Trust Me
Page 10
“You can tell me, Mila. I’m not going anywhere. I know I did before and I’m so fucking sorry for that. But I’m here now and I’m staying. No matter what.”
I hear everything he’s saying, but I have no idea if I’m ready to confront what happened to me. I don’t know if I’m ready to have this conversation with anyone but myself.
“I want to tell you everything, but right now I just need you to hold me,” I say, struggling to get the words out.
“I will be whatever you need,” he murmurs into my hair and wrapped in his arms, I finally fall asleep.
We’re in the exact same position when we wake up the next morning, but maybe a little sweatier. Sleeping against another person definitely transfers that body heat and we both laugh a little as we peel ourselves off each other.
“Got a little sweaty overnight,” I tease, lying side by side, the light streaming in through the slats in the blinds. Our eyes are focused on each other, my hand now rests on the side of Adam’s face. He smiles, leaning into it even more.
“How are you this morning?” he asks, a sincerity to his question, a genuine wondering, rather than something simple and vague.
“I’m okay. I’m going to go see Ruby this morning.” I let what I’ve said float between us and as I do, I realize, he’s once again left wondering. “I’m not trying to keep something from you. I’m just not certain how to tell you.”
“I can handle anything you tell me, Mila,” he states with certainty.
“I know you can, but I don’t know if I can,” I admit, taking in a shallow breath. It must have been difficult for him to tell me about Rachel, hiding from it for all this time, but he managed to get it out.
“When you’re ready, I’ll be here. Even if that’s a year from now, or ten years. I’m here, Mila, no matter what.”
“Thank you,” I say, not sure what more I can do to show him that this isn’t about him, but about how I need to deal with my issues first.
“Whatever it is, don’t run from it. Take it from me, it doesn’t work. It all gets blown to shit when the second girl you’ve ever fallen in love with nearly dies the same way the first one did.” He says it all very tongue in cheek, but I know he’s covering his pain with what he attempts to disguise as irony.
“We have a lot going on, don’t we?” I respond, realizing that our meeting was the catalyst to all of this. Without it, we’d both still be running from our past. “I gotta get moving. I told Ruby I’d be over at nine.” I quickly add, not necessarily trying to change the subject, but needing to get away from all the sadness in our lives.
“I’ll drive you over. I don’t want you hobbling over there, boot and all,” Adam insists, his words firm.
“You know I can still drive a car?” I say, sitting up, and hovering over him as I smile.
“Yes, I’m aware, and I’m not really sure you can drive it safely with that boot on, but you still have to get in and out of the car and up the front steps at Ruby’s house and back out to your car and…” he trails off, letting my head fill in everything else he planned to list out.
“All right, Prince Charming.”
An hour later Adam is dropping me off at Ruby’s, yelling at me to stay in the car and not open the door and not to try to get out as he runs over to open the door for me.
He leans down, telling me to put my hands on his shoulders and I do as I’m told because at least he’s not trying to carry me up the steps.
“Just call and I’ll come back and get you, no matter what time,” Adam tells me as I pull the key to Ruby’s house out of my pocket.
“What if you’re working?” I ask, sort of teasing him. “Or what if you’re taking a shower? Or you’re at the grocery store with a cart full of groceries? Or—”
“Listen, you cheeky little shit. I’ll drop everything. I’ll even leave my trolley full of groceries.”
“Oh my god, trolley,” I croon, tilting my head to the side and nearly cooing at his use of the word. “Why do you say the cutest shit ever?”
“You are so weird,” he replies, shaking his head as I push open the door and find Ruby waiting for me on the couch with a cup of coffee in hand.
“Laters,” Adam says, kissing the side of my head. “Trolley and all,” he whispers, his mouth now next to my ear, making me laugh. He tosses a hand up shouting a hey to Ruby as he closes the door behind him, leaving just the two of us now.
“You want some coffee?” Ruby asks, standing up and heading toward the kitchen.
“Just some water,” I reply, following her, my boot thumping along with me.
“When do you get that thing off?” she asks, scrunching her nose up when she looks down at my foot.
“Six weeks all in. I’m down two weeks. Four to go.”
“Hurt much anymore?” she asks, and the conversation feels weird and forced. This isn’t why I’m here and she knows it.
I left the counseling center shortly after the session with Madison and Ruby and I didn’t mention what I subtly admitted to the both of them. I didn’t expect her to jump right in with questions or to even ask me about it at all. She was processing it as much as I was. I don’t think working in the counseling center and studying counseling prepared her for how to deal with it when your family member admits to you she was raped. It probably even says something about not trying to help.
“It’s not too bad.” I tell her, lifting a shoulder in response.
She hands me a glass of water, leaning back against the counter, we stand in an awkward silence, neither one of us knowing how to broach the subject. I don’t want it to be awkward. I want to have Madison’s confidence. I want to scream it from the rooftops and rid myself of the shame I feel. But it just isn’t there…yet.
“How did you know?” I blurt out, unable to deal with the weight of the question I’ve wanted to ask since I walked in here. “How did you know I had been,” I stop, swallowing hard, but knowing I need to say the word out loud, “raped?”
Even the word feels like it should’ve been whispered, as if saying it too loudly will cause a collective gasp from the world. But why should I stay quiet? Why is my story any less important for inciting change? Maybe that’s where this all goes wrong. It all goes wrong in the silence.
“You were different,” Ruby says. “And after you told me about the abortion, I pieced things together. You showed up here two weeks before you were supposed to move into your apartment. You drove six hours from Tahoe to spend a weekend with Sie and me. At times you felt like an over-the-top version of yourself. Like you were…” She stalls, not wanting to say it, so I fill it in for her.
“Like I was trying too hard? That’s because I was.”
“Did you report it?” she now asks, and I scoff at her question.
“What do you think? I was pregnant and he was…” I don’t even bother continuing. I could fill this in with a number of things that make me smaller than him, that make me less believable, less worthy of a voice. “It would look like I was…” And again, I don’t finish my thought.
“Retaliating?”
All I can do is nod. Ruby doesn’t say anything else, but she begins to dig through a drawer in the kitchen, pulling out a business card.
“This is Caleb’s therapist. I really think she could help you. I’m not saying you have to go to her, but you should talk to someone.” I take the card from her and when I do, I’m instantly hit with the memory of the nurse at the hospital I went to after I realized I had been sexually assaulted.
I initially refused a sexual assault kit and only went for what the nurse labeled as “general medical care”. She knew I had been raped. I told her my story, but never once did I call it rape and she didn’t either. She didn’t say because she didn’t have to, we both knew and eventually I agreed to the sexual assault kit with her telling me it never had to go anywhere from here unless I wanted it to.
And as I was discharged, handing me an order to come back for birt
h control, she also handed me a card to a therapist.
“You’re going to need this,” she had said and even though I did, I never once took that card from my purse.
I won’t make that same mistake again.
“I never told you the real story of what happened,” I now say to Ruby, hating that I lied to her in that hospital bed when she was the only person who was there for me. “I lied to you and I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay and you didn’t lie to me. You just weren’t ready.”
Ruby’s compassion and understanding knows no bounds, and I don’t think she has any idea of how truly selfless she is, and how at twenty-two years old, she’s in a category by herself.
“When will I be ready?” I ask, begging for someone to answer for me, begging for someone else to help me understand what the hell is even happening.
“I have no idea, but the therapist is a good place to start.”
Chapter Sixteen
Adam
“You sure you should be walking without your crutches?” I ask as Mila makes her way out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.
“Uh huh,” she says, leaning against the bench beside me. “Halfway now, they said I could, remember?”
I pull her into my arms, taking the weight of her as she leans against me. I feel her arms wrap around my waist, her head resting on my chest and when I look down to press a kiss to the top of her head, her eyes are closed, as though she’s more exhausted than she’s letting on.
She’s not the only one.
Things between us are a little weird right now. As I much as I meant the words I’d said to her the other night when she broke down in the darkness beside me, about me waiting until she was ready to talk, it’s still really fucking hard.
Hard not to think about whatever it is that’s causing her this much pain. Hard not to worry about what she’s been through or the reasons she feels like she can’t tell me.
Hard not to worry that something between us is broken now and I have no idea how to fix it.
But at the same time, I feel like a total dick for thinking all these things, knowing that I kept my own secrets from her. That I did far worse than that when I ran without a single thought for how my actions would make Mila feel.
Because for all the weirdness that hovers between us right now, at least Mila is still here, holding me close.
“When are you going?” she mumbles against my t-shirt.
I glance at my watch. “I need to go now actually,” I say, gently easing her back so I can look at her.
“Can I come with you?” she asks, a small smile on her face as she looks up at me.
I brush my thumbs across her cheekbones, over the dark circles beneath her eyes. “You look tired,” I tell her, knowing neither of us has been sleeping particularly well lately.
She covers one of my hands with hers. “I’m okay,” she says.
I lean down to kiss her lips, smiling against them as I whisper, “Hmmm, I’m not sure I believe you, but yeah, of course you can come with me.”
Mila kisses me back, holding me close to her, a silent apology for all of the things she still isn’t telling me. This is what we’ve become now, two people who can’t bear to let each other go but who dance around the secrets we’ve spent far too long trying to hide.
Even though I’ve told her about my past, about what happened with Rachel and what I ran from, it’s still just the basics. And I know she still has questions. I see them there, every time I look in her eyes, just like I know she sees the questions in mine.
But just like before, when we were dancing around this thing that was happening between us, we’ve become good at ignoring them, pushing the questions and the doubts and the fears aside, because it feels easier to pretend they aren’t there. That just being here together is enough to get us through it.
It scares the fuck out of me wondering if it is, knowing there’s not a chance in hell it can be.
“Come on,” I say, taking her hand in mine. “Let’s get going.”
The drive to LAX is quick and the closer we get, the more excited I realize I am. Even though I’ve known Josh was coming over to visit, that I’d get to see my little brother for the first time in over a year. With everything that has happened these past few weeks, I’ve barely thought about what that would actually mean or really be like.
And it’s only now as I’m pulling into the parking garage, that it finally hits me. I’m going to see my family again.
My brother.
A link to my past and everything that I ran away from.
Meeting my future and the one thing I’m desperately trying to hang on to.
“Are you excited?” Mila asks, breaking my concentration as she reaches over and puts her hand on my thigh.
“Excited?” I repeat with a grin. “Yeah, I kinda am, actually.”
Mila laughs a little. “I am too.”
“You are?” I ask, as I turn off the engine and we hop out.
“Yeah, of course,” she says as I walk around the car and take her uncast hand in mine, lifting it to my lips to press a kiss to the inside of her wrist.
“You sure you wanna walk all the way in there?” I ask, knowing it’s a decent walk to the terminal.
Mila leans closer, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “Yes, I’m sure,” she whispers. “I’m okay, Adam.”
I let go of her hand, wrapping my arm around her shoulder as I attempt to try and take some of her weight against me. “Well, let me know if you need to rest, okay. I’ll give you a piggyback if I have to.”
Mila bursts out laughing, the sound echoing through the car park and reaching right inside me. “Seriously?”
Smiling, I lean down to kiss her neck, my mouth at her ear as I whisper, “Seriously, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Mila.”
It takes us nearly twenty minutes to get inside the terminal, Mila hobbling along beside me and me trying very hard not to just pick her up and carry her. When we finally get inside, I glance up at the board to see Josh’s flight landed about thirty minutes ago.
“Should we wait over here?” Mila asks, gesturing to the arrivals door and the small crowd of people already waiting.
“Sure,” I reply with a grin as we find a spot.
“We so should’ve made a sign or something,” she says, looking around at the people holding up boards with all kinds of messages on them.
I chuckle. “Yeah, we should’ve, he would’ve hated that.”
Mila elbows me in the side just as the doors open and a crowd of exhausted looking passengers start to stream through.
My eyes scan the faces, searching for the familiar face of my brother in a sea of unfamiliar ones, a weird nervousness coursing through me. I hear him before I see him though, the sound of my name echoing through the arrivals hall.
“ADAM!” he shouts, his accent making it stand out even more.
I turn just in time to see him engulf me in a huge hug, his arms wrapping around me as he pulls me against him, laughing as he rocks us from side to side. My arms automatically wrap around his shoulders, the instant familiarity of him somehow calming me.
“Fuck, it is so good to see you,” he says, his voice loud in my ear.
Laughing, I push him back, my eyes taking in everything about him. “Look at you,” I tease, giving him a once over. “You’re all grown up.”
“Pfft,” he says, punching me in the shoulder. “Whatever.”
He’s grinning, but I can tell he’s happy about my observation and it’s true, because as familiar as he is, there are also differences. He seems taller somehow, his eyes level with mine when I could’ve sworn they never used to be. He’s bigger too, like he’s been working out, and there’s a maturity on his face that I never would have expected to see.
“So,” he says, a huge grin on his face as his eyes flick from mine to the person standing next to me. “You gonna properly introduce me to your girl, or what?”
“Hey,” Mila says, smiling as she holds her hand out to him.
“Ah fuck, Mils,” he says, stepping closer as he wraps her in a hug. “It is so damn good to finally meet you.” He pulls her close, his body practically smothering her as he does the same side to side rocking thing with her as he did to me. Mila’s eyes, which barely meet mine over his shoulder, widen a little and I can’t help but smile at the two of them.
“Alright, get your hands off,” I eventually say, pulling Josh back as I reach for Mila.
He grins, clapping his hands together once as he reaches for his suitcase and the backpack he dropped beside it.
“That everything?” I ask him.
“Yep,” he says with a nod.
“Okay then, let’s go.”
The drive back home is filled with conversation, mostly from Josh as he asks a million questions about almost everything. He avoids anything heavy though and apart from asking Mila how her arm and ankle are, he doesn’t bring up the accident or what happened afterwards.
For the most part, things feel almost normal, even though I know there’s an underlying nervousness there, possibly for everyone.
When we finally arrive and step out of the lift, we make our way down the corridor to my apartment. Stepping inside, Josh looks around before meeting my gaze.
“Homey,” he says, and I can tell he’s being sarcastic.
Rolling my eyes, I gesture down the hall. “Bedroom’s down here.”
He follows after me, stopping in the doorway. “Where are you gonna—”
“I’m across the hall,” I tell him. “At Mila’s.”
“And you’re welcome to hang out there,” she immediately says, a smile on her face as she looks directly at Josh. “Seriously, just come over whenever and make yourself at home. We don’t want you hanging out here by yourself.”