Chapter 4
Maverick
I hate that big eyed, deer in the headlights, stunned off their rocker look that people sometimes get.
It’s worse because I don’t know what to do other than kneel here and gape.
I’ve never been good at finding the right thing to say.
If it doesn’t involve a joke, then I usually opt for silence, but both those options feel like they’d be the exact wrong ones.
It’s not like I can just whip out my phone and look up what Loreena just said. I don’t even know how to spell it.
“I- you’re going to have to help me out here.
” I’m going to fall over. I’m on my damn knees and I’m still unsteady.
All the oxygen sucks right out of this small kitchen.
“I don’t know what that means, but I’m not gonna run because there’s something wrong with you.
” My hands are balled up, and I thrust one to my chest, thumping it there like a vow.
“If you’re sick, I understand why you didn’t say anything, but you don’t have to face it alone. ”
I don’t like the twisted smile that cuts across her face. It’s cruel, but it’s not directed at me. I want to try to reach out. Set my hand on her elbow or maybe brush her arm. Her pain stabs at me, a knife between my ribs.
“I’m not angry that you didn’t tell me. Everyone deserves their privacy. Or maybe you just found out, and you wanted to wait to see me in person. I—”
“I didn’t just find out.” That cruel smile drops away, and her lips thin out to an unhappy line. “I’ve known for years. I chose not to tell you, because I didn’t want you to see me that way. Just my illness and nothing else.”
“I wouldn’t have… I still don’t know what that is.” If she’s been sick for years, then it’s not something that’s life threatening, is it?
She shakes her head, then lets out a shocking snarl, whips around, and hurls the bag of coffee back onto the counter.
It lands without much force and doesn’t burst or spill open.
Her head whips back to me, eyes glowing almost ferally, the starkest blue.
“You’re meant for a good life. Just looking at you, I can see that you’re made for laughter.
You should never have been in that place.
You’ve lost enough years of your life already.
You’re beautiful. There’s nothing cruel or mean about you.
I can see it in your eyes and your face, but of course you’re gorgeous on the outside too.
Whatever it is that I’d hoped for, we can’t do this.
I’m glad that I could help you when you were on the inside.
Maybe brighten your day or provide some small measure of relief, like you did for me.
Getting your letters was sometimes the only good part of my day.
” She wraps her arms around herself, clutching her arms so tightly that I imagine she’s leaving marks on her pale skin beneath her sweater.
“I used to wonder what your voice sounded like. The exact timber and cadence.”
Why does that sound so fucking final?
A death knell pealing right beside us.
“Okay, but I…” I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m so lost. I just know that I don’t want this to end right when I finally got to meet this woman.
I didn’t want to, but I dreamed about her.
She’s been my one constant for years. My hope, my bright light, my guide, a whisper in all the painful silence and a soft quiet in the noise. Her words burrowed under my skin. They worked their way straight down to my soul.
She’s been family when I had none. She was a bright spot in my day.
As much as I didn’t want to bring her into that place, she was the reason I survived.
She gave me the will to get through some of my darkest moments, when I just wanted to give up, or when the panic at being locked up for another few years, when I didn’t think I could stand another minute, set in.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers again. She shouldn’t be apologizing. She shouldn’t hang her head and collapse inward. “It means that I can’t go outside. I can’t leave this building. I haven’t since before I started writing to you.”
That’s what her sickness is? That she won’t go outside? I don’t want to be an ass, and I quickly blank my face before she looks up. I don’t want to be insensitive, but I just don’t get it.
“Why would you choose to live like that?” I ask eventually, when she’s not going to volunteer anything else. I want to tilt her chin up and force her to look at me. I want to breathe the life back into her lungs.
Her head snaps up all on its own. Twin flames burn in the depths of her eyes.
Fuck. Choose was the wrong word.
Just as quick as it came, the fire dies. I feel the bitter tang of ash on the back of my tongue. I’d rather her spitting mad and ready to fight than defeated.
“I know this isn’t how you pictured me. I know that you’re disappointed. I thought that I could be here for you when you got out. I still want to, but it’s mostly going to have to be like it was before. I can’t offer anything more right now.”
I was never supposed to imagine what this woman would be like.
I shouldn’t have wanted to meet her as badly as I did.
Even if there was nothing wrong in that itself, I judged her to be around my age, from everything she wrote.
I imagined she was single, or she wouldn’t be writing to a prisoner.
I could have been wrong about all of it, but I got this sense that I wasn’t.
I shouldn’t have harbored a secret hope all these years that we could be friends.
Or more than friends. The writing wasn’t a romantic thing, but I thought maybe, since she understood me so well, since she’d looked inside my soul, since she was my person, that more could mean anything.
She’s the one thing I’ve allowed myself to hope for, and now she wants to stand here and tear it away from me because of some stupid fear?
I know that’s not fair and it’s not right, but I can’t help the tight fist of anger that grips my gut. Everyone says lightning doesn’t strike twice, but this feels so fucking unjust.
Loreena raises her head and shivers when she looks at my face and sees what I can’t hide. The anger deflates like she just pricked me. Slipped another knife between my ribs. The last thing I should be doing is making assumptions. They’re all probably dead fucking wrong.
“If it’s just a phobia, you can get over it.
People do.” I feel like a total asshole trying to point that out.
“If you’re afraid of spiders, they put you in a tank and put them on you, and you have to just deal.
When your brain finally understands that you’re going to make it out, and maybe it’s more that you don’t like spiders, you can chill.
It stops sending all those bad brain signals out to your body, telling you to panic or go into shock or overreact. ”
“Overreact.” She grasps her cardigan and pulls it more tightly around herself, wrapping her arms over her thin frame.
“Not overreact. That’s not how I meant it.
” I should stop floundering. Take the time to get educated.
Tell her I’m not going anywhere. It’s not what comes out.
“If you were like this before you started writing to me, was I just some side project? Did you do it out of pity? Were you interested in hearing what someone on the inside had to say because you were studying to be a lawyer? Was I just an escape and some fantasy world for you?”
My voice keeps rising. Not yelling. Not mean. The questions just aren’t all that nice. They’re too heated. Even if she said yes to everything, I could never hate her.
“I told you things that I’ve never told anyone.” Her eyes swim with a haze of moisture.
She’s going to cry because of me. I’m doing the one thing I promised myself I’d never do. Hurt her.
“When I said that the only time I could truly be me was when I was writing to you, I was being honest. We had something beautiful.”
Had. Had means the past. Had is bad. I didn’t know it was possible for a brain to go into cardiac arrest, but look at that.
“Why did you leave your address then?” The question comes out wounded and accusatory.
She doesn’t respond. She already has. She’s unravelling right in front of me. All I want to do is wrap her in my arms and hold her, but it’s not my right. She doesn’t want to be mine. She could be making all of this up, letting me down easy because I was just a prison project for her.
She’s not.
A rough shiver wracks her body. She’s thin.
Not too thin but built slight. She’s not short.
I’m six two, so I’d judge her to be around five ten.
I knew that she’d be pretty, but the mental picture I’d painted in my head didn’t prepare me for just how gorgeous she is.
All her features are so delicate and finely shaped.
It’s not her beauty that could shatter. It’s her spirit. It’s already been broken.
I want to know who hurt her. I want to pick up the pieces and glue her back together, but that’s not what she wants. She wants to be noble. She wants to save me from the world that she lives in.
“You’re missing so much. You could step out that front door right now if you wanted to.” Again, not what I wanted to say.
Loreena doesn’t get mad. She bites down into her bottom lip and rolls it between her teeth. Her hands clench into tight little balls in her sweater. She sighs, the sound filling the kitchen painfully. Will she keep doing it until she can disappear?
“You don’t know anything about how the mind works if you think that. I’d die if I went outside.”
“You would be afraid. Uncomfortable. You’d panic, but you wouldn’t die.” It’s disturbing that she’d say that. Can you actually be frightened to death? “I’d be right there with you, protecting you.”
“That’s not true.”
“How do you know that it’s not?”
“Because I’ve tried.”
“You haven’t tried it with me.”