Turn around.
Let me see your face.
Is it the same? Or has age changed that, too?
My mind can see the child’s face as it was and imagine what the woman looks like now, but I need to see it. To know if the boy I was, knew something the man I am should have known years ago.
But part of me never wants her to turn around, because if she does and what I feel isn’t the same…maybe Nonna was wrong.
Maybe I had my one soulmate, and thinking that I could find another woman to love is a foolish boy’s dream…nightmare. Something to take away from the unearthly love I lost.
“Fiona,” Hope shouts to get her attention.
This is it. Fiona is going to turn around and dash my foolish musings.
Only she doesn’t right away. She freezes in place.
Did we startle her? Does she know I’m here? Is she thinking the same thing?
Fool! She hasn’t seen you in decades. Fiona probably doesn’t even remember you.
Why would she?
Why would—
The world tilts as Fiona twists around on one decidedly high heel, and our eyes meet.
For a brief second, it feels like our souls are being introduced without a single word. Like she’s feeling exactly the same way that I am.
But that spell is broken as her body starts to wobble, not because of my eyes losing focus, but because she lost her balance.
I dash forward, reaching my arms out to grab her before her head cracks on the hard ground below us.
The guttural scream that bursts from her brings me back to the sound she made all those years ago when I touched her.
My soul falls from my body, lost in her pain.
Rage On The Street
Max
My body quakes with her pain as I move both of us into an upright position.
What do I do?
Letting her go doesn’t seem right.
But there are tears pouring out of the corners of her eyes.
How do I comfort someone when I’m the thing that caused her distress?
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
Me.
Her.
The world that caused a woman to scream like that when a man protects her.
