Eternally North

  The paramedic moved to the doorway and, giving me a polite nod, closed the doors. The sirens blared and blue lights filled my vision as the ambulance moved carefully up the driveway.

  I looked around, trying to locate someone I knew to try and grasp some idea of what the hell was going on, but all I saw were officials and discarded Christmas decorations thrown on the perfectly landscaped, hilled lawn. With no other avenues to explore, I moved towards the front door.

  Before I could reach it, two policemen came out of the main entrance, struggling with a bloodied and heavily beaten man in handcuffs. He had fair hair and was tall with a stocky build. He looked (at least from what I could make out) to be in his mid-to-late fifties and he was limping on his right foot. He exuded an air of malice; it was practically pulsing around him. I instinctively wrapped my arms around myself as he passed.

  As the police officers struggled to drag the fighting man to the car, he caught sight of me watching and smiled, his mouth full of blood, droplets dripping crimson on his stubbly chin. I felt violated from his grin alone.

  He began to laugh, making me shiver and I backed away. "Well, if it isn't Tudor's bitch!"

  I gasped. He knew me? I was scared now, and in fear I stepped back several more feet as the police seemed to lose their grip and had to wrestle to restrain him. He met my gaze straight on, eyes narrowing. "Now, where have you been, little girl? I've been looking for you everywhere this past week but no-one was home. Pity really, you look positively delectable in person," he licked his lips, lapping on his own blood, causing my skin to crawl.

  My head span and my heart pounded. I wasn’t breathing. He'd been following me? He knew where I lived? Who was he? A stalker? A crazed fan? I couldn't speak through fear. The leer on his face was pure evil. He cocked his head and spat a mouthful of blood at my feet, making me retch.

  He laughed at my reaction and tried to lean forwards. "The denial statement was good, by the way, but I knew it was bullshit. I was here, watching, waiting. I was going to finish what I started years ago before that bastard mistake of mine stopped me, stopped me from what I am entitled to do – she’s mine to play with however I wish. You were going to be the icing on the cake, the guilt would’ve killed him. But hey, there's always next time, and there will be a next time. Make no mistake about that!" he threatened as he was hauled into the back of a police car, the police officer apologising as he walked past.

  As the patrol car pulled away, the man was staring at me out if the window, smiling all the time until they were out of sight, leaving me standing alone in the snow.

  Breathe, Tash. There must be an explanation for all this whacked-out, Stanley Kubrick madness. Don’t vomit, keep it together… Pamela said Tudor needs you.

  My inner monologue was broken by noises coming from inside the mansion. I commanded my feet to head towards the house as fast as I could. Henry, Tudor's brother, and Samantha, his wife, were sitting on the stairs directly in front of the large oak door.

  Samantha was crying hysterically and Henry was as still as a statue, staring at nothing, as pale as a ghost. The door to the left of them was shut, but the crashing and banging noises emanating from behind it were loud and unyielding. I came to a halt, unsure of what to do next.

  Henry noticed me first, shock clear on his face. "Natasha, what are you doing here?"

  Samantha lifted her head and wiped the tears from her face. I flinched as something cracked against the wall on the other side of the door. Henry dragged a hand through his long, shaggy hair. "He's in there, we can't calm him down. I think you had better leave him a while. We can explain everything later."

  “He told you about us.” I said softly. Not a question, but a statement.

  Samantha stood beside me rubbing my arm. “He did. You made him very happy while it lasted.” she delivered with a tight smile. I swallowed the lump in my throat. He had told his family after all.

  “Tash, just go and come back later, please.” Henry pushed once more.

  I shook my head. I knew Tudor needed me, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I was nothing if not stubborn (thank you, Scottish genes!). "I want to see him," I whispered.

  Henry groaned and turned away, sitting back on the stairs. Samantha touched my shoulder lightly. "He's struggling to rein it in, Natasha, it's probably best to wait a while. Tudor had to deal with everything that happened today. Again. It’s too much."

  Still absolutely none the wiser as to what had actually happened, I hugged her quickly before walking towards the door, the three-inch piece of wood that stood between me and whatever was happening on the other side.

  I took a few seconds to work up the nerve, swore quietly, put my shaking hand on the handle and pushed. The door creaked open slowly, noises of anguish amplifying as I stepped through.

  I peeped my head cautiously around the door just as a chair hit the wall to my left. Undeterred, I slid through and carefully shut it behind me. In the centre of the room stood Tudor, my Tude, with his back to me, in a bloodied white T-shirt, ripped so badly that the scratched skin on his back was visible, gashes peppering his beautiful tattoos.

  I inched closer to him as he kicked broken furniture, cushions and other debris around what I assumed was once Boleyn's pink-and-white bedroom. I noticed that the cream carpet had patches of blood in certain areas and the furniture was now mostly in pieces, photos scattered around like confetti.

  He didn’t know I was there.

  "Tudor?" I spoke in a shaky voice, worried at his reaction to my intrusion.

  He stilled, his back muscles bunching, his shoulders high and his breathing erratic. He slowly turned to face me, his upper lip swollen and smeared with blood, a black eye forming on his beautiful face and red welts carved into his cheeks. He turned white and just stood there, watching me in silence.

  I held out my hand, willing him to take my offered comfort. "B-Babes, are... are you okay?" I was moving slowly towards him, hands still outstretched.

  He released a painful cry and practically ran the short distance between us to wrap me tightly in his arms. I began to cry with him as I held his injured body in my arms. I couldn’t even comprehend what he must have been through.

  He was shaking and his head was tucked into the nook between my neck and shoulder. He was crying, crying so hard. I stroked his closely shaven head, trying to soothe him.

  His legs buckled and he collapsed onto his knees, taking me with him, all the time gripping me tight. The fight in him instantly drained away. His hands slid to my waist and he wept – all I could do was hold him close.

  It took ten minutes. Ten minutes to let it all out, ten minutes of holding him tightly in my arms and ten minutes to stop the crying. With a final shudder, he pulled back and lifted his head, his eyes severely bloodshot from all the released emotions and his face all battered and bruised.

  I sat staring at him, trying to control my rage towards the man in the police car who I assumed had hurt him. He tried to read my eyes, searching my face for a sign that I still wanted him, before tentatively leaning forward and kissing me. It was soft, brief and full of need, and this time, I kissed him right back.

  He pulled away, his hand pressed to my cheek as he looked around the room. I followed his gaze with my own, surveying the chaos and destruction. Tudor cleared his throat, his voice cracked and strained. "I need to get out of here."

  "Of course," I whispered, and I stood and took his hand leading him out of the carnage.

  When we were out in the hallway, Samantha and Henry rushed over. Henry wrapped an arm around Tudor's neck and pulled him into his chest. They were both struggling with their emotions and clung onto each other for support.

  Henry pulled back, bracing Tudor in his arms. "Are you okay, little bro?"

  Tudor nodded weakly.

  Henry swallowed and whispered. "Thank you, again. You shouldn’t have to keep dealing with this shit. Somehow it always falls on you."

  Tudor bowed his head once in acknowledgement.

&n
bsp; Samantha moved in and kissed his cheek and then moved to kiss mine. I smiled weakly at her, and Tudor took my hand in his, leading me to a door that led to the basement. “I need to be alone right now with Tash, I… just need some time away from all that,” tilting his head in the direction of Boleyn’s trashed room.

  Henry tapped him on the arm and let us past, and we descended the stairs to Tudor’s basement. It was unlike any basement that I had ever seen – it was practically a palace. It was bigger than most houses and it was decorated with wood and leather. A total man-cave, complete with separate kitchen and living area, but I loved it. In any other circumstances, this would have been a total turn-on, but these were not normal circumstances… These were unprecedented, these were… Well, I wasn’t entirely sure. I was still completely in the dark to exactly what had happened and what it all meant.

  Tudor led me through the dark-wood-and-chrome kitchen and sat us down on a huge black L-shaped couch, never once releasing my hand and never once uttering a single word. I rested my head on his shoulder, giving him the time he needed to talk, or not talk – I wouldn’t push this time. This time it was up to him.

  I honestly didn't know how long we stayed in the same spot, my head on his shoulder, his hands holding both of mine as if they were a lifeline. It was obvious that he needed time to cool down, and I was happy to just be there as a support.

  The sun had begun to set when he shifted and for the first time since we moved downstairs, Tudor relaxed some and settled back against the cushions, tucking me under his arm, desperately close. I looked up at his face and his eyes were closed and tense, like he was battling with the image of something. When he finally spoke, his voice was gravelly from the strain of the day’s events.

  "When I was younger, things were okay at home; at that time we lived in Victoria, BC, that’s where Henry and I were born and raised, and we were a typically normal family. As I grew up, I realised all was not as it seemed, not at all. I first noticed little things, like my mom would sometimes walk funny, like with a limp or a twisted ankle, and then sometimes she would have these bruises on her arms and legs, but I was too young to know what was really going on.

  “I was about eight; Henry, ten, when we walked in from hockey practice to see my father pinning my mother down to the floor and beating her, punching her over and over with his fist while he was practically raping her. We didn't know what to do, we were so young – we didn’t even know what sex was, for Christ’s sake! Henry pushed me back to protect me and tried to pull him off her but my dad just swatted him away like a fly. The man we idolised, our hero, was hurting our mom and we didn’t know how to stop it. It was after that when we left the first time. We lived with our grandparents for a few years in Kelowna, BC, and then one day he showed up again, right out of the blue. We had no idea how he had found us but he said he'd changed, he seemed to have changed and my mom took him back. She wanted us to be a family, for her boys to have a dad.”

  He sucked in a breath, and I slipped my fingers underneath his T-shirt to run my fingers over his stomach to comfort him. I didn’t want to push him. In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined that this was his secret.

  After a couple of minutes, he lifted my chin and kissed me softly on my mouth. I smiled and cuddled back in, and he picked up where he had left off.

  “At first everything was great, he was the perfect father, but then the signs appeared again: the flinching from my mother every time he moved, the bruises in places people wouldn't check and the baseball bat he started using to keep me and Henry in line. We were bigger then, both of us teenagers who trained hard at hockey. I was starting to get into weight-lifting to help with my junior varsity career and I was gaining strength by the day. Henry and I both knew how to handle ourselves, but he had my mother wrapped around his little finger, and if we stepped up to him, she would beg us to stop. He used her to control us. It went on for years and there was nothing we could do.

  “I was fifteen when I found my mom crying on the bathroom floor, holding something in her hand – a pregnancy test. My father was at work. She was pregnant with Bee and that was the day we left for good. We got in the car, without any of our possessions, and moved to Vancouver and never looked back.

  “Years went by and we heard nothing from him, life became normal again and the fear of him turning up went away. Bee didn't know much about Dad, we told her he had left us when she was a baby and, with two big brothers around helping Mom raise her, she didn't want for anything. She was happy, at least for a while.”

  He began shaking again. I sat up and took his face in my hands. “Tudor you don’t need to keep going, it’s okay,” I reassured and I moved in to kiss his forehead.

  He pulled away. “No, I want you to know, I need you to know. No more secrets, Sunshine. Never again.”

  I sat back and he stared off, not looking at anything in particular, eyes unfocused. “A few years back, I got my big break – you know how, I told you before – and I moved to LA to be closer to the studios. I’d been there a few months when I got a call from Henry saying that Dad had been back in touch. It just brought all these fears and feelings back, and I didn’t know how to deal with this new career and the fact that… that… that monster was trying to weasel his way back in our lives after everything he’d put us through.

  “In LA, if you’re known, everything is available to you, so I turned to alcohol and tried to drink my problems away. You know the drill: I slept around and drank for nearly a year before my mom called and told me to stop being stupid and to come home. So I did. My dad had stopped calling, finally getting the message that he wasn’t welcome, and things were looking better again.”

  He rubbed his hand across his face and his eyes once again welled up with tears. I used my thumb to rub them away and waited for him to finish the story.

  “Bee was twelve when he showed up. He knocked on the front door, as brazen as all hell, like he had every right to be there. She answered and, having never seen him before, not even a picture, let him in. He claimed he was a family friend. I arrived home half an hour later, I’d forgotten a script that I was supposed to be reading for producers in downtown Vancouver, and walked in to find my father assaulting my baby sister on the living room floor. He didn't manage to rape her, but if I hadn't got there when I did...”

  He let out a strangled moan and I held him tighter in my arms.

  He tucked his face into my hair. “I saw red, Tash. I pulled him off her and began laying into him; I was well into bodybuilding by then and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds and could have easily beaten him to a pulp. It wasn't long before Henry came home and dragged me off him and in all the commotion, the bastard managed to get away. The police have been searching for him for over three years. God knows where he was hidden but could we hell find him. Bee took it badly and was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder; she struggled to go out of the house and would get night terrors and such high anxiety that she had to be sedated on more than one occasion. I couldn’t believe it was happening. We spent over a year trying to make her better. Half the problem was that he was still out there and she just couldn’t move on. The doctors advised a change of scenery. I wanted to help her, so we moved here, the last place anyone would expect and hopefully the last place he would think to come looking.

  “From that moment on, I purposely fell off the radar. I kept working on my films but all social engagements and interviews were cancelled. I had the worst job in the world for coping with this type of situation, any social media post or gossip site could give away where we lived at any moment. There are thousands of pages out there solely about me and several of them only exist to track my every move. It’s beyond fucked up to have fans acting as a personal GPS, especially when you have a father who is trying everything to seek you out and destroy your family. Anyway, the money from my films has helped us buy the best lawyers, private eyes and security, but my job has also made it easy for him to threaten us too.

  “On m
ovie sets, or when I’ve been on location – all public knowledge of course – he would send notes through the runners telling me that he would find us and finish what he started and that he blamed me for everything, for stopping him and his right to have his own daughter. My fault! All the police and specialists on the case warned me about involving other people and to not risk telling anyone but family about our situation, and I didn’t for years.

  “He was spotted a few times around Canada, but he always managed to evade the police just in time. The notes became more threatening as time went on and he made it clear that if he got the chance he would ruin my life, in any and every way that he could. He described explicitly what he would do to my girlfriend if I ever I got one, if I loved anyone as much as he ‘loved’ Bee – he’s a sick bastard! I knew I could never get into a relationship until he was caught. I didn’t want to, I honestly thought that relationships just seemed to destroy people, rip them apart.”

  He pulled back and made me look into his eyes before letting out a snort of light laughter. “And then you came along and blindsided me. When you barreled into the restaurant that night I couldn’t look away. I was hooked from the get-go. I fought our attraction for so long, put you through hell and never once told you why. In the end, I was weak and selfish and I couldn't not have you in my life. That coffee date with Gage pushed me over the edge.

  “I told my mother and brother about what was happening, what I was resisting and they told me that I shouldn't – no – couldn't live like that: miserable and on my own forever because of him, because then he would win. So I gave in, and you completely changed my life, I finally lowered my guard to someone.”

  I smiled shyly at him, and he smiled softly in return, before kissing me once more. His face fell when he ended the kiss.

  “About a week before you left for Christmas, my agent received an email with your picture attached. It was from him; you were coming home from school. I nearly had a heart attack when I realised he'd found us again, found out about you, and right after things had been going so well for us. I felt like we had barely been given a chance to make it work…” Tudor trailed off.