“I wanted you to move on.” He stared at me as though I had committed an unforgiveable crime. “I told you to leave me alone, but now…”
As his voice trailed off, so did his eyes. He studied the distant corner of the room, avoiding me altogether.
“You didn’t have to follow me. You didn’t have to save me.” I watched his eyes close in response to my words, sealing tightly above his clenched jaw.
“I’m your protector, Soph.” His words were barely audible.
I leaned my face closer to his, inhaling the aroma of saltwater that still clung to his hair, and whispered, “You should have let me go.”
I briefly lingered within an inch of his face, studying his refusal to acknowledge me, before returning to the back of the couch and pulling the blanket more tightly around my wet clothes. Jameson didn’t flinch as his aunt and uncle entered the room amidst the flickering lights. Elizabeth hovered over me, placing another blanket around my shivering body, and squeezed my shoulders.
“How are you feeling, Sophia?”
I looked at Jameson before replying, “I don’t know.”
“Physically?” Judge Kerry probed, a hint of disappointment in his raspy voice.
“Tired.”
“We need to talk,” he continued, sitting in one of the brown leather chairs across from me. Elizabeth joined him, taking a seat next to him in the other chair.
Judge Kerry’s demeanor had softened, as if he were no longer angry at me and had time to arrange some appropriate conclusions. I waited for Jameson to move, or even lift his face near any of us, but he only removed his hands from my thighs while still looking away.
I wanted to ask for a change of dry clothes but, even in the dangerous weather, I had no intention of staying there. Elizabeth’s legs crossed, her hands folded together in her lap while she sighed and turned to her husband. His fingertips pinched the bridge of his nose as a slow, deliberate breath escaped his lips.
“I don’t know what you think I know, and I really don’t care. I would never tell anyone anything. I promise, Judge Kerry.” I glanced between the two, hoping for mercy. “I promise.”
“That isn’t all of it, Sophia.” Elizabeth’s face hardened with unease. “It isn’t what you know, just like it is facts or useless information. It’s that you know, and knowing now puts one more person in danger, and if anything happened to you…”
Her brown eyes lifted toward Jameson, who had now turned to watch her from the corner of his eyes. In just a week, I had almost forgotten the splendor of those pools of glowing hazel.
“What do we do?”
“Jamie,” Judge Kerry sighed, rubbing his temples in exhausted exasperation.
“What do we do now?” Jameson repeated, lifting his body to stand next to me.
“Sophia needs to rest.” Elizabeth cleared her throat, delaying further discussion. “Would you like me to take you home, honey?”
In a hurricane? My eyes frantically searched the three figures in my company, wondering whom of the four of us had either lost their minds or had a death wish.
“Take her home,” Jameson scoffed, stepping from his cemented position and grabbing my arm as he forcefully lifted me from the couch. “She’s not going anywhere.”
While my body flew at Jameson’s yank, I saw Judge Kerry and his wife also rise.
“I need to make a phone call. Elizabeth, come.” Judge Kerry held his hand out for his wife, impatiently waiting for her to follow him elsewhere within the confines of their castle.
Without further notice, I was struggling to comply with Jameson’s long footsteps, nearly tumbling behind him as he clung to my arm.
“Where are you taking me? Just let me go home, Jameson. Please.”
I pleaded as he mounted the stairs, climbing two flights and then turning down a lonely hallway. My arm throbbed with the vacancy of his hand as he opened the door to a small bedroom painted in a soft, muted green. An antique iron bed rested beneath two large windows, covered in heavenly pillows and quilts that beckoned exhausted souls.
“You can’t go home,” he finally broke the debilitating silence while he pulled sweatpants and a t-shirt from the drawers of a wide ivory dresser, tossing the fabric onto the bed. He gently tore the covers back and pointed to the empty space. “You’re staying here.” He spoke to me as though I’d committed a crime and all faith in me was lost. “End of discussion.”
“Jameson,” I said, “You can’t keep me in your house like a prisoner.”
“There’s a hurricane out there, Sophia.”
“Just let me go.”
“When will I get through to you that I can’t?” Jameson’s fingers violently combed through his damp hair. “I couldn’t before and now I absolutely can’t. Won’t. No.”
He pointed to the mattress again, reminding me that the decision had been made for me. I waited for him to soften, to speak to me like I was a friend, but that moment wouldn’t arrive while I stood next to the bed, so I reluctantly climbed onto the mattress.
Jameson picked up the pile of clothes and tossed them into my lap, avoiding my eyes. He rested against the foot of the bed, silently grimacing at his thoughts, before climbing on and tucking his legs beneath one another.
I twisted my fingers beneath the pile of clothes, listening to the hurried winds and rain pelting against the window. The ominous hum of rain and wind screamed into the bedroom, but Jameson’s silence was deafening.
“Are you going to talk to me?” I mumbled, receiving a quick glance from Jameson. His head swung back to look away, his hair flopping over his forehead. “Jameson.” I raised my voice. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Let me go or talk to me.”
“Why did you let go?” he muttered. “You gave up.”
“What?”
“In the water.” He turned toward me, his eyes burning into mine. “You just let go. You gave up, Sophia. Why would you do that?”
Oh.
“I don’t know.”
He scooted closer to me on the bed and my heart began pounding, bouncing erratically against my ribcage. My fingernails pressed into my palms as he studied me like prey.
“You gave up.” His palm cupped my left cheek, sending a painful chill through my damp skin.
“There wasn’t anything left. I saw my mom. I was terrified. I couldn’t fight anymore…” I looked away from him, hoping to avoid his judgment.
“Jesus, Soph.” He was on his knees, pulling me against him as his arms securely wrapped around me. “The thought of losing you almost killed me.”
My breathing was suppressed beneath him, the suffocation comforting as I drowned in Jameson’s grasp, but the pain of knowing how much my soul craved his touch after how he treated me was terrifying.
“What do you mean you can’t let me go? You already did that, Jameson. You burned me so painfully that all the walls I broke for you…they’re thicker now. I can barely comprehend how to get through them and they’re in my soul.”
“Soph…” his head hung, hopefully internalizing my words, “…what I did to you was unforgivable…I’m a coward. I can’t even begin to explain the reason…”
I placed my hand over Jameson’s, lacing my fingers between his and savoring the feel of his soft skin beneath my hold.
“I’m not going anywhere. You will start explaining it to me.”
His hand closed in response to my demand, still held by mine, and he pulled our hands to his lips.
“Jameson…” my voice was a whisper, careful not to disturb the overwhelming silence. “What do I know now?”
Jameson’s bottom lip pressed between his teeth as they bit down while he thought. His right palm grazed my left cheek, resting against my neck as his eyes examined me thoroughly. I felt him exhale, removing weight from the air lingering around us before he climbed from my side.
Jameson lifted a corner of the mattress, squatting to pull something hidden between the top and box-springs. He studied a small photograph before hesitantly handing it to me once he let go of the mattress.
His deep eyes were hollow, all glow of hazel vanished into the anger tainting his face. I was afraid to take it, let alone look at the picture, but his eyes motioned from the picture to me as if demanding me to look before he would continue.
With my fingers frigid and shaking, I carefully lifted a hand to hold the picture, delicately balancing it in my grasp.
The image captured a messy-haired little boy who was probably around ten years old. He was grinning, a familiar smile that spread from the corner of his radiant golden eyes. One of the little boy’s teeth was missing, marking his perfect smile. He was squeezed between a couple; most likely his parents. Their arms were wound around one another and the boy, tightly securing their family. The little boy was glowing as he received a kiss from the woman. Her wild, curly brown hair had been handed down to him and those glowing eyes echoed in the man on the boy’s right. A smile crossed my own lips, albeit briefly, as I was warmed by the love in this picture.
“I knew this little boy once,” Jameson said, still standing above me. “His dad was an architect at a really prestigious firm in Chicago and the boy’s mom was a district attorney. This little boy was the happiest child that lived. He asked for nothing, had two parents who doted on each other and the little boy no matter what. This little guy would spend his summer vacation visiting his grandparents all over the country. He saw it all. His parents got along, at least as far as he knew. It was a perfect world, a perfect life.”
“Sounds beautiful.”
“It was.” He nodded, glancing away from me again. “Until his dad was at the wrong place at the wrong time and was murdered in a bank robbery gone bad…the little boy was there…he saw it happen. He watched his dad reach for his phone to call for the police when he got shot. He had to hide beneath his dying father as the boy nearly drowned in the blood.”
I gasped, covering my mouth in disbelief. Once more, my eyes fell to the photograph, curiously studying the little boy. His eyes were ablaze with the same excited luminosity as the young man now sitting at my feet. As Jameson’s voice began to hum with his reluctant words, I realized he was telling me his story. Without him telling me, I knew it, I felt it. This was his truth, his story, and my vocabulary crumbled into an abyss of overwhelmed emotions while my eyes screamed with reluctant awareness.
“His mom,” he continued, “it took her a few years, but she remarried a decent guy, but he was definitely not comparable to the little guy’s dad in any fashion. The little boy was an only child for most of his life, until his mom and her husband had a baby girl.”
“What was her name?”
His head snapped back toward me, as if I were wrong to interrupt him, but his irritation faded to haunting despondency as he mumbled, “Samantha.”
I began to sink beneath the heady, palpable trauma that trickled into Jameson’s room in an eerie fog that began to stifle our lungs and hearts. I let the silence linger, my words paralyzed and uncertain, before the pieces of his story fell into place within the fog of my thoughts.
“What was your name?”
“Until four years ago…” His eyes hid, as though ashamed to continue. “…I was Gabriel.”
“What happened to him?” I wiggled the photograph in my hand, returning Jameson to his story, resisting the suffocating air.
“When Gabe’s mom was put on a case against a suspected gang member, she uncovered that her husband—and daughter’s father—had been accruing gambling debt with this creep’s group. They came after my mom for continuing to press the case. They threatened to kill her and kill Sam and me if she continued…they decided that she and her kids would be enough to pay the debt her husband owed.”
My heart sank when Jameson changed his story to first-person, crumbling around me as Jameson’s walls broke down, colliding with my own. I wanted to reach out to him, pull him against me, and apologize for all the wrongs he had seen. When he continued to divulge his story to me, what strength I had shattered even further.
“It was a really cold night that winter.” I watched his eyes empty even more, filling with a dull, aching vacancy as he pressed into the recesses of his mind. “I was walking Sam back from her elementary school and we stopped to get ice cream because she won the spelling bee. If we hadn’t stopped for ice cream, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. While we were out, they found my mom. They went to our house, broke in, and broke her neck. I sent Sam up first because I wanted to talk to this girl I knew from school…”
After his silence consumed the space, my eyes flashed toward him, catching the frozen boy before me without his own will to reflect, while he battled his heart to develop enough courage to continue.