penance. a love story (The Böhme Series) (39 page)

We stayed and helped my mom for a few hours around the house and Wynn ate his first farm fresh meal. Watching him with my parents was amazing. I was seeing a new side of them and I couldn’t help but believe he had something to do with it. He was filling a hole in all of our hearts that we hadn’t known was missing.

He saw the same strength in me that my father described. Wynn, without even knowing my history and what I believed I had done, stoked the fire and brought that strength back to me. He fanned the tiny ember left with his love.
Love
. It was love that he held in his eyes when he looked me and I hoped that my love mirrored his when I looked at him. Because that is what I felt for him and I wanted him to know it.

We had known each other for a short time, but since we held so much pain in our lives, love was clearer to us than other people. I compare it to when someone is surrounded by darkness and a light
brightens your vision. You see the brightness and it hurts your eyes at first, but you blink a couple times and realize it wasn’t painful at all; your eyes needed a couple seconds to adjust and focus. That was what this love was. It took that moment for me to realize it, but now that everything came into focus, I only saw him. The darkness was fading.

I stood to the side as he hugged my parents good-bye
before we left, reminding them that we planned on returning the next day and a warm smile formed on my face. Without a question, he immersed himself into my life and he fit. I gave him a kiss on the cheek before we returned to the hotel to get our belongings. He smiled at me as he climbed onto his bike and put his hand over mine that wrapped around his waist. We needed to be together. I couldn’t leave his side and he couldn’t leave mine. We intertwined our lives in such an instantaneous way, but remained individuals. We weren’t losing ourselves in each other. But we were better together

When we reached Joe’s the sun was setting. He came out to greet us and with excitement
, informed us of what he did in our absence. We followed him into the cottage and found it dusted. “I know it’s just a start, but I wanted to make it more comfortable for you on your first night here.” He walked toward the room with the large bed and he waived his hand in the door. “I had the neighbor kids come by and move this mattress set in here for you. It isn’t much, but now you at least have a bed,” he said with a smile.

I looked over at Wynn and the nervous longing he held as he looked at the bed. We both stood dumbfounded as we listened to Joe tell the story of the kids delivering the mattresses. I don't think either of us could recite the tale though. I imagine his thoughts were on the same path as mine, we were going to be together for the first time in that bed. There were many yets held in our eyes as we looked at it. Our attention came back to each other, and I saw the hesitancy and
nervousness vanish from his eyes as I willed the love I had for him to show. Joe laughed at the end of his story and walked us to the bathroom, not knowing we hadn't heard any of it.

“The water is on now and I had the tank filled out back, so you should have hot water now too. The shower doesn’t work though, so it's just baths for the time being
,” he said as he pointed toward the now sparkling tub.

“Okay
,” Wynn said, turning to Joe. “Thank you for this. I’m looking forward to getting to know you and hearing stories of my family,” he said squeezing the older man’s shoulder as they turned toward the kitchen.

Joe turned a sad expression to Wynn as he put his hand over his
. “It’s a shame how things have turned out with your family. Lydia was a good girl. The last time I saw her she was eight or nine.” He looked off with distant memories as he continued. “She was a beautiful little girl and Evie loved her more than life itself. Jacob was no different. They were inseparable—all of them. It was their anniversary the night they died.”

H
is eyes began to gloss as he ran his hand across the table in the kitchen. “Evie loved this place. She dreamed of having many families living here on this land with their own little adobe houses.” His voice drifted along with his thoughts. “It was her dream, and we followed in her wake. She was a force to be reckoned with that woman,” he said as he looked through the window toward the now dark sky.

“What was my mother like?” Wynn asked waiting for Joe's response.

“She was like any other little girl, I suppose. But she had a strong will and imagination in her. Your grandparents always wanted her to live a life that was full of creativity and possibilities. It breaks my heart how she ended up in the system as she did.” He brought his hand up to pat Wynn’s face. “There's a sorrow in your eyes and it breaks my heart again. Things were bad for Lydia and I fought like hell to get custody, but back then the state wasn’t willing to allow a single man the right to adopt. It’s still difficult now.”

“I know. I’m thankful for what she did for me. It was because of her experience I realize now. The one good thing she did was make sure she left me with Sid if anything happened to her
,” Wynn said as he looked at me. “She never spoke of my grandparents. It was like she wanted to block the memory of them out. I thought it was because she had a bad experience with them. I think now though that she did it because it hurt too much to talk about happier times.”

Wynn took a seat at the table and rested his head in his hands. I could tell he was battling with the memories he had of his mother and the stories told to us. What happened to drive a person that was once so beautiful and free to turn into such a monster that would sexually and physically abuse her son? I knelt next to him and wrapped my arm around his waist and rested my head on his shoulder.

Joe gave my back a pat and nodded to me as he left the cottage. He shut the door and as he did I saw the deep sadness that he held from his own years of pain. The more people I met, the more I was coming to the realization that all of us held onto our own pain and went through our own self punishment. We just chose to cope in different ways.

Joe lived here in the middle of nowhere away from people because of his own reasons. There had to have been a falling out with Wynn’s grandparents. In Joe’s remorse he refused to push forward with life. His punishment was giving up on life. By giving up he was destroying himself as much as I was with my casual, lifeless, sexual encounters.

I pulled Wynn’s hands to my lips and kissed each of his knuckles as he watched me with a far off expression. Wynn was punishing himself by allowing his demons to hold tight and direct his every move, caging him inside the fears in his mind. Now he faced the realization that his mother, though she did evil things, was not always that way. As if he could read my thoughts Wynn spoke. “What made her change, Hannah? Why did she do such horrible things to me? How could the person that lived her early years here in this place be the same one that haunts me every time I close my eyes?”

I pulled my lips in and shook my head slowly
. “I don’t know,” I said in a whisper, because I didn’t.

“I want to hate
her so badly, Hannah.” He raised his voice and as he stood abruptly his chair fell backwards. I couldn’t help but notice even in his act of anger he was aware of where I was and he made a point not to allow me to fall back when he jumped. “I want to hate her so
fucking
badly,” he said quieter with his pointer finger and thumb pressed together in a clenched fist next to his face and pressed his palm into his eye as if he could rub the memories of her away.

He started to speak several times as his breath caught. He fought to form the words that he needed to share until at last he calmed. He said in a whisper
. “She would touch me there and she wouldn’t let me finish because she said I didn’t deserve it because of how dirty I was for getting excited by her touch. How fucked up is that? How could that person be the same angelic person Joe spoke of?” he asked as he pointed with his opened hand toward the door. His hands dropped to his sides as he looked up at the ceiling for his answers.

When he looked back at me, my chest imploded. He was breaking. His face pulled tight as he held back the tears and pain he had bottled up for so long. He pulled his lip in and on a deep breath bit his lower lip as he ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back and pulling it away from him.

“How could she be the same smiling, beautiful little girl in those photos? How could she grow up to do the things to me that she did?” he asked as he lowered himself in front of me. His face became more serious as he attempted to understand. “She beat me. She put me in a fucking barrel for not mowing the fucking lawn right. I cannot for the life of me connect the dots here,” he said as he put his hands in his hair again. “How could she be the offspring of such wonderful sounding people? What does that mean will happen to me?” he said in such a whisper I almost missed it. “What does that mean for me?”

He dropped to the floor on his knees and began to rock back and forth with his arms holding him. In that moment I began to understand his ultimate fear. He was afraid of becoming the monster. He was afraid of being consumed by the same demons and letting them win. I knelt in front of him and put my hands against either side of his face. His tears hit my hands, and I felt myself break right along with him. This was the same man that held me earlier and who was my quiet strength and now I needed to be his.

“Hey,” I said in a whisper. He looked at me with fearful eyes. “You won’t become the monster. I know you won’t. Remember, you have them in you,” I said as I looked around the room. “You just need to cling to them and forgive your mom. Something happened to her and though we both have had shit flung at us, she just might have had more. We will never know her story, but we can move forward. Remember we have many
yets
to come. We can’t let the past take those from us. We have more reason to cling to them. We have to forgive the past,” I whispered.

He tilted his head in question at me. I leaned in and touched our foreheads together as I continued. “We need this for all the yets stolen from your mother, my sister, my niece or nephew. They had their yets ripped from them. So the way I see it—the only thing we can do is make sure we achieve every single one of the yets we can and enjoy every last minute. That’s how we have to look at it. We have to hold onto the minutes—the seconds even. We can’t look at time as days or months or years. But every single moment has to be ours to claim. We have to claim these moments, for us and for them. We have to break the cycle and forgive them and ourselves along the way.”

He didn’t give a response. He sat looking at me with an intensity that made everything fall into place inside me. The truth his eyes held in that moment sent a wave of want through me and he tilted his head, bringing our lips together. He laid me back to the floor as he climbed over me.

“I want to make love to you Hannah Anderson and that is the definition of what it will be. My rational side wants to say that now is not the time for that. We both have been through so much today and are trying to make sense of it. I want one of those moments you just spoke of and it's the most rational thought I could have. We aren’t going to try to heal ourselves with more pain and numbness like we have
done. It won’t be sex, it won’t be any empty thing that you have had before, but I intend for both of us to feel every moment of it. I meant what I said before, you may be my first, but we are going to be each others’ lasts. You said you want to claim every second as ours and we are going to start with this one. No one else can have it. Every bad thing and thought we had today is gone. I don’t want to think of the past anymore or even the future, but just this moment that is ours, right now.” I saw in his eyes the truth in his words and I believed every one of them.

Then he kissed me and I felt every single one of
those words in that kiss. He said he wanted to make sure I felt all of it and I did.

She is so fucking soft.
It was the only thought echoing through my mind as I touched her and traced light kisses along her shoulder. I always knew she would be. We lay on the dirty ass floor of that little cottage,
our
little cottage. Her clothes stained from the moments shared earlier in the tall flowers at her parents’ house, were now dust covered. She wore the white top I loved. That itself was a beautiful thing. We both had messed up hair and dirty clothes and she never looked sexier.
Sexier.
Just a few weeks ago, I would have laughed at myself if told I was going to use that particular word. It was the best way to describe her in this moment though.

I lifted myself above her as she started to run her hands up along my sides. She was exploring me and the entire time her eyes remained open and aware of every single moment, claiming it, just as I said we had to do. I lifted up and put my hands over my shoulders to pull my shirt off and a crooked smile formed on her face as she followed my movements with her eyes. “What?” I asked after I threw my shirt and lowered myself back to her.

She started her hands at the front of my scalp then ran them through my hair until she was holding me at the base of my neck. She pulled me back to kiss her and took a small bite at my lip before answering. “Watching you take your shirt off is the sexiest thing I have ever had the privilege of seeing,” she said. I laughed as I settled back between her legs. “I’m serious, the way you pull your arms over your head gives me chills.”