Never Let You Go (a modern fairytale) (28 page)

“I’ll go!”

Griselda’s voice made him start. She stood beside him, her hands clasped in front of her, her chest heaving and her eyes glistening.

“I’ll go,” she said again, softly, her voice broken. “I’ll leave.”

“N-no,” he said, reaching for her. She stepped away, holding her hands up to fend him off.

“Holden,” she said, her eyes so bereft he felt his heart dying just looking at her. “Me leaving is the right choice.”

“I won’t lose you. I c-can’t.”

“But you’d lose your baby?” She shook her head as tears ran down her cheeks. “No. I can’t let that happen.” She shifted her eyes to Gemma, stiffening her spine. “I’ll go tomorrow. As soon as I can arrange to be picked up.”

“Tonight,” said Gemma.

“Tomorrow!” roared Holden, the frustration and fury distorting his voice almost unrecognizably. “You s-selfish c-cunt!”

“Don’t you throw insults at me, Seth West. I still have that appointment . . .”

Holden clenched his jaw, rage making his body so taut he wished he had someone to punch, someone to hurt, someone to hurt
him
so bad that he’d pass out and wake up to find out that all of this was just a terrible nightmare.

“Enough, Gem,” said Clinton. He stood and stepped away from the picnic table to head inside. He looked at her over his shoulder before letting the screen door slam behind him. “I’m not drivin’ you anywhere.”

“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms over her full chest and turning to face Holden. “Tomorrow. Works better for me anyways, since I got to pack up my stuff. I’m movin’ in with you, Seth. I’m sick of stayin’ at my mama’s house, and I’m quittin’ my job at the DQ. You gotta take care of me now.”

“Don’t push me, Gem.”

She shrugged, giving Griselda one last victorious once-over before following Clinton into the house.

Holden grabbed Griselda’s hand, pulling her back down the porch steps and around the garage to his truck. Once seated, he turned to her, his heart thudding in misery, his life suddenly a new version of hell, where the woman he loved was walking away from him.

“You’re not going anywhere, Gris. W-we need to talk.”

Griselda had known more than her fair share of heartbreak. Unloved and abandoned by her mother, with a father she never knew, she’d been passed around from one foster family to another, barely able to make a connection before she was uprooted again. She’d been abducted, held captive, and beaten. She’d escaped from hell, only to be put back in the system again. As an adult she’d allowed her body to be used without affection and abused without protest. Heartbreak. She was no stranger. She’d known more than most.

But she’d never felt anything like the pain of knowing that she alone stood between Holden and his child. His child’s life depended on her walking away, and her decision was quick and final because she loved Holden, and even more, she already loved that baby, just as much as he did.

Better than anyone on earth, she knew his deep and lifelong desire to be a father.

And she knew that he would never forgive her if he ended up choosing her over his baby.

The words “I’ll go!” had been ripped from her broken heart with the very knife that clinic doctor would have used on Gemma’s belly. A life for a life. Griselda’s happiness in exchange for Holden’s child. It was a fair trade. Oh, but it hurt to the very depths of her soul.

They rode back to his apartment building in heavy silence, their footsteps echoing up the steps like a death march.

For the two weeks Griselda had been with Holden, her tears had flowed freely—a sign of love, of trust, of faith, of hope—but she had no tears now. Long ago she’d learned how to hold them back to avoid punishment. She’d learned how to eat them, the salt eroding her insides until she ached from the burn. Like now. Like right now.

Holden closed his apartment door behind them and pulled her into his arms. He held her for a long time, and she allowed herself to be held, though her arms hung limp at her sides.

Finally she whispered. “I need to use your phone.”

“For what?”

“I need to call Maya and ask her to come get me.”

“No!” he exclaimed. “P-please, no,” he gasped. “G-Gris . . .”

She felt a cool and inexplicable calm as she pulled away from him.

“Yes,” she said gently.

“You’re leaving me.”

“I am.”

“W-we can work it out.”

“Not right now, we can’t. Not when she could still hurt your baby.”

Griselda held out her hand, waiting for the phone.

Holden suddenly dropped to his knees and took her hand in his, his eyes red rimmed and glassy as he looked up at her with desperation and agony. “I’m
b-begging
you not to go.”

And all those tears she’d just eaten refused now to be held back and erupted in streams of anguish. “Holden, please. Please don’t make this harder for me.”

“D-don’t go,” he pleaded, staring up at her as a tear slid down his cheek. “She’ll come around.”

“You don’t know that.” She dropped to her knees in front of Holden and touched his cheek with her palm. “My being here will just make the situation worse. I think I should go, and you need to work this out with her, and you and I need to . . . to wait.”

“I waited ten fucking years for you!” he yelled, dropping his head to her shoulder. “P-please, Gris.”

“I can’t. I won’t come between you and your baby. If she hurts that baby to spite you, you’ll hate me, Holden. It’ll ruin us. We have a choice right now to do what’s right for that baby. I have to go. At least for now.”

He leaned up, reaching out to hold her face between his hands. “I’m in love with you. W-with everything I am, I love you. Th-there is no future for me without you. N-no family. N-no love. N-no life. I’ll be dead again. I’ll be d-dead without your heart b-beating in my chest, G-Gris. D-don’t d-do this. G-give her a d-day or t-t-two to c-calm d-down!”

“It’s not worth the risk,” she sobbed, her voice breaking. “Give me the phone. We’ll have a little time left together before I go.”

He dropped his hands from her face, pulled his phone out of his back pocket, and threw it on the floor between them. Standing up, he looked down at her with anger and sorrow. “I can’t s-s-stand it.”

“Then go out for a while,” she said. “Go for a walk. Come back when you’re ready.”

He nodded, turned on his heel, and walked back through the door, letting it slam shut behind him.

With trembling fingers, she picked up the phone and dialed Maya’s number.

“M-Maya?” she sobbed as soon as her friend said hello. “It’s . . . Zelda.”

***

Holden walked down Main Street in the late afternoon sun, past the row of businesses, to the little park beside City Hall. Sitting down on a bench, he hunched his shoulders, letting his neck drop forward in misery.

She was leaving. His Gris, his love, his girl was leaving. By tomorrow she’d be gone, and he’d be alone again.

Only this time he wouldn’t be alone with the memory of a dead girl. He’d be alone with the knowledge that the only woman—the only
person
—he’d ever loved was living and breathing two hours away. And he wasn’t allowed to be with her.

His thoughts circled in an endless loop, the horror of Gemma’s suggestion to terminate the pregnancy balanced against the heartbreak of Griselda offering to leave. The only words in which he found any comfort were these:
I have to go.
At least for now
.

For now.

Did she mean that she’d wait for him? That she’d eventually come back? When? When Gemma was past the point of aborting? After the baby came? How long would he have to wait to be with her again? Suddenly the answers to these questions were the only thing that mattered, the only thing that would get him through the anguish of their separation.

He stood up and headed back to his apartment at a clip, anxious to talk to her and come up with a plan. He vaulted up the stairs to the apartment and burst through the door, striding through the living room to the bedroom, where he found Gris separating her meager belongings from his. She was folding them neatly and placing them in one of the two empty grocery bags that Quint had showed up with two weeks ago.

“Hey,” she said, looking up at him with red eyes. “You’re back.”

“Yeah. What did you mean when you said ‘at least for now’?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘I have to go. At least for now.’ W-what did that mean?”

She sat down on the bed, the white bra with the little bow in her hands. “It means that I don’t want to make things worse by being here right now.”

“D-does it mean you’ll come back?” he whispered.

Her lips parted and she stared up at him, blinking. “Um . . .”

“If you promise to come back, I can bear it,” he said, squatting down before her. He took the bra from her hands and placed it on the bed, then took her hands in his. “I won’t sleep with her. I won’t touch her. I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m yours. I’ll . . . w-wait for you.”

Her lips trembled, and she smiled briefly, then pulled her bottom lip into her mouth for a second. His eyes couldn’t help but stare, new memories of their time together—the taste of her, the way her lips felt moving under his, the sounds she made when he kissed her—filling his brain with comfort and longing.

“Me too,” she said, with a quiver in her voice. “I’ll wait for you. If she ever comes around, I’ll tell you where to find me.”

“I’ll come for you. The second the baby’s safe.” She nodded, and he unlaced his fingers from hers to wipe a tear from her cheek. “It’s so fucking unfair.”

“We waited ten years,” she whispered, pressing her forehead to his. “We know how to do this.”

“We waited ten years,” he countered. “It k-kills me that we have to wait any more.”

“I’m alive,” she said, letting her nose nuzzle his. “I love you,” she murmured, closing her eyes. “I’ll wait for you.” She brushed his lips with hers. “Forever.”

“Forever, angel,” he said. He placed his hands on her hips and pulled her down onto his lap.

He kissed her fiercely, his hands sliding her tank top and bra over her breasts with urgency. She grappled with his T-shirt, and he yanked it off and threw it on the floor, banding his arms around her and crushing her naked chest to his. He felt the miserable finiteness of their final hours together, and his chest ached from knowing he’d have to watch her leave him tomorrow.

“When is Maya coming?”

“Two or three hours,” she said, as his lips kissed and sucked a path from her throat to her ear.

“N-no!” he protested, jerking from her, gazing into her eyes with a look that had to reflect the wild desperation he felt. “It’s t-too soon!”

“It’s better,” she said, settling her palms on his cheeks and pulling him back to her lips. “Gemma said tonight. And a quick good-bye is better.”

“I
w-w-wanted
tonight, Gris” he lamented. “I w-wanted forever.”

“We have
now
,” she said, leaning forward to capture his bottom lip with hers, her tears salty. “And I want to feel you inside me one last time.”

His eyes burned as he kissed her, tangling his tongue with hers, trying to memorize the feeling of her small body in his arms. He didn’t want to forget the way her softness molded into him, the way she smelled like soap and fresh air, the way her amber hair caught the light and looked like Rumpelstiltskin’s gold. His heart, swollen and throbbing with love for her, protested her departure, and he clutched her tighter against himself, his mouth ravishing hers to the point of punishment. Why would she agree to leave him? Why?

“Holden,” she gasped. “You’re hurting me. Be gentle.”

“F-fuck!”
he bellowed, releasing her and bowing his head.
“D-don’t g-go!”

With his forehead resting on her shoulder, he clenched his eyes shut, willing any higher power that never gave him one single fucking break in his miserable twenty-three years to intercede, to help, to save him from the stark meaninglessness of life without her.

He received only silence.

He felt her small hands skate up his back, over the lashes, gouges, and scars, until she buried her fingers in his hair, cradling him against her warm, soft body like the mother he’d lost so long ago.

“Holden,” she said, her lips near his ear. “Ask me if I’m whole or broken.”

He paused for a moment, remembering all the times he’d asked the same of her. In all the time they’d known each other, it was the first time she’d ever asked it of him.

“Griselda,” he said, leaning back to stare at her beloved face. “Are you whole or b-broken?”

“I’m whole,” she said with a small, certain smile, her fingers gentle against his scalp. “I’m whole because I found you again.”

As he inhaled sharply, her face blurred before him until he could barely make out her features. “I’m g-gonna be lost without you.”

“No.” How she did it, he wasn’t sure—though Gris had always been the strongest girl he’d ever known—but she somehow managed to smile. Shaking her head at him, her tears still fell as she reassured him, “No. No, you’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna to have a baby, Holden. You’re gonna be a dad. And you’re gonna be great at it.”

“I c-can’t say good-bye to you.”

“Then don’t. Just remember the McClellans in Georgetown. You come find me someday if you can. I’ll be waiting.”

“You’ll wait for me?”

“I will.”

“Never let me go, Gris.”

“I won’t.”

Reaching for her cheeks, he pulled her face to his, closing his eyes as his lips found hers. He put his hands under her arms, and he pulled her to her feet, his fingers unbuttoning her shorts as she reached for his and did the same.

Still kissing him, she lay back on his bed, pulling him with her to cover her naked body with his.

They made love slowly, savoring each other, desperate and tender at turns, declaring their love as their bodies climaxed together. And as the afternoon sun fell lower, Griselda lay curled in Holden’s arms in a communion of perfect sorrow and perfect understanding. In that moment, they rediscovered the synchronicity they’d known as children, when no words were possible. Only this time, no words were necessary.

When Holden’s phone buzzed with the text from Maya saying she was downstairs, he kissed Griselda’s head for a long time, his lips lingering on the same crown he’d stroked from his perch on the filthy, striped cot so many years ago.

She rose silently from his bed and dressed with her back to him. When she turned, she stared at him for several unbroken minutes, and he could almost hear her voice in his head from so long ago:
Don’t look back, no matter what. Stone to stone. I jump, you jump.

“Run,” he whispered, clenching his eyes shut.

When he opened them again, she was gone.