Never Let You Go (a modern fairytale) (14 page)

Standing up and crossing the room, she locked the apartment door and fastened the dead bolt and chain.

“No more visitors tonight,” she muttered, feeling unsettled by Gemma’s sudden appearance, threats, and departure. Though it had been many years since Griselda fought physically with another woman, she was in good shape—likely, she’d still hold her own. No, what bothered her was that, even after a lifetime in the foster care system, she didn’t like the vulnerable feeling that came from being woken up by a stranger, and after years living on her own or with Jonah, she was unaccustomed to it.

Her stomach growled, and Griselda realized that she hadn’t eaten since Rosie’s last night. She opened the refrigerator to find milk, three cans of beer, half a package of hot dogs, half a bag of buns, an apple, ketchup, mustard, and an onion. She opened the cabinets and didn’t fare much better: a can of coffee, half a bottle of cooking oil, two half-empty boxes of cereal, and a few cans of soup.

A sudden sharp memory of her early childhood assaulted Griselda and made her grimace. Until the age of six, she had lived in an apartment with her meth-addicted mother, Joellyn, in Anacostia, the worst neighborhood in Southeast D.C. They’d rarely had enough food unless Griselda’s grandmother made the trip from Baltimore to check on them and bring groceries, and when she did, it was always the same: hot dogs, apples, milk, and cereal. She said that you could live on those four things for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you had to, and she was right. Griselda often had.

Griselda paused, staring at the cabinet and wondering if she’d shared that story with Holden at some point or another. Perhaps she had. And perhaps it had been advice he’d inadvertently taken. How strange to know that her grandmother’s wisdom was still in use so obscurely, so many years later. Her grandmother had died a few days before Griselda’s sixth birthday, and Griselda spent that birthday being dragged by her mother to her grandmother’s poorly attended funeral, after which they returned home and her mother dosed herself hard enough to stay in an almost dead stupor for days.

Not long after that, Joellyn started a kitchen fire, and Griselda was taken away from her mother. With nowhere else to go, she was assigned to her first foster family. She saw her mother only twice after that, and when she was returned to the foster care system after her escape from Caleb Foster, she was informed that her mother had died of an overdose while Griselda was in West Virginia.

Shrugging off the bad memories and plucking a can of chicken noodle soup out of the cabinet, she opened the lower cupboards and found a solitary saucepan, which she placed on the stovetop.

Her hands shook a little as she emptied the contents of the can into the pan, and after the soup was on the stove, she took a seat at the small table, staring at Holden’s sleeping form.

Now what?
he had asked her before falling asleep, and the question reverberated in her head as she stared at him.
Now what?

For ten years she’d been searching for Holden, and now she’d suddenly found him. He wasn’t dead, but he was drastically changed, and she recognized that leaving now might be easier in some ways. She could walk out of his apartment as he slept and move on with her life, knowing he was safe and alive. Maybe, as a way of making amends, she’d send him some money so he could move to a nicer place. He could go back to his life with Gemma, and she could go back to hers with Jonah.

And yet, her longing to know him again tightened its grip on her heart and demanded she stay. Finding him, but not taking the time to know him, seemed like a waste of the miracle she’d been granted. Just being near him again felt strangely hopeful—like a chance to be whole again after long years of being broken. No matter who he’d become, she wanted to know him. She
needed
to know him. She needed to know what had happened to him, how he had survived, if he was okay. Some part of her—a very potent and tenacious part of her—had never let go of Holden through ten dark and lonely years. Might be that someday she’d walk away from him. But not today. Not tonight.

Noticing his phone on the table beside her elbow, she picked it up, dialing Jonah’s number.

“Who’s this?”

“Jonah, it’s me.”

He exhaled in a rush. “What the
hell
, Zelda? What happened? Where the fuck are you?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter? We’ve been waiting here for you for more’n three hours. Shawn was saying how you had a head injury and maybe you’d wandered off. Drowned or something. Your purse is here. What the fuck is going on? Where are you? We’ll come get you.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “No. I’m not going back with you.”

“Wha-What does that mean?”

She looked at Holden sleeping peacefully across the room, then got up to take the boiling soup off the stove.

“It means what I said. I’m not going home. Not right now.”

“What the fuck, Zelda? You been crazy ever since we got here.”

She was silent, wedging the phone between her shoulder and ear as she rummaged for a bowl and poured the steaming soup into it.

“What about your stuff? Your purse and your phone?” he asked.

“Take it all home for me, I guess,” she said, opening the drawer beside the sink to find two sets of silverware and no more. She took a spoon and closed the drawer. “I don’t really care.”

“You don’t care. And then what?”

“Live your life.”

“Live my life. The rent? The bills?” he snapped. “Your job?”

“You figure out the bills for now,” she said, shuffling to the table, careful not to let the hot soup slop over the side of the bowl and burn her hands. “I’ll handle my job.”

The reality was that there was not much she cared about in this world. Her apartment and its contents? Nope. Her purse and phone? Replaceable. She cared about Maya, to whom she hoped to explain everything someday, and the McClellans, who might or might not fire her from her job. She would miss little Prudence very much if she was fired, but even Prudence wasn’t enough to keep her from Holden. So, as much as it would hurt, she’d accept that consequence.

There was only one person in the world for whom Griselda truly cared. One person. And unbelievably, after a decade apart, he was sleeping a few feet from her right now.

Jonah cursed under his breath. “You know what? You are—you are one bat-shit, crazy-ass bit—”

“I’ll see you when I see you,” she said, pressing the red End button on Holden’s phone before holding down the power button to turn it off entirely.

If Jonah called back—and she was sure he would—she didn’t want to risk waking up Holden. If his voicemail greeting gave the name Seth, Jonah might come looking for her here, but then, Jonah’s only connection to Seth was Quint. And somehow she didn’t see Quint giving up Holden’s home address to her jackass of a boyfriend.

Which meant—for now, at least—she was free.

It was nighttime when Holden woke up, but the apartment maintained a dim glow of ambient light from the Main Street lamps beneath his window, even in the middle of the night. He’d never purposely live in a place where the nights offered a pure, black darkness. Not willingly, anyway.

“Gris?” he ground out, trying not to move.

“I’m here,” she said, and his eyes focused on her standing up at his kitchen table and walking across the room in bare feet.

She was beautiful.

She was so fucking beautiful it made his eyes burn.

She’d taken her sweatshirt off. All she had on was a pair of jeans and a white scoop-neck T-shirt. Her hair was back in a ponytail, and he didn’t know if she wore makeup or if she was just naturally stunning, but he’d be willing to bet on the latter. She’d been a tall, skinny girl, but she must have stopped growing at some point, because she was definitely shorter than his six feet by several inches, but still trim. And now the slight adolescent curves that had so intrigued him a decade ago were filled out and womanly—the swell of her breasts, the gentle curve of her hips—and even with four stab wounds, three bruised ribs, two black eyes, a broken nose, a fractured cheek, and a concussion, Holden’s body reacted, his dick stiffening, even though he had no business thinking about Griselda in that way.

She squatted down beside the couch, her face a few inches from his, and he could smell the fresh, clean scent—like soap or laundry detergent—that clung to her skin, and he knew that when he closed his eyes to die, that was the last memory he would reach for: the sweet smell of Griselda on the night he found out she was still alive.

“How you feeling?” she asked, her voice low and gentle as she offered him a glass of water.

He struggled to sit up a little. “Good. Yeah, um, better.”

She held the glass to his lips, and he took several deep gulps before lying back down with a soft groan.

“Holden . . .,” she said, giving him a look.

“Everything fucking hurts,” he admitted, wincing. When he looked at her face, though, it was impossible not to grin. “Except my heart.” He paused, spellbound by the sight of her so close. “But even my heart hurts a little.”

His eyes dropped to her lips, and he watched as they tilted up a little. “Why’s that?”

“Because I missed all of this. I missed ten years of . . . You . . . are so beautiful.”

“Aw, look who got smooth.” She laughed softly, placing the glass on the floor, and he knew that if the room had been brighter, he would have seen a pink blush color her cheeks.

“I hate to say it,” she continued, still grinning at him. “But you don’t look so good.”

“Yeah, well. Didn’t know you were coming. No time to pretty up.”

“How often do you do it?”

“It?”

“Fight like that.”

He heard the censure in her tone and looked away from her, up at the ceiling, shrugging his shoulders defensively. “From time to time.”

“I’d think you would have had enough of being beaten up,” she said, picking up the glass.

“I don’t do it to get beaten. I do it to win,” he muttered.

She sighed, heading back to the kitchen with the empty glass, and Holden watched her: the gentle sway of her hips, the silent touch of her little feet across the carpet. The last time he’d seen those feet, they’d been cut up and bleeding, the Shenandoah rinsing them clean.

“You want something to eat?” she asked.

“I don’t have much.”

“You have all the basics,” she said. “My grandma used to say—”

“—hot dogs, apples, milk, cereal. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

She leaned her elbows on the kitchen counter. “I wondered if you’d remembered that.”

“I remembered,” he said softly.
I remember everything. I’ve lived on memories of you for ten years.

“So what’ll it be?”

He shifted on the couch, the spike of pain in his chest wound making him wince. “I think I have some soup too? Up in the cabinet?”

“Yep,” she said without checking. “Tomato or chicken noodle?”

“I don’t care which. You don’t mind heating it up?”

“Nope,” she said, pulling his saucepan from the drying rack. Since Holden never left anything in the sink, and she was familiar with the small stock of food in his cabinets, he assumed she’d made herself some soup too.

“How long was I out?”

She opened the cabinet next to the stove and took out a can of soup, pulling on the metal tab to open it. “Um, a few hours. Three or four?”

“You ate?”

“I did. I hope you don’t mind.”

“What’s mine is yours, Gris.”

She stared at him for a moment, then turned her back to him, pouring the soup into the pan. He was hungry, but he wished she’d leave it for now.

“Come talk to me while it’s cooking.”

She gave it one last stir, then turned to face him, crossing the room to stand behind the easy chair across from him, which still felt way too far away.

She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth, looking at him like she was trying to decide something. Finally she said, “While you were asleep, your, uh . . . your girlfriend, Gemma, stopped by.”

“Oh yeah?”
Fuck.

“Mm-hm. She was, uh, upset to find me here. Said you should call her so that you two could discu—”

“G-Gris, listen—”

“Holden,” she said, her eyes sad, “I don’t want to disrupt your life.”

Well, I want you to. My life was shit until a few hours ago. My heart only started beating again when I saw you walking up the stairs toward me.

Risking the pain of sitting up, but wanting to face her, he braced himself on his elbow, carefully lowering his feet to the floor, then leaned on the back of the couch trying to keep his chest and stomach as flat as possible.

She quickly stepped around the chair and sat down next to him on the couch. If he’d have known that trying to sit up would make her rush to his side, he would have tried it as soon as his eyes had opened.

“You okay? Move slow,” she said, putting her hand on his arm.

He panted lightly from the pain, turning his head to the side to look at her and covering her hand with his. She sat a few inches away, on her knees, her body facing him, that clean scent so fine and so welcome it was almost making him light-headed.

“You smell good,” he said, staring into her blue eyes.

She flinched, her eyes darting to his neck for a moment before sliding back up to his face. She lingered on his lips—only for a split second—but he noticed, and it made his breath catch as his skin flushed with heat, chased by shivers.

This girl. This girl. God, what she does to me with just a look.
The thought made his head race, only stopping when it acknowledged that she already had someone in her life who got to do more than look—he got to touch her, be with her, give her pleasure. Holden’s lips tightened.

“W-who were you with last night?”

She pulled her bottom lip into her mouth again, holding it between her teeth as she stared back at him. This was something he didn’t remember her doing when they were kids, but it was one hundred fucking percent distracting, and he prayed she wouldn’t drop her eyes to his lap, where his dick twitched and swelled.

“Um. Jonah.”

“And who is Jonah? College boy? B-boyfriend?”

“We live together,” she said, holding his eyes but pulling her hand away.

Well, if he needed something to deflate things, finding out she lived with fucking Jonah was the perfect pin.

“Married?”

“No,” she said quickly.

“Engaged?” He flicked his eyes to her bare fingers.

“No,” she said, shaking her head for emphasis. “It’s not like that. We just live together. He didn’t go to college. And frankly . . . I don’t know if he’s my boyfriend anymore.”

He lifted his eyes back up to hers, peripherally noting the way her breasts moved up and down with her short, shallow breaths, and desperately trying not to drop his eyes to stare at them. “Why not?”

She searched his eyes, scanning them carefully, as if looking for answers to unasked questions. Her lips parted, but the soup suddenly boiled over, hissing and spitting, and she jumped up to take care of it without answering his question.

***

Griselda’s heart galloped as she padded across the crappy brown carpet back to the kitchen, relieved for a break from the intensity of their conversation. With her back to Holden, she took a deep breath, finally filling her lungs, and flicked her tongue over her dry lips. When he stared at her like that, she could barely think.

She turned off the burner and took the clean, dry bowl she’d used from the drying rack beside the sink. Lifting the soup from the stove with a solitary pot holder, she filled the bowl and placed the pot in the sink to clean later.

She could feel his eyes on her from the moment she left the couch. Turning back to him, she asked, “Do you want to eat over there or at the table?”

“Here, if that’s okay. I have a little table,” said Holden, pointing to a folding table leaning against the wall by the TV.

She set up the table in front of him, then went back for the soup, swearing she could
feel
the heat thrown off by his steady gaze. It was discomfiting, making her feel nervous and excited, too self-aware and too aware of
him
.

After she placed the bowl and spoon before him, she made the safer—and yes, spineless—choice to sit in the easy chair instead of beside him again. As he’d slept, covered with the blanket, she hadn’t studied him closely, but now, seated across from him, she allowed herself to explore him with her eyes as he leaned forward to take a spoonful of soup.

His burnished blond hair was still thick and unruly and too long in the front, where two rogue curls dipped over his forehead as he leaned forward to blow on the soup. His chest was firm and sculpted with muscle, and though his abdomen was hidden by the collapsible table, she checked out the tattoos on his upper chest as he placed his lips on the rim of the spoon. An angel had been inked just below his neck, and her unfurled wings spread across the length of his body, from shoulder to shoulder. The light was too dim for Griselda to make out the details, but she knew in her gut that the angel was somehow connected to her, and her heart clenched with the certainty that grief had been its designer.

She slid her eyes from his right shoulder to his upper right bicep, which bulged slightly with defined muscle tone, and found four black roses. Under the first two she read “Cory and Will,” a red banner under their names with the date “11.14.99.” His parents. He’d only told her the story once, but she’d never forget it.

Holden had spent the night at his grandmother’s house so that his parents could have a date night for their tenth anniversary. When his grandmother drove him home the next day, the smell of gas in the small apartment was unmistakable, and his parents were dead in their bed from carbon monoxide poisoning. One of them had turned on the stove to make dinner and gotten distracted—dinner was never made, and by morning they were gone.

The third of the four black roses read “Gran,” with a red banner noting the date “2.4.01.” His grandmother, and guardian, who’d died of a heart attack only fourteen months after his parents’ deaths, leaving Holden utterly alone in the world.

And finally, under his grandmother’s rose, a final black rose dripping with two drops of bright red blood that read “Gris,” and the date “6.12.04.”

Her breath caught as she jerked her eyes to his face, only to find him watching her with such steady, unspeakable sorrow, such unfathomable tenderness, it made her face crumple. Her neck bent forward, her chin resting on her chest as two huge tears plopped into her lap.

“G-Gris,” he whispered, his voice soft and broken. “I thought you were dead.”

“I know,” she sobbed, reaching up to smear her tears with her fingers, but unable to stop them from falling.

“Stop crying, Gris. P-please stop crying, or I’m going to have to get up and walk over there to hold you, and damn it, as much as I’d like to do that, it would hurt like hell to move, so please . . .”

She sniffled loudly, taking a deep, ragged breath before looking up at him. “I’ll stop. I’m okay.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding as he drew his spoon back through the soup, watching her with haunted eyes. He sipped the cooling soup, then swallowed. “I’ll change it.”

“The rose?”

“
Your
rose,” he said. “I’ll have it colored red and cover up the date.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“The angel is you too, Gris,” he said, placing his hand over the angel’s face, over his heart. Then he twisted his right arm to show her the tattoo of her face and their initials. “And you already saw these.”

Her eyes still welled, so she blinked quickly a few times and took another deep breath. She jerked her chin toward another tattoo that peeked out from the inside of his left arm. “What’s that one?”