Brutally Beautiful

Chapter 8

I spent five days locked inside my den.

Five days. A great portion of them were spent in the dark, lying face down on the couch with my face pressed into the cold leather cushions, wondering how long it would take for my depression to kill me.

Monday. Entire day, face down feigning the flu, or plague…maybe a bit of walking corpse syndrome. If I thought hard enough about it, I felt warm, but there was no one there to ask so, yeah, whatever. I ate nothing. There was a half empty bottle of brandy next to me, so at least there was some sort of consumption of something.

Tuesday. I Googled everything and anything on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Then I inserted myself back on the couch, trying to sink myself deeper into the cushions and springs. I paid $200 for a delivery of chicken soup from the diner. It was ice cold when it arrived.

Wednesday. I turned over on the couch, lay on my back and watched my ceiling fan oscillate around depressingly. Spinning, spinning, spinning…always in the same exact circles. Just. Like. Me.

I snapped the blades off.

Of course, this is my life, so I also sliced my arm open while exacting my rage on the innocent propellers of air. Tore my arm to shreds actually, making me have to use all those pathetic supplies Lainey had me buy at the store weeks ago, because she worried about me getting an infection. The supplies weren’t pathetic, I was.

Thursday. I was so angry that she was right. Everything she fucking said was right, which led me to punch a hole through the wall in the den.

Friday. I was back, face down on the couch. Groaning. I missed following her. I missed seeing her smile and hearing her snappy quick comebacks.

Life had made me really good at being a douche. Since I was sixteen, I’d been on a one-way track to self-destruction, mowing down everyone in my path. Then I met Lainey, who pulled me out of myself and made me feel normal for a few moments in my life, and I had lost it right in front of her.

She must have felt as if she was pulling my teeth out, trying to get me to make small talk at the diner. My brain was in a fog being so near her. The entirety of the night was spent with me talking myself from sliding my splayed fingers up the back of her neck, fisting them through that silky hair and pressing my lips to hers, savagely. What she said in my truck…how could she know the things inside me? Thinking that someone felt the same as me, understood me, made me want to fuck her and to over indulge myself in her flesh. The need overwhelmed me. There was an overbearing realness to her that lay heavy on my chest, and if I never saw her again, I swore I would succumb to its weight.

Thrumming softly into my ears, the raspy vocals and music of Simple Kind of Man by Shinedown, held back the phantasms of my horrors, and showed me only my bitter longing to listen to the cadence of Lainey’s soft calm voice and taste the sweetness of her soft pink lips. No matter how badly it was going to hurt, I didn’t want to be anywhere but with Lainey. Let her crush me. Let her destroy me. There wasn’t much good left of me, but I wanted her to take every last bit.

In those green eyes, yelling at me, holding up that metaphorical mirror that showed me some of my actions against her, I knew I’d come undone. And she was fucking right; I couldn’t do this anymore. I didn’t want to. I knew the true impact of my trauma was me just shutting myself down, quitting life. I stayed up all night, thinking and rethinking if I should ever see her again. Questioning if I could be capable of some sort of normal to offer her. ‘Redefine normal’ was what she told me, such innocent, brilliant words. I stayed up throughout the entire next day and watched the sun sluggishly pass through the sky, as if it was toying with me and wasting and playing with my time.

Just to torment myself, when the sun finally set, I went to Dylan’s bar.

One of the guys from the trailer park was giving himself an impromptu bachelor party, bringing along a rowdy crowd of cave dwellers that had my panic set to high alert.

I wanted to haul Lainey over my shoulder and carry her out of the crowd. The whole time I was watching her as I stood by the entrance, talking myself into going in, she didn’t smile at all.

Not even once.

I clenched my jaw and stalked toward Dylan’s office, slamming the door behind me, which caused Bree to fall flat on her ass, right off the desk where she was playing a full contact game of tonsil hockey with my brother. “Coitus Interruptus!” I screamed. “Stop and put your hands where I can see them.”

Bree stumbled awkwardly to her feet and walked out giggling. “Hello to you too, Kade. Coitus Interruptus, that’s hysterical.”

Without a thought, I started wearing a hole into my brother’s rug, as he stood there, hands on hips, waiting for me to talk. I felt like a cloud of smoke, just billowing into nothing. My lungs felt like they were tightening and drying out, and I couldn’t inhale enough air. My throat was tight and dry when I finally spit out the words, “I want her.”

“She’s sort of crazy about me, mate. And personally, I don’t think you’d ever stand a chance with your flagrantly charming demeanor,” he chuckled.

“I want Lainey, you dolt.” He was just ridiculous thinking I could want the blonde perky one. She was…well, perky.

“Kade, mate. I think the girl has been through enough hell, okay? Don’t drag her through yours,” Dylan replied.

“I can’t stay away from her,” I growled, raking my hand across my forehead and back through my hair.

He looked me dead in the eyes, “Try a bit harder, Kade. It’s what you’re best at.”

I covered my face with my hands and then ripped them violently through my hair again. “I don’t want to be best at that. I’m sorry, Dylan. I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever put you through.”

“What about someone like Natalie?” He asked.

Jerking my head back, I gagged in his direction, almost literally vomiting on him. “She’s fuckable, not datable. There’s a huge difference. I’m tired of fucking women that I have to hide who I really am and what horror lives inside me. I want someone to know me, just fucking understand me, and God…Dylan, I can swear when she looks at me, I think maybe…I don’t know, that maybe she does. The only thing I know right now, is that when she’s near me, I don’t think of the blood that’s been spilled in a classroom, but the rush of pulse from the flush of her cheeks when I look at her.”

“What’s that even fucking mean?” He asked.

I ignored the question. “She said I had PTSD.”

“You do, Kade, face up to it. Get fucking help. I miss my brother.”

“I want her,” I growled again, as if I was sporting to have a tantrum.

Dylan leaned forward, talking low, eyes shifting behind me to see the door. “You didn’t see her when she first came here, mate. She could barely walk straight. Bree had a fat lip and a bruise across her face, but Lainey… Lainey needed a hospital and wouldn’t go to one, and it didn’t seem like it was because she was afraid of doctors, Kade. I think she’s afraid of the police. I think something is wrong…the way Bree talks about her…did you know Bree and Lainey’s brother were engaged…” he whispered. He pointed his finger at me. “I’m not going to let you hurt her, because the only reason Bree is here is because Lainey is here, and I’m not ready to give Bree up yet, mate.”

“Dylan, don’t go getting your silk panties in a twist, yeah? I know she has some sort of wooly situation she’s hiding from, but I want her and I have no clue how to deal with any of these feelings. If anyone is going to be getting hurt, it’s going to be me.”

“You’re a real dick sometimes. You’re just going to bring her down,” he whispered, shaking his head.

“Hey, I lived through attempted murder and a massacre, cut me some slack. Aren’t I supposed to get like a ‘get out of jail’ card for it, or some sort of sympathy card?” I smiled pathetically.

His eyes widened from the carefree lightness of my plea, “Kade, you’re cracking jokes about it? This girl is really changing you, isn’t she?”

“She’s so different. She doesn’t have to get naked to get a man’s attention. She just has to walk in a room, glide in with her watery movements, and when she speaks, it’s of substance. You fucking want, no…you need to listen. She’s profound. It’s ruthless on my soul. She is a woman who still blushes when a man looks at her. She’s not a child, you know she’s lived some sort of difficult life and the mystery of her is breaking me. I want her to crack and break in my hands. I want to open her up and gut her.”

“Never thought I’d see the day,” my brother whispered, smiling.

“The memory of her taste has me crazy,” I added. Every detail of that kiss was still felt; I could still smell her, feel her and taste her. God, thinking about it made my cock ache for her.

“Taste?” He asked.

“I fucking kissed her.”

“So what do you want me to do?” He asked, leaning forward.

“Tell me I should try, and that I might be able to be good enough for someone...”

“Kade, man, that’s every one’s fear. But, if this woman is getting you to come out of your self, then I’m all for it, just don’t hurt her. Stop scaring her and tell her everything. Talk to her, talk to me, talk to someone. Please try, because God, Kade, I bloody miss my brother. I can see it, you know, these past few months. This girl is changing you. She’s bringing you back from the dead, Kade.”

The thought brought me to my knees. Metaphorically, my brother would call me a pussy if I did that in front of him. Doesn’t count that I had to strain to hold myself up with my arms. Doesn’t matter, because he was right.

“And Kade?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but when you talk about her and what she does to your insides, mate, it sounds a lot like falling in love with someone.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be capable of love, ever. Or trust. I’m panicking from hearing all the noise outside in the bar and I’m counting heads and windows. In my head, I’m going through all the different scenarios of someone coming in with a gun and how I would get to her and how I could save her, how I’d save everyone.”

“That’s what you do? You count heads and windows and constantly plan escapes? Lainey kind of talked to me the other day about PTSD and coping mechanisms, but I didn’t believe her fully. You never once let me help you. You never once let me in. I have no idea what you went through unless I read about it in the bloody paper.”

“You remember the sort of day it was, don’t you?” I whispered.

Dylan slumped against the wall heavily and nodded.

I ran my hand down my face and gave a dark chuckle. “It was one of those beautiful days, not average for Britain, strange it wasn’t rainy. I was with Thomas before first hour in our little hiding spot, getting in our last drags off our Marlboros before we headed inside. Lizbeth had just gone in. She was always afraid of being late. She gave me a snog. I had no idea that it would be the last time I would ever kiss her.”

My legs gave out and I just dropped down heavily to the floor. Dylan followed along and leaned his back up against his desk. I thoughtlessly played with the cuff of my jeans. “I had no idea that my world was going to shatter so completely when I stepped into that classroom. So many people asked me if there were any warning signs before it happened, any clue in the few minutes before when we were sneaking our smokes, but there were none, not then. The fucking warning signs had come all before throughout all the years and months I’d known him. I knew Thomas better than anyone did. I knew him better than those analysts who tried to profile him did, I knew him better than his parents, and teachers. I knew when I stepped foot in there what he was capable of. I just didn’t choose to believe it.”

Dylan thudded his head against the desk, eyes rising to the ceiling, “I can remember the gunshots. We thought someone lit fireworks off in the main hall. But they had us evacuating immediately after. I knew it was bad. I knew it was bad the minute all the classrooms were emptied but yours. And we saw the bullet holes as they blasted through the window.”

I tried to even out my breathing, I didn’t need a full on panic attack right there in front of Dylan. “Not even two minutes after he walked in, he was standing in front of the class aiming, his black duffel bag full of guns at his feet. I was the first one, did you know that?”

Dylan’s face went ash.

“Over everyone’s screams, he eloquently explained why he chose to fire on me first, two nonfatal shots. He said, and I’m quoting here, ‘I need you to be able to watch it to the very end, Kade. You stay until the end, watch me kill everyone, then you get to die.’”

Shaking the visions from my head, I stood up. My palms were sweating and my head felt light. I needed to see Lainey. I needed to see her calm face. I lumbered to the door and stopped shy of the threshold, clamping my hands on the top of the doorframe. “Back then, my biggest problem was trying to talk Lizbeth into showing me her tits. It all changed when my best friend aimed that barrel of the gun at me, and pulled the trigger without blinking. He had a goddamn smile on his face, Dylan. I relive that scene everyday. I relive the entire scene of him picking off all of my friends one by one, shooting kids hiding under desks, hiding behind other dead kids, and…oh God, Mrs. Turner. He executed them all; the whole time laughing and bloody singing a sick twisted song, then came back to me. But, when I look at Lainey, for a minute, I can think of something else.”

Leaving my brother to mull over my past on the floor of his office, I made my way into the bar to look for my obsession. Lainey was standing behind the bar pouring a beer. Bree said something to her and she laughed, smiled, eyes dancing. My God, she was pretty already, but when she smiled like that, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.