Scars and Songs (31 page)

The bar was packed, despite the blizzard raging outside.  People were dancing to someone horribly singing karaoke, crowded around the bar ordering drinks, and every table was full with laughing noisy drunks.  I itched to start a fight.

Brayden grabbed a huge empty table in the back and pulled in enough chairs for everybody to sit.  Tucker and Blake ran to say their hellos at the bar and came back with three bottles of whiskey, a bunch of glasses and a beer for everyone.  Perfect.  I felt like drowning myself tonight, and the bottom of an empty whiskey bottle was the perfect place as any to do just that.

After three shots and a beer, my gut twisted when Grace walked through the crowd.  I broke a wooden spindle off the back of the chair when I watched Blake and Grace’s eye meet and the glow that lit up her face.  I slammed back my drink, draining the last of my beer and then slammed the bottle on the table.  Hard and loud.  Everyone at the table stopped their conversations at the jolting noise it made.  I stood up, looked around me for the first time and noticed some chick sitting next to me.  I grabbed the girl’s hand, fixed my stare on Grace and walked the girl out to the dance floor.  The girl looked back at her friends, waved and giggled. 
Come on, really?

Grace didn’t look away.  Her perfect plump little lips made a shocked little ‘O’ shape and her features darkened.
  If she didn’t care, why was she mad? 
I grabbed the girl’s waist and started dancing really close to her.  Grace watched.  Stunned. 

“Wow, I can’t believe I’m dancing with Shane Maxton from Mad World,” she squeaked. 
Oh, crap.  Did I freaking need this right now?  No
.

She ran her claws all over my body and started dry humping my leg. 
Yea, this is fun
.  I choked back vomit as the girl kept rubbing herself on me.  My eyes never left Grace’s.

“Aren’t you going to ask me my name?”

“Nope.”

“Wait, what?”  She stopped dancing and tried to pull my chin away from facing Grace’s direction.  Grace squeezed her eyes shut, covered her hand over her mouth and looked away. 
Fuck, I can’t do this if it hurts her
. 
Why the hell can’t she be with me if this affects her?

“Why did you want to dance with me if you didn’t even want to know my name?”

I looked at the girl for the first time.  She was adorably cute and innocent.  “Shit, I’m sorry, but did you see that girl who walked in before I grabbed your hand?”  She nodded.  “I’m so fucking in love with her that I can’t see straight.  And she is smiling at some other guy, and when I told her I loved her, she…”

“Oh, I get it.  Would you like to make her jealous?”

“No.  No, I don’t want that…I didn’t mean for that to happen.  I just…shit.  What the hell am I doing?”  I spun around on the dance floor to walk back to Grace. 

Blake and Grace were dancing right in front of me.  Blake held her close and she danced with her arms wrapped around his neck. Someone was singing Karaoke to Adele’s Someone Like You, and Blake noticed me watching them, winked at me and roughly
grabbed her chin and pulled her lips up to his.  His mouth devoured her and I wanted to kill him, then he spun her around to face me.  Blake pulled her closer against him and kissed that neck that I love; pulling her hair that I dream about splayed across my pillows, and trailed his lips over it.

Her face looked stunned and a tear fell from her eye. 

I swallowed the hard sharp knot that was caught in my throat and watched Blake slide his hands around to the front of her shirt. He lifted the fabric, placing his hands on the bare skin of her stomach, the stomach that I had my hands on just a few hours ago.  I looked back into her eyes and more tears fell. 
The hell with this.  I surrender
.  I put up my hands, turned around and slowly made my way through the bar towards the front door. 
I wasn’t going to suffer and watch her do this
.  I’m out of here. I’m done with this.  She definitely wasn’t anything like my Selah.  Selah would never do that shit to me.

The crowd was so thick it took me a few minutes to find
my way through.

When I finally reached the front door to the bar, I heard Grace’s voice sing over the Karaoke machine.  Of course, the crowd was so amazed by her voice they went quiet.  My heart pulled when I turned and looked at her.  It clenched in my chest when I saw she was singing it just to me.  Katy Perry’s The One That Got Away. 
I didn’t understand this
.

I flung the doors open to the howling wind and snow outside.  I jumped on the snowmobile that I rode to the bar and I felt a small body slide in behind me.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked the girl behind me.

“Well, I can’t leave you alone after seeing the girl you are in love with suck face with another guy.  So just drive.”

I hopped off the snowmobile.  “Look, there is no way in hell anything is going to happen between you and me tonight.  So just stay here with your friends, okay?”

“No way, you shouldn’t be alone.  Even if nothing happens between us, I could always lie to my girlfriends and tell them some awesome stories about how hard you made me come.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?  Whatever, I don’t have time for this shit.”  I hopped on Tucker’s snowmobile and left her.

The nut followed me on another snowmobile.

When we got to the cabin, I tried to slam the door in her face but her body was halfway in.  I paced the living room area and called her every insult I could think of to get her to leave me the fuck alone.  Then I sat next to her on the couch and for a good fifteen minutes, tried to explain that I wasn’t going to have anything to do with her.

She laughed and showed me her tits.

When the front door opened, she covered herself and Grace and Blake stumbled through the door.  Blake laughed as his eyes narrowed at me. “Crap, I thought we’d have the house to ourselves,” he sneered.

I jumped off the couch and stormed over, putting my body between them.  “I want you to come with me, Grace.”  I held out my hand and touched my fingertips to her chin.

She flinched back.  “Are you serious, right now?  What, am I supposed to join you and your friend over there?”

I leaned in closer. “Don’t do this.”

Blake yanked her away from me, “Take a step back, Shane, this has nothing to do with you.  You have a pretty girl over there,” he said, pointing to the girl quietly sitting on the couch.  I still hadn’t asked her name.

I reached out for her again and touched my hand to her elbow.  Her eyebrows pulled together and her silver eyes pleaded with me.  But I couldn’t figure out what they wanted me to do, all I know was that they needed me to do something.

Blake stepped closer to her and shoved her body behind his.  That made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was too harsh, too violent, but Grace said nothing.  “Back the fuck up, Shane, she’s with me,” he growled. 

I stepped even closer to Blake, staring him right in the eyes.  “Let her decide,” I snapped back.  I leaned past Blake and grabbed her by both wrists. “Come with me,
” I said to her.  She leaned toward me.

“Okay, that’s enough.  Get the fuck away from her,” Blake screamed. Grace looked down at the floor, breaking our eye contact with each other.

Then she pushed off Blake with tears in her eyes, “I’m not a fucking pretty little shiny toy, both of you get the fuck off me!”  She looked at me deadpan, all feeling gone. “I’m going with Blake into my room.  You seem to have a visitor with you that you’ve forgotten about.” 

No. No, no, no
.

“If you do that, you’re like every other girl that you fight so hard
not
to be.”

“You know what, you’re a fucking asshole!”

I laughed.  I had to, because it was better than being a pussy and doing what I was really fighting myself from doing, which was crying like a little bitch.  “In the past few weeks that I’ve known you, you’re called me a hell of a lot worse.”  I raised my hand to her face one last time and gently touched her cheek.  “Call me anything you want, as long as you don’t do this.  This isn’t you.”

She stepped back from my hand.  “What?  You’re here to save me, Shane?  I’m sure the answer to all my problems is to lower my standards and go with you and your friend.”

With tears pouring down her face, Blake pulled her down the hallway.  I watched as she walked backwards with her eyes on mine and closed herself in her bedroom with Blake.

I stood there broken.  Watching the closed door. 
How can you fight for someone who doesn’t want you? 
My hands wrapped around the vase that was on the table I was standing next to.  It was such a beautiful thing.  I smashed it hard in my fist against the wall.  The sharp glass sliced my hand open.  The pain felt good, it was intense and clear.  It was the only thing I knew and the only thing I could understand.

“Oh my God, Shane!  You need to get that looked at!” the squeaky voiced girl yelled.

I looked at her and laughed.  “Come on.  Let me get you back to the bar, so I can deal with this without an audience.”

The girl followed me out with a terrified look on her face.  Good.  She should
be fucking scared.  I pulled her onto a snowmobile, drove her to the bar, and hauled her ass off my seat as quick as I could.  The engine of the snowmobile sputtered and stopped.  I probably turned the engine over a dozen times to get it to start again. 
Damn, if he was screwing her already, I didn’t know what the hell I would do to him
.

“Wait.  Shane, what are you going to do?”

I smiled at her.  I saw her body melt at my expression.  Then I laughed, “I’m going to go back there and probably kill him.”  With that, I left her there and drove over the snow back to the cabin. 

I never made it back.

Halfway between the cabin and the bar lay a small rumpled mound in snow.  The splash of bright red against the whiteness of the snow was what caused me to stop the snowmobile and walk over to it.  The smell of sickly sweet blood, mixed with the freshly falling icy snow, filled my nose. 

Thick dark hair spread out across red snow.

Grace.

Grace?

Red snow?

Grace’s body
. 
My beautiful Grace,
bleeding
into the snow. 

There was bright red blood all over the snow. 

No.  This isn’t right.  That can’t be real.  That CAN’T be blood.  The snow is too red
.

Grace
.  What the hell happened? 
WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?

“Grace?  Grace!”  I could hear my voice screaming.  Breaking, sobbing her name.

Blood.

There was blood
everywhere
.

I knelt in front of her and cautiously place
d her head on my knees.  Her life was pouring out of her.  Leaking all over the white snow. 

A knife. 

So much blood
.

Tears blurred my eyes and I squeezed them shut. 
Please God.  Please God.  Please God, hear me.  Please God, save her
.

I put pressure on her side where I thought the blood
was coming from, but the wound was too big. 
There was too much blood
.  It was warm on my hands.

No, no, no
.  Grace
.  Please don’t leave me.

“Grace, hang on.  Grace, stay with me. 
Please GRACE!
”

I look
ed across the snow where Blake’s body was slumped in a huge heap a few yards away.  Buzzing sounds of snowmobile engines surrounded me as I lifted Grace’s limp body into my arms and cuddled her close.  Her blood oozed warm and thick over my hands;
too much blood
. 
Please, God, please spare her
. 

Her warm blood was spreading across the material of my jeans, soaking through my coat and onto my shirt.

Lea’s screams echoed in the background, but the only thing I could distinctly hear was the slowing weak rhythm of Grace’s heartbeat.  “Please, Father, let me be the angel you created me to be. Let me take her pain,” I cried.  “Too much blood, Grace, there’s too much blood.” 

“Shane, Shane!  The ambulance isn’t going to get through this snow!  We have to carry her inside,” a familiar voice called to me.

I knew it was probably too late, but I gathered her in my arms and stood up.  “Don’t be scared...heaven is breathtaking,” I whispered in her ear as I carried her dying body over the snow to the resort.

The bright lights of the emergency room’s waiting area stung my eyes.  Doctors and paramedics had rushed Grace’s body through the hallways and into surgery, while I stood by helplessly; Grace’s blood was dry and crusted over my hands and arms.  Her skin looked pale and lifeless when they wheeled her off the ambulance.  Blood was splattered across her forehead and cheeks. It dried in clumps through her hair and on her cold wet clothes.  So small and still, she laid on the gurney.  When my eyes lost sight of her behind the closed doors of the emergency surgical unit, my legs just gave.  I slumped back from the doors and slowly slipped down against the wall until I hit the cold tiled floor of the hospital.  I held my head in my hands and cried.  “This is all my fault,” I said.