“No. There are no reasons why. And it wouldn’t matter son. It wouldn’t change what happened. Just be thankful that she has you, that she is letting you help her. As long as you’re here with her, then there is hope. Don’t give up on her, Sean. Don’t let her down. You have to fight for her. You have to be strong enough for the both of you. She needs you now, probably even more than she realizes.”
Sniffling and clearing his throat, Sean agreed.
“You’re right. I know. Thanks, Dad. I really needed someone to unload on. More than I thought.”
“I know, son, I know. Now you lie down and close your eyes. I’ll stay here. When Izzy wakes up, I’ll let you know.” Terrance held up a hand to silence him. “She never even needs to know that I was here.”
Sean saw the meaning in his eyes and was thankful for his father’s astuteness. It was apparent from their visit with Izzy earlier that morning that she didn’t feel comfortable being around either of their parents yet. And his dad understood that.
“Thanks, Dad,” Sean said as he closed his eyes.
“Go to sleep, son.” Terrance sat on the couch and had to fight his own tears. Izzy had been as much his daughter as if she were his own for the past several years. And as much as he hated to see her in pain, it was doubly worse from having his son suffer as well. Dear God. Please let them get through this, he silently prayed.
Chapter Fourteen
Sean clutched his cup of coffee tighter than usual. His nerves were on edge. These last three days had been agonizing. Izzy seemed more withdrawn now than she was when he first found her after her attack. She was building a wall around herself. Hardly eating and barely speaking, it seemed as though she was merely a shell of the person she once was. All she wanted to do was lie in her, well, their bedroom and sleep. Which would be fine, except every time she fell asleep she had dreadful nightmares. She would scream and beg for Sean to help her, at which point he would wake her, hold her and soothe her—but that would be it. Once her tears had subsided she would once again ask to be alone.
He winced as he drank the last of his bitter coffee. How could he leave? Damn his chief for calling and demanding that he come in tonight. Sean didn’t care one damn bit how many officers were out with this flu bug that was going around. Nor did he care how understaffed they were for the night shift. He just wanted to stay here with Izzy. He knew she was awake upstairs. She hadn’t fallen asleep yet. He could hear her tossing and turning. Earlier he had gone up to talk to her, to tell her how sorry he was that he was going to have to leave tonight.
His eyes shut on the pain of that memory. As if in a trance, she had just stared at him, or right through him it was more like it, and shrugged, telling him it was fine.
“It doesn’t matter” she had said. She didn’t even care that he was leaving. And as much as he knew it made him seem like a jerk, he hated that she could care less if he was there or not. Damn it, he hated this!
He got up from the table to rinse his cup in the sink. He needed to be out of there in the next five minutes and no matter how much she said she wanted to be alone, he was not going to leave without talking to her. He needed to tell her, to remind her how much he loved her. If not for her, than for himself.
Sean took the steps two at a time, hoping it would relieve some of his anxious energy. He rounded the corner to the room and would have knocked but the door was only halfway closed. He opened it and froze in uncertainty. Izzy stood in front of the mirror staring at her naked self. Silent tears ran down her face as she stared at herself with a look of, was that disgust he saw? Dear God!
“Izzy? Baby, what—.”
Isabelle swung around and reached for her nightshirt on the bed.
“Sean, oh, I thought you had left.” She hurriedly put her shirt back on and got back under the covers. “I was just going to bed. Have a good night at work tonight. I’ll see you in—.”
“Izzy, stop it!” Sean shouted the words. Damn, why had he done that? “Baby, I’m sorry. It’s just, God, Izzy, why won’t you let me help you?” He went to her, despite the fact that he knew he would probably be rejected. He sat on the bed next to her.
“Sean, I’m really tired. I’m going to go to sleep now.” She told him as she turned away from him and proceeded to snuggle into a ball.
God, how he wanted to scream. He wanted to rage and yell and take away the nightmare of this past week and erase it from history. But instead he gently placed a hand to her shoulder, careful not to startle her.
“Izzy. I’m sorry I shouted at you. I’m torn up, baby. I don’t know what to do. I see you; I see what you’re doing. You’re pulling away. I know you hurt. But I don’t want to lose you.” He sighed and took a moment before continuing, “I know that makes me sound like a selfish bastard. But I can’t help it. I love you.”
“Sean, please.” She whispered without turning to face him. “I’m tired.”
Sean shook his head.
“No, Izzy, you’re not tired.” He strengthened his grip on her shoulder slightly. “Izzy, don’t lie to me anymore, it’s true. That’s all you do, is lay up here. If I wasn’t here you wouldn’t be holed up in here, you’re doing it to avoid me. And I hate it. I’m sorry, but I do. I love you so much and it’s killing me how much you can’t stand to be around me.”
Suddenly and so quickly that she caused Sean to jump off the bed, she turned to him.
“Is that what you think?”
Stunned, he wasn’t sure how to respond. She showed more energy in that one movement than he had seen out of her in the past five days.
“Yeah. I mean, I understand that you’re feeling—things, but I want to help you. I don’t know what to do, what to say and—oh damn, I wish I could just take it all away. Like it never happened.”
“I’m sorry, Sean.” She sat up in bed. Turning to face him, she hesitated before saying, “I wish I could make it all go away too, but I don’t know what to do. I just hurt so much. My heart, it—it aches.”
He closed his eyes on a sigh. Why? He’d asked himself that a million times since that night. Why had it happened? If he had done just one thing different would it have changed the outcome? He hated the self-imposed questions, because it forced him to think that if he hadn’t have given into his love for her it might have stopped Justin from going over the edge. Would she be okay now? Without him, but okay?
“Izzy, what can I do?” He went to her and knelt in front of her. “I sense this wall, the one you’re putting up around yourself, and it’s so big. I’m worried, baby. I’m scared that if I don’t stop you it will get so tall that I’ll never be able to get to the other side again.”
“Sean. I wish I could say that—I don’t even know. I just can’t seem to make any sense of what I’m feeling from one minute to the next.” Reaching out for him, she touched his shoulder.
At the feel of her touch Sean looked up at her. He wanted to reach for her hand, to hold it and squeeze it tight, making sure she knew that he’d never let her go. Anymore, though, he had no idea what he should do. What was right? What was wrong? His training as a police officer conflicted with the emotions of the man that he was.
“Maybe you should consider talking to that counselor. Or maybe even your mother.”
She knew he was right. After days of avoiding her mother’s phone calls, she knew it was only a matter of time before her mother would show up insisting to see her. The truth was, she just wasn’t ready to deal with her mother. The hysterics that she showed in the hospital, no matter how justified, were too much for Isabelle to handle. How was she supposed to deal with her mother’s tears when she couldn’t even control her own?
“I know. I need to speak to her. I’m not sure what to say, though. I know how upset she is. I hate that it’s because of me.”
“I wish you would stop saying things like that. It is not because of you, but because of what someone did to you. It still seems like you blame yourself.”
She nodded, understanding his rationalization
but not quite sure on how to convince her brain to agree with him.
“Sean, aren’t you going to be late?”
And there it was. The wall, it was being built higher. That was the most they had talked to each other, truly talked to each other, in days and now she was pulling away again. What could he do? Deciding to be thankful for the small step they had taken, he stood up.
“Yeah, I need to get going. Are you sure you’re going to be okay? I mean, if you think there’s any chance at all that—.”
“Sean, no. Thank you, but I’ll be fine.” She gave him the best smile she could manage. “Be careful. You know I worry about you.”
Talk about reading minds. He was more worried about her than he could even begin to explain. “I will, baby. Try and get some sleep.” Yeah right, she slept all day to avoid him. She would probably lie awake all night long.
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye. I love you.”
Smiling again, she lay back down and pulled the covers up.
“Good night,” she said before closing her eyes.
If a wrecking ball had slammed through his chest he wouldn’t have felt even close to the amount of pain that consumed him right at that moment. The horror of his greatest fear came to life at the lack of her words. This is what he had been afraid of. She was going to pull away from him so far that he would lose her forever. She had spent the past several years loving him with such intensity that it was unreal. But now, the woman who told him she loved him with the same consistency of breathing air hadn’t said those three little words back.
After locking up the house, he got behind the wheel of his SUV. He started the engine and slowly backed out of the driveway. He glanced up and saw the bedroom light turn back on. Pulling to the side of the street just a few doors down, he looked back up at the house. And as if confirming his accusation of earlier, he watched as the lights illuminated in the downstairs windows. She was now in the living room. He had been right. It wasn’t just his paranoid fears. She stayed in that bedroom all day to avoid being around him. She wasn’t just slipping away. She was almost gone completely. If he couldn’t get through to her soon he truly would lose her forever. And not just her love and their future, but he would lose Izzy. Izzy. The beautiful, tenacious and vibrant woman that he had come to love as a person as much as a woman.
“Dear God, tell me what to do.”
* * * *
Isabelle walked through the downstairs, wondering what to do. She had been going stir crazy up in that bedroom. She hated that she was glad that Sean was gone. She shouldn’t want to be alone and away from him. But she did. No matter how horrible it made her feel, she was so happy to finally be alone.
She loved him, truly she did. But she felt—smothered. Like she couldn’t breathe from the care and attention he was showering her with. It was horrible. She knew that it was. “Thankful” is what she should be feeling. Glad that he still loved her. How many women would delight in the devotion that Sean showed her?
Giving up on her questions, she walked toward the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, she stared at the contents for several moments. When she didn’t see anything that interested her she closed it and opened the freezer. She smiled. Vanilla fudge swirl, her favorite. Oh, Sean. He always was thinking of her. She knew he hated anything with vanilla in it. She knew it was bought solely for her.
She took the pint out of the freezer and closed the door. She reached in the cutlery drawer and grabbed a spoon and headed toward the living room. How is it that for days she had barely an appetite and now just the picture on the small container made her mouth water? Plopping herself down on Sean’s recliner and getting comfy, she dug in.
“Mmm.” Heaven.
After she got through half of it she was already getting stuffed. That only reminded her of how little she had eaten in the past few days, and how much Sean had pestered her to eat more.
“You’ve barely touched it,” he told her earlier after he took her soup bowl when she claimed she was full.
“I’m worried about you, you need to eat more,” he had said when she swore to him that she couldn’t eat another bite.
But how could she explain to him that it wasn’t that she was full? It was more like a feeling of extreme emptiness. And no matter how much she ate or didn’t eat, she didn’t believe that the hollow feeling inside of her would ever go away.
She recalled Sean’s words when they spoke upstairs just a little while ago. He had told her he was worried and scared. She hated that he felt that way. But worried and scared were exactly how she felt, as well. She loved Sean so much, with everything that she had, and now she questioned whether she would be able to continue to love him the same way.
It wasn’t him. It wasn’t even her. It was—well, it was her. It was what had changed inside of her when Justin had raped her. That was what she had been thinking about earlier when Sean had walked in on her. Immediately following her rape, she had felt dirty and somehow broken. But now she wasn’t even sure if there were any words to describe the way she felt when she saw herself.
It wasn’t shame or guilt. And no matter how many tears she had cried she couldn’t even say it was sadness. She felt—despair. Yes, complete and utter despair. Despair for the woman that she no longer felt that she was and despair for the future she would have had with Sean. Because no matter how much she loved him and how much he told her that he loved her, she was uncertain about the possibility of their happily ever after.
If she were to truly be honest with herself, she would admit that she didn’t believe there was anyway that she would be able to be the woman Sean once loved ever again.
Chapter Fifteen
Sean slammed the door open to the locker room, furious with himself for screwing up. How could he have been so stupid?
“You get suspended?” Jake asked him.
“No. I should have been though. Damn it!” Sean punched his fist against his locker, causing an oblong shaped dent. “Shit!”
Jake looked at his friend, his partner, and hated what he saw. For a short time after Sean and Izzy had finally found a way to be together, they had gotten Sean back. The real Sean. But now, he was changed —perhaps more so than ever before. And the worst part was that Jake feared there was no chance the Sean he loved and respected like a brother would ever return.
“Are you all right?” What else was he gonna say?
Sean looked up at his partner while rubbing his hand. How Jake wasn’t furious with him, he had no idea. His blatant disregard for proper procedure in that vehicle search could have caused Jake a lot of trouble.
“I’m sorry for screwing up. I’ll try to—I will be more diligent next time.”
Jake shook his head.
“Will you?”
Truly hurt by the question but knowing it was completely justified, Sean looked at him.
“Look, I know I haven’t exactly been myself lately, but I’ll get back into the swing of things. I promise. I just haven’t been sleeping very well, that’s all.”
“Sleeping? Are you serious man? Come on. It’s me, Jake,” he told him incredulously.
“Yeah, sleeping. Look, I said I was sorry. I can’t take it back, so just drop it.” Sean’s anger was slowly returning. He hated that he had been nothing but an incompetent screw-up lately.
“No. No, you can’t take it back, Sean. And nothing you do can take back what happened to Izzy, either.”
Sean’s head snapped to Jake. With fury in his eyes he bellowed, “How dare you! You don’t think I know that. You don’t think I’m reminded of that every god damn day!”
People scattered out of the locker room at the ensuing shouts. Jake waited for the last of them to clear before he turned his somber expression back to Sean.
“I know. Unfortunately I think that’s the problem.” Jake slapped his hand in the air, forcing Sean to be quiet. “No, listen, damn it! Enough already. Look, it’s been over a month since the rape.”
“A month since I los
t her! It’s been over a month since a selfish bastard took something from my Izzy that I can’t give back to her!” Sean, although screaming the words, was doing everything in his power to fight the tears. The goddamn tears that came to him every damn night as he cried with such pain he thought he would die from it.
Jake closed his eyes and hung his head. Trying desperately to find the right words, he waited. He wanted to help, not make things worse.
“I know. I know she’s changed. And I know that you’re hurting. But you’ve got to get a hold of yourself. You aren’t just difficult to be around anymore. You’re making mistakes, big ones. Ones that could cause a lot of problems for the city and for your fellow officers.”
Sean dropped to the wooden locker room benches. Jake was right. He knew it.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do, Jake. I’m losing her.” He shook his head. “No. Who am I kidding? I’ve already lost her.”
Placing a hand to his shoulder and sitting next to him, Jake continued. “No, Sean. She may be hurting and trying to heal, but she loves you. You know that.”
Sean let a tortured laugh escape. “Do I? It’s been over a month since she’s told me.” He looked to his friend. “Did you know that? I tell her every day that I love her. And every day she doesn’t say it back.” Giving into the anguish, regardless of where he was, he began to sob.
“Jesus, Sean. I had no idea. I—I gotta be honest. I don’t know what to say.” Damn, no wonder Sean seemed so destroyed. He wasn’t just dealing with the pain of Izzy’s rape, but that of the end of their relationship. After all they went through to be together. How freaking unfair could fate be?
“There’s nothing you can say. I’ve tried everything I can think of. She finally started talking to that counselor a couple of weeks ago and her mom comes over pretty regularly now, but it still hasn’t changed. I love her so much, but it’s like she’s gone.”
“But she’s still there with you right? I mean, she is living with you. She hasn’t gone back home. That has to be a good sign. Right?”
Morgan, Nicole - Love Knows No Boundaries (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 15