Chapter 14
Maverick
Only an idiot would leave a warm bed with a good woman that he doesn’t have a hope in hell of deserving when she’s curled around him, all sweet and kind, her spirit so strong and forgiving and hopeful, but here I am.
I’m sitting on the couch, fully clothed, which was the way I fell asleep.
After talking for a bit—mostly Loreena telling me childhood memories that she still takes so much delight in even if they’re bittersweet—she fell asleep.
I wasn’t even close, but then, sleep for me usually means cycling through moments where I have my eyes closed and am still fully aware, to having grainy eyes open in the dark, just waiting for the damn ceiling to fall in and crush me.
The cats chose the bed in favor of me, and I don’t blame them.
I’m not good company, with all these black, poisonous thoughts coursing through my veins.
It’s like sludge, that darkness, and eventually, the heavy, weighted, bleakness of it all chased me from the bed.
I had to put some distance between myself and Loreena.
I wanted to watch over her. I know it’s irrational, but it was like if I allowed myself to be beside her for another second, I’d infect her.
If the power of positive thought is real, then the opposite about negative shit has to be true too.
I just needed a minute, but that minute has turned into hours.
“Maverick?”
A chill runs through me. I startle, realizing just which parts of me have gone numb. I probably look like a creepy statue over here, sitting so damn still and so up in my head that I didn’t even notice that Loreena was awake.
She pushes back the blankets gently and slips out of the bed at an angle after extricating herself carefully from the sprawled out cats.
I want to warn her off, but when I open my mouth, no sound comes out. I want to remain separate, keep this safe distance, hold myself remote. That way, I can’t corrupt her, at least not until I’ve got control of myself and all this shit that’s sludging through my brain.
She’s having none of it. I know she wouldn’t, even if I told her to stay away. She might sit beside me then, and talk to me, but she has no idea what’s going on. She just saw me perched here on the couch and she came straight to me.
She crawls into my lap just like that, so full of innocent trust. Naive, just like I was.
I believed that the world wouldn’t bite me in the ass.
I had faith in the justice system and in myself.
I thought that doing the right thing was more important than all the money in the world. It was stupid. So fucking stupid.
I suck in a wavering breath as a cold sweat breaks out on my skin. My t-shirt sticks to me, clammy in less than a moment.
Loreena kisses the side of my neck, nuzzling in close. The sweet scent of her fills up my next inhale. I thought she saw me here and didn’t understand, but I’m wrong.
“Are you sitting up because you can’t sleep and the bed hurts your back and your shoulder is numb, or are you grappling with the weight of the past, present, future, and the rest of the world besides?”
“I thought I needed to be alone.”
Now that her arms are twisted around my neck and she’s leaning into me like I’m the kind of man that can be absolutely trusted to take that weight, half of me doesn’t know why I left the bed.
The other half still worries that if she stays too long, the blackness in my soul might sink into hers.
I thought I could set it behind me, but it’s still there.
It’s not going to evaporate just because I’ve changed my surroundings.
I’ll still be an ex-con tomorrow and the next day and the next, forever.
“In prison, I was so desperate for a connection. For touch.” God. I know how that sounds, but of course Loreena doesn’t take it that way and I’m not in the mood for dark humor. “And now that I’m not in there anymore, I leave the bed with you and sit out here, alone,”
“Sometimes the kind of touch we need isn’t physical.”
She loosens her arms, but I set one hand on the small of her back, holding her close. “No. It is.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
She waits while I try to find the words.
This isn’t a mistake. Trying to help Loreena, having faith in her, bringing her here, I might have gone about it wrong, but maybe it was what she needed.
I’m not questioning that. It’s just me, worried that I’ll fuck up again, wreck her life this time, right along with mine.
That those ten years carved unseen scars into me that I can’t unmake.
I’m always going to be the man who spent ten years in prison.
Who lost ten years of his life while his family and the rest of the world moved on without him.
How do I explain that to her? How do I find the words, especially with my throat closing up tighter with every passing second? My eyes get hot so fast that there’s nothing I can do to stop them. I can’t remember the last time I actually allowed myself to cry.
I thrust my hand up to my eyes just in time.
The wetness seeps into my fingertips. I can’t press it back in.
I can’t help the way my shoulders curl in on themselves, my natural instinct to immediately protect the weakest parts of my body, to hide my unraveling, but I’m not curling in on me. Loreena is in my lap.
Her arms tighten around me, but then one loosens and slips to my shoulder and then up, to cup my cheek. She waits a moment before she strokes my cheek then up to my hair along my temple. Everything in me screams to pull back. Instead, I find the courage to lean into her.
“You’ve been so worried about me, but has anyone stopped and asked how you’re doing? How you’re really doing?” Her words sound ripped from the depths of her, heavy and throaty.
I don’t need more than the pale, water glow of the streetlight at the end of the block trickling in here to see that the pain etched into her face is all for me.
“Yes. Lots of people. That’s why I’ve been so lucky.
I got out and Scythe was there. He had everything ready for me.
A house, a job, a vehicle. They have shit in prison that they provide you with in preparation for your release, at least they did in the classes I was taking.
They want people to go out there and be a success.
So I got some learning. So what? Most will get out and find they can’t handle it in the real world anymore.
It’s so changed and they’re so changed that they’re no longer compatible. ”
She makes a sound in her throat but doesn’t say anything when I pause.
“They can’t hold a job if they can even find one.
Housing is dubious. No one wants to take a chance on an ex-con.
That’s why so many just end up back in prison.
It’s what they know. They don’t have to worry about paying the bills or finding housing or where their next meal is coming from.
They even have something of a schedule and a family in there. ”
She knows that’s true, I don’t doubt. You don’t have to be involved with the law or the justice system in any way to understand how society operates.
“I didn’t want that to be my life. It’s not going to be.” I want that to sound bold and certain, but it just comes out as broken and jagged around the edges as my insides are.
She grasps my hand and raises my palm to her lips.
Even though she kisses it to comfort me, I feel her stiffening.
Not out of disgust, but out of anguish. I didn’t want to hurt her.
That’s why I got out of that bed, but here I am, spreading my poison to her anyway.
She absorbs it into her body. She doesn’t pull away, and I can’t make myself do it or shut up.
“At the club, even though everyone has tried so damn hard to make this a good fit for me, it’s still hard seeing guys who have been through this.
Now, they’ve got their lives together. They have brotherhood, jobs, purpose.
They have women who love them, and some of them even have kids, or they want that family.
And fuck me, it’s a lot, you know? Trying to pick up everything that was lost and make up for it because that’s a decade gone that you’re never going to get back. ”
I should push her away and explain to her that I’m no good right now and maybe not ever, but she banishes that thought right from my mind when she curls around me. My arms cage her in on instinct, squeezing her tightly against me.
Thing is, I don’t want to push her away. She’s always been my hope. My light. The one thing that’s kept me going, kept me strong, kept me hoping.
“The injustice of it makes me sick to my stomach,” I wheeze, my insides roiling and clenching.
I speak the words to her hair, holding onto her so damn tight.
They’d be better locked inside, but I can’t keep them there to fester.
“The world is an even shittier place than when I left it. I have no idea why people are in such a hurry to get back out to it. The amount of people being hurt, how easy it is to just walk around uncaring, hurting others, how little accountability there is… it’s just…
sickening. My mom asked me to a be a good person, but I don’t know how to fucking do that anymore. I’m just tired. I’m so tired.”
“When’s the last time you properly slept?” Her hand traces little circles on my shoulder. There’s no judgment. She just wants to know because she wants to help.
“It’s not that kind of tired.”
“I know, but I also know that you really haven’t slept since I’ve been here.”