CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Three weeks later

The beauty of the scarlet sunset was blinding. It merged with the sky, like a cube of colorful ice in the glass of hot water. Watching it through the window of the airplane brought so many memories to my mind. My trip to the Bahamas wasn’t long, but I enjoyed every second of it, knowing that no Liam would interrupt my peace. For the first time in years, I felt like I was finally free and ready to start a new chapter of my life, where no sad thoughts would take place.

Just when I promised myself to never look back, I felt someone’s arm brush against mine. I turned my head to say hi to whoever was going to sit next to me on my flight back to Pittsburgh, and felt like the ground, or to be exact the floor of the plane shattered beneath me.

“Going home from vacations?” A man in his early thirties asked, smiling.

I felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs. I knew him… That face, that voice, that familiar twist of his mouth that I still remembered so well kissing, six years ago, in the dark alley behind the club.

It was him – the man who I once agreed to dance with and then almost said good-bye to my life in a pool of my own blood. The man whose face I saw over and over again in my nightmares. The man who ruined me to all the other men living on the planet. The man I had always been afraid to see again.

“Miss, are you okay?” He asked, touching my hand.

I flinched as if his hand was made of fire.

“Miss?” He called again.

He looked a lot different than I remembered, but it was him, no doubt. He was dressed in a suit that looked very expensive; his snow-white shirt contrasted with his tanned skin. Even with no tie, he still looked very business-like. Unlike the night the son of a bitch watched his friend punch me in the face.

“Are you scared of flying?” He asked.

I’m scared of you!

I wish I could tell that it was not true, but the fact remained. I felt like I was trapped again. At least this time there were many people around us, and there was nothing to be afraid of. But the eighteen-year-old girl in me didn’t know that. She felt weak and helpless again.

Why today? Why this plane? Why this seat, right next to mine?

“We should probably ask the stewardess to bring you some water.”

But I was no longer listening. I blinked and tried to call the stewardess, but no words came out of my mouth. Everything went black.

 

Next thing I remember happening was the doctor’s face leaning over me. His glasses glistened in the lights surrounding him.

“Miss Burk, can you hear me?”

My vision started to clear and I saw other faces, leaning over me. Those were the passengers’ faces. I saw some of them getting aboard with me. One particular face was hard to forget. He was there too now, with his eyes scrutinizing my face.

“What happened?” I asked, trying to remember the moment I passed out.

“You fainted,” the owner of the familiar voice from my past said.

“We had to call an emergency,” one of the stewardesses added.

“How long have I been unconscious?”

The doctor returned my chair to the upright position and I felt my head spinning slightly.

“For about fifteen minutes,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine, I guess.” I didn’t turn my head to look if the man who was supposed to spend the next four hours by my side was still there. But my sixth sense was telling me that he was close.

“I would recommend you take the next flight to Pittsburgh,” the doctor said. “Your blood pressure is lower than normal.”

“No,” I protested. “I’m fine. Really.” I couldn’t wait to get back home. Even if that meant living through the worst of my nightmares for real.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Positive. But…” I looked for a stewardess. “Can I switch seats with someone else? I guess it’s sitting next to the window that made me feel sick.”

“No problem. You can take one of the seats in the first row.”

“Thank you.”

She helped me up to my feet and accompanied me to my new seat. I smiled at the lady sitting by the window, sat down and squeezed my eyes shut, hoping I would get home before I would lose my mind, or well, before the man who no doubt was still trying to remember where he had seen me remembered the girl he once met in the club.

I still felt a little dizzy, but it was nothing compared to what I felt when I saw him sitting next to me. It was as if I were back in the dark alley, too weak to break out from his grip and too scared to make a move. The fear filled every fiber of my body and mind. I hoped I wouldn’t have another panic attack.

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, trying to remember what Stanley once told me about my past – ‘It’s not real, it’s just a memory, bad or good memory, but it doesn’t exist anymore. It lives in your imagination and it’s up to you what to imagine. You can change it as much as you want, because what was there will never happen again.’

Back then, those words were exactly what I needed to hear to make me want to live. Stan insisted on me visiting a therapist, but I refused to follow his advice. I was sure I was okay. I was sure I was strong enough to deal with my fears on my own. And up until today, I was sure I had done a damn good job. But right now, I wasn’t as sure about it anymore.

Liam’s face came into my mind and I felt like crying. I wanted to see him, I needed to see him.  Wanted to feel his arms around me and his voice telling me that everything was gonna be okay. That there was nothing to be afraid of.

I asked the stewardess to bring me a cup of tea and took a laptop from my bag to distract myself from the thoughts of the man sitting a few rows away from me. The little distance separating us felt nonexistent. It was as if he was still holding me in his dead-tight embrace, with my body pinned to the brick wall of the club. The sound of his laughter rang in my ears.

I shook my head and opened the file with Liz’s schedule for the next week. I couldn’t let the stranger from my past ruin everything I had now; I couldn’t let him ruin me again. The next four hours or so were going to be the longest of my life.

***

Liam

“Do you really believe these scars can be removed?”

I looked at my patient’s face again and nodded. “Absolutely. It might take more than one operation to make them invisible, but I’m sure you will look as good as new after the recovery period is over.”

She smiled at her reflection in the mirror and I saw her eyes glisten with happy tears.

“You can’t even imagine how much your words mean to me.”

“I’m glad I can help you.” I immediately thought about Crystal and what it would be like for her to wear a bikini again, without being ashamed to reveal the imperfection of her belly skin. Uh, if only she agreed to let me operate on her…

“When are we going to do the first operation, Doctor?”

I stared at the screen of my laptop, still thinking about the girl whose image never left my mind, neither when I was at work, nor when I was asleep.

“I think we can schedule it for next Tuesday. Is that okay?”

“Yes, sure. I can’t wait to have my smooth face back.”

“Okay, then. I will ask the nurse to instruct you about the preparations for the procedure.” I pushed a button on the intercom and asked Lea, my secretary, to accompany Stacy to the nurse’s office.

She was one of those patients my father and I were going to operate on together. Her face was injured by a fire and she had numerous scars on her cheeks and forehead. Good news - they were not as terrifying as Crystal’s and I was sure we would be able to remove them completely. 

Again, my thoughts traveled to the night I saw Crystal ’s scar for the first time. Now that I knew how she got it, it was even harder to suppress the desire to help her get rid of it.

I knew that she went on vacation and was going to be back tonight. We hadn’t seen each other for weeks, and I felt like I was dying over and over again, waking up with a different woman by my side.

Kim and I were trying to make our relationship work. Well, she was trying, when all I could do was to pretend I cared. But every time we went to bed, I pretended I was too tired to do anything but sleep in one bed with her. Or I would say that I was afraid to hurt the baby growing inside her belly. Whatever excuse I came up with, it was very soon going to backfire, considering my imagination refused to give me new excuses for why I didn’t want to make love with my future wife, and she was not happy about it.

I looked at my watch and felt like my excitement hit the roof. Crystal’s plane was about to land at Pittsburgh International Airport in less than half an hour, and even though I wasn’t going to be there to meet her, I was glad to know that she would be back in the city.

My workday was almost over, so I packed my bag, went to say good-bye to my father and headed home. Kim’s parents were going to pay us a visit tonight and she was a little nervous about the upcoming meeting; my relationship with her mother left much to be desired. The woman was sure that marrying a plastic surgeon was the worst decision her daughter could have ever made. She thought I slept with every female patient and no words could make her change her mind.

Kim met me at the garage doors. “They are here!” She whispered, pointing at the car parked near the house.

“What?”

“Surprise! Mom and Dad arrived early.”

“Like two hours earlier? Don’t they even know that it’s not polite to do things like that?”

“Don’t get mad, Darling. Mom is so happy. She said we have a nice place.”

I faked a smile and went to the back door, saying, “Hope you don’t mind if I get changed before facing your folks?”

“Take your time, I’ll offer them drinks.”

The next couple of hours were going to be ‘fun’, no doubt.

But what happened in reality was so much worse than what I expected.

The moment I came to the living room to greet Kim’s parents, I got a call from Crystal.

“Hello?”

“Can you come to the back yard?”

“Um, right now?” Not that I wasn’t happy to hear her voice, but now was the worst time she could have chosen to pay me a visit.

“It’s urgent,” she said. Something was wrong about the way she said it.

“Oh, my God… Are you crying? What happened?” I rushed to the doors opening into the back yard, ignoring the questioning looks of Kim and her parents.

I wasn’t mistaken, Crystal was crying, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

“Dear Lord, what happened to you?”

Without saying a word, she leaned into me and cried even harder; her shoulders shook.

I wrapped my arms around her and felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. I couldn’t stand seeing her like that.

“Shh… It’s okay. Whatever it is that has upset you so much, just tell me.” I moved to see her face. Tears ran down her cheeks, leaving dark mascara lines behind them.

“I saw him, Liam… The guy from the alley. I saw him on the plane.”

“Wait. What?”

“The guy who tried to rape me… I saw him on the plane.”

Blood boiled in my veins.

“Did he recognize you? Did he try to hurt you?”  I frantically checked on her clothes, giving her a head-to-toe look.

“No, he didn’t hurt me. And I don’t think he recognized me. But he sure knew it wasn’t the first time he saw me.”

“Oh, Crystal...” I pulled her back into my embrace and cursed mentally. She should have reported the bastard to the police a long time ago. “Come on, I’ll take you home.” I didn’t think about telling my fiancé’s parents that I was leaving, but since her mother was sure I was the biggest jerk on the planet anyway, telling them I was going to miss the family gathering wouldn’t change a thing. I sent Kim a message, hoping she wouldn’t kill me when I came back. She texted something in response, but I didn’t read it.

“Where’s your luggage?” I asked Crystal.

“I sent it home straight from the airport.”

We got into my car and I started the engine, making a mental note to call Kameron first thing in the morning. There was something he could help me with.

I hated the feeling of helplessness overwhelming me at the sight of Crystal’s tears. I needed to do something to make the bastards from the alley pay for what they did. Who knows, maybe Crystal wasn’t their only victim.

“He followed me to the taxi,” she said in a small voice.

“What for?”

“He wanted to know if I was feeling better. I fainted right before the plane was about to take off. They had to call the ambulance.”

“Damn it. Why didn’t you wait for the next flight?”

“I couldn’t wait to get home.” She wrapped her arms around herself and turned away from me. “But then, when I realized that the man was following me, I panicked. I told him I was fine, got into the taxi and asked the driver to bring me here. Hope you don’t mind…”

“I don’t. Though I would prefer you had a different reason to see me.”

Quietly, she said, “I needed you… Isn’t it a good enough reason to pay you a visit?”

I sighed. I wish I could tell her that she, of all people, didn’t need any reason at all to come to my place.

We drove in silence, each one lost in their own thoughts. But I guess there was one thing that was more than obvious to both of us without saying it aloud – it was getting really hard to resist the pulling between us. Even now, all I wanted was to take her to the lake house, lock her in my arms and love her for the rest of the night, until we were too exhausted to keep our eyes open.

But I couldn’t do it. Because I didn’t want to make her suffer even more. I still had no idea how to tell her about the damn wedding. I parked at Stan’s place and shut down the engine. Neither of us rushed to leave the car.

“Liam…”

“Crys…”

“You go first,” she said.

I turned to look at her and everything I was going to tell her flew out of my head. We lost so much time running from what was inevitable. She used to pretend she hated me, I used to pretend I didn’t care. When in fact, every time she left, she took a part of me with her, making it impossible to put myself together. No matter how much time passed, my heart kept crawling back to her, needing her, falling for her, deeper with every small beat it made. She stole my every thought, my every unspoken wish. Everything about her was addicting. Without knowing, she controlled everything I did and lived for. It hurt to not see her for too long, like she was the air I needed to breathe in to keep myself alive.

Perfect to everyone’s eyes, she was fragile from within; lost and broken, like a ship shattered by the storm; like still glass scattered all over the floor in tiny fragments that would never become a solid thing again.

Why was it so hard to let her go? Perhaps I hoped she would return the pieces of me that she had stolen. Even though deep down inside I knew I didn’t need them back. Because she was all I needed and wished for.

I couldn’t find the right words to tell her how much I loved her and how sorry I was for everything she had to go through. Guilt cut my veins, making me bleed and die over and over again, as if seeing her now, being so close to her again wasn’t torture by itself.

I brushed her cheek with the back of my palm and leaned closer, with only one thought running through my head – I couldn’t let her go, not again.

Her lips met mine half-way to her mouth. I knew I shouldn’t kiss her, but damn it, I couldn’t fight the desire to feel those delicious lips of hers moving over mine. It was stronger than me, and pulling away was not an option. I wanted to lose myself in her, in her scent, in her kiss.

She whispered my name, feathering my lips with her breath; I more felt the name than heard it. I had never liked the sound of it as much as I did now. The world around me fell away.

There was only her; the things I felt for her; the things she felt for me and showed them through the kiss she was giving me. I broke it for no more than two seconds and then leaned in for another one. My hand rested on the back of her neck; her palm ran up and down my chest. My tongue slid in between her parted lips; she moaned softly in response, reducing my ability to think straight to zero.

I wanted to pull her closer, so close there would be no empty space between us. She could feel it; her breathing quickened and so did mine. My lips moved down her neck and to the soft spot beneath her earlobe. My heart fluttered with love I could have never imagined being so strong. I was completely unprepared for what it did to me, but I loved each and every second of giving in to it.

My lips found their way back to hers and she welcomed the connection, adding even more passion into her response. It blew my mind. Those kisses were my cure and my pain; my hell and my paradise, my salvation and my curse. But I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t make myself abandon her, I couldn’t stop loving her, even though I had no right to love her. I used to think that my love for her wasn’t real, that it would pass one day. I pushed away what I really wanted, because what I wanted was too much. It scared me, it made me weak, and men hate being weak. And then I realized that she was my strength – the strength I needed more than anything in the world.

I saw her and my existence started to make sense; I touched her and it was like she’d been made just for me; I kissed her and then never wanted to let her out of my arms.

She was like a whirlpool of all those feelings I refused to let into my heart. I wanted to plunge into it, lose myself in its alluring depth, promising much-needed relief and peace, and never face the reality again. Because in my real world, there was no place for us…

“Will you stay for a while?”

I smiled gently. “Of course.” I gave her one more kiss and then we got out of the car and went to the door.

The house was quiet and there was no light in the hall.

We went up the stairs and into Crystal’s bedroom. I loved and hated it. There were so many memories hidden in there.

“Give me a minute to get changed,” she said, walking to the bathroom.

“Sure.” I sat down on her bed and sighed.

What was I supposed to do now? Tonight like never before did I feel that everything I was doing was wrong, in more ways than one. I loved Crystal, but I couldn’t be with her, as well as I couldn’t be with Kimberly who put so much faith into our relationship, knowing from the very beginning that it was a lost cause. I felt kind of sorry for her. She was a good person and I didn’t want to make her suffer. But the more time she and I spent together, under one roof, the less I felt like living like that my whole life.

On the other hand, there was Crystal. She suffered too. And I hated seeing her like that. Which brought me to the only way out of this shit… I needed to let both of them go.

“Thank you for staying.” Crystal returned from the bathroom and sat down next to me. She washed her face and changed into her pj’s. I could almost feel how broken she was. It made my heart bleed knowing that there was so little I could do to lessen her suffering.

“Come here.” I opened my arms for her and she willingly leaned into me, with her head now resting on my chest.

“It’s so weird, right?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This room, you and me… It feels like those six years after my eighteenth birthday never happened at all.”

“Yeah…” I rubbed her back gently, thinking of what it would be like between us if I had stayed that night.

As if reading my minds, she said, “Do you think we could still be together if you had stayed?”

I smiled. “I don’t know. But I’m sure you’d do your best to give me a hard time.”

She laughed quietly, causing her body to shake in my embrace. “You know how much I loved being a pain with you.”

“I guess it was one of those things that made me fall for you. I couldn’t resist fighting back.”

“Nothing has changed since then. But then again, I guess I never wanted anything between us to change.” She looked up and added, “The only thing I have always been afraid of is seeing you marry someone else. Knowing that you dated other girls didn’t bother me as much as knowing that you might want to stay with one of them forever.”

“None of them has ever been you. But sometimes we can’t decide what really matters until everything takes its place and we start to see the difference between what we have and what we could have.

“I know I have been keeping you tied to your past, to our past. But I want you to stop looking back and move on; with or without me, I want you to live the life that you always wanted for yourself, build your career, travel to the places you always wanted to see and enjoy every moment of it. You know, today, on the plane, I realized something very important. Without knowing it, I made you a prisoner of our past. A part of me blamed you for what happened to me, when in fact, I was the only one responsible for the events of that night. So what I’m trying to say is that you are free to do whatever you want. You don’t need to worry about me anymore. I’m a big girl now, I can take care of myself.” She lowered her eyes and added, “Facing my fear helped me see everything from a different point of view. Even though I still feel like a wounded animal, dying to hide somewhere no one would be able to find me, I know that it won’t change anything. Stan was right when he said that my fears are nothing but the result of my imagination. He said I could imagine anything I wanted. And right now, I wanted to imagine myself happy.”

“You will be happy, I know you will.” Without me…

“Thanks again for bringing me home and staying with me. You know how much it means to me.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Try to fall asleep. Tomorrow will be a new day. Everything will look different in the morning.”

With those words said, I placed one last kiss on her lips and wished her sweet dreams. My night was going to be long.