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Carter’s face. I can’t get the image of Carter’s pulverized face out of my mind. The last time I saw a face that bloody …
I gasp and choke on a sob as the image of my mother lying in bed, never to wake up again, slams into my consciousness like a linebacker. It doesn’t flicker, and it doesn’t flash. It blocks out my vision like a gruesome bumper sticker over my eyes as Wes drags me up the exit ramp and into the woods. I count backward in my mind. I shake my head from side to side. I use my free hand to yank on my hair, but nothing’s working.
We stop running. Wes is talking to me, but I can’t hear him. I’m too busy trying to think of something else. Anything else. I open my eyes as wide as I can, looking all around us for a distraction, but everything reminds me of her. The woods, her motorcycle, the air in my lungs. It all reminds me that I’m alive and she’s not. Wes straddles the bike, his mouth moving like he’s giving me instructions, but I just blink at him. At his perfect face. Carter had a perfect face too, but Wes broke it. He broke it, just like my dad broke my mama’s face. Made it ugly and bloody and gone.
Wes guides me to sit on the motorcycle. I let him manipulate my body like a rag doll.
Is this what the Paramore girl sang about? Watching your parents destroy each other just to fall in love and make the same mistake? Will Wes do the same thing to me one day?
I watch him as he picks up Mama’s helmet. He shoves his wild hair behind one ear, black lashes fanning out across high cheekbones, and I know she’s right. I am destined to make the same mistake. Because just like my mama, I’ve fallen madly in love with a man who is capable of doing terrible things with the best of intentions.
Wes’s pale green eyes lift to mine, swimming with remorse and sharpened by fear, and I’m so lost in them that I don’t realize what’s happening until I’m being plunged into a dark, hazelnut-scented prison.
Wes starts the bike, and I hold on for dear life as grief wraps its powerful tentacles around me and drags me under. I can’t hide from it anymore. I can’t fight it off. I have no distractions. Nowhere to go. It’s just me and this smell and this loss and this pain and this road taking me right back to my own personal hell.
I squeeze my eyes shut and press my forehead to Wes’s back as a strangled cry fills my helmet. It is long and loud and primal and overdue.
I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to go back there. Please, God. Please don’t let him take me back there.
I rock in my seat and repeat the mantra, finding some relief in the mindless repetition, but when the bike eventually begins to slow, a fresh wave of fear washes over me.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I’m afraid to look up. Afraid to let go. Afraid to face the place that holds all of my best and worst memories. I’m not ready. It’s too soon.
When the bike pulls to a stop, Wes turns and lifts the helmet off my head. I suck in a breath that doesn’t smell like hazelnut coffee and exhale with my whole body.
“Fuck, Rain …” Wes whispers, brushing the matted black strands away from my swollen, wet cheeks.
I keep my eyes shut tight, content to sit here and let him touch me as long as we don’t have to go inside. “I’m not ready,” I mumble. It’s the only explanation I can give him before my face crumples again.
“I know. I wanted to give you more time, but … time’s never really been our fuckin’ friend, has it?”
I shake my head, my eyes still glued shut.
“Do you think you could sit on the porch?”
I nod, not because I believe that I can, but because I want to believe that I can.
Wes guides me off the bike and walks me down the driveway and over to the front steps. My pulse speeds up with every step we take closer to my own living nightmare, but I push myself to keep walking.
It’s just the porch. It’s fine. It’s just the porch.
Wes helps me sit on the top stair and then plops down behind me so that my entire shaking body is enveloped by his.
“You know how I brought all that stuff from your house when I came back?”
I nod and listen, eager for him to keep talking. Wes’s voice is my favorite sound—deep and rough yet calm and quiet—and the way his chest rumbles against my back when he speaks helps me feel calmer, too.
“I stayed here while I was gone. That whole fucking time. I don’t know if I told you that. Mostly, I just got drunk and felt sorry for myself, but when I wasn’t passed out, I fixed the place up a little.”
“Wait. You did what?” Without thinking, I turn in his arms and open my eyes.
Wes’s lips pull into a sweet, boyish smile, and he shrugs. “I knew you’d come home eventually, and I didn’t want you to have to see … all that … again. I found some paint in the garage. Got rid of the, um … damaged furniture. Pulled up the carpet. Did you know you got hardwoods under there?”
I shake my head and laugh as my face wars with itself over whether to grin like a lunatic or cry like one.
So, I give up and do both. I laugh and cry and look into the eyes of a man who destroys beautiful things … but who also makes destroyed things beautiful again. For me.
