Austin
When I pushed the door to my bedroom open, Skylar was there in front of the mirror. She was holding up her shirt and having a look at her stomach, where the bruise that had once been a perfect imprint of a set of knuckles was now out of focus and faded to a sickly yellow color.
Just seeing that mark on her made me want to fucking maim somebody. I’d told Ian, Ross and Robbie that if I ever saw that asshole out of his wheelchair, I’d put him back in it.
I would have told the police too, if the NHBFC lawyers hadn’t kept me from making any statements. Skylar dropped her shirt and turned around as I let myself fall backwards on to the bed.
“Didn’t hear you come in,” she said. “So?”
I laced my fingers together over my forehead and closed my eyes as I took a deep breath. The mattress shifted slightly as Skylar climbed on, and a moment later I felt her hand gently tracing random patterns around my chest and stomach.
With all the meetings with lawyers, NHBFC management, police bullshit, the media and every other fucking thing, it felt like we hadn’t had a spare second to ourselves in a month. Skylar had been like a little rock throughout the whole thing, her support was unwavering and went light years beyond what Robbie and his team of writers had cobbled together for her in this clusterfuck.
I could feel her there, right next to me. Lately, it felt like that all the time, whether she was physically with me or not. The way she was touching me now was like a fan blowing back the clouds of blinding rage that threatened to creep in every time I thought about that motherfucker in the club.
“So?” she asked again.
“The charges are being dropped.”
From behind my closed eyelids I heard Skylar take a breath as deep as mine and let it puff out. She flopped down, resting her head under my arm and continuing those mesmerizing patterns on my torso. Relief all around.
“Thank goodness.”
“Yeah, NHBFC spares no expense on lawyers. The security footage from the club and that bruise on your stomach gave them some serious pause.”
“Lucky I bruise easily, huh?”
“Fuckin’… anyway… there’s going to be some kind of under the table settlement for some of the medical costs, and property damage to the club that’s coming out of my purse for the next fight, but after that it’s all basically being swept under the carpet. Robbie and his team are spinning some White Knight Hero storyline bullshit about it, and it’ll roll into everything we’ve been doing anyway.”
“It’ll be so good to put this behind us,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“It’s not such BS anyway.”
“What isn’t?” I asked.
“You may not have had a white horse and shining armor, but you did charge in and save me. My hero-“
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t call me that,” I said.
“Why not?”
How the fuck was I supposed to explain that? That the one time in my life I
actually
thought I was going to run in and save the day that things got even more fucked than
this
?
Skylar kept on prodding. She hadn’t done much of that since the night in Vegas, maybe now, with the charges dropped, she felt like the stress was sufficiently lowered that she could finally get to the bottom of it. “It was… kind of brutal, Austin. What happened?”
“I saw. I saw that guy getting close, saw that mean look in his eye. Then I saw the way he moved and you jerked forward. I fuckin’ knew what that meant. I had, like, a flashback…”
Skylar propped herself up on her elbow. “Of what?”
I didn’t answer straight away. Nothing good could come of dredging up the past. Not
this
past. If she thought what happened in that club was brutal, she’d run for the fucking hills if I told her about this.
To tell her would be to lose her right now, instead of when her contract was up. I never talked about
those
days with anybody.
Of course, nobody had ever
asked
. I thought about it for a second. Maybe nobody ever
cared
as much as Skylar.
“You can tell me,” Skylar said quietly.
I gulped and my mouth opened slowly like it was on rusty hinges. “Dear old Dad.”
“He used to…?”
“Oh
man
,” I dragged the word out, still horrified by the memories after all this time. “My mom’s face was… unrecognizable every weekend. My arm had been broken twice by the time I was seven. The hospital reports said I fell. I fucking didn’t.”
Peeking out from behind barely open eyelids, I saw Skylar’s brow furrow as she took it in, and her own eyes tracked the path of her fingertips around my chest. I closed them again and went on.
“Every weekend and half the week, parties, and so-called business meetings that escalated into parties. Booze, cigarettes and ass-kickings. Dinner not ready on time? That’s a slap. Disrespect him? Imagined or not, that’s a split lip. He remembers some shit that might have happened months ago? Oh fuck.”
Those sounds came flooding back from my memory, I swore could almost
hear
them. There was a small but violent tornado that lived in that house, and the path it cut, tearing the place the fuck
up
as it went, had no concern about how scared the people were. It could touch down anywhere and leave pure distilled pain in it’s wake.
“Even now I remember those nights, too scared to sleep, listening for that moment when the drunken banter took a turn. If my mom hadn’t passed out yet, then I heard the thuds, the screams and the sounds of breaking furniture. I heard him beating the shit out of her and I knew I was next. And I couldn’t do
shit.
”
“Oh, Austin…”
“After a while, it used to get quiet down there, like that pause before somebody gives you
real
bad news. Mom was done, but he didn’t feel like he’d been respected enough. So… what? I hear these footsteps on the stairs.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump
. Steady, just like that, no hesitation. He knew where he was going.”
“What did you do? Could you hide?”
“There was nowhere to hide. I haven’t been afraid of anything since… well… since him, but I remember how hard it was to breathe, how my heart used to beat so fast I thought it was going to explode. So much blood being pumped through me that my skin was hot, prickling with pins and needles. I was no doctor, but I knew you could get hurt so bad that you died. I knew he had that power over me.”
Crash!
The memory of the way he used to burst through my door hit me like a hammer.
“He’d kick that door open and see me there, shout something about why the fuck wasn’t I asleep, disobedient little fucking good for nothing piece of shit.
Get the fuck over here
! He made me walk over to take my licks. Made me stand up to take more as many times as I could. It was worse if I didn’t. I was forged in hell.”
“When did you get away from him?” Skylar asked.
“Started when I was ten.”
“Started?”
“That’s when I started sleeping on the streets. I stayed away more and more as the years went by.”
“At
ten
?”
“Yeah.”
“Did your mom manage to get the two of you away in the end?”
My heart, flooded with adrenaline just as my mind was flooded with these nightmares, had been building up to a crescendo, almost like those nights when I was a kid. It almost ground to a halt when Skylar mentioned my mom. And the end.
“No. She was a drunk. Her body was there, but who knows where her mind was? I begged her to take me away and she couldn’t. I promised myself that when I was big enough, I’d fucking save her. Well, I met Ross and he started training me. I got pretty big. I went back one night.”
“What did you do, Austin?”
No doubt reliving the comparatively tame events of the club in Vegas, Skylar could barely get her question out. She would pull her hands back in horror if she knew.
Those soft hands. The softest touch I’d ever felt in my life. The quiet words in the dark after we fucked, when we talked as if this marriage wasn’t going to end when NHBFC told us it was. All gone, if she knew.
A lump formed in my throat and my surprise at that fact jump-started my heart again. How the fuck did this woman get under my skin? All I’d wanted was a tight pussy to put my cock in, but damned if she didn’t feel like a… what? A wife? A… partner? Like she was a part of
me
? Fuck.
“There was a party going on, as usual. I stormed in there and I fucked him
up
in front of his friends, anybody that tried to stop me too. All those
years
being paid back all in one righteous fuckin’…” I trailed off.
Skylar sat up and turned to face me, sitting cross-legged. Another peek out of the tiniest cracks in my eyelids showed me she was crying.
“Did he leave after that?” asked Skylar. I could hear the hope in her voice.
“The police said he committed suicide. Guess he couldn’t face the humiliation of being destroyed by a fifteen year old kid,” I mumbled.
“What did your mom do?”
I didn’t answer for a long time. “She… she barely did anything. Except drink. It was almost as if the only thing that had ever stopped her from drinking herself off the edge of the world were those beatings that signaled party-over. When I tried to sober her up… she got nasty. She said the kinds of things
he
used to say… and one thing that was completely new. Holy
fuck
.”
“What?”
“She said I wasn’t even really
their
son. I was the worst fucking thing that ever happened and she wished they never bought me. Bought.
Me
.”
“No.”
Skylar spoke the word in a long groan as if my pain was
her
pain and I felt the bed shaking as she struggled to contain the sobs. My own breath was on the border of hitching every time I inhaled too.
“So I left again, and she drank herself to death. That’s what happened when I thought I was some kind of hero. I fucked it all up.”
I had to shut up now. I had to shut the
fuck
up before I did something stupid, like tell her everything.
That police report. It said suicide.
That
much was true. What was curiously missing from the report was how Leon Aquila had been beaten to a pulp and found at the bottom of the lake wrapped in chains and with broken legs.
It didn’t mention the water in his lungs that showed how he was still alive when he went under. It
couldn’t
show how he begged for his life.
Either the police were glad that the asshole who used to spit in their faces every weekend when they were called about the noise got what he deserved, or they were just that corrupt and it
looked
like a mob hit. I had no idea, but suicide it was.
Skylar
Austin’s story had me in tatters. I noticed that he had no family at our wedding, just like me, but I never brought it up, because that would have lead the conversation to the topic of my own parents. Best to let sleeping dogs lie, I’d thought.
Now it was different. From the way Austin spoke, with a waver in his voice I’d never heard from him before, I could tell this wasn’t something he shared often. If ever.
I’d wondered what kind of life it took to make a man like Austin, and now I knew. All the years spent in becoming a nigh-on invincible fighter, all the power and confidence relentlessly built up, and the take-shit-from-nobody attitude, these were the tools he needed to survive.
He said that he was forged in hell, but it was really just his armor that was made there. When he opened up, he let me see that fear, the source of his anger. I saw the real man in charge of this tank of a body, and he was
hurting
.
“Did you ever try to find your real parents?” I asked.
“No. Fuck that. In order for somebody to buy something, somebody else has to be selling it. They were probably junkies that needed some quick cash. If I ever found their asses, it might not be pretty.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands and tried to compose myself.
Over the past couple of months, Austin had done things for me I’d never would have thought possible. It was like looking at myself with a completely new set of non-judgmental eyes. It was a huge relief to have so much guilt and self-consciousness off my shoulders. To have a man look at me the way Austin did and for it to be OK,
more
than OK, might have seemed like such a simple little thing to somebody else, but they weren’t me. For me, it was priceless. It was irreplaceable.
Austin did that for me, and now I could see… he needed me too. As much as I needed him.
Since he started talking, he had been lying on the bed with his fingers laced over his forehead and his eyes closed, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me. I reached out and stroked his cheek.
“Hey.”
He opened his eyes.
“I’m so sorry you went through that, Austin.”
“It’s OK.”
“No it is
not
. It wasn’t fair that you had to grow up in that house. Scared. Hurt. You didn’t even have anybody to…”
I licked my lips and swallowed, turning my eyes up for a second as if seeking some extra strength. It was hard to believe I was about to talk to my fake husband about
this
… but things had changed somewhere along the line between when the ink dried on our marriage certificate and now.
There was more than a contract holding us together, as confusing and scary as that thought was. I was sure Austin felt
something
too, or he wouldn’t have just told me as much as he did.
I lifted the bottom of my shirt and twisted to the side. “You see that scar there?”
Austin raised his head and reached out to trace it with his finger. “This one?”
“Yeah. My… my dad disciplined with a belt sometimes. He used to fold it over and give me five good ones if he thought I was dressing too… uh… suggestively, or if he thought I might have a boyfriend. He made me feel like my own body was the most evil thing in the world. One night when he was swinging that belt, the half with the buckle on it came loose and it whipped around and sliced into my back there.”
“Son of a
bitch
. Maybe I should show up at his fucking house with the
heavyweight
belt.”
“It’s not worth it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, it’s the first time in my life I’ve had enough distance and courage to do it. My uncle helped give me the distance, and you helped give me the courage, Austin. Nobody ever defended me before. It’s weird, feeling like I’m not alone.”
“I didn’t-”
“There’s a guy in Vegas sitting in a wheelchair, drinking apple sauce through a straw and mourning a popped testicle, who will never lay a hand on me again, who says otherwise. Anyway, I think the difference with my dad is that he was actually afraid of my growing up, becoming an adult, getting attention from boys and everything. He tried to make me afraid of it too, and I was.”
“There’s got to be a better way,” said Austin.
“Yeah, but he didn’t know it. Can I show you something?”
“Not another scar?”
“No. Just wait there a sec.”
I hopped off the bed, went to my bag and pulled out my purse. In there, tucked safely behind some cards, was one of the most precious things in my life. This was the first time I’d ever showed it to anybody else.
My hand trembled as I returned to the bed and held the picture out to Austin. He took it and held it in front of his face for a few seconds, then looked back to me.
“You and your mom?”
I nodded.
“Did any of the ice cream end up in your
mouth
?”
The young girl who I used to be peered out from the picture, with a huge and innocent grin on her face and a generous dollop of chocolate ice cream on her nose. Sitting next to her was a woman who I was starting to look more and more like all the time.
Back then my parents seemed to be so
big
and all-knowing. There was nothing they couldn’t do, no question they didn’t have an answer to, especially my mom.
“Some of it,” I said. “I remember that day. So many days are just
lost
, you know? But I remember
that
one. Clear as a bell. The sun was hot, the ice cream was cold. Dad was at work and we were just sitting in the back yard talking about our favorite flavors. I got that ice cream on my nose and
that’s
when my mom decided it would be best to take a picture.”
In my mind’s eye I could hear the birds chirping and that cool breeze blowing my hair across my face, getting chocolate ice cream in it from the smear on my nose. It made for a pretty impressive knot later on in the day.
“I asked her why she was taking a picture and sh-she said… she said…” I held the back of my hand to my mouth for a few seconds and blinked away the tears that threatened. “She looked at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world and said ‘Because, Sky-Pie, one day we might want to look back and remember that time we just sat in the sunshine and had some ice cream together.’”
The blinking didn’t suffice and a tear rolled down my cheek, which I wiped away. Austin was quietly looking back and forth between the picture and me.
“She was right. I remember the sound of my dad’s yelling, I remember the sound of the belt against my skin… but I remember that
day
with my mom too, the timer whirring down, I remember how her arm felt around my shoulder and how safe and loved I was. I remember. There’ve been so many times when I had to close my eyes and reach back to that feeling, otherwise I would have broken down completely.”
“Where did she stand on the belt then?” Austin asked.
“Dad wasn’t always like that. She d-died when I was twelve, when I was going through puberty, starting to show… um…
signs
of growing up.” I waved my hands over my body. “He was… strict, before she died. He was awful after.”
“Sorry. She sounds like she was a good mom.”
“The best. It wasn’t fair that she got sick and died, but it’s even less fair that you never had anybody like that in your life. She was my soft place to fall, she showed me what love was. When nothing else in the world made sense, I could rely on the fact that she loved me and everything else would sort itself out. I miss her so much.”
Seven years since she died. Seven years since I spoke these three words that were circling around in my brain and my heart. It felt like forever, and like a fleeting second all at the same time.
I wondered if Austin had
ever
heard them. If my mom was around I could have talked to her about it and I bet she would have told me to say it weeks ago. I reached out and touched his cheek again, turning his head in my direction a little.
“Austin?
I
love
you
. You changed my life and… I just love you.” I swallowed hard and pulled my hand back to my lap, looking down at it as another lump formed in my throat. “You don’t have to say it back to me… y-you don’t have to
feel
it. I just w-wanted you to know you’ve got something, and somebody, you can rely on. I wanted you to know.”
For a moment, Austin’s face went stiff like granite, and then it began to contort. He unlaced his fingers from his forehead and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
I could see him grit his teeth, could
feel
the strain like a hum through the mattress, but despite his best efforts, tears still leaked out from under his hands. Lacking any better ideas, I rubbed my hands over his chest again like I had when he was talking about his childhood home.
Austin pulled himself together after a minute or two and dropped his hands from his face, one of which landed in my lap. I held his big hand with both of mine and he looked at me with undisguised wonder.
“I love you too, Sky. I do.” He paused and his eyes rolled around the room a little before returning to me with an apologetic, even awkward, shrug of his broad shoulders. “So, now what?”
I sighed with happiness, feeling like sunshine had burst through some cloud cover inside of me. It was too much to contain and I smiled, seeing Austin’s face light up in response.
“Well… you’re a free man. It’s a sunny day. You wanna, maybe, get some ice cream… with me? We could take a picture.”