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CHAPTER EIGHT
JULIAN
Dinner was great, probably the best I had in a while. I bought this building because of that restaurant. I’m known for engines but created my wealth by buying up the city. It cracks me up to watch the confusion on people’s faces when I start talking real estate.
By the time we got back to my house, her eyes looked tired, but she insisted on walking the grounds. I removed my coat and draped it around her shoulders. She looped her arm through mine.
It felt like a scene from my past life where my wife and I were happy, where nothing else mattered. To me, she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and when I promised to protect her, I meant it. Even though she does not remember.
Yet, unlike before, I would work to make her happy and not cry. I would be the man I needed to be and not blame her. Maybe it was a good thing she could not remember the ugly words I said to her. I certainly wish I could forget.
By the time we got to the back patio, a fire was lit in the metal ring. Oh Orson, ever the hopeless romantic. I gathered her in my arms and held her tight. She tilted her head back and looked into my eyes. My mouth could not resist, and my head bent down as if on its own to meet her lips.
The fire inside of me stoked again. It had been five long years without this woman in my life and now, just as she came back to me, she could die at any moment. Our time together felt urgent. I needed to fully experience every second with her even if she did not feel the same way about me.
She was pliable in my arms, and I quickly debated if I wanted to undress her or see if I could spark a memory of our happy times. I opted for the latter. Although I had a sneaking suspicion she would be more than happy to appease my physical needs, she deserved better than that. I let go of her with a sigh.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“As much as I want to see you naked again, we should…we should…we should get to know one another,” I finished lamely.
“How about we start with scars?”
“Yea, you had a long nasty one on your front,” I said as we sat in wicker chairs close to the fire.
When I first saw it, I worked hard to keep my surprise and anger inside. I knew if I asked her about it, the mood would have been ruined and we would have been robbed of that delicious experience. Those five years felt like a lifetime and her body, while I knew how to pleasure it, it no longer looked familiar. In a way, it was getting to know her all over again.
It suddenly hit me that she did not remember the hell I had risen out of. I took a deep breath and plunged back into the icy waters of Boy’s Ville. My story started when I was just old enough not to remember how I came into this world. I do remember being born as a small child in the underground bunker with my other brothers. They beat us, they whipped us, they convinced us that neither heaven nor hell wanted us. We were nothing and nobody would notice a nothing.
When the servant girls came, they would tell us about the house they lived in. They tried to make us feel better, but it only made us angrier. At least they got to see the sunshine all the time and sleep on floors that weren’t dirt. They said there were many bunkers with many boys snatched away from their lives being trained. We asked what we were being trained for, but they did not know. We found out one day when we were moved from bunker seven to the camp.
We were being trained to become child assassins. The men used to joke that no one would suspect a cute little boy. We thought the torture was over when we got to the camp, but it only intensified. After our specialized training in killing, we were sent out on jobs. Sometimes a boy would not come back alive. Not only did these men leave marks on our bodies, but our jobs sometimes did too.
Finally, one day we escaped. We thought we had won our freedom, but we soon found out how hard it was to live on our own. That was when Mr. Fletcher found me huddled next to the dumpster behind his shop.
“Mr. Fletcher helped me heal and now it’s my turn to help you,” I finished my story.
She searched my face as the insects sang their symphony in the night.
“So…all your scars are from that?” she finally broke the silence.
I nodded.
“How aren’t you going after them to make them pay? You seem so calm about it all.”
“There were many years when I wasn’t calm. Many years where I wanted to go in guns blazing and take them all down one by one,” that familiar feeling of rage returned. “I eventually realized that if I cut them off, they’ll only grow somewhere else. That’s only if I could get to them. It’s a worldwide underground association. There are camps all over the world teaching different specialized skills. While some of my brothers are out for revenge, I’ve chosen to get on with life.”
“Do you think that’s what I should do too?” she asked looking at the ground.
“I don’t know. How about you tell me about your experiences, and we’ll see,” I encouraged her to tell me about her time with The Wonder Project.
“Well, I don’t remember my life as a kid. That’s kind of strange. I was part of an elite group of women who kind of had the same mission you did. We were created to remove the bad guys from this earth. This scar,” she traced a line down the middle of her torso. “It was the worst of all of it. Even worse than this fucking thing in my head. I was used to being stabbed and having to fight, but this…I was in the middle of a mission…in the middle of a fight actually. I lunged forward and the next thing I remembered I was waking up in my bed. Somehow, I got hurt and they had to open me up to fix me. I guess they thought I was too expensive to just let die. I joke that I almost died from a broken heart because that was the only time I came back empty handed. I guess we have a lot more in common than we realize.”
I could feel a sob threatening to choke me. My love has come back but she’s not the same person that left. I didn’t know if I was sadder about that or the fact that someone else understood my time at Boy’s Ville and the camp.
“Ya know Gia…I…it’s been a while…” I tried to begin but could not find the words.
“A while since what?” she asked.
