I drive like crazy, muddled from the rapture of liberty, triumphantly, without destination nor orientation. Just away, knowing that we might be followed or at least searched for. Therefore, here we go on the highway., no matter where, just far. I don't pay attention to highway signs, they just flash by. Sometimes I change the highway. Now we are one a smaller road, no other car in sight. It is dark and I am tired – and oddly calm because there was no sign of our kidnappers following us. The next baiting-place is ours. Well, actually it is more something like a long forgotten emergency bay.
I stop the engine and jump out into the pitch-dark, silent night. It is freaking cold, I estimate it's about 0°C. I speed to the trunk. By now nothing really surprises me when I think of the assholes of our kidnappers, but I didn't expect this in the trunk:
The car is prepped to kidnap someone and keep them for at least a few days. Next to black ropes and duct tape I also see zipties and a bag made of black fabric, a knuckleduster, two blankets and spare fuel at first sight. On my left hand side there are food cans piling up and several litres of water in a cartoon box. And finally I catch sight of what I have been looking for: The first-aid-kit of the car.
I pick it up and want to return to Liv as fast as possible when I see the black combat knife under the kit. It is a japanese Tanto, The grind and the back are parallel, the tip is tilted. I take it and cut out the one side of the cartoon box to poorly seal the whole that was once covered by the window and that I broke in order to find keys.
My fingers are freezing to their certain death, still I return to the trunk and take another and closer look – there are even clothes. Black. Maybe for potential kidnappers to easily get rid of clothes that hold evidence. Now I finally close the trunk and crawl towards Liv, joining her on the backseats.
Her green eyes are sunk in, yet still awake and looking at me. They give me a warm feeling tickling down my spine. I recall my plan before I get lost in thoughts and focus on the cut on Liv's forehead. My irregularly fast heartbeat could trait me, I am just glad that she can't see me blushing in the darkness of the car as she smiles at me tiredly. Luckily it is just a small wound right above her eyebrow, it almost doesn't bleed anymore.
I stick my hand into the first-aid-kit and grub around, then I rip the plastic package of the sterile gauze pad, wet the fabric and begin to carefully wipe away the dry blood. Naturally my left hand touches Liv's jaw in order to stabilize her head. As my skin meets hers I am sure that she shudders slightly while at the same time my stomach is about to burst because it has no more capacity for more butterflies.
I stubbornly only gaze at the wound, but I feel her eyes on me the entire time. Only once she whimpers shortly, blinks and freezes again. Hot guilt crawls up my gut and I swallow the question if she is alright because I know she is not. Absolutely nothing is okay. We have been kidnapped after she fled from human traffickers and whoremongers and we have almost been raped, we've been shot at and now we are fleeing with injuries. We sit in a stolen car in the middle of nowhere. We don't have any phones, navigation, map, nothing. And I don't have anything better on my mind than to crush?! As usual and apart from the highly inappropriate situation Liv is probably straight anyway. They always are. The biggest piece of shit is this. We are screwed.
***
I am done. In the first-aid-kit there's almost everything – but no butterfly bandages. So I improvise and just but a regular plaster on her forehead, slightly under tension. Her green eyes still are on mine.
I want to take my hand away from her chin, her face, it has already been there way too long. But Liv holds it, our hands awkwardly hover in the space between us. Liv finally lowershandy knot. Her second hand closes around mine as well. They are cold. But calming. I just stare at our entwinded hands in our laps and try to supress the urge to shudder at this contact. Suddendly her hands cramps, close tighter around mine as if she just made a hard decision. My dark eyes meet her shining green ones, whatever she might say now, I know it is full of honesty.
"I am so incredibly sorry." The words touch me, in them there vibrates the saddest sound I know – the breaking of a voice when the person is about to cry. "Everything. I am so, so sorry. You shouldn't be in this, it is all my fault!"
Liv sobs. A single tear explores her skin and I can't do anything but wipe it away with my free hand. Instinctively I pull Liv into my arm, I embrace her because every fibre of her begged for forgiveness and affection. She flinches with her sobs into my shoulders, I just hold her. And she tells me a story, a gruesome and disgusting story that seems to be her life. Human trafficking, violence, humilation. Changes of owners – and that expression alone makes me sick to my stomach – as well as the most inhumane living conditions. I feel her every rib in our hug, she is gount. Liv tells that in that fateful night at the underground station she had fled from her owners and that the men, the kidnappers, should first punish her and then bring her back.
Everything she says seems to be so horrendous and painful and shocking that it gives me cold shivers up and down my spine. And I just hold her to soothe her sobbing. I don't know if I should believe her but I do. Whatever it really is, it makes her cry and sob.
"Hey. It's okay. Everything is going to be okay. You are safe", I whisper calmly. I pull back from the embrace although everthing in me screams at me not to. My body wants to touch hers longer. It was so cold. Too cold. Maybe she is under shock and therefore hypothermic. I brush her hand and hand her the water bottle I took from the trunk. Gratefully she takes it and drinks while I reach over the backseats into the trunk and grab the blanket. I lock the car from the inside because I happen to think of it, then I wrap the black cloth around her.
She sits opposite of me, her eyes catch mine again. She closes hers and leans her forehead against mine. We remain silent, my dark eyes also fall shut. She might be enjoying the source of calmness in me, but inside my thoughts and feelings are on a rollercoaster ride. My pulse is speeding, I am so close to her face, but I don't allow myself to touch her. Through the slit of my eyes I look at her thin lips and wonder how they'd feel. We breathe each other's air.
The heavy silence between us almost kills me right now, but I wouldn't move for anything in the world. Then Liv whispers. A single word leaves her lips. A word that in today's society is either used way too less, or so often, that it loses the depth and honesty which define it in its core.
"Thank you."
Nothing more but a whiff, but a storm to me, starting a fire inside of me.
Think of what you'd do if you weren't afraid.
Then do it.
And my hands cup her face and as lightly as I can my lips meet hers. My head explodes and reality seems razor-sharp to me although my eyes are shut. Heat floods my system. Her breath quivers.
She pulls back. My world falls apart, shatters to pieces. I shatter to pieces. I screwed it up. Again. I am shattered. Impaled. Pierced through the heart. I just think one thought: She doesn't feel it. She doesn't feel it. I came too close and inited myself at her beauty, her honesty, her fragility, her flaming, shining character – now I burnt myself and my heart is charred. I know she looks at me and I can't prevent myself from meeting her green eyes. I swallow dryly, lower my gaze again. I want to vanish. Want to turn back time. Want to read her mind.
And then it happens. It, that has never happened before. It, that I am not prepared for. At all. Liv's cold hand cups my cheek and her thumb brushes my skin. She pulls me towards her, faces so close, so close, I breathe her. She presses her lips to mine.
Words are too limited to describe this moment. Not even my feelings can express what I feel. We kiss and my world accelerates and stops at the same time, time is eternally still and speeding fast, the moment freezes yet still burns into my core. The kiss is careful, asking and fragile at first, but then my feelings, my overwhelming find their way into it. I have the basic urge to hold her, never let her go, give her reason to believe I am there.
Closer and tighter our bodies entwine and I swear heaven exists right here, right now. At some point we part because we lack of oxygen. Heavily we breathe each other. I want time to stop.
"You have no idea how long I have been craving to do this", Liv whispers into the dark car and I shiver. I pull over the blanket. My back at the backrest I make Liv lay down in front of me, fitting into my arm. She is so close. And so cold. But she makes me glow, so I share my warmth that she creates in me. We are spooning, hands entwined. Me free hand puts a strand of hair out of her so beautiful face behind her ear. So close.
We spend the night laying like this. Talking quietly, sleeping next to each other. I smell her – pine and dark forest, calm hope are in her. So incredibly close.
I am happy. In this very moment I am happy.
As black becomes blue, as the sun begins to rise and fights the darkness in an orange battlefield, we take off heading for the horizon, for freedom and for life.
