Page 22

Taylor

The wind whips through my hair as Ari and I stand at the wooden gate, staring down at the snow filled canyon.

Waking up this morning, I was already feeling the weight of the day.

Especially after that damn nightmare.

The only positive was Ari being there to wake me up, but that peace only lasted for a second before I was brought back to the present.

Today is the day my life changed forever. One I should be grateful for but somehow find myself dreading.

To me, today is the day that I found a piece of solid ground after years of living on tiny pebbles, jumping from one unstable rock to the next. It's the day that reminds me of everything that came before that and how many I failed and continue to fail every time we get there a second too late.

Typically, the only person I allow to come within five feet of me is Reagan, but she’s not here. And I suspect that’s what has turned this typical depressing day into one so dark that even though the sun is shining bright, a dark cloud looms over me.

I wanted nothing more than to rot in bed all day and try to forget the girl I once was, but it quickly failed.

Some twisted part of me believes Ari could somehow see that and is the reason we are here today. He knows what today is and knows that it is the one day of the year not to mess with me, but he’s never done more than offer an ear to talk or a shoulder to cry on.

Today he took a leap in what has turned out to be the right direction, because this is exactly what I needed.

Fresh air, quiet, and the sight of my favorite place where I come to forget or get a break from the chaos that is Braveheart.

Ari’s arm brushes against mine, and I tear my gaze away from the canyon.

“I know this is your day of silence, but any chance I could interrupt for just a moment?”

My brows furrow as curiosity and apprehension fill me. Despite my better judgement, because you truly never know what is going to come out of Aries Clark’s mouth, I nod.

Case in point, that this man wants me in ways I never imagined.

“Wait here.”

Ari runs back to his truck and pulls out two lawn chairs, a large plush blanket, and a backpack.

“Sorry. I know it's not some summer picnic at the park, but this is the best I could do when it snows over half the year here.”

Laughter escapes me and I watch as he sets the chairs up, making sure they are still in the perfect position to look out at the snowy canyon.

Setting the backpack and blanket in the other chair, he reaches his hand out to me and I allow him to guide me to sit and cover me with the cozy blanket.

“Warm?”

“Plenty.”

Ari takes a seat in the chair nestled close to mine and starts digging through the backpack.

“Where did you get that bag? Mary Poppins?”

“Haha. Very funny.” Sarcasm laces his voice as he pulls out a bag of Jolly Ranchers. “Here. I know it's not the healthiest thing, but I also know they’re your favorite.” His voice trails off and my mouth waters at the sight of the candy.

I dig into the bag when I stop and freeze. It’s full of only blue and red jolly ranchers.

My head snaps up to Ari and I feel tears welling in my eyes.

Reaching over, he slides my chair closer to his and lifting my legs to rest on his. Ari covers himself with the remainder of the blanket before resting his hands atop my shins. “You only like the blue and red, right?”

“Yeah. How did you know that?”

“I see you, Taylor. You are a creature of habit and love to work in the same places. Most of the time you are so locked in on your computer, a war could start behind you and you wouldn’t know. You think I haven’t seen one of the many times you buy three bags just to pick out two colors?”

I blame today for making me an emotional wreck over some goddamn candies.

“B-But why? You have more important shit to do than worry about me.”

Without missing a beat, he says, “Because you are impossible to miss. Strength radiates off you in waves, which would be hard for anyone to overlook.” He pauses, leaning closer to me, his voice almost a whisper. “Never tell me I have more important things to worry about. I meant it when I said I wanted you in my life, whether you're mine or just my friend. You are everything to me, Taylor. Never forget that.”

“Ace.” My chest deflates and I sink further into the chair. My mind goes a mile a minute, trying to decipher how I feel about this man who is doing a damn good job at convincing me he’s the man for me.

Ari relaxes in his seat and squeezes my leg. “Don’t. We are not here to talk about us. We are here to talk about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I have a secret that I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while, but it never was the right time.”

My stomach drops. What the hell could he be keeping from me?

“Stop. I see that look. It’s nothing bad.”

I throw a piece of candy at him. “You're an ass. Don’t you know not to say that shit? Especially to a woman! It's in our DNA to overthink literally everything.”

Ari chuckles and runs his hand up and down my leg absentmindedly. “Sorry Hellhound. Won’t happen again. Can I tell you now, or do you need a moment to overthink some more?”

My eyes roll and I throw another candy. “Ass.”

“Whatever you say.” Pausing to adjust his beanie, he says, “I want to preface that this isn’t a secret. More like a fib. So you may get pissed, but I need you to know, I promise I did it for the right reasons.”

“Okay?”

“Do you remember the first anniversary you came to Braveheart? You kept to yourself, but the next day you saw I had a black eye and made fun of me?”

“Yeah?”

I remember that day clearly. I had spent the entire day in my room and had a horrible nightmare that night. I was shaken up, to say the least. The next day, I went in search of familiar faces to find my way back to reality and Ari was the first person I saw.

It was a nasty black eye. Boone had to have had some power behind that punch and I remember it making me smile. The never ending antics of the compound brought me out of that dark headspace I was fighting so hard to stay out of.

“Boone didn’t hit me. You did.”

Sitting up straight, I stop unwrapping the candy. “What did you just say?”

“I was coming to check on you that night when I heard screaming. I ran into your room thinking someone was attacking you and found you trapped in a violent nightmare. You were thrashing, and I had to calm you down before you hurt yourself. One of your fists caught my eye and your eyes flew open.

“I expected you to say something or remember, but you didn’t. And I didn’t want you to be embarrassed or ashamed, so I played it off as Boone got me during a sparring match.”

My mind races and I wrack my brain, trying to remember Ari being in my room, but I come up blank.

“Why did you lie? Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because you weren’t in a great place, Taylor. You were pretending to be okay, but I saw through it. Plus, you had mentioned a few times in passing that you didn’t feel like you belonged here, so I didn’t want to give your mind fuel to that blazing inferno. So I lied and I don’t regret it.”

We sit in silence as I process what may seem like a small encounter that to any other person but to me, wasn’t. Ari brought me out of a devastating nightmare. I hit him, and then he lied to protect my fragile mind.

I want to be mad, but I’m feeling the exact opposite. I’m feeling…loved, cared for, understood.

“Well, judging by how nasty your eye looked, I guess I can say my right hook packs a punch.”

Laughter fills the space between us.

“It certainly does. That motherfucker hurt for days.”

A gust of wind whips between us as we both look out at the canyon.

“Butterfly. What happened in that nightmare that causes you to have it every year?”

Dammit. I should have seen that one coming.

I’ve done a great job of avoiding talking about my past to nearly everyone except Reagan and Tucker. Don’t get me wrong, I trust Aries with my life, but he saw enough to put two and two together to understand what was happening wasn’t a first time occurrence.

The fear of placing a burden or any sort of mental strife on the man that just went through hell races through me.

I want to tell him it's nothing and just take in the beauty of the canyon, but a large part of me is saying this could be a chance to see if mine and Aries relationship can expand beyond a friendship.

I will know instantly if the tales of my past are going to change the way he looks at me. Much like Ari, I hate pity. I hate people looking at me like I’m this broken toy who should be treated with kid gloves. I’m not that girl.

I’m Taylor freaking Morgan. I am a survivor. I could have sat back and let my grief and pain swallow me whole, but I didn’t. I turned that anger and fire into motivation and skill that helps thousands of others just like me.

“Every year, I don’t remember that day as the day I escaped. I remember it as the last day I wasn’t in control of my own body. That nightmare plays a damn highlight reel of all the times where I wanted to give up and just end it because anything was better than looking at some limp dick bastard that wasn’t able to get a woman, so he had to buy her instead.”

Aries visibly winces, but that doesn’t stop me. My words are flowing at rapid speed as if they have been stuck inside me for years, just waiting to come out, despite my years with Dr. Link.

A dry chuckle escapes me. “And you want to know the sad part? A woman is the person who sold me to the highest bidder. A fucking woman, my own damn mother, sold me in exchange for her own freedom.”

Aries’ face tenses. “She did what?”

I nod. “Yep. She was in hot water with a drug king and he said that she had to give him the fifty thousand dollars’ worth of drugs she stole from him or hand me over with the notion that she would never see me again.” A lump rises in my throat and I force it down. I will not cry. “She didn’t hesitate. Before the words were even out of his mouth, she was pushing me into his arms and slamming the door in my face. My own flesh and blood sold me for the sake of getting high and didn’t even think twice about it.”

Aries' face is almost unreadable, but I can see that he is more than angry. “Where is she?”

“She overdosed less than a year later. I didn’t find out until I was granted access to a computer after trying to hack some old billionaire's phone. He was going to kill me, but his grandson said he could keep me around to grow their fortune. I was immediately put to work and when they weren't paying attention, I hacked into the police station records from my hometown and found out.

“She sent me on a path straight to hell filled with disgusting, vile men who used me in ways I will never forget, only to die less than a year later. I was nothing to her. Then in the blink of an eye I was nothing but a pawn to be moved from person to person to use however they saw fit, just to be discarded and sit in silence as I waited for the next player to take their place.”

Suddenly, I’m hit with a wave of sadness and I fight everything in me to not completely break down. “Those nightmares are filled with faces that I couldn’t save. Those beautiful girls who, most of the time, were in the wrong place at the wrong time and failed by a system that doesn’t bother to look deep enough into our disappearances.”

“They chalk it up to—” I pause and mimic quotations with my hands, “ We are women. We allow our emotions to guide us, so we must have just run away because someone upset us .”

“Fuck that,” Aries says, taking the words right out of my mouth.

“Exactly. Fuck them. That's why I love this job so much. I get to show those dumbasses that they didn’t just run away because they were sad. They were taken by a problem that is too prevalent in society. It sits right beneath our nose, yet no one has the will or brains to catch these assholes. The system fails women daily and although this job shows me, more often than not, I have failed yet another one. I am grateful I get the opportunity to aid in helping the ones I can.

“It’s just today…today I can’t file what those men did to me, and so many others away, and lock away the memories. Guilt eats me alive to the point where I can barely stand, because why did I get out? Why wasn’t I left behind to help others escape? Why do I get a safe ending when so many don't?”

I don’t even realize that tears coat my vision until Ari is kneeling before me, his cold hands swiping away the tears raining down my face.

“Hellhound. Look at me.”

Shaking his hands away, I continue, “No. For years, any time I closed my eyes, I remembered their hands on me, the degrading, horrific things that they screamed at me when I couldn’t get them off. One time, I didn't get one of them off quick enough before his wife came home, so he punished me by making me watch as he executed one of my best friends. We were seventeen at the time and I had to watch my best friend fucking die. And that wasn’t the first time it happened. I lost so many people. I lost so much of myself. And now I’m sitting here, helping so many, yet every day I feel this immense guilt that I made it out.”

Shutters racket my body and my chest tightens. My lungs seize and I desperately search Aries’ eyes for help.

In a flash, Aries is standing, lifting me into his arms, and sitting back down with me in his lap. He tucks the blanket tightly around me as my cries continue and he whispers in my ear, “You are okay. You are safe. You are a hero. You made it out because you are a survivor and a warrior. Do not feel guilty for getting out alive. Feel proud that you made a life for yourself that is filled with helping others.”

He repeats the words that I desperately need to hear over and over until my breathing returns to normal.

His large hand runs a pattern up and down my back, and I can’t help but sink into his warm, comforting touch.

No one says a single word, both of us looking out at the canyon.

Never in my life did I think I would share this side of myself with this man, but now that I’m here, I can’t help but feel a sense of relief. Like I was holding back a piece of myself and now that it’s finally out there for him to see, he finally knows the real Taylor. The one that isn’t just the sarcastic, won’t take no for an answer hacker who loves to give him a run for his money.

Sitting up, I turn to face Ari, searching his face for a hint of disgust or anything that could reveal something has changed between us now that he knows just how rocky my past was.

A small smile spreads across his face and he whispers, “You’re beautiful and I am so lucky to have you in my life. Whatever path you lead us on, please know that I am so happy to have you in my life.”

The stark realization that I feel myself falling for this man every time he simply speaks hits me in the face and I am forced to find the words to say that have been a major reason I have been fighting this battle so hard.

“Ace. There is a reason I have been hesitant. And it’s not just because I am trying to figure out my own feelings. But in no universe is there a way I can let myself fall for you and be with you, without you knowing the truth.”

Aries’ hand on my back pauses and he stares at me inquisitively. “Nothing you say will change the way I feel about you. I would know if you were hiding something big, like being a damn murderer or psychopath. It’s kind of hard to hide twenty-four seven when you live with someone. So I promise you, whatever it is, nothing will change.”

Damn, I wish I could believe him, but I can’t.

Straightening in his lap, I try to climb off, but he stops me, wrapping his arms tighter around my waist. His dark chocolate eyes stare at me, daring me to escape again, knowing full well he will stop me once more.

Giving in, I glance up at the sky for a brief moment before returning my gaze to him.

I can do this.

“I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to be blunt. And please know, I completely understand if it changes how you feel. Especially after everything with Rayne. Trust me, I understand. Okay?”

Aries' face goes blank at the mention of his daughter’s name. “Taylor. Tell me now.”

Taking a deep breath, I allow the cool air to fill my lungs. “When you are sold, you are often placed on a hormone suppressant to keep you from getting pregnant. They couldn’t care less about any sexually transmitted diseases, but pregnancy? If you wound up pregnant, you were dead. So, I was placed on a high dose of medication that was often laced with sedatives, so I wasn’t so combative. I was forced to be on various different drugs for years and my body paid the price.”

I pause and take another deep breath, mentally preparing myself for everything to change in an instant. “When I got to the compound, Doc immediately brought in an OBGYN because of my situation. She ran various tests and after checking multiple times, she found that due to the strength and unconventional hormone suppressants I was on, my body has a hard time recreating them. Meaning that getting pregnant will be nearly impossible.” My voice cracks and I watch as Aries face drops.

“I couldn’t let us go any further until you knew. We are both adults and frankly, I have no interest in getting into a relationship that doesn't have the chance at lasting, and I know you feel the same. So with everything that happened with Rayne, I couldn’t live with myself if we got together and I put you through more loss or heartbreak. Someone like you deserves to be a dad and with the uncertainty of my ability to give you a tiny version of you, I cannot sit here and allow us to go any further knowing there is a large piece of me that could make you not want me.”

The emotion clogging my throat causes me to stop and Aries face remains blank.

“I-I’m sorry. I know I’m broken and a mess. After everything you’ve been through and having the strength to tell me how you feel, now you have to face this. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t know that our paths would cross like this, so I never thought to mention it. I thought it was going to be the burden I’d have to bear alone for the rest of my life and something I try to forget as often as possible. It kills me knowing I may never be able to have a child, but now sitting here in front of you, someone any person would love to have kids with, and I have to tell you, I can’t. And now I’m—”

“Stop,” Aries commands, interrupting me.

His hand moves to cup the side of my face with a gentle yet firm grip, holding me in place. “Listen to me when I say this. If you are broken, that means I’m broken, too. Just because someone hurts us beyond repair doesn't mean we cannot live a happy life while slowly piecing ourselves back together. Yes, I lost my daughter. It hurts like hell every day, but I’m choosing to live in her memory and not let my life remain static. I want to live every day to the fullest as if she were right alongside me, so that when I see her again, I have stories to tell her that will last a lifetime. But you have one thing very wrong. Do you know what that is?”

“No?”

“There isn’t a thing on this earth that would make me not want you. I want you just how you are. Would I love to have miniature Taylors running around? Yes. But if it’s not in the cards for us, it’s okay. I had my little girl and although I wish she was here every fucking day, having another child scares me. I lost one and truthfully, losing another may break me. So, if you find it in your heart to allow space for me, know that my feelings are not dependent on something you cannot control. If I have you by my side and my little angel’s memory tucked in my heart for the rest of eternity, I will be happy.”

I’m speechless. Completely and utterly speechless.

Once again, Ari has somehow taken my worries and absolved the fear in a split second. How this man speaks so eloquently, I will never understand.

Before I realize what I’m doing, I lean in and brush my cold lips against his. Ari doesn’t hesitate. He presses his lips fully against mine and I sink into his chest.

I need this. Just for a moment. Just to forget and allow myself to see what life would be like if I wasn’t so scared.

Our lips move in sync and just as I find myself wanting more, Ari pulls away, his cheeks flush.

“Careful Butterfly. You kiss me like that again and I will think I finally have my answer.”

My head drops to his shoulders in defeat. “Finally? It hasn’t been that long.”

Ari guides me back to meet his gaze, “When you have waited for what feels like an eternity for the person who feels like the glue to your broken soul to finally notice you and she gives you a tiny drop of attention, everyday feels like forever.”

Once again, I am rendered completely speechless. I am not able to formulate a thought after that mind-altering kiss, but I know one thing for certain.

Aries: 3

Taylor: Destroyed, but can see the light at the end of this very unexpected tunnel.