by Marni Mann
I couldn’t believe he’d said that. “If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t.”
I hated that she’d thrown me into the pile with all the other ex-girlfriends. He had a past—both of us did—but it really stung to be lumped together with everyone else, as if I wasn’t any more important than those other girls. Maybe it hurt more than it should have.
And it made me feel like I was on the bottom of that pile.
He shook his head, leaning in so our faces were closer. I had no choice but to continue staring at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I was testing to see how far she’d taken it. Obviously she went all the way and probably said things far worse than I’m imagining.”
I pulled back and rested against the cushions. “Are you sorry for the things you didn’t say?”
Confusion crossed his face. “What would that be?”
“I don’t know…maybe that we’re a couple. That the maid isn’t your assistant, but your girlfriend is since it’s their company I work for, too.” My voice was starting to rise. I couldn’t stop it. “How about that the person picking you up for those meetings was your mom? Dammit, Hart! My head has been all over the place wondering who she was and what you weren’t telling me.”
He gripped me behind my knees, like he was going to pull me into his lap. A wrinkle creased between his brows and the muscles in his jaw began to flex. “It’s because of my ex that she’s like this. Katrina basically ruined any trust my mom had in the girls I date. Mom will get over it, and she’ll treat you right—I’ll make sure of that.”
“You hid me from her, Hart. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“I was trying to protect you, Rae. I knew how she would be, and it sounds like she did exactly what I was afraid of, regardless.” His gray eyes had taken on a charcoal cast as they filled with emotion. “I should have told you—I realize that now. And I should have told her about you, it just happened so fast. I thought it might have been too much, too soon.”
I appreciated everything he had said up until the last part. It threw my stomach right back into motion.
“What about us?” I asked. “Are we too much, too soon?” I held my breath while I waited for his answer.
Hart shook his head. “They’re my parents, Rae. My ex put them through a lot. I have to take things slowly with them.”
I brushed the tears away before they had a chance to rain down. “What did she do, exactly?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this, but if it answered questions about how his mom had treated me, then I needed to. I doubted anything he was about to say would make me like her more. Maybe, instead, it would help me understand her.
“Katrina worked at one of the salons I was opening. She knew my mom very well. You could say she was her protégé. Mom was pushing hard for us to get together. After a few months, I was getting ready to go to a new location, and Katrina didn’t want me to leave…she thought getting pregnant would make me stay. She went as far as pulling the used condoms out of my trash and emptying them—”
“I get the point.”
“She couldn’t seem to let go. So she went to Mom and dragged her into the whole shitty situation. Needless to say, it didn’t end well.”
When I tried to lift my knees up to my chest and rock, he wouldn’t let me. He forced me to keep my feet on the ground. I knew why, and I knew he was right.
I had to get through this without back and forth.
“Your mom thinks I’m after your money. She probably thinks I’m going to start emptying your condoms, too…” If she only knew we’d stopped using them, I’d be even farther down her list. “At this point, there’s nothing I can do to show her I’m not a gold digger. I’m living in your house, I’m working for you…I’m sleeping with you. She has everything she needs to distrust my intentions.”
“She has more…”
“More?” How much more could there possibly be?
I’m afraid you and your scar simply don’t fit into his clean, perfect world.
His head cocked. “The reason she came into town was to look at two more locations in Maine.”
“But you have Bar Harbor, Bangor and Portland.”
“I want a few more.”
“And why is that?” I didn’t need more puzzles. I needed something truthful, something
I could trust again.
“Because I don’t want to leave you. Your family is here and I don’t want to be the one who drags you away from them.” Family was such a loaded word and it could have meant many things. I wondered how he’d ever understand how dark and chaotic it was for me. “I may not have confirmed our relationship to her, but she isn’t stupid. She knows why I’ve kept her away from the house, and why I’m pushing for more spas in Maine.”
“No wonder she said those things to me. She hates me.”
“She’s wary of you. That’s all. She’ll come around—trust me.”
I thought again about the way she’d looked at me, what she’d said about my scar and how she’d treated me when she thought I was the maid. According to Hart, she’d probably known who I was the whole time. She was just toying with me to be a bitch. That only made it worse.
“Do you think anyone will ever be good enough for you?”
He slowly leaned forward and brushed his lips over mine. “You. Only you. That has always been the answer.”
I truly cared about him. I wasn’t sure I had ever felt love for someone I had dated, but I knew my feelings were deeper and stronger than ever before. I wanted it all—everything I’d had for the last week, and everything I thought we might be able to grow into.
Maybe it wasn’t the right time for that.
“Maybe I should move out and look for another job. Do something to prove to her that I’m not after anything but you.”
His hands tightened over my knees as he slid me off the couch and into his lap. I wrapped my arms around his neck; my legs straddled his waist. “You are not the issue here; I won’t let you do that, so don’t even think about it. Things have been a mess at the jobsite since you’ve been gone. Shane’s crew needs you. I need you—at work, at my house…” He pulled my hand off his neck and pressed it against his chest. “In my heart.”
I felt something inside me start to soften, stir. It lessened the resistance I’d been building up. “I won’t leave the spa, then.”
His eyes scanned mine, drawing my doubt to the surface. “I don’t want you to leave my house, either, Rae.” I tried to protest, but he spoke right over me. “But you’re not giving me all of you. Haven’t I proven how crazy I am about you? That even though you try not to show me your scars, I think you’re absolutely beautiful regardless of them. What you did, what you didn’t do, what happened to make things the way they are—I don’t care about any of that. I just want to be with you.”
He was right.
Every word he had spoken was the truth. I felt completely protected whenever I was with him, cared for. Loved, even. So why did I have such a hard time sharing this part of my life?
Why couldn’t I let him into the darkest part of me, and flood him with my truth?
Even I didn’t know the answer to that.
“Soon,” I whispered. It was all I could offer him.
His hands moved to my shoulders. He dipped his head so our eyes aligned. “Give me something, Rae. Something…anything.”
I swallowed a mouthful of air and dug my nails into his skin. “Darren’s birthday is in four days. I just have to get to that without falling apart. Then I promise I’ll tell you everything.” Part of me regretted those words as soon as they left me. The other part wished I had already told him.
“That’s fair.” He slid me a few inches closer so my chest pressed against his. “But you’re going to stay at my place, aren’t you?”
Home.
“I…I don’t know.”
“If you’re not comfortable there, then we’ll move out.”
That was a huge sa
crifice for him, one I didn’t feel he needed to make. “I don’t want that.”
He was trying so hard—I could feel it in the way he held me, the way he breathed, how his forehead tensed. His hands wanted to reach out and stroke my cheek, my skin. He resisted. “You don’t want my place, you don’t want us to have another place. What can I do, Rae?”
“Help me find a place of my own.”
There was a gaping pause before he spoke again. “I can find you a rental by tomorrow.”
A rental was temporary, like every place I had ever lived in. I needed something more stable than that. A place no one could take away from me as long as I kept paying for it.
“Not a rental,” I said. “I want to buy a house. My house.”
“Do you know how much money that would take?”
“I have the money.” The last deposit I’d made had brought my total to almost twenty-five-thousand dollars. If I found something small and not on the water, that would hopefully be enough for the down payment. My salary would more than cover the mortgage. “And you can live with me there.”
“Then let’s find you a home.”
It was a word that couldn’t live on its own.
“No,” I said, “let’s find us a home.”
In my belief, everyone who lived in a perfect home would be safe. The hands inside would never harm anyone else. Days wouldn’t be counted down as a means of getting past the darkness. No one was scared; no one was scarred. The walls withheld the storms. In a perfect home, there was nothing inside but pink and sparkles and twirling. And endless sunshine.
My stomach churned at the thought of all that.
I would never find perfect. Shit, I hated perfect.
But maybe there was a home out there for me, and Hart would be able to help me find it.
As long as it kept the storms out, that would be enough for me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I SAT ON my bed with my legs crossed. Loose white sheets of lined paper lay in front of me, along with my chemistry book, open to the periodic table of elements. The family laptop was beside me as I searched for the answers I was looking for. It was complete bullshit that this assignment was due tomorrow, and we’d only been given one day to complete it. It should have been illegal to have chemistry first period, anyway. Even the smarties in my school needed a minute for the coffee and half-assed shower to set in before they could understand anything the teacher was lecturing about. Really, the only thing I could focus on that early in the morning was how his rug was a different color than his sideburns. What element plus what other element would equal an explosion was completely lost on me.
And Google wasn’t telling me what I needed to know. The empty search window yawned at me.
I yawned back.
It was late. I’d snuck out to meet the boys and had returned well past midnight. Now it was close to one in the morning. My eyes were shot, and I was way too high for this.
Darren was probably sleeping, but he’d woken me up plenty of times to drive him somewhere, or to make him something to eat, or to help him with his English since he had a math brain. That boy was helpless sometimes. He’d live on vanilla lobster ice cream if he could. But he rocked his science classes so I knew he’d be able to help me with this.
I crawled off the bed and tiptoed out of my room. Mom wasn’t home, and I didn’t want to wake Grandpa as he slept on the couch. Darren, Mom and I had the bedrooms.
The living room was literally his “living” room.
I snuck through the hallway. It was pitch black, and silent. As I moved closer to Darren’s room, the silence turned to something else.
Strange noises came from behind his door. His bed was squeaking. It wasn’t super-loud, but loud enough that it seeped through the walls and the door. And there was breathing. Heavy breathing.
Was my brother beating off? And was I really standing outside his room listening to it?
Nasty shit.
Just as I was about to go back to my room, I heard another noise above the others: a voice that didn’t belong to Darren. It was deep and crackly from years of smoking…
Grandpa?
What was he doing in Darren’s room?
The bed squeaked. The breathing grew louder. The voice moaned.
It wasn’t possible.
My mouth watered at the thought of what might be happening, and my stomach started to churn. I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob. Slowly and silently, I twisted it and pushed the door open.
Darren’s room was dark. But the floodlight above the garage trickled in through the window by his bed. I could see everything that was happening.
The sight made acid rise in my throat.
Darren was on his stomach, naked from his waist down, his face buried in a pillow. Our grandpa was on top of him. Grinding into him from behind. Moaning as he moved back…and forth.
Back and forth.
I was frozen. My feet wouldn’t move; my hands wouldn’t reach out to push him off my brother. I couldn’t scream. And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t process it. I didn’t understand it.
How could he do this?
His hands were visible in the light as they pressed Darren into the bed and held him captive. The same hands that had stroked my head; the same fingers that had smoothed my hair every night before I went to sleep. They were the same hands that now restrained my brother like shackles to keep him from getting up while he violated Darren over and over again.
I needed something sharp. Something that could hurt him.
Kitchen. I needed to get to the kitchen.
My body was still numb, but I felt the ice inside start to break. Acid burned as it hit the back of my throat. I pushed it down.
Kitchen, I reminded myself. I had to get to the kitchen.
Sharp, I repeated. I needed something sharp.
I took a step back and heaved. I ran to the bathroom, just making it to the toilet in time. Heave after heave came, until I was empty.
“Are you feeling okay, sweetheart?” Grandpa asked from outside the bathroom door. “I heard you throwing up all the way in the living room.”
Liar.
He wasn’t in the living room. He was in Darren’s room.
Raping my brother.
I saw him. I saw what he was doing to my Darren.
And I hadn’t stopped him.
There were tears streaming down my face and my stomach was telling me it wasn’t quite done and my body was barely stable enough to stand, but I pushed myself to the corner of the bathroom. I crouched down and curled into a ball and wrapped the shower curtain around me, and I rocked.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
“Rae, honey, please answer me.”
Back and forth.
“I’m okay,” I said. I pulled the shower curtain even tighter and tucked my face into my knees.
The doorknob wiggled and began to turn. “Let me in, baby, you might be coming down with something.”
“No!” I shouted. “I don’t have a temperature. It’s something bad…something I ate. I’m fine…just fine.” My voice wasn’t my own.
He sighed. I heard the metal relax as he let go of the knob. “Come wake me if you need me, okay?” I said nothing. “Oh, my good girl, I hate knowing you’re feeling so sick.”
I uncurled from the shower curtain and heaved into the toilet again.
***
“Rae, I’m here, it’s okay…you’re okay.” Hart’s voice encircled me like a cloudbank. His body wrapped around me from behind, his thumb gently rubbing the base of my neck. He drew circles over my skin—soft, tender circles that were meant to calm me.
They didn’t.
I was unable to purge myself of Gerald’s hands.
Of my grandfather’s hands.
The rain I heard pouring down on the roof above us only complicated things. It matched the intensity of the storm that had been brewing within me for years. Five years, to be exact.
It had
finally broken open.
I wiggled out of his grip and sat up in the bed, curling in a ball with my back leaning into the headboard. And I rocked.
Back and forth.
Shock drained from his eyes, turning into concern. “Did I do this?” he asked. I didn’t answer.
Back and forth.
“Rae, what happened to you? What did you see in your dream?”
I tucked my face into my knees and slammed my back into the wood behind me. Then I pitched forward and did it again. Every impact shot through me like electricity. The pain was welcome.
It took away the emotional edge that cut into my heart.
It disconnected me little by little from the scene playing again and again in my head.
“Rae…” Hart’s hands pressed into my knees. I rocked harder. “All I want to do is make you feel better, and I don’t know how to do that right now.”
There was nothing he could do.
Hands.
I couldn’t get my grandfather’s hands out of my head.
Back and forth.
My hair fell over my shoulders as I rocked. People couldn’t compliment my face so they always said I had pretty hair instead. But that was where his hands had been: in my hair…stroking it, smoothing it.
The scene of my grandfather attacking Darren had been branded into my soul. His hands went from being tools of comfort to weapons of my brother’s destruction. I couldn’t remove that memory from me. His hands were in my hair.
It felt as if they were still there, and had been all along. I couldn’t get them out.
Although I’d never tried before…
I unrolled from the shape I’d curled myself into and headed for the bathroom. Hart followed me, his footsteps echoing my own, his breathing as labored as mine. I yanked open every drawer, dragging through their contents until I found what I was searching for: scissors. I picked them up and held their cold steel against my cheek. I slid my finger and thumb into the holes and spread them wide open.
Hart stood ready to reach in, to save me from whatever I was about to do. I doubted he knew what that was.
I pulled a section of my hair away from my cheek, feeding it between the blades as I watched myself in the mirror. Light glinted from their surface and accented the groove of my scar, as if to remind me: The truth will always be written on your face.