I raised my arms, allowing myself to fall back onto his bed as he crawled gently over me. My fingers explored his soft hair as they made their way from the back of his neck up to his hairline, where they pushed his tousled hair backward and tickled their way back down. Though cautious, Austin's hands were just as adventurous as they caressed my sides and my hips. He moaned, grazing the side of my neck with his lips and teeth, and the heat radiated throughout my body in a way I hadn't ever thought possible.
Following his lead as he continued to kiss me, my hands trailed down to the edge of his shirt. As he rolled to the side of me, still positioned above me, they made their way curiously underneath. He inhaled sharply in welcome surprise. The muscles of Austin's stomach were firm beneath my fingers—he wasn't extremely muscular, but he was much less lanky than his looser-fitting clothing had me believe.
I felt their shape easily as I continued gliding across them into the center of his torso, where I felt a masculine trail of hair begin just above his navel. At that point, I remembered his description of his other tattoo—the one he couldn't show me, the one he'd motioned to on his hips that had made me blush. As if with a mind of their own, my hands explored their way downwards, and I maddeningly wondered if I'd get the chance to see that tattoo in person.
Austin's body seemed to control me just by being in contact with mine, and it was much more satisfying than I would have thought. Even more enticing were his reactions in the wake of my touch. They were empowering, even with my broken confidence, and urged me forward.
His breathing became more ragged, the muscles in his abdomen trembling as he did so. His kisses became deeper and needier. It became difficult to keep up with him.
I wrapped my hands around his neck as he pressed into me, nuzzling his mouth against my ear. “I love you, Jade,” he whispered. His kisses came in quick, gentle volleys—first on my neck, then on my collarbone as he moved his head down to my chest.
“I love you too, Austin.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I couldn't decide if it was the dizzying pace or the excitement of the events happening that made me so lightheaded, but I tilted my head back and breathed deeply in an attempt to steady myself. Instead, this only served to increase my anxiety. It was frustrating that I didn't understand why I felt so uneasy in the presence of someone who was so captivating and so...real.
I looked around his room as I stroked his hair, and I tried to anchor myself. Austin's hands slid effortlessly down the length of my torso, wrapping around to my backside as he propped himself on his knees and nuzzled his warm face over my breasts.
My eyes were still closed, and I was still breathless. Part of it came from the thrilling electricity of Austin's touch in places that were new to me, but it was something else too. My sudden anxiety had made it literally difficult to breathe. Why was this happening? The question itself was troubling. It added yet another layer to my deepening sense of fear.
Without warning, a stabbing pain jolted through my temples and into the front of my head like a laser beaming itself through my brain. I grimaced, relinquishing my hands from Austin's body and snapping them up to either side of my head. All of the fire in my veins had travelled to my head and was threatening to explode like an atomic bomb.
“What is it? Are you alright?” Austin pulled back, half laying down and half sitting beside me, his eyes now wide with worry.
I heard him asking the question, but it sounded far away, like a television show playing in the background of the living room. My hands and feet began to tingle, and a wave of panic swept over me. My breath quickened, and I struggled to breathe as if I were being pulled away by an undertow of fear; I tried to inhale oxygen as quickly as I could, but it never seemed like enough to keep me from drowning.
I shut my eyelids tight, scrubbing my palms over my face and covering my eyes. In the darkness behind my lids, images flashed before me seemingly at random. There was a dive restaurant where I sat across from the familiar-looking face of a girl with short, auburn hair and brown eyes, who was giggling furtively at her cell phone.
I saw pages of e-mails, one after the other, and a phone ringing incessantly in the background. “Where are you?” some of the messages read. “We're worried about you! Call us!”
Voices rang in my head in time with the phone. They were muffled..voicemails, perhaps. “Hey Jade! This is Sandy...we were gonna invite you to the end-of-the-year pool party, but since we haven't heard from you in like a month...you've just been so weird lately. But if you still want to come, just gimme a call.”
The flashes of messages, the voices, and the persistent ringing all gathered together like a hurricane. It was impossible to think. The voices became angry; these were people that I knew, people I had once cared about...and they hated me because they believed I had abandoned them.
“What, just because you moved, now you don't want to see us? It's not like you even moved that far away!”
What were these? The images flitted in and out of my head like pages in a scrapbook being constantly turned, and I realized the significance of the nanosecond images.
These were pieces of my past. The images came faster and faster, as if someone were flipping pages of animation on a big screen inside of my head. I saw Christmas lights at a downtown shopping center, car rides with girls and their moms to an ice skating rink, the high school where I'd transferred to when we moved, the whispered rumors in their halls that came to an uncomfortable halt as I walked by, resuming only once I was far enough away that I couldn't hear them...
The ringing had become a constant buzz that infiltrated my rational thinking and my ability to pull myself out of this panic attack. The images were too many and too fast...I feared my brain would explode if I even dared to move. This chaos compounded with the sound of someone screaming in the background. Wait, was that me screaming?
And then, without warning, the images came to a miraculous halt. The still darkness behind my eyelids lasted for only a moment, however, before it slowly began to cloud into the memory of a dimly lit bathroom on a warm, cloudless evening when I was fifteen years old.
And then, I remembered everything.
***
I had set the bottle of pills on the bathroom counter, still unsure when their effects would make themselves known. I didn't even know what kind of effect to look for. Would it hurt? Would my body disintegrate from the inside, or would I just feel really tired all of a sudden? The remaining pills sat their in their orange bottle, taunting me with the prescription typed out in small print across the middle, reminding me who they really belonged to.
I glanced towards the bathtub, which was about halfway full of the hottest water I could stand. My skin felt as though it were crawling, and scalding it as I waited for the inevitable seemed like the best thing to do to get rid of the remains of what had happened earlier that morning.
I stood naked in front of the mirror, but I couldn't look at myself. It wasn't that I thought I was unappealing or anything like that, not like what so many of my friends complained about whenever we went down to the swimming pool—no, it was something else. I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed that I had breasts and curves coming in where they were supposed to. It felt wrong, and unfair. I didn't want this body at all, and I didn't want what came with it. I felt dirty looking at myself in the mirror, and not even the hottest water could wash it away.
Eric's wolfish smirk, which leered in my memory with a mouthful of yellowing, crooked teeth as he glanced across the dinner table at me, made my skin crawl all over again. Mom had made green bean casserole and rolls. It was my absolute favorite, but I wasn't hungry. Through mouthfuls, he asked me why I looked so down, watching me as I shifted the food around on my plate.
“A pretty girl like you should smile more. Right darlin'?” he said, sending another leer my way before looking up for affirmation from my mother. His voice was deep and grated, like tires going over a washboard road, probably from years and years of smoking. It was an unpl
easant sound, but it fit him.
I glanced over at Mom, who smiled faintly out the window as she ate, looking back over at us every now and again. She was oblivious.
“Oh yes honey...you do have such a great smile,” she agreed, stuffing her fork into the mound of food on her plate and taking another bite. “Is everything okay?”
Of course things weren't okay. I shifted in my seat, trapped under Eric's tense, watchful eye as he continued eating. He seemed almost bored as he ate. He was too calm, and definitely too nonchalant and apathetic. It was almost as if he'd forgotten that he'd come to wake me up that morning. He quietly beside me on my bed, watching me until I woke. It was as if he hadn't placed his fingers inside of me, darkness filling his eyes with an emptiness I had only seen in my nightmares. They burned like jet black coals of hatred into my heart, infiltrating my spirit like he had infiltrated my body. It was as if he hadn't touched himself too until he was satisfied, grumbling as suggestion that I should get ready for breakfast as he pulled up his pants and turned away.
Meanwhile, I had drifted into a world of my own, turning the blackness behind my eyelids into a shining world of my creation as I numbed myself to the outside world. The one inside my head was a place where I would never have to see him, or feel like this, ever again.
It wasn't the first time he'd done it, that Eric sat in front of Mom like this like nothing happened. For some reason, she was in love with him. But would she if she knew he was defiling the only daughter she had?
I wished I could tell her...but how? Would she even believe me? This man, if I could call him that, was so appealing to her that he'd been living here rent-free with us for almost two months. He worked his part-time job at who knows where, providing nothing but countless bottles of alcohol and a plethora of discarded cigarette butts. He gave nothing, yet was so willing and eager to take—our living space, our food, Mom's love, and my innocence.
It wasn't the first time he'd done something like this, but I would make damn sure this morning's incident would be the last.
That world where I would never have to see Eric could be a reality. I sank my body into the bath tub and turned off the scalding water.
I didn't notice before, but I had become very, very tired thinking about the whole ordeal, and even more tired trying to scrub its vestiges from my body. I was exhausted. As the hot water seeped around me, engulfing me in warmth and comforting me with its soft, liquid lullaby, I could barely keep my eyes open. As if to convince me more that I should close them, I became dizzy and a little nauseous the more I tried to stay awake. I sighed, giving in to their demands, and closed my eyes gratefully.
I exhaled deeply. I closed my eyes to all the sadness, to all the disgust, and to all the hatred that had encompassed me and became an integral part of who I was. I allowed my mind to crumble like flecks of dirt into the wasteland it had become. As my mind grew faint, the flecks shifted and tumbled into a thousand shapes and colors, disappearing into the sky in a thickening, foggy haze...
***
The foggy murk of my mind thinned as I looked around, and it materialized into a somewhat dim room. It was familiar, this room—it was Austin's. The drawings on the wall became clearer, illuminated by the light from his small windows and the single ceiling light. My hands and feet still felt numb and stiff, but it was joined by a new sensation. There was a warmth surrounding me; it was comforting, just like the water had been in my dream.
I knew it wasn't a dream.
It was Austin's arms, wrapped around me in a protective cocoon as if I were a fragile shard of glass. He held me closely, rocking me back and forth. As my senses deepened and I became more aware, I could hear his voice.
“It'll be okay,” he whispered faintly, almost as if speaking too loud would shatter me into a thousand pieces. His voice was shaky and fearful.
My voice was still frozen somewhere deep in my throat. Instead of forming coherent words, I managed a guttural sigh that sounded foreign to me.
“Jade?” Austin asked, somewhat louder. “Thank God.”
His lean arms shifted me slightly so I was now staring into his familiar eyes. He stared at me as if trying to diagnose me, to make sure I was conscious of my surroundings.
“Okay. Uh, are...are you alright? Just nod yes or no if you can...shake your head 'no' if you need me to call someone, okay?”
I nodded to let him know I was okay. I urged myself to speak, but I remained mute. Come on, idiot, say something.
“You're okay. Okay...” Austin ran his hands through his hair, and breathed a sigh of relief. “I've never seen someone have...I'm guessing a panic attack? I've never seen someone have one before, I don't know what to do.”
His voice shook with fear as he spoke. As I listened, I felt the tense muscles in my face relax into a smile. I blinked, willing blood to fill my fingertips and my limbs. The cold that had overtaken my body began to subside bit by bit, and I tested the motion of my hand, which had been balled into a tight fist, using it to prop myself up onto the bed.
It was bold—too bold, I realized, as I fell back into my cradled position. Though the muscles in my limbs were still weak, the ones in my throat had loosened, and my voice freed itself from their confines.
“It's okay,” I mumbled. “Thank you.”
Austin clutched me to him then, taking me by surprise with the amount of love he demonstrated in this one simple motion. His large hand cradled the back of my head, his fingers entwining into my hair, and his face nuzzled against my forehead.
“Jesus...I'm just glad you're okay. You scared the shit out of me.” He kissed my forehead, then bent his head down to look me in the eyes. “What...what happened?”
I tried to recall the vivid images blasting one after another through my mind, but it was almost more than I could take. As I stared blankly in front of me, I noticed the hot tears streaming down the sides of my cheeks. Austin gently wiped them away with the side of his thumb. He pressed his hand beneath my chin and tilted my head towards his face, and his eyes bored into mine with such intense worry that I had to look away.
“Jade?”
I blinked away another tear, then placed my hand on top of his.
“I remembered,” I managed to tell him. “I remembered.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In between sobs that racked my entire body, I was able to explain to Austin the memory I'd just experienced. As I did so, things began making sense to me in a completely different way—the loose ends within my mind appeared to finally want to string themselves back together. He comforted me as best as he could, which was both relieving and humiliating all at once. Of all the times to figure things out...way to ruin the moment.
I buried my head into Austin's chest as I relieved the experience again. I knew now that, despite my desperate desire to know the truth, acknowledging the events of my past was almost as difficult as it was not remembering them at all.
When Mom told me about our trip to the thrift store, she recalled how sad I'd been, and I'd automatically told her I took the day off from school due to menstrual cramps. The response was so automatic that, even though I hadn't really remembered yet what Mom was telling me, I had given the answer unprompted. I knew now it was because this was a very well-rehearsed lie.
What really happened was that I'd been raped. It hadn't been for the first time, or even the second time. I was already beginning the process of becoming the shell of myself I now lived with on a daily basis—my new norm. I had started to shut down, and I was so sad that day because I'd begun the process of giving up. The initial fight in me had all but disappeared. Things felt completely out of my control, so there no longer seemed to be a point to any of it.
I remembered then how angry I was in the beginning, when Eric first began living with us and when things began to happen. At first I had fought him.
***
“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” Eric said through a grimace. I had kicked out at him with my leg as he pinned me to the
wall in the kitchen by my shoulders, and I caught him square in the groin. From every movie I'd seen, he should have dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, and I could run away safely, calling the cops and saving Mom from even one more day of dealing with this scumbag. But he didn't drop to the ground. Instead, he continued to stare at me with eyes darker than the pits of Hell.
“You must have been kicked there too many times already, you disgusting pervert,” I spat at him. He pulled me forward and slammed me back into the wall. It hurt, but I wasn't about to let him know that. Instead, I stared at him in defiance as his face came within inches of mine. The smell of tobacco lingered fresh on his lips from his last cigarette, and it took everything in me not to gag as I turned my head away.
Eric leaned his face in towards my neck. “Mmm, I don't know about pervert,” he purred into my ear. His cracked voice made it sound more like steel grating on steel. “I'd say I have pretty good taste. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?”
He was talking about Mom. His rough hands moved down from my shoulders to my breasts, and the thought that he would dare to touch her in the same way filled me with contemptuous rage. My insides turned to boiling lava. I tried to shove him away, but he was much larger and stronger than me, even before the lust had settled into his coal-black eyes.
“I'll tell Mom everything,” I threatened. It was a threat I meant to follow through on. “You don't deserve her.”
His slimy tongue jutted out from between yellowed teeth that were too large for his already somewhat wide mouth and slithered across my neck.
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