Holding Her in Madness by Kimber S. Dawn Page A

either, that makes this a lot fucking easier on me.
    I creep. Yes... I fucking creep. Like a pussy. Or a thief. I’m gonna say I creep like a thief. It sounds better than I creep like a pussy.
    I creep like a thief around the side of her house, keeping to the shadows. As I round the house into the backyard, I hear my firecracker. The sound of her crying tears through my heart like bullets and immediately my eyes tear up.
    She’s mumbling and sniffling every few seconds. Still shrouded in darkness, I come up directly behind her, less than a foot away.
    Goddamn, I missed you, firecracker.
    The winter night wind picks up, blowing her thin, tangled hair.
    When I smell her in the cold breeze, I have to both bite the inside of my cheeks and cover my mouth, stepping back for a bit as I smother the guttural groan of both misery and bliss that tries to escape my chest.
    I slide down with my back against the bricks of her house and sink to the wet earth, feeling it seep through my jeans and boxers. But I don’t fucking care. Keeping my hands over my mouth, I’m left breathing ragged breaths through my nose. Tears, I didn’t even realize I was crying are running down my face in rivers.
    A sob I’ve caught in my throat stays locked there directly beside my heart booming inside my chest cavity.
    Then I hear her. Speaking through her tears and agony. On her own sob, she whispers, “I cannot give you a rational excuse or the appropriate reason. I can barely give you simple facts.” Her head falls into her hands. The one holding her cigarette drops it onto the patio table she’s sitting at and her cigarette rolls away.
    The sobs racking her tiny body shake so hard that the chair she’s sitting in rocks back and forth.
    I swear to God she has to have lost more than thirty fucking pounds. Her shoulder bones are protruding out, clearly noticeable in her old thin t-shirt.
    She looks sick. My baby—my Lil—looks really sick.
    I’m so fucking worried for her that I go to step forward, gather her up...until she lets out a growl and continues her confusing rant.
    “It’s fucked up. So fucked up.”
    It hits when she stands up, turning sideways to grab her lighter, then sits back down and pulls her knees up to her chest.
    She’s not pregnant with my baby.
    She’s not pregnant.
    I didn’t realize that was why I was here. That was what I was expecting to see. I didn’t know that I was here to play the ace up my sleeve. But that’s why I came. I was ready to lay all my cards on the table.
    Only instead of two pairs, Aces over twos, all I have is a pair of twos. And I’d gone all in for my firecracker.
    And I lost to the house.
    The house always wins.
    I sink back to my spot against the brick wall in the dark and listen to her, mumbling and lost in that damn head of hers.
    She laughs a crazed, maniacal laugh that sends chills down my spine, and I can barely make her words out. “I’m a fucking masochist. That’s what I fucking am. It’s all I can be though, really. If I don’t pick at the scabs to make them bleed and hurt, then it’s like....” Whatever she is saying is lost in another bone-racking sob. I barely make out the last word on her whispered exhale. “…real.”
    “Lil, fuck, firecracker. Why are you so damn broken? What the fuck has happened to you, baby?” My whisper is quieter than the night air.
    She stands up and heads straight towards me.
    I fucking freeze. Every goddamn nerve, muscle, and bone in my body is begging to reach out and grab her. My mind continues to keep me still. Her foot is less than six inches away from my right hand when she stops, tossing the contents of an ashtray into the yard at my feet.
    Then she turns away, muttering to herself, “I’ll happily accept these masochistic urges. Happily shoulder that pain. Hurts a lot less than the pain of him not being real, him being a figment of my imagination. Which fucking scares me more than anything.”
    She sighs and gathers up her papers,