A Kiss Stolen

“Bon appetite,” I say.

She tucks her hair behind her ears nervously and picks up her fork.

“We’re returning tomorrow,” I say to her.

All we hear is the clinking of cutleries in the background and the low buzz of chatter from the other dining couples in the restaurant.

She puts her fork down, picks up her glass of wine, and takes a large swallow. “Okay. How are we going to be when we return?”

“I don’t know, Liliana.”

“What is going to happen when we get back?”

Until that moment, my heart was undecided. But as I look at her my response comes. “I don’t know what is going to happen, but I can’t let you go.”

Tears shimmer in her eyes. “You have to let me go back to my father and talk to him. That is the only way this will work.”

“I can’t take the chance. You are mine now. I don’t recognize his authority over you.”

“Please. You have to let me go to my family. My father loves me. He wants me to be happy.”

“Yeah, like he did when he fired my dad just because I kissed you?” I ask coldly.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Liliana

He doesn’t take me to a place where he had promised to make me climax under a table. Instead we go back to the farmhouse and sit at the kitchen table. As long as I live I will never forget this night. Under the overhead lamp his face is craggy and his eyes bleak. We drink whisky straight from the bottle and we talk.

Ah, how we talk.

There is so much to say. So much to know. Sometimes there are tears in our eyes. He finds out I think gray pitt bulls are absolutely adorable and I find out about the brutality of men in grand stately homes. It makes my hands tremble with fury and my heart break for that dark-haired proud boy who kissed me. How dare they do that to a kid? As he talks about them the rage comes back.

“I saw one of them in the newspapers once. Lord Hetherington was apparently a respected member of the House of Lords and a very eminent judge who believed the age of consent should be reduced. I heard he cried and sniveled like a fucking coward for a very long time before he died.”

I don’t blame him for executing the judge. I would have done it myself. People like that shouldn’t exist. Who knows how many other boys have been taken, abused, and murdered?

I take sips from the bottle and he takes gulps. By the time we are halfway down the second bottle he is very drunk. I want to tell him I love him, but the words stick in my throat. Love seems like such a tame word. I mean, I love ice cream, but what I feel for Brand is like the ocean, wide, deep, endless, unfathomable. After everything that has happened between us I would go to the ends of the earth for him, give up my life for him.

I watch as his movements become relaxed, his speech slurring slightly, and his head starts to droop.

“Should we go to bed?” I ask.

He looks up at me. “I’m not letting you go, Liliana.”

“I know. I don’t want you to let me go.”

“Just so you know. I’ll die before I fuckin’ give you up.”

“Nobody is going to die,” I say firmly.

He looks sad and lost. “I’m afraid you don’t know your father very well. You might have to choose between him and me.”

I stand so suddenly the wooden chair crashes to the stone floor. “Don’t say that. My father will never do anything to hurt me. If he hurts you he hurts me. And I know you will never hurt him because if you hurt him you hurt me.”

“There is too much water under the bridge now for that. Too much hatred.”

“Forgive me,” I say. “Forgive my father, and most importantly forgive yourself. That is the only way any of us can move beyond this.”

“Until I took you as my pawn I could blame you. Pretend it was all your fault, but now that Band Aid has been ripped off. The cancer was me. It was my fault all along. I caused it all.” He pauses before crying out in anguish. “I can’t forgive myself.”

“Until when?” I ask passionately. “Until when will you think this way? Until something happens to me, or to my father? Or until something happens to you, and you look back to regret why you were so unmerciful to yourself you never allowed yourself to be happy. That you never set yourself free. How would your parents feel watching all of this?”

His eyes darken, and his face becomes chillingly cold suddenly. “Don’t mention them.”

“I’m sorry,” I say instantly. The last thing I want to do is push him away.

He looks exhausted and pale suddenly. “No, you have nothing to be sorry for. It’s not your fault. Let’s go to bed, Princess.”

We stagger upstairs. There is a full moon outside and with the snow on the ground his bedroom is full of blue light. He lands on the bed on his back and I begin to undress him.

“Are we going to fuck?” he asks.

I chuckle. “Somehow I don’t think so.”

“Why? Don’t you want to?”

“Um … you might have trouble getting it up.”

“I never have trouble getting it up, Princess. Not where you’re concerned,” he replies, but his eyelids are already closing. Gently, I take off his shirt and his trousers. It is while I am undressing him that I see the tattoo I had seen it before. A knife with an intricately carved handle, but what I had not noticed previously were the letters on the blade.

Liliana

I run my fingers along my name. His skin is silky and warm. I feel tears blur my eyes. Oh, how he has suffered because of one careless action. All sensations of sleep have disappeared so I pull a chair by his side and I sit by him. I have never watched someone have a more troubled sleep. His movements thoroughly restless as though no position seems good enough, while his breathing pattern is continuously irregular, as though he is either fighting dragons in his dreams, or he’s just tormented. His face is constantly frowning and sometimes he makes little sounds. Once he calls my name.

My heart twists as I watch him, and although I do not want to wake him up, I cannot just sit by and watch any longer. Rising from the chair I get into bed with him. I spoon him with my front to his back and placing my hand on his heart I rest my cheek in the crook of his neck.

That is when I hear him take his first deep breath. As the minutes pass he falls in a deeper slumber. A proper one where he stops moving restlessly, his breathing becomes even, and he turns only once to pull me into his arms. It makes me certain that he can sense my presence.

He wraps his hand around me and like a child I lay my head against his chest. We fall asleep that way. I’m awakened a few hours later, by Brand untangling himself from me. The moment I open my eyes I see him staring around, disoriented, wondering at his position.

“What is it?” I whisper.

“I don’t know. I think something is w

rong.”

“It’s okay. It’s nothing,” I say, just as the sound of something crashing to the floor downstairs tears through the still air.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Liliana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL0bxewHbjo

Now we are Free

I freeze, but Brand jackknives out of bed and starts putting on his pants. His eyes are astonishingly shiny and alert. His cellphone starts to vibrate. He immediately picks it up. In the deathly silence I can hear Mark’s voice come through, rapid and tense.

“We are being attacked. Eden is here.”

“How many down?” Brand barks as he takes out his gun.

“I don’t know, but Khalid is out,” Mark says.

“I’m coming,” he says and kills the line. He turns to me. I’m so shocked I have not moved an inch. “Stay here. Whatever happens don’t come out.”

I sit up. “No, wait, Brand.”

“I mean it, Liliana. This is between me and your dad. Don’t come out.” He starts walking away and all I can do is just stare at his naked back. At the door he turns back and looks at me. Then he says the words that electrify me. “I love you, Liliana. I always have and I always will. If I never see you again, remember that.”

Then he is gone. I jump out of bed and run to the door just as he locks it from outside. Instead of trying to bang it I run to the window. There is a tree branch close to the window and it looks like it could handle my weight. Without thinking of the consequences or looking down at the ground below I get on the branch. I exhale and my breath becomes clouds of mist in front of me.

It is freezing cold, but like a little monkey I quickly climb down the tree and get to the front door. It is wide open. As I get to the hallway I see my Dad. He has a gun pointed at Brand and Brand has his gun trained on Dad.