The Pain in Loving You

by Steiner, Kandi

  “You really want to go see him tonight, don’t you?”

  I nodded, swallowing a sandpaper-covered cotton ball as he leaned even closer. He was squeezing my wrist with enough force to make my nerves jump to life. Something was wrong. And I realized at that very moment, I was scared of my step-dad.

  “Well, I can let you go and not tell your mother,” he said, and though those words should have brought me relief, they only made me shake in his grip. His next sentence proved my fear to be warranted. “But you’ll have to do something for me.”

  He grinned wider, licking his bottom lip as his eyes fell to mine. Bile rose in my throat and I couldn’t hide the horror that quickly appeared on my face. “Oh my God, Dale.” I tried to shove him away, but he only grabbed my other wrist, and now he had both of them in a tight grip. My heart pounded in my ears. He was serious. Oh God, he was serious.

  A mixture of fear and disgust rolled through me and I jerked my arms with as much force as I could, but it barely fazed him. My muscles were exhausted, and Dale was stronger. It didn’t take me long to realize the sickening implication behind those two facts.

  “Dale, please, let me go,” I cried, tugging my arms again. He shoved me back hard against the door, knocking the wind from my chest. Wide-eyed and shaking, I flexed my knee forward and connected with his groin. Dale coughed and bent forward, but kept his grip on my wrists. I squirmed against his grasp, trying to wriggle free as he strained to catch his breath again. But I was trapped. And when he lifted his head again, his dark eyes were venomous. He released one of my wrists long enough to rear back and slap my face.

  The force hurled me to the ground and I hit the hardwood floor with a smack. Groaning, I grabbed my head between my hands, trying to stop my vision from spinning. Pain echoed through my skull as I tried to focus on the legs of our coffee table across the room. I blinked over and over, but the room kept sliding quickly from the left to the right in my vision. I squeezed my eyes tight, willing my head to settle, praying the dizziness would pass.

  Dale dropped down on top of me, pinning my wrists above my head. My chest was tight, my breaths labored. I felt the panic setting in and I couldn’t think straight. Shaking my head wildly, I thrashed against his grip, my eyes wide, vision still blurred.

  “Dale! Stop! Please!” I screamed for Mom, but that only made him laugh. He knew as well as I did that she was passed out and not even my screaming was going to wake her. When a sickening snarl curled on his lip, I realized this was how he liked it. He wanted me to fight. He wanted me to struggle.

  I swallowed back the acid rising in my throat, squeezing my eyes tight again. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.

  “God, you smell so good,” Dale whispered, inhaling a deep breath against my neck. I squeezed my eyes tighter as hot tears leaked out of each one. I focused on them as they seared a trail from my cheeks to my ears. When I felt Dale fidgeting with the spandex band of his sweatpants, my eyes snapped open.

  I bucked against him, thrashing, kicking, screaming, crying. A rush of adrenaline had sparked to life and I tried so hard to help it catch fire. I tried to head butt him, to knee him again, but every attempt was futile. My muscles wouldn’t cooperate, and Dale wouldn’t budge.

  “Dale,” I groaned, tears streaming, throat aching. “God, please. Please stop. Please. Please.” I said the word over and over, praying to his humanity or God or whoever would listen first.

  “Shhh,” he whispered, touching his finger to my lips as his other hand still held my wrists firmly in place. I shook my head against the touch. “Just relax.”

  I choked on a sob, writhing beneath him. My heart was pounding in my ears. It was beating so fast. Too fast. I was going to pass out. I was sure of it.

  My eyes fluttered open, the beat growing louder and louder in my ears. Dale was still saying something, but I couldn’t make it out anymore. Everything was muted, vision still like a dream, or rather a nightmare. I simply stared up at the chandelier, watching it shimmer and glitter like the horrific scene just beneath it weren’t real. Like I wasn’t real. Like I didn’t exist.

  Everything was in slow motion. Time was morphing. Inhale. Exhale. Dale’s hand slid up my inner thigh and two more tears slid down to join the puddles forming in my ears. A cry left my lips, but I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t smell or feel or taste. I only saw through blurred, distorted vision. The chandelier. The chandelier was all that existed.

  Something broke the edges of my vision, but still, no sound came. There was commotion, muffled voices and screams pierced through the barrier. I blinked. Dale was off me. I blinked again. Still the chandelier. I blinked once more.

  Rhodes.

  All of my senses came rushing back at once.

  I gasped, bolting upright as the breath hit my lungs. Eyes wide, I clawed at Rhodes as he lifted me into him. He wrapped his arms around me. He was kissing my hair. He was saying something. What was he saying? Nothing made sense. My head. I reached up, fingering a tender spot on the back of my skull. My hand was wet. Blood.

  Dale was on the ground. A woman stood over him. She had a gun. Who was she?

  Dale’s laugh was the first sound to truly register. It broke through the fog, and it was as if I were hearing for the first time.

  “You,” he seethed. “Well, well. Look who’s risen from the dead!” His mouth was bleeding, staining his teeth as he smiled up at us. The woman still had the gun trained on him. All I could see was the back of her head. She had short brown hair and a dove tattoo on the back of her neck.

  “You would love me to be dead, wouldn’t you?” Her voice was sweet, but firm. Her hands shook just slightly as she adjusted her grip on the gun.

  Dale laughed again. “You going to shoot me, sweetheart? Go ahead. I’d just love to see your pretty little ass thrown in jail.”

  “Lana, don’t,” Rhodes warned as the woman’s finger wavered on the trigger. I gasped.

  “Lana?”

  Her eyes flicked to mine, but all I saw was Rhodes. She looked just like him. Same green eyes, same strong jaw, same bent brow. Eying Rhodes’ arms around me for just a moment, she snapped her attention back to Dale.

  “As much as I’d love to be the one to kill you, I’d rather see you rot in prison.”

  Dale laughed harder and Rhodes lurched forward. Lana held out one arm to stop him. I knew more than anyone that he could have easily plowed through her, but he didn’t.

  “I don’t know what you don’t get about this situation, sweetheart. I’m Dale Poxton. This is Poxton Beach. I own this fucking town.”

  “I’ve been gathering witnesses. I have fourteen girls willing to testify against you.”

  “And I’ve got three highly-respected doctors who will diagnose every single one of them with some form of mental instability,” he argued, not even fazed in the slightest. He lifted himself from the ground, still sitting but leaning back against the wall. “It’s my word against yours. And theirs. Sexual assault is one of the hardest crimes to prove, baby, and let me assure you, I am the only one who comes out a winner in the end.”

  I watched as Lana’s face crumbled. Rhodes lurched forward again.

  “You mother fucking son of a bitch!” Lana didn’t stop him this time and I watched as his fist connected with Dale’s jaw. His face flew to the left with a loud crack, blood spurting from his mouth and painting the wall behind him.

  “It’s okay,” Lana tried to soothe Rhodes, but she didn’t seem sure herself. “Phil will know what to do. We have the witnesses. We can do this.”

  “Who the fuck is Phil?” Dale asked.

  “Not every cop on your squad is crooked,” Rhodes spat at him. His eyes connected with mine and recognition hit. Officer Martino.

  Dale shook his head, thumbing the fresh wound on his lower lip and chuckling at the blood. “Again. No evidence.” He shook his head, still smiling. “I knew you were still out there. One by one, girls I had an eye on for so long started disappearing.
Moving away. None of them went to the cops but I knew something was going on. And I just had a feeling it was you.” His eyes were so dark, so venomous. “You drove me to drink pretty hard this summer, little girl. But let me just remind you, you’ve got one cop and fifteen mentally unstable girls against a man whose family has owned this town since it was founded. Who do you think comes out on top, baby cakes?”

  I cringed at his pet name for Lana. She fired off something else, but I didn’t hear it, because an idea of my own set my heart racing again. Thumbing through the settings on my watch, I ended the voice recording and used my finger to slide the playback option. When I hit play, the yelling in the room ceased.

  “It’s just amazing. You were always pretty, but he made you…” A rustling noise. “Let’s just say I can see why he was so quick to claim you as his own.”

  I shivered at the replay and slid the playback further. Rhodes’ eyes were wild as recognition hit. He heard what Dale had said to me and he layed into him again, his fist rearing back before connecting again and again, but I screamed at him to stop.

  “Just wait!” I hit play again. Dale was now bleeding from one eye, too.

  “I’ve been gathering witnesses. I have fourteen girls willing to testify against you.”

  “And I’ve got three highly-respected doctors who will diagnose every single one of them with some form of mental instability. It’s my word against yours. And theirs. Sexual assault is one of the hardest crimes to prove, baby, and let me assure you, I am the only one who comes out a winner in the end.”

  Dale’s voice was soft, but I could still make it out. My nose flared as I held the watch higher. “Let’s see you try to refute that in court.”

  Lana’s eyes glossed over, a smile spreading on her face. Red and blue lights broke through the dark foyer and sirens surrounded us. I watched the lights play off the horrified look on Dale’s face as cops burst through our front door that had already been broken down.

  “Oh my God!” My mom’s voice rang from the stairs. She flew down them, hugging her nightgown tightly to her body, her bright blonde hair in disarray. “What the hell is going on?!”

  “Dale Poxton, you’re under arrest for the sexual assault of Lana Rhodes,” an officer said as he forced cuffs on Dale’s wrists. Dale laughed at him, but the cop was clearly not amused as he continued reading his Miranda Rights. Lana eyed him with disbelief just as Officer Martino slid up beside her. She jumped into his arms, hugging him tight.

  “I don’t understand,” she breathed, pulling back to face him.

  “What, you think I’m the only good cop in the Poxton Beach Police Department?” He smiled crookedly at her and she gazed up at him like he was her hero. I realized that for all I knew, he might have been.

  “What are you doing? Let him go!” My mom chased after the cops as they hauled Dale out of the house, still reading his rights along the way. We all followed them outside, though Rhodes had to support me as we walked. I was shaking so violently I couldn’t stand on my own.

  The scene in the yard was so surreal. I should have been focused on Rhodes’ arms around me or Lana’s face as she smiled through the tears of happiness in her eyes. I should have ran to my mom to explain what happened, except I didn’t really know myself. I wish I remembered what it felt like to be safe again in that moment, but I don’t.

  I remember the lights.

  I remember I wanted to photograph them, the way the red and blue splashed across his cold, emotionless face. But I knew even if my feet could move from the place where they had cemented themselves to the ground and I could run for my camera, I wouldn’t be able to capture that moment. There was no shutter speed, no lens, no lighting technique that could properly encapsulate everything I felt as I stared into his eyes. I had trusted him, I had loved him, and even though my body had changed that summer, he’d made sure to help me hold on to who I was inside regardless of how the exterior altered.

  But then everything changed.

  He stole my innocence. He scarred my heart. He took everything I thought I knew about my life and fast-pitched it out the window, shattering the glass that held my world together in the process.

  I remember the lights.

  The passionate, desperate, hot strikes of red. The harsh, cruel, icy bolts of blue.

  They symbolized everything I endured that summer.

  And everything I would never face again.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as if it were the lights that had attacked me and not Dale. Rhodes pulled me closer and I buried my face into his chest.

  “I trusted him,” I choked out.

  “I know you did, Bug.” He ran his rough hands through my hair, trying but failing to soothe me.

  “It hurts,” I groaned, clutching at my heart through the thin fabric of my tank top. My chest burned, like acid was slowly leaking between my ribs. Fresh tears fell in lines down my cheeks in the same course as those before them. “It physically hurts. So bad. Why does it hurt?”

  Rhodes sighed, holding me tighter. He held me as close to him as he could, shielding me from Dale, from the lights, from the pain. “It’s weight,” he said, kissing my hair. And that’s when I felt it — all of it — all at once. “This is your weight.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  IT TOOK HOURS TO file the police reports and get medically cleared. I had a pretty nasty gash on my head from hitting the floor when Dale smacked me, but other than that, I was just “shaken up,” at least that’s what the paramedic said. It seemed too simple to describe how I felt in that moment, but I was just thankful Rhodes got there when he did. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t shown up.

  I didn’t know what time it was when our yard finally cleared of all the cop cars. Our neighbors were still lingering in their lawns or behind their windows, phones glued to their ears, no doubt spreading gossip through the town about Dale Poxton being tossed in the back of a police car. When the last car other than Officer Martino’s pulled away, it was just him, Rhodes, Lana, Mom and I left. We all stared at each other, no one moving, no one really knowing what to do next.

  “I think we should talk,” Lana finally said, clearing her throat. “Can we?” She motioned toward the house and I nodded, leading us all inside.

  Mom was in a zombie sort of state, her hair wild and her eyes heavy, but she brewed up a pot of coffee for all of us as we gathered around the kitchen island. Rhodes took the bar stool next to mine and pulled me close, resting his hand on my leg. He hadn’t stopped touching me since Dale was hauled off. I was thankful. It seemed his touch was the only thing keeping me from losing myself.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” Lana tried, looking to Officer Martino for help. He smiled encouragingly and rubbed her lower back.

  “Why did you leave?” Rhodes asked. His lips were pressed together, his jaw tense, but his eyes were bright green and soft. I was so confused, so lost, but I couldn’t even imagine what was going through his head. His sister, who he assumed was dead just a few hours before, was now standing in my kitchen with us.

  Lana sighed, twisting her short brown hair around her fingers before letting it spring back into shape. “I can’t start there. It goes back further than that.”

  “So start from the beginning.”

  Lana took a moment, a pondering look on her face. It was as if she were racking her brain for the right words to say, or maybe she was pulling a memory from an ocean so deep she thought she’d never have to see it again. I sipped my coffee and eyed my mom as we waited. I wondered how she was feeling, and even though we were on weird terms, I found myself wanting to hug her.

  “When I turned eighteen, I started interning at the Poxton Beach Law Firm. I wanted to go to law school, but it was going to take me a few years of waitressing to get enough cash saved up to even think of applying. I thought interning would be the best way to stay relevant in that down time, and lucky for me, a spot had just opened up.” She said lucky sarcastically, and I knew if s
he could go back now, she wouldn’t have applied at all.

  “I knew Dale was on the board, obviously, being that he owns the firm, but I didn’t realize that he was a lawyer and that he worked on certain cases. So, I was surprised and excited, to say the least, when I was assigned to the case he was working on at the time.” I noticed Mom sniffle at the mention of Dale, but she just continued stirring her coffee.

  “I remember when you started there,” Rhodes said. “You would go to school all day, then intern, and sometimes serve after.” He shook his head. “I was so impressed.”

  “It was important to me. And Dale made me feel like I was special, like I was one-of-a-kind. At first, it was normal — nothing alarming. He coached me, he was a good instructor. A lot of the interns got stuck pushing paperwork, but he always asked me questions and made me think. He trusted me. And I trusted him.” She swallowed. “One night, he asked me to stay late with him to wrap up paperwork on a case. I felt honored, he hadn’t even asked any of the partners to stay. But that was the night that changed my life.”

  “Oh God,” Mom whispered, her trembling fingertips touching her lips.

  Lana’s face was pale and I could see her arms shaking a bit. Officer Martino squeezed her hip to let her know he was there. “When he was finished with me, he threatened me. He said if I told anyone, I would be fired from my internship and blackballed from every college within a five-state distance. He said if I worked with him, he could make all my dreams come true, but I had to be willing to give him something in return.”

  I shuddered at the similarity between those words and the ones he’d said to me earlier.

  “So, naturally, because I’m a Rhodes, I told him to go fuck himself. Told him I would report him to the cops, even though he said I’d never win.” I tried to force a smile, because that did sound like a Rhodes thing to do, but I wasn’t sure if one actually appeared. “That only fueled his anger. So he went after what he knew was the most important thing in the world to me, the only way he knew he could get me to keep my mouth shut.” Her eyes found Rhodes’ and her nose flared. “He said he’d kill you.”