Transcending Nirvana (Dark Evoke #3) (3 page)

Unbinding my fingers from his neck, I gathered the seam of the T-shirt I was sporting and lifted it up and over my body before dropping it to the flooring, then peeled my underwear down my legs. “Well,”––I hitched an innocent shoulder––“the offer is open,” and as I stepped into the tub and under the torrent, I could hear his low, rumbling chuckle, followed by the word ‘
women’
, being sighed from behind the curtain.

Encumbered somewhat by yesterday’s grime, I surrendered myself to the gloriously addictive heat and closed my eyes, letting each scalding droplet settle on my flesh and cleanse me. Regardless of all reassuring and cherished contact emanated from Walker’s hands upon me, I wanted to wash away the thoughts and evidence of each and every violation that Liam took pleasure in undertaking from my skin. Although I knew that relieving myself from the damaged thoughts that the man shaped was going to be much harder, the torrent discharging me from the physical violations, would have to suffice.

The mere thought of Liam’s name had my stomach flipping, and a powerful sense of foreboding cloaked me, as if I’d stepped into some ominous shadow which was going to suck the life from my very being. All I could do was hope that my life would be restored, wherever my newfound journey would take me.

Through the clamorous noise of the spewing water and the incensing pipework, the drape was pulled back, the shower gel and loofa torn from the metal shower caddy. Within a few seconds, over my back and shoulders, lightly cleansing circles were made, resulting in pleasurable moans being ripped from my throat, and an amused chuckle torn from his. My ankle was tapped twice, indicating for me to part my legs. As I did, the sponge was taken down my behind, thighs and calves. Sensitivity spawned from the pinnacle between my legs as the sponge, alongside the burning heat of the water, stroked each round and oval blemish. My tales of a very much remembered and inescapable story…

Sucking air between my teeth, I was asked if I was alright, the pressure behind my cleansing easing minutely before returning to a northern site.

Smiling, I craned my head over my shoulder to face him. “You’re getting wet.”

“’Aye, I’ll be fine, darlin’. A little water won’t kill me.”

“Just come in with me…please,” I pulled my best doe-eyed, pleading expression with pouting lips, still, he sniggered and shook his head, decisive.

“Kady, I just want to look after you for now. I’ve wanted to do it for as long as I can remember. Please, don’t take that from me.”

Taking extra care not to slip in the tub, I turned my entire body to face him. The rebounding spray of the shower blanketed his arms, turning the black ink of his tribal tattoo almost gloss-like, and although his tank top was black, I could see it was absorbing its fair share of water. I watched him as he studied me, with his simple smile displaying his adoration in plenty. Yet I could sense a further underlying explanation, and it was one I knew was going to be a mammoth of a hurdle to overcome.

“Are you scared to show me again?”

An exasperated breath followed my name as Walker groaned his complaint. The sponge dropped back into its place and his hands found their way into his hair as he turned his back to face me.

“Walker they won’t keep me away, I can handle it.”

I jolted when he spun at high velocity on his heel to face me once again, with a riled glaze in his eyes. His arms were demanding, maddened and heavy as his hands left his hair and gathered the hem of the tank-top containing his perfectly imperfect body.

“You think you can handle it?” he snapped, winding me with his intensity of his incense and affront. Muscles rippled and hardened, shadows formed below each abdominal making them even more distinct as he dropped the material to the floor. “For Christ sake, look at me, Kady,” he raised his voice over the sound of the torrent, his lilt coming thick and grave as he stood motionless, his arms outspread like wings of a fallen angel, offering an unobstructed view of his body. “I’m a fuckin’ wreck. Each one of these holds a painful fuckin’ memory.”

“Then let me help you.”

“It’s not that simple, darlin’,” his voice was smoother, yet still held a discernible amount of mockery. “This one,”––he motioned to a gash just above his left hipbone,––“was done when I was fourteen, my very first self-inflicted wound all because a kid at school insulted my ma, and I was under assessment after God knows how many suspensions and I couldn’t afford to get kicked out. I smashed a glass bottle and hacked myself up at lunch. This one,”––he pointed to a round blemish, slightly larger than the ones on my thighs,––“I used the exact same method as you when I found out my ma was sick. This one,”––his fingers came to the silver slash over the right side of his ribs, the first one I had touched.––“This one I did last year, the day I came to visit you when I found out that cunt had you locked away in Pinewood.”

I was standing in front of him as he bared his all to me. Seeing his emotional pain and his anger had my vision blurred. It wasn’t my intention to have him rehash all those distressing memories, yet here we were, and it was me making him hurt.

“This fucking one,” the thunderous sound when he slapped his hand against the withered, leather-like flesh on his pectoral, ricocheted around the bathroom like a gunshot. “This hideous, grotesque fucking mutilation was me losing fucking control the day I had to put my ma in the fucking ground––” I had never seen Walker’s eyes darken as much as they did at that point in time. It expelled the breath from my lungs and all I could do was gasp, while his face turned stern and the moisture settling in his eyes betrayed his internal pain. “You want to know how I did it, Kady?” he grated, closing the distance between us with menacing steps. “Do you want me to tell you how much I fucking screamed when I poured that pot of scalding water down my chest at seventeen, because I just wanted to strip that pain and grief from my motherfucking bones?” his voice broke and by the end of his admission, his voice was practically earsplitting with his outburst, at the same time, a glistening trail of an escaped tear fell from his cheek.

Water beads ran into my eyes as my head tumbled forward. What do you say to someone after they give up that chunk of anguish to you? Doing so under your own intent is welcomed, but I just backed him into a corner to extract this information from him. I forced him to let me in. Guilt thwarted my system.

“What are you thinking?” he asked his beaten tone virtually restful.

The Walker I had come to know and feel for was tough yet caring; he would put anyone before himself. I’d never once seen this side of him, this level of profuse pain and torment was so new. It was torturing observing him so agonized. “More like, ‘what am I feeling’?”

He frowned at my unexpected words.

“I’ve never felt closer to you.” Naked from the waist up, Walker took another step towards the bath side. My hands stirred as I placed them onto his defined shoulders, briefly kneading at the burdened muscles hidden beneath golden skin. I gazed down into his conflicted eyes which displayed an ocean full of pain, and ocean full of hope, and licked my lips. “One day it’ll be my turn to save you.”

“Fuck it,” he breathed, his hand moving toward his waistband. Before I knew it, his sweats were being kicked to the corner of the bathroom and he stepped into the tub with me. Within an instant, my body was pinned against the cold, wet tiled wall, his hands fisting into my sodden hair before his thumbs settled on my jaw. His tongue took what it wanted, exploring my mouth in fluid, sensual strokes, while his muscular body was clutched at by needy hands. His right hand left my hair and skated down the length of my body, seizing my left leg behind the knee and hooking it over his hip.

Feeling his excitement for me growing in more ways than one, my hips began grinding against him. He was only a few precious millimeters from impaling me; I felt his crown slipping over my center, pushing against me once again, as though searching for consent.

“You’re killing me, Kady,” he sighed against my lips.

As I tipped my head back farther to seal our lips together anew, the words, “I’m sorry,” tumbled from my mouth.

“You got nothing to be sorry for, darlin’.” The strength behind his grip lessened as he moved from behind my knee, to grasp my jaw, and restrained me with a look of sincerity that was so intense, I felt it bore into my soul. “I didn’t want to influence you with my flaws, Kady. I didn’t want to mar you with them. Trust me when I say that you’re my biggest one. Seeing what he was doing to you, the marks he left…it hurt more than all of these scars combined. Just because you aren’t
on
me like all of my past hurts, doesn’t mean you’re any less a part
of
me, darlin’.”

The hand which was cupping my jaw, slipped away, trailing over the curvature of my neck, while his brow fell against my own. “This is me, Kady,” he began, grasping my hand and pressing it against the heart of the physical evidence of his greatest sorrow, and eclipsed it with his own. “This is the result of what losing control can do, and the reason why I need to be the one to help if you need it.” Our fingers were locked when he thumped against it urgently, as if fortifying his point, before making a forced circular motion with my hand, almost as if my touch had the power to erase it. The texture was alien against my palm. “Could you love someone this imperfect, because that’s all I’m asking for from you, darlin’?”

I could’ve asked him the same question. The degree of resolve I felt coursing to the surface had my skin heated, my jaw set and burned in my eyes. With our hands locked, I guided him to my inner thigh and held it forcefully against the evidence of my own pain and self-destruction. “Could you?” I redirected his question.

A growing smile of relief alleviated the minutes of intensity and sorrow. He nodded, utilizing a firm pressure of his fingertips as my flaws were clutched in silent promise. “These are our stories, Kady, the stories of our past.”

He was right. They were the stories of our past, stories of pain, loss of control in aspects of pushing barriers or unwillingly having the power of your own decisions taken from you, abuse…release.

For a fleeting moment, we stood motionless and silent beneath the torrent, adrift in the other’s eyes before we lurched at each other once again. Ragged, labored gasps and pants sounded between urgent kisses, while our wet bodies clutched, pressed and slipped over one another.

In that moment, I realized and welcomed the fact that it was time to move on and create a new future; it was time to begin a new story––our story.

Wide-eyed, my heart picked up a hasty rhythm, as, even through the sound of gushing water and the God awful squealing of aged pipes, the ceaseless banging on the apartment door was caught, pulling us from our moment of revelation and desire.

“Goddamn luck of the fuckin’ Irish.”

I tossed my head back to rest against the tile lined wall. “People aren’t plotting against you just because you’re Irish, Walker.”

“You sure about that?”

One simple thought flashed through my head, dragging me kicking and screaming from our highly erotic trice, back to reality. The natural response of my lungs was forfeited, while my eyes flared at the potential hazard waiting beyond the door. “Liam…?”

Around the fogged up room, screeching metal echoed as Walker twisted the valve, bringing an end to the torrent and drew the curtain back further to climb out. “He wouldn’t be able to get into the building darlin’. You’ll be fine.”

“Walker, how do you think
I
got in? All it takes is another tenant of the building to open that door, and that’s it.” My words came at a quiet, although frantic pace. A tireless bout of quaking hijacked my body and my stomach freefell once again, as the mere contemplation of Liam coming anywhere near me, caused the dark, menacing knots of my fear to limit any logical thought.

Gentle hands, which were both warm yet rough, came to settle on each side of my face; still it did nothing to eradicate the sense of penetrating dread. “Kady, I’m not going to let anything happen to you, do you understand, darlin’? He can’t hurt you anymore.” As I watched him wrap a towel around his hips, it occurred to me that, Walker didn’t know the full extent of how severely Liam had already hurt me––someone who he was supposed to love. God only knows what else that man was capable of.

If possible, the knocking sounded again although more forceful and insistent. My legs were shaking so greatly that they almost buckled under my weight. Regardless of the simplicity of merely standing, the difficulty I experienced with such an act must have been noticed, because Walker’s arms were immediately wrapped around my waist, and I was all but lifted out of the tub like a child.

I allowed him to care for me by draping a towel over my shoulders, and was then pulled against his partially covered body, with a chaste kiss pressed against my lips. “You stay in here. I’ll be back in a minute, I promise.”

In a hope to eliminate the ring in my ears and the swaying of double vision after he closed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the hazy bathroom, I perched my trembling body on the edge of the bath and lowered my head between my knees. In that moment, the horrid reality of how unnerving my days would be from that point on, hit me directly. I had never feared running into someone so much, or feared being with someone and them getting hurt because of me. One thing I already knew was that Liam had walking cameras spying on me. There wasn’t one place I’d be able to go and enjoy freely without fear of ramifications.

Despite his unawareness that I remembered the magnitude of our volatile relationship, and what he had done to me, I felt, in some sense, that I was finally free from him and his control. Yet reality, and how my body reacted to the mere chance of running into him, reminded me that I was still his prisoner.

Hastily drying my body, I pulled on the white pair of boxers and T-shirt and stood with my ear against the bathroom door. The cold wet surface seemed to throb against my intently listening ear, while my heart was felt drumming in my throat.

“So you finally opened up. What took you so long?” Finally, a voice which I recognized graced my ears, and for the first time since hearing the door knock, I was able to breathe. With a calming sigh, the bathroom door was pulled open, and I tread quietly down the hallway.

“I’m standing here soaking wet in a towel, and you ask me what’s taken so long? Really?”

“Shut up!” he was countered by the lively voice as I approached the end of the hall. “So how did it go last night? Any progress? I really hope she’s okay, I’ve been tearing my hair out with worry all night.”

With my arms folded across my chest, I craned my head around the corner to the wall along my right, to the sofa. “Mornin’,” I smiled. Unsuspecting of my presence, the petite woman jumped a mile in the air, causing both Walker, who was standing just beyond the coffee table, and me, to grin inanely at her reaction.

“Kady,” she gasped, prior to the Irishman taking the brunt end of her gaping and abrupt questioning. “What happened? What have I missed?”

Over the creaking floorboards, with a smile, I walked and settled under Walker’s arm before putting my friend out of her misery. “I remember, Laurie. I still have questions, but the big picture…I remember.”

If I’d had a camera at my disposal, the expression Laurie was sporting would have been snapped up within an instant. With her mouth agape, her hazel eyes flared and animated, she looked both pleased and utterly stunned at the same time. “I–I have no idea what to say, when did this happen?” she eventually managed to choke out.

It was my turn to look just as perplexed as my friend. I opened my mouth, although struggled to find words to speak, ones to explain. The draping of Walker’s arm over my shoulder drew me further into his hard muscle. It was a gesture equally gentle and reassuring; One which almost silently asked permission to talk
for
me. I offered my unspoken answer by nestling further against his body.

“Long story,” he said simply with his lips gradually lowering to settle on my head. Releasing me from under his arm, he spoke one word, “Coffee?”

“Any chance of something stronger? My nerves are still shot.”

Laurie frowned. “Nerves? Why? What else has happened?”

Good grief, for such a small thing, Laurie didn’t half ask a lot of questions. She was placed under our direct attention as we turned simultaneously. “We thought you were Liam,” Walker sighed.

The moment that name was hanging in the air around us, the room fell silent, the atmosphere thick and stifling. “I’m so sorry, I––”

“No need to apologize, cuz. Coffee?”

Walker made his way to the kitchen after his question was answered by the insistent nod of her head, and I rounded the table to take up the unfilled seat next to our guest on the couch.

“So, this is big, girlie,” her endearment prompted a snort from me. My teeth were sheathed by my lips while my lingering inspection remained firmly on the edge of the coffee table. She must have picked up on my reticence because it was the warm, encouraging hand on my knee, as she asked, “How are you feeling?” that finally drew my vacant gazing towards her.

For the first time since walking back into this apartment, my little fluffy cloud dispersed from underneath me and I crash-landed back to reality. Elbows braced on my thighs, I filled my lungs and buried my face in my hands. “I feel completely deserted.”

“Deserted? Kady, you’re far from deserted, you have me and Walker––”

The strength bared through my arms was lost; I let them crash under the burdening weight as my face was freed from clammy palms. “But no clothing, no phone, no home, no money––” forcing myself to peek up, I sighed and shook my head. “Laurie, everything I had was bought with Liam’s money. I have
nothing
, nadda, zilch. I have no idea what’s going to happen with Ent-icing considering it was his money that got it started…”

“That’s not entirely true,” my ears were caressed by a pleasant brogue yet left me internally burning with consuming guilt.
For fuck sake…
Walker already felt like a failure, that I knew, and now he had just heard how I
truly
felt. He set the mugs on the old, rickety table between the couch and the old chair, opposite.

His notifying me of my awaiting Irish coffee fell on deaf ears. “What do you mean, ‘not entirely true’?” I asked, my voice teeming with wariness while my gaze swept from an almost naked Walker, to a rather morally-torn Laurie. Walker’s level of security while standing in his apartment, sporting only a towel with his scars on full display in Laurie’s presence, was a fleeting contemplation as curiosity got the best of me.

“Kady,” springs in the sofa reverberated when Laurie shimmied to perched herself on the very edge of the cushion. “Do you remember who used to do the books for Ent-icing?”

In hope to grasp at another loose end of a finely woven memory, I strained my mind to catapult me back. “Umm…” wrinkles deepened and spanned across my brow as I scowled into oblivion with a faint shake of my head. “I–I can’t…it’s the little things I just can’t…I…”

“It was my Da.”

“Carriag?” I sighed, fighting yet losing battle against the hazy sections of my memory which refused to be recalled. “I don’t understand; what’s this got to do with anything?”

To my right, a loud intake of air sounded. When I turned to face her, she was hooking her lengthy red bangs behind her ear and swept her tongue over her glossy lips. It was obvious that she was warring with some part of herself, too, with her jaw continuously dropping, and freeing only silent words. “Each week when Carriag sorted the books, several hundred dollars would go unprecedented and would be put into a private account where no one knew anything of its existence.”

What the fuck was she talking about? Wait…wasn’t that a form of embezzlement? Jesus Christ, thing were going from confusing to unrealistic within seconds. “Laurie, no offense, but what the fuck are you saying?”

“She’s saying that if you’d decided to leave Liam, you wouldn’t be stranded because a safety net was created for you, darlin’. Using money that there’s no record of, so there’d be no ramifications.”

At that point, I was merely sitting on that couch surrounded by yet more questions and unsure whether to feel grateful or downright mortified. However, there was one thing I knew without a shadow of doubt: I felt totally naïve.

Laurie’s subsequent words were a supplicant gathering in the ringing of my ears. “Kady, please say something.”

“Say something? What do you want me to say?” an incredulous snort cloaked my words, sending her gaze tumbling to her lap. “I don’t know whether to feel beyond grateful that you considered this day could ever happen and created that net for me or whether to feel utterly mortified because you could see it happening before I could.”

“We did it for you, darlin’.”

“Yeah,” I scoffed. “What else have you two been doing for me, huh?” I chanced a glance at the man to my left, his arms folded over his torso and broadcasting the look of unreserved guilt across his face. “I already know that you knew about what Liam and Liv were getting up to, what about you, Laur? Did you know that my best friend was fucking my partner for over a year and keeping it from me?”

“She didn’t know anything,” Walker interjected.

“A–and what do you mean, ‘a different account’? What account?”

How a sniffle can be shrouded by so much culpability I have no idea, but redirecting my focus to the man at my left, with his head hanging down and rocking back and forth on his bare feet, I found I already knew the answer.

“You?” I breathed. Too apprehensive about learning more truths, it took numerous second before I could even find the will to carry on speaking. “The night of the accident, you said you had money and we could get away so he’d never find us. Is that the money you were suggesting that we used?”

“Kady––” Usually, the tone in which my name fell from his lips, sounding like ‘Katy’, would have had me calmed instantly and a conversant warmth radiating through my heart. Nevertheless, I felt utterly betrayed and what’s more, embarrassed that all these people around me could see how flawed my life was when I refused to believe it and see it for myself, because I was too damn scared to.

“Shut it, Walker!” I pointed a berating finger at him. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anymore lies
or truths
for that matter. Understand?
FUCK THIS
!” I shouted, shunting myself from the edge of the sofa and making my way heavily down the hall, his insistent steps trailing behind me.

“Kady, please stop, let’s talk about thi––” his plea was terminated by the slamming of his bedroom door.