Page 59 of Save Us
I can no longer hold back and begin thrusting harder and faster, needing to chase this high with her. So much so, I reach down to start circling a place I know will undo her just as quickly. She pants fast and shallow before exploding in a beautiful gasp over her orgasm, not much longer before I fall over my own precipice. I haven’t come this quickly since I first made love to her, when we were seventeen and just finding one another. Neither of us seems to care though; there’s no urgency and no barriers between us anymore.
“You ok?” I ask her as if it’s our first time again.
“So ok, I could cry,” she smiles. “I never thought this day would come for us, Xander, when I could tell you how much I love you again.”
“I was afraid you might have changed your mind,” I admit with a healthy blush, “that you no longer felt the same way as I do for you after all these years.”
“Still a silly boy at heart, aren’t you, Fenton?” she giggles, and I laugh with her before giving into kissing her as much as I want to, because finally, we can.
Beth
Xander’s room is truly beautiful, even in the dark with the wide windows letting the moonlight fall right inside, touching everything with a silvery glow. There’s no wallpaper, no eerie patterns sucking me in, and no Oliver. I don’t even know what the exact time was after we made love, ate, made love again, but now we’re just lying in a tangle of limbs with the cotton sheet pooling around us like a nest. We’ve been more than content just staring at one another for a while now, with only his finger touching me as he traces wavy lines up and down my arm. Neither one of us is ready to fall asleep for fear of waking up and realizing this was just a good dream, like the ones we’re both so used to. His finger begins to circle my puckered nipple and I close my eyes to indulge in the tingly sensation it induces. I can’t see him properly, but somehow, I know he’s smiling down at me.
His finger travels south until he hits the scar where they had had to remove my spleen, prompting my eyes to burst open. I see him now leaning up over where it lies, staring at the raised skin that still looks a little angry. I can just about notice his frown getting deeper and deeper the more he explores it with his eyes and fingertips. We’ve been so consumed by one another, the reality of my past has been put to one side, but I have a feeling that that conversation is now about to happen. I don’t want him to see me as fragile, as the victim I’ve been for so many years, but I guess he deserves to know it all; to see my scars and try to work through them with me.
“Tell me,” he whispers, sounding both firmly yet softly at the same time. It’s a strange combination that has me reaching for his face and kissing his lips one more time.
“Before we dive into that pool of misery, Xander, I need you to promise me that you won’t pity me or feel sad for me. That part of my life is over now. I am damaged, Xander, but this, here with you, this has already set me well on my road to recovery. I don’t want you to treat me any differently, ok?” He doesn’t answer for a while, just looks to the side with a clenched jaw that I can feel tightening underneath my fingertips. “Xander, please?”
Again, his silence tells me he’s battling with his anger, but eventually, he relents and releases the tense muscles in his jaw before finally nodding. I sigh, long and deep before telling him to turn on the light. Meanwhile, I get up to remove the bedsheet and stand before him. The front of my body is mostly free of scars, bar those from where I had had Rosie and the removal of my spleen. But when I turn around and show him my back, I brace myself. Oliver was always selective about where he hurt me, not wanting to face it when he was being intimate with me. But my back seemed to be fair game to him, especially because it meant he couldn’t see the pain in my eyes when he struck me.
I emit a surprised gasp when I suddenly feel Xander’s soft fingers tracing over every mark on my back, as if taking his time to become acquainted with them. It feels like a painfully long time before he stops and presses his head to the back of mine while letting out a long, deep breath. His hands reach for mine and holds them so tightly, it makes me tear up. I know how bad I look from where he’s standing, but it never gets any easier to have others confirm the horror of my marred body.
“They removed my spleen the last time he beat me,” I tell him in a rush of tears before he can say anything. “I don’t recall it because I was knocked out. Apparently, I suffered from internal bleeding.”
“Beth,” he whispers with a crack in his voice, “was that the last time he hurt you?”
I close my eyes and shake my head sadly, for I cannot bring myself to tell him about the worst thing Oliver did to me. Though it might be true that sex with Oliver never felt wholly consensual, he had never held me down and used it as a weapon to hurt me. But the attack in New York, before we had left for California, was honestly the worst kind of abuse that he ever committed. The pain, the humiliation, the complete lack of respect in that one insidious act was the last straw and the reason why I refused to cry for him when he lay dying in my arms. When I open my eyes again, his jaw is clenched in so much fury, I instantly want to soften it.
“What happened at the hospital after Rosie was born?” he asks before leading us back to lie on the bed where I curl up as small as possible inside of his arms.
“I woke up to find him in my room,” I begin to explain, “he offered me a choice; either I take Rosie with me, and she be brought up as his child, in the Mayfield way, or I leave her with you and become a ghost to everyone I know and love. Xander, it was never a choice as far as I was concerned. I know how hard it must have been for you, and I hated leaving you to think I was gone, but it was the only way to protect you both. I knew you wouldn’t stop until you found me again, so I died to save you both. It was, without a doubt, the hardest and most painful day of my life.” I pause to try and push back the hard lump in my throat while his body tenses up beneath mine. “At least I got to hold her before he ripped her from my arms.”
“Shit, Beth, that must have been…I don’t even know how to describe it!” he sighs and pulls even tighter against my naked, scarred body.
“I did die that day, Xander,” I murmur, trying not to cry but no longer able to stop the tears from falling. “I needed you both to be safe and the only way I could make sure that happened was to give myself up to him.”
“Don’t cry, baby,” he whispers, “I’m not going to let anyone take you or Rosie away again. I love you so fucking much!”
“I know,” I tell him as I look out at the moon through the open window. “We’ve all suffered, even Kai. I need to know where he is, Xander.”
“The last time I saw him was at your memorial. He looked…different.”
“He is,” I mutter sadly.
“You’ve seen him?” He pushes me back to study my face, with his looking deeply shocked over my admission. I guess we have a lot of secrets to catch up on.
“We found one another a few months ago,” I answer sadly, because I am so worried about what’s happened to him. Is he still running? Has he been arrested? Is he even still alive? “He was the one who shot Oliver. He was the one who saved me.”
Chapter 24
Xander
Beth’s admission about Kai is still whirling around inside my head, trying to come to terms with the fact that the strange kid from school is the one responsible for killing Lawrence and freeing my girl. I had naturally assumed it was Jonah Fox who had rescued her by hiring some mindless thug. Of course, I knew he wouldn’t have been personally responsible, I had guessed as much when he insisted on me writing a story that emphasized his presence at his cousin’s funeral in New York. It more than gave him the perfect alibi. But knowing that Kai was also mixed up in all the Mayfield shit as well, leading him to lose everything, including someone he had fallen for, has me feeling awful for him. I make up my mind, here and now, over a cup of tea for Beth, that I’m going to find him for her, as well as for him.
Beth breaks my thoughts when she eventually comes down to the kitchen wearing the same dress she had on yesterday. I only now come to the realization that she doesn’t actually own anything. She literally has nothing other than her freedom, which although priceless, means I have to take her shopping ASAP. After that, we’ll be going to my parents’ house to go and pick up our daughter.
“Morning,” she says shyly, which kills me, but I guess it’s to be expected after everything. We’re going to have these little awkward moments until we get used to each other all over again. It’s weird though, for it doesn’t stop me loving her, especially not after last night. I know the feisty, beautiful, strong girl is in there somewhere, I just need to convince her of that fact.