Epilogue: The Dark Duet (18 page)

I was jolted into consciousness by a
forceful slap and cold water being splashed on my face. Carlos’ angry glare was
all I needed to realize what had happened. I looked beyond him to watch as
another man treated Fernando to the same. He sat up with a cough and rubbed at
his neck.

“I knew you were a troublemaker when
you walked in,” Carlos said in Spanish. “Get dressed and get the fuck out.” He
stood and tossed my shirt onto my chest. I pulled it on and stood as quickly as
I was able.

“Good fight,” I
managed through a strained throat. “We’ll do it again.” Fernando managed to
smile and nod as I turned to leave the ring.

I grabbed my socks and shoes and left
without putting them on. The cold was bracing as I walked toward my car, but I
didn’t mind. It was the only thing keeping me upright. I knew I’d be bruised to
hell in the morning. At last, something felt normal.

I managed to get back to the hotel before
the first stirrings of bruised muscle, scraped flesh, and weary bones had me
longing for the comfort of a hot bath. Slowly, I eased my body into the water.
It stung viciously. I put ice on my face. No one could accuse me of being
pretty at that moment.

I was sound asleep when I heard the
pounding on the door. I moaned as I attempted to move all at once. The light
coming in through the curtains told me it wasn’t yet evening. Livvie hadn’t
waited long before coming to find me.

I decided further movement was ill
advised. My throat was too sore to yell. A strange pinch occurred in my chest.
I wanted to see Livvie, but I didn’t want to fight with her.

Vivisected.
It’s the only word I can think of
to describe how I’m feeling
—
vivisected. As though someone has cut me open with a scalpel, the pain
not sinking in until the flesh begins to separate and my blood bubbles out. I
can hear the crack as my ribs are flayed open. Slowly, my organs, wet and
sticky, are pulled out of me one at a time. Until I am hollow. Hollow and yet,
in excruciating pain
—
still alive.
Still. Alive.

As I lay unable or unwilling to move
with Livvie pounding on my door, it occurred to me:
It’s always going to hurt.
 Yes, vivisected had been a very apt word to
use. Loving Livvie was like allowing myself to be peeled open and hollowed out.
She made me weak. She made me vulnerable. She made me ache and long and hope
for all the things that could never be mine.

The door opened.

“Caleb?” Livvie called out. It was the
first time she’d ever used the key I’d given her and I groaned at my own
stupidity. That was another thing Livvie made me—stupid.

“I’m in here,” I said. Getting choked
until unconscious is hard on the vocal chords. I hated the way my heart knocked
in my chest. I really wanted to see her. I wanted to tell her I was sorry.
Shamefully, I wanted her to see me battered and use it to keep her from
screaming at me.

She gasped when she saw me but didn’t
reach out to touch me.

“What did you do now? I mean, aside
from invade my privacy and break my trust? It’s been a busy day for you.”

I let her words hang in the air between
us. What could I say? Finally, she stepped closer and brushed her fingers
across my cheek. I hissed.

“Serves you right,” she snapped.
Beneath the anger I heard concern. “What happened?”

“I picked a fight,” I whispered. “You
should see the other guy.” I laughed and it hurt.

“Is—is the other guy alive?” she asked
without inflection.

“Yes,” I said just as coldly. “You
would ask me, wouldn’t you? I’m always killing people for petty reasons.” I
turned away from her. “If you came for a fight, don’t bother. I surrender.” I
felt an intense pressure in my chest. “Just go.”

“Do you really want me to go?” she
asked. There was no emotion in her voice and it scared the fuck out me.
Please, don’t go. Don’t leave me.

“If you’re done with me,” I said
instead.

“Coward,” she spat. “You’ll take a
beating. You’ll face men with guns. You’ll kill. But God forbid you have to
swallow your goddamn pride and apologize for being a nosy little shit.”

I sat up fast.

“You think I don’t swallow my pride?
Fuck you! All I’ve done for months is swallow my pride. I’ve apologized ad
nauseum. I fuck you when you want to be fucked. I play nice for your friends. I
wait for you to come home because I have nothing more to do. You’ve become my
whole life!

“Meanwhile, you’re writing about me.
You still see me as the man I was. You still see the killer—beautiful on the
outside and hideous on the inside. Why are you with me? Why am I trying so hard
to be someone else when all I’ll ever be to you is the man who ruined your
life? I follow you around like a love-sick bitch and every day I fight the urge
to go back to what I know. There are days when I want to go back to being the
person I was because that person couldn’t love you. The man I was would
never
be this weak!”

I shouted through the pain in my throat
and that, coupled with the emotion working its way to the surface, threatened
to close off my airway. Livvie’s face was a mask of indifference. It chilled my
bones. How had she learned to be so cold? I knew the answer even as I asked the
question.

“You love me?” she asked as she looked
into my eyes. “When did you come to the realization? Was it when I told you I
loved you and you said it was cute? Or maybe it was after I killed a man?
Possibly when I begged you not to leave me at the border?

“Did you realize you loved me while I
was alone in the hospital and weeping over you? When did you shout your love
from the rooftops, Caleb? I couldn’t hear you. I was too busy trying to fucking
breathe without you. I was busy convincing everyone around me I wasn’t crazy
for defending my kidnapper. So, remind me. When did you say the words? I’ll be
sure to go back in time and comfort the broken girl you left in your wake. Your
love can comfort her, because I’m not the same person anymore.

“I’ve learned to breathe without you.
I’ve learned there’s no one in this life I can trust. It isn’t that you read my
words. I don’t care about that. I would have shown you eventually. It’s the
note you left. It’s now. It’s knowing that at any moment you’re going to run
off and leave me again. How can I tell you I love you? How could I survive it
again?”

I was stunned into silence. Every cell
in my body crawled with shame. Livvie was a survivor. She’d survived
me
. I realized then what I was
witnessing was not indifference—it was pain. Livvie was in pain and it was my
fault.

I didn’t know what was happening, but
it came on suddenly. My nose started running and I sniffled. I knew Livvie was
watching me. I knew how ridiculous I must look, how weak and broken. I couldn’t
even care. I had nothing left to lose. I did my best to clear my throat before
I spoke.

“I couldn’t say it, Kitten. I’d just
finished… I loved him.” I felt my chest shaking.

“Who?” Livvie whispered. She was still
so stoic.

“Rafiq,” I said softly. Livvie sighed.

“Why, Caleb? You know what he did.”

“Yes. I know what he did. I also know
what he didn’t do: He never touched me the way the others did.” A part of me
couldn’t believe I was about to go into this with her. I’d read her story and
it had me thinking of my own. I suppose I thought I owed her the other half of
our tale. I needed her to know I hadn’t cast her out without good reasons. “I
was so young, Livvie. I was so powerless. Every day I was raped by someone. I
was raped every day until I started to convince myself it wasn’t rape. I let
them touch me. I let them… fuck me. I smiled at the ones I saw more often than
the others, imagining they must care for me. Why else would they come back to
use me repeatedly?

“Eventually, I believed them. I
believed them when they said they cared. I believed them when they promised to
buy me from Narweh. I let myself hope that one day I would be free.” I heard myself
sob. The sound was far away, as though someone else were falling apart and not
me. “It never happened. They never cared. They were never going to set me free.
It was the hope they loved to toy with—my hope. I let it die.

“And then one day… Rafiq came. He
picked me up, whipped and bloody. He took me home and nursed me. He fed me. He
fed my body. He fed my mind. He fed my soul. He taught me how to do more than
survive—he taught me how to
live
. And
he never touched me.

“For years he took care of me. I didn’t
need hope anymore. I had something better. I had
purpose!
I loved him for that. And then...” I felt numb as I stared
off into space. “I learned the truth.”

My body shook as I recalled the night I
murdered him.

“I wasn’t anything, Livvie. I wasn’t
anything to him and he’d been
everything
to me. I would have died for him and the whole time… I was nothing.” I finally
looked at Livvie. Tears were on her cheeks. “But that’s not the worst part. No,
the worst part is that I meant to kill him before I knew the truth. It was the
only way to set you free and I… I killed him, Livvie. I killed him and I buried
him in Felipe’s garden where his family will never find him. I buried the only
person I thought I could trust. I loved him, and he turned out to be the person
responsible for the most horrendous betrayal of my life.

“And then I realized I’d done the same
to you. I’d beaten you. I’d raped you, and worse—I even made you like it. I fed
you hope and I snatched it away. I made you love me! How could I tell you? I couldn’t
tell you, Livvie. I was confused. I was…
broken
.
I’m
still
broken. I don’t know who I
am or what I want. All I know is that without you… without you, there’s
nothing. I’m nothing. Do you have any idea how terrifying that is for someone
like me?”

My feelings toward her were on the tip
of my tongue. I’d been holding the words in since the moment I had watched her
walk out of my life, and if she’d turned around and looked at me for even a
second, I wouldn’t have been able to resist telling her then.

I
love you.

I couldn’t say it in Mexico. I had lost
too much that day. I had lost my reality. What could I possibly understand
about love when the only person I was sure I did love had lied to me for twelve
years? Livvie had said she was mine. How could I be sure? Worse, what if it
were true? What if she loved me and all I had to offer was a husk of a heart to
love her with? How can anyone understand what love is without experiencing it?
It would be like trying to describe color to a blind man. Some things you have
to see for yourself. To understand love, you have to feel it for yourself.

It wasn’t until Livvie walked away and
I was truly alone in the world that I began to feel what love could be. It
didn’t come to me as it came to others; I had to find love as I had found
everything else that defined me: through my suffering. The chasm Livvie’s
absence opened in me was a hungry void. It was alive, the void, and it would
not be filled with vengeance. It was not soothed by my attempts to right my
wrongs. It was not pleased by random women. It did not sleep, despite the
amount of drink I imbibed to dull my senses.

There was only one thing the void
wanted. Greedily tearing me apart, it asked for Livvie. It wanted my hopes, my
dreams. It wanted my memories of her face. It wanted the laughter we had
shared. “Mine,” the void had decreed. Only Livvie could make me whole, and as
soon as I had realized it, I couldn’t stop looking for her. I’d become obsessed
with knowing if she really loved me.

The first touch of Livvie’s hand on my
shoulder had me sobbing again. Love made me weak. I wished it would go away.
Instead, it crushed me under its heel. I let Livvie push me back onto the bed.
And when I heard her turn away, love made me beg.

“Please don’t
go. Don’t leave me.”

I felt her fingers running through my
hair.

“I would never
leave you, Caleb. I just wanted to get you some water.”

“I don’t want water.”

“Scotch? Whiskey?”

“Just you.”

There was a long pause.

“Okay.”

 I heard her undress before she slipped in
behind me. She smelled like smoke. She hadn’t had a cigarette since the first
night I’d come to her apartment. I didn’t say anything about it. She had her
vises and I had mine. All that mattered to me was that Livvie was warm. And
soft. Livvie was always warm and soft. She spoke softly in my ear.

“I’m scared
too. You didn’t come to the door and I thought: He left me again. Caleb, you
can’t
do that
to me.”

Livvie kissed my shoulder, but I could
feel her vibrating with anger.

“You’re mad at
me.”

“Yes,” she said. “But I guess… maybe I
can’t blame you. In the grand scheme of things, it’s ridiculous to assume you
wouldn’t
break into my laptop. To use
your words: I know who you are and I know what you do.” Livvie let out a short
burst of laughter that quickly became a thoughtful sigh. “It must be hard on
you, not having anyone to talk to about…
him.
I certainly don’t care he’s dead—he can rot in hell for all I care—but I never
guessed how much you…” Livvie sighed and went silent.