Dare to Breathe (13 page)

He grabs my hand and pulls it to his chest. I feel his heart beating and the heat coming through his shirt makes my knees start to feel weak.

“There is
not
‘nothing’ between us. We’re both just fucked up and scared but never say that
this
thing between us doesn’t exist.”

I take my first real look into his eyes. They burn through my soul, but what I see more than that is the pain in them and it makes me afraid—afraid for him and afraid for me.

“Why’d you do it, Nathan?” I finally whisper.

“Because I don’t know how to be there for the people I love,” he says, simply, dropping my hand and stepping back. He looks broken. Something has finally snapped for him and I have no idea what it is.

“Nathan, I don’t understand…” I try to bring that confident man back to me.

He looks up at me with anger simmering in his eyes. “I tell you what Sam,” he says harshly, “when you are ready to share your story, I’ll tell my sad one. Okay?”

I feel hurt and angry but suddenly I hear Sally and Doctor Sandy in my ear telling me to face my problems. I need to get this out once and for all. Nathan, at least, deserves to understand what is in my head.

“I…I don’t know…I want… My family all d—died in a fire when my uncle wh—who I think abused me burnt down the h—house,” I finally blurt out. By now the tears are falling down my face and I can’t see him or anything around me anymore. “I am the broken one. I am the Humpty who can never be put back together again. I am alone,” I add angrily. I’m not sure who I am angry with, but saying that all aloud makes me fired up and ready to lash out.

I turn away from him and stumble into my room, slamming the door behind me. I fall onto the bed and weep, angry hot tears of frustration, bitterness and fear. My feelings for Nathan are too intense, too much for my mind to handle in amongst all the shit going on in my head. I feel sick to my toes and I know Nathan will never look at me in the same way again. The last thing I want to see is pity.

I don’t hear him open the door or enter the room but the bed dips and I suddenly feel his arms wrapped around me. I can’t help the way I react. I instantly turn to him and bury my face into his shirt. He says nothing as I hold onto him and I am grateful for his silence. He doesn’t ask stupid questions or try and make me feel better about anything. He just holds me. We sit together for what feels like ages until I have no tears left to cry.

I finally pull myself out of his grasp and look up at him. “Now they are never going to want to put me in charge of dinner again,” I say.

Nathan strokes my hair off my face. “Samantha, I think you are far more capable of succeeding than you think. I bet if you put your mind to it, you could make a three course dinner fit for a queen. I really want you to know how sorry I am that I hurt you.”

I roll my eyes. I am still hurt by his actions but I see now Nathan isn’t as confident in himself as I thought. He has his own demons and I know I need to find out more if we are ever going to go further.

“Tell me about this picture,” Nathan says, going to the only photo I have of myself and my brothers.

I look at my special photo which is looking torn and faded. “Those were my baby brothers Alex and Fred. I don’t really remember much about them except for this feeling of intense responsibility.”

He gently touches the photo paying particular attention to me as a young girl. “You were so small,” is all he says.

I want to ask him about his own personal demons but the doorbell goes and I hear everyone scrabbling to get the pizza. Nathan stands up and pulls me towards the door. I stop him just before we go out and turn him to face me. “Just because we have to go out and eat, doesn’t mean you miss your turn to spill your guts. For the record, I think you are great at looking out for the people you care about,” I tell him as I open the door to head out.

Nathan looks at me with awe. Hand in hand we head out to face the others and eat our pizza.

A subtle shift occurs in our everyday lives. Every morning I wake up, Nathan is there ready to have breakfast with me and then walk me to class. After classes have ended, he is there again walking me to Sally’s where he sits, does his work in a corner and again waits for me to finish. The biggest change however is that Nathan no longer brings home endless women. This of course gets Sally and Beth all frothed up and every chance they get, they molest me in the kitchen asking questions about us, that I can’t answer.

“So, you finally got him to confess his undying love?” Sally asks me as she walks past me making coffee.

“Shh Sally!” I glance at Nathan, worried he has heard her. “We’re just good friends.”

“You just keep telling yourself that,” she replies with a laugh as she walks into the kitchen. I glance back to Nathan knowing that once again I am blushing furiously. His eyes find mine just as I go to look away and I am frozen. His smile widens. I can only imagine what he must be thinking.
Yeah, just good friends, yeah right!

We walk home together, eat some dinner and then finally say good night. Each night it gets harder to watch him leave to go upstairs and I wish I was brave enough to take the next step. I’ve been home weeks now and not once have I had a bad dream. I start to believe I am finally getting over it but I know deep down, nothing is ever as simple as that.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“You stupid little bitch, you think I gave up my freedom to look after you with nothing but trouble in return?” His watery gray eyes look at me. I have been trying to cook but the stove is so high up and I have spilled the pot of water all over the floor.

“I…I w—will p—pick it up!” I tell him, quickly grabbing a dish cloth and wiping the floor. The water is hot and it burns my hands but I know I can’t stop. Fear drives me.

He turns to walk away and I start to breathe a sigh of relief but it is too soon. I feel a boot hit my side and pain explodes into my mouth.

“Now, what the fuck are you going to make?” he screams at me.

I am curled in a ball on the floor, my ribs pounding through my little body, the pain ripping through me with every breath I try to take. It hurts too much to talk so I close my eyes and wish this all away. Perhaps if I can’t see him, I’ll be invisible to him too.

“I’m going out!” he says. I wait until I hear his heavy steps walk out the house and down the front steps.

I lie still in a ball for another twenty minutes until I am sure he won’t come back, then I try and stand up. The pain shoots through me everywhere and I gasp for breath. I walk into the bathroom and lift my shirt. I see a nasty bruise seeping through my side. I may be six but I know this can’t be good. I gingerly walk back into my room, grab my school bag and put in some underwear, socks and my toothbrush. I know I need to find a doctor and may not be back for a while.

Once I have everything I need, including my photo which I could never leave behind, I walk out the room, out of the door and out of the property, not once looking back. I walk and stumble, looking for any signs that a doctor may be nearby. I can hardly see through my tears and frustration but I keep going until I hear a siren behind me and I stop to find out what it is the police want from me.

“Samantha, wake up!” I feel Nathan shake me. I wake up instantly with my heart beating wildly in my chest.

I leap up and grab hold of him. “What if he comes back?” I scream at him.

“Who? I won’t let anyone hurt you baby, I swear.” He rubs my back and pulls me towards him. I am grateful I don’t need to explain who I am talking about. Nathan seems to have internal access to my thoughts and this consoles as well as terrifies me.

I relax into his arms feeling those familiar tears start to fall. I am sick of crying, sick of being scared and sick of not moving forward.

“Help me forget…” I ask him looking up to him with hope and moving my mouth towards him.

He hesitates for a second before I feel his firm, warm lips descend on mine. We kiss with a passion I have never felt before. This is even stronger than the stolen drunken kiss. My legs start to tremble as every part of me ignites.

“Oh Sam,” he breathes into my mouth finally pulling me down with him onto the bed.

I fall back gladly still kissing him passionately, refusing to stop. My hands get a life of their own and suddenly they are on his stomach feeling every muscle on his body through the shirt. It’s not enough, so I pull up his shirt. Nathan pulls in a deep breath as my hands touch his warm chest, skin to skin. I feel his muscles tense and hard underneath the shirt and I love it. Then before I can blink, he whips off his shirt and I see him, so clear in the moonlight. I drink in the sight for a moment and then I am pulled back towards his mouth which demands more of me.

Both of us are breathing wildly by the time Nathan reluctantly pulls away from me. “We need to slow down,” he says, looking anything but happy about the idea.

“Why?” I ask, still rubbing his arms, his chest, his face, anywhere I can feel him.

He closes his eyes for a second and then opens then looking at me intently. “Because, we need to talk and right now, you are just upset.”

“I don’t want to talk and I am
not
upset,” I sulk at him. I am upset, and do need to talk but damn it, I also want to forget!

He pulls me back to him so I feel every inch of him pressed up tight against me including the bulge in his pants which is not well hidden by his boxer shorts.

“Look, I want you, more than you could possibly know but I want more than a desperate ‘forget the world’ fuck. Somehow, pretty girl, you have gotten under my skin and I really don’t want to fuck up what is happening between us any more than I already have.”

“Oh,” I reply, warmed and freaked out by his words.

“You need to know something.” He pulls my head up so I am looking directly into his warm eyes. I see his whole body language change and recognize that for once, Nathan is going to open up about himself. “When we were kids, we all lived in the same neighborhood. Ben and I, even when we were little, were always like brothers, hanging out together, playing ball, climbing trees, whatever. Well, one day—when we were a little older—we met Mandy and Carrie and someone else…Kate.” He takes a deep breath and for a second, I think he is going to stop.

“The girl in your picture?” I ask him.

He looks at me curiously and I mentally slap myself.

“You’ve been in my room?” he asks.

I nod guiltily and I feel rather than see his smile.

“Hmm, that’s pretty hot,” he says, a dreamy look coming into his eyes.

“So, what happened? To Kate I mean.”

His expression turns serious. “Well, after we met the girls for the first time, we would do stupid things like chase them and pull their hair, anything to get them to notice us.” He laughs. “We were twelve at the time and suddenly girls were more than just annoying to us, especially these girls, especially Kate. Before I knew it I was following her everywhere. I was like a little lovesick puppy, and those girls, well they just played along letting Ben and me hang out with them all the time. Those few years were awesome. We became good friends, all of us.

Kate and I first kissed when we were fourteen. I told her I was going to marry her and we were going to live in a big house just like the one she saw on TV.”

He rubs my back absently, deep in his own mind, but I can see the pain behind his eyes.

I gently touch his face reminding him that I am here for him.

He clears his throat, and then continues. “When we were seventeen, Kate started to change. It was like one second she was the girl we all knew and loved and the next she would fly into a fit of rage, destroying everything in her path. We began to fight and argue but then…then, she would come back into my arms crying, telling me she loved me, and telling me she was sorry.

“Mandy, Carrie, Ben and I all tried talking to her, trying to figure out what the hell was happening to her, but none of us could. Her rages would fade after a while but worse than the rages would be the silence. She had dark moods that seemed to suck the energy out of her, leaving her like a shell.”

Nathan looks down at me. I am totally focused on him, his pain is my own and even though I have no idea where this is headed, I want to erase the sad look in his eyes. I kiss him lightly on the lips, urging him to continue.

For a second he kisses me back but then he stops and sighs. “I need to get this out,” he says gently.

“Okay.”

“They told us it wasn’t our fault. Depression is a sickness. I have been told that when someone decides to kill themselves, it is already too late. I found her Sam,” he says brokenly. “She was hanging with a rope around her neck from the attic. I still don’t know what pushed her over the top and every day I live with the guilt of not being there for her, for not being enough. I hate not knowing why she did it. I hate that every day I live with the guilt of wondering if it was me.”

He finally stops talking and I realize I have been holding my breath.

“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?” I see the pain in his face and I struggle to imagine what he saw, what he must have felt. I imagine him, grabbing her and trying to get her down. No person should ever have to see that and no person should ever have to get to a point so low in their life. Even in my darkest moments I have never felt like ending my life and I can’t even imagine what must have been in Kate’s head.