Chapter 10 Kevin the police bear
Kevin the police bear
Severin
The white numbers on the screen of my phone are slowly ticking away. Minute by minute each one turned into another hour.
I’ve said my peace.
I’ve apologized.
She’s accepted it.
End of the story.
Then why the hell am I sitting in my car far enough away so she can’t spot me, but I can see them.
The tips of my fingers slowly run over my mouth and stubble on my face as I watch the tiny, dilapidated house from the distance.
Someone’s boarded up the broken window from earlier and from the distance the house almost looks peaceful with glistening snow covering the roof.
The trees around it swaying quietly in the dead of night.
That thing she calls a car standing alone in the long driveway.
The lights went off forty-three minutes ago, and by all means I should have as well.
I’ve been saying that for hours now, ever since I was on my way home from practice and found myself halfway to this small town instead—yes, all the way from Boston—just mere hours after I came back from it.
I just wanted to make sure those lowlifes didn’t show up again. I needed to make sure they were safe.
I’m not here because I can’t get her mint-colored eyes out of my mind. Cool and crisp but with a long-lasting aftertaste. That hasn’t been a problem for five long years now since they simply live rent-free in my mind.
I’m not here because every heartstring in my body has been pulled tight by that small boy to a point where I’m no longer sure who’s in control.
Me…I’m always in control, before today. Now? I’m fucking rattled. My entire perfectly organized cage is rattled.
He survived. She survived. The heart inside her chest is still beating.
It wasn’t supposed to be beating. She wasn’t supposed to survive.
He wasn’t supposed to survive. Five years of letting go.
Five years of carefully stuffing those days into a faraway box.
And everything came right back at the sight of those eyes.
When I saw them holding her…when I saw Emett standing by their car, crying…they were touching her…
Fuck, my hand curls into a fist to stop the trembling that starts anew at the mere memories.
She’s fine. They’re safe. I watched them dance around the kitchen as older woman I recognized as Stella Gray was washing dishes and shaking her head at their antics. Aurora looked so carefree, so happy, no one in their right mind would suspect she was assaulted just hours before.
She fooled Stella. She fooled Emett. But not me.
I saw every raw emotion she was trying to keep hidden. I felt it pierce straight through me every time she closed her eyes when no one was looking and sent silent prayers.
A humorless chuckle leaves my lips. Do the demons inside her heart bristle every time she prays? They must, because I saw her clutching at her chest.
But I saw, and rage spiked inside me. I’m not sure if I was furious with her or at myself for caring. She means nothing. She’s poison…
But there’s something so different about her. A sadness in those green eyes that’s almost consumed her whole. Apart from one tiny ray of sunlight breaking through an endless night.
Lychik.
I came back to make sure they’re safe. I stayed because I’m not.
I take a deep breath, steadying the ramming heart inside my chest. It makes no sense why I care.
How they’ve gotten under my skin so quickly.
I’ve stopped feeling a long time ago. Feelings are poison.
Feeling is excruciating. And I have no intention of renewing that particular expired subscription.
Yet here I am, binge-watching all the seasons of my guilty pleasure that I’ve missed.
I glance at the clock again. They should be long asleep by now.
Quickly, before I can think better of it, I walk over to my trunk and load my arms with the few boxes I brought with me.
The snow crunching under my steps, but the dark night covers me as I make my way over to the front door.
When I asked the saleswoman for a Kevin the police bear, she looked at me as if I needed a bottle of high-end whiskey in a toy store.
I’ve never bought toys for kids before. I had no idea what I was doing, but when I saw the sadness in Emett’s eyes when he spoke of the toy he lost. All I knew was that he needed Kevin the police bear, and I was going to find it.
It took three fucking stores and seven useless salespeople until a woman who was also shopping for toys directed me to the Build-a-Bear store—who knew they had shit like that?—but I found what I needed.
I set the cartoon box with Kevin at the front of the door and will my legs to move. To leave.
You did everything you could, Severin. Say bye-bye and get the fuck out of here.
Yet I stay there, frozen at the spot, staring at the neat row of boxes along with Kevin.
Is it even the right bear? What if I got something wrong?
“Fuck my life,” I groan out to the dark overcast skies.
This is fucking stupid. I have a damn game tomorrow. I need to be in bed, resting before it. She told me she was capable of handling everything herself so why am I still here? Fueled by my frustration with my own self, I storm across the driveway back to my car.
My fingers gripping the wheel hard enough to bend as I floor the gas before I do something ridiculous like stay out here the whole night. Because I do have that urge.
I have it the whole way home.
That night it isn’t her eyes haunting me. I wake up to the sound of her voice calling out my name, every letter rolling off her tongue as if she was born to say it. As if it belongs there. And I know I’m in deep fucking trouble.
AURORA
I eye the mini army of teddy bears neatly seated in a row on the other side of Emett. I haven’t stopped eyeing it since I opened the front door this morning and saw the distinct white and blue cartoon boxes in shapes of a house from the fancy Build-A-Bear store.
Five of them, to be exact. Five.
My initial thought was that the delivery person mixed up addresses and delivered these to the wrong house.
I was just about to hide them so Emett didn’t accidentally see them and got all excited when we had to give them away when I caught a name written on the closest box in a neat, careful handwriting.
Kevin the police bear.
My breath caught in my throat.
It couldn’t be. No, no, no.
It has to be a mistake. Has. To. Be.
Severin wouldn’t go to trouble buying these bears for my son. Why would he?
While I stood frozen at our doorstep, my mouth still gaping, Emett flew down the hall and came up behind me. He knew exactly what was inside those fancy boxes because they were his wish for his next birthday.
The squeal that came out of him at the sight in front, clued me into the fact that we were not giving these bears away, even if this was indeed some kind of mix-up.
But I knew deep in my heart there was no mix up. I didn’t want to accept it. Didn’t understand the why, but I knew it.
Emett seemed to know it as well because he’s been begging to go see Exton so he could call Mr. Brick to say thank you.
“Minaev! Goddamn it! Are you a (beep) cheesecloth today? It’s not the (beep) Halloween; you’re not supposed to be a ghost!” The expressive shouting coming from the TV pulls my attention from those bears, and I wince. What a day to be mic’d up.
“Mommy? Why does Coach Hill’s voice keeps getting beeped like that?” Emett asks, his little forehead scrunched up in confusion.
“It beeps every time he’s particularly unhappy with something,” I tell him, figuring this is the best way to explain all of the excessive cursing that is happening at the game tonight.
I’m almost terrified to think how bad it is at the arena itself.
Come to think of it, in all the times I’ve watched the games with Emett, I’ve never once heard coaches going off like that.
“Ohh, he must be very angry at Mr. Brick then. I think he needs some luck at this point.”
“I don’t know if luck will cut it, bud,” my dad supplies, chuckling from his wheelchair. I was worried his mind would be fragile after yesterday’s events, but Dad seems to be in good spirits this morning, which means he doesn’t remember his son’s visit.
All the better.
“Yeah, that must be it.” Emett nods to himself as if that’s the only plausible explanation for the spectacularly bad game.
Half of the game has been played already. Over thirty minutes in and it almost feels like about the same number of pucks have gone in Severin’s net.
I’m not always home to watch these games with Emett, but today I picked up the lunch shift instead of evening, terrified to leave Emett and Dad alone in the house when Aaron’s still around.
I missed the whole first period, too busy coming up with excuses for the army of bears other than those toys coming from Severin, and I was coming up short.
Nearly twelve hours after that discovery I’m still questioning why he’d do something like that.
It’s obvious Emett knew where the bears came from. Severin was the only one he mentioned losing Kevin to, and if my son had hearts in his eyes for his favorite goalie before, it was nothing on the happiness he sparkled with now.
Severin was making my son fall in love with him, and I hated him for that. I hated him already for the day Emett realized it wasn’t real. A day Severin would break his little heart because that’s what people like him do.
Because he would. I knew it. I knew he would.
Right?
Once again, I’m at war with myself because of this man. So, no, I don’t want to see him play. I don’t want to see him and his stupidly handsome face and those confusing eyes but then Emett’s groaning so loud, I came to see what all the fuss is about.
Yeah, that’s what I’m going to sell to my brain when it questions my decisions and thoughts.