Desire: Love and Passion (21 page)

             
“Why didn
’
t you say that?”

             
“I to
ld you I loved you,” she said.
“Don’t you know what that meant? I loved you regardless of your scars, your flawed past and I wanted nothing else than to be with you.”

             
“Do you still love?”

             
“Yes, but it’s now complicated. It does not feel the same
as before.
I
’
m still fiercely attracted to you, but it does not feel the same. I
’
m mad at you and I want to hurt you.”

             
“I thought you took all that rage out against the poor Beetle,” he said.

             
“Don’t remind me,” she said. 

             
“Oh,” he said.

             
“What?”

             
“I sort of had Simon keeping an eye on you, and there
’
s a video.”

             
“No,” she said.

             
He nodded. He had a devilish smile on his face.

             
“You have to get rid of it,” she said.

             
“I think it is actually quite hilarious,” he said. “I mean Larry was on the floor when we were watching it.”

             
“You showed it to Larry?”

             
“Everybody saw it,” James confessed. “Let me put it to you this way. There will never be a cricket bat
nearby
while you
’
re around.
At least
now I know why my scalp hurt.”

             
Willow smiled despite her mood.

             
“I don’t want to be that person,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I cannot think about you right now without a thought of how I can really hurt you like I hurt that morning. It’s like this afternoon. I enjoyed having sex with you, but I wanted to rip every hair out of your head
in
clumps.”

             
“I understand. But that doesn
’
t solve our problem of you living alone with this baby growing inside you.”

             
“I can spend some time with my grandmother,” Willow said. “She has already invited me to stay.”

             
“She’s at least a half hour from your office. I
’
m not comfortable with you commuting every day.”

             
“Taxi service,” Willow said.

             
“I’ll hire a driver for you,” James said.

             
“Then we
’
re settled?”
s
he asked.

             
“Yes, you’re off to grandmas,” he said. “But only if I get to visit.”

             
“I’m sure she won’t mind.”

"While you are already mad at me, I want to make one more confession."

"What is it?"

"I switched your pills
.
"

"What?"

"The evening you asked Giles to pick
up your pills at the pharmacy
,
I changed them to vitamins.
I
read online that it takes eight to eighteen months before we could try at having a baby
once you get off the pills
. I figured by the time
we g
o
t around to actually working on a baby
,
we would be married
already
and it would not be a problem."

"You could have asked me to stop taking the pills," she said.

"I could
have
? What would your answer have been?"

"It
’
s pointless to ask me now. Good night."

             
“Will,” he said and took her hands into his. “I hope one day you can really forgive me and we can recapture what we had.”

             
She hugged him.

Chapter 14

             
By mid-November, Willow had lost two
kilos
since the last weigh-in.
The doctor assured them that she was perfectly healthy
although
James was skeptic
al
.
Though they were no closer to being a couple again, they remained
amicable
.
James
had in fact
become quite the fixture at her grandmother’s house. He was allowed to stay nights, though he opted for the seclusion of the guest ho
u
se across the lawn whenever he took her up on the offer.

Today w
as their third doctor's visit. The report was all good.
They went back to his office as it was late in the evening and he was accompanying her to her grandmother's.

"Can we have dinner tonight?"
h
e asked.

"Nana always overcooks."

"I mean you and I?"

"You know I don
’
t want to eat out."

"I have an apartment just on the next street. I could whip up something in a few minutes."

Willow took a deep breath. 

"You know how I feel about being in
your
residence."

"Will, I made a huge mistake. I know what I said was the awful, but I was not quite myself. You know whether you want to or not, you will have to be in my home after you have the baby."

"I know. I know."

"So
we
’
re having dinner, yes
?"

"Okay."

They walked from his office to his apartment. His bodyguards followed a respectable distance.

Willow did not realize how cold it was outside until they were inside the warmth of his apartment. During their time together they only spent a few nights in this apartment. She removed her coat
and placed
it in the coat closet. 

"Do I still have clothes here?" She asked.

"Yes. I haven't gotten rid of anything."

"Okay. I am going to have a quick shower
,
if you don't mind."

"I want you to be comfortable."

James had indeed whipped up a quick meal. This was the first time they were dining alone since the argument. Willow was reminded of their first dinner date.

"I killed the man who killed Larry's father," James said half way through dinner.

Willow stopped and looked at him.

"You were a soldier," she said. 

"He did not die in combat," James said.

This was the first time he opened up about the war or his experience. Willow wanted to say something but thought it better if she
just
listened.

"I have no idea how long we were in captivity. One day they decided they
’d
had enough of our refusal to succumb to their torture. I was tied to a chair and the executioner stop
ped
in front of me. He just gave one swipe of the blade and Captain Sikes was dead. His body kept jumping and the blood spewed everywhere. I don't know where I got the strength from. Maybe my restraints weren't as tight as I thought, but somehow I broken the chair in my rage. The executioner swiped at me with his blade. I felt the pain in my face, but it was nothing compared to the rage.

"I remember using the ropes to strang
l
e him, and even after his body went slack, I just kept tugging at his head. I wanted to rip it off and probably would have if self-preservation had not kicked in. I too
k
the machete, worked through
the rest of
my restraints and went in search of trouble. I probably killed four or five people that night. I don't remember it all.
All I remember was walking into the sands covered in blood. My own
hot
blood and
the stench of other people’s blood
were o
n my face.

“The next time I opened my eyes I was in a hut. It was a small dirty place. It was stiflingly hot. I couldn
’
t feel my face. There was an old woman. She gave me something vile to drink. I spat it out on the first sip. She swore
in
Farsi and kept offering the drink to me. It was for the fever she said. I don’t think she knew I understood Farsi, I think she was trying to reassure me that it wasn’t poison. I passed out when I finished drinking it.

“I don’t know if it was hours or days that passed, but when I woke again, I was alone.  The hut was not hot, so I guess my fever broke. I still couldn’t feel my face. I remember hearing noise outside and shouting, shuffling and the old woman came back in. She grabbed a blanket and threw it over me. I tried to say something and she shouted for me to be quiet in Farsi. Somehow I knew I needed to keep my mouth shut. She covered me from head to toe then threw some rags on top of me. They stank of goat shit. I remembered thinking this was how I was going to die. The last thing I was going to breathe in was the scent of goat shit.

“I could hear voice shouting. Some
one
pushed inside the hut, grunted something and left. I was there, holding my breath as best I could. Maybe a half hour passed, I don’t know. It was difficult to tell time whe
n you have no idea where you are or how you got there. She came back and removed the rags and the blanket. She gave me something to eat. It smelled absolutely rotten at first, but it tasted good and I was famished. 

“I ate and I slept. She would wash me, change my bandages and feed me. She told me they were looking for me, but I would be safe. I tried to talk to her but my voice was hoarse and would crack instead of make words. She thought I did not understand so she would
write
in the dirt of the hut.
I was wanted.
I stayed there for perhaps three weeks after I regained consciousness. 

“I lived on goat milk, vegetables and homemade goat cheese. I wanted to leave, but I was afraid
,
I guess. I didn’t know the war was over. One evening after I came back from a walk, the tattered door on the hut was open. There was a man inside. There was a bundle of rags on the floor. It took me only
second
s to realize that what I thought were rags
,
was the old woman. She was dead
. The man was looking for me and he killed her. And I was in a rage again. 

“I don’t want to tell you how brutal I was. When I eventually made my way to the British Consulate in Turkey, the trail of bodies behind me would make Jack the Ripper
look
a coward. It takes a special kind of monster to do the things I did. I had no remorse. Even now it is difficult for me to relate to the man that did those things. You have no idea what horrors happened because of these hands.”

He held up his hands. They were shaking. He clasped them together and looked down at his plate. Willow was silent.

“I thought if you knew the things I did. If you knew there was a time that these hands were crimson with the blood of others you might never want to be touched by them again. I was a monster. I am a monster. When I was in the hospital here, after my third or fourth surgery, Stacey came to visit. She had just seen me and thought I was asleep. She was talking to the doctor. And I remember her asking about my scar. The doctor told her they couldn’t do more than
what had
already
been
done. There was too much damaged tissue. I was lucky to have survived it to begin with. She told the doctor, ‘
how do you expect the King of England to look like a monster?
’

“So I covered my scar from then
on
. Then you came along. I swear Willow, in the basement, all I saw was the executioner. He was laughing at me, mocking me because I had hurt you. I was now the monster.”

Willow had tears in her eyes. She thought of what she could say to make him feel better. Nothing came to her mind so she reached across the table and held his hands.

“You’re not a monster,” she said. “And you didn’t hurt me on purpose.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Come with me.”

She got from the table. He got up too. She took his left hand and led him up the stairs to the master bedroom. She undressed in front of him. James watched her, not sure what to do. She took his hands in hers and placed them on the side of her face, like the first night they kissed. She leaned in and kissed him.