I shook my head and tried to steer us elsewhere.
“He explained to me about Judy, the anniversary, and I understand where both of your thoughts rest on that matter. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t feel open to share yours with me.”
“No, what you don’t understand is that I didn’t fuckin’ want to share that shit with you.”
“I do understand that, Noc,” I said quietly. “I just don’t understand why.”
“You don’t wanna know why.”
“I do.”
“No, Franka, you don’t.”
I took another step toward him, stopped and stressed, “I want everything from you.”
His words were implacable when he replied, “Trust me, you don’t.”
“Please Noc.”
“Let it go.”
I shook my head, took another step and stopped. “I can’t.”
“You can. You won’t.”
“I see your pain,” I whispered.
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice actually snide.
My Noctorno.
Snide.
Regardless of the shock it caused he even had that in him, I persisted.
“You helped me through mine, my love, I want to guide you from yours.”
At that, but a brief moment elapsed before he burst into laughter.
Laughter that held no mirth.
My body locked at the foulness of the sound and the odious feelings it made me feel.
When he stopped, my words dripped the ache I felt inside as I remarked, “You don’t think I can do it. You did it for me, but you don’t think I have it in me to do it for you.”
I knew just how far he’d drifted from me when he had no reaction to the torment in my words, replying unemotionally, “I see you want that Franka and part of me digs that from you. What I do not dig is that you won’t fuckin’ listen when I tell you this is somewhere you can’t go.”
“So you can force me to see my golden soul but you wish me to allow you to live in midnight?” I pushed.
At that, with a sudden violence that was so startling my entire body jumped, and I had to fight cowering when he took his glass and threw it across the kitchen where it crashed against the cupboards on the opposite wall, the glass shattering, the whiskey splattering.
And then came the thunder, the force of it making me wince.
“They took me from her dead body,” Noc roared.
I stood utterly still.
“She was dead before I took my first fuckin’ breath,” he declared.
Oh gods.
Gods.
He was talking about his mother.
“Darling,” I breathed.
“I was born in midnight and it was in the middle of the fuckin’ day I made it into the world,” he bit out. “You think you can take that from me?”
“Noc,” I whispered, edging toward him.
I stopped when he declared, “She never held me. She was dead before I was alive. Dead to give me life. I’m no doctor. I don’t know the research. I don’t know what infants can feel. All I know is, I was a baby and I knew he loved her. Fuck, Franka, my dad loved her so fuckin’ much, it tells me the man he was that he had the courage to give it another go, three times, because with what I felt from the minute I was born I wouldn’t think the man had that in him, that’s how much he loved her. That’s what I felt. I also felt just what he felt that he lost her. From my first breath, I felt his loss and I felt his love for me and that’s all I felt. And then that loss happened again. And then it fucking happened again. And I had to fucking watch.”
“My love—”
“You think you can take that from me?” he clipped.
“I—”
“There are no heroes, Franka.”
I closed my mouth.
“I know that,” he declared. “I learned that. Killed my own fuckin’ mother bein’ born and I prayed to God every damned night Judy was sick, askin’ him to let her win. Begging for that shit. She fought so fuckin’ hard, she deserved it. But it was more. The woman she was, there’s no reason I could get why she’d be forced to take that pain. Why a woman like her would be taken away from us. I didn’t understand what we’d done to deserve that because she sure as fuck didn’t do shit to deserve it. But she didn’t win. And we had to watch. We had to watch her waste away. We had to see her pain. And there was not one fuckin’ thing any of us could do about it.”
He gave me that, shredding me with it.
And then he blasted me with, “You know what makes a hero, babe?”
Slowly, I shook my head.
“What makes a hero is the one that’s left standing when the others are dead. Or the one that gave his life so the others could live. That’s a fuckin’ hero.”
Cautiously, I said, “There are other definitions, Noc.”
“Those are the ones that matter.”
I couldn’t argue that.
“My mother was a hero,” he declared.
Gods, he was killing me.
“My love,” I whispered.
“The way she fought to stay with us, Judy was a hero too.”
Standing in front of him whole, I still felt like I was bleeding.
“That being a hero, Franka, who would want to be a fuckin’ hero?” he demanded.
“You were a wee babe when you were born, darling. You couldn’t have saved your mother.”
His head twitched in disgust. “You think that makes it easier?”
I persevered. “And you were still but a boy even if that boy was growing to a man, and certain illnesses can bring low the greatest of warriors, as evidenced through your Judy.”