Free Tomahawk by Erica Hale

her pixie haircut and shouted.  "I want to kill him."
    "Do you actually think that I am going to let you commit murder?  You're just angry and hurt."  I could see it in her eyes, the pain.  It was the same look she gave me when she pulled out of my driveway five years ago.  I knew that I could never give her anything that she wanted.  "Let me handle this.  I will make sure that he will never hurt you or another person ever. Just trust me."
    "Trust you?  I could never trust you.  You...you broke that part in me."  She looked back at the window.  "I allowed you to."
    There it was. She finally said it to me.  "Tonya, please. I know that I messed up but if you only knew why.  Why I had to break things off. I never meant to hurt you."
    "You thought that I didn't love you?  I gave you everything!" she stalked towards me.  "I gave up a good job in Atlanta.  I gave my body and my heart to you, because I loved you so much.  You were the one that turned away from me on whim, not me."
    Giving me a hard glare.  "Tonya, I know that my sorry is nothing to you--"
    "You’re right.  You told Ryan and Drew not to talk to me? Didn't you?"  My silence was her answer.  "I thought so. You couldn't just break off the relationship. You had to leave me completely alone.  And now you want me to trust you?  You are the last person on this earth that I ever wanted to see again in my life, God knows if I wasn't in this position--"
    "Please," I whispered reaching out to her.
    "I would tell you to go straight to hell." 
    My hand dropped back down to my side.
    Hopping back to the window, she continued to stare. I took a deep breath. "Tonya, we are going to have to work together if we are going to get through this. I know that you hear me."  Tonya didn't even respond.  "Can you just please answer me.  Please."
    "There is no 'we.' Just Tonya and you.  I have to work through this.  Once this guy is found and I kill him. I think that I will try to get a teaching job somewhere in Baltimore."
    "Never took you as a runner."
    "Never took you as a pusher either."
    "Touché."
    Tonya's shoulders slumped.  "Don't think that I will be able to take my kids out on recess and watch them playing on the spot where I was found.  Just too ugly, you know?  I will roll over some vacation time, then I'm going to start looking."
    "Your students are going to miss you."  I'm going to miss you.
    "I'll miss them too. It’s just for the best I think.  Too many memories here."  She looked back at me and I knew that she was talking about us.
    "Yeah...I know what you mean."  I couldn't stop looking at her.  My heart was going through a gambit of contradictions.  How can you lose something without ever really letting go?  Everything that I ever wanted was right in the room with me, but I could never touch it--touch her.
    "Can you stop?”  She woke me out of my pity party.  "Can you stop staring at me?"  She rubbed her foot on her calf.
    "Right now, no. I can't stop looking at you.  I don't know if I want to stop."  I drew closer to her she took a quick glance around the room to find an escape route.  "Just let me look at you.  Give me that."
    With her good arm she shoved me back, but like the moon pulls the tide I still came closer.  "You don't deserve me."  She put her head down.
    "I know.  I never did and I never will.  I was never the man that you needed, but you have always been the woman that I've wanted.  Please."  I put my hand out to her. Tonya looked at my hand then to me and turned her back and faced the window.
    "I think I want to lie down now. You can leave."
    With great will, I turned and put one foot in front of the other. "I'll be right out here."  The soft creak of the door almost drowned out her tender crying.
    With one foot out the door and my hand on the knob, I turned around. She put her hands to her face and continued to cry.  It reminded me of the time when one of her students was killed over Spring Break.