Page 5 of Cuts Like An Angel: Part 3

Sickness gripped her stomach at seeing his offence. "Sorry", she whispered. "Was a joke. A bad joke."

“I don’t get it. Why would we order feed? What kind of feed do you mean?”

Now she was confused. “To feed the pig. Like grain.” She wasn’t sure what part he didn’t understand, and she topped it off her American stupidity, by making pig sounds.

“Ohhh," he said, sounding relieved. "Feed? Is that what they call it in America? I couldn't get what you could mean. I thought you meant the film kind of feed, you know, for videoing. But why on earth would you want to film pigs? We call it pig swill. My brain must be stuck in work mode."

Her laughter spluttered out in the relief that she'd not offended him somehow. "I thought you were mad. I was calling your mother a pig. I wasn't. I was calling me a pig." She cringed. Shut up. Just shut up. "I do not need to video pigs." Another pointless laugh. "Although, I wouldn't mind raising one. We could make our own bacon."

He drew back a little. “You would kill a pig? What did little Wilbur ever do to you? Have you always had fantasies of killing helpless animals? I know a good therapist.”

"Stop it," she said between breaths of laughter. He gave her the most beautiful smile, and she slid out of her chair, needing to touch him, ready to be on his lap again.

He pushed his seat out to make room for her and pulled her down. "Didn't get enough of me before?" he teased, wrapping his arms around her.

“Maybe,” she murmured, closing her eyes and just feeling him.

Ignoring Maria for another day wasn’t such a bad idea.

“The twenty-third,” he said, sliding his arms along her body.

“Twenty-third?”

“Demon day,” he whispered after a long silence. “Maria.”

Rosie stroked his arm with her fingers, tears welling in her eyes at hearing it in his words. A living death he had to accept. “There’s time.”

He gave what sounded like a snort. “We don’t have forever.”

“You could …” She paused. “We could put her in her old bedroom, the one at the front?” she said with a gentle nudge. “We could get her one of those seats on the stairs.”

“A stair lift." A gentle smile quirked his mouth, and she raised one brow at him. "Ever see the film Gremlins? When they rig that old woman's stair lift, and she flies out of the roof?"

A bark of laughter escaped Rosie, and she clutched her mouth, not imagining William would say something like that. "We could …" Another pause and his expression grew more serious. Rosie stayed on his knee, her arms around his neck, giving him time, giving him space. “I sometimes think about selling this place. Just get rid of it and give the memories to someone else.”

“It’s your house?”

"Yeah." He leant back. Rosie stayed sitting straight, but he still had his arms around her waist. "I moved out of here when I was about sixteen. I think I told you; then I had to move back because she'd got sick. Pissed and drugged up at the same time. She'd been on a bender for months apparently and hadn't been paying the mortgage. I agreed to take the mortgage over, but she had to sign the house over to me. Sell it to me sort of. That way she had a roof over her head."

“You’re a good son.”

He laughed, and it wasn't a happy laugh. "Tell her that. I'm the son who took her chances away from ever having more children. She said when I was born, it was like having evil taken from her womb, and I took her motherhood from her too."

It was hard to say anything to that. She wanted to. She wanted to wrap him in her arms, in her love and make it that he could never be hurt again. Pain shone in those blue eyes. “Oh, William.”

"It's fine. I saved any future siblings having to suffer her shit, right?" he said it, but his words held something else. Rosie held back, wanting to ask, but letting him speak. It was rare that he'd talk like this. Sometimes the lid came off the bottle, and he let a little out. She cherished every part of it he gave to her.

“We could put her in her old room, but I don’t know if she can get up the stairs. Not with her hip. And her stroke …”

“It’s only a TIA.” TIA, Rosie had since learnt, meant transient ischemic attack. Like a stroke, but not quite. A warning for a stroke if anything. A shame it wasn’t a real one. One that could silence the woman’s ability to spew her hate all over William. “The lounge then? The one at the front,” she said. "Then if she needs anything, we've easy access to her. We can nip in."

Another wrong word. She stiffened at the look he gave her.

“Don’t worry,” she assured with gentle confidence. “You and I will be a team like no other—a tag team. When you get tired, you tag me, and I’ll go in … I’ll bust some royal ass. Yeah?”

She waited in the silence, holding her breath, praying her words held him, kept him from falling off that ledge. He was right there this time, right with her. She pulled him into her, his mouth pressing into her shoulder. There was no phone line between them this time, but yet … she still felt she could fail him, and he’d fall. Fall and shatter right in her hands.

She gasped when she felt him smile against her. "You always know what to say. Me and you." He hugged her tighter. "A tag team.”

“Can I see the bedroom?” she asked, daring. She’d been forbidden from going in, but maybe now it was time to face it.

“I …”

With her nerves playing some wild game in her stomach, she slid a hand to the side of William's face. "We can face it together. Whatever is in there. We can take it out and smash it."

“What if you hate me?”

Lifting his face to hers, she looked into those blue eyes, so bright, so afraid, so ready for her to get off his lap and leave. “Oh, William. There is nothing in the world that could make me hate you. You’re my world.”

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