Never Let You Go (a modern fairytale) (13 page)

“Wickedness!” bellowed the Man, the two tin oatmeal bowls crashing to the floor and scuttling across the room.

Holden’s eyes burned with fear, but he opened them to see the Man reach down and grab Griselda’s braid, yanking her head up. “Wicked, evil gal sleepin’ in here with Seth!”

“No, sir,” she sobbed. “No. You f-forgot to lock me in l-last night. I slept by the door, sir. Didn’t even look his way. Not once.”

Still holding her hair, the Man drew his hand back, and his palm cracked across her face, making her head whip to the side. She grunted, a throaty sound that ended in a higher-pitched whimper. As he drew his hand back again, Holden threw back the blanket of his bed and jumped up.

“D-d-don’t hit her again!”

The Man’s hand stilled, and Holden’s eyes shot to Griselda’s. The expression on her face, which was bright red on the side that had just taken the smack, begged him not to get involved.

“Ya tellin’ me what to do, half-wit?” asked the Man, turning to Holden and loosening his grip on Griselda’s hair.

“I’m t-t-telling you d-d-don’t hit her again!”

The Man’s eyes blazed with fury as he released Griselda’s hair, pushing her head roughly against the panel wall as he stalked toward Holden. His hands fell to his belt buckle. He unbuckled it and pulled it off with one yank, the whipping noise making bile rise in Holden’s throat.

“Ya want her beatin’, little brother?”

“Y-y-yes, s-s-sir,” said Holden, staring at Griselda, who mouthed the word “no,” shaking her head.

He’d asked her to stay. She’d tried to go back to her room, and he’d asked her to stay because he wanted to feel her body next to his. No matter what the Man said, Holden couldn’t bring himself to believe that touching Gris, that loving her, was evil. But it was his fault she’d been caught.

Yes, he wanted her beating.

He pulled off his T-shirt and threw it on the bed, facing away from Griselda as the terrible blows started landing.

It took Holden a while to fall asleep. He fretted for a bit, mumbling incoherent words with full-body flinching and an almost painful grip on her hand.

After a good twenty minutes, Griselda finally heard his breathing shift to a deep, even rhythm. His hand, still tightly bound with hers, finally relaxed. He was sleeping peacefully.

You still have nightmares
, she thought.
Just like me
.

She sighed, wondering what episode of his life had just tormented him before he found peace. Her heart hurt to imagine there had been more misery in his life than that which they had endured in the cellar together. But chances were, there had been. Chances were, his life had been a living hell.

She was comfortable enough where she was, kneeling on the floor beside him with her head touching his. It was a position she remembered well from their childhood nights in Caleb Foster’s cellar, and she thought ruefully that Holden’s smelly, nubby couch wasn’t much of an improvement from the rank mattress that had been his cellar bed.

It was very quiet in his apartment. She could hear the occasional car horn or muted voice from the sidewalk below, but it was unexpectedly peaceful. The late afternoon sun softened the drab room with a golden light as Griselda looked around at Holden’s home.

The walls were probably once white but were now badly scuffed and slightly discolored. The cigarette smoke she smelled was old and stale, so she assumed the previous renter had smoked and Holden just hadn’t bothered repainting. The carpet, like the sofa, was brown and nubby, and showed several cigarette burns throughout.

In addition to the sofa where they rested, there was a dingy, scratched-up coffee table, a mustard-gold velour easy chair that had seen better days, and below the windows she’d glimpsed from Quint’s car, a TV on a wooden crate with a gaming console attached. The small, simple kitchen was beyond the front door, and to the right was a small kitchen table with two chairs. On the table, which had a neat stack of mail and a couple of books, there was also a vase that held a single daisy.

Oh
, she thought, unexpected jealousy slicing through her like a blade.
Of course.

She hadn’t actually given it any thought until that moment. But of course a twenty-three-year-old man as built and fierce as Holden would have a girlfriend. It’s not like Griselda had a right to expect or assume that he’d lived his life as a monk since that day on the Shenandoah. It’s not like she had lived like a nun either, she sniffed, thinking briefly of Jonah.

What irritated her, and made no sense at all, was how much it hurt. And not just that he had a girlfriend, but that he had a whole life that didn’t include her. He lived in West Virginia, he worked in a glass factory, he had friends she’d never heard of, he fought other men for sport and profit. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know him at all anymore.
That
part of him was—as much as she hated to admit it—someone named Seth.

And yet.

He wore her face and their initials on his arm, dyed into his flesh so she would be a permanent and constant part of him. Though he’d obviously learned how to control his stammer, it still got away from him when he felt overwhelmed or emotional. Forbidden names like Ruth and Cutter still caught on his tongue, and he still breathed deep the instant she told him to. As she’d bandaged him, his eyes still searched hers for truth and comfort, just as they had so long ago, when he was only Holden.

***

“. . . hope wasn’t lost, however! The dark knight arrived on his jet-black steed—”

“Steed?”

“Horse,” she said impatiently, losing the rhythm of the story every time he interrupted. She was annoyed with Holden today. He’d taken her beating yesterday morning, and he shouldn’t have. The Man had already gotten her once in the face, and he generally didn’t hit her more than four or five times. When Holden got involved, it made the made the man so much madder that he got fifteen or twenty lashes on the back. Holden didn’t seem to understand—if she lost him, her life was over. He had to stop talking back.

“—and he battled the fearsome witch with his sword, which was steel, forged in the fiery canyons of—”

“What’s ‘f-forged’?”

“Made. Crafted.”

“Oh, right. G-go on.”

“. . . in the fiery canyons of Hades. He chopped off her head with one flaming blow, and it rolled across the room to land at the feet of the princess.”

“Eyes open?”

“Eyes are always open when someone’s dead,” she said, shivering as she remembered all the times she was sure Joellyn was dead, staring straight ahead and barely breathing.

“G-gross,” he said. “Then w-what?”

“Then nothing,” she said, flipping over on the cot so her back was to him. “You interrupted me so much, I can’t barely keep my place.”

“D-d-does the kn-knight save the princess?” asked Holden from behind her.

“Of course. It wouldn’t be a fairy tale if she was locked in the witch’s hut forever.”

“Well, then, c-c-can you just finish it?” he begged her, placing his hand tentatively against her back. “Just so I c-can see it in my head? I p-promise I won’t interrupt no more.”

Griselda pursed her lips, looking straight ahead at the darkness of the cellar. Though she couldn’t see it, she knew there was a tool bench across from the cot where they were lying. It had hammers and saws, and sometimes she had a terrible idea: that when the Man came downstairs with their breakfast or dinner, she would slam one of those hammers into his head. Except, if she didn’t kill him, he’d kill
them.

She flipped over onto her back, folding her hands on her chest and staring at the ceiling. Holden shifted slightly, and she could feel his eyes on her, needing the comfort that her silly stories provided. And she needed him too. Without him, she’d have no one to care for, no one to love, no one with whom to endure the long, dark, lonesome hours.

“Fine.” She drew in a deep breath, and her chest expanded just enough for her side to brush into his, which made her tummy flutter. “Holden?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t talk back to him.” She felt the hot tears gather in her eyes. Pain hurt. Fear hurt. But she could bear pain and fear. The thought of losing Holden was unbearable. “Please. Just . . . let me take it sometimes.”

Holden took a breath, then swallowed. “I hate him. I hate it when he yells those things at you. C-c-can’t stand it w-w-when he beats you.”

“I don’t care if he yells at me. I don’t even care if he beats me. I can’t stand it when you make him mad and he starts in on you but worse. It scares me, Holden.”

Holden was silent for a long time before asking, “He ever t-t-touch you funny, Gris?”

She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “No. You?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said quickly, a shiver breaking out across her body.

Though the Man didn’t seem to have a special interest in either her or Holden like that—like Mrs. Fillman had seemed to have in Billy—that he might develop such an interest was the stuff of Griselda’s worst and darkest nightmares.

“We have to escape, Holden,” she murmured. “We have to try and escape.”

“F-f-finish the story.”

“I can’t.”

“You c-can,” he said. “Just b-breathe.”

She took a deep breath, trying to remember where she’d been in the story, trying to let go of the terrifying thoughts of Holden leaving her and the Man wanting her.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s see . . . Well, the witch’s head landed at the feet of the princess, but she didn’t scream because she didn’t notice it. She was staring at the knight, dressed in black, standing just inside the door of the cottage. He sheathed his sword and crossed to the fair maiden, dropping to his knees as he broke the chains that bound her. Then he carried her from the witch’s lair. Though they hadn’t seen each other for one hundred and one years, they were as much in love as ever. The knight kissed the princess in the sunshine, and they lived happily ever after.”

“The end,” whispered Holden, as he always did.

“The end,” said Griselda, her heart still heavy and frightened as she burrowed her forehead into the sweetness of his neck. She couldn’t fall asleep, but she closed her eyes, the words “We have to escape” playing in an endless loop in her head.

***

When Griselda opened her eyes, it was dusk in the small apartment, and she knew immediately where she was. What she didn’t know was who was sitting a couple feet away from her in the mustard easy chair, staring her down with narrowed eyes.

“Ain’t this cozy,” the woman observed.

Griselda blinked, starting, trying to pull her hand away from Holden, but it was still held securely at the base of his throat, and she didn’t want to wake him by wrenching it away.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “Are you G?”

“G?” asked Griselda, reviewing the situation with a still-sleepy head. She was in Holden’s apartment. She’d tended to his wounds and fallen asleep. So who was this woman sitting a few feet away from her, shooting her daggers?

She glanced at the vase on the kitchen table.

Aha.

The daisy.

“G. For ‘Gris,’” the woman said, spitting out her name like it was a bad word. She shook her head, her ponytail swinging from side to side and releasing a strong smell of fast food grease. “He calls out yer name in his sleep.”

“Oh.” Griselda dropped her eyes for a moment, hating it that this woman knew what Holden said in his sleep.

“I know yer her. I recognize you from the ink, so don’t deny it. ’Sides, he never holds on to me like that.”

“Yes. I’m Gris.”

“Of course you are.”

“And you’re . . .?”

“His
girlfriend
. Gemma.”

His girlfriend. Griselda had already known, but it pinched something inside to hear it confirmed.

“Another G,” Griselda said softly.

“Yeah, but not the one on his arm.” Gemma crossed her own arms over her chest. “So who are you to Seth?”

“Someone from a long time ago,” said Griselda.

“Like a sister?” Gemma asked, tentatively.

“Foster sister.”

Griselda glanced at their tightly bound hands before looking back up at Gemma, her silence giving Gemma the rest of an answer she didn’t like.

“You stayin’?” demanded Gemma. “Now that yer here?”

Griselda shrugged. She had no idea how to answer that question, but for the second time since she’d arrived at Holden’s apartment, she thought of Jonah. She briefly, and without much emotion, wondered if he’d left for Maryland, or if he was still here, wondering where she was, worried about her. Without her purse or her phone, there was no way to know. She’d simply . . .  disappeared.

“Hey!” said Gemma, snapping her fingers twice in Griselda’s direction to get her attention. “I asked you a question.”

Griselda didn’t particularly like being snapped at. Her voice was low and unfriendly when she replied, “I don’t know.”

“I been with him six months.”

Griselda stared at her, unmoving, uncaring.

“I spent all the morning with him at the hospital until I had to go to work. I went straight back there after work. ‘He’s left,’ they told me. ‘Checked himself out,’ they told me. I come here, let myself in, and here you are. Holding his hand. Asleep.” She took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes. “I should slap yer face off yer neck.”

“I wouldn’t,” Griselda said tightly.

Gemma flinched, taken aback by the sand in her rival’s tone. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen tonight anyway. He couldn’t get it up if he wanted to.”

Griselda stared at her, grateful for the cloak of semidarkness that concealed her blush. She was no innocent, but the last time she’d seen Holden, he was thirteen. Her mind hadn’t progressed to a point yet where it could process that he could—that
they
could—that their bodies could . . .

Gemma stood up, brushing her hands on the front of her tight jeans. “Tell Seth to call me when he wakes up. We got things to discuss.”

Without moving more than necessary, Griselda nodded curtly, watching Gemma head out the door, which clunked shut loudly. Holden gasped, his eyes flying open.

“Where’s Gris?”

“Here. I’m here. Shh. Shh, now,” she murmured, adjusting their fingers so he’d know she was real.

“I’m dreaming,” he panted, blinking his half-asleep eyes at her.

She shook her head and spoke tenderly. “No, Holden. It’s me. I’m here.”

“It’s you,” he gasped, his eyes widening before fluttering closed again. “Gris. Don’t go ’way.”

“I won’t,” she promised as he fell back into a deep sleep.

This time he hadn’t tightened his hand on hers, so after watching him sleep for a few quiet minutes, she slipped her fingers from his without waking him. She pulled a tired-looking, thin blanket off the back of the couch and covered him, relieved when he didn’t stir.