The Explorer's Apprentice

64:A Rather Peculiar Escape

I own no one but Marley's thoughts and memories. 

Marley Faulkner

“Where are you going?”

Sharp claws of fury grasp tightly onto Marley’s lower arm, turning her back around quickly and shaking her like a ragdoll. Once again, she gazes into Cal’s bleak eyes, rimmed with anger. 

“Back to him?” He assumes as Marley attempts to tug away. But his grip is too tight, and the harder she tries the harder his nails dig into her skin. “To be a whore to a gutter rat?”

Marley almost laughs. “I’d rather be his whore than your wife.”

Cal's words are so shattered--so damaged and meaningless. And although pity stirs in Marley's soul, she is finished with being told what to do, especially by a man so lost and broken. 

Marley doesn’t, and perhaps never will know if Caledon Hockley ever really loved her. Maybe he never did. Maybe he always thought of her as nothing more than property. To most, this would have been the obvious answer, but as Marley catches a brief glimpse of something soft that resembles hurt and abandonment flashing through his cold eyes,  she can’t be so sure.

Perhaps the man doesn’t even know how to love properly, even though he feels it. Perhaps he really always did think her beautiful and witty, and just didn’t know that in order to convey love; one has to show it, as opposed to just thinking it.

I'm sorry for you, I am so, so sorry. I wish I could help you. But I can't do this. 

Either way doesn’t make a difference to Marley, who refuses to let him take hold of her life any longer. She tries to take advantage of Cal’s moment of shock and turns her body around to leave.

“No!” He cries, still clutching on tightly. But this is the final step of her prison break, and Marley is not going to let him stop her. She’s already come so far. She struggles to loosen his grip, thrashing harder than she ever has before as she feels him begin to loosen up.  “I said no!”

I can't let you control me any longer, I'm already gone, I'm already on a new adventure. Sooner than later I will have forgotten you and the pain you've caused me, and the suffering. Sooner than later your name will come up and I'll say who? Because you haven't been on my mind for years. Does that scare you?

Cal’s voice is booming. “No!”

It should.

“Watch closely,” he instructs, completely ignoring her plentiful protests as dozens of spectators stroll by. He snorts— a horrible, wet, nasally sound that scrapes the back of his throat—arcs his head back, and then shots out enough mucous-enriched saliva to fill up a small lemonaide pitcher ,out onto the sea. At least it appears this way to Rose.

“That’s disgusting!”

When he laughs at her, the sound reminds her of her grandmother’s old wind chimes, twinkling gently in the breeze. Beautiful.

Marley snorts quickly, hard and loud, tilts her head back and then lets her saliva fly into the eyes of her fiancé’s—x-fiancé’s—eyes.  She finally does it right this time.

Cal lets out a small gasp and instantly lets her arms go.

Marley runs, the sound of Ruth’s calls for her, over and over as the lifeboat lowers—not even reaching her ears. 

The freedom that follows tastes sweeter ocean air.