Never Say I Want You

by Pennza, Amy

  Now the pounding was in her head. Or maybe it was just the music. Across the restaurant, someone laughed—a high-pitched shriek that echoed through her skull.

  “Stop being a coward, Catalina, and tell me what happened.”

  Suddenly, everything was too much. She had to get…somewhere. Her heart raced, and a cold, prickling sweat rushed up her back.

  Juan paled. He reached for her. “Catalina?”

  She stood. Too fast—her chair tumbled back. Diners at the next table stared, forks suspended in the air. The mariachis continued playing. At another table, a man half rose, concern etched on his face.

  Juan rose, too. The anger was gone, replaced with pain.

  Her fault. It was always her fault.

  “I’m…” Saliva pooled in her mouth. Nausea burned her throat. “I’ve got to go.” Then she was off the patio and running toward the darkened beach, joyful music filling the air behind her.

  * * *

  He pushed her too hard.

  Juan’s heart tried to burst from his chest as he raced after Catalina, his stupid shoes making him clumsy in the sand. She was a dark blur in the distance, her blue dress hiked up to her calves, her hair like a black flag behind her as she ran.

  Where the hell was she going?

  Away from me. The answer came as fast as the question.

  She didn’t have a destination. She just wanted to escape him. At last. Finally. He pushed her one time too many, and she finally snapped.

  He’d meant to tell her he loved her. That she could live anywhere she wanted—even on the other side of the country if it made her feel better. He planned to annul their marriage, too, although he’d hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  Like always, though, he garbled the message.

  Ahead, she continued sprinting down the sand. At some point, she must have lost her shoes. It was the only way she could move so fast. He stopped, bent, and jerked his off. Then he took off again, kicking up sand as he put on a burst of speed.

  Within seconds, he caught up to her. “Catalina!”

  She stopped and whirled, her chest heaving. Her hair was a wild tangle around her face, and two bright spots of color stained her cheeks. She gripped the blue dress in two tight fists, exposing sand-covered calves. “Leave me alone, Juan!”

  “I can’t.” Mindful of her capoeira training, he kept his distance.

  She dashed at her cheeks, and for the first time he noticed the tears running down her face. “I’m not going back with you!”

  “I know, baby. Stop crying. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  That seemed to shock her, because she caught her breath. “You won’t?”

  Shame. Utter shame crashed over him like the sky just collapsed on his fucking head. He made his voice as gentle as he could. “I won’t, princesa. Never again, I promise.”

  Her face crumpled, making fresh alarm spike his veins. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

  “I won’t anymore. Not if you don’t want me to.”

  She released her dress, and the wet material dropped over her feet. Behind her, the waves crashed onto the shore. In her blue dress, with her hair damp and spilling around her shoulders, she looked like some kind of ocean goddess just emerged from the sea.

  They faced each other, the hotel looming behind them, its lights sparkling here and there along the water. The faint sounds of the mariachi band drifted down the beach.

  Catalina stared at him, her expression so heartbreaking he took a step toward her.

  “Don’t,” she said, a sob in her voice, and he froze. “Don’t make this harder.”

  The hair on his nape lifted. An odd feeling crept over him. “What’s hard, sweetheart?”

  Her reply was so soft, he almost didn’t catch it. “Letting you go.”

  “You don’t have to let me go, Catalina. I’m right here.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no chance for us. Why can’t you understand?” She sounded genuinely frustrated, like this was an argument she’d made over and over again, and now she was exhausted from the struggle.

  “Because I love you,” he said.

  More tears spilled down her cheeks. Jesus, she was killing him. He dared a step toward her. “I love you, Catalina. I’ll never stop loving you.” Another step. “Even if you say you don’t want me, I’ll still love you.” Now he was choking up. “I’d do—” He gulped. “I’d do anything for you.”

  “Anything?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Anything.”

  A curious light entered her eyes. “If I ask you to stand there and listen, and then let me walk away, you’d do that?”

  The odd feeling intensified. Like any lawyer, he knew better than to agree to a contract he’d never seen. But this was Catalina, not some document in his office. Whatever she had to say, it was important enough for her to lay down conditions.

  He took a deep breath. “I’ll listen to anything you want to tell me.”

  “And you won’t follow me. Swear it.”

  “Cat—”

  “Swear!” She balled her hands into fists. “Or we’re finished here.”

  God, he could never be finished with her. He gritted his teeth, certain he was stepping over the edge of a cliff he could never climb up again.

  But that was love, wasn’t it. Every once in a while, you had to jump.

  “I swear.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Tears leaked from under her lids, and she brushed them away.

  He stood on the beach, his feet sinking into the sand, helpless.

  Helpless.

  When she opened her eyes, they were almost…vacant. And when she spoke, it was rote, as if she recited a story that happened to someone else.

  “My first year of college, a few girls from the dorm invited me to a party. I didn’t want to go…” She gave her head a small shake. “The details don’t matter.”

  He listened, a growing sense of unease sliding down his spine. The wind picked up, tugging at his hair and clothes.

  “There was a guy there, a friend of a friend. He was an English composition major, too, so we talked. He asked about my engagement ring.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “He seemed unusually interested in my wedding plans. For a man, anyway. He brought me a drink.”

  Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god. Juan’s mouth went dry, his thoughts a spin cycle of mounting despair.

  Catalina continued. “It was getting late, so I decided to leave. But it was like my body wasn’t responding to my brain. Nothing worked right, or as fast as I wanted it to. I got separated from my friends, and then I was so tired. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.” Her voice became almost robotic. “Then I woke up in my own bed. It was like someone erased several hours from my memory. I couldn’t remember leaving the party or how I got home. How I got undressed. But I knew something was different. Wrong.”

  Juan couldn’t breathe. He wanted to cry and scream and beg her to stop—all at once. But he forced himself to be still, to say nothing. Because she deserved to be heard.

  “He recorded it,” Catalina said. “All of it.” She gulped, and her hands flexed, like she needed to grasp something but only found air. “It was a game to him, I think. He sent me the file a few days later. In an email.” She gave a short, gasping laugh. “It had his signature line and everything, like we were business colleagues. I watched a few minutes, and then I couldn’t…”

  Juan’s hands clenched as white-hot fury sizzled through his blood. He welcomed the anger. It burned away the pain and despair, leaving a sort of clarity.

  But now Catalina looked at him, some of the emptiness gone from her eyes. “I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t violent. I might not have even known it happened, if not for the recording. I couldn’t go to the police.”

  Why not? He bit back the demand before he could say it. There were myriad reasons why rape victims didn’t report their assaults, not the least of which was the fear that no one would believe them,
or that someone would shift the blame back to them. He’d seen cops do it over and over again.

  He stuffed his anger down so his voice was gentle when he asked, “Were you worried the police wouldn’t help you?”

  “How could they? The recording showed me talking and responding. I wasn’t myself, but another person watching wouldn’t know that.” Deep lines appeared between her brows, and she sounded totally forlorn when she said, “I still don’t understand how I could have gone along with everything he said, when I don’t remember any of it.”

  Juan did. Several drugs produced that effect. “It was probably midazolam or gamma—”

  “Gamma hydroxybutyrate, I know. Rafe told me.”

  Shock hit Juan so hard, it was like someone blew a hole through his chest. Then pain swept in and filled it. “You told Rafe?” The “and not me?” was a ghostly bookend.

  She knew that hurt him. The knowledge was there in her eyes. “I couldn’t go home. Don’t you understand? Your mother had already been through so much. And there was always the chance I would see you. There was nowhere else to go.”

  Memories crashed over Juan. The two of them standing in the airport in Caracas. He’d told her she belonged to him. Had threatened to spank her if she didn’t leave with him.

  All while she’d been trying to get away from her rapist.

  “I sold my ring to pay for the plane ticket,” she said, regret lacing her voice. “I asked Rafe to kill him.”

  Juan jerked. “Did he?” His voice came out rusty, like he hadn’t used it in a long, long time.

  “No.” The faintest smile touched her mouth. “He said he’d teach me how to do it, that revenge is most satisfying when it’s personal. So he showed me how to defend myself, and how to fight.”

  Capoeira. Juan’s fury reignited. Rafe had taught her martial arts and then shipped her back to Texas? To take on a dangerous man by herself?

  “I didn’t do it,” she said, and her generous mouth flattened to a bitter line. “As it turned out, I didn’t need to. His drinking caught up with him, and he died in a car accident a couple months after…” She took a deep breath. “After it happened.”

  Waves lapped around Juan’s feet, soaking his pant legs. Anger thrummed in his veins and pushed against his chest, threatening to burst forth. He wrestled it back. Later, he could be angry, when he was alone and free to punch a fucking hole in the wall because he couldn’t punch the asshole who violated her. Right now, he needed to be calm.

  For her.

  When she spoke again, it was slow and measured, like she was weighing and considering each word as she said it. “I think I went crazy for a while. I couldn’t go back to school, and I couldn’t move home. I needed a job, but nothing paid enough for me to live on my own. I was driving around one day, miserable after hours of filling out applications, and I saw a help wanted sign on a strip club marquee. It was like this jolt of electricity went through me. I’d been numb until that moment, but it’s like that sign woke me up. So I went inside and watched. It probably sounds stupid, but those women had this…power.” She lifted her chin, as if daring him to judge her. “Stripping gave me power. If men wanted to use my body, I was going to make them pay for the privilege. I hated all of them. I was happy to see them on the ground, wishing for something they couldn’t have.”

  It didn’t sound stupid, and he sure as hell didn’t judge her for it. He didn’t take on too many sexual assault defense cases, but he’d handled more than his share of rape trials as a prosecutor. Assault victims coped in a variety of ways. Some felt detached from their body in the aftermath, like they were wearing another person’s skin and needed to take it off. It wasn’t so much of a stretch to imagine how stripping could offer a sort of relief.

  Catalina’s mouth twisted. “Of course, I didn’t expect the police to raid the place. Or for you to eventually show up and get me fired.”

  “I did that because of the raid. I got word you’d been arrested and—”

  “It’s fine.” She waved it off. “I wouldn’t have stayed there much longer, anyway. Too many of the girls did drugs, and I was definitely staying away from that. But staying away didn’t really help. Every time the police came, they arrested everyone first and asked questions later.”

  That was standard operating procedure for most officers he knew. A good number of his clients got swept up in stings simply by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “One of the girls from the club was an escort on the side,” Catalina said. “She showed me how to put up a site and get clients.” Her eyes softened. “I hated them, too, at first, but being an escort is different than stripping. You spend a lot more time with people. You talk to them, get to know them. I heard the same sad stories over and over and…” She lifted her shoulders—a quick gesture of defeat that was somehow endearing. “I stopped hating.”

  He wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms and let her know everything was all right. That they’d get through this together. But she’d left something out. There was an unanswered question burning in his heart. It had been there so long he was almost used to the pain.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Fresh tears filled her eyes. “Because you would have married me anyway.”

  He had to repeat that in his mind, just to be certain he heard her correctly. “Of course I would have. Nothing has changed.”

  “Yes, it has!” The sudden outburst made him jump, and it drowned out the sound of the crashing waves. She took a step toward him, her tear-stained face shiny in the hotel’s lights. “I’m not the girl I was eight years ago, Juan. I’ll never be the same.”

  A knife slashed across his heart. She thought he wouldn’t want her anymore? Like she was damaged goods? God, he was going to fuck this up. He was going to say all the wrong things but, dammit, he couldn’t—he refused—to let her think that.

  He closed the distance between them, standing so near he could see the pulse flutter in her neck. “Catalina, you asked me to listen. Now listen to me. Please. I love you. We can work through this together.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “We can’t.”

  At last, he dared to touch her. He grasped her upper arms, holding her in a gentle grip. “We can, sweetheart. We can fix it—”

  “No.” She shrugged him off and stepped back. When he tried to follow, she held up a palm, holding him at bay. “I knew you would say that,” she said. “I knew it. You think I’m broken, and you need to fix me, or work on me, or make me all better.” More tears raced down her cheeks, and it was like someone reached inside him and ripped his guts out. She slapped her hand against her chest. “But this is who I am now, Juan. I’ve spent eight years taking my clothes off for men I don’t love.”

  “But you’re not doing that anymore.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” She flung her arms to her sides, frustration stamped all over her face. Her voice rose. “This is part of me now. I ran away because it shouldn’t be part of you, too.”

  He was losing her. He was losing her all over again. Panic made him angry, careless. “Don’t do this, Catalina. Don’t you fucking do this.”

  But she backed up, shaking her head. “I tried so hard to give you the life you deserved. I kept running, but you just wouldn’t stop coming after me. Now you know the truth.”

  “Don’t.” He advanced on her, stepping into the impressions her feet had left in the sand.

  Still retreating, she hiked her skirt up, pulling the sodden material above her calves. Her blue eyes swam with tears. “You said you wouldn’t follow me. You promised.”

  Oh god, she was holding him to that? He halted, then stretched out his hand. “Please don’t do this. Don’t give up on us like this.”

  She stopped, and relief almost buckled his knees. Then she drew herself up. Tears still streaked her face, but her voice was steady. “It won’t work between us. You have to trust me. You’d spend the rest of our lives trying to fix me, and I’d grow to resent it.”
<
br />   No. No, no, no, no.

  “Eventually,” she said, her eyes as dark as the sea beside her, “you would resent me, too.”

  His lungs burned. Or maybe that was his throat. Words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t make his vocal cords work. He didn’t know what to say to keep her here.

  Her gaze moved over his face, as if she was trying to memorize it for later. “Goodbye, Juan. If you love me, keep your word. Don’t follow me off this beach.” She gave him one last look, then turned and walked away.

  He sank to his knees. The tide rushed in, filling her footprints with water, pulling at the edges and sweeping them out to sea.

  Almost as if she’d never been there at all.

  20

  How long Juan knelt on the beach, he couldn’t say. An hour. The whole night. Who cared? He stared, unseeing, in the direction Catalina had gone. Water rushed over his thighs, ruining his pants. It didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered anymore.

  “Mijo?”

  At first, the soft voice was so faint, he was sure it came from his mind. Great, now he was hearing things.

  But then something touched his shoulder. He looked up.

  An older woman stood at his side. One of the ladies from the group taking selfies at the restaurant. A pair of strappy kitten heels dangled at her side. Her hair was a deep, velvet black—obviously dyed—and her makeup was flawless, giving her more than a passing resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor in her later years.

  She glanced at the trail of Catalina’s footsteps, now mostly washed away by the water. “She left you?” the woman asked in Spanish. “Your wife?”

  He replied in the same language. “She doesn’t think we can be together.”

  The woman pursed her lips, a disapproving look in her eye. “Silly girl, to walk away from a man like you.” Her Spanish was as rich and colorful as her makeup, with the musical undercurrent of Colombia.

  “Someone hurt her a long time ago.” In the back of his mind, he wasn’t sure why he was sharing this with a stranger. Still, he kept going. “She wants me to move on without her.”