Chapter 13 Callum
Callum
Nepenthe (n) something that can make you forget grief or suffering
I watch Maeve as she traces her fingers over my chest. The night is still and quiet around us.
Lying intertwined on the patio sofa with her, skin-to-skin, I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy.
I follow the path of her finger on my chest as it moves up to the round of my shoulder and pauses, her eyes widening.
Ah, I think to myself. She’s seen it.
It’s a tattooed replica of our engraving on the oak tree at her parents’ estate. The letters are just as jagged as the ones on the tree. Just the way we left it.
CE & MC Always
She looks up at me, her eyes sparkling with tears, and I can’t help but place my hand along her cheek and wipe them away.
She tries to speak, but the words catch.
I can tell she’s struggling, can almost see the storm of emotions whirling inside her.
She closes her eyes and takes a shuddering breath in.
“Maeve,” I whisper, and she opens her eyes. I can see the pain there.
“Maeve, you’ve always been my reason for… everything. I’m tired of trying to live this life without you. It isn’t worth it without you. It’s like I took my first breath in nine years last night when I sat next to you at your father's table.”
I lean my forehead against hers. I know what she’s thinking, because I’m thinking the same thing. We’d been robbed of so many years. Years that we could’ve made countless memories and saved ourselves from the ones we wouldn’t, couldn’t speak about.
We lay there in each other’s arms, and Maeve falls asleep, her fingertips still on my chest. I carefully disentangle myself from her and head through the sliding glass doors to retrieve the blankets I’d stashed inside.
Blankets in hand, I walk back over to the patio sofa and look down at her, long hair fanned over the cushions, cheeks still wet from the tears.
I lower myself back down beside her, cover us both with the blankets, and promptly fall asleep with my arms wrapped around her.
I wake to Maeve thrashing and screaming beside me. I jump up, my heart in my throat, grasping wildly for the pistol in my jacket pocket.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, where’s my jacket? I think wildly as Maeve screams again.
“No! Please no! No, don’t please! PLEASE!”
I glance back at her, tangled in the blankets, clearly dreaming.
“Damnit,” I whisper, trying to catch my breath. I try to wake her, gently shaking her shoulder, but she’s deep in whatever she’s reliving. And I have a pretty good idea of exactly what that is.
“Please don’t do this! What do you want? I can get you whatever you want! PLEASE, JUST STOP!”
The desperation in her voice is gut-wrenching. My muscles clench in response. I feel helpless. I sit back down on the sofa and pull her into my lap, holding her closely, whispering in her ear.
“You’re okay. You’re safe. I’m here now. Nothing will ever hurt you again.”
I repeat it like a prayer, over and over again.
Finally, she begins to still, becoming limp in my arms. I breathe a sigh of relief, but before I can even exhale, she jolts out of my lap, the knife that had been strapped to her thigh now in her hand, pressed against my throat, dangerously close to my jugular. I hadn’t even seen her reach for it.
How had she moved so fast? I wonder vaguely as I eye the tip of the dagger, holding completely still.
Maeve’s eyes are wide and wild, but after a few seconds, they refocus, and a panicked realization contorts her features.
Her chest is rising and falling rapidly.
She drops the dagger on the stone patio, and the metallic clatter seems to startle her. She looks terrified.
“Cal,” she whispers.
“It’s okay, it was just a dream,” I say reassuringly, reaching a hand toward her.
She just stands there for a second, clad in nothing but her panties, her hair wild from sex and sleep.
It isn’t exactly the best time for a wave of desire to flood over me, but I can’t help it.
I move over on the sofa, making room for her.
“Come here, Maeve,” I whisper gently.
She slowly approaches me, tiptoeing carefully over the dagger. I pull her back down onto the cushion and against my chest, stroking her hair and repeating the same incantation from before. Her body slowly relaxes.
“Shhh, you’re okay. You’re safe. I’m here now. Nothing will ever hurt you again.”
She slowly sits up, silent tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I thought I was dreaming those words that night. I thought I had made them up in my head,” she says slowly, barely above a whisper. “But it was you, wasn’t it? I remember lying there thinking I was dreaming, but you were there lying with me in my bed, weren’t you?”
She remembers.
I simply nod, my emotions churning as I brush the hair away from her face. “I couldn’t leave you until I knew you’d be ok.”
She stares at me, searching for an answer to questions she was too scared to ask. I kiss her forehead gently, then her lips. I feel her tears rolling onto my hands, and I do my best to wipe them as they fall.
18 Years Old
“He hasn’t come out of her room since you left,” Cormac sighed as he leaned back in his chair.
He had a vacant look in his eyes and was extremely disheveled, a stark contrast to his normally neat appearance.
Suit wrinkled, collar unbuttoned and uneven, hair tousled.
I could almost guarantee that he hadn't slept much in the last week.
I walked over to the beverage cart and poured both of us a glass of whiskey.
I walked back over and offered the drink to him, and he raised an eyebrow as if he was scrutinizing me for drinking underage.
It was laughable. He took the glass anyway, swirling the amber liquid before knocking it back and placing the glass on the desk.
“Have either of them eaten since… since they got home?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words "since she was rescued" or "since Orin found out the news" because it made bile rise in my throat to think about how awful they both felt right now, not to mention the fact that Maeve only knew bits and pieces of everything that had happened over the last two weeks.
Cormac’s nostrils flared, and he tried to keep his composure. “Not nearly enough.”
“They’ll get there. It’s gonna take time and patience from everyone involved,” I said, trying to reassure myself in the process. “She’s already weak as it is. She needs nutrition. I’ll have to call the doctor back in to check on her again.”
I pull out my phone and shoot a message to Orin.
She asleep?
After a few minutes, Orin replied.
Yeah, she just fell back asleep.
I grit my teeth, thinking about what to say. I nodded a silent goodbye to Cormac, then headed up the stairs towards Maeve’s room as I typed the message.
I need to talk to you. Will you come to the door?
The ellipsis bubble pops up and down, as if he kept changing his response. Finally, his message came through.
Yeah, just don’t knock. Text me when you’re outside the door.
Well, open up then.
I hear the sound of the lock on the knob softly click as Orin slowly pulls the door just wide enough to slip through without waking her. I caught a glimpse of her, and my heart seemed to stop. The whole world seemed to stop.
She didn’t look like she was getting better. She looked ill, her skin pale and covered in bandages. I felt frozen as I stared at the door Orin closed behind him.
“Hey man, you okay?”
I grit my teeth and clench my fists, trying to get a grip. “She doesn’t look any better. What can I do? I need to do something, she can’t…” My voice cracks and I trail off, lost for words.
Orin placed a hand on my shoulder, and I finally looked at him, his eyes bloodshot with dark bags beneath them.
“She’s surviving, Cal. That’s the best she can do at this moment. She has to work through this part her way, and we have to follow her lead.”
I nod and straighten my back, attempting to feel taller, but it doesn’t change anything. She was broken. And I was useless.
“Do you think I could lie with her for just a little while? You can go shower and do whatever you need to,” I say, despising the note of pleading in my voice.
He looks over his shoulder as if he can see her through the door, then back at me. He looks torn.
“Please…” I whisper. “I need to… I need to feel her breathing, Orin. My mind keeps replaying the moment I opened that door, and I couldn’t see her chest moving. I just need to feel her. Please.”
Like a bolt of lightning, the memory of performing CPR on Maeve’s lifeless body struck me.
Orin had been right there with me. He took over after pulling me away from her.
I don’t know how long I’ve been working on her.
I just remember sweat pouring down my face and my muscles aching, and Orin jerking me away by the shoulders.
I backed up against the wall of that piece of shit house they’d held her in, breathing so hard I thought I’d faint.
I’d gripped my hair in my fists, panic clutching at my chest, and when Ronan walked into the room, the look in his eyes told me that this was really happening. And it was bad.
Orin finally got breath sounds back, and I immediately scooped Maeve up and raced out of the house and to the SUV with Orin trailing closely behind me.
I briefly registered that Ronan was helping get Thadg loaded in the other SUV.
I cradled her without letting go until right before she woke.
I didn’t want to let go, but I knew she didn’t want me there.
We rushed back to the Collin’s estate, where we had our personal medical staff waiting for our arrival.
We couldn’t go to a hospital, no. It would stir questions, and there would be too many eyes.