25. Buried Echoes
25
BURIED ECHOES
My breath catches at Julia’s smile as she returns from her morning shower wearing nothing but a towel and an enchanting grin. Despite the miles of exposed skin, it’s the gentle curve of her lips that’s lodged in my awareness. I can’t look away as it pokes at some of the deepest, oldest cracks inside me.
“You okay?” she asks, climbing into bed beside me.
It’s been a week since we left the island. I’m still not comfortable drifting alone in the vast ocean, but I’m more than comfortable sharing this king-sized bed with the most incredible woman this world has to offer.
“You look… pensive,” she says. I warm at her precise adjective. She knows how much I adore those.
“I am. I was stunned by your smile.”
The smile I love returns with full radiance. “Yeah?”
She leans in so I can taste it. The scent of citrus from her wet hair mixes with the pleasing bite of mint. I drag her in for a deeper hit.
The towel falls open, allowing her naked body to dissolve against mine. Her fingers slide into my hair in a bold demand. Her warm curves are satin against my enflamed skin as she grinds in slow passes against me. I lose track of them as the hunger takes over.
“Jonah,” she breathes out.
Jonah.
Our lips slide together with sudden urgency, searching for the perfect angle to consume. But it’s a futile effort. There is no relief from this craving, and my tongue plunges into her mouth, sweeping over hers until she’s panting and straining for more.
I roll her to her back, bracing over her as our lips, tongues, and hands claw and explore. My hips drag over hers, eliciting the sweetest moan as she arches to meet my hard heat.
“You’re feeling okay?” she gasps out. It’s a fair question since my injuries have kept us apart for so long.
“Not until I’m inside you,” I reply.
Her grin tastes incredible as I devour that too.
Her eager hand slips between us, and soon our words become harmonic pants. Our movements become volcanic collisions—building, climbing, sparking—until the surges of pleasure flare from anticipation to desperation.
Her head drops back with her cry. Her body rigid and hot as it pulses around me. Time stops. Space transforms into the most beautiful image, captioned by the most mesmerizing sound. I commit every detail to memory, because this moment will have a place in both our scavenged collections.
As we come down from the high, there’s no place for words. We don’t need them. Our eyes lock and speak the poetry of our hearts.
I reach out and trace her cheek, her chin, her lips that are now tipped up in a sated arc. I love this smile too. I love them all now that they’re genuine.
I lean in and brush a gentle kiss over her mouth, lingering so our bodies can stay connected for a few more precious seconds.
“My love for you is infinite,” I whisper. “It will never be defined.”
Her glowing expression is my reward as she reaches up and toys with the ends of my hair.
Tangible. She’s so fucking tangible.
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against hers.
We stay like that for a long time. Breathing the moment into our lungs. Transforming fantasy into reality.
After a long, saturated silence, she sighs and gives my hair a gentle tug before letting go. “Make me breakfast?” she asks. “It’s the least you can do.”
Her eyes dance with humor.
I smile and shake my head at the reminder of our first night together. It’s incredible how different this moment feels, even though so many of the details are the same.
“Only if you remind me how evenly I should slice the potatoes.”
“Jonah, get in here!”
I place the knife in the sink and wipe my hands on a towel as I move toward the lounge area of the yacht. Julia is on the couch watching television, so I hover behind her to see what got her attention. A breaking news report graphic is flashing bright and bold across the giant screen.
“ Shakeup in the Keys”
The headline screams beneath a chaotic mass of lights and activity, broadcast from an evolving helicopter view.
“Is that Undertow?” I ask, squinting at the screen.
“A massacre last night,” she says in a stunned voice. “Ten deaths so far. They’re saying it was a cartel dispute involving four different organizations.”
“Let me guess, the RLC, Hartfords, McArthurs, and La Quinta Muerte?”
“Good guess,” she mumbles.
“Have they announced the casualties yet?”
Julia peeks back, her teeth sinking into her lip. “Four Hartfords, three RLC, and three McArthurs so far. They’re still identifying the bodies.”
“Adrian and Mama H?”
She nods.
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugs and turns back to the screen, but this can’t be easy for her. One betrayal doesn’t erase years of conditioned blood ties. I get it. Watching the photos of my parents populate the screen with details of their deaths is causing an ache in my stomach, even though it shouldn’t. They tortured and tormented me my entire life. I should be fucking glad they’re dead, and maybe I am. One emotion doesn’t cancel out another.
But then it’s my face on the screen… and Julia’s.
“We’re dead too?” I ask.
Julia’s lips tip up in the slightest smile. “Merrick came through. He said we’d be free to start over.”
“Yeah,” I say on an exhale. “Guess he meant that literally.”
“I wonder who those bodies actually belong to?”
I think I know one of them… Patrick would be thrilled to know he assisted me, even in death.
“What’s all the hub-bub?” an older voice says.
I turn to see Gramps sauntering toward us with a towel wrapped around his waist. He must be finished with his morning swim.
“Just watching the news of our deaths.”
His smile fades as he comes to stand beside me. “Damn, kid,” he mumbles. “Don’t see that every day.”
He slips an arm around my shoulders and squeezes.
“Guess I’m officially no one now,” I say.
I stare down at the eye on my hand. The bruises from last week are starting to fade, but the scars never will. They’ll continue to scream the dark, ugly truth about who and what I am.
They can “kill me” every day and it won’t change the fact that I’ve been beaten and broken. Used, abused, and subjected to every evil this world has to offer. I’ve been bathed in sin so deep and dirty there are times I can’t even look at myself in the mirror. And now I’m supposed to start over?
What does that even mean?
“Jonah?” Julia’s voice is filled with concern. “You okay? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I force out.
But my hands are shaking now. My lungs hardening.
Memories are flooding back. Nightmares bright and raging in broad daylight.
What good was any of this? All I’m doing is running again, a coward on this futile chase to hide from the monster inside.
“Jonah, come here.”
I shake my head. I don’t even know why. God, I can’t breathe.
Julia shuts off the TV and grasps my hand, pulling me around the couch. She tugs me down beside her, but I’m trembling so hard I can barely feel her.
“What if it’s too late?” I whisper. “What if this is what I am? I don’t… look at me. I’m so fucking ugly. Inside, I’m…”
“No,” she hisses. “No! You’re not.”
She pulls me in and holds on tight as I break down.
“You’re not, Jonah.”
I shake my head. She’s wrong. She hasn’t seen the worst. The years of pain and suffering. The years of doing the unspeakable to survive. What if it’s too late to be anything else? Maybe this is what I am now.
We jump at a slam on the coffee table in front of us.
I look up to see Gramps standing across from us with a stern look. He points to a composition book on the glass surface. My composition book.
“Open it,” he says.
“Gramps, I?—”
“Open it!”
I sigh when Julia releases me to obey.
I open the book, cringing at the years of weathered ink. Tears and blood blot the pages. As I flip through it, every entry is another demon screaming accusations of another crime committed and suffered. Over and over in an endless cycle of horror.
I get to the last one, my hands shaking as I smooth the page, still not sure about the point of this exercise.
It seems that wisdom didn’t come accompanied by clarity because I didn’t know the severity of my condition until now. I am a coward with cracked bones and swollen eyes, trying to make the pathetic sound prophetic or even poetic,
I’m a heretic deserving of total isolation.
I’ve spent years transforming myself in circles, but this low feels all too familiar and I’m starting to taste the blood I’ve always drawn from becoming a victim of myself,
I’m a gentle-hearted monster.
It takes all my strength to look in the mirror and identify the cold reflection staring back. Smash the glass. Gouge out the root of the problem. Use the blood to script my story on the page.
Writing in the dark; living even darker.
Finding redemption in a tragic ending.
Living testimony in a silent warning.
-JD August 18
The final entry from just days ago taunts me with its prophetic truth. Here I am, dead and buried, holding the tattered evidence of my damaged soul in my hands.
A monster wrote that. A human thumbnail who’s been filed down to nothing by every evil this world has to offer.
“This is the last one,” I say with a grimace.
I glance up, expecting disgust, but his eyes are soft and shining instead. He shakes his head with a vehemence I’ve never seen from the man.
“No. It’s not. Not even close.”
He bends down and flips the page.
A pristine, clean sheet of paper stares back at me.
… No ink.
… No marks.
… No blood.
… No tears.
Innocent. Pure.
“That was who they were, Jonah,” he says softly. “ This is you.”
He places a pen on the blank page.
“Your story starts now.”
There will never be an appropriate time to tell you that I’m leaving.
I don’t expect to hear words of encouragement as the door slams behind me.
I know the echo of that exit will ring through my head for years to come.
We all find silence in due time and sometimes, although not often, we demand it.
We crave it.
We are all yearning to find purpose for our hearts and hands, and even without clarity we can rest assured freedom is out there.
Have you ever thought, though, that maybe the purpose for some pain is the relief of its absence?
That peace and repentance could only exist with the blank page to keep our beating hearts grateful?
When the door shuts,
when I’m no longer stuck with these deafening echoes from my past,
I pray that my hands move with innocence and purpose leaks from my eyes.
May I choose to rest in silence,
I pray that the echoes stay buried with me.
-Jonah Dylan August 28