“I don’t know that I will ever be okay again,” Fiona whispered into his chest, clutching hard at his back to make sure that he didn’t move away from her. “Is that okay? Could that be okay if I just…never heal?”
Gage was silent for a long moment, and Fiona guessed that he didn’t really know what to say. She didn’t know the answer either, so it wasn’t exactly like she could blame him. He finally trailed his head down from her head to her back, sticking a hand up her shirt to trace her spinal column with his fingertips. “You’re perfect…just the way you are,” he whispered.
Fiona looked up then to stare into his eyes and see if she could detect any bit of deception. But she couldn’t find a single trace of a lie within his eyes. Only truth. Only love.
Before she knew what she was doing, she reached up and pulled his head towards hers, crashing their mouths together while their hands scratched at each other’s bodies.
Blindly, they moved into the living room, stumbling into various pieces of furniture on the way, their mouths attached the entire time. They fell back onto the couch, kissing deeply and furiously, but somehow, Fiona knew that this wasn’t going to turn back into sex. Her body wasn’t ready for another round, for one thing. But more importantly, it was her heart that was hungry for him this time. She needed his softness, his sweetness, his comfort, not his animalistic side. She needed to know if the soft parts of Gage still existed or if he’d cut them out of himself after she’d left.
Even as she continued to kiss him, the thoughts from before returned. Maybe she was only getting this stuff out of her system. Maybe she’d come here, back to the city, not to save the girls’ lives but to cleanse herself of her past. Maybe she’d just needed to come here to exorcise her demons, get all of that pent-up energy, all the “what-ifs,” all the unanswered questions out of her body. Maybe this was exactly what she needed to do in order to fully commit herself to Carl and to the safer, simpler life out in the country.
Or maybe…maybe not. Maybe this was what she really needed, what she really wanted. Maybe this was who she really was, and any other life was just a lie.
She pulled back from his mouth, panting for air, grabbing at the muscles of his upper arm to anchor herself down into this moment. Fiona licked her lips and cleared her throat, preparing herself for the first time in a year to tell the truth, the whole truth. It was terrifying, like dangling her feet on the edge of a precipice, but she knew it was what she had to do. Otherwise, she’d never be free. But what do I want to be free of? Fiona wondered to herself as she stared up into Gage’s wide, vulnerable eyes. Gage? My past? Or the hope of ever having a future, the idea of healing from my past and letting it go, the expectation that I’ll ever get better? What was this ache in her heart, exactly, and would it ever go away?
# # #
“I would have taken you with me, you know,” Fiona said suddenly, without warning.
Gage didn’t know what to make of that at first, it was so out of nowhere. But then it hit him, all at once. She would have taken him to her little rural town in the middle of nowhere. She would have taken him to her new life.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Gage said reflexively, shaking his head back and forth. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would,” Fiona said, and her tone sounded defensive now, like she was arguing for her own virtue. “You weren’t the problem. It was the city.”
Gage just shook his head again, feeling a sad smile stretch across his face. “No, no, see, that’s wrong.”
“Why?” Fiona demanded to know, her jaw set and her mouth flattening into a sharp, thin line.
“Because…because me and the city…I couldn’t leave it. You know that. It doesn’t…it doesn’t mean anything for you to offer because you already know what the answer would be.”
Fiona was silent for a long moment after he finished talking, and Gage felt the back of his neck go hot, his skin prickling with discomfort as she just looked at him. “I guess I always knew that,” she finally said. “I just…maybe I hoped that it wasn’t true.”
Gage’s heart fell inside of him, hard, like a heavy stone sinking under the surface of a lake. The truth was so much more unbearable than a lie because the truth of the matter was that Gage and the city couldn’t be separated, ever. He was born here. He was going to die here. Because that’s what happened to Abby. She never got out. She never got a chance. It wasn’t fair if Gage got to leave it, got to forget about the horrors that hid within its alleyways. He wasn’t going to abandon his sister, not for anything. Not even for love.