The Trouble With Goodbye

by Sarra Cannon

  He sets me down. With a soft touch, he wipes the rain from my forehead, then runs the back of his knuckles gently across my cheek and under my eyes. “I don't want to rush you into anything,” he says. “I love you, Leigh Anne. The last thing in the world I want to do is cause you pain.”

  I shake my head, the tears still fresh. “I need to do this,” I say. “You're right. I've been holding back, too scared that if I tell you the truth, I'll get hurt. But I don't want to shut you out. I need to talk about this.”

  Sobs threaten my voice again and I try to take a breath.

  He takes my hand. “Here, follow me,” he says. “I’ll make us a couple of drinks and see if I can find some towels or blankets around here somewhere. We don't have to rush this, okay? You can take all the time you need.”

  He leads me into the bar and just as he flips the switch to turn on the lights, lightning crashes somewhere way too close and the whole room plunges back into darkness.

  We freeze, waiting, but the power doesn’t come back on. It’s silent in here except for the sound of the rain on the roof and the rumbling of thunder.

  “Wait right here,” Knox says.

  “Where are you going?” I ask as he lets go of my hand.

  “I’ve got some matches behind the bar, and I’m pretty sure I can find a few candles if I look around,” he says. A few seconds later, he lights a match and the space around him glows with a golden light.

  He smiles at me, then sucks in a breath and drops the match to the floor. He laughs and lights another.

  I can’t help but smile at him despite the pain in my heart. He tosses a book of matches at me and I catch them.

  “Just in case,” he says.

  He shakes out the match in his hand and lights a third. He searches through some cabinets for a moment and finally pulls out two white pillar candles. He lights them both, sets one on the bar and carries the other with him into the back room.

  Instead of sitting down on a bar stool, I hop up on top of one of the nearby tables and wait.

  Knox comes back a few minutes later with a couple of blankets. He wraps one around my shoulders and pulls me in for a kiss.

  “If you're not ready, I'll wait,” he says again.

  “I want to tell you. If you’re still willing to listen.”

  “Of course,” he says. He sets the candle down on the table and uses the chair as stepping stool. We both sit together on the table top, the light of the candles flickering around us.

  My heart is racing and my skin feels heavy. My hands tremble as I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders.

  Knox waits patiently as I take several deep breaths in and out, making sure my voice is strong and my heart is calm.

  When I’m finally ready, I push aside all my doubts and fears, and I start from the beginning.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “When I left Fairhope after high school, I was on top of the world,” I start. “I had spent my whole life doing what everyone else wanted me to do, even down to dating Preston Wright. But what my parents didn’t know—well, what no one really knew—was that Preston had cheated on me several times. The day before Valentine’s Day my senior year, I walked in on him with one of my best friends. Bailey Houston? Do you know her?”

  Knox shakes his head.

  “It really broke my heart. Until then, I had planned on sticking around here in Fairhope like my parents wanted instead of taking the scholarship up north.”

  “Wait, your parents didn’t want you to go to school in Boston? Why not?

  I sniff and wipe at my runny nose with a laugh. “Because my mother had her heart set on me marrying Preston Wright.”

  Knox reaches in his pocket and hands me a tissue.

  “Thanks.” I wipe my face and nose and keep going. “Anyway, I had planned to stay here and follow my mother’s master plan. I’d go to Fairhope Coastal U. Marry Preston. Be rich and respected as his wife. For a while, I thought that’s what I wanted too. But after he cheated on me with Bailey, I realized it was all a lie. This life I was living was a pretty picture on the outside, but it wasn’t real. On the inside, it was hollow and meaningless and I realized that’s not who I wanted to be for the rest of my life.”

  Knox is listening to every word, and I know I’m stalling, but in order to understand what that night meant to me—what it ruined for me—I had to start from the beginning.

  “So after a lot of soul searching, I decided to break free. I decided to stop doing what my parents wanted and to do something I wanted for a change. For the first time in my whole life, I made a decision that was all about me and what I wanted for my future,” I say. “To some people that might not sound like much, but to me, it was huge.”

  “I can see that,” he says.

  “When I got to school, I was probably more excited than I’d ever been in my life,” I say. “Too excited to realize just how naive I was, I guess. Here in Fairhope, I was a big fish in a small pond, but there? There I was a very tiny fish in a very big ocean.”

  I think about my first day moving in to the dorm room and how, once my parents left, I felt somehow both incredibly small and big at the same time.

  “The first semester was a whirlwind, really. I was having a ball, meeting lots of new people, struggling to keep up with my classes but still staying up half the night talking to the other girls in my dorm. Regular college stuff.”

  Knox waits patiently, not saying a word, but his eyes are glued to my face.

  “I decided not to come home for Christmas break because it was such a long trip home,” I say. “And to be honest, I just didn’t want to spend the whole break listening to my mother’s shit about how I’d made the wrong choice and how I’d screwed things up with Preston.”

  I think about that winter and tension knots up in my stomach. I feel another sob coming, but I choke it back. If I lose it now, I’ll never get through this.

  “I spent my break mostly catching up on my studies and exploring campus and Boston,” I say. “I even took the train in to New York a couple of times. It was the first time in my life I’d really traveled on my own.”

  I swallow down the lump in my throat.

  “Well, one night when I was in New York City, I decided to walk over to Rockefeller Center to see the big tree. You know the one where the people ice skate and everything?” He nods. “I’d seen it on TV a million times, so I thought why not? So there I am, staring up at this tree like a stupid tourist and this guy comes up beside me. He starts up a conversation and when I look over, I think I recognize him. Then, as he’s talking, I realize wow, this guy is Burke Redfield.”

  “The actor?” He’s confused at first, startled. Then he puts it together. He knows. I can see it as his face falls. I feel his body tense from head to toe. “He’s the guy who has been all over the news.”

  I hold back another sob. “Yes,” I say simply. I know I could probably end it there and let him draw his own conclusions, but I want to talk through this. I want him to be a witness to my story. “We got to talking and then we both realized that, hey, we both go to the same school. I honestly don’t know how I didn’t know that before, but anyway, we ended up catching dinner together that night in the city and exchanging phone numbers and email addresses. I was completely crushing on him at the time. I even called my mom to tell her about it.

  “When we got back to campus for Spring semester, I didn’t hear from him for a while, but it was like I saw him everywhere,” I say. “We said hey a couple of times, but I had pretty much given up hope on him ever really asking me out. Of course, I’d told all my friends about us meeting in New York and how I had this major crush on him, so everyone was so excited for me when he emailed me that March to ask if I wanted to go out to dinner and a movie. I said yes so fast and must have spent something like five hours with all the girls on the floor of my dorm trying to find the perfect outfit for my date.”

  The tears begin to flow again as I think of that night and how excited I had be
en. I thought I was living some kind of fairytale.

  Knox puts his hands on my leg as he waits for me to continue.

  “He picked me up in this sporty car and took me to some fancy restaurant downtown,” I say. “We were having a pretty good time, but the more we talked, the more I realized he was all about Burke. Whenever I tried to talk about myself or bring up anything about my past or my life, he always found a way to turn it around so he could talk about himself or his career. Still, it was Burke Redfield, you know? He was one of the most sought-after guys in the country and he had asked me out. I kept reminding myself how lucky I was to be there. How most girls would kill to listen to him talk about his career and all the actors he knows.

  “After dinner, I thought he was going to take me to a movie, but as he drove, I realized he was taking us out of town.” My voice cracks a little bit and my chest tightens. “I didn’t say anything at first, but after a little while of driving out in the middle of nowhere, I finally asked him where in the world we were going, stupidly thinking that maybe he knew about some exclusive theater in a nearby town or something.”

  I laugh at my own stupidity, but it comes out as more of a cry. Knox squeezes my leg.

  “He just kept telling me I’d see, like he was taking me to some exclusive, ultra-cool place that would blow my mind.” I pause and take a couple of deep breaths. “But when he pulled off onto some weird dirt road and parked, I knew something was definitely wrong. I tried to laugh it off and just go with it. I mean, for all I knew, this was normal college behavior. He said he’d just brought me here so we could have some privacy. He gave me this line about how he hated always being in the spotlight and never being able to really be alone with anyone. He told me he thought I was really special and that he just wanted to kiss me without the paparazzi sticking a camera in my face.”

  I can’t control the tears now and I just let them fall. They fall onto Knox’s hand, but he doesn’t move. He just holds tight to me as my body trembles.

  “At first, I kissed him back. I kind of liked him and thought we were just having a good time. Other than being conceited, he hadn’t done anything that sent off warning signals, but in the back of my mind, I think I knew something was off. But at the same time, I had no idea what I could really do about it. We were out in the middle of fucking nowhere, you know? What was I going to do? Get out and try to walk home? Hitchhike? We hadn’t seen a car in ages. I wasn’t even sure I would know which direction to go if I tried to walk.

  “So I figured it was better not to rock the boat. I thought I could handle it. I let him kiss me for a minute. It started out nice. I mean, it wasn’t like he was the first guy I’d made out with or anything. But then he started to take it too far. He kissed me harder and started to move his hand higher up on my thigh.”

  I squirm, not wanting to think about that night or how he’d made me feel. But I need to. I have to talk about this. I’ve kept quiet for way too long.

  “I tried to pull away, but there wasn’t exactly a lot of room to move away inside that tiny little sportscar. I laughed it off and told him that I’d had a really great time, but that it was getting kind of late and I had something I needed to do in the morning.”

  Knox’s hands tighten into fists and his breathing has become shallow.

  “He backed off for a minute, but he didn’t make any move to start the car or take me home. He started kissing me again and this time he got pretty aggressive. When I told him I wanted him to take me back, he got really angry. It was like some switch inside him got flipped. He started yelling at me, saying that I’d had no problem spending all his money at dinner, but now that he wanted just a little something from me, I wasn’t willing to return the favor.”

  I flinch at the memory.

  “He grabbed me and pulled me across the stick shift toward his side of the car and I panicked. I reached for the door and pushed it open, but when I tried to get out, he grabbed the back of my dress and pulled me really hard back into the car. My head smacked against the door frame really hard and started gushing blood.”

  My fingers trace the smooth upraised scar just above my temple.

  “I started to feel light-headed, but I knew I had to get out of there. I wasn’t thinking clearly and just ripped out of his grasp and started running. The strap on my dress was ripped and I just remember that I kept trying to put it back in place, but it kept falling as I ran.”

  I hang my head low and take a moment to steady myself, the memories flooding through me, threatening to wash me overboard. I struggle to breathe through the tears and Knox moves to sit next to me, putting his strong arms around me and pulling my head against his shoulder.

  “You don’t have to keep going if it’s too hard,” he whispers.

  But I can’t stop now. For the past year and a half, I haven’t been allowed to talk about this. I haven’t had anyone who was willing to listen and who could understand the pain of what I went through. I need to get it out. I need to know he can still love me even after he knows.

  “No, I want to tell you,” I say. I inhale and my breath hitches. “If there’s any hope of a future between us, you need to know.”

  “I’m here,” is all he says. And it’s all I need to hear.

  When I’m ready, I swipe the tears from my cheeks and sit up. My voice is oddly calm and I feel numb thinking of what happened next. I am able to recite it as if I were merely a spectator in the whole thing instead of someone who lived the horror of it all.

  “I didn’t get far before Burke caught up with me,” I say. “He lifted me up like I was nothing. Like I was as light as a feather. I’ll never forget that feeling of being weightless, helpless against his strength. He carried me back toward the car, but stopped short, then threw me on the ground just inside the treeline. For a split second, I thought he was going to kill me. He had this look in his eyes.” I grimace and fresh tears sting the corners of my eyes. “He was excited. Full of power and control. He pinned me down on the ground, and the whole time he was doing it, all I could say was ‘stop’ over and over.”

  Rage tenses my muscles.

  “You know what he said to me?” I shake my head, hearing his voice so clear in my mind. “He said, ‘I wouldn’t have to do this if you would have just let me fuck you.’ As if it was my fault for not just giving in in the first place. As if it was my choice.”

  Knox’s face is all straight lines and pure anger. “I swear to God, I’m going to kill him,” he says and I see that his eyes are wide and filled with tears.

  “When he was finished, he just got up and told me to get back in the car. I didn’t know what else to do except just do as I was told. I got in the car with that mother fucker and sat next to him in silence the whole drive home. When I got out, he actually said goodnight and opened the door for me. As if nothing had happened. As if he was some kind of gentleman.”

  Knox caresses my hair. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “Did you tell anyone?”

  I close my eyes. “Not at first. It was really late and most people were already asleep. I got up to my room as fast as I could and stripped off my dress and threw it in the trash. I got in the shower and just sat in there for the longest time, turning the water hotter and hotter, then I crawled into bed and fell asleep. The next day, everyone was asking me about the date and gushing over how cute Burke is and how it must have been so amazing. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me just wanted to pretend nothing happened. I thought that if I told everyone it was a fun night, then maybe I could make it true. I even started telling myself that really he didn’t do anything wrong. It was my fault it turned out the way it did. If I had just-”

  I choke back another sob. I have spent so long blaming myself for what happened, but actually saying it out loud, I hear how stupid it sounds.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he says. “Oh, Leigh Anne, please tell me you know that this wasn’t your fault?”

  “I know,” I say. And I do. But it helps to hear someone agree with me. Beli
eve me. “I tried to act like everything was okay, but my roommate Sophy knew something was up. She kept asking questions about what happened to my head and how come I didn’t want to talk about my date. I finally told her and I guess saying it out loud made me see it for what it was.

  “He raped me.”

  Even now, the words stumble against my tongue. It’s such a nightmare, it doesn’t seem possible that it really happened to me. I have spent so much time trying to reason it away. Trying to make sense of it all.

  Only, it doesn’t make sense. It will never make sense to me why someone so handsome and wealthy—a guy who could have anything and almost any girl he wanted—would force anyone to do what he did to me.

  “When did you say this happened?” he asks. He’s holding my hands now so tight, and the pressure feels good. He’s holding on to me and anchoring me to this place. He’s keeping me from disappearing into the nightmare memories of that night.

  “March of last year,” I say. “A few weeks before spring break my Freshman year.”

  Knox shakes his head. “You’ve lived with this secret for a year and a half?”

  “It’s not a secret from everyone,” I tell him. “Sophy talked me into going to the school clinic and requesting a rape kit. I knew it had been a couple of days, but she said sometimes they can still gather some evidence. I had bruises and scrapes on my leg. The cut on my forehead. I even pulled my ripped dress out of the trash and gave it over to campus police. Everything snowballed from there, and I know this makes me sound awful, but as soon as the police and nurses and administrators got involved, I wished I had never told anyone.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  I shake my head. “The whole process was awful. I had nurses examining me, making me get naked while they poked and prodded and gathered samples. They took pictures of me, completely humiliated me. The whole time, I felt like I had done something wrong. And when they asked me who…” I sigh and pick at the edge of my shirt. “Their eyes would go wide and they would excuse themselves and start whispering. It didn’t take long for someone from the administration to step in. They told me I could demand a hearing at the school where I could face him in person and accuse him and try to get him expelled from the school, but in the same breath, they told me that it would become a media circus. They said it would be in my best interest to keep the whole thing off the record. They promised to take care of me, but the truth is that they kept me completely in the dark.