A Nordic King(84)

Then again, what about her isn’t?

“It’s nice out here,” she says, tilting her head back to look at the endless starry sky as the smoke leaves her mouth. “It reminds me of home.” She pauses and then says quietly, “Huh. I so rarely refer to it as home.”

“I suppose you must have a completely different sky.”

“It was a completely different world. I was a completely different person.” She hands the cigar back to me.

I want to know more. She’s so guarded about her past, even now. I know it’s because she had a terrible childhood of neglect and it’s hard to talk about it. But I want her to share everything with me, the good and the bad. I want to know what her dreams are, as well as her nightmares.

“So you dropped out of school when you were a teenager,” I mention.

She sighs. “Yeah. When I was sixteen. I was dumb. I mean, I made some really dumb mistakes.”

“Why did you drop out?”

She looks off into the distance. The water has calmed quite a bit in this bay, enough to reflect some of the stars back. “Because I met a man and I fell in love.”

This is a surprise. “At sixteen?”

“Puppy love,” she says with a shrug. “Puppy love that morphed into something beastly.” Her voice is more acidic now.

“What happened? Who was he?”

“He was a criminal,” she says.

I stare at her. “Are you serious? I mean, I know there is a running joke among Australians but…”

“No, he really was. He came to town with a lot of cash and needed a safe place to put it. He bought an ailing pub and opened it. But it was a front. And then he saw me walking past the pub one day on my way back from school and that was that. My bike was broken, and the walk was hours and he offered me a free drink and I went in. His name was Dan. He promised me the world. They always do, don’t they. Only I had nothing and nobody and I stuck with him like a joey to his mother.”

“Where is he now?”

“Jail,” she says, brushing her hair off her face, which looks even more fair and pale in the starlight. “At least, I hope he is. He killed someone during a drug deal gone wrong…” she trails off.

“I’m so sorry you had to be with a man like that,” I tell her softly. When I wanted her to open up, I didn’t think it would be this. But at the same time, I’m glad I’m no longer in the dark.

“Sometimes I think about how he’s a villain and I’m a victim. Other times I think I’m the villain and he’s the victim. Then it turns out that everyone has both of those roles in a story.” She lets out a long sigh. “We’re just people doing stupid things because that’s what people do.”

It’s so silent now. I can hear Johan snoring downstairs. I glance over at the RA boat and see a guy at the back with his iPhone out, lighting up his face. There’s freedom out here, a place where confessions can set you free.

I need to be set free.

Especially with her.

We can’t move forward in this relationship, however you want to define us, until we’re completely honest and open with each other.

I clear my throat and steady myself.

This is just the last step in my salvation and she’s been my crutch each time.

Every dirty thing I do to her makes me feel clean inside.

Each time I come deep inside of her, I’m reborn a new man.

She is mercy incarnate, my absolution.

“I killed my wife,” I say. My words are quiet and soft and meant for her, but they still have the impact of a thousand storms.

Aurora slowly turns to look at me, her big eyes even more oversized, her face paling before me. She can’t even speak.

“It was an accident,” I go on, carefully choosing my words, hoping to make her understand. “I was driving that night in the car. It wasn’t Nicklas. I was angry, and the roads were wet and there was a fight in the car and I…I lost control. I so rarely lose control, but I lost control then. We went over the shoulder and plunged down. Flipping. I never thought the car would stop flipping. She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and she went through the windshield. I saw her die.”

The air between us is so still, stretched thin with tension. Aurora is trying to breathe, I’m trying to calm my fevered heartbeat. I don’t know what I was expecting, I just know it needed to be said. And if she should leave me now…I can’t blame her.

“Where was Nicklas?” she finally asks.

“He was in the car. I picked up both him and Helena from the airstrip. I wanted the two of them together alone. It was the only way I could confront them in private.”

“Why?”

“Because Helena and Nicklas were having an affair. Probably since we got married, maybe even before. I knew, and I wanted them to know. It was stupid. I should have kept my mouth shut, that’s what was expected of me. To turn a blind eye to affairs. But I couldn’t. I was so hurt and more than that, my pride was hurt. Precious, precious pride.”

“So Nicklas wasn’t driving?”

“No. He took the fall because I’m a coward. I knew admitting what happened would destroy my family and the girls. And he took it because I promised him a job and I promised him the world would never know about him and Helena.”