Erasing Faith (29 page)

He was literally holding me together.

“Shhh,” he breathed into my hair.

And, for a moment, I just closed my eyes and let him hold me until the rest of the world disappeared. 

A MONSTER

I held her until I felt her relax in my arms, all her strength sapped by her breakdown. For a while, she seemed to forget that it was me, the man she hated so much, holding her. She might not have noticed, but I’d never been more aware of anything in my life. 

I closed my eyes and breathed in her scent. Everything else was different, but that was the same: sunlight and spring. I committed it to memory.

I’d dreamed about this moment — her body pressed against mine, the crown of her head tucked perfectly beneath my chin like we’d been designed to fit together. Whenever I was somewhere cold or dangerous or just fucking
lonely
, I’d reach inside my head and find this fractured glimpse of Faith — her arms around me, her forehead against the hollow of my throat where my pulse throbbed a little too fast.

There was nowhere in the world I’d rather be.

Eventually, she recovered her senses enough to realize that she’d collapsed against my chest and cried approximately half of the Pacific Ocean into my t-shirt. Her breaths slowed from heaves to hiccups and her entire body tensed against mine. When she moved to pull away, I tightened my grip on her for just a moment and held her to me.

I’d listened to her tirade — it was my turn to say something.

“Maybe you’re right, Red,” I murmured, my mouth against her hair. “Maybe I am hateful. Maybe I ruined your life. Maybe I’m the devil, and the worst thing that ever happened to you, and a million other awful things.” I tilted my head so my lips brushed her earlobe, and felt her shudder in response. “But did you ever stop to think that even if I am a monster… I might still be your soulmate, anyway?”

With that, I released my hold on her, turned around, and walked outside, not waiting for her response. I knew she wouldn’t have one for me — at least, not one I’d like.

The welcome release I felt when my fist slammed against the first oak tree I stumbled across wasn’t enough to make me forget her, but it did distract me from the pain inside my chest for a few short moments.

And, right now, that was enough.

ERASERS

Did you ever stop to think that even if I am a monster… I might still be your soulmate, anyway?

I sat on the floor, my eyes aching almost as much as my fists, and replayed his words over and over until they crowded out every other thought in my head. Honestly, hearing him ask the question I’d been asking myself for three long years was a little more than I could handle. 

I hadn’t lied, when I’d told him he changed my life — changed
me
. He’d flipped my world on its axis and walked away, leaving nothing but bitterness to fill the void he’d created. Since that day, when I woke up in the hospital and learned that life as I knew it was over, I’d had only one mission: to eradicate his memory completely. To cut away every impression he’d left on me, and start over.

I’d learned quite quickly that while, in theory, forgetting Wes would be easy, in reality it was damn near impossible.

Wes…

Well, Wes was like math.

See, as a little kid, I’d sucked at math. I can still remember sitting in Mrs. Sampson’s second-grade classroom, learning my multiplication tables for the first time and failing to grasp the concepts she was trying so desperately to illustrate on the chalkboard. Every day she’d give us a worksheet… and every day I’d find myself staring at the incorrect answers I’d scribbled down on said worksheet, dreading the part that came next.

The eraser.

I’d drag that damn piece of rubber back and forth across my faulty calculations, scrubbing away my errors with each swipe and watching with a growing sense of frustration as the crappy school-issued eraser turned my penciled answers into a blurry smudge of charcoal. No matter how hard I pressed, the marks never came away clean. The faint shadows of my miscalculations were imbedded deeply in the paper, impossible to remove without tearing away fragments of the worksheet as well.

I couldn’t expunge the memory of Wes, any more than I could scrub out those embarrassing math mistakes. Not without shredding parts of myself along with him.

In the end, as much as I might want to, I couldn’t deny the truth in Wes’ words.

You don’t choose who you fall in love with in this life.

You can’t erase your soulmate.

The marks they leave are etched in permanent ink.

***

He came back, after a while, and we ate a dinner consisting of the same stale crackers and canned soup I’d turned my nose up at only hours earlier. At this point I was so ravenous, I’d have happily eaten my left arm, if it meant the hollow ache inside my empty stomach would go away. I tried not to eat too quickly, but my fingers shook as I scraped the final remnants of soup from the sides of the can.

We didn’t speak.

At first, I didn’t mind the silence. But after a while, the persistent quiet began to fill with that uncontrollable, electric feeling. The space separating us seemed to crackle with invisible sparks as every molecule in the tiny cottage began to charge and collide with tension. The air was so thick with the things we’d left unsaid, I soon felt starved for oxygen — each breath I dragged into my lungs made my chest ache a little more, until the lancing pain beneath my ribcage was almost crippling.

I grabbed my duffel bag and began to rummage through it, looking for the pajama set I’d packed. After a sleepless night followed by a day of exertion — both physical and emotional — I was exhausted and had no intention of sleeping in dirty street clothes again. What I really wanted was a long, hot bath to soak away the grime — but that would require me to ask Wes for some privacy and, as I was stubbornly determined not to be the one who broke our silent stalemate, that wasn’t an option.

Unfortunately, I knew from experience that he was just as stubborn as I was.

Snatching a soft pair of shorts and matching tank from my bag, I headed for the “bathroom” in the corner. The curtain was too small to conceal much, but it was better than stripping down to my skin under nothing but the weight of Wes’ eyes. As for his ears — I knew all too well that every sound I made would carry easily past the flimsy hanging fabric.

I tried not to let that bother me when I plunked down on the toilet and started to pee. Maybe I would’ve been fine, if it hadn’t been so many hours since I last relieved myself. Maybe, if I hadn’t chugged a half-gallon of water after my cleaning marathon, I could’ve done the deed and remained entirely aloof about the whole ordeal.

Or, maybe not.

All I knew was, as soon as my ass hit porcelain, I was peeing like a racehorse. And it lasted
forever
— one of those pees that’s so long, it’s embarrassing even when you’re the only one to witness it, all alone in the privacy of your bathroom. Except I wasn’t alone, and the damn witness to my humiliation was my satanic maybe-soulmate, standing inches away.

The steady streaming sound was so loud, it seemed to echo back at me from all sides.

Thirty seconds passed and I began to pray it was almost over, though I knew I still had half a tank left to empty.

At forty seconds, I felt my cheeks beginning to flush with mortification.

At fifty, I was ready to curl up in a ball and die, rather than face Wes after this.

When I neared the minute mark, I heard a chuckle from the other side of the curtain and dropped my head into my hands with a groan. This was even worse than my dirt-eating dive from the trunk.

Finally,
finally,
I expelled every last drop from my bladder and flushed away the evidence of my embarrassingly long pee. I took my sweet time changing into pajamas. Only when I was sure the color had faded from my cheeks, did I dare pull back the curtain and step out to face him.

His eyes immediately met mine and I was pleased to see they held no teasing. My gaze swung swiftly away and I beelined for the duffel, repacking my dirty clothes and pretending I was in no way embarrassed. I’d just zipped my bag closed when I heard a muffled laugh from the other side of the cabin.

My eyes snapped back in Wes’ direction, but I found his face bore no traces of amusement.

“What are you laughing at?” I growled, glaring for all I was worth.

“Nothing,” he said, his voice flat. His expression was the picture of innocence.

“Good.”

I’d begun to turn again when his stone-faced facade cracked and a snort escaped. I watched as his expression filled with mirth — a full-out grin on his lips, the skin on his forehead crinkling, a happy light dancing in his eyes. He was so handsome in that moment, looking at me with sheer joy on his face, that it was hard to hold onto my anger.

Hard — but not impossible.

When his chuckles turned to full-blown laughter, I narrowed my eyes on his face and gave him my best death-stare.

“This isn’t funny,” I grumbled angrily. “I don’t understand why you’re so amused.”

“You know…” He stopped laughing just long enough to gasp out a reply. “They used to call Secretariat ‘Big
Red
.’”

His eyes pressed closed and his shoulders shook uncontrollably as he laughed at his own joke.

My lips twitched, despite myself. “Oh,
piss
off,” I muttered.

His bark of laughter reached my ears and I made sure to turn away before he could see the small smile on my lips.

***

The cabin lights were off and I was securely beneath the bedcovers — the quilt was pulled practically to my chin, covering every inch of flesh besides my face. I’d stacked two pillows against my left side, effectively dividing the bed in half, and was huddled as close to the mattress edge as physically possible. Pressing my eyes closed, I relaxed my features into what I hoped was a peaceful, unconscious expression and feigned sleep.

Better that than face Wes when he decided to make an appearance.

I heard the screech of the screen door opening a few moments later, and my entire body tensed in anxious anticipation. The thumping of my heartbeat matched the steady echo of his boots against the hardwood as he crossed the small room toward the bed. When his footsteps faded into silence, I lay as still as possible, struggling to keep my expression serene and my breathing rate even.

A minute passed.

I fought the urge to twitch.

One more ticked by.

My nose itched like a bastard but I didn’t move.

I counted sixty more seconds in my head until, finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. My eyelids slivered open and I peeked out from beneath my lashes.

He was standing at the end of the bed, arms crossed over his chest in a casual stance, staring at me with an amused expression. His quirked eyebrow said
Did you really think I was buying your terrible fake sleeping act?
and the twisted smile playing out on his lips asked
Do you truly believe your pillow barricade and paper-thin blanket will protect you from me if I want to touch you, Red?

I gulped.

He grinned.

I glared.

He reached for his belt and began to unbuckle it.

Crap
.

I flipped over and faced the wall, wincing as I listened to the unmistakable sound of his clothing dropping to the floor. A few seconds later, the quilt lifted, he slipped into bed, and I was forced to concede that he’d been right: my paltry pillow shield felt perilously thin, now that he was reclined mere inches from me. The darkness seemed to thicken and the air grew heavy as I listened to him settling in, heard the tired sigh he released as his body relaxed for the first time in days. 

The teeming dark, swimming as it was with secrets and lies, felt somehow safer than facing him in the light of day. Lying there in the shadows, still and silent, with his skin so close to mine I imagined I could feel his heat through the pillows dividing us, he was more threatening than he’d ever been… and yet, also far less. 

“I call you Wes in my head,” I whispered.

I heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by the soft crinkling of fabric as his face turned on his pillow. Though I didn’t look, I could feel his eyes burning holes into my back through the quilt.

“I know it isn’t your name.” I swallowed. “That man… Benson. He told me it was just your cover.”

He kept silent, so I heaved in a steadying breath and spoke on, unable to stop now that I’d started.

“I just…” My voice was so hollow I barely recognized it. “I don’t know how to look at you and not see
Wes
, even though I know he doesn’t exist. So maybe…” I trailed off, suddenly feeling foolish.

He cleared his throat but when he spoke, his voice was still rough, like he was speaking around a mouthful of gravel. “Maybe what, Red?”

I pressed my eyes closed. “Maybe, if you gave me something else to call you, I could stop seeing you as my Wes, and start seeing you for who you really are.”

I was immediately mortified that the words
my Wes
had escaped my mouth, but it was too late now. They were out there, thrumming in the air around us. I knew, if there’d been light enough to see by, my cheeks would’ve been redder than a fall sunset.

He was silent for so long, I feared he wasn’t going to answer at all.

“Never mind,” I mumbled, feeling like an absolute idiot. “Just forget it.”

I heard him sigh. “Joshua Collins.”

My eyes flew open. “What?”

“My cover name in Budapest. It was supposed to be Joshua Collins.”

Supposed to be?

“I had it all worked out. The backstory had been prepped for weeks. I was prepared.” His voice was low, now, and full of strain. “And then… Then, you looked at me with those big melted caramel eyes and… Fuck. I just… lost it.”

Though my heart was racing inside my chest, I bit my tongue to keep from talking. I knew from experience I’d have to wait if I wanted the full story from him.

“And before I knew it, I was telling you my name was Wesley Adams. Which has to be the single most reckless thing I’ve done in my entire career.”

My heart began to pound faster. “Why?”

“Covert Ops 101, Red: never pick a code name too close to your real one. And, no matter how you slice it,
Wesley Adams
is a bit too damn close to
Weston Abbott
for my liking or anyone else’s.”

Weston Abbott.

Just like that, I finally had an answer to the question I’d been turning over in my mind for the past three years.

His name was Weston.

Which meant… he was still Wes.

He’d always been Wes. 

My mouth opened and closed mutely, like a fish gulping for oxygen, trying to process the fact that he’d given me a name nearly identical to his own. And, suddenly, only one question remained that really mattered.

Why?

I’d parted my lips to ask just that when I felt the bed shift as he flipped over to face the opposite wall.

“No more questions. I’m tired, Red. Go to bed.” His tone booked no room for argument and within seconds, I heard his breathing rate slow into the telltale rhythm of slumber.