I had indeed planned a visit to see him in October, but circumstances led me here almost a month early with no forewarning. I know he’s worried.
I shrug, not sure where to begin. “Would you accept I’m having an existential crisis?”
“Way too vague,” he replies with a chuckle.
I take another sip of wine, this one larger than the last. A clear sign I need fortification, and Kane’s eyes narrow slightly. My gaze moves back out over the cityscape, and I admit, “There was an incident. I was attacked.”
Kane doesn’t say anything, but, from the corner of my eye, he sits up straighter in his chair. I can almost feel pulses of violence coming off him.
It reminds me of when we were back in college, and I got drunk at a frat party. I have no recollection of the event, but the next day he told me some guy had been on top of me in a bedroom, and I’d probably been pretty close to getting raped. I don’t know what he did to the guy, but he told me the problem had been handled.
He carried me home that night, safe in his strong arms, and sat by my bed until the next morning when I woke up, hungover and feeling awful. When he’d recounted what happened, it was the same… waves of anger and a need to rain destruction down on someone that would dare hurt me.
Getting up the nerve to look across the table, I start to explain it correctly, so he can understand why I am indeed having a crisis.
“I’ve traveled to all fifty states,” I begin slowly, and he merely watches. He’s patient in that way. “Canada, Central America, Latin America. Europe twice. I’ve been so many places I need a spreadsheet to keep track.”
“I have a digital map I mark with every place you’ve been to,” he says. There’s such pride in his voice I feel a lump in my throat.
“You do?” I ask in awe.
“I always have my eye on you, Mollie,” he replies, but his voice has a hard edge. What it conveys is that while he watches from a distance, he can’t do much more than that.
I nod, understanding his dilemma. He’s been my protector from the start, and he can’t be effective at it with me so far away. That causes him pain.
I continue with my story. “All those places, I never felt in danger. You know I’m careful. I have Samson and a gun I know how to use. I choose my camping spots carefully, after hours and hours of research, to stay away from dangerous areas. I don’t pick secluded areas, knowing there is safety in numbers. And for the most part, I have nothing but wonderful experiences. Hundreds of places I’ve been to, meeting the nicest people. People like me, who travel the open roads… we sort of stick together and protect each other.”
Kane doesn’t say anything, but I can see a muscle ticking at the corner of his jaw. It tells me his jaws are clenched tight, bracing for what’s to come.
“It wasn’t a stranger,” I say softly.
Leaning forward across the table just slightly, he implores, “Just please get to it, Mollie.”
“It was Matthew,” I murmur, my eyes falling away from his hard gaze.
Matthew was the man I had been seeing for several months. Kane knows about him because I tell him pretty much everything. Although I find it interesting he never talked to me about the beautifully exotic woman coming out of his apartment yesterday morning.
At any rate, Matthew Brighton and I had met in the Dakotas last summer, as he was on a two-month bike trek that was winding down. A free spirit, just like me. He blogged, just like me. Matthew was handsome, funny, and gregarious. We had so much in common it was inevitable we would hit it off, and I felt incredibly safe and secure inviting him to travel with me.
He followed my pre-planned route, and I slowed it to accommodate the number of miles he could make in a single day on the bike. We’d wake up in the morning, tangled in the sheets of my bed in the back of my van. I’d take off to the next spot, stopping to see sights, and he’d meet me at the next planned evening stop.
It was something.
It was good.
And he gave me something I was starting to understand had been greatly missing from my life.
Companionship from the severe isolation that can occur by living a life such as mine.
“But you two broke up,” Kane says in a low rumble of anger.
“Yeah… four months ago. And it wasn’t pleasant.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” he accuses.
I shrug. “It wasn’t a big deal. At least I didn’t think it was at the time.”
But the truth was, the more time I spent with Matthew, the more I saw his true self emerging. He became controlling and manipulative. He impeded the freedom I cherished so much, then he became scary when I wouldn’t abide by every single thing he wanted.
When I broke it off, there’d been lots of threats. It had scared me.
Luckily, I had a van that could go a lot faster than his bike. I drove four states away before I felt like I could breathe easy again.
Next came weeks of calls and texts I refused to respond to, and, eventually… he left me alone.
I explain this to Kane, watching his expression turn thunderous. Not toward me, but the man who would dare to scare me.
“I thought he was nothing but a bad memory,” I admit. “It had been a couple months since his last stalkerish text, and I never saw it coming.”
“What happened?” Kane asks. If the tone of his voice matches his insides, I’m almost afraid he wants to vomit.
“I was in North Carolina last week.” I reach for my wineglass, then take another sip. “On Topsail Island. There’s a great campground that sits on the intercoastal waterway. I got up, took Samson for a walk, had breakfast, and was back in the van getting it ready to depart.”
It was a simple matter of cleaning up my dishes and utensils and folding the bed into a chest along one side of the van that, when closed, becomes a bench I can sit on. On the opposite wall of the van is a pullout table, and it’s where I sit to do my blogging.
“Samson let out a bark.” I get lost in the memories. “Most of the other campers had already pulled out, so I was surprised. The bark wasn’t a warning type… it was friendly, and that in itself was unusual because Samson trusts very few people. You’re one, obviously.”
Kane doesn’t even smile at the pointed reminder Samson loves him.
“I was on my hands and knees in the van, folding up the mattress to stow, and I glanced over my shoulder to see who Samson was welcoming toward us. It was Matthew.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kane mutters, his voice anguished.
“He came at me so fast I couldn’t even react,” I say, amazed at how steady my voice is. I’m safe right now. No reason to fall back into the fear. “He came right in through the back doors. Before Samson could figure out anything was wrong, he’d closed them. I could hear Samson barking and snarling, lunging at the doors, but by then Matthew was on top of me, pinning me to the floor.”
Kane lunges up from his seat so violently he knocks over his glass of wine. It shatters against the tiled top of the table. Red liquid starts running my way, and I push my chair back and rise as I watch it begin to pour over onto the patio. Kane moves to the railing, gripping onto it hard as he stares out over Phoenix.
I give him a moment to process, watching him take a deep breath.