~Tamalyn~
I was born to be strong.
I was raised to rise above it all.
I will always endure.
Beat me, mind fuck me, throw every stone in your arsenal, I will take every blow. Moment after moment, memory after memory, tragedy after tragedy, I will survive.
Until I crumble.
Until I fall.
That churning, that pit in your stomach, the acid burning feeling, the emotions are too much. The fear is too much.
I lived it as a child. I carried it into adulthood.
When I found my way to Haven’s Harbor, I said I wouldn’t be afraid anymore. It was my fresh start.
The phone in my back pocket pings with an alert.
Tempest and I made a plan. When I felt that tingle like I was being followed, I told her I had to go. There was no way I would put her place at risk. I have had a little over eight years of security, maturity, and time to save money while being here at Haven’s Harbor. It’s only been a little over five months since I left. I still miss Tempest, my cousin, my best friend. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched though, and as hard as she works for the many women and children in her care, I would not put anyone at risk.
Social media is both a blessing and a curse.
Twitter is my contact with Tempest, and the ping is an alert from her.
@MaryAstronomy Love is not far behind anger.
I stare at her cryptic message directed at me under my sign on Mary Astronomy. What the hell does that mean?
Quickly, I type my reply to her sign on, Arika Mae.
@ArikaMae There is a fine line between love and hate.
Why would my cousin bring up love? Normally, our tweets back and forth are normal Twitter activity, featuring emoji’s and quotes about missing someone or remaining strong in life’s storms.
Tempest is not only my cousin, but my very best friend. She knows all my secrets. After her best friend was killed in high school by an abusive boyfriend, she’s dedicated her life to helping keep women and children safe.
Haven’s Harbor is Tempest’s dream turned reality. Knowing the hell I lived in, it was also the one place my father would never look for me because he didn’t know Tempest had always stayed in contact with my mother and me. Caleb Andrews didn’t know my mother never cut her sister out of her life like he dictated.
Even as my mother was put into the ground and her casket covered in dirt, I never once slipped up about my aunt Mary and her daughter Tempest. As hard as it was, I didn’t let on that anyone was missing from my mother’s funeral.
It was one week before my eighteenth birthday when she passed. Looking back on it now, I think she knew. I think my mother could sense that I wouldn’t stay. When she died, I didn’t have a single thing to hold me back. The doctors say it was a heart attack from a blocked valve. I think it was agony from a life of hell.
My birthday present from Bladen was freedom. It didn’t happen on my birthday. Bladen thought that would be too obvious, but not long after with our plan laid out, we took off together and never looked back. My dad didn’t know that Bladen left me with Tempest, purposefully putting himself in their target zones and getting them away from me. An eighteen-year-old pair of teens outsmarted Caleb Andrews and Anderson Jones, Bladen’s father.
We grew up together. There isn’t a time in my life I can’t remember him not being around. Not a single memory that isn’t somehow followed with Bladen. He was the boy next door and my whole world. He promised to make us both safe.
And he did, just not in a way we could stay together.
A carefully laid out plan of clues took our father’s south to Alabama while I was tucked away in Tennessee where Tempest was just starting Haven’s Harbor.
I’m not sure if they ever learned the truth about Bladen and the Ruthless Rebels Motorcycle Club or not. He didn’t patch in with them. Two of their guys gave Bladen a marker, a favor, he explained to me. When the time came, Bladen called in that favor for me. I didn’t ask questions. It wasn’t my place. The only thing I do know is they made it to Granville, Alabama to find a dead end on Bladen and my whereabouts.
When we rode out on his Harley, we made sure they were told he patched to an MC, an outlaw gang who would die before anyone could touch me.
Part of it is true now, but at the time, Bladen didn’t know the men he calls brothers. Hell, neither of us knew anything about life in a motorcycle club. Yes, Bladen had a bike, but only because it was cheaper than a car.
Months before we fled, he had met the Thorne twins, Skinny and Triple Threat, who are part of Ruthless Rebels Motorcycle Club, on the side of the road with a blowout. We were seventeen and the twins were twenty-two at the time. Bladen got the men a tire and the tools they needed, using his dad’s truck while he was on patrol, none the wiser, and they gave him—therefore, us—a marker. A one time, get out of jail free card, kind of. A favor of any kind, name it and they would ensure it was seen through.
At the time, I didn’t think about it. We were just helping people who needed it. When we took off from home, leaving the abuse in the past, it was only then that Bladen said he had called in his marker with the bikers.
True to their word, Skinny and Triple Threat kept me safe by allowing my father and Bladen’s to think we were tucked away with the MC. Out of their territory and jurisdiction, our fathers had no choice but to retreat back to Dillon, South Carolina.
Bladen has always kept up with me through Tempest. For my safety, he’s never spoken a word to me since the day he left me there. Tempest told me about every update, though, even when he met some woman who was practically living in her car with her kid.
At first, I was afraid there was more to the story, like Sabrina was a woman he fell in love with. After meeting her, she really was a stranger he had met at a store and helped, sending her to Haven’s Harbor. Proving once again, the man through and through Bladen Jacob Jones is.
Apparently, she had one asshole husband who had her stuck. He had control of the money and the small town they lived in. Unlike our mothers, Sabrina drew the line when her husband put his hands on their son. It’s what landed her living in a car in a grocery store parking lot. After her card was declined at the register and a well meaning cashier said the absolute wrong thing in front of Bladen, he stepped in and got her free.
Well, I guess his version of free. While I can’t complain about my time here, I long for him. I long for the day I can not live under a false identity waiting for Caleb Andrews to find me and make me pay for escaping him.
Almost nine years ago, he left me there and hasn’t come back for me. A single kiss goodbye and he never turned back for a last look. In the end, it was probably for the best. He would have seen my heart breaking, shattering, and read the despair in my eyes.
He was my strength for all my life, and he was gone. Like a dream, a figment of my imagination that was always out of my reach.
Burner phone after burner phone was always provided to me from him, but never once did he use it to contact me. I gave up hope on the third phone waiting for his call. If I had his number, I would have called even if just to cuss him out. Alas, he never gave me the opportunity.
A little over eight years ago was the last time I saw him, smelled him, touched him, and kissed him.
I found my own way now.
I’m my own woman, and it’s time to live my life, not stay in hiding.
I have had years to learn how to survive: cash only, do not use my real name, and never leave a trail.
Haven’s Harbor gives women job skills. I went to bartending school during my first year there.
Master mixer.
I started at a bar in town while spending my days helping anyone who needed it at the shelter. Bartending is the perfect job to stay off the grid. Given my experience at Blood Thirsty in Tennessee I have a skill set that will work for me at any bar in the country.
My income is tips from dive bars where everything is off the books. A simple certificate is easy to forge, changing name after name, while keeping my bosses’ understanding my skillset without a follow up to references.
With the money I had saved and eight burner phones never used at my disposal, I took off. It might not have been the best laid plan.
After four nights in Tennessee, I had the hair on the back of my neck standing on end at Blood Thirsty, the bar not far from the shelter where I worked. It was too close to home to feel like I had someone on my tail. It was four nights too many. I couldn’t put anyone at Haven’s Harbor in jeopardy. That was four months ago. Time flies when you stay on the move.
With a simple plan to use Twitter to keep up with my cousin, I left everything behind. No matter which phone I switch to, I can still log in and tweet her random things so she at least knows I’m alive. It was her one request.
Using our middle names that no one knows we would use, we have our logins. I am MaryAstronomy for my love of stars, and she is ArikaMae for her secret. A secret I will take to the grave for her.
My phone pings, and nervous energy builds even more.
@MaryAstronomy Love isn’t afraid to go home.
I sit on the front step of my shack home and try to sort out what she is saying. The silver pinwheel spins in the night breeze.
Everywhere I go, I always put one in front of my front doorstep as a reminder of what I have survived. My current residence is a shed turned rental space in the backyard of the old man who owns Creekside Tavern, the bar I work at.
It’s one room with a curtain that gives my bathroom some privacy. I have a small front porch with a single plastic chair. Just off the porch is the silver pinwheel. If it ever gets too frayed, I purchase another one.
Just a few months before Bladen and I left, there was a charity walk for the community, one our father’s lead the parade for, among many others. This one, though, this one, if people only the knew the truth behind the walls of their homes, the men in uniform would be the last that would lead this parade.
The concept was to purchase a silver pinwheel and fly it in your yard or business front for awareness on the children who suffer in silence from child abuse day in and day out. I donated a five-dollar bill to get my own silver pinwheel. Then I wrote the words I couldn’t speak on the inside by the spindle and gave it to Bladen for his eighteenth birthday gift.
He knew the answer to the question he always asked. I just never said the words. However, I silently gave it to him in that pinwheel. To this day, I don’t know if he ever looked. There is more than the meaning in the pinwheel, but if he’s find it, I’ll never know.
I can’t dwell on it.
I need to figure out what Tempest is trying to tell me.
We have a rule: no calls. No matter what, she won’t call me and I won’t call her. Twitter only.
Love.
I have known love., in the form of Bladen Jacob Jones, the only person who knows my past. The only man I have ever loved.
Love isn’t afraid to go home.
He wouldn’t, would he?
Love isn’t afraid to go home. I let the words play repeatedly in my mind. I’m not there. Surely, he knows I wouldn’t betray him and return back to South Carolina. Regardless of the fact that we haven’t seen each other, I wouldn’t go back there. He gave up everything to get me out and keep me safe.
Love isn’t afraid to go home.
Afraid, Bladen knows fear.
The temptation to call is strong. The war inside me is waging on as I try to decipher what she’s telling me.
@ArikaMae Love is separated by time and distance. Home is where you make it.
I remind her of that because, of all the places in the world I could go, anywhere in the Carolinas would not be it.
@MaryAstronomy Hearts may travel, but love knows no distance and no fear.
My love for Bladen knows no distance. His love for me was once the same.
I think on the words as the silver pinwheel sparkles under the night sky. I’m in Utah. It is not quite one in the morning here, which means it’s almost two where Tempest Mae is. It would be almost three in the morning back home. That means that, while I sit in the dark, winding down from my shift, Bladen could be back home, getting ready to start a new day.
Love knows no fear. Love isn’t afraid to go home.
Son of a bitch!