Roar (13 page)

“I want you to date someone else.” It hurts to say it. I want to instantly take my words back and throw myself at him, but I won’t. I will be strong for him this one last time.

If I had slapped him, he wouldn’t have looked as shocked.

“What?” he whispers, his face contorted. He knows what I’m asking; it’s scribed in his pain-etched face.

I swallow the lump that’s formed in my throat. “The only way I will know you
really
love me, is if you find someone else and try to move on.”

“What the fuck, Charlotte?!”

“Don’t call me that.”

He expels a huge angry breath and drops his hands again. They fall to my hips and he nods an apology.

“Charlie, baby, it’s insane to ask me to date anyone to prove my love to you.”

I stroke his rough cheek and feel his muscles under my fingers as he leans into my hand. “I need to know that what you feel isn’t because of what we went through, what Daddy has done to us. You always said he trained me, brainwashed me to please him. But he did much worse than that, Nate… I think he trained you to love me enough to go through anything for me.”

I don’t even get a breath before he is crushing me to his big chest, his fingers threaded through my hair as he breathes hard, and I can smell his heavy scent that makes me ache.

“That’s what you think?”

I nod into his chest, ignoring the fresh tears.

“I can promise you, that is not why I love you.”

“I can’t know that for certain. At least with Paul―” He pushes me from him, holding me firm so he can look into my eyes.

“He doesn’t love you, Charlie. You have to know that. What he does to you…” he glances at my forehead, where I have cleverly covered Paul’s temper behind makeup, and back to my eyes.

“He does. Just not how he should. He does his best with what he can. I am the same, and he gets that.”

Nate squeezes my shoulders tighter. I know he doesn’t know it, but I feel every bit of his anger and disgust in his gripping fingertips that will probably leave their mark, and his pained gawk that will leave its own kind of mark… the kind that won’t heal.

“That’s not true,” he rushes, shaking his head, tears brimming his re, rimmed eyes. “He’s just as evil as your father. How can you stay with him?”

“Because it’s all I know.”

“No, it’s not!” he retorts with a steely glare, daring me to argue because I do know a different love. We both knew a different love once.

“You’re right. But it’s all that I will ever get.” It’s also all I ever want without Nate.

“You can’t do this to us. You don’t understand, Charlie, I can’t do what you ask because you stole my heart when we were kids, I can’t give it to another.” A new lonely tear falls down his cheek and catches in his dark stubble. I fight to not brush it away, I hate that I’m doing this to him; I wish he understood that I’m doing this all
for
him.

“
You
don’t understand… I don’t want to
steal
it.”

“
What do you want, then?
”
He shakes me once, his stare driving past the wall I try to uphold in front of my soul.

“I want you to give it to me, to choose me.” His jaw drops and I can see he understands now. “Daddy took that choice away from you, and now I’m giving it back. But the only way to know with absolution that you have broken his tie to me, is to really try and give your heart to another.”

“I don’t want to.”

I smile wryly. “I know. I would love nothing better than to say yes to you, but the best I can do is say no to Paul. The deal I offer is, you try to find love, and I will end it with Paul.”

“We could start our new lives together right now; the life we always dreamed of. I want you to leave that bastard, but what’s the point of you leaving him and sending me to another woman.”

“I’m leaving because I know Paul will probably kill me one day if I stay, and you will never be at peace to live your life when you want to rescue me from mine.”

“I want to kill him.”

“And that’s why I will leave tonight.”

“Where will you go?”

“For a couple of days, I will go to the Grandview.”

“You know―” I hush him with my finger to his lips.

“Stop rescuing me and go live your life. I’m doing what you wanted; I’m going to be free of this caustic relationship and finally be safe as I try to work through my own demons. You need to work through yours… even if it means saying goodbye to me forever, or giving yourself to another and just being my friend. If, at the end of it, we find each other again, then we know it’s real.”

Again Nate pulls me to his chest and for the last time I draw the scent of him in. He smells fresh and woodsy, something I will never forget or replace. My hands grip the back of his shoulder blades, taking note of his bandage, and then down his thick arms that are colored with intricate ink. I hope one day I will be able to hold him as mine, but it’s not likely, so I need to remember everything about this last embrace, about the man in my arms who shares the same shadows that I do. I want to feel his breath on my neck forever, for one last time let him kiss me there and make me shudder. I wish, just once, we had made love as adults so I could feel his everything against mine and tighten around him while he was inside me―just once, so I could have it forever.

Before I change my mind, before my body takes over once again and gives in to the charge that’s always between us. I push from his arms, and this time, he lets me slip from them reluctantly. He stays, sad and defeated as I walk from the shadows of the tree tops back out onto the open grounds that lead to the lake and the loving folks of Beaver Dam spending time with their families.

As I thought, Paul has left. He would be furious and no doubt dangerous. I won’t wait for him to return home before taking my things, which are still boxed in the garage. All I need to do is pack a case of clothes. I’ll move my stuff out and come back and wait for him in the front garden to return his keys and his freedom. It’s safer that way.

I make my apologies and kiss Nona and Davey goodbye. Without looking back, I head to my car and drive off to face the next step in my life.

I don’t hear the music playing from my speakers or see the rivers of tar that lead to Paul’s. But when I make that final turn, I see one thing that makes my blood run colder than ice. The brown boxes lining the sidewalk, the garbage is overflowing with my clothes and piles sit beside in a heap; it signaled my life.

My foot slips from the accelerator, and I roll the last of the distance. I come to a complete stop in the middle of the road, outside what was the place I shared a life with a man who has decided I’m not worth it anymore. It shouldn’t hurt; I should be relieved, even, but I’m not. I’m scared. My belongings could burn for all I care right now.

If a monster didn’t want me, then who would?

I SMELL HIM BEFORE
anything else. He has this woodsy smell that’s all Nate and no one else. It’s relaxing and healing, but that’s Nate to a T.

I feel his heavy breath on my shoulder and the small jarring of his steps before I realize I’m floating. I’m being carried. My eyes fight me, but they finally open like I will them to. I see his dark gray tee, the red check of his shirt, the shining silver of his Saint Christopher, and then up over the olive, glistening skin of his neck to his jaw which is bunched tight and just showing small signs of facial hair. He doesn’t have a lot of hair, but I guess most guys just shy of their eighteenth birthday don’t.

“Hey there,” he says so softly. It’s almost like I’m dreaming with him gazing down into my eyes, the clear blue sky above, right before a shadow cast over him. The dream ends when I notice the red. There are two slivers of thick blood that have congealed above his cheekbone starting just above the angry red swelling by his right eye. A small split in his brow is the culprit, and instantly,
everything
comes rushing back—the reason I’m being carried, why I fainted, why Nate is bleeding for me.

I whimper, not able to help the stupid sound coming from me; it just does, and Nate stops walking. I’m not even aware of where he’s taking me or how long I’ve been unconscious until he’s tilting me, so my feet meet the ground. He doesn’t let me go, whether he is afraid I’ll fall or faint again, or what, but I’m grateful because I don’t trust my body at all. My hand is trembling as it reaches one of the droplets of blood that looks like a deadly tear, and I feel the dampness of it against my finger. It’s so bright against my finger, and so real. This is different to every wound Nate has ever had, or I have cared for. For eleven years I have tended to his scrapes, cuts and bruises, from falls, accidents or brawls, yet this is different… this was from Daddy.

My father has never hurt Nate or me, not ever. This changes everything.

“It’s nothing, Charlie,” Nate says, so gently I feel a little dazed. Had I missed something? Daddy has hit him. That is
not
nothing! For eleven years Daddy has not touched Nate like that. He doesn’t hug either of us, or hold our hands, never yells at us or punishes us, even though there were many times he should have. We were his pride and joy, his possessions for him to play with. Daddy hitting Nate means our lives had just changed so profoundly there was nothing to trust in anymore. Daddy was a man of habit; we could trust in that. Today, when he called for me, it all disintegrated.

“We aren’t safe anymore, Nate.”

Nate guided me to his bed, and for the first time, I realize we are in his room. He strides back to his door and closes it before returning to me, kneeling on the floor before me. He has grown so much in the last two summers, width and height; he towers over me when we stand.

“You’re going to stay here from now on, okay. Nona will be fine with it; it’s not much different to before anyway.”

“It’s a lot different. I can’t live here,” I say, looking at his bed and then back at his hazel eyes, they are darker than usual, and I know it’s the worry for me that does that to him.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way. You and I, Charlie. That’s how it has always been and always will be. There is nothing that can change that for as long as you want it that way.”

“What about my stuff, my clothes? What about what people will say?”

“We will collect your stuff when your dad goes to work. As for anyone else and their opinions, since when do you care what folks think of you?”

I smirk and stroke his jaw. “I don’t care what they think of me; I care about what they think of you.”

He cups my hand to his cheek, the blood smudging a little over his skin. “Nothing matters but our family. You, I, Davey, and Nona. Got it?”

“Got it.”

He smiles, leans his forehead against mine so our noses touch, and I see two of him.

“You are safe now. By my side, I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”

I pull my head away a little and kiss to the side of his split skin before looking him in the eye again. “And I will never let anyone hurt you again either, Nathan Shaw.”

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY
times in my life where I felt I couldn’t possibly do what needs to be done, where giving up would be so much fucking easier. But then I see her face in my mind, and I know I can’t give up.

I can’t do what she wants me to do, either; that I know without a shadow of a doubt. I have had women since her, of course, but this is different. I can see a future with Charlie if she would just allow it. I completely understand what she thinks is true, and had I not been going to therapy since my incarceration, I would believe it too. One blessing came out of all this, and that would be my therapy, followed by my outreach group. One night a month I spill my feelings and thoughts with other survivors of abuse.

It still scares me to share, it still scares me to listen to other peoples pain, and it scares the living fuck out of me how many of us are really out there.

We aren’t friends, or even acquaintances, nothing like that; they don’t know my job, that I like sugar in my coffee, or that I now wake up in a cold sweat from my old nightmares. My personal life is mine and mine alone. We are survivors who will be there for one another if they needed help, a face to say the words “It’s not your fault.” That is all, and that is fine. The only thing wrong with that is, now I need to bring my personal life into the group. I healed through voicing my nightmares, and I think it’s time Charlie does, too.