Page 24 of Protect Me

I sniffle. My eyes are filled with water again, and I can’t see.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say, but he is watching me carefully, a knowing look in his eyes. As if he sees me. Knows me.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “I bet you don’t.”

He knows I remember.

“I fell hard for you that day,” he says. “You are the realest thing in my life. You are everything. Nothing else exists.”

“Jesus Christ, Marco,” I say, and it’s kind of an oath and kind of a prayer all at once.

“Yeah,” he says.

…

The shots are getting louder. Closer to our side of the barn. More focused, more determined.

They have been shooting all over the woods for the past hour or so, looking for us in the darkness. The shots have been ringing alternatively closer and further away from the barn, but now they’re gathering around it. I think by now they have realized that we can’t be anywhere else: we must be hiding in the barn after all. So, as we sit still and listen, they begin to circle it from all sides, determined to find a way in. Shooting the walls down hasn’t worked, but there are still shots being fired at the door. It’s beginning to dent.

Marco quietly counts how many men must be there, and I can see it in his eyes that the numbers don’t add up. We have countless weapons, but there are only two of us. Only one, really. He tells me of all his different plans, depending on what happens. Where I’m supposed to stand, what he will do and so on. He preps me as best as he can.

He put off the fire ages ago, so that there is no smoke coming out of the chimney, and it did buy us all this time. But now they’ve finally realized that we are here. It’s a matter of time before they try to force the door open some other way. And we are sitting ducks in it. Well, sitting ducks with an army’s worth of weaponry, but only one pair of hands that can use them. So Marco will do nothing that might betray our presence here until he absolutely has to. He sits with me in his arms, waiting. Waiting to die.

It’s not an easy business, waiting to die.

“How are you doing?” he asks me every few minutes, rubbing his hands down my arms.

“I think I need to pray,” I tell him at some point.

“For forgiveness?” he asks. “What could you possibly have done?”

“Nothing,” I reply. “I’ve done nothing, that’s what I’ve done. I had all this life, all this privilege, and instead of living it, I did nothing. I did not help anyone, I made no difference.”

“Olivia, stop…”

“No, it’s true. The Rotten Royals had it right about me.” Well, I still can’t wrap my mind around Hector being my brother, but I’m pretty sure he can’t have been the one behind these vitriolic posts. “Their tone was too bitter, but everything they said was true. Any one of them in my position would have done something with all the power I had. But instead, I was just obedient, I was… I wasted everything. I regret that.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just listens to me carefully.

“Ok,” he says slowly afterwards. “Let’s pray then.”

“Mostly, I want to pray because I’m scared. But I don’t know any words.”

“I do,” Marco says. “I have been saying them in my head since the day they recruited me. Wanna hear?”

“Have they helped you?”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” he squeezes me closer, and I sense that this is something that means a lot to him, that touches him deeply. Too deeply for words.

“You are,” I nod.But for how much longer?“I want to hear, yes.”

He starts in his low, rumbly voice that is more of a comfort than any words. I close my eyes and try to forget any other sound other than his voice exists. The shots are getting closer and closer together. I don’t think about the shots. I concentrate on his words.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” he says, “I will not want. He leads me to the still waters. He restores my soul. He…”

He goes on like that for a few more seconds.

Then he stops, the vibration of his voice echoing in the empty space like a living thing.

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