Chapter 19
Jolie–present day
Woodrow pulled me through the busy street. His walk, rigid and uptight, the opposite to my loose and tottery movements as I tried to keep up with his long legs. His grip around my fingers tightened, as I twisted on my heel, my ankle bending. Gravity, the traitor that it was, pulled me to the floor.
But I didn't hit.
“In your face,” I drunkenly mumbled to the concrete ground, which was all too eager to tear through my dress and scratch my legs.
“Careful.” Woodrow's words were soft and gentle, a caress to the heart he once owned.
And in my intoxicated state, I was ready to give it back to him.
I stared up at him when we stopped at a curb. He didn't look at me as I steadied myself, my thumb brushing over his skin, over one of many tattoos I hadn't allowed myself to give attention to until now.
I peeled back the sleeve of his jacket, wanting to see more. . .
But I never got to. He pulled me forward, and again, told me to be careful as we stepped down the curb. The light to cross turned green, and he guided me safely across the street.
“Can I see your tattoo?” I asked, reaching the other side and still trying to read the story his body would tell. A memory popped up, remembering, he also had piercings. . . and I almost asked to see those, too.
“Maybe later.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, hating the dismissal. The coldness of him shutting me out. . . that wasn't Woodrow. Even yesterday, when I said so many hurtful words, he still reached out to me.
“You're mad?”
“I'm never mad at you.” His thumb rubbed my hand, and for the first time in years, I found a little comfort through someone's touch.
“I'm mad,” I whispered, my true feelings bulldozing through the alcohol pollution in my blood. My eyes streamlined ahead as we made our way through the flurry of people, his darting to me. “I'm mad at you. Not Hell. Not Woody. You.”
“I know.”
“Do you know why?”
He didn't answer, and his silence told me nothing.
“I'm sorry.” He pulled off his mask and stuffed it into a pocket, allowing me to see the authenticity in his expressions. “I'm so sorry. I couldn't save you.”
“You should have come with me! You told me we’d leave together!” I snapped, stopping in the middle of the street as my voice broke under the pressure of so many mixed emotions, causing passerby tourists to glance our way before the life and soul of Vegas, once again, hypnotized them with its glory.
“I couldn’t just leave.”
“Couldn’t just leave? You were willing to all those weeks before.”
“Yes, before. Before my father locked you in that basement and did fuck know’s what!”
“So, why not after? You should have followed me. Hell steps down when you really want him to. You proved that today. But you became your father’s puppet, training his gun on me as I struggled to get away, thinking only of you.
Of us. Forcing happy memories into my head to override the fear.
” I could have only imagined what those around us were thinking, but I didn’t care.
“I thought of you each day I was caged like a misbehaving animal. An animal who was abused by both of your parents and almost starved to death. I went through a pregnancy where I was constantly stressed, wondering if you were alive. You were always on my mind. Always! And you didn’t even care enough to leave with me! ”
“I wanted to be with you. To run with you.”
“Then you should have.” The sun dried the tearstains on the exposed side of my face, and my half-face mask hid the others as more sadness rolled over my cheeks.
“He couldn’t get away with it. He convinced Hell to kill you.
. . I felt it. For the first time ever, I felt Hell’s stress, Woody’s fear.
My father wanted you gone, and he couldn’t get away with any of it.
If I left with you, we’d have both been caught.
I needed you to get away. Nessie was in the house; I wanted her to get away, too.
I couldn’t leave her there with them. It’s not true that I didn’t want to leave with you.
I’d have given up my life for you. I stayed so you could get away. ”
“I didn’t want that. I wanted us to leave together. I lost our baby, Woodrow, in the most awful way. I couldn’t lose you, too.”
I couldn't stop the tears from dampening my mask.
I lowered my eyes, preventing my sadness from ruining more of the makeup I never wanted to wear.
I couldn't stop the final piece of my heart from breaking . . .or Woodrow’s.
When I looked up at him, following the movement of his hand to his throat, he was crying. Sad tears, lots of them.
He pulled me from the crowd, and we dropped down. He sat on a stone seat, his back to a sculpted masterpiece, me in his lap. Turning me to him, he slipped his fingers beneath my mask, exposing my face. . . my scars.
My hands rushed to my cheeks, hiding my face from him and everyone else. I felt my insecurities quash the taste of alcohol.
Woodrow's hands touched me; one starting on the small of my back, the other on my knee. He felt over me; over the weight loss I'd suffered. He didn’t like it. . . skinny girls weren’t his thing. Or Hell’s, and he’d blatantly told me so.
Woodrow’s eyes stayed on me, even as groups upon groups of beautiful girls—many with his preferred body shape—walked by us.
His face burrowed into my hair, his mouth on my hand with a gentle request. “Don't push me away.”
And I didn't.
I couldn’t pull my hands from my face to even consider it.
His head nudged at the clip in my hair. The giant daisy on the top—holding a mass of my curls to the left of my face, hiding where I'd been shaved—loosened its grip on me.
“You're moving my flower.”
He heard my almost silent words. He reeled back, his hands leaving me for a second to fix my hair.
“Shift your hands slightly?”
I did as requested.
“Where's my mask?” I asked as his hand returned to my back, a gentle rub coaxing the words from my tongue.
“In my jacket pocket. It was getting wet.”
I peeked through my fingers, my nail polish shining due to the bright lights surrounding us reflected against my strained vision. I closed my fingers together on my left hand, cloaking that side of my face, and the eye that made everything blurry.
Woodrow's pretty face pixilated in front of me. “You once told me I didn't have to hide away from you. You don't have to hide with me, either.”
He took my hands in his, his fingers careful as they pushed under mine to remove them.
With our hands still joined, I looked around quickly.
Heavy breaths crashed from my mouth with the panic of someone pointing, laughing, and saying horrible things.
I'd been called names for long enough, and it didn't get any easier as time went on.
I didn't grow a thicker skin. Instead, the scars deepened, staining my soul.
No one looked in our direction, too much was going on around us.
Gratitude for the busy city flooded me.
I turned back to Woodrow, finding the strength to look him in the eye.
His fingers weaved through my hair, careful not to move it. “You look beautiful.”
“Don't take the piss.” The lowly response had a little venom.
The soft gray of his eyes and their delicate stare upon me told me that wasn't his intention.
“To me, you'll always be perfect.” The lie came from his mouth at the same time another tear fell from his eye, and I found myself wiping it away with a shaking hand.
“I missed you. I missed you so much.”
“I didn't want you to get caught. I wanted to follow you, to run with you. I didn't want the outcome you unfortunately had. I didn't want you caught by those people, taken away. I wanted the future you wanted. I wanted to share it all with you. I wanted us together, too.”
“I didn't wait for you. I should have waited for you.”
“I understand why you didn’t. Hell was out of control. He saw you as something else, and he tried to hurt you. Something inside felt different, like he was confused, and he let me in to help, and when I saw you, I tried to force him out.”
“Running from that house, from you, broke my heart. You broke my heart letting me do it. It was the second time you threw me away. But worse, because you had a gun on me.”
“Firstly, you know that gun was never meant for you. Deep down, you know that. And I have no idea what you are talking about when you say I threw you away?”
“You left long before that day. You disappeared within yourself, and I didn’t even know you were alive. And when I got you back, I had to lose you again.”
“I couldn't stop the dissociation. My therapist says it was because I couldn’t face what I knew was happening to you, knowing I couldn't stop it.”
“And I knew that.” I sobbed, my words hurting as I voiced them.
Tears fell, but before I could brush them from clinging to my lashes, Woodrow beat me to it, his fingers shaking.
“I asked you to leave with me. That was you.
I know it was you. I know how you stand, how your shoulders slump just a little more when you're you.
How your voice drops slightly in pitch, in comparison with Hell's. How your eye movements are slower. I know your very soul. And it was you that pushed me from the house and told me to leave.”
“To protect you. I stayed behind to protect you. To make sure you got away to safety.”
“But I didn't.”
“I had no idea they were coming. I had no idea someone was already in the house. I had no idea about anything. That was the worst day of my life, and I did what I thought was best at the time.” He brushed a straying strand of hair from my eyes, clipping it behind the daisy with the millions of others.
“I woke in my room, my journal in front of me, and our baby on my pillow. She was tiny and unmoving, and—”
“She?” I never knew our baby was a she.
“I don't know for sure. She wasn't fully developed, but she looked like a girl, to me.”
I almost couldn't ask, scared to hear the answer. “What happened to her?”