Damaged (10 page)

Chapter Eighteen

A month later, my surrogate mother, Tory, died. It was hard for me to let go of her, the only other living being who remembered the way things used to be before it all fell apart. Saying goodbye to Tory felt like ending that chapter of my life, and I hoped that whatever came next would be better. Maybe not easier, but better. I was sad that she passed but relieved that she was finally free of the pain. She’d suffered so much both physically and emotionally.

Jackson took the day off to escort me to the funeral and burial services. He never got to meet her and I was sad for that. I sort of felt like she was proof that Brett hadn’t always been a monster, that sometimes people just went wrong. After the burial I led Jackson to the spot where my parents were buried. It was sort of depressing, but I wanted to go there and sort of introduce him to them.

I used to go to the cemetery and talk to them a lot after they died but I hadn’t been in a while. Brett always told me it was creepy. I guessed it was, but I felt closer to them there.

We stood there together for a few moments in silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts.

“They would have liked you, I think.” I told him, turning to look at him.

He laughed, “No they wouldn’t. I’m the son of a mobster and kill people on a regular basis. They’d hate me, and try to get you away from me. You’d be better off without me, and they’d know it, too.”

“You’re a good person Jack. They’d see that just like I do.”

“I’m not a good person, I’m a selfish person. You see me with rose colored glasses and I hope it stays that way. I don’t want to read the emotions on your face if you finally see me for the selfish bastard I am. I like being a hero in your eyes, and I hope that never changes.” He pulled me to him and kissed me softly on the lips.

“I’m selfish, too.” I said, “I know that you spend all the time worrying over me, and protecting me. I don’t want something to happen to you because you’re too busy watching me. I don’t know much about what you do, but I know you need to be focused to stay alive. I’ll be OK Jack.”

“You’re my greatest strength, and my greatest weakness. I’ll never stop thinking of your safety. I’ll never stop fighting to keep you.”

“You don’t have to fight, you know. You just have to love me.”

He called me his greatest strength and weakness and I could guess why. I was a vulnerability. I was a weak point the crime families could press on anytime they wanted to try and control him. He’d kill them for even mentioning me, I knew. He’d called me his strength before and I’d decided he meant that I helped him not give in and just kill anyone who got in his way. He knew that I had a problem with senseless killing and that he’d need to give me a good reason. I was his moral compass, I thought. I helped him see from a new point of view. He was too cynical. He read too much into their motivations, imaging that everyone did things for power and financial gain. He forgot sometimes that people were just as motivated by their hearts and desires. Grief, jealousy, lust, and heartbreak were all very powerful motivators. Most people don’t think as logically and methodically as Jack, and he didn’t always remember that.

“Let’s go home.” I told him, tugging his hand.

I needed to spend some time relaxing with him. We spent a lot of our relationship fighting for each other and against anyone who tried to tear us apart and we didn’t have much time to just relax. I wanted to eat popcorn and junk food and watch a movie. I wanted to wear PJ’s and fuzzy socks. I wanted to lay with him on the couch and daydream about the future. I wanted to plan and imagine with Jack. There was no way to know what was in our future but it was fun to imagine what we’d do if we had a choice, if we could pick to go anywhere and do anything.

Chapter Nineteen

I’ve learned a lot in the past year about myself and about what I could handle. As it turns out, I can handle a lot. It was rough going for a while but I made it, and I couldn’t have done it without Jackson. I didn’t know that I could love someone so much, or need them so much. He showed me that needing someone makes you stronger, not weaker. He showed me that it’s OK to fall down, as long as you get back up. Jackson taught me to build a relationship the right way, with trust and conversation. He didn’t hide things from me. He allowed me to see the darkest parts of himself and I knew that he’d seen the darkest parts of me.

Maybe I could have done it on my own eventually, but the point was that I didn’t have to. We don’t have to be alone. There is always someone out there willing to help us get our shit together. Sometimes we need someone to look us in the eye and say “You’re falling apart and it’s OK, but you have to find the strength to put yourself back together because life is worth it.”

We all have scars and emotional damage. We all have problems that pile up and pile up until we can’t see around the mountain in front of us, but what makes life worth it, what makes blasting the shit out of that mountain worth it, is knowing that life is about more than just surviving. Life is about thriving.

I have a full life and future ahead of me to look forward to. Maybe I’ll go back to school. Maybe I’ll finally take that yoga class. Maybe I’ll finally work up the nerve to say, yes and marry Jackson even though I’m still terrified of screwing up. Maybe we’ll have babies and live happily ever after.

Maybe we can do a lot of things, but not until we decide to. Not until we decide to get in the game instead of watching from the stands or the sidelines. Life is hard and gritty. It’s dirty and painful, but we live through all of it because when we finally find the beautiful it’s worth the trouble it took to get there.

My journey to finding myself again has been tough, and will continue to be tough. I battle my physical and emotional scars on a daily basis. I get cranky and irritable. I pick fights with Jack over silly things and he gets mad at me for making messes and forgetting to clean them up. Living with Jack has come with it’s own set of rules and issues but I love him enough to look beyond the OCD and late hours. He does it all for us, and for the life we’re building together. The need to protect me drives him and pushes him in ways that he hadn’t been pushed before.

Jack and I are a work in progress and it’s fun, exciting, and aggravating all at the same time. Our relationship was never going to be easy and simple. It wasn’t going to be about flowers and romance. Our love is about realness and openness. Our love was born from struggle and pain, forged by anger and resentment. It made us be real with each other. The hardships made us honest because we didn’t have time to be anything else. Our story isn’t pretty and sparkling but it’s ours and we worked for it. We took what life handed us and made it our own. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but it was worth it a million times over.

I spend a lot of time thinking and imagining the future. In my wildest dreams we escape from the danger and pressure of Hartsdale and make a new life for ourselves. Maybe we will do that some day but for now, we have a bit of unfinished business. The people of Hartsdale deserve to live a life free of fear and maybe one day they will have it, and so will we.

Chapter Twenty

Jackson

11 Months Ago

I sat in the seat of my town car and seethed. Inside I was a mass of barely restrained rage, but on the outside I appeared calm and patient. It was important in my world to keep any hint of emotion or reaction hidden. I’d grown up in this world and it didn’t take me long to realize that the only way to survive was to follow the rules. They weren’t traditional rules, but rules created out of the need to survive. I’d always known that I was different, that my experiences were different. I knew that not everyone learned to shoot a gun at 6. I realized that not every teenage boy learned how to pleasure women from prostitutes. My upbringing was unconventional, but this life was familiar and somewhat predictable. It was easy for me to pick out the men who tended to jump into situations without learning all the necessary details. I learned to take advantage of them and use them. I was a puppet master, and they were attached to invisible strings they weren’t smart enough to realize were there.

I answered to no one, and I’d worked hard to make it here. I’d done things that would horrify Lily and send her running but to my thinking, what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. She didn’t need to know the details, all she needed to know was that I would protect her and take care of her. Just like she didn’t need to know what I was about to do to her ex-husband, Brett. Just thinking his name made me grind my teeth. I’d gotten a call from her and when she didn’t answer me when I called her name, I knew something was wrong. I had Dexter call Max, who I’d assigned to watch her door. He didn’t pick up and my suspicions were confirmed. Max wasn’t stupid enough to not answer a call while on a job, so that meant someone had gotten to him, and I had one guess as to who that was. I couldn’t believe the douche had gotten the drop on my guy, but even broken clocks were right twice a day.

When we pulled up to Lily’s house I jumped out of the car and raced up the steps. I could hear a male voice yelling and loud thumps. Dexter and Jack were right behind me when I turned the nob and readied my gun. The sight in front of me made me want to kill the fucker and get it over with, but one look at Lily told me that getting her medical care was more important than killing the asshole. Brett wised up pretty damn quick and got away from Lily, guess he didn’t want to be shot tonight. Well, I didn’t want my girlfriend kicked and pummeled until she lost consciousness so I guess we’d both have to deal with the disappointment. I shot him in the leg and grinned when he yelled. Sometimes it felt really satisfying to do whatever I wanted. I gestured for Dexter to go over and knock him out so when could take him to the warehouse.

I went to Lily and checked her pulse. It was steady, thank god. I lifted her as gently as I could, figuring that she had a few ribs broken or bruised. I took her to my house and called Doc, glad that for once being who I was had it’s perks. I got Lily to the makeshift hospital room that was set up on my first floor. People ended up hurt a lot in my line of work, and discretion was a must so the medical equipment and doctor on call were a requirement to keep the guys alive and the police out of my business.

By the time Lily was settled and sedated hours had passed and I got more and more angry. Seeing the bruises and broken bones sent my anger and blood pressure through the fucking roof. It was going to take months for her to heal physically and much longer to heal emotionally. The hours spent watching Doc fix Lily gave me plenty of time to think. She would want him dead, initially. Her first reaction was going to be anger. She wouldn’t care what I did with him as long as she never saw him again. She wouldn’t want to have to see him in court and hear the reporters talk about him on TV. She’d want him to vanish into thin air and block the memories from that night. But once she got passed it, she’d change her mind. Lily was a kind person, she wouldn’t want to feel responsible for the death of another person. She wouldn’t be, I would be, but it wouldn’t seem that way to her. She was sensitive, she cared about people. At some point the secret’s I’d been keeping would come out. I’d have to tell her just enough to satisfy her curiosity and desire to still see me as a good person. I wasn’t a bad person, but I wasn’t really a good one either, but she didn’t really need all the details. I loved her too much to let her see the monster that lived inside of me.

I’d have to tell her about my father and what it was like growing up with him. I’d have to tell her a little bit about what my “job” was. Whatever I told her, I wasn’t going to tell her everything. Sometimes it’s better not to know, and with Lily I think that was definitely the case. I didn’t fool myself into thinking what I was doing was altruistic. I was doing this for myself and myself alone. I needed Lily and she needed me to survive in this world. They would come after her and take her out before I could blink if I didn’t protect her with every trick and tool I had in my arsenal. She made me feel like I wasn’t the monster I’d always thought I was. She saw something in me that I didn’t think was there, but I liked that she saw goodness in me. I was addicted to her. There was something about the way she moved, unconsciously graceful and sensual. I love the way her eyes softened when she looked at me. I refused to imagine living in a world where Lily’s eyes turned cold and hard. She deserved happiness and peace. She deserved to live in a world where people were good and justice meant something. I would do whatever I had to not to break that illusion for her. As long as I kept away the darkness, she never needed to know what the world was really like. I was her shield and I was always going to be her shield.

When the car rolled to a stop I cleared my mind of thoughts of Lily. I refused to bring her or thoughts of her into the warehouse with me. I would never burden her with the knowledge of this place and what it was for. Lily was above this place and it’s purpose. Clearing my head helped me walk into the warehouse calmly and purposefully. I had a job to do and I was going to enjoy every second of it. This bastard deserved to suffer and scream in agony before I allowed him to die. He was going to wish he’d never called me up looking to make a deal. He was going to rue the day he called and invited me to dinner to meet his lovely wife. He was going to hate himself for deciding to offer her to me in exchange for protection.

I walked into the room and smirked. The asshole was tied to a table in the middle of the empty warehouse. Spotlights were set up in a circle around him, baring him and his shame to everyone in the building. Humiliation was a big part of torture. I enjoyed knowing that he was embarrassed and ashamed of his weakness and vulnerability. He was entirely at my mercy and he needed to learn that, and fast.