Black
I didn’t know why I thought telling Quill about Sunshine was the right thing, I just did. With everything going to shit around us, we were safe here, waiting, and when he looked at me with his color-of-the-day eyes, I saw something there. Understanding. I knew he’d get it and accept why I lived how I did. Lana knew, but only because she had met Sunshine, briefly, but she had met her and knew how when the end came, it made everything darker. She witnessed the beast that broke free after my world fell apart.
“Sunshine never really liked to play with the other kids but for some reason, she seemed to enjoy my company. We ate together, played together, did it all. We were content with it just being the two of us. We were like that until we entered middle school. I turned eleven same as she had, and we went into a different school. That was when things started to change.”
I saw Quill scoot closer out of the corner of my eye, ready to likely hug me at some point.
“Sunshine’s dad died that year, a heart attack. Her mom took it real hard and started drinking. She told me one day on the bus, she hadn’t eaten dinner the night before because her mom had passed out before going to the store. So, I gave her my lunch and said to eat it, I’d grab hot lunch. Still, nothing really computed as there being a problem. I just thought her mom was having a tough go of things.”
I closed my eyes and remembered sitting on the bus with her that day. The sun hit her golden hair and a stripe ran across her face, making her look like her namesake. Her smile rivaled the beam itself. It was the face I always saw when I needed to remember who she really was.
“For a few years, she seemed okay, quieter than most, but I asked once and she said she was a woman now. I was dumb enough to ask her what that meant and I got an unwanted lesson in a woman’s menstrual cycle.”
This made Quill laugh and it was contagious enough to make me join in.
“On her fourteenth birthday, she came to school in a cast. She said she was so excited for her birthday the night before, she ran down the stairs, slipped, and fell. I carried all her books and did all I could for her for the weeks she had it on.”
“You were a great boyfriend.” Quill smiled, but the sadness that surrounded his eyes told me he knew where this was going.
“A month later, she told me her mother was remarrying and I remember thinking how sad she was over it. I figured it was because she missed her dad, but as soon as her mother remarried, Sunshine began to wither away.” I gulped my drink down, grateful when Quill poured more.
“She got a broken leg at one point, then a bruise by her eye. She was absent so much. This went on for a year and I begged my father constantly to do something. I knew something was wrong. He had Blackrose Securities, so I asked him to make use of it and help her.”
“I was elated when he said he would contact his people on the force and get someone over there. I thought she’d be okay.”
“How old were you at this point?” Quill asked so quietly.
“Fifteen.” Again, I drank down my bourbon and again, Quill refilled it.
“The cops were called multiple times after that with no results. Never arrested her mom or stepfather. And all my dad would say is ‘the law was a tricky thing.’”
I shook my head, the familiar feelings I had buried deep began to surface. Remembering was a vicious beast and the more I uncovered about Sunshine, the sharper the torment.
“One night, it was like two in the morning, my phone rang. It was her asking me to meet her at the train station. She asked for a bunch of stuff and I brought it with me. She sat huddled on the bench, her lip swollen, one eye was bloodshot, and she cradled her arm. She said she couldn’t do it anymore and was going to go to her grandmother’s in Maine.”
“She was a survivor, Black, or at least, she wanted to be.” Quill rubbed his hand over my arm, the connection giving me an odd sense of peace.
“I think she wanted to live in that moment. I told her I’d miss her and watched as she rode out of my life. One year later, just a month after my seventeenth birthday, she returned. I was so excited to see her, but at the same time not. She was but a shadow of the person I had known. Her golden hair was black, her eyes dull. She had gotten hooked on every drug she could and was only home because her grandmother couldn’t handle it anymore.”
“Oh no.” Quill wrapped his arm around me as best he could and laid his head on my shoulder.
“I begged her to stay with me, promised to get her healthy and take care of her. I remember telling her I would always love her and wanted to die old and gray beside her.” I tried to shrug away the familiar agony. “It was all true, I really wanted all that, but she wasn’t in a good place.”
We sipped our drinks, giving me a moment to calm down before I continued.
“The abuse became more severe. And I called the cops every time. Each time, they said there wasn’t anything they could do since no charges were being pressed,” I scoffed, fucking worthless pieces of shit. “Like they couldn’t see he was beating the shit out of her or that her mom was ignoring it, they just didn’t give a shit.”
“This was here in Haven Hart?”
“Yeah, a different time, maybe, but it was right here where we live.”
Another gulp of my drink and I wished it would numb me, but the more I unraveled, the more powerful the throb in my heart became.
“One night, the flashes of red and blue through my bedroom window woke me. Sunshine lived a few houses down from me and, of course, that was where the ambulance, fire trucks, and police cars were. In just my pants, I raced out the door and ran down the street. I knew the cops would try and stop me, so I climbed up the tree on the side of the house and slipped through her window. It was vacant and I heard voices downstairs. A woman walked down the hall and I followed to where she had come from. It was the spare bedroom. I will never forget what I saw that night. It’s the reminder I need that the law doesn’t protect, that you can’t trust it to do the right thing, and that all their red tape gets in the way.”
Quill pressed my shoulder, so I laid against the back cushions. He straddled my lap and with both hands cupping my cheeks, forcing eye contact, he asked, “What did you see? Let it all out, let someone else carry your burden.”
I had heard that before. Girlfriends and boyfriends asking me to open up to them, to share and let them help, and none of them felt right… Or was it worthy? So how did Quill become the person, the one I knew would feel my pain? Was it because he reminded me of Sunshine? Was it because I hoped I could save him where I couldn’t save her? I wasn’t sure. What I was sure of was for the first time since I had met Quill, I wanted him to wrap himself around me. I wanted to lose myself in him and hope he released my demons.
“She was on the bed, blood all around her. I could see shallow breaths in the rise of her chest, but she was almost unrecognizable. Chains hung from the bed post; it was something out of a horror movie.”
Quill’s fingers tenderly stroked my jaw and slid through the strands of my beard, pushing little jolts of strength through my flesh.
“I whispered her name, saw her jump slightly, and in that brief movement, I stopped caring who saw or heard me.” Quill and I both exhaled at the same moment. Quickly, I breathed in, hoping I could gather his air and it would fill me with the courage I needed to get to the end of this story.
“She was dying. The woman who left her there was a minute behind me, likely getting a gurney, something. But I knew she was dying. There was so much blood, all hers.” A warm tear slid down my face, stopped by Quill’s still finger, like he wasn’t allowing it to drop.
“She whispered for me to take her away from here. So I did just that. I scooped her up in my arms. Her blood covered my chest and I felt my pants absorbing it. It felt like I only had minutes left with her, but I hoped for more.”
“They just let you leave with her?” Quill’s eyes were wide and his chin quivered like he wanted to cry but wouldn’t.
“They tried to stop me, but it was my father who made it so I could pass. He shouted at the police, telling them they had had all the chances to save her. And if they couldn’t do right by her in life, they didn’t deserve the honor of her death.”
Quill’s lip quirked up. “Your dad sounded amazing.”
“He was, mostly.”
“Where’d you take her?” Quill asked as he resumed stroking my cheek.
“My house, my bed.” Shit, it felt like the world was crashing around me just like that night. I carried her alone, unable to protect her, but I wasn’t alone this time. It was like Quill was an impenetrable blanket, not letting it crush me like it had all those years ago.
“Why?”
“It was where she said she always felt safe, with me. I laid her down and she released a watery breath. She looked at me and…” It was like the chain snapped and I sobbed against Quill’s chest. He held me in silence as I got it all out. “She said she loved me. Asked me to live for her, be what I had to be to make this right.”
“Oh, Black.” He pressed a kiss to the top of my head as I soaked his shirt with over thirty years of pent up sorrow.
“I killed him. Took me a decade, but I found him rotting in a cell. I paid a ridiculous amount of money to have them all turn their backs. I choked him with the chains he’d held Sunshine prisoner with. It was in that moment when I vowed to be what the police never could be. I was Plan B.”
“B for Black,” Quill spoke softly.
“Now you know why I do what I do.”
He pulled my head away from his chest and I looked deep into his eyes, seeing a power I’d never seen radiate from this beautiful man before me. “I never needed to know.”
I wanted to see his green eyes so badly in that moment. “Can you take your contacts out? I want to see you.”
He sat back slightly, but never removed himself from my lap, and I watched as he plucked the white contacts out of his eyes and wrapped them in a tissue he had in his pocket.
“You just ruined them.”
He shrugged. “Your request was more important than stupid contacts.”
We stared at each other silently for a minute and I half blurted out but wholly meant it, “I’m going to kiss you, Quill.”
His smile was wide and brilliant. “I’m going to let you, Terrance.”