Witness

“One two, kick! One two kick! Don’t forget to breathe ladies!”

On the instructors command, I kicked as furiously as I could into the punching bag in front of me. Mary was bracing it from behind, egging me on with throaty insistence. “Come on, you can do better than that!” she shouted, pushing me further. I kicked harder and harder, screaming as I kicked it out. Everyone in the studio was screaming out their frustrations, their partners and our instructor encouraging it.

I don’t quite think I’d ever felt so bad ass.

“That’s good for now ladies! Good work! Take a break, get some water, and then we’ll switch!”

I collapsed onto the ground, all the will in my body dissipating entirely with exhaustion. My muscles ached, my heart raced, my head pounded. But I felt so much better. Mary collapsed next to me, tired from taking the blunt force of my blows, her blonde ponytail splaying out behind her head.

“You were going mental on that bag, Lil,” she commented approvingly, turning her head to face me with a smile. “What were you imagining?”

It was a kickboxing class, the one Mary liked so much, that she insisted I attend with her when she saw how angry I was coming into work after my incident with Harry. She already knew half of what I was picturing – Harry’s face when he asked me who I was, eyes all wide and accusing me of being a liar. But what Mary didn’t know was I was also picturing Damien, unruly brown hair and even more unruly brown eyes. I was picturing ripping Damien to shreds for forcing me into becoming that liar Harry thought I was.

“I was just in the zone, that’s all,” I gasped, wiping at my forehead with the back of my hand. “Just feels good to sweat, you know? I think I’m getting stronger.”

“I’ll say so,” Mary teased. “Just about broke my arms off, you did. Soon you’ll be stronger than me.”

“Doubt it,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. Mary had this superhuman athletic ability about her. She was above and beyond the rest of the class, who as a general consensus watched with wide eyes as she commanded the room. I wished I had a fraction of her power and knowledge of fighting. Then, maybe then, I would feel safe on my own. But I was getting there.

Just then, the tonal sounds of my new ringtone sounded from my bag at the back of the classroom. With a grumble, I pried myself off the floor. It was probably Harry just trying to apologize. And like hell I would let him. The office had called a couple days ago to say that Amelia, now Michaela, had arrived safely at her destination, so that wasn’t a phone call I could be expecting. So who could it be?

When I found my phone at the bottom of the bag, my heart stopped in my chest. It was a New York number. Never a good sign.

“I have to take this Mary! I’m so sorry, I’ll be right back!”

And before she could even respond, I was darting out of the room and into an empty classroom, locking the door behind me.

“Hello?” I answered, my heart knocking in my throat. What if it was Thomas this time? What if it was Damien, having found my number? What if, what if, what if?

“Miss George,” the voice came, familiar though cheerier than usual. Agent Hudson.

“Hudson,” I breathed, pressing my hand to my forehead. “What is it this time? Who is it now?”

“It’s actually about Trask,” he said, tone still brighter than I’d ever heard. “Damien, that is. We think we’ve come to the end of his trail.”

I resisted a gasp. “The end of his trail? What does that mean?”

“We’ve been following what we thought to be his trail since his attempted attack on Michaela,” Amelia, I mentally corrected, “ and we believe we’ve found what are his remains.”

“His remains?” I clarified breathlessly. They’d found what they thought to be Damien Trask’s dead body.

“Let me start from the beginning,” Hudson clarified as I collapsed to the ground, sliding my back down a wall, my heart pounding in an insanely relieved frenzy. “He hijacked a car here in New York, leading to a string of carjackings all the way down the coast, and across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending in New Orleans, Louisiana.”

Holy shit.

“We estimate that he was in the city for a day or two, but we’re not sure why,” Hudson continued. “We found the final car near the mouth of the Mississippi river, abandoned with a window broken in. There was blood all over the interior, a few different kinds, but most of it Trask’s.”

Holy shit. I was struggling to breathe, at that point, trying to wrap my head around it all.

“We also found a tooth on the floorboard, and from dental records, it matches Trask’s mold,” he added. “We proceeded to search the delta, but it’s hard to find anything there with the amount of turnover. We did find badly burned remains of a man with Damien’s exact build, but it was mostly down to the bone and entirely indistinguishable from a glance. But the skull has pretty much given us all we need. There is a entrance and exit hole through the bone, all the teeth pulled out.”

Holy shit. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t open my mouth, I couldn’t hardly even breathe.

“We’re preparing a death in absentia statement,” Hudson concluded. “We just have to gather all the evidence in the same place and make sure we didn’t miss anything. But you could be safe to come home soon, Miss George.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed, tears welling in my eyes.

All the other words were caught in my throat, caught like me in this nightmare, caught like all my dreams on hold. Soon, it could all be over, soon I could breathe again, soon I could go home. Go home. My bones quaked at the thought of it all. I broke into sobs, uncontrollably shaking with the mixture of emotions I was feeling all at once.

I could go home soon. Damien Trask was most likely dead. They’d found his body in the Gulf of Mexico. I could go home. I could get back to writing screenplays, I could get back to my apartment, I could get back to my whole life.

But Harry.

“We’ll keep you posted, Lilia. Until then.”

I pulled myself off the floor again, steadying myself against a barre to my left, praying that I could somehow walk out of the studio, make it back to Mary, and get a grip all at the same time with the weight of the world suddenly lifted from my shoulders. It was honestly like learning how to walk again. Like learning how to talk again. Like learning how to breathe again. I wiped at my eyes with the backs of my hands, brushing away the stray tears. I had to be strong for now.

“You missed it,” Mary greeted before guzzling a long sip from her water bottle. “I broke the studio record of kicks per minute.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t forget me in your award speech,” I muttered, turning to collect my things before she could see my tearstained eyes. She didn’t know the half of everything going on in my head at that very moment – we’d only just briefly talked about Harry’s nosiness on the way and she had no idea of my past life in New York. Just another person I’d lied to. But soon, according to Hudson, I could stop living that lie and go back to reality.

But Harry.

“Are you okay?” she asked, noting the quiver in my voice. “You were gone for a long time.”

I shrugged, taking a deep breath before hoisting my bag over my shoulder and facing her. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered as cheerily as I could muster. “A call from home. I’m just a little homesick is all, no big deal.”

And then I gave her the best smile I knew how to give. She smiled in return, slinging her bag over her shoulder and nodding towards the door.

“So I was thinking about you and Harry while I was kicking the living shit out of that bag,” she began, changing the subject entirely as we began our walk to her car. “And I think you should forgive him.”

I snapped my head around to look at her, caught off guard at her suggestion. “Why do you think that?”
She gave me a coy smile before opening the back seat of her car and throwing her bag on the floorboard, nodding for me to follow suit. “He came into the pub after you two had your little tiff just positively beside himself,” Mary explained, slipping into the front seat. I followed to keep up with her.

“What did he say?” I exclaimed, suddenly interested in what Harry had to say for himself. Just minutes ago, I’d still been flamingly furious with him, but something about the fact that he went to Mary made me curious.

“He asked you’d been ‘round and when I told him no, he got all quiet, which is something I’ve never seen out of Harry ever,” she continued. “And told me he’d messed up royally and would do just about anything to make it better. He then proceeded to make some cheesy comment about you being so much more than he ever thought you were and blahblah, long story short I vomited violently and then told him if he wanted you so bad, he should prove it.”

I laughed at her comment, though my insides were stirring with emotion. “You really think forgiving him is a good idea?”

Mary smiled a small, quiet smile. “I’ve never seen Harry the way he is when he’s with you,” she said softly. “Or you when you’re with him. Not any other couple makes me want to puke quite as distinctly as you two, which is quite the achievement. I think it’d be a crime not to give him a chance, really.”

Holy shit.

And when we pulled into my driveway, sure enough – there he was, sitting on my front step with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, looking exhausted and hesitant, but with a hopeful glint in those emerald eyes. I took a deep breath before I rolled from the passenger seat, grabbing my bag from the back. Of course he would be waiting with flowers.

I swear, I could have felt my backbone retract right into the back of my skull at the sight of him.
He stood up, but waited until Mary had disappeared from sight to approach me. As always, he looked devastating in a plaid button down and a pair of dark jeans, hair tousled in just the right way. And in his hands, he held a bouquet of bright red poppies, modest but powerful. My favorite flower, my symbol of safety. Harry.

“Harry, I – ”

“Lilia, just let me apologize, okay?” he insisted, taking a step towards me. I allowed that, pressing my lips together complacently crossing my arms over my chest.

“Listen, I didn’t mean to offend you by Googling you, alright?” he murmured, sighing a little at the end. “You’ve gotta understand that I didn’t mean anything by it, I just want to know more about you and I feel like you aren’t telling me things.”

I kept my mouth closed, knowing that he was right. Normally I wasn’t a liar, normally I was the one championing honesty above all else. But I had to keep my life a secret from him. He was right, I was keeping things from him. And I felt horrible about it. More than anything, I felt horrible about it.

“But what I really wanted to apologize for was making you feel like a…”

“Manic Pixie Dream Girl?” I prompted.

“Right, yeah,” he agreed, scratching at the back of his neck. “I never meant to make you feel like you were a prop in my life, like you weren’t a human being with thoughts and feelings. You are so much more to me than that, and honestly it’s a little terrifying because I’m not usually the guy to actually fall for the girl but…”

“But?” I questioned, my voice wisping off in hesitation.

“But I have,” he concluded, reaching forward and brushing a strand of hair from my face. “Pretty hard. When I break something, I fix it. And I won’t be having my girlfriend feeling all out of sorts with me.”

“Girlfriend?” I breathed.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, with his crooked playful smile.

And so I kissed him. What the fuck do you want from me? Of course I kissed him.

It was so much easier to be excited about going home when there wasn’t a boy begging for my forgiveness. It was so much easier to be excited about going home when I wasn’t forgiving that boy, one urgent kiss after another.

“I’m sorry too,” I breathed between his lips. “I swear I didn’t mean to make you feel that way, I swear I’m not trying to keep anything from you, I swear it won’t happen again...”

Harry pulled away with a little smirk, eyelids still heavy from the kiss. “Just shut up and kiss me, would you?”

So I did.