SCARS (7 page)

              The dark night of the soul kind of secrets that had the power to destroy lives in the short term and which the ripple effect they would have would be felt for generations.

              “What did you do with the body?”

              “I burned the car. It burned so hot that his flesh turned to ash. No one ever asked me any questions. Except for Georgia. She hates me. But she loves me. So it’s just been between us all these years. Mom I think suspect knows, but, right now we don’t have a relationship.”

              He said nothing, he just ran his fingers through my hair repeatedly. Almost as if he were thinking of his own sins in the process and wondering whether or not to confess them to me.

              “I’ve done much, much worse. Believe me when I say you don’t want to know what those skeletons say about me. You would be running from me. Not walking out on a bridge to save me. In my mind all yours say is that you did what you had to do in order to survive.”

              “Then why does he reach out in my sleeping hours and terrify me all over again?”

              “You were a good girl pushed to do the unthinkable. I’m afraid I’ve always been the kind of person who pulls the trigger first and then worry about the consequences. I think about my life now and I wonder not if those demons will come to get me, but when. With you in my life it terrifies me that I really have something to lose now.”

              “Have you ever been scared before?”

              “No. My life was always hard. I never knew my father. My mother abandoned me at a church when I was four years old. Told me she would be right back. So I waited for her all night. I didn’t sleep that night. Finally I dozed off around dawn on the front stoop of that church. I was at that hell hole of an orphanage for three years. I don’t know how many times I was raped by the Father Simeon or smacked around by the Sisters there. Finally I ran away.”

              “How did you survive?”

              “I was resourceful. It was either live by human trafficking or die by the crime lord that was disgusted by that particular crime. I was pick pocket. Sleeping in the park. Pan handled. Wondered from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. I was a skilled con artist by the time I was nine years old. A smart mouth and an even smarter answer for every question asked of me. Then I got a little too big for my own britches and targeted the biggest mark in the city. Tony Cotalano. I tried to pick pocket him. He busted me in the act. I was completely unrepentant. I was a smart ass and really think if I’d been an adult I would have been a grease spot. But because I was a kid he was charmed. He and his wife didn’t have any kids. Couldn’t have any kids. So he took under his wing.”

              I know, as I sat there, I should have been horrified by what it was he was confessing to a life of. But all I could think of was that four year old little boy being left behind by the only mother he ever knew. To a world completely alien to him only to be abused by people he was supposed to trust to treat him right. I knew I should scream and run. But I found his story drawing me in like the proverbial moth to a flame. I needed something in him. To fix him maybe? I couldn’t fix him. I knew that. God I knew that. God knew he couldn’t fix me. However I could comfort him. In his vulnerability I could be there for him. In some way I had a special understanding of what had led him out onto that bridge. I knew the pain of abuse. It could consume you in its horrible fire. It left scars on your soul and psyche if left unattended could and would wreck your life in ways you couldn’t possible imagine, unless
you had been through it too.

              “James, the past is the past. As long as you want a life with me I don’t have to know what it is you’ve done. All I have to know is that your life was never easy and you made choices based on what life was handing to you. You survived. Maybe cracked and chipped with the pieces glued back together in ways a child would put you back together. But that’s okay I’ve experienced that too. Just because I confess my sins doesn’t mean you have to confess yours. You’re welcome to, but rest assured I’m in no position to judge anyone. My sins are what they are and they have eaten my insides up and left me raw. Being HIV Positive is no cake walk and most days are hard to get up live the day through. It’s like I’m walking around with a scarlet letter on my chest. But with you? It feels like it doesn’t matter like the world could fall apart and I could be the darkest of hearts and it wouldn’t matter.”

              He sighed and tilted my chin up. “Rayna, nothing you do could ever say would make me believe you have the evil of a dark heart beating within you. You have this light that just seems to glow from within and seems upon first glance impossible to extinguish. You are the real deal. You are authentic and an angel sent from God into my life. I don’t know how else to explain you getting underneath that table in Denny’s and talking me down from the ledge. No matter what has come your way you’ve just patiently taken my hand and walked through these fires anyone else would have run screaming from.”

              He was right. People who didn’t know pain often failed to recognize it in others. A lot of times people in pain often lashed out at others. Pushing less seasoned emotional warriors away. I had been through worse. I was sure he had worse to offer. That was not my concern at the moment. I was worried that perhaps he would be triggered into another episode. I wanted him to be relaxed. Not worried about what I could and could not handle. At the moment I could handle anything.

              “I have my own scars, James. I can’t imagine what it is you’ve done. But I’m not an idiot. That mob boss obviously saw something in you he thought he could use to his benefit. You might not have been an angel, but you were an innocent just the same.”

              “Darlin’ I haven’t been innocent for a long, long time. And I certainly didn’t have a come to Jesus awakening on that bridge. I saw something in your eyes that maybe there was hope for my worthless soul and I selfishly took. If you don’t leave after a while I will no doubt break you as I have all the other women in my life. I don’t want that for you.”

              “I’m a grown woman, James--,”

              “Rayna, you killed out of opportunity and a need to survive protect yourself. You carry that with. I killed. Not out of protection. When Catalano offered me the job of bodyguard to his beautiful wife I didn’t twice about taking the job. He was a masterful boss, but he could a cruel, cold and violent husband. I spent a lot of time comforting her. We became lovers. We thought we were being discreet. Until one day she asked me to run away with her. And I was young enough. And headstrong and willful was quite the romantic. We mapped out a plan. Until the day came and as I pulled up to the house I saw an ambulance carrying her lifeless body out. I turned the car around and I left that city, that state and never looked back.”

              “That’s not all though is it?”

              He got very quiet and very still.

              He wasn’t telling me everything. I couldn’t make him say anything else either. But I remembered the national news being all a twitter over the execution style death of Tony Catalano. In my gut I knew it was James behind it. He wasn’t going to tell me that though. That was his secret and wasn’t going to force a confession out of him. It would neither of us any good.

              “I’ve killed men. I’ve killed women. For the same reason. I was hired to. Some jobs were easier than others. But I never took the life of an innocent person. To my knowledge anyway. When I exchanged vows with my wife I came here where she had roots. She cheated on me and ran off with her lover. Karma. You something different though. You have secrets, but you’re a good woman. I’m not a good man. But as long your offering you’re heart to me I’m not kind enough to leave something alone. Bad things could happen to you in my world.”

              “My life has stunk to high heaven. Maybe I shouldn’t be drawn to you. But I am. Karma be damned. I choose life. I choose love. I choose you.”

              He kissed me. Not sweetly or tenderly. But forcefully with fire and passion and heat. He crushed my body to his and everything about his raw, animal sexuality set my soul on fire. I wanted more. I wanted to be consumed. I wanted to be possessed by him and him alone. Right or wrong. Good or bad. I wanted his love. Because no matter what society said about either of us we understood each other. We spoke one another’s language. He was warning me but with that kiss we were admitting, to ourselves and one another, we were all in, come Hell or high water.

Chapter Ten

              It was pushing supper time when I hit the doors at home. Ellen hadn’t made it home from work yet. I needed a shower. And it was incumbent upon me to get dinner started in her absence. She wouldn’t approve of how fast this relationship was moving. She rarely approved of any of my relationships. But then I hardly approved of any of hers. After all our friendship had survived just about everything and anything that had been thrown at it. This relationship was different than the others that had come before.

              This was a man.

              Most of the men in our live had been little boys in grown up clothes. Including Kevin. Especially Kevin.

              A man with scars. A man with demons. A man with a heart engulfed within a house of shadows and bruises. A man who was by far and away the most dangerous man I had ever known that I hadn’t been forced to kill. Was I worried about him turning on me? In a way yes. I’d be a fool not to entertain those thoughts. But he should fear me too. The feelings he engendered in me. The need to possess him and for him to possess me. Dangerous. Reckless and absolutely irresponsible. My viral load was nearly undetectable. We could use condoms and he could take PReP treatment. The way I was feeling that conversation was going to happen sooner rather than later.

              I thought of his doomed love affair with the abused mafia wife.

              He never mentioned the word love.

              But it was obvious to me that he had loved her. And in his grief had sought vengeance and justice. He understood there were people in that world that would haunt him until the day he died. He worried about me being exposed to that world. Of that world finding me and crushing me. I’d faced the cruelties of this world and was still alive to tell the tale.

              We’d have to have the talk soon. Something that I often put off because that usually marked the end of the relationship. Men were good with the idea of me having HIV in theory. But the idea of being an active participant in my treatment and them taking medication as well? Well they often disappeared from my life and never looked back. It made for a lonely existence at times. I had been living the life of nun. I had even ceased to masturbate. My libido had been lying dormant for many years. Yet with that once kiss it sprung back to life.

              All of this was on my mind as I laid out my medication to take. The shower would have to wait. I made myself a tall glass of ice water and sat down at the table and began to take the protocol one by one until final the table was void of any pills.

              Suddenly there was a hammering at the door.

              It startled me and scared me. Ellen never knocked like that. She had a key. No, this was a thunderous hammering that made her heart race. She went to the door and looked through the peephole and her heart leapt into her throat.

              I opened the door and there stood James. A pharmacy bag in one hand. I was puzzled by the bag but the look on his face. It had been a long time since I’d seen that look on a man’s face. Raw, pure, animal magnetism. He oozed desire. The hunger in his eyes said it all. I shivered with desire of my own.

              “Rayna…” his voice was harsh and rough to my ears.

              I stepped back to let him into the house. He came in and as soon as I locked the door he grabbed and kissed me like a man possessed and dying of thirst. And if he just kissed me long enough that thirst would be enough.

              All it did was fan the flames from earlier.

              We stood there clinging to one another.

              The world had stopped.

              Inside that moment it was us and us alone that had choice alone to make.

              “I’ve been on the PReP protocol for three days. I’ve got condoms. Tell me to go home and take a cold shower and that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

              It was all I could do to keep my legs from shaking.

              How long had it been since a man had touched me. Desired me enough to research what was needed in order to be with me without me having to have
the talk
with him. More than that he had come to me ready to well, make love. Looking into his eyes I knew it would be good too. Toe curling, mind blowing sex.

              He seized me again and branded me with a soul sizzling kiss. Every hair on my body stood on end. The strength left my body and I clung to him. My whole body ached for his touch. I wanted to feel his skin, taste his lips again.

              He held me tight and he smelled so good and it felt so right to be in his arms. I froze and right as it felt I knew to sleep with him now would be flat out wrong. Not because of any spiritual hang-ups I might have but because I wanted to be sure my viral load was still low. That he was responding well to the PReP treatment, and that I didn’t expose him to some dread disease that would leave him dead before his time.