Chapter Thirteen
When I reentered the apartment, I found my mother pacing in front of the door. My first thought was to toss her ass out, but it would only delay the inevitable. My mom and Delia needed to be hit over the head with the cold hard truth. Instead of unburdening my conscience, I would have rather raided my liquor cabinet. Maybe after a few hundred shots, the pain of watching Autumn drive away with hatred in her eyes would diminish.
Before my mother could open her mouth, Delia dashed over. “Blake, why was she here?”
“Maybe we should go into the living room and talk.” My voice sounded calm and rational. I had checked out, and I was only going through the motions. Why couldn’t I have lived the lie for a little longer?
“No!” my mother shouted with a vein pulsing in the center of her forehead. Delia jumped at the sound of our mom’s voice. “You’re going to tell us right here and right now what the hell is going on.”
“Autumn is a student at Cook. I met her a few months ago at a party,” I said wearily. “She didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t tell her. When she saw you just now, she figured out our connection.”
“Blake, are you with her?” The way Delia put emphasis on “her” told me she’d regard it as a mortal sin. Dating Autumn would be the equivalent of burning Delia’s father alive and laughing as the flames licked across his skin.
“Yes.” I allowed the conviction to seep into my tone. Despite my relationship being massacred before my eyes minutes ago, I had to make it clear to my family I was in love with Autumn.
My mother marched up to me. She pulled her hand back and smacked her palm with brutal force across my face. Jerking away from her, I gritted my teeth together.
Delia let out a loud gasp from the sidelines, and burst into tears.
“You fucking traitorous little boy! When will you stop making my life miserable?” my mother demanded, detonating her full fury on me. “We were alone and on the brink of being put on welfare after your father died. Thomas saved us. He saved you.” My mother had the savior speech memorized, and I was done hearing it again and again.
“He tried to rape her—”
“Shut your mouth!” my mom screamed. “I have no idea what lies that slut put into your head.”
“She’s not a slut!” I yelled back at her. “For chrissake, she was seventeen—”
She cut me off. “So what? Do you think I don’t know what goes on in high school? Your sister is sixteen, and I know all about the perversions of the girls her age. They’re not innocent children. Autumn knew exactly what she was doing when she went after my husband. Maybe he shouldn’t have encouraged her, but he did not rape her.”
“Mom, please can we go?” Delia sobbed. I tried to go to her and comfort her, but she took a step back.
“Del, I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you,” I said, resigned. “I never wanted to hurt anyone.”
“Then, why did you do it?” Delia wiped away the tears on her face and glared at me. “You could’ve been with anyone else. Why did you have to go after Autumn Dorey?”
“I only wanted to get to know her and try to make sense of what happened between her and Thomas.” I blew out a long and shaky breath. “I never meant to have feelings for her.”
“We’re done, Blake,” my mother said in an affronted tone. “Don’t think you can lord your grandparents’ money over me and I’ll be okay with this. You want to be part of our family again—you stay away from Autumn and reconcile with your father. If you’re lucky, in time, he may forgive you.”
Autumn was a part of me now, and I’d never stay away from her because of my family. I’d stay away if that was what she wanted from me. But never would I sever her from my life for Thomas.
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m in love with her.”
The shocking statement rendered my mother silent. She flicked a cold and hard stare in my direction.
“You stupid, stupid boy,” my mother spat. “You think you’re better than your stepdad, but you’re making the same mistakes. He was also a fool and thought with his dick instead of his brain.”
“You can’t love her, Blake. Do you know what Dad has been through in jail?” Delia cried out. “He’s been beaten, spit at, and god knows what else. He’s surrounded by scumbags day in and day out—and it’s all because of Autumn.”
I looked at my sweet and naïve sister, and I hated myself for causing her to suffer. She wasn’t even seventeen yet, and I was telling her I believed the man who raised us both was a sex offender. Fuck my life.
“I’m so sorry, Del. If there’s one thing I regret is that you’re put in the middle of it. I would never ask you to choose sides.” She opened her mouth to reply, but I added quickly, “But I ask you to respect my choice.”
“You want to be with Autumn—go right ahead and mess up your life.” My mother snatched her purse off of the end table and pulled it close to her body. “But Autumn Dorey will ruin you. You’re going to lose all the things you worked for—we worked for. If you get to the NFL, you won’t have Autumn to thank for it. You’ll owe it all to your stepfather.”
My mom knocked into my side as she stormed to the front door of the apartment. Delia’s eyes were swimming as she regarded me. Shamefaced, I looked down at the floor. Her high-heeled shoes clicked against the wood as she followed my mom out of the apartment. I was finally alone.
The urge to destroy everything in sight rose up inside me. I fantasized about tossing the furniture around and slamming my fist through the wall. I wanted to break everything because I had broken my relationship with Autumn. But lashing out would be something the boy in me would do. If I wanted to win Autumn back, I needed to be a man she deserved.
***
Don’t do this, I urged myself. I was standing in the hallway of Autumn’s dorm, and trying to figure out if I should knock on the door or walk away. I told myself I should give her time—time to wrap her head around the explosion that occurred a few short hours earlier. But I couldn’t leave it alone. I had to convince her that, regardless of my lies, I was madly in love with her. Maybe the fact I loved her didn’t erase my transgressions, but I didn’t want her to walk away from us without knowing the entire story.
I knocked on the door and shoved my hands into my pants pockets as I waited. I had too much nervous energy and kept shifting from side to side as the door remained closed.
Finally, it swung open. Autumn’s roommate had fire and brimstone in her eyes as she glowered in my direction. “Go away, Blake. She doesn’t want to see you.”
Strangely enough, I was pleased Lexi wasn’t being a pushover when it came to looking out for her friend. Firsthand, I’d witnessed how cruel Autumn’s friends had been in high school. I couldn’t fault Lexi for trying to watch over Autumn. “I need to talk to her and at least explain myself—”
“Haven’t you done enough?” Lexi scoffed. She pulled her shoulders back as she stood her ground. “Are you some sort of masochist? You have to come here and see what kind of pain you caused her?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s true I’m a fucking horrible person for lying, but I thought telling her the truth would only hurt her more. I’m a coward, and I deserve it if she hates me. But I still need to make sure she’s okay.”
My hope was Autumn couldn’t possibly hate me more than I hated myself. I shouldn’t have pretended to be someone I wasn’t for as long as I did, but I couldn’t wish my lies away. I regretted harming her, but the truth was if I had told her who I was—she would have never been mine.
Lexi looked primed to punch me in the face. “Of course she’s not okay. And if you don’t walk away in the next five seconds, I’m calling security to remove you from this building.”
“It’s fine, Lex. I want to talk to him.” My heart picked up speed as I heard Autumn. It felt like years since I had heard her voice. But I hated how lost she sounded.
“Autumn…” her roommate started.
Autumn didn’t let Lexi finish her thought.
“I want to know the truth about everything, and he’s the only one who has the answers.”
Autumn came into view and I wanted nothing more than to take her in my arms. She looked so vulnerable and unlike the girl I had come to know. I had shaken her confidence, and I didn’t want to be the one to undermine all the progress she had made since leaving Newpine behind. She’d left her hometown to begin again and I’d brought all the memories back to her doorstep.
“Should I stay?” Lexi addressed Autumn.
“I should probably talk to him alone.” Autumn finally met my eyes, and I could see the mistrust in them. “He won’t hurt me.”
Her words reduced me to ashes. How could she believe I’d hurt her? Maybe I deserved her anger, but not her fear. I could be considered many things, but I wouldn’t be chucked in the same category as my stepfather.
Autumn watched me warily as Lexi got her books together. I remained stoic despite my wrecked emotions. There was a high likelihood I’d only get one chance at explaining myself, and I didn’t want to mess it up. I had to stay composed if I wanted to get Autumn to listen. I had to be a rock and not become unhinged by my need to bring her into my arms and hold her close.
“You need anything, just call me and I’ll be here,” Lexi told Autumn.
“I will,” Autumn said.
Before marching out of the room, Lexi shot me another dirty look. I thought I’d be grateful to be left alone with Autumn, but the room suddenly felt too small to hold in all the things left unsaid between us.
Autumn waited for me to speak while my agitation intensified. Being with her had been selfish, but I needed her. I wanted it to get through to her that I was hurting right alongside her. But all the words I came up with in my head sounded unsubstantial. Finally, I said, “I wanted to tell you who I was so many times, but I always backed out at the last minute. I knew the second I said I was Thomas’s stepson, I would lose you forever.”
“You never had me, Blake, if I never knew who you really were.”
Her words punctured my heart. I’ve had my share of losses in my life, but nothing compared to being told by my love that what we had wasn’t real. I would accept her anger, but I would never accept that it was wrong to love her.
“I deserve that. I was going to tell you this weekend when you stayed over. I never wanted you to find out that way. My mother—”
She didn’t let me finish. “I don’t want to talk about Cassie Bridges, and you’re delusional if you thought you’d tell me Thomas was your stepfather and I would still sleep with you.” She seemed to push aside her sadness and gave me a grim look while crossing her arms in front of her body. “Why did you try to be my friend?”
I had prepared for her to ask the tough questions. Being honest with her was like facing down a firing squad, but I needed to be sincere. “It took me a while to recover from seeing you at the Football House. I saw your picture a couple of years ago when you went to the police about Thomas. Delia and I looked you up online, and we were able to see your Facebook profile before you took it down. Later, we got hold of one of your school’s yearbooks and I saw your picture again. I needed to put a face to the name of the person who my parents accused of ruining our family.”
“So your family hated me? That’s no surprise. I’m guessing by how you gave me the look of death at the party, you shared their feelings?”
“I should probably start from the beginning so this makes sense.”
I took a deep breath and launched into a brief history lesson of how Thomas came into my life. As I told her about his role as my replacement dad, I squirmed under her scrutiny. I felt like her gaze was saying, Why hadn’t you seen who he truly was? How could you love a monster?
“We were totally floored when the police arrested him. I was a freshman here, but I came home as soon as my mom called and told me what he was accused of doing. He told us he had made a stupid mistake, and he would regret it for the rest of his life. He convinced us you were a sexual deviant and had begged him to bed you,” I explained. I was disgusted with myself—filled with revulsion over having to admit out loud how utterly wrong I’d been about her.
“And, of course, you believed it.”
I could hear the judgment in her tone. But I wished she would think about what the situation had been like from my perspective. I hadn’t known Autumn two years ago. All I knew then was my stepfather had always been good to me. I had wanted so badly to believe him because I had lost one dad already. It was easier to hope the girl who accused him was a liar. Thomas had been perfect to my youthful brain, but I could see the cracks now. There was a facet of extreme machismo to him I may have selectively overlooked.
I stared at her bare feet. “I found the stuff Faye posted about you online. I saw the pictures and read the stories, and I took it at face value.”
“And you thought what?” she cried, lifting up onto her toes to get close to my height. “You wanted to see if I was really Whorey Dorey?”
It was god-awful to hear it, but what she said held more than a grain of truth. I had approached her with the purpose of finding out whether or not she willingly had a relationship with Thomas. At first, I had become a friend to her because I hated the sensation of never knowing whom to believe. Ultimately, I had used Autumn because I wanted to justify having Thomas back in my life.
“Thomas went to jail and we lost everything,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Delia had to switch schools, and we had to rely on the money left from my grandparents to live on. It was embedded into my brain that Autumn Dorey was responsible for every problem in our lives. But there’s always been a niggle of doubt in the back of my mind. It seemed like fate when I realized you went to the same college as I did.”
“It wasn’t fate, it was a coincidence. The worst kind of coincidence—the kind where the universe decided to give me the middle finger.”
She wasn’t taking what I said to heart. Autumn was a survivor, and she had impenetrable shields in place to keep herself from being harmed again. In her mind, I was an enemy, and my words were merely weapons.
I kept talking. “I met you and decided I wanted to find out the real story. I tried to be your friend because if you found out I was Thomas’s stepson, I would never learn your version of things.”
“So you decided to play junior detective and question me about my past? You’re pathetic.”
I ignored her dig. Things were ugly enough, and I wouldn’t waste what little time I had trying to stop the character assassination. “It soon became crystal clear you were nothing like I expected and every fear I had about Thomas was confirmed.”
“Okay, so you stopped thinking I was the real predator and your stepfather wasn’t the hapless victim of my feminine wiles. Then why did you continue to stick around?”
“I saw how hard of a time you were having coping with what had happened. I liked you from the get-go and I hated knowing my stepfather caused someone so much misery…”
Her eyes grew cold. “I don’t know what’s worse—you trying to investigate me or you thinking your friendship would somehow fix what your father did to me.”
“Nothing could fix it, I realize that. It was a horrible feeling, knowing how much pain someone I loved had caused. And I hated myself for not seeing sooner that there was something dark inside of him. Maybe I could’ve prevented you from getting hurt.”
“So, instead your plan was to make me love you to ease the hurt? Blake, you had to know I was going to find out the truth eventually,” she said and shook her head in disbelief.
She was beginning to sound more despondent than angry. Neither emotion helped my case. “I made so many mistakes with you, and I told myself to walk away over and over again. But I did feel a connection to you and I found it impossible to break it. I’d see you at a party or at class and I could only think about holding you and kissing you. You had so much warmth about you, and I found it unforgivable Thomas had hurt this beautiful girl I was falling for. I had the insane thought that
despite the universe saying we didn’t belong together—it could actually work.”
I was putting myself completely out there, and I was begging for her to believe in my sincerity. Maybe it would take a long time for her to see that I wasn’t a total asshole, but I hoped once I left, my words would continue to echo around in her head.
“Does he know about us?”
Another valid question, but damn, it hurt for her to not acknowledge I had basically told her she had come to mean everything to me. Panic seemed to consume her as she waited for my answer.
“No. I haven’t spoken to him in more than a year,” I said softly. “For the first year he was in prison, I’d go see him, and I would demand to know why he would have an affair with a student. He had been a teacher and coach for almost twenty years. What drove him to throw his family and career away? I couldn’t understand why my mom forgave him and why she didn’t hold him accountable for what happened. But my mom has no idea how to survive on her own. She may not have liked what Thomas had done, but she can’t imagine a life without him.”
“He’s getting released next month.”
She sounded frightened and a dark feeling settled over me. If I could, I’d find a way to keep Thomas imprisoned and out of both our lives forever. I hated the immobilized sensation that came along with the knowledge that she wouldn’t let me keep her safe.
“I know,” I said. “My mom told me and Thomas has written me several times from jail. He wants to start over when he gets out and rebuild our relationship.”
“Is that what you want?” She sounded sickened by the idea.
“I haven’t written him back, and I didn’t open up the last two letters he sent. I miss the person I thought he was, but I won’t forgive him.” She still had a queasy look on her face, but she seemed somewhat relieved. “My mother will let him know about us and I’m sorry for that. I told her how I feel about you and she’s furious. She sees it as a betrayal, and, although I told her the truth about our meeting, she’ll warp it around in her mind until she believes you targeted me. I asked her to leave today and told her I didn’t want to see her again.”
#1.5 Finding Autumn Page 12