to spar with me in the ring, but some days it is just not enough. Some days I have to hurt her because this feeling is hurting me. Hurting her heals my pain just a little each time. The same soothing relief I get each time a member of my family dies.

Shannon has turned my world and my plan a little on its axis and I feel myself slipping away and my control is getting less and less. I keep having this dream where I am the king of this fucking world and she is my queen, where I worship her and treat her right. In my dream, she is still a dangerous, bloodthirsty killer, but I am safe from her and she serves me with her murderous lust for blood. I am not sure what to make of it all. Back at home I would have seen my therapist that actually helped keep this shit under control. Here I don’t have that luxury my family cannot see me going to a shrink it would not fit in with the plan. They would know something was wrong with me. O’Reilly’s don’t deal with their madness they cover it up and hide. I could use my drugs, they would clear the mess in my mind. That would leave me to think about what I am doing and I don’t want to think, I just want it done. Shannon is messing with my plan, my mind and fucking heart. I shouldn’t be near her without the pills to at least control the episodes. The pills would make me walk away from her, I am never going to do that.

I still don’t trust her not to kill me in my sleep, and I bind her to the bed at night. I know it sounds insane and it is. I know she used to suffocate men in their sleep before she turned to poison so forgive me if I cannot sleep soundly next to her. I also won’t eat or drink anything she has touched. Not yet, we are working on trusting each other. There are other things that are messing with my head at the moment. My family for one, being so close to them is making me edgy and unpredictable. I fucking hate them; I keep reminding myself it is not forever, it is just temporary, and they will all be gone and I will have what should have been mine all along. I will finally be able to silence my demons and be happy. I will go home, get better and live my own life. I want to try and be happy just for once in my life.

I am following the plan to the letter, Sahib is making sure that I do, his family has a lot invested in me and my making this work.  He doesn’t like Shannon, he won’t say so out loud, but I can tell in his demeanour when she is with me. She makes him uncomfortable, in their world women are inferior, servants and slaves. They don’t respect them and they certainly don’t understand our ways.

The renovations at the Spillane house are almost complete and if I am frank about it, the place is playing tricks on my mind, creating dreams and memories that I don’t want to have. I think living there is going to be harder than I anticipated. I have made a decision to do it anyway. I am part Spillane, my father is dead and I think it is about fucking time the bad blood stopped being spilled. I am planning to embrace that name and what it once meant in this world. Starting with living in that house, marrying a woman, not a good one, but a wife none the less. Maybe even have one of these heirs they all seem so fucking set on having. I need there to be someone to take this all when I am gone.

My world is changing and me with it. I cannot help the unexplained desire to have what Rowan has, the dark and light. The balance, the everything I shouldn’t have. I dare say it even if only to myself. I love Shannon. That makes me weak and strong at the same time. It means she can kill me even without poison, because she could break my heart.

We are going to do a walk through at the house this morning and then I plan to stick to my plan and propose to her. It has all been arranged, Art, who thinks I am fucking bat shit crazy, has helped me set up a trip to the lighthouse. The only other place I have a genuine memory of my mother. I have the marquise cut diamond ring fit for my queen in my pocket the weight of it feels like it could pull me to the bottom of the ocean and drown me. My heart, something that is new to me, wants her to say yes because she wants to, but I know that this feeling is one sided and I am dealing with it. I can love her enough for us both without telling her that’s what it is. She will feel it eventually. I will make her feel.

THE COLD CONCRETE STEPS do it every time. I get close they suck me back into my past. To a time that I know was the birth of the monster. To the day, my world ended and started. I know it’s not there, but the copper smell of blood swirled with my piss burns my nostrils. Scent, we remember smells most vividly for some reason. The damp air at the entrance to the house carries the smells of the ghosts that haunt my life.

The lady with eyes that match mine steps out of the door, she is dressed so smartly. Her hair is pulled back in a stern bun and her red fingernails are so shiny. She picks me up by ear and marches me to the car in the drive, the sound of her clicking heels is all I hear as the sun slowly rises. I had slept the night in my mother’s blood on those steps. I am cold and wet and scared. She doesn’t talk to me yet. She lifts me into the back seat and puts a seatbelt on me, it is a fancy car. Black and smooth and enormous.

She closes the door and goes around the driver’s side, she glides in, so elegant and put together. Her pale hands hold tight on the steering wheel as she starts the car. Her eyes seek mine in the rear-view mirror, it is like looking at my own eyes. I am just a boy, a baby, but I know she is like me somehow how. From the same place. “I am taking you home now boy, you never come back to the big house you hear me. You don’t tell anyone what you saw. Never. You be brave and good and no one will hurt you. Do you understand Callum?” The way, she spoke my name, was softer, like my mom. I nod at the lady and wipe my tears with my sleeve.

We stop at my home, she opens the door and bends down to look me in the eyes, she wipes my face with her hanky and presses a soft kiss on my cheek. “Goodbye sweet boy. Your Mummy loved you so much. Now go on inside and be a good kid. You will be a great man one day Callum. A great man. Remember that always.” She drove away quickly and I never saw my grandmother again after that.

My body tenses at the memories or dreams that flood my mind, I grip her lovely hand tighter and her red nails, remind me of the lady I know now was my grandmother. She said great man, not good man. I plan on being just that. Rumour has it that my gran was more ruthless than any mob man in their day. She was the head of the family for a long time after her husband died. She was a ruthless killer and a ruthless boss under her soft face hid a woman no man would cross. Rowan met Lauri for the very first time when my grandmother died, she was a geeky teenager and he was a lost young man. After that we both left for South Africa and he found his way back to the girl he met at a funeral.

We wander through the house and all the construction, contractors and mess. In one of the spare rooms, I get the overwhelming feeling that this space was a child’s room and in a moment of madness I pull Shannon closer and tell her. “This is the perfect bedroom for children don’t you think?” For a moment, I still believed I could have everything the world had to offer. The world is a cruel place where we rarely get what we want without heartbreak and pain.  I don’t hear it all. I hear sterile and I go deaf to the instant rage that pounds through me. A fire of madness that wishes to attack her right here, but I won’t there are too many people here. Here, this fucking house of dreams and nightmares and shattered hopes, I need to get out of here now.  There is no point to all of this if in the end there is no one to leave it to. Who am I taking it all for? I won’t be here forever; we all have and end date. Then what? Shannon has stolen that future from me.

I feel the blood in my veins changing over to monster with every beat of the heart she just stabbed me in. Why is this tug-of-war between us so fucking hard why can we just not both have what we want? I want to hurt her so badly, like she just hurt me, tit for tat.

“How am I supposed to be the King of this empire I have created with no fucking heir Shannon?” I yell at her closing in on her personal space only my scream comes out a strangled whisper. My heart aches for the child I will never have. I swallow my sadness and pour all my anger out instead.