Holding Her in Madness (2 page)

Instead of manning the fuck up and grabbing Lil’s demons by their throats, killing them one by one, snuffing out every single one of those bitches fucking with her head, I’d stood aside, waiting for her to come back to me, waiting for her to need me enough to come back.

Fucking thank
FUCK
my cell rang! I knew it was her. Even though she didn’t say a word, I knew it was my firecracker. I knew I wasn’t too late. I knew it was her calling me for help, calling because she finally needed me.

I will thank God every night of my life for that call… ‘Cause I had a motherfucking number.

In only twenty minutes, that abundant victory immediately gutted me, leaving in its wake nothing but bleak desolation.

Shit, y’all were there. You know what the fuck I saw when I walked in the bathroom of her hotel suite.

Her beautiful head was lulled back. Fuck, I’ll
never
forget that shit. It’s imprinted in my brain, etched across my skull. It’s seared into the backs of my eyelids.

She had a blood clot smeared from behind her ear, stringing like a fuckin’ spider web to her shoulder. Her skin was as pale as a full moon, not a fucking trace of my firecracker, not a trace of that beautiful tan skin of hers that I loved. Lying there in a pool of bloody water was the woman I fuckin’ swore I’d never leave. How many times had I fuckin’ promised her?

Too many fuckin’ times. And I swear, I swear, I was there.

It just wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. I’d never be enough.

After the docs got her physically well enough to be moved to the psychiatric unit, she was admitted to The Center. I knew then that my fate, my happiness, my fucking LIFE depended on being strong enough for her. Everything in our goddamned life depended on me stepping up and doing any and every damn thing I could to save my firecracker, be there for her, and make fucking sure she knew I was there and that I wasn’t going anywhere.

And I did.

I made fucking sure I was enough. I killed all those fuckin’ bitches in her head. I went through Hell for my fuckin’ firecracker and brought her back to life.

And now, even if I have to stay here in Hell for the rest of my life in order to keep her out, that’s what the fuck I’ll do. As a man, sometimes you just have to do what the fuck you have to do.

When you’ve been where I’ve been, seen the shit I’ve seen, and been shredded as many times as I have, there is no other option. Even if it means your life is hell. Even if it means from this point on, you are the one who carries all the weight and burden.

You fuckin’ do it because you love a woman, the only woman in this whole damn world. You do it because she’s your soul mate. And without her,
YOU
would rather be fucking dead.

Summer 1991

“Holy fuck!” Rolling over from my stomach, I try to grab the rubber band from around my wrist and pull this fuckin’ hair from out of my face and into a ponytail at the nape of my neck when my hand gets stuck in some stiff rats nest lying on my stomach.

What the fuck…is this bullshit?

“Ouch!” Raccoon eyes look up at me from below. “Shit, Leo. Let me move before you try and kick me out already.”

Why, God? I ask you, why do you let
her
be the only one to answer my fuckin’ calls at three a.m. when I’m so fuckin’ drunk I don’t know my own goddamn name?

“Sorry,” I grunt out, getting up to make it to the shower and wash the skank whore off of me.

“You know what they say, right? When you’re as drunk as you…well usually are when you call, that’s when the truth always comes out.”

“That so?”
What the fuck ever, you dumb bitch… If it helps you sleep at night.

“Mmm hmm. That’s why I’m always here.” She lets out a sigh as I cross my eyes and try hard to hold my tongue. “The morning after, here I am… Every time, darlin’.”

Nu huh. Fuck this shit.

I make a detour on my way to the bathroom and yank all her shit off the floor, throwing it at her and saying, “Heather, get the fuck out. It’s too fuckin’ early and I’m too hung over to be polite right now. Don’t wanna see your ass out here when I get out of the shower, you hear me?”

“Why do you always have to act like a dick? Huh, why?”

I narrow my eyes on her then point at the door. “Bye. Like I said, get the fuck out.”

“Fuck you, Leo. See if I answer the next time you call. Because I won’t!”

After the door slams shut behind her, I make my way into the blessed shower, really fucking hope she wasn’t lying. It’s mornings like these that make it so damn hard not to run my ass back to Cali and out of this Podunk piece of shit town.

After my shower, I throw on an old beat up t-shirt and some blue jeans before I slip my Doc Martin boots on my feet and make my way outside. I don’t blow dry my hair. I just tuck that shit behind my ears and let it dry however the fuck it wants.

I step out onto the back porch, light up my morning cigarette, and hear my cousin Josh next door yelling at his girl, April. “I wasn’t lookin’ at shit, bitch! You’ve lost your fuckin’ mind!”

“Who the fuck is she, Josh?”

I head next door and walk straight into their convo. “What’s up, pussy?” I smirk at Josh. Shit, he is pissed. I slap him on the back then take a drag off my cigarette.

He flips me off before zeroing back in on April. “She’s some fucking babysitter my mom hired for Jules, April. Last time I saw the chick, she was in the seventh damn grade. I don’t know her, babe. I don’t want to know her…”

I watch as Jason, Josh’s little brother, and some other kid come running out of the house. “Ah… I’m guessing that other kid wasn’t her.” I laugh at my own joke. No one else does. “Ya know, ‘cause it’s a he…not a… Shit. Never mind.” I look between the fighting couple then settle my attention on April. “What the fuck’s your problem, April?”

“There’s this fucking cheerleader bitch that Josh was eye fucking in the kitchen this morning. And apparently he’s known her forever, right, Josh?”

“Tell her we don’t know this bitch, Leo! Please! This is such fucking bullshit.”

“No… I don’t know her. Course, I just moved here so I have a very short list of people I know.”

“Oh yeah, and by the way, asshole, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call my friend over in the middle of the night for a drunken fuck then treat her like shit the next morning!”

Well damn, April is on a fucking roll this morning… Mid-morning. Okay, afternoon—whatever. My thoughts are severed by a voice I’ve never heard before.

The three of us are standing on the front porch when the door opens. “Jules?” I swear to God, the cigarette hanging in my mouth falls to the ground, along with my jaw.

Holy fucking Christ… Standing in front of me is a damn angel, I know it. Blond hair in big curls hanging down to her ass. She’s wearing some fuckin’ denim cut-off shorts that have got to be illegal in more than forty states. Are those… Fuck me, she has clogs on her feet that have me as hard as hell the second I fully take her in from her head to her toes.

“Oh.” The angel blushes.
She fucking blushes.
“Hey, y’all. I’m Lil.” Jesus Christ, her smile has me stumbling backwards. It’s like looking into the sun. Or an eclipse. You know it’s gonna fuck you up but you can’t make yourself look away.

I’m fuckin’ grasping at straws here and coming up short on every fuckin’ level. I can’t even speak. I swoop down to grab my cigarette, turn around, and carry my fumbling ass back to my yard, back to my house. And away from…whatever the fuck that was.

I’ve never in my life had trouble talkin’ to chicks. Ever. But that bitch—whoever she was—threw me on my ass. I can’t even think straight when I’m around her.

Problem is this bitch seems to be everywhere now, all the damn time. And I can’t keep my shit straight, much less my devious and dirty thoughts of what I’d do if I could get just one little bite of Lillian.

It’s been over a week and I still can’t shake this shit off. I’m not on my game. This girl fogs up my head, ties my tongue. She fucks me up. And I hate her for it. I’ve even thought about packing up my shit and moving back to Cali, but I know I can’t. I fucked that up beyond all repair. There’s no going back to that life.

My parents divorced about six years ago. It shook me up pretty bad. I knew they’d fought a lot, but I’d never expected a divorce to happen to our family. I was pissed, so instead of trying to make shit easier on my mom, I set out to make shit worse, to make it harder on her.

Within two years, I’d fucked up enough and she shipped my ass to my dad’s, which made life for a fifteen-year-old boy suck ass.

My dad’s new wife was a stuck-up bitch who had three small kids from her first marriage, and instead of fighting with her, my dad just let her make the rules and run the house. I still hate that bitch, and we still fight like a motherfucker, especially when she tries to force me to go to family functions where she pretends she has a perfect family, including a perfect stepson. Fuck that shit.

It didn’t take long for me to run out of patience with my dad and his bitch-ass new wife before I ran away.

I lived on the streets for a solid year before my mom finally found me and carried my ass back home. But by then, I was way too deep into the game. Selling drugs for some piece-of-shit small-timer, I climbed up the gang-of-thugs ladder pretty quick. Being tall for my age and not afraid to lose anything because I had nothing left to lose made me a good commodity in their world.

This created the beginnings of my first fuck-ups. I tried to do it right, keep my shit out of mom’s life.

I surfed when I wasn’t studying for my GED or sketching, and when I wasn’t surfing or sketching, I was either selling or fucking.

My Saturdays were as normal as Tuesdays—no change, just the same thing, every day of the week.

In less than a year, my mom got tossed under the eye of Child Protective Services because of my bullshit. She’d remarried, had a two-year-old daughter, and was pregnant again. They were trying to take her babies away.

In a last-ditch effort to save my ma from any more trouble and pain, I emancipated myself and moved down to this shit town to live with some distant relatives. Relatives I’d never met before.

They knew my story and left me alone. I had a door to my room from outside and usually just stayed the fuck away from everyone. Well, everyone except Josh. He was a year younger than I was and was always looking up to me. Stupid fucker. I only hung out with him to keep his ass in line, to make sure he didn’t repeat my mistakes.

After I come out of my reverie, I blink, looking around me. I’m fucking surrounded by sketches of her—Lillian.

“Jesus Christ… This is fuckin’ worse than I thought.” I snatch up all the sketches, tossing them into the trash, and then make my way outside. After I wipe the charcoal from my hands onto my jeans, I light up a Marlboro and start heading over to Josh’s to see what the hell he’s up to. But I’m stopped dead in my fucking tracks by the blonde who won’t stop haunting my damn mind.

“Oh, hey. You’re Leo, right?” She starts walking towards me…

I start edging backwards, unsteady thanks to the uneven ground under my feet. I make myself stop before I bust my ass in front of this damn girl.