Breathe Me (A 'Me' Novel) (20 page)

She grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers, kissing my knuckles. “Because you came back for her.”

There was no denying that, and I couldn’t fucking think straight, so I wiped her tears with the pads of my thumbs and pulled her to me and gave her the one thing I had given only one other woman in my life: a hug.

Chapter 30

Harley

Hugs were always uncomfortable for me. I never knew where to put my arms or if I was squeezing too tight or too light, and since I didn’t have much practice with them aside from the occasional spontaneous ones from Ember, I tried to avoid them. But with Deklan, I fit in his arms, my hands fit around his waist perfectly, like I was made for him, and it hit me: I fit.

With Deklan, I fit.

This feeling—the warm, fuzzy, tingly feeling I was feeling—this was what love felt like. In his arms I was loved. Even if he never said it, I felt it. I wasn’t familiar with death, just like I wasn’t familiar with love, but I knew that people often apologized for it even when they didn’t know why they were apologizing. It was just what you did, like saying “bless you” when someone sneezes. But I knew the reason I said it to Deklan was because I really was sorry. He was in pain, it was clear, and when someone you love is in pain, you’re in pain.

“Come on.” He pulled apart from me, reached under the bed, and produced my shoe.

“Come somewhere with me?” he asked. Actually asked, and not demanded in pure Deklan style. How could I say no?

Nodding, I slipped on my shoe and we left the room. Once in his car, we sat in silence as he drove, one hand on the wheel, the other holding mine. I squeezed his hand every so often to let him know I was there, and he’d squeeze back, silently acknowledging it.

When we pulled up on the curb outside his parents’ house and he turned off the engine, I expected him to get out and go inside, but instead he just sat there and waited. He stared at the house. In the driveway, I recognized Matt’s truck, and I assumed the older, expensive-looking car was his father’s.

“Are you going in?” I asked, even though the last thing I wanted to do was go back in that house and face Mr. Kane, but if it meant helping Deklan, easing some of his pain, I’d do it.

“No,” he said as he continued to stare at the house. He dropped my hand and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. A coroner’s car passed by us and turned into the driveway, and all thoughts I had about my mother vanished as I focused on Deklan. His breathing had slowed down, and his grip on the steering wheel got tighter and tighter. I wanted to reach out to him, but I was scared it would make things worse. I wanted to comfort him in some way, so I pried one of his hands from the death grip he had on the steering wheel and intertwined our fingers. If this was all I had to offer, holding his hand and waiting, then I’d do this forever. We watched as people came and went, and when they finally took her away, Deklan sat up straighter in his seat and whispered, “Good-bye, Ma.”

I didn’t know how I felt about my mother, but as I looked over at Deklan, I thought of what he must be going through, the pain he was feeling because he
did
love his mother. What if my mother died? Would I be apathetic about it, or would the news upset me? Would I cry? If I had been asked that question two days ago, hell, two years ago, the answer would have been yes, but knowing what I knew now, I couldn’t be too sure. I could say what I’d like to do, but I wouldn’t really know until it happened. My mother had no family or real friends. Would I be responsible for her burial? Even if I didn’t want to be?

I hated that these answers weren’t so automatic for me. I hated that I would never have automatic, generic answers when it pertained to her. Yes, she had scarred me in irreversible ways, my body, my soul, my heart, and there would never be a topic or a conversation where I wouldn’t think of her, and that scared me. I wanted to be free from her grip on my soul.

“Okay,” I said softly, but in the silence of the car, it came out like a shout.

He turned to me, eyebrow raised in question. Breathing in a lungful of air, I said out loud what I had been waiting to say for my whole life.

“I’ll leave.”

Chapter 31

Harley

Talk about being scared shitless. The feeling of someone finally saying in not so many words that they cared for you was the best high and something that, until now, I had no idea I was missing. And it was scary. My head filled with all these what-ifs in the span of seconds after agreeing to leave with him, but Deklan didn’t give me a chance to let them stop me.

After convincing him that it would be quicker to get my things on my own, and mostly because I didn’t know what he would do if he saw my mother, I let him drop me off a few houses down from my house with the promise to check in after two hours.

“Any longer, babe, and I’m coming,” he warned, and that just went to all the wrong places in my body. I was turning into a pervert.

Easing into the house, I expected the fight. I was actually ready for it so that I could leave in a fit and not think twice about it. There was something to be said about leaving in a fit of rage. It was more satisfying, like the other person hadn’t gotten the better of you.

I was met with silence. The house was dark and still. I quietly waited in the foyer, listening for any movement, any sign that she was home. When I didn’t hear any movement after five minutes, I ran up the stairs, thankful for the respite. She was more than likely out somewhere getting drunk or degraded.

I flew into my room and grabbed a few duffels and threw in anything I thought I couldn’t live without. I wasn’t taking much, a few shirts and jeans. Going to my bathroom, I grabbed what little toiletries I had and stuffed them into a bag. Once back in my room, I surveyed it, making sure I got everything I wanted to bring. Almost two hours and two fully packed duffels later, I remembered my remaining books tucked away under my bed. I was under the bed reaching for the last book when I felt the prickling sensation that I wasn’t alone. But it was too late. I was pulled by my legs out from under the bed, and before I could even flip over and fight back—because I was going to fight back this time—I got a blow to the head.

“Where the fuck were you?” she screamed.

I rolled over in time to miss her foot, which would have collided with the side of my head. She sat on top of me and began pounding her fists into my flesh. I blocked what I could and tried bucking her off me. I never fought back, so when I tried to grab her by her hair, she only laughed.

“Oh, you got some balls now, huh? Who lied to you, little girl?”

I got a lucky shot in and punched her in the jaw. That was the wrong thing to do. Fighting back only gave her more strength, and her blows became harder. I felt the blood pool in my mouth from all the hits, and my eye was beginning to swell, but she kept on hitting. I stopped trying to buck her off me in hopes that she would get tired like she normally did and just leave me there, but I knew that wasn’t the case when she slipped her hands around my neck and began squeezing. The harder she pressed, the more hate fell from her lips. I was never leaving her, if I wanted to leave, it would be by her hands and her hands alone. I was useless and ugly, and no one would ever love me. I tried to block her out, to think of happy things and not let her hatred be the last thing that clouded my vision, but before I blacked out, she was all I saw.

I felt no pain, which I was thankful for, because I knew that I was dead, and when you’re dead, you don’t feel pain. Except there was a constant ringing in my ears that didn’t sound like it belonged in the afterlife. The ringing stopped, and then immediately sounded again. I opened my eyes as much as I could and found myself on the floor of my room, alone, and not dead.

I wondered if she left because she thought I was dead or because she knew I wasn’t. Either way, I was done. She tried to kill me because she didn’t want me to leave. I would never be able to be free from her. I managed to sit up and survey my room, or what was left of it. Along with the signs of an obvious struggle, she had destroyed my room. Clothes were strewn about everywhere, the mirror was broken in shards on the floor, the lamp was turned over, and the mattress was ruined. I reached out and grabbed a piece of the broken mirror, and though I knew I shouldn’t, I looked into it. What I saw made me cry out, but my throat was raw, so only a shallow breath came out.

My face was unrecognizable, swollen all over from my lips to my eyes. But that wasn’t the part that had me crying, and although I wasn’t used to beatings of this extreme, I was expecting it.

My throat, red with her fingerprints, stared back at me, reminding me of her pure hatred for me. Fingerprints that would stay long after the bruises had healed. Fingerprints that could never love me like I wanted. I knew then, no matter what Deklan said to me, this was my life. This was my normal even if I somehow managed to get free from her. I was never going to be this perfect person, all better and happy and shitting sunshine and rainbows. I was always going to have this moment hanging over my head.

What I had told Deklan was true. I would always wonder. Would I be enough for someone to love? Was I enough for someone to care to ask me about my day? To make sure that I had eaten or gotten a good night’s sleep? For someone to listen to me talk on and on about some book that sucked me in and I had to tell someone how it made me feel?

Was the happiness that I felt with him only temporary, in that moment? Because someone like me only got happiness like the ocean in a storm, in a huge roaring tidal wave, and then it was gone. Deklan was my tidal wave. I saw that now.

I used to know how my life was going to be, how I was going to live out my lifeless days, unloved and fearful. Hopeless to the possibility that life, my life, could be anything better than what it was now. I knew that I would either give up or give in; either choice would eventually be the end of me, and I didn’t think that was so bad. I would no longer be constantly reminded that I was shit, and I would be shit no matter how hard I tried in life. I thought it was all easier to just slip away.

But that was before.

Before I knew what it was like for someone to actually care about me, to have someone look at me without hatred in the stare, without being repulsed. That was before I knew what it was to actually be happy, to smile for no reason, and to laugh because I actually had something to laugh about. Before I experienced the feeling that life was perfect and I was on cloud fucking nine. Because those few hours with him, I fit.

I pulled out my pill bottle, the one where I had been hoarding pills little by little, and stared at them. I was having a hard time talking myself out of this plan. Life was hard, and while many people may have seen my struggle as being brave, I didn’t. I saw it as being weak. Too weak to fight back or stand up for myself when I knew,
knew
my life was all wrong. I saw myself as a failure at life and at being a person, a human being. I was just this thing that was taking up space, and once I was gone, it would be like I never existed in the first place.

I mean, this was supposed to happen, right? It was how those beautifully tragic love stories played out. Guy falls for beyond damaged girl, girl can’t quite get her shit together, and the story ends in tragedy.

I wondered as I popped the cap off and started dry swallowing the pills one by one. I again went back to my favorite fantasy. Wonder. Would I have had many friends in school, gone to college, dated, kissed, fell in love, a lot? Would people have loved me if things had been different for me? I took the time to make a wish to whoever was listening that I be reborn to a family like the ones from my imagination. While I didn’t particularly believe in a higher power anymore, I believed in reincarnation. How else would I explain all the beautiful things in the world, like butterflies or birds? Beautiful souls turned into beautiful things.

I looked around my destroyed room and down at my battered body and swallowed the last of the pills, thinking back to a time where I did believe in a higher power. One I talked to and called upon every day to please just make it stop. Make her love me, or make me go far, far away from her. But when my voice seemed to be falling on deaf ears, I had stopped. I had figured that no one was listening, no one would rescue me, and the only escape I would ever have was this one. Silent and alone.

The ringing sounded again, and I realized it was my cellphone. Through my haze, I found my purse slung under the bed and reached over to silence it. I saw Deklan’s name appear on the screen, and though I wasn’t planning on being this cliché, I wanted to hear his voice one last time, the one person who I loved and who I thought maybe loved me, too.

“Harley? Thank fuck. I’ve been trying to reach you for the last thirty minutes.” His voice grumbled in my ear and washed over me like a blanket, warming me. Even though he sounded mad, it was lost on me as I sighed, trying to gather my thoughts enough to tell him I loved him and that I was sorry.

“Dek-lan.” My voice sounded wrong, funny. It was getting harder to concentrate, and my head felt heavy.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” I could hear that he was in his car, and from the sound of the engine, he had just accelerated.

“I l-l-love yo-u,” I stammered out.

“Harley,” his voice grew concerned, “what happened, baby? Talk to me.”

“I’m s-s-orry.” I couldn’t hold the phone any longer, and I watched in slow motion as it slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor. I heard footsteps on the stairs and was thankful that whatever else she had planned for me, it would all be over soon. I faintly heard Deklan yelling my name, and a whole slew of curse words from the phone before the door opened and two booted feet appeared as I welcomed the darkness to wrap me up and take me away.

Chapter 32

Deklan

I watched them load her onto a stretcher and take her away. I wasn’t family, so I couldn’t ride in the ambulance with her, but I would fucking be there when she got out, and every step of the way after that. I was already on my way when she didn’t call me after the two hours, and when I couldn’t reach her, I knew in my fucking gut something was wrong. I knew I was a fool to let her go alone, to trust that it would be that easy.