Page 78 of Shelter Me

Like hell I don’t. “Tell me.”

“It hit me one day at basketball practice.” He leans his head back and closes his eyes as he speaks. His face is completely relaxed, at peace, as if he doesn’t even hear the shots outside the barn. “You were dripping with sweat, your hair gathered on the top of your head in the messiest bun in history, and you were yelling at another girl about the best way to nail a three-pointer. You were arguing, but she was being rude to you, so you were shouting at her—she was shouting back at you—and your eyes were flashing. You were angry, but you radiated happiness. I can’t explain it. I just felt that you were happy to be having this fight with a girl at school, like an ordinary girl. I just watched you; I couldn’t stop. You spit a little as you yelled at her. I think I got a little bit choked up, because my throat hurt afterwards. As if I had been crying the whole time. You… I saw you that day. How strong and selfless you had to be all your life, how you had to put yourself second, third, last. How you were finally living a little for the first time in your life, livingforyouasyou, and how filled to the brim with it you were. I saw you.”

He stops abruptly. He’s breathing hard. He…

He is so spot on. I remember that day.

I remember everything he just said: it happened exactly as he described it. But I remember what happened afterwards as well.

I remember that I went to my room afterwards and cried my eyes out for yelling at that girl. Princesses don’t yell. My dad would have been so disappointed in me, I thought. I have betrayed my kingdom, I thought. I have embarrassed everyone who raised me, I thought, I have let them down. I have crushed their expectations.

Now I think that I should have yelled at that girl some more, and have gotten yelled at some more myself, and allowed myself to be as angry as I wanted. As passionate as I wanted.

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?”

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