Darkest Before Dawn (14 page)

T
he pinks
and yellows seem so vibrant, the whispers of clouds gray against the rising sun. Everything seems so big. The open spaces seem endless. I was beginning to believe the world was really nothing more than four walls, wondering if I’d made all this up, but I didn’t. I suck in a lungful of frosty morning air as though I am a person dying of thirst and this air is water.

After several moments, we climb back into the car and drive another hour and a half until we come to a run-down motel complete with the cliché fluorescent light flickering on the side of the highway. Max turns into the gravel driveway and parks.

“Wait here,” he says.

He anxiously looks around as he makes his way to the front office, briefly glancing back at me when he places his hand on the door handle to walk inside. The door closes behind him, and I can’t see anything through the tinted window. For a split-second, something inside of me tells me to open the door and run. My heart slowly picks up its pace. I reach for the handle, but…he
saved
me.

When Max steps out of the office, my hand is still on the door handle. I snatch it away quickly as the guilt drowns me. The key is still in the ignition which causes an alarm to buzz when he opens my door for me.

“Come on, now,” he says, gently taking my hand to help me out of the truck.

My hand remains in his as we walk down the sidewalk, stopping in front of a rusted door at the end of the walkway. This seems so peculiar—us out here, going into a hotel room. And I don’t think it should, but it is strange not having my hands bound and not being in that house.

Max opens the door and the smell of bleach immediately slaps me in the face. I crinkle my nose.

“Fuck, that’s rancid,” Max groans, waving his hand in front of his face. He closes the door behind him and I sit on the edge of one of the double beds.

“Shit,” he says. “I didn’t get the bags. I’ll be right back.”

And with that, he leaves me alone.

Alone with a door I could easily open. I could easily leave. Run to the office. I could be free, but my legs don’t want to carry me to that door. And why? Because I do not want to leave him.

And all alone, I panic. Vertigo sets in. Sweat pops from every last pore. I
need
him. I grab onto the edge of the bed in an attempt to feel grounded, to keep myself from thinking I am about to sink right through this grimy hotel floor. I count in my head, making it to one hundred and twenty before the latch to the door pops. The door swings open, and the moment I see Max’s face, I feel like I can breathe again.

His brow wrinkles. “You okay?” He tosses the keys down on the nightstand and drops the bags at the foot of the bed.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

He shoots a curious glance at me, smirking ever so slightly. “You look worried.”

“I’m not.”

“Good.” He nearly trips as he kicks his boots off. “Shouldn’t be.”

Max grabs the bottom of his white shirt, lifting it over his head. I watch the muscles in his stomach bunch and flex, my eyes skimming over his bare flesh. He catches me staring at him and smiles before tugging his jeans down and crawling onto the bed next to me. “Shitty motel, but that’s what you get in the middle of butt-fuck Egypt.”

I laugh.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, lying on his stomach and grabbing one of the pillows. He scrunches it up under his massive arms before he rests his chin on it. “Huh?” he says. “What’s so funny?”

“I like that term—butt-fuck Egypt, I use it all the time.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah…” He grabs my knee and gives it a playful squeeze, but instead of moving his hand away, he leaves it there, gently rubbing his fingers over my leg.

“Figures.”

“Figures?” I ask.

“Yeah, figures you’d say some shit like that, too.” He grins again. And that smile—it does something to me. There’s a few moments of silence where we look at each other and all I want him to do is kiss me. Hold me. Love me…

“It will all be okay now.” He tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I promise.”

“I know.” My mind is racing. I worry that he’s going to leave me. He cannot leave me. Ever. My pulse kicks into overdrive again.

“What?” he asks as he trails his fingers down my jawline. “What are you thinking?”

“Don’t leave me,” I blurt, realizing how desperate I sound.

The thing is, it’s not just that I feel lost without him or that I love him, but that there is something about him I know I’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere else because it’s something I have yet to put my finger on. This connection—it’s deeper than any I’ve ever felt.

His brow wrinkles and he sits up. “I’m not. I’m not leaving you…” There’s a pause where his eyes narrow. His gaze grows intense like he’s trying to pull something out of me without words. “I want to know what happened to you. Not in that house, Ava. What happened to you? Long before I ever met you, you were fucked up by something.”

My lungs cease to pull in oxygen for a second, and my mind goes to those places it shouldn’t, those places I’ve blocked out and trained myself to forget:

The dark.

The footsteps outside my bedroom door.

The way the laundry detergent smelled, the whiskey on his breath.

The second I close my eyes, I’m sucked down that twisted tunnel of fear and shame. All these years later and I can still feel his rough hand slam over my mouth to muffle my cries, smell the cigarettes on his fingers. It still—even though I wish to God it didn’t—feels like his hands are all over me. I can actually
still
hear him telling me how terrible I am, how if I tell, no one will believe me, and most importantly, that no one will love me.
I’m unworthy of love.
That kind of shame and confusion, fear and betrayed trust, drowns you no matter how well you think you’ve recovered. It always devours you. And the thing is, when you’ve never told anyone about this kind of demon, this hell you relive within the realms of dreams and sometimes within your waking thoughts, well, you are alone. Absolutely and utterly alone in the dirtiest place imaginable.

And I’ve yet to tell anyone because the thought of it makes me feel sullied.

I don’t want anyone to see me for what I am.

I drop my head to my chest, and Max immediately takes my chin and gently lifts it, but I close my eyes. I don’t want to look at him because, if I do, he will know. He will know and he could never love me if he knew. People can say what they want, but
no one
wants something soiled.

And that is why I build my walls up. Why I push people away because then they can’t hurt me…but with Max, my walls are crumbling and it terrifies me.

“Ava, look at me,” he whispers, his thumb gently stroking my jaw. “I want to know
you
. I want to know those parts you think are broken and ugly because anyone can love the light. I want to love the dark inside of you.”

Does he really
love
me?
I sit, my stomach flitting and fluttering.
Could he really love the ugly person I hide deep down inside?
Max grabs onto me, pulling me to his chest. And I find myself sobbing because that is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said—he wants to love the parts of me I hate.

Piece by broken piece that barrier I’ve spent my entire life building falls away, and I allow myself to come apart in his arms—within the embrace of a man who anyone else would say wants to destroy me. And I feel safe. I feel unjudged. I feel whole.

I have always been enslaved to the memories of something so wrong, so fucked up…and I’d rather be imprisoned to a man who will love the parts of me that need to be loved—to a man who will live in the shadows and hide in the dark with me.

“I can’t…” I whisper.

“It’s okay, but I want you to feel free of it,” he says. “No matter how horrible you think it is, I want that part of you more than anything else.” He kisses my lips with reverence and I sink into the bliss only he creates, thinking…
but I’m afraid to be free.

T
he soft lull
from the TV plays in the background, the eerie blue light from the screen casting shadows over the wall. Ava is asleep on my chest and I’m combing my fingers through her long hair, wondering what in the actual fuck I am doing.

Her face has been plastered all over national newspapers. Her family has been interviewed on TV—there’s a hefty reward for her safe return. And here I lie in a scummy motel with her asleep on me, pretending that she is with me because she simply should be.
But she should.

Something about her—there is something so goddamn deep to her that can only come from trauma and despair and heartache. When you get down to it, there are two types of people in the world: those who have struggled and those who have not. And by struggled, I don’t mean financially or physically, I mean psychologically, emotionally. People who have experienced things so fucked up and twisted that, at times, they long for the peace of death. Experiencing things we shouldn’t, learning how to compartmentalize all the bullshit and the evil and the anger, it carves out jagged crevices inside a person’s soul, creating a dark level of depth the human mind isn’t meant to really know.

And I can see that depth in her, within the pain ridden glimmer in her eyes. It sucks me right in, making me want to know what’s happened to her, making me want to love her. I
could
love her…I believe I
need
to love her, and maybe it’s the guilt—maybe it’s all come to a head and I’m just desperate to know what actual love feels like.

No, fuck love.

To hell with that emotion. Love is like the holy fucking grail. It is something we chase and chase and then, right when it’s within our grasp, we realize it’s been nothing but a mirage. It disintegrates in our hands and all the promises, all those passionately heated words turn to lies and dust that is swept away and forgotten within the sands of time.

Love is not a real thing. It is contrived, whether by someone like me or by the person themselves. We believe what we want, because the truth is when you realize something as pure as love is nothing more than a fucking fairytale in a world of shit, well…that epiphany is enough to make the strongest of people crumble.

I want to love her.
And all that does is terrify me, so I lie to myself:
You’re too fucked up to really understand the concept of love.
Her eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted in her sleep and I sweep my fingers over her cheek.
I want to covet this woman and pretend I could love her in ways no one else ever would.

She is merely deception—all I want and can never have. She has been molded to see me as love. And love I am not for I have demons so deep, so fucking violent—even something as pure as love can’t cleanse this.

Shifting ever so slightly in her sleep, she rolls onto her side and takes a deep breath. And fuck me if she isn’t beautiful. Raw beauty, completely unintended.

And I want it.

I want her.

“Please, no…” She whimpers. “Stop…” Her arm flies up into the air, her legs jerking. “Stop!” Just as I reach over to wake her, she gasps and bolts up in the bed.

I sit up and grab onto her, and she yanks away, panting like she’s just finished a marathon. Her gaze darts around the room before it lands on me. She holds her chest with her hand, exhaling as she closes her eyes and rests her head on my chest.

I tenderly take her face in my palms and tilt her head back, swiping away the tears beneath her eyes. “Only a dream…”

“But it wasn’t.” She chokes back a sob and I kiss her forehead.

I want to save her, protect her, and I can’t help but scoff at the irony of it all because, unbeknownst to her, I’ve ruined her in a way she’ll never come back from. But until that moment where she understands what I have done, I can have her.

“You are safe with me,” I whisper into her hair as her fingers dig into my arms. I grab the remote from the nightstand and turn the television off, but she immediately takes the remote from my hand.

“Don’t do that,” she says, desperately pressing buttons to turn the TV back on. “Don’t turn it off. I don’t like the silence when I sleep. The noise drowns the other things out.”

“
What
happened to you?” I ask.

She swallows and fidgets. “When I was little…” She inhales then exhales as she shakes her head. “I was just a kid and he…he…”

I know what has happened to her because I just
felt
it. Some things don’t have to be said.

“I can’t,” she whispers. She clings to me, burying her face in my shoulder, and I sweep my hands through her hair. “I just, I hated him for it. I don’t know why I never said anything, you know? I just, just couldn’t because it was wrong but I thought it was my fault because why would someone do that to you? Why would someone you trusted do that and say those things and hurt you if you didn’t deserve it? What was so wrong with me that he had to do those things? It just—and then all the things I saw growing up. All I wanted was to be like everyone else and I never could, I never could…” Her words are lost on sobs.

“But if you were like everyone else, you couldn’t appreciate the beauty in the darkness, the miracle of light. As terrible as they may feel, the things you see as flaws”—I pull her close to my chest—“those
are
the things that make you beautiful. It makes you able to understand those people no one else does. And we all need someone who can show us we shouldn’t be afraid of our demons.” Her arms fall from my back, her body goes limp, and all I can do is hold her.

Ava is an angel whose wings were severed and ripped off before she was cast to the earth. And as heartbreaking as it is, those are the most precious kind, for fallen angels are the only creatures who know what both heaven and hell are like.

We’ve met with the dark side of humanity, the raw, gritty, terrible faces most people only see in nightmares. She and I—we both know the truth: the concept of love is the grandest façade man has ever dreamed up.

And that is why she is broken.

It is why I am broken.