“I don’t know what the fuck to do. How can you love two women at the same time with the same fire and fierceness that it hurts?” All I can do is blink the double vision of him away from my eyes as he closes his own and presses his head to mine. “I couldn’t change her fate and I don’t want the same fate to take you, Jade. I couldn’t handle to lose another to the cruel world that is me and this. It’s already tainted your flesh,” he says like he could have stopped what those dicks did to me. It was like a frat party gone wrong. I can't even process what has happened, let alone hold the mental space for him to place blame on something he didn’t even know was happening.
“I want to take it all away for you, little bird. All the hurt, the nightmares… give it all to me let me take it.”He speaks again, his words flowing out fast, as if he was hijacking his screaming mind, that he needs to speak over and over. Like he needs to unleash his feeling and unravel his emotions in order to allow me to see the good and not focus on the evil. But it’s the evil that sits behind his eyes that holds the sick power over me. I wanna know it, feel it, taste it.
Without knowing, I lift my hands from the water to cup each side of his face. “Don’t hold your demons on leads around me. Let them run free as you never know, they may just wanna make love with mine.” His eyes widen as his lip tremble. His hands shake on my skin, matching the chilled shiver from my body. His shaking was fear of me knowing the truths that lay behind his irises, and mine was from the stone-cold water mixed with the feeling of my walls breaking down with the knowledge of a man, with a fire for the same dark that my mind dances with. He just doesn’t know it yet.
“I will not tame my demons, 81, and I don’t expect you too either.”
I speak to him as he leans back on his haunches, reaching for a towel behind him. He stands and scoops my body from the bathtub, the smell of jasmine mixes with leather and rain causing an aroma that has a moan leaving my body. It ripples over the skin of his neck into the colorful ink that is painted over his taunt skin.“I wish you could see my tears, Jade,” he wraps the towel around me.
“I wish you could see that my smile is actually a façade so that people don’t really see just how broken I am,”I say into him as he lowers us back to the floor. His arms hold me tight, the leather harsh on my skin while his body warmth burns through the fabric and it heats my chilled skin.
“I see it, little bird. I see the cracks in your halo.” His arms tighten around me as he sucks in a deep breath “Let’s just stay here… inside this room, this space and not worry about the world out there,”He lets out the breath into my wet hair
“The crazy thing about this, 81, is that is exactly what my fucked-up mind needs right now. you!”I shudder out. I can feel fresh, warm tears roll from my eyes down my cheek. “Maybe it’s time I opened up and just trusted that you were placed in my road for a reason,” I say into his chest. His heartbeat fast then slow. Fast then slow. It's like it's deciding if he is dead or alive.
“Maybe it’s time I started to feel more than pain and loss." He moves his chin from the top of my head to rest against the wall. “I just wish I could be more than what I was with her for you.” His words hung heavy in the room.
“I wish your hurt didn’t tear you to pieces like it does, because it hurts me being in your arms when you’re in so much pain,” I whisper into the space between us as the darkness takes me back. This time, I have his broken heartbeat to hold onto while I'm gone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
81
“Do you think there is hope for someone that has done bad things?”
Jade and I are both lying on our backs and watching the glistening stars form in the sky when she tilts her head, and it connects softly with mine. “I think that people do bad things for a reason… and if the reason holds truth for the bad, then yes, there is hope. But if that bad was for personal gain, then no, I don’t,” she says as her little fingers seek out mine, twisting them together. Fire leaps through me at her touch alone.
The sun’s beginning to go down, displaying veins of orange and yellow hues in the sky.
“I’ve done some fucked-up shit, little bird, and I’m worried that when you see all thescars you will run." My heart racing under my skin.
“I’ve woken to you in my house while in my bed, breaking and entering. I’ve been drugged inside a club that you call home and been pestered by three women whom all love you more than anything. I feel like I am a fourth wheel in a relationship I’m unsure I’m even in. And I’m being held hostage inside said club where I was drugged and nearly raped by men that you have informed me have been taken care of. God knows what that even means. So, 81, if you think the scars you’re so scared of will cause me to run when all this hasn’t, then you don't know me." She digs her nails into my flesh.
“Your body has given me life, Jade. Please, don’t leave,” I whisper into the fading orange of the day.
“I will try to stay, 81. Just know that I gotta leave this place soon. I can’t stay inside this compound and find out what you and I are when I can barely breathe with all of this around me.”
Knowing where she's coming from, I know I have to let her go. It has been 12 days since that night. Twelve days of me holding her close and sleeping with her wrapped inside my arms, in my bed, where I could listen to her breathe.
Now, I have to let my little bird go. I can no longer hold her inside the metal cage.
“Where do you go at dawn and again at dusk?” She turns onto her side. My blood turns cold. It’s then that I realize that it’s dusk and I haven’t left to see her and my baby.
A light comes on as the heaviness settles like stone inside my veins.
A new pain washes over me. They are my private torment, my private show, mine and mine alone.
“You know I won’t push you, but I would like it if you felt strong enough to share. I know that it’s a hard subject for you, this sharing of one’s life with memories and feelings, but, 81, I would really like to know.” Twisting to look at her the darkening sky holds painful l memories as her eyes begin to taunt me from the clouds.
“Don’t look away, little bird. Keep your eyes on mine,” I beg her with an urgency I cannot explain. She begs me to leave her and kiss the dead, when I know I need to stay with the living. When the sun goes down, I need to stay here, right here, and make new memories with her on this side of the heavens. Change the broken, because even now when I say goodbye it hurts. I need to remember Jade and now like this, under the stars, as night settles… not the shattered, bent and toxic that was Hannah and I.
“I go and speak with the dead, little bird. I sit with a ghost and kiss the son I lost because of a woman who’s desire for drugs was stronger than her love for me and a life the three of us could have had.”
Silence sounds out louder than the pulse inside my ears. She doesn't answer me for the longest time
“Sometimes it’s the bad love that makes it hard to choose between what’s real and fake. Like the false sense of stability drugs give to the real euphoria that love gives. You know it’s easy to misjudge the two as they both give off the same exotic feeling.”
My eyes seek out hers.
