Fragile Truths (26 page)

I gave her a moment to calm her heartbeat, my eyes and ears on the other room while she quietened but I needed to tell her, I had to before it was too late. “That’s why I went to your house that day. I’d heard about…” I gave her a sheepish shrug, “I was uhh, a bit of a rogue by then and in with some dire gangs. Word was going round that the Knight’s were looking for a young ‘distraction’ to use. Anyway, I’m not sure, even to this day if that’s what your dad had heard too and he thought that’s what Jude and I were doing there. I tried to tell him, I begged him to listen to me but he just starting beating all sense out of me.” I shook my head at the memory and forced myself on, “Anyway this bloke came running down the stairs with you. I’m not sure who he was…”

“My uncle,” she disclosed quietly.

I nodded and sighed, “You were screaming at your dad, telling him to get off me. I don’t think you recognised me cos’ of all the blood pouring down my face.”

She gulped and looked at me as a tear slid down her face. “I want nothing more than to huddle you up right now, Capella. Hold you so close that the fear and ache can’t hurt you anymore but you need to listen to me now, very closely. And I need to be quick.”

She nodded and inhaled deeply, forcing the courage to listen to my next declaration, the statement that would tear her heart out of my hands but she needed to know, she needed finality and truths, even if they were fragile ones that would shatter as soon as they left my lips. “One thing though?” she asked quickly.

I nodded in acknowledgement, “Go on.”

“Well if all this is true and the Knight’s wanted me, my life for payment. Why hasn’t Don taken me out before now? I can understand him not getting the association with my name, my dad changed it from Belling to Wilde when we moved, but…” I stiffened but she carried on, not noticing my hesitation and shame growing, stifling the air with its potency. “He’s seen me before, I’ve taken him in the courtroom before. He’s had me here days, fair enough he wants the USB but it doesn’t make sense.”

I blew out a long breath and gripped her hand, drenching myself in her touch and scent, probably for the final time. My heart bled out as I uttered the words that I hoped didn’t make her hate me. “Because you disappeared and he hasn’t seen you since you were nine. And because he thinks I killed you.”

The only sign of life was that her eyes had snapped up to mine. She remained so still that I couldn’t even hear her breath or see her pulse throbbing at the base of her pale neck. Her hands were still in mine but they didn’t flinch or shudder with my confession.

We didn’t have time for shock or even numbness; I needed to tell her, so I carried on hoping that she could still hear me. “I only recognised you because of your moles. I… when I said before that I had done shameless things to keep your heart beating, well I meant it, Capella.”

She moved then, so swiftly and icily that I knew she grasped what I had done. Her head shook from side to side in denial as acceptance hit her fiercely.  A wail so heart-breaking erupted from her as she completely gave up and broke down. “Noooo, Noooo,” she cried with so much pain as sobs tore from every part of her honesty and pureness.

She knew I had killed another to save her.

“NO!” She screamed at me. Her hands flew as she tore into me, a lifetime of hatred ripping both her and me apart as she refused to accept that she was here because another had given their life for hers. “Why? God, why?”

I had broken her. Throughout everything life had thrown at her, this was the ultimate betrayal for her. She felt she didn’t deserve her life over some other, but she did. She fucking did. She was all the good the world needed to remain righteous and fucking clean. I didn’t care that the voice in my head sounded like a bloody preacher at a funeral. I felt with every sense of my being that Frankie should be here, with me. She was meant to be here, her vividness and decency holding up all the worlds’ downfalls and failures.

“No Tate,” she sobbed as she crumbled within herself. “She would have been just a child.”

“What!” I stuttered. “No, no. She was twenty two when I...”

Her head snapped to the side and her eyes widened on me, “But… what? None of this makes sense.”

“Then let me explain before you throw us to the dogs completely. Please, Frankie, please.”

She nodded as her chest stuttered and seized her unsteady breaths.

I swallowed against the dryness in my mouth and shook as pain vibrated my body with the memories. “I finally managed to persuade your uncle to talk to your dad, tell him what was being planned. Luckily, he must have listened because two days later you’d gone. Your house was bare when I came back, and there were no signs that anyone had lived there… ever, it was so clean.”

I slid round so my back rested against the bath side next to her. I was dying to reach out and touch her, feel her and gain some sort of foundation but fear crippled both my actions and my thoughts so I remained still and stared at the floor. “I had no idea where you’d gone. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it that way or not, but I searched. I looked in every part of the fucking world for you, but it was like you’d vanished. Word went round about your dad’s disappearance.” I shivered as I remembered Pop’s curses and nightmares and at the time I had wondered if he’d given up Frankie’s whereabouts, but not to me. “I never saw you again for nine years. Until the night you threw up behind Don’s casino and I knew I had to do something to put him off your scent.”

She frowned at me and tipped her head, but her eyes were soft. “I remember that night. I had found him, for the first time in nine years I had heard a voice that I had never wanted to hear again.”

I nodded, and then sighed heavily. “Where did you go, Capella?”

She smiled and fuck, if my heart didn’t start beating again. Her lips rolled as something humorous touched her, initiating a deep stunned frown from me. “My dad did an excellent job of hiding me.”

I nodded, urging her on but she giggled. I stared in confusion, my brows high, wondering what was so funny but she was soon laughing so loudly I was frightened we would disturb someone. “Frankie, shush.” I couldn’t help chuckling with her as tears rolled down her cheeks, dripping onto the sheet she had wrapped around her.

She hiccupped and bit her tongue as she looked at me, her eyes alive with a sparkle I thought I’d never witness again. “I went to St Harriet’s school for under-privileged boys and girls.” She stated matter-of-factly as she pursed her lips to stop the giggle returning.

My jaw dropped as I reeled back against the bath tub. “What the fuck? That’s about twelve miles away.”

Her cheeks puffed out as her laughter returned and her head nodded rapidly, “Yep. So close no one ever thought to look” she revealed.

“Well, fuck me” I laughed. The comedy of the situation I’d been in for those nine years of searching, slapping me in the face and mocking my stupidity.

“I had to go to a poor school. I knew something was wrong when we left but my father shielded me as much as he could. We had suddenly gone from living in a multi-million pound house to renting in some dire building. We’d huddle together at night in the corner of the room, the drawers pushed up against the door as we fought to keep warm.” She sighed as her eyes glazed over and she took herself back in time. “Of course, when we went we couldn’t take anything money wise, no bank books and we didn’t have time for my dad to collect monies owed, so we went with what we had, hence St Harriet’s. We hired a van, leaving my uncle to clear the house and we went, just like that and just as quickly.”

She shuffled round and smiled at me, “Although I missed my mother terribly, I will never forget those days or nights with my dad. We grew close; both of us clung to each other for more than just warmth. He was my protector, my guard and my fierce knight. He’d tell me tales of soldiers and heroes, prince’s saving their maidens and ogres brought to ground by the courageous, enacting stories with the few teddy’s and toys he’d allowed me to take.” She smiled widely and chuckled, “It was those tales that made me want to help people. Comfort the good in all the bad things wrong with the world.”

I sighed and swallowed my shame. Frankie slipped her hand in mine and we both kept our gazes on our locked fingers. “I remember once, when the money had gone and my dad hadn’t any to put in the electric meter. Darkness hit so quick in that room I couldn’t breathe against the crush in my chest, my body went into lockdown as my brain cried in agony.” She shivered against me and I reached out to her, running my thumb across a stray tear.

“Why the fear?”

Her face darkened and she squeezed her eyes closed, “The cellar. Whenever it’s dark all I hear are my momma’s screams, her pleads with them not to hurt me, to take her instead. Then the beatings; all I can feel and hear are their fists crunching her brittle bones, and their feet connecting with her bruised flesh. Then the laughter as they raped her broken and bleeding body.” Another tear scurried from the corner of her eye and I watched it sail down her face, hunting for freedom against the pain of entrapment within her desolate soul.

She looked so lost in that moment, her heart open to me as she begged with her eyes for me to take it all away. Pleaded for me to rip her from all the last seventeen years of torture and pain she had suffered. Prayed for me to open the gate and allow her to release all the agony and desperation she had locked away inside.

She blinked, forcing another drop to leak from her eye but then she smiled softly. “As I was saying, the time the electric went and popped me into my nightmares.”

I nodded gently, pulling her hand further across so I could take it in both of mine and feed her as much strength as I could. “My dad went into panic mode. He thought I was dying, which essentially, I think I might have been. I can remember gasping and writhing on the floor and my dad’s screams.” She shrugged and snorted, “Well let’s just say, he went out and found a job the very next day, swearing that there would never be another time when he couldn’t afford light. He worked as a security guard while he trained to be a cop.” She eyed me, the teasing glint lightening my heart, “Yes, I know, very ironic to say he had led a ‘colourful’ past, but for once that past helped save us when he managed to secure false documents so his life could take a different route completely,” she laughed. “But he started again, Tate. He regretted a lot in his life. He’s done bad things, I know he has but he has done everything in his power to protect me.”

I smiled at her but her eyes dimmed when she looked at me. “Did you know who she was?”

“Yes,” I sighed and looked down, not wanting to see the revulsion on her face when I told her. “Her name was Sarah. She was a nursery teacher and I’d known her since school. She had no family at all and she was my best friend.”

Frankie gasped and I forced myself to tell her the rest. “She found out she had cancer on her twenty second birthday. It was a brain tumour and in its final stages.”

We both withdrew; me to remember Sarah and Frankie to pray for the woman who had given up so much to save hers. A tear slid free and I cursed the damn thing, “We’d been friends for a long time and yes, I don’t have a problem telling you we had a sexual friendship, I owe her that much - the truth.” I spotted the slightest lift of Frankie’s lips and compelled the hurricane in my stomach to settle. “We were close and I loved her, as a friend. At the time I was too arrogant and focused to realise that and that’s one of my deepest regrets, never telling her that before she died… before I killed her.”

My own words choked me and drove a tear free, my grief over Sarah once again pushing the demons inside me to laugh and mock. “She was the only person I’ve ever told about you. The only one that ever knew who held my heart and she loved me deeper for that.” I smiled as our last ever conversation filtered through me, choking a sob up my throat and crushing my spirit along with it, “She said I must never give up fighting for you. She laughed and said, knights and champions were romantic and any girl that found one willing to fight for her would fall instantly in love.”

Frankie slipped her hand in mine as my heart crushed within me. Fuck this! I’d never bloody cried before, never let this free to anyone and the pain was tearing me in two, ripping my soul out with shame and the mortification of what I had done to my best friend. “What happened?” She asked softly, her hand firm in mine as I threw out all the darkness and clawed at the light she was feeding me.

“Oh Christ, Frankie. This hurts too fucking much… I can’t…”

She pulled at me, tugging me across until my head was on her lap and her fingers were in my hair, smoothing the disarray as my heart broke upon the woman I had loved for near eternity. “Tate. Listen to me,” she whispered as she continued soothing me with her touch. “Did Sarah know what you were doing?”

“Of course she knew. It was her idea.” I snapped angrily, “I’m not that much of a monster.”

“I know. Then you owe it to her to tell me. She did this for me and although I know what you’re going to tell me, you need to say it; for Sarah, for you.”

“I smothered her….” I choked out. “We’d arranged it, when her time was nearly up. I smothered her and then… then I had to fucking beat her unrecognisable and drop her body at Don’s feet. I took away my best friends identity and gave her yours…”

I couldn’t breathe, everything was clawing at my insides as memories and agony and hatred and shame tore around my bloodstream, crippling me with its burn as my chest heaved with my sobs.

Fuck, what the hell was happening to me? I couldn’t bear the pain; it was unbearable, scrabbling and wrenching at my soul as sobs and cries rushed from me. Something ruptured inside me as Frankie pulled me against her and wrapped me up, holding me and rocking me like a child as all my grief poured from me in huge bawls and howls.

“She loved you Tate, and she knew you loved her, if she hadn’t she wouldn’t have done this for you… for us. You have to remember that. Don’t let her memory kill you; use it to fight for what she wanted for you, for us. Build a future from the rubble.”