loved a man before.” The half-built walls fucking crumbled as those words tumbled from her mouth. The crack morphed into a fuck-off black abyss. “I love you, and I know you love me, even if you can’t say the words aloud.”
I groaned and clutched my head, needing the fucking pounding to stop. Eyes glazed, I looked up. “They killed them. The branded bastards who tried to take you. They killed my mum and sister. Burned them alive.”
“I know,” she said, and tears spilled over my eyes and down my fucking cheeks. She wiped at my face, and my head fell against her shoulder. I breathed her in. I fucking breathed her in and felt her fill my lungs. Felt her run through my body like a damn remedy to the poison that had been lying thick in my flesh and blood for far too long.
“I’m here for you. Let me be here for you.” Holding my head close to her, embracing me and fucking keeping me breathing, she said, “Let me love you.”
“I don’t know how,” I hushed out. “I have no fucking idea how the fuck to let you in.”
“This is a start.” She lifted my head. Her hand fell over my heart. “Don’t shut this off anymore. If you feel sad, feel sad. If you feel pain, let your body accept that pain. Joy, sadness, grief, guilt, happiness … love.” She smiled, and it just about fucking crushed me.
“No one can push them out forever. Eventually, something or someone,” she said, with a kiss, “will break through, and so will every emotion you’ve forced back into a box where it doesn’t belong.” Cheska kissed my cheeks, then pressed her forehead to mine. “I want to know you, Arthur. All of you. Every bit of darkness, every bit of sadness, all of it. The good and the bad, the hard and the soulful.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, the words feeling foreign on my tongue. “For earlier.” I gritted my teeth, not fucking knowing how to do it, how to let her in, apologise, have her truly by my side. “The video …” I shook my head. “I didn’t know how to deal with it. I still don’t …” My voice broke and I dropped my head to Cheska’s shoulder. She sat back, arse on the floor, and pulled my head down to her lap. I went. I wrapped my arms around her waist and fucking kept the rubble of the walls pinned down around my heart, kept her there, in my mind and fucking blood, kept her in the marrow of my bones.
Cheska held my head. Dropped kiss after kiss on my face, my hair, anywhere she could reach. For ages we lay there, the flames from the fireplace dancing in my eyes. But in them I saw the cottage burn, my mum and sister inside, unable to escape. I saw Cheska in my arms in the yard.
“I can’t lose you,” I said, and Cheska stopped breathing. “I can’t fucking lose you too.”
Cheska exhaled. She held me tighter. “I can’t lose you either, baby.”
Bit by bit, the ache in my chest crawled out of me, leaving only numbness behind. But it wasn’t a bad kind of numbness. It was like a junkie after a comedown, like the heat that filled your veins when the alcohol started to take effect. Cheska kept stroking my hair, and I felt my eyelids pulling down in sleep. I was so fucking tired.
The fight drained from my body, and I didn’t push Cheska out. She stayed by my side, stroking my hair. My breathing grew deep, and I exhaled. But just before I drifted off, I opened my eyes and looked right into Cheska’s. “You wrecked me, too,” I said, then let myself find comfort in the darkness. “When I met you, princess … you fucking wrecked me too.”
Cheska was asleep on the floor. The fire had died down, and only embers were left. The whisky and vodka were still rolling around inside me, but the fucking aftereffects were staring to kick in. I felt rough as fuck, but I took it. I deserved the hangover from hell I knew was coming.
It was still pitch black outside and fucking baltic. I’d only been asleep about two hours, but I’d woken up and knew I had to see it. I hadn’t been back there in twelve years. I had to go back … and I wanted Cheska to be with me.