AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I thought about giving up more than once.”
His breath stills for a second at my words. I know he is listening to every word I say, even if my throat is so clogged up that no more than a breathed whisper escapes.
He remains silent. Comforting. Safe. Just uttering those words helped, so I keep going. Maybe I can lighten my burden, even just a tiny bit.
“I hate my life. Always have.” My eyes are on the dark far wall, but my mind is a million miles away. “I wanted to disappear. To get away. To stop it all. I couldn’t take it anymore.” The arm he has around me squeezes me, the other hand never waivers. Giving me my only source of warmth. Keeping me tethered to the here and now.
“I never shared this with anyone but…” I go silent. My throat is so closed-up nothing comes out.
“What is it, honey? You can trust me.”
And I have no doubt in my mind about that. I may want to fight it, deny it, rage about it, but the truth is, deep down, I’ve always known I can trust him with my life. The only thing I can’t trust him with yet is my most precious possession and my most sacred secret. My heart and my baby boy. And even my heart is willing itself to become his no matter how hard I fight it.
But what I’m about to share is not about him. I take a deep breath in and try to utter the words I never thought I would, “I…” My throat is closing, words trapped inside, suffocating me. I need to get them out. “I killed my mom,” rips out of me.
His body immediately goes tense behind me. Freezing. Shocked. Guilt has been eating at me for so long now.
“I didn’t pull the trigger, but it was still my fault.”
His body slightly relaxes as he asks, “What do you mean?”
“I was out one day with her. She’d taken me to the park. She warned me not to talk to anyone, but a boy came to me and asked me to be my friend. My first and only friend.”
The torrent of tears and the sobs wanting to tear out of me make it difficult to keep talking, but I try. “She had been distracted for a second, but when she noticed, she came running to get me away. I didn’t want to go, so she kneeled in front of me, next to him.” My eyes close but the image will forever be burned in my mind’s eye.
“A man approached us next. He was the boy’s dad. He tried talking to us, but my mom was frantically trying to get us away from them. The man was trying to reason with her to let us play five more minutes, and I was refusing to budge. She was pleading with me when the bullet came. She had just abruptly gotten up to face the man. The bullet hit her in the back, straight through the heart, out through the chest, grazing my new friend in the temple too. He was standing in front of his father. He survived. She didn’t. She cushioned the bullet I later found out was intended just for his father.” The pain of reliving this moment is almost as debilitating as it had been when I went through it.
“That was the last time my dad fired a weapon, I think. Now he has others doing the shooting for him, the coward.” My head is shaking.
“But you see, if I hadn’t disobeyed, she would still be alive.” My whole body is shaking, freezing from the inside.
“My dad didn’t like me much before, but that was the day his hatred for me overcame every other feeling he might have. Because he blamed me. Rightfully so, but still.” I sigh. This pain is a constant reminder that I bring death to those I love. That is why I had to hide Finn. That is why I can’t let Kieran into my heart any more than he already is. And he is here. Because you can’t hate someone you don’t love.
“Life was never easy, but it only got worse from that moment on. I was nothing but a nuisance. A reminder of his mistake. I became literally nothing. No one.”
“It wasn’t your fault, you know that, right? You were just a child. And even if you weren’t, you didn’t pull the trigger, like you said.”
His words bounce back against the weight of my guilt.
“No one has any idea what life is like when you are nothing but an object. A commodity. A trinket to be passed on to someone else. Living in constant fear of angry outbursts. Listening to the blood-curdling screams at night and wondering if someone will come for you next.” I know my father never loved me. I was a stain in his life. An aberration.
“I knew all it took for my father to blow up sometimes was a look, a word. What if I did something to upset him again without even knowing? Because you never knew what would trigger him next.” I sigh. “In a twisted sense, being given to you was the kindest thing my father ever did for me. And he doesn’t even know it.” A bitter laugh escapes me. “You know, he wanted to screw us both at once.”
His chest vibrates slightly with his silent chuckle. His arm wraps tightly around me. Then his gentle voice reaches me in a whisper. As if he knows we are in a bubble and if either of us talks too loud, it will explode, and reality will come crashing down again.
“For a long time, I lost the ability to dream. You see, unlike you, I had it once, when I was a little boy. But it was brutally robbed from me.” His words carry so much pain, so much sorrow. I turn in his arms. My hand reaches out and lands on his chest. His heart. As if to give back some of the warmth he is lending me. “There are monsters out there that will do their best to make the world a darker place. But guess what?”
He slightly lifts his head to look at me and gives me a little smile as my eyes find his.
“Sometimes, things happen, and hope becomes part of us again. For me, it was you.”
“Me?” I think I ask, but I’m not sure I can even whisper at the moment. All the air has left me.
He nods. “You. You gave me hope again. Hope that there is more to life than just darkness, that there is more to me than this low-IQ thug that’s only good for brawls and fights. Hope that someday I can have the life I used to dream about. With a wife, kids… Just be a regular Joe, you know?” He is silent for a second and my heart is destroyed all over again because of the secret I’m keeping from him. The secret I’ll continue to keep because it is not safe to share. For anyone.
“But that’s a dream I’m not sure I’ll ever get to see happen.” He shrugs and I’m destroyed on the inside for keeping the truth from him. But I have to. Protecting my son is my number one priority, even from his own father. I can’t trust Kieran with Finn yet, so I’ll just keep him all to myself, at least for now.
“You brought light and life back to my life, Carra. So, thank you for making each day brighter.”
