17. RAVEN

17

RAVEN

My emotions gush out of me like water through a broken dam. I’ve been hating for too long. I’ve been feeling guilty for longer. I lived through regrets of what happened with Emily, burying myself alive, being an empty shell, and not letting anyone close.

For years, I’ve acted all fearless and tough as shit, trying to suppress the feeling that I might fuck up someone’s life like I did Emily’s because I didn’t do enough. And that fear snarled back at me whenever I felt a tiny movement in my heart.

Maddy, my beautiful girl, is not a tiny movement. She is an avalanche of emotions. And now she is telling me she loves me.

I should’ve said it back. I should’ve screamed it from all the rooftops of Ayana long before she was kidnapped. But I was a coward.

Feeling her wrap around me makes it even harder to contain myself.

“I love you, Rave,” she says quietly. “And I want you to accept it. Because I won’t stop telling you that.”

I push off the wall, run my palm over my face to wipe away water, and turn around. Right away, I kiss her. Kiss her as hard as I can, hoping to balance my feelings out.

But she pulls away. There’s a smile on her face, that saintly kindness that always takes my breath away.

“Don’t take my softness for weakness, Rave. Because next time, I will trade myself for you. Next time, I will kill for you.”

She says it with a smile, the words that twist me on the inside, letting the awful memories rush to my head and pound in my ears again.

“Don’t say that,” I whisper, fear crawling back into me through the sound of the running shower. “Please, don’t say that.”

She has no idea.

“But I will, Rave. I am capable. I know how. And if something threatens what I love, I will kill. It’s a promise. You are mine.”

I shake my head furiously and cup her face, trying to fight the bile that’s rising to my throat, the guilt from what happened the last time someone did that for me. “Don’t. Take it back. Take it back, now. Please.”

She only smiles, a little confusion in her eyes. “But you killed for someone you loved, Rave. Years ago.”

She means Emily. She means the limited story I told her. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know .

“No.” I shake my head. “No, Maddy.”

She can’t say shit like that. That’s not how it works. I’ve been there. It backfires, that sort of love. It never ends well.

She frowns a little. “You did. Don’t tell me I can’t. Because you did. For Emily.”

Here it is, the moment of truth.

I swallow hard. “No, I didn’t.”

Her frown deepens. “You went to jail for stabbing your foster father. For her.”

“I did.”

“You said you stabbed him. Eleven times.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t,” I say so quietly that I hope she doesn’t hear it, but the truth needs to come out. “ She did.”

I close my eyes and bow my forehead to Maddy’s shoulder. Her hands cup my head, and I feel so fucking weak.

But I start talking, for the first time telling someone what really happened. Something I only told Mac.

I was doing the right thing. Back then, when I returned to that monster’s house, I was determined to avenge Emily. But I was young, stupid, angry. Too angry. I was distracted by that anger when he slammed a bottle against my head. He tied me, half-conscious, to a chair, like he had so many times before. He was going to cut me. Just like before. For fun. Laughing drunkenly. But this time, Emily was there, standing wide-eyed in her pajamas, tears streaming down her face. I remember hearing his words, “Now you will watch what happens to this useless piece of shit.” And then I blacked out.

“I couldn’t do anything. So she did it instead,” I say almost in a whisper. “With the broken bottle she picked up off the floor. When I came to, my ties were loose. His body lay on the floor in a pool of his own blood. And Emily’s tearful eyes were on me, the bloodied broken bottle still in her hand. She said the words that broke me that night. ‘I couldn’t let him do that to you anymore.’”

A sob shakes my chest. I grit my teeth. I shut my eyes close, feel Maddy’s hands stroking my head.

“ She said that, Maddy. The girl who went through hell. Who was four years younger than me. Who was broken, used, forced to do horrible things. And yes, when I went to juvie, I thought I was saving her, paying for the crime I didn’t commit but doing the right thing by her. I only understood later what that did to Emily. When she sent me the last letter. I didn’t know it was the last…” My voice breaks, and I take a deep breath. “The last one… ‘I want it to end,’ she wrote. ‘I never meant to hurt you. You weren’t supposed to pay for it, Mathew. I am sorry. Please, forgive me. Because I will never forgive myself for you taking the blame. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’”

I take in a shaky breath and exhale through my lips.

“I didn’t know how to reply to that. So I didn’t. Not for a while. And maybe those days as I waited, thinking and thinking and thinking about how to make her feel better—those were the days when she needed my answer the most… But she didn’t have the strength to wait…”

I finally lift my head and look Maddy in the eyes. I never want to see tears in them, but I do, the droplets mixing with water, her eyes full of so much compassion.

“Maddy,” I whisper, but before I find the strength to say something else, she starts kissing my face, stroking me with her gentle hands that have an incredible power to sooth pain.

“I haven’t done a single thing to deserve you,” I whisper.

“You don’t need to deserve me. It’s just the way it is,” she says, smiling through tears. “Love doesn’t always have to be deserved. Sometimes, it just is. It’s not sold. It’s not bargained. It’s free for the taking. It’s a gift. Just let me be with you, please.”

This is the most vulnerable I’ve felt since I was seven and went into the first foster home and so desperately wanted my new foster parents to like me. I smiled so hard. My heart beat so fast. I wanted to cry because they looked at me with curiosity, and I thought, “This is it, my family,” and I already loved them for wanting to take me in. And in the end, they gave me up, just like many others afterward.

But this feeling—that someone wants you for themselves—grows roots fast, even if only for a short while. And I so want to be hers, capable of protecting her, not being saved.

Letting go is like turning into a rushing river. They can throw anything they want at you, but you carry on. They put up a dam, but you break through it, because you are strong enough.

I want to tell Maddy that I will take a hundred more stabs for her. That I will kneel to the enemy for her. That I will endure more abuse if that will keep her safe. Being by her side is a privilege.

I want to kiss her from dusk until dawn. And at dawn, I want to take her to the beach, go swimming, watch droplets of water sparkle on her smooth skin and kiss them off one by one. I want to see her smile at the sun. I want her to laugh with her mouth wide open like she used to. I want to watch her teach little dude how to surf. And I want to know that they are both mine.

I want to tell her all that, but you never tell a woman all the deep thoughts you have about her. A man is supposed to be a shield, and shielding one’s emotions is part of it. In truth, I want to live to see the day she can take that shield off with her gentle hands. When we are old and wrinkled and still hold hands, and we think of how our story began and laugh at the craziness of it all.

I want to live with her.

With her, I want to live.

With her, I constantly want.

You don’t heal wounds and build the future with anger and hate. You do that with love.

She once told me that, with a smile, waving it off as silly nonsense.

So, I swallow my pride. That shitty thing rarely did any good. No, not pride, it’s denial. Or doubt. Or fear. Or ego. As Henry Miller once said, the ego dies in its own glass cage , and I don’t want to be caged anymore. Not by the past, not by my ambitions or silly notions of superiority. Or whatever it is that kept me from telling the girl who holds my heart hostage and my demons at bay that she is the most beautiful human I've ever met.

“I love you, beautiful girl,” I whisper. “I love you.” I kiss her. “I love you.”

The more I say it, the easier it is to repeat.

And I kiss her cheeks, her eyes, her brows, her soft lips. And I make love to her in the shower, letting the water wash off the tears, anger, and hate.