Hannah
Hannah was walking through a thick line of Christmas trees, a soft layer of snow on the ground and on the pine needles of the trees that surrounded her. She was only dressed in a white nightgown, but amazingly she didn’t feel cold, not even a single shiver despite the bareness of her legs and arms. Hannah turned her head to look behind her, but it was just an endless line of trees, stretching as far as the edge of the horizon.
How did I get here? Hannah asked herself. She even stared down at the ground, searching for some kind of sewer or subway grate that could have allowed to her to climb up from under the earth. But she couldn’t see anything, and she couldn’t remember driving here. I must have walked, she thought. But her legs ached only with the desire to keep moving, a giant itch that demanded to be scratched. So she obeyed it, continuing to move slowly forward through the thick layer of snow on the ground, leaving deep footprints in her wake.
As she kept walking, eventually she began to notice a spot ahead of her where the trees thinned. An opening of empty air. There must be a clearing in the forest, Hannah thought. Her legs immediately broke into an all-out run, her muscles pumping hard to get nearer to the opening in front of her. But it never got any closer. Am I running in place? Hannah wondered, but then she noticed that the trees were moving around her, changing as she moved faster and faster. It was just that the hole of light in the distance remained the same, totally unreachable.
Her lungs finally gave out, forcing her to stop running and bend over, gasping for air. She stared down at the muddy snow on her feet, slowly melting into separate pools of ice-sludge on her toes. The atmosphere must have been heating up as the snow slowly shrunk back into the ground. Christmas is almost over, she thought. No more time for miracles.
When she looked back up again, Evan was standing in front of her, a sly smirk on his face. For a second she just stared at him, examining him from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, as if he were an alien creature sent to distract or destroy her. But…she knew those arms. She knew those hands, those beautiful, innately crafted, guilty hands. There was no doubting it, not when the sensation of how it felt to be touched by those hands rocketed through her brain again, all her old retired pleasure centers lighting up in joy as she stared at his fingers.
“Evan!” Hannah yelled, running forward again to throw herself into his arms. “Evan!”
“Yeah, baby,” he whispered into her hair, wrapping his arms around her shoulders tightly. “It’s me.”
“It is, it is, I knew it, I knew it was you,” Hannah gasped into his chest, screwing her eyes as tightly as she could to keep tears in their rightful place. “You’re—you’re fucking here, you’re here—”
“Are you okay?” Evan whispered, dropping gentle little kisses against the top of her head.
“Yes, yes, I’m so happy, I’m so…” Hannah shook her head, incapable of coming up with the right words to say. There was no language that could sum up how she felt in this moment.
“No, I meant—in general, are you okay? Like, in life?”
“I am now,” Hannah said quickly. “The rest doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”
There was a long pause, but Hannah could tell that something was wrong. Evan had gone tense and stiff in her arms. She extricated her head from Evan’s arms and tilted her face up to look into his eyes, wordlessly asking him what was wrong.
“I’m going to go soon,” Evan said, his fingers ghosting over the sensitive skin of Hannah’s cheek.
“What? No!” Hannah protested, the words hitting her like sharp rocks. “You just got here. I’m not letting you go.” She reached forward and pressed hard against his back, pulling him into a deeper hug.
“I have to,” Evan whispered into her ear before pulling back a little to look her in the eyes. “If I had a choice, don’t you think I’d stay?”
Hannah was quiet a moment, and she knew she was probably pouting, but she didn’t care. It was exhausting being fucking mature all the time. She was done with it, at least for the moment. She wasn’t going to make herself easy to abandon yet again. She was going to put up a fight. “I don’t know,” she finally answered. “I don’t know what you want to do. What you need to do.”
Evan cradled the side of her face, thumb running up and down her cheek. “You know me. Trust me. I’m doing this for both of us.”
Hannah groaned and stomped her feet, feeling like she was a five-year-old girl again. “Okay. Okay!”
Evan smiled sadly as he leaned in again, pressing her head under his chin for a moment as he rocked them back and forth, as if they were dancing instead of saying goodbye.
“I’ll always love you,” Evan whispered as he kissed her cheek. “Even though I’m dead, I still love you.”
“Don’t say that!” Hannah snapped. “You’re not dead. You’re just hiding from me.”
“So come find me,” Evan said casually, as if it was the easiest, most obvious answer in the world. And then, he was gone, disappearing into thin air without even a trace. But if she inhaled deeply she could detect his scent, as if he was still somewhere in the forest, just hiding from her.
She couldn’t go search for him, could she? She had to things to do, a baby to raise. She couldn’t, right? She couldn’t—
Hannah woke with a start, reaching over to the bedside table out of habit to grip onto the frying pan. She had a gun under the bed, fully loaded, but the frying pan comforted her more, felt more familiar within her tight fist. It was really the only connection left to her old life, to her fucked-up childhood and the fucked-up relationship that had followed it. It had kept her safe in the past; it was the only thing Hannah trusted to protect her now.
But after a few more seconds, she slowly put the frying pan down on the bed and let it loose from her grip. There was nobody and nothing there in her dark bedroom. Hannah groaned and buried her sweaty forehead in her hands, pushing her hair out of her face and breathing hard. In. Out. In. Out. It was such a simple pattern to remember, inhaling and exhaling slowly, but it still took all of her concentration to keep at it until her heart rate calmed down.
In all these months, she’d never once dreamed about him until now. Maybe it was the season, seeing Christmas stuff everywhere again, that was to blame for this shit. Her subconscious must have been thinking about him without even realizing it, simmering under the surface until it reared its ugly head in her dreams.
Or maybe something happened, she couldn’t help but think. And my brain is finally catching on to it.
Hannah shook her head at herself and got up out of bed. Maybe if she moved around a little bit her brain would shut the fuck up. She paced back and forth across her bedroom, from the window to the door and back again. What if he’s dead? Hannah’s inner voice persisted, practically shaking her by the shoulders to get her attention. Shut up, she tried to shout back. Shut up shut up shut up. There’s nothing I can do so what’s the point in torturing myself?
What if he’s not dead? What if he’s alive, and well, and he’s just gone? What if he’s out in there in the world, on some other beach, with some other woman? Or what if he’s hurt, in a gutter, with nobody to take care of him? What if what if what if—
“Mama? Mama? Mama?” Alex’s muffled voice pulled her out of her self-flagellation session.
“Hold on, I’m coming,” Hannah called back, grabbing her bathrobe and slipping it on over the underwear she slept in.
Hannah rushed to the door and walked out into the hallway, flipping on the light to reveal Alex stumbling in her direction.
“What’s wrong, darling?” she said, kneeling down on the floor and reaching her arms.
He mumbled something against her robe, but she couldn’t quite make it out. She ran her fingers through his adorable little curls, scratching his scalp to help him calm down.
“Bad dream, Mama,” Alex finally said loudly and clearly enough for Hannah to understand.
Fear struck Hannah’s heart, reverberating through her entire body like a gong had been struck. “What was your dream?”
“Bad…bad man,” Alex mumbled, rubbing his face against her chest in an attempt to comfort himself.
Hannah swallowed hard. Was it possible? Had they dreamed the same thing?
“Who was the bad man, baby? Do you remember?” Hannah asked, all of the hairs on the back of her neck standing up in anxiety and anticipation.
“No….” Alex said, sniffling a little.
Hannah sighed and nodded to herself. That was good, at the very least, that Alex didn’t remember everything that happened a year before. But she knew it was just as likely that he was dreaming about Salvatore, who’d done so much to hurt Alex in such a little space of time. Hannah had hoped that it had happened too early to set in and scar Alex for life, but there were probably some effects still, even if he never remembered it.
“It’s not real, sweetie,” she said to comfort him, rubbing his back to soothe his nerves. “It’s just a dream. Nothing can hurt you, darling. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
Alex sniffled again and cuddled her harder, making Hannah’s heart warm up in her chest. She was so lucky that she still had this beautiful boy in her life. He made everything worth it, despite all the pain, despite all the loss. She still had her son. That was what mattered.
“Let’s go to the beach tomorrow, huh?” Hannah said, leaning in to drop a kiss on Alex’s nose. “We’ll have fun.”
He nodded and smiled, that glint of mischief in his eyes popping up as he started babbling about the beach. Hannah chuckled and lifted him into her arms, taking him back to his bed in the other room of their apartment. “Bed first, baby doll. Sleepy time first.” She tucked Alex back in his bed and checked that the sound monitor was switched on before returning to her room and shuffling back under the blankets.
“It’s not real,” she whispered out loud to herself, rubbing her own temples and practicing slow rhythmic breathing. “It’s not real. It’s just a dream. Just a dream.”
But even still, she slept with a hand on the handle of the frying pan, ready to fight off whatever demons might come to haunt her in the middle of the night.
***
The water was warm somehow. That was the thing that Hannah couldn’t get over. She kept her feet in the water while Alex got his hands dirty in the thick sand on the shore.
“Be careful, Jeff-Jeff,” she said to him, keeping one eye peeled to make sure that he didn’t go off walking into the water. But he was a well-behaved kid. He had calmed down a lot in the past year. Maybe because for once in his life he was surrounded by peace and quiet. Belize had given them that, a way to power down and collect themselves. I am a different person now, Hannah thought. Belize had made her someone softer, calmer, even friendlier. It was like the early wrinkles of worry had sunken back inside her skin, and it was because of days like this, days when she could just let the waves crash over her legs, burying her deep in the sand.
“Aren’t you cold?” a male voice behind her said. Hannah just smiled and shut her eyes as she bent her neck back to let more warmth from the sunlight hit her skin.
“Not at all!” she answered back. In the back of her mind, there was still that little thread of doubt—could it be one of Salvatore’s men?—but she was starting to get used to tourists hitting on her. It was no longer scary, just a little uncomfortable. She wished she could just bathe in the water, letting anybody and everybody admire how brave she was, how comfortable she’d become in her body, but she had to open her eyes to check on Alex. She sighed and flicked her eyes open, her vision landing on the silhouette of the man who’d spoken to her.
It can’t be….she told herself. There’s no way.
She cleared her throat and tore her eyes away, turning her head to check that Alex was still on the sand next to her. She stared at him for a long moment, waiting for the shadowy man before her to walk away. But he didn’t. He just stood there, the dark edges of his shadow still apparent in her peripheral vision.
Now more than ever Hannah wished she had her frying pan on her, ready to protect her instead of waiting for her at home next to her bed. This has to be a trick. A mirage. Something Salvatore made up to hurt me, she thought. How will we get out of here? It’s still pretty public. I could scream. That could give me a head start if I need to run.
But she turned her head back to face the man, blinking until his face came into focus. And if this was a trick, there was no way she wasn’t going to fall for it. Because there was Evan in front of her, that same self-satisfied smirk on his face.
She felt her jaw fall open, and she shut her eyes and opened them up again several times in quick succession, trying to make the perfect hallucination go away. But it was there. It was real. He was real.
Hannah slowly got to her feet, brushing off the excess sand that stuck to her arms and legs and back, stretching to her toes to stand level with the man in front of her. She expected him to say something, but he just stared back at her, the smile slipping off his face slowly.
“Are you here? Is it real?” she finally whispered after several long silent moments, her throat aching painfully, like she hadn’t spoken anything in a year.
Evan nodded, and he gave a half-smile now, sweet and genuine. “I’m here,” he said softly.
Hannah stepped forward, reaching her hands out to brush against the hem of Evan’s jacket, her fingers trembling with the contact. “Prove it,” she whispered.
“Just look at me,” he whispered back. Evan then moved forward slowly, wrapping his arm around her back. Hannah gasped a little and fell back into his arms, giving her weight to him. She just knew that he would catch her. Evan used one hand to tip her chin upward and make her meet his eyes. “That’s my girl,” he murmured.
Their breath mingled together in the short little space between their mouths. Hannah wanted nothing more than to move forward and crash their lips together into a kiss that would never end. But she still wasn’t sure this was real. She dragged her hand over the jagged edge of his jawline and found some scars she didn’t recognize.
“Are you okay? Did it—did it go all right?” she whispered, hurriedly looking around to make sure there were no suspicious figures watching them from the beach.
Evan smiled again, but it was softer, more private, like it had a meaning that Hannah didn’t understand yet. “Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Did you—all of them? All of…his guys?” Hannah asked in as low a voice as possible, hoping the rush of the ocean’s waves would cover her voice to any bystanders’ ears.
Evan nodded slowly and slipped his fingers gently through her damp hair. “Yeah, baby. Yeah.”
A thousand questions popped up into Hannah’s head all at once. How many did he kill? How hard was it? Was everybody gone, or did he leave survivors to spread the word? Was he injured? Why didn’t he come faster? And above all else: Are we safe? Hannah wanted to ask. Are we safe? Are we safe? And am I still your baby, really? Am I yours?
“We should—we should get inside, get to my apartment. It’s too dangerous out here, it’s too—” Hannah tore herself out of Evan’s arms and reached down for Alex’s hand and to scoop up his beach toys with her other hand.
“It’s okay, we can talk, we can sit on the beach,” Evan argued, leaning over Hannah’s arm to smile down at Alex.
“No, no, we need to get…” Hannah trailed off, putting all of her energy in moving her feet as quickly across the thick sand as possible before somebody on the beach noticed them.
Evan reached for her shoulder and pulled her until she came to a stop. “Wait, just hold on,” Evan told her, pulling at her shoulder until she turned back around to face him and the ocean.
“Just, stop. Let me talk to you,” he whispered, rubbing the side of her hair gently.
“I would really feel a lot more comfortable if we talked inside, okay?” Hannah hissed under her breath, gesturing to the open space around them.
Evan frowned a little, but then he nodded a second later. “Okay, but let’s walk, not run, all right? I promise you that everything is fine.”
Hannah just shook her head, feeling beads of sweat travel down from her neckline. “Walk quickly, okay? I only live a minute away from here, so we can get inside fast.”
She quickly scaled the rest of the beach, scooping up Alex, jumping up onto the sidewalk and power-walking as briskly as she could without attracting unwanted attention. At some point Evan grabbed onto her hand, probably trying to slow down her pace, but Hannah just dragged him along, carrying both of the boys forward to her apartment and practically knocking down the door in her hurry to get inside.
Hannah placed Alex down on the couch and turned to the door to lock it up and push the several latches into place so that anybody trying to break in would have to make tons of noise, giving them an opportunity to get away if necessary. “All right,” she said as she turned back to Evan, panting a little from the rapidity of her walk back home. She realized now that she had no idea what to say. How do you break the ice after almost a full year apart? “How…how are you?” she asked, her voice shaky and stuttering.
“I’m amazing,” Evan said with a smile, stepping forward to encase Hannah in his arms, pulling her tight against him. Hannah still felt a little awkward and stiff, some paranoid voice in her head still insisting that this was a trick, that he’d been sent by Salvatore’s men to make her let her guard down. She’d never completely rested in over a year now, constantly waiting for a sign from one of Salvatore’s old guards or business associates with a bone to pick. And now, with Evan showing up out of nowhere, she couldn’t help but wonder how he’d found her. And did he bring anyone else with him?
“How long have you been in Belize?” she asked Evan, looking up into his glassy dark eyes.
“Exactly long enough,” Evan murmured, leaning in to kiss her on the top of the head. Hannah felt tingles shiver down her body starting from the skin his lips touched, all the way down to her toes. She wanted so badly just to melt into him, just to trust that everything had worked out perfectly, but her mind resisted with all of its considerable might, pushing back against the idea that they could possibly be safe.
“I’m sorry, I can’t, I got to—” Hannah cut herself off, extricating her body from Evan’s arms. The frown on Evan’s face sent a shot of pain straight to Hannah’s stomach, but she did her best to ignore it and walk off to the kitchen area, putting space between their bodies. She just didn’t trust herself enough around him yet to let her guard down. “I’m going to make myself a drink. You want one?”
“Sure,” Evan replied. “That’ll be my first one in a long time. A real long time.”
“You a lightweight?” Hannah asked, genuinely curious as she poured out shots of vodka into paper cups. She felt like she knew Evan so well, knew all of the dark crevices of his soul, but there were so many little details about him that she never had the opportunity to learn.
“I might be now,” Evan said, following her over to the kitchen to watch her make the drinks. “You’ll take care of me, won’t you? If I get sick?”
His voice was teasing, but the words hit Hannah hard. “I—I—” She cut herself off, tearing her eyes off of Evan to refocus on the floor, her cheeks reddening with embarrassment and shyness. “Of course I would,” she finally answered honestly, but her voice dropped down to a whisper. She had never felt this nervous around Evan, or around any man for that matter. But her hands were shaking and her blood was rushing, and she could no longer tell if she was scared of hypothetical hitmen preparing to burst through the front door or if she was more terrified of the flesh-and-blood man in front of her.
“What’s wrong?” Evan whispered.
“N-nothing,” Hannah stuttered in response, handing over Evan’s cup. “Drink up.”
Evan did what she said, drinking deep until he gagged a little. Hannah did the same, practically draining her drink despite the bitter taste of the vodka against her tongue.
“I’m nervous that…that someone might have followed you. It’s not that I’m not happy to see you…”
“Really? ‘Cause it kind of seems like you think it’d be better if I never showed up,” Evan said, a little edge of sharpness to his tone.
Hannah cringed at the implication, feeling all of her insides shrivel up in shame. “That’s not true at all,” she said softly. It was like she couldn’t quite access her anger, like it was buried between foot after foot after foot of solid rock that she’d erected to protect herself in the months that had elapsed since she’d last seen Evan.
She saw Evan bite down on his bottom lip, rubbing his forehead as his brows furrowed up. “I’m sorry. That was unfair.”
“Yeah, it was,” Hannah said bluntly, her old capacity to fire back quips at him slowly returning to her. “That’s not the case, not at all. I…I’ve waited for this moment for….well, forever,” she said honestly, the bitterness seeping back out of her voice as quickly as it had arrived.
“Yeah?” Evan prompted her, tearing his eyes away from the floor to meet hers. God, he’s so beautiful, Hannah thought, soaking in all the details of his body from the top of his head to the bottom of his shoes. It was like she had mentally reconstructed him. He looked so perfect, so fucking undamaged. It couldn’t be real, could it? Am I still hallucinating? Am I still dreaming? Did I never wake up? Do I even want to?
Hannah downed the rest of her drink and poured out another one, giving herself more this time. “You’re really late, you know,” she said, walking closer to Evan until barely a foot of space separated their bodies.
“Am I?” Evan asked, and his voice was half-serious, half-teasing. Hannah didn’t know which half to focus on.
“Yeah,” she answered, keeping her tone subtle and soft. “You were supposed to be here hours ago.”
“What do you mean?” Evan asked, now obviously confused as he stepped forward, once again narrowing the space between them.
“I, um, I—” Hannah sighed deeply and stared down hard at her feet, wishing she could click her heels together and teleport away from this situation. Why did she feel so vulnerable yet again? Why was she so scared of the man who’d saved her? Had she really acclimated to being alone so quickly? “I, um, I dreamed about you last night. That’s all.”
Evan immediately grinned, his entire face lighting up like the brightest bulb imaginable. “What was it about?” he asked, stepping a little closer still to Hannah’s body.
“I, uh, I…” Hannah trailed off, feeling her heart pound in her ears, as if she was about to spill a scandalous secret that should have never been spoken. “I, um, I have to check on Alex,” she quickly said as an excuse, moving away from Evan yet again as she walked back around to the couch with her drink, seeing Alex passed out on the cushions, tired from the beach.
“Angel,” Evan said softly behind her after following her back into the living area. “Him, I mean,” he said as soon as Hannah sent