Roar (19 page)

My lids are heavy against the sliver of sunlight beaming upon us from the gap in the curtains. In fact, everything except my heart feels heavy, almost a dull ache. Oh, but I relish in every ache, for it was given from passion and an abundant of trust and love. I will never get enough of this man who’s lying naked beside me, the same sliver of light casting a glow through the small amount of hair on his chest. I can’t help myself, I run my fingers across his warm skin, bathed in light.

It represents so much about him and his effect on my life. If we could stay in this motel room for the rest of our lives, I would have no doubt we would live happily ever after. He would be my Peter and I his Wendy. We would make our own adventures without thought or care of the outside world. The universe would grow old while in this room we would remain the same, seduced by looks and touches and a dream for it all to never end.

“Good morning,” he moans, deliciously satisfied.

“Morning.” I don’t stop my easy roam of my fingers across his skin because he’s way too beautiful in the sunlight to deny such things.

“What time is it?”

I glance at the digital clock beside the bed, “Seven-twenty.”

Nate jolts under my hand and shoots from the bed, instantly I miss his warmth. “Shit, shit, shit. I’m late.” He’s jumping, literally, into his pants. It’s so goddamn sexy.

“For a very important date?” I tease even though I feel anything but bright over him leaving. Didn’t Alice give chase to her rabbit? Should I go with him?

He’s pulling his shirt over his head and kneels on the bed in front of me, his face saddened. “I don’t want to go, Charlie. I want to stay here forever, but this is extremely important to what I do. I have a meeting and the people attending are relying on me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

He smiles, leans in, taking my cheeks in his hands just before he kisses me. “Pack up your shit, I’ll leave you my key, and I’ll meet you at my place as soon as I can get away.” He’s sliding from the bed and fiddling with his keys as I absorb his presuming and his reasons why.

“Nate, I don’t think I should move in with you. Our love hasn’t burnt out, I know that, but a lot has happened in our lives. We’re strangers in love with our pasts.”

Frozen, I feel his incredulous glare right through to my bones, giving me goose-pimples. I pull the sheet up under my neck and manoeuvre myself off the bed, keeping my body covered. This isn’t going to be good. In fact, it’s going to be rough. I don’t want to be lying naked in the bed we had only hours ago made love in countless times when it all goes to hell. I don’t want to stain those memories with harsh words that were sure to come in the pain of the moment. When I close my eyes after he leaves here, I want to see our love, not our pain.

“I know what you’re saying, and I think it’s not an excuse to put the brakes on. We know each other where it counts, and we love each other. What possibly could you need to know other than that?”

“
Everything
.”

He thrust his hand through his messy hair and groans into the air before looking at me again, his eyes so tired. “Those things are trivial and we will have all the time in the world to learn them. Couples who get married learn new things about their spouses every day, even after marriage. What we know about one another surpasses all that.”

“So what’s the rush? Why must we do it today?” We’re both starting to get irritated over the others inability to understand. I hate that words can take everything good away, bringing us both down from such a delirious high. But that’s half our problem, I guess.

“You can’t keep living in limbo, Charlie. You gotta move on.”

“How am I living in limbo?”

“This”―He thrust his arms out, waving them about— “is not living! Staying in a motel is not moving on. This room is your limbo, and I’m scared if you stay here any longer you’ll be stuck.”

“
Stop trying to fix me
!” I yell, my throat raw. My heart aches and I want to throw something at him; I want to kiss him and tell him I’m scared too, I want to move on.

What I do is walk over to limbo’s door, gripping my sheet around my body with one hand, I open the door with the other and stare at my feet trying my best not to cry or look at him. If I do either, he will think he has a hope of winning this battle, and I have no intention of allowing it. We don’t have time for the discussion we need to have and definitely not the patience. If this is what our love is, I’m not sure I’m strong enough.

Nate stops in the doorway, in front of me, the toe of his boots almost touching my toes. His breath sweeps through my hair as his hands clench into fists with one of them gripping his keys. Then, just like that, like I silently pleaded, he walked out of my limbo and my life. For how long? I don’t know. By the rev of his truck’s engine and the squeal of protest from the rubber of his tires, I fear the worst.

When will the battle scars of our bounded lives ever heal?

I slam the door and crumble to the floor giving up, because giving up is all I have in me now.

I TRY SO HARD
to conjure the faith that everything will turn out right. I try so fucking hard, but she tests me. She calls out to all my fears. I want to hold her and protect us from all our fucked-up fears and past. Under my skin, my blood runs so hot just for her, and it would have even if we weren’t subjected to such a nightmare of a childhood. I would have loved her anyway. I want so much for her, but above all, I want her to be free―always have. Yet, no matter what I do, she closes that cage on herself and cowers in the corner.

I slam the steering wheel with my fist at my stupidity. She doesn’t want me to fix her, to help her, but I can’t stop. I want to help her, to fix her problems if I can. Like the selfish asshole I am, I want to be the reason she doesn’t give up. I want to be the one she moves forward for, and I want all these things so we can finally be together because together we can be anything—fight for everything together. I did it for her, and I know she can do it for us.

I pull into the lot of town hall over ten minutes late for my appointment, looking like a bum instead of a businessman. I can’t believe I risked losing so much by being so stupid as to not set an alarm on my phone. No matter what happens between Charlie and I, I have to remember that there are people’s lives in my hands. I don’t mean life and death like a firefighter has, but their day-to-day lives and their future dreams of settling into the life of honest men, some with families to support and some alone. At the end of the day though, they want something more out of their lives than a prospect of minimum wage and the outlook of facing another term in a cell.

Running up the stairs, I rush into the conference room I always use. The door bangs against the wall, echoing off the polished timber, making me wince and startling the three men and our parole officer, John Hollis. In three months’ time John Hollis will no longer be
our
parole officer and just
theirs
, and as much as I owe that old goat, I can’t wait to be liberated from him in that respect.

“Sorry, I’m late.” I rush to the long table and take a seat by John, who is giving me that analyzing judgement, which I fucking hate. “My name is Nathan Shaw.” I hold my hand out to each of them as they introduce themselves to me, and I begin the spiel I have perfected through repetition. I think in the nine times I have conducted these inductions, only one man has rejected my offer. Never have I rejected them, because I know all too well the need for a new start and only two have let me down since their employment. Today was another success, and within two and half hours I had three new recruits ready to start in Shaw Construction.

Usually after an induction I bounce around on a high of self-satisfaction, but as I watch the three men leave the room I slouch into my chair and sigh.

“Out with it, boy.” John puffs, making the corner of my mouth lift for a second.

I rub my face, feeling the stubble fight against my flesh. “She’s killing me.”

“Awe, Nathan, you should know better than to allow a skirt to make you lose sleep.”

I tilt me head, look at him and laugh. “I lose sleep over her, I lose patience because of her… I lose my breath near her.”

“Dear Lord, you’ve got it bad, boy.”

I rub my chin, contemplating on whether to tell him the truth. Fuck it. He’ll hear in this town anyway. “I never stopped loving her.”

John leans forward; he’s so close I can see the red capillaries in his eyes. “Yeah, I guess, but you need to control it. Charlie may be the anchor in your heart, but anchors weigh you down, they drag you beneath the surface to drown.”

I nod, but hate how he says her name like she’s a dirty secret. What happened to us was dirty, but she is not, and never will be, no matter what happens between us. Charlie’s one in a million; brave strong and beautiful, she’s my one in a million.

“Yeah,” I say, because to a point he is right.

“I thought when Noel let you out after the trump charges, you’d come by and see me. I didn’t get to talk to you, and you never explained what the hell was going on that day, but…”

“You remember when I tracked her down years ago?” He nods and I continue, “I thought she was happy back then, ya know? I told you I could move on knowing she was. I did move on, and I made something out of myself. I help others find their path and feel great about it. I did all this, and it turned out she was anything but happy. The guy abuses her, he beats her. I don’t fucking know how far he has gone with her and for how long… I could kill him.”

“Don’t fucking talk like that. He could have you back in court like that”―John clicks his fingers in my face and all I see is my cell door close.

“I know.”

“So, what? Is she still with him?”

I shake my head, glad for that at least. “No. The last time I saw you, was the last time she saw him, I believe.”

“What about at her work?”

“She’s got some time off at the moment.” I wonder when she will go back or if. How will she work in the same department as that fucker?
Fuck.
I never gave a thought to that. Just another thing to worry about, another thing she will be angry at me about, because no matter how many times she tells me that she can handle herself and doesn’t need me to fix it, I will always want to and never stop trying.

This shit pile is getting bigger and bigger.

“I don’t know,” I continue honestly. I wish I could say she would leave or find another department, but she will do what she wants and I have to let her, or I will lose her.

HE’S RIGHT, AND HE’S
wrong. We’re in opposite sides of the ring, yet we’re fighting for the same thing―each other. So how do we keep fucking this up? It shouldn’t be this hard… life shouldn’t be this hard.

I never thought I would be doing this, and yet here I am with my meager possessions, with the key in my hand, staring at the doorknob. It’s the only way to fight my way back into his arms, the only way forward. I slide the key in, my hand shaking as I turn it and open the old timber door.

For some reason, I expected to see the remnants of the scene I left in the hall of my childhood home. But what lay before me is just a stark reality of what happens over time; people are forgotten, possessions are worth nothing, and memories are just that.

Barely breathing, I walk through, past the living room where the furniture is covered in white dust sheets. Who did this? Who would care? Then it hits me: Nona.

I’m in the place where my worst nightmare came true, where all our lives as we knew them came to a violent end. The off-white tiles show no danger of what took place; they don’t show the first drop of blood spilt from me or Daddy. There’s nothing left but the memories which will always haunt me, and yet the choice I’ve made today after I cried myself almost to oblivion has me meeting with my demons.

I’ve always treated this place like a talisman of my past, something I moved on from. But Nate is right. I haven’t moved on; I just pressed skip and have been passing off my existence as a life. I chose a job which helped people, though made sure I would never see them again, never feel invested. I live uninvested!