Lynn

"So, your plans for tonight are takeout and bed?" I ask coyly as we climb off his bike near the taco truck in town.

Joking and flirting with him this way comes so naturally, so effortlessly. I'm surprised I even still know how to do it, since I spent so many years cooped up at home and avoiding men and all and any mentions of sex. But his sly grin back just confirms that I haven't lost my touch at all.

"No, who do you take me for?" he says and offers me his arm. "I was thinking we'd have a picnic up in the hills. But if you'd prefer to just go straight to bed…"

"No, no," I say and wrap one hand under his arm and clutch it with the other. "Your idea is better."

He laughs again, and I love the sound. It reminds me of birds taking off after being startled in the forest, their chirruping and flapping of wings a sudden burst of life in the calm.

Eating under the stars and kissing in the moonlight is something I've never done. But I always wanted to. I used to be a sucker for romantic things like that, used to imagine perfect dates with my perfect knight in shining armor in my head all the time before I was kidnapped. I was one of those girls who had a pink secret diary with a lock and I'd write things like that in it. Scar's not perfect, and he'd probably laugh from here to the end of time if I called him a knight in shining armor. But that's what he is, he's my knight, and for me he is perfect.

There's no line for the tacos and ten minutes later I'm clutching the bag of food as we speed up another hill, the rumbling of his bike echoing off the trees lining the road, sounding and feeling like an earthquake. Not the scary kind, a good kind, the best kind, the kind that only destroys what has no reason to exist, only destroys and buries things that should've been destroyed and buried a long time ago.

He stops at the start of a dirt road, but even though it's completely dark now, the end of the path seems illuminated, glows a whitish orange like the setting sun, and I'm not sure if I'm really seeing that or it's just in my imagination. Either way, it doesn't matter and I don't think of anything else but how happy and light and content I feel as I take his hand and let him lead me towards that light.

I've been worried and afraid and anxious for so long, didn't know how to escape those dark feeling that trapped me in an endless circle of pain. But they're gone now, replaced by this blissful elation, this glowing light of a future I look forward to so much that I hardly feel my feet touching the ground as we walk.

The path opens onto a clearing at the top of a ridge. He leads me to the very edge, to the stony part where grass doesn't grow. The light wasn't just in my head. It's coming from the fire raging in the distance, beyond a dark valley and beyond another, smaller hill. The fire is so large that the sky above it is orange. My light of hope was this monstrous wildfire destroying all in its path, hot and ferocious, annihilation made thing.

"Isn't it gorgeous?" Scar asks. He's already sitting on the ground, the paper bag he took from my hand when we arrived rustling as he takes out his food.

I manage to tear my eyes away from the fire and sit down next to him, and even take my own taco out of the bag he's holding out to me.

"It's mesmerizing, that's for sure," I say. "But I can't call it gorgeous. Animals are dying in extreme pain in that fire right now."

I'd save them all if I could, I'd risk my life to do it in the blink of an eye. But there's nothing I can do. And I can't look away either.

"Oh, yeah, the animals," he says. His mouth is full, so I can't tell if he's making fun of me, or if he's actually concerned for them too, now that I mentioned it.

I look at my taco, but can't bite into it. I lost my appetite, would probably retch if I tried to eat.

"Well, I still think it's gorgeous," he says, so I suppose he was poking fun at me before.

"People are losing their homes too. Everything they worked hard for all their live is getting destroyed, is disappearing like it never was. Many of them will never recover. How can you call any of that gorgeous?" I ask quietly.

"Because it is," he says and chuckles. I'm sure he sees my point, he has to, but he's clearly refusing to join me on my level, and maybe I should stop forcing him to.

"I come here to watch the fires sometimes, this place almost always offers the best view of them," he adds. "I like watching the world burn. It's nature showing her teeth and taking her own back. You know, like the ultimate punishment, and there’s nothing any puny human being can do about it, or any animal for that matter. I thought you'd appreciate the idea too, given what you've been through."

I glance at him, and his face is illuminated just enough by the fire so I see it's actually very serious. In his own rough way, he brought me here to help me, not because he thought I'd like the orangey glow in the sky. And on some level, I understand what he's saying. But I don't feel the same way.

I'll never be able to look beyond the pain and suffering this fire is causing, despite the pain and suffering I went through. I've never longed for revenge on anyone for what happened to me, nor did I ever want anyone else to suffer like I did. The suffering of others won't make mine any easier to bear. That's what I know. Maybe I can help him understand it too, because he sounded so angry and yet so darkly satisfied when he spoke about the world burning.

"You're talking about the scar on your face and getting revenge for that," I say. "You've had it for a long time, haven't you? Since you were young?"

It's like a breeze of very cold air hitting me from the side as he turns to face me.

"You been doing a lot of thinking about my scarred face, haven't you?" he asks harshly.

I shake my head, have the sudden urge to touch his scarred cheek, but his stone cold eyes and the hard set of his jaw tells me he won't allow that right now.

“We can talk about something else if you want to” I say. “It’s just…”

“Just what? I already told you how I got it,” he says. “But I suppose you won’t be happy until you hear the full story.”

His voice isn't as hard and cold as before, so I offer him a sheepish little smile. "Most likely, yes."

He grins and shakes his head. "Fine, Lynn. There's not much I can refuse you anyway, for some reason I don't understand. I mean, I spent the last week shoveling hay and horse shit for fucks sake."

This time I grin. "Hey now, you did that for the animals, not me."

He gives me one of those piercing, exasperated looks he’d sometimes give me while we joked around on slow afternoons at the diner. The ones I grew addicted to. The ones that made me fall in love with him back then. Because he saw me those times, me for me, and not just me the local beauty queen, didn't see me as an object, a thing to have, like those other men who came in to watch me did. He's still looking at me like that right now.

"My brother cut up my face when I was twelve, because I played his video game without asking," he says, his story driving a sharp stake right through all the butterflies fluttering in my stomach from remembering those fun times we used to share.

I gasp, try to say something, then just end up gasping again.

"Yeah, it's a fucking terrible story, Lynn, not much more to say about it," he says. "It's made even worse by the fact that I had to live with him in the same house for the next six years, pretending I tripped and fell on a saw, which was the story my father told everyone when he brought me to the hospital.

"Your parents just pretended it never happened?" I say after another gasp.

No wonder he wants the world to burn. Me, I'd probably hide in the basement for the rest of my life, alone with my pain and my grief, but he's different than me. He's angry and he needs revenge.

He shrugs and frowns. "Well, yeah, to everyone else. Not at home. But I still hated their guts for it. They're both dead now, so that doesn't matter anymore. And my brother will get his any day now."

The venom, the cold hate in his voice as he says it, strikes me like the coldest gust of wind, strikes me right through. His need for revenge is eating him up inside like a wound that won't heal. I know this very clearly right now, and it hurts me too.

"I understand that you're angry. You have every right to be," I say quietly after a few seconds of silence. "But revenge and thinking about it all the time will only make you angrier, and it'll only make you feel worse. What happened, happened. It's no one's fault, it just happened."

"It's my brother's fault," he snaps. "And what happened to you is Lizard's fault. It happened because they're both sick motherfuckers who need to be put down."

For the second time in the space of five minutes, I'm hit with that cutting, cold wind his anger brings. And it's harder to recover this time, because he reminded me of things I'm not really good at forgetting yet.

"You're a gentle and sweet woman, Lynn, and I hate it that what happened, happened to you of all people," he adds, holding my chin with his thumb and forefinger, so he can look into my eyes. "I'm also amazed that you're still as pure as you were before it happened. But I don't know how well it's all worked out for you these last few years that you spent living at home with your mom, and hiding out at a ranch in the middle of nowhere. It's not something that makes a whole lotta sense to me."

"It worked fine," I say, kinda hurt by his mocking tone, but not really, because he's wrong and I know it. "I found peace with what happened to me. I could've been an angry and resentful mess, like some of the women I met in group therapy were, and I'm not judging them, but they had no peace. Maybe I had a boring life, but at least I had a peaceful one."

"Not judging, huh?" he says, but despite his mocking tone, his eyes are thoughtful.

"Not at all. It's just my way," I say. "But it's a good way, and it worked for me."

"It's never been my way," he says after a longer pause, which he spends looking very deep into my eyes, like he's searching for something in them.

"And I'm too old to learn new tricks now," he concludes.

Then he leans down and kisses me, making the earth spin, bringing the heat of the wildfire raging in the distance much closer. But destruction isn't what I'm afraid of now.

I hold him very tight as we kiss, tighter that I've ever held onto anyone, even the teddy bear I still keep on my bed and hug when I'm sad.

He needs me. Needs me to give him the peace that he can't find for himself. Just like I needed him so many times before. He always gave me what I needed, and I will give him this. I just hope I’ll know how.

* * *

He doesn't stop kissing me as he picks me up and carries me back from the edge of the ridge, into the grass and flowers growing wild and unfettered there. I can smell the grass, smell the flowers, smell the rocks and the trees, but not the burning. His scent explodes all around me as he takes off his jacket and shirt, accentuating it all, bringing new ones to the mix.

He does stop kissing me long enough to pull the dress I'm wearing up over my head, nothing sensual about the action, nothing slow, seductive or romantic, but I don't need that, I don't crave that. I crave the passion, the feel of his naked skin pressed against mine. His scent and mine are mixing in the air, becoming one with the other wonderful scents of the world all around us.

The world is beautiful, the world is whole, and it's mine for the taking. No, it's ours for the taking.

But the world is burning all around us too. It’s getting destroyed just over that hill in the distance. That fact strikes home in my mind when my knees collide with the hard earth beneath the soft grass, as he turns me and forces me down on all fours.

His passion is as wild and unbridled as the nature around us. As destructive and rough as the wildfire raging just beyond the next hill. He yanks down my panties until the elastic is digging into my thighs just above my knees.

"I want to look at your face," I whisper as his fist closes around my ponytail, and he leans down for another kiss.

He says nothing, his fist tightening in my hair as he kisses me. And the gentleness of his lips against mine, and later against my neck, belie the roughness of his hand gripping my hair and pulling my head back, of his rough thrust as he gives me his cock.

He starts riding me fast and hard, until even the gentleness of his kiss fades in the raging furnace of pleasure his cock is stoking up inside me. Before long I'm screaming and writhing, my nails digging into the dirt, breaking on the stones buried inside it.

But I miss the gentleness mixed with this roughness, I miss his eyes soaking me in all the wild passion and desire he has for me, bathing me in the recognition, the appreciation of me that I only ever see in his eyes and no one else's.

"Please," I shriek and moan more than say. "I want to look at you."

He gives me one more vicious thrusts that nearly makes me come, then freezes with his pulsing cock buried deep in my pussy.

"No you don't, Lynn," he says gruffly. "No one wants to look at me."

I never expected this kind of self-consciousness from the rough, strong and tough man he is, but here it is, plain as day for me to see.

"I do. I want to look at you," I tell him and gaze at him over my shoulder as he loosens his grip on my ponytail. "I never want to stop looking at your face. It's the most beautiful face I've ever seen, because you're the man who gave me back my life."

The distant fire is illuminating his face, hiding nothing, not a single jagged edge of his scar, nor the softness of his eyes, which see only me right now, the way no one else ever has. The way I don't think even he's seen me before.

"You mean it?" he asks, and I can hear it in his voice that he's sure I was just saying that.

I gasp and moan as I slide off his cock then turn to face him, not breaking eye-contact as I glide my hand across his cheek, across his scar like I should've done when he told me how he got it earlier.

"I mean it," I say. "Your scarred face is the most beautiful face I've ever seen."

He just looks at me for a good long while after I say it, frowning, and if it weren't for those peaceful forest pools in his eyes bathing my face and my body and my soul in their calm waters, I'd be sure I said exactly the wrong thing, even though I know it's what he needed to hear, and I meant every word.

He chuckles suddenly, the smile staying on his face even after the sound fades. "Then you haven't been looking in the mirror much, because your face is the most beautiful face that exists."

"No, I'm pretty sure that's yours," I say and smile too.

"You're wrong," he says, but kisses me before I can keep this little back and forth game going.

His kiss is as soft as the grass he lays me down in, as everlasting as the earth beneath my back as he spreads my legs apart and enters me, slowly, almost gently, making us one, joining us in body, the way we're already joined in spirit.

He gives me what I wanted, looks deeply into my eyes, as his cock brings me to the brink of an abyss of pleasure so vast and deep I might never reach the bottom. He keeps looking at me as I topple off the brink into the abyss, into the sweet, bottomless expanse of pleasure and bliss, of devotion and passion, which shines brighter and burns hotter than the fire devastating the world in the distance.

But it's not too much to bear, because I'm floating in the peaceful waters in his eyes, they're washing over me, caressing my skin, giving me what I've yearned for. Peace and belonging. And love. I think.