Page 33 of Wicked William

William

It’s been two dayssince I let it slip that I love Maisy, and she’s yet to comment on it. I’m trying to be patient, but I’m starting to feel anxious. I want her to say something, anything. I want to hear that she loves me too.

I take a deep breath and try to stay positive. I know she feels something for me, and if I just give her some time, she’ll admit it. I just have to be patient.

After I work out and take a shower, I find her in my bedroom putting clothes away. She makes eyes at me in my towel.

“Down girl.”

She laughs. Damn, I love her laugh. “Just appreciating the view.”

I’m closing my underwear drawer when she asks me, “William, what are the scars on your back from?”

I clench my jaw, unprepared for the question, though I should have been, I suppose. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I wish I knew if that were true.

I take a deep breath and let it out. “My old man had a temper problem at the bottom of his hooch bottle.”

She gasps, her eyes widening with horror and sadness. “He beat you? Scarred you? Your own father?”

I nod and look away. “He beat my mom too. And Max. He never touched Dillon. Max and I made sure to draw his attention away from the baby.”

Max and I don’t talk about those times. Talking about it now is like breathing life back into a dead monster.

Maisy steps forward and wraps her arms around me, pressing her face into my back. Into the hate that forever marks my skin. “I’m so sorry, William.”

Her touch is gentle and loving, and I can feel her tears watering the messy rows of raised flesh. I turn around and pull her close.

“It’s okay, Maisy. I’m okay now. We all are. The only good thing my old man ever did was abandon us.”

She looks up at me with shining eyes. “Sometimes I get intuitive flashes around people like him. They are so dark. It makes me nauseous. How did you come out of that so good?”

“I’m not good.”

“Yes you are,” she whispers. “You’re the best person I know.”

I look into her eyes and see so much love and warmth there. She won’t say it, maybe, but she feels it. I don’t need her psychic powers to know she feels it.

“Maisy,” I murmur, “I love you. Maybe you don’t want to hear it yet, but I do. I love you so much.”

Her face softens, and she buries her head in my chest. I hold her close, let her feel my heartbeat against her soft tear-wet cheek. We stand there for what feels like eternity, just holding each other.

“It scares me. Love. Being loved. Loving someone else.”

“I know. From what I have seen, it’s the only damn thing in the world that scares you. What I don’t know is why.”

“Because I don’t want to get hurt. I watched my mom die like a movie in my head. And then it happened.” She takes a deep breath and looks up at me. “When she died, I lost everything. I was completely alone in the world, and I was just a kid, you know. A teenager. A ward of the state. It’s a blessing and a curse to have psychic knowledge about people like your dad. There are a lot of them in the foster system.”

“Oh, baby.”

“I had to learn how to rely on myself. Trust my intuition. The dark feelings, the nausea always told me. But not everyone is bad. And maybe that’s harder somehow.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I let someone in too close, what happens if they die? If I see it before it happens? Like I did with my mom. Remember the reason I’m here is because I had a vision that you were in danger.”

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