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My brave, beautiful girl. No, scratch that, she was all woman. My woman. How was I supposed to tell her the truth and watch her walk away to find her life, when every day it became more and more obvious that she was put on this earth so I could fucking find her?
I took another sip of the whiskey, welcoming the burning sensation sliding down my throat. If only it could burn the memory of Rita shaking like a scared rabbit, dodging me. She thought I would hurt her. Hit her, for God's sake.
The imaging shown on the MRI came back to me; I remembered all those cracks and signs; they made my skin crawl, and I was pretty sure now I had a confirmation of what happened.
My fingers clenched on the glass so much I knew my joints were white and drained of blood. Here was a feeling I didn’t get very often. I felt violent. I was sitting in the pitch-black dark, trying to drink my anger away because I could easily find the piece of shit that put his hands on my woman hard enough break her bones and put him in a state where not even Zach's magic scalpel could help him.
How could I let her go when I knew something bad awaited her on the other side? I didn’t care how mad she got; I hoped she never remembered the smallest chunk of her years before me.
We lived on borrowed time, but...
"Fuck it!"
I placed the glass on coffee table with no care or patience and jumped up, making my way through the lightless hallways and up the stairs, all the way to the guest bedroom door. I didn’t knock, but I walked in silently. The only light in the room was the green of the baby monitor, and I used it to guide myself to the bed and spoon her. I didn't even take the time to change my clothes.
As soon as I wrapped my arm around her soft body, I knew she was not asleep. She was tensed and stiff like an arch, but she made no move to push me away, and this was all I could ask.
"Love."
"James, don't. I am so mad at you, I could patearte en las pelotas." she mumbled to her pillow.
I loved when she spoke Spanish, letting that fire in her loose, but this time, the word sounded weak and tattered. I swore under my breath when I realized the reason for that.
"Please don't cry. I'm sorry for how tonight went." The only response I got was a deep sigh. "I was selfish and cruel. I should have never implied that it's hard dealing with your condition."
"But it is."
"Yes, but it's not how you think. The hard part was seeing you in the hospital, seeing you hurt. Technically, you're still not recovered from that accident, and yes, that is hard to deal with."
After she sniffed one more time, she finally turned in my arms, facing me. I couldn’t see her eyes because of the lack of illumination, but I could feel her searching gaze.
"I'm sorry I yelled."
"Rita, we both know you like to be loud, and I'm sorry I yelled too."
When she mimicked my hug and pulled her body closer to mine, I knew we were on the right path. The comfort of this little gesture reinforced my decision to grasp onto her as hard as possible.
"We still need to talk, love. There are things we need to establish loud and clear."
"I know you'd never hit me, but I was so sure you were about to. It was weird."
Gathering my thoughts, I tried to prepare for whatever I was going to say next because I knew for a fact that I was going to hate every single syllable.
"Rita, you had that reaction because...you lived through a few violent episodes before we met."
"What? Who?"
I'd give up a kidney to know and eviscerate the subhuman who had the twisted gut to do it. I was so tempted to find out; the only thing that was stopping me was the fear of discovering something way worse. I'd checked all her papers twice. Rita was not married, not legally anyway, but I couldn’t forget the simple wedding band that matched mine, that was encased around her finger like a leash.
"I know you are eager to find out about your past but please, please don't make me talk about it. I can't handle it. Rita, just the thought makes me ready to go at someone's throat and slice it open with a clean cut."
She landed the tips of her fingers on my lips, stopping my rambling.
"It's alright, you don't have to. Maybe there are some positives to amnesia after all." Didn’t I know it?
"So, it's ok if we drop it?"
She took a deep breath and started talking in a whisper.
