"Two souls are sometimes created together and in love before they're even born." -F. Scott Fitzgerald
When eight year old Beau Ruby met twelve year old Colton Caine, she had no idea she was meeting the love of her life. She had no idea she'd grow...
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I was out of my truck in front of the house faster than I ever been. "Jack!" I yelled out. I was yelling his name all the way from my truck to the door of the house.
She had been there. She had been standing right in front of me. She was close enough for me to touch her. I had touched her. I had traced and touched every single bruise I could find.
I'd kill him. I didn't know who he was or where I'd find him. I didn't know why he had hit her and grabbed her. I didn't care. Her soft, perfect skin was discolored and bruised. Her lips were busted and cracked and caked with dried blood. The only thing o could see in my mind was her being hit repeatedly. I didn't even know if the images I was playing over and over were what really happened. All I could think about was killing him. I wanted to wrap my hands around his neck. I wanted his face to be as bruised as hers. I wanted him to look as completely shattered as she did.
Shattered. She had looked completely shattered. Pieces of her old self standing on that porch. If I had tried not to look at her...if I had just gotten in my truck and left, then maybe I wouldn't have had time to think that the reason she looked so broken was because of me. I was standing there in front of her. I could have said, "Hey, Beautiful," and kept on working. I could have said anything at all. Instead I just yelled at her to stop.
"Jack!" I screamed again from the front door. Where the hell was he? He came stumbling down the stairs then. He wasn't wearing a shirt and he was rubbing his face. It had to be nine already, and he was just now waking up.
"Damn, what in the hell are you screaming about?" he asked me as he walked. What little short, cinnamon colored hair he had was messy. There were reddened indentions from the sheets on his chest.
I was practically yelling at him when I answered him. It wasn't that I was angry at him. I was just angry in general.
"Did you know she was back?" I asked him, my voice borderline frantic.
He looked at me like I was speaking French. "Know who was back? What are you talking about?" He broke up the two syllables of talking dramatically for effect to show me he had no clue what I was jabbering on about. What are you taaaalk-ing about?
"Who do you think, asshat? Beau." I answered.
He grinned, then. He actually grinned. That smug, cheerful bastard. Of course he would be happy. She was pretty much a little sister to him for ten years. She saw him just as often as she saw me, even though he's two years older than me and six years older than her.
"No shit? She's home?" He was adding syllables now. No she-it.
I stared at him in disbelief. He was standing in the living room grinning from ear to ear about her being home while I was trying to recover from the moment of seeing her.
"No shit. She's here. In Hammond. At Verne's. " I kept adding two word details like it was going to help him better understand the concept of her being home. Maybe it was to help me better understand. "I just saw her. I was working on the back porch and then she was just...there."
