by Noelle Adams
“But I let it happen. I didn’t protect you either.”
I could see on his face how much this fact was eating at him. Aching emotion rose up in my throat. “But you tried. Gideon, you tried. No one could have done any more than you did.”
“Knowing I tried doesn’t change anything.” His face twisted briefly, evidently from emotion like what was shuddering through me. “I didn’t protect you when you needed me to.”
I choking on sobs now. I hadn’t cried for months until last night, and now I couldn’t seem to stop. I brushed the tears away and forced out what I knew was the truth. “It does change things. I told you the truth that night on the phone when I said you were like a glimmer of light to me that night. You changed things for me. I’m not sure I would have even come out of that house alive, if you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t done what you did—that night and for the eight months before it. You changed things for me.”
He made a rough sound and pulled me into his arms, and I cried against him for a minute. I don’t think the embrace was just to comfort me. I think he needed it too.
I pulled away when I’d mostly composed myself. “I’ve never blamed you, Gideon. You know that, right?”
He nodded. “I know. But that’s because your heart is...so sweet.”
I didn’t think my heart was sweet. Not anymore, if it had ever been. But I didn’t object to his words because I liked how they sounded. I sniffed and said, “No. It’s because I know what happened. Because I know who you really are.”
He gazed at me, his eyes deep with naked emotion I couldn’t fully identify. Then he finally said, “Thank you.”
I nodded and sniffed and wiped my eyes. “Thank you—for telling me that, I mean.”
He nodded, his expression changing. Like he was waiting for something.
I suddenly knew what it was.
I was the one who had told him—who had thrown the words out to him like a challenge—that if he ever opened up to me himself, then I would open up to him.
Just a week ago I’d said it. Being absolutely certain it would never happen.
But he had, after all. Which meant it was my turn now.
I was tempted briefly to tell him that it wasn’t fair, that he was manipulating me by twisting it around like this. But he didn’t deserve that. He was being good to me now, just like he always had.
I wanted to be good to him too.
“I’ve been doing that a lot. On the elliptical trainer, I mean.” I stared down at my empty coffee cup, feeling exposed and so young.
His voice was incredibly mild, as if he didn’t want to spook me. “For how long?”
“Since I moved out here.”
“How often?”
“Every day. For hours and hours.”
I heard him take a jerky breath. “Can you tell me why?”
“I don’t know. Not completely. I think it just hurt so much that it clouded all the other stuff. It was almost satisfying. Like I wanted my body to hurt.”
He reached out and took my hand, gently rubbing the palm with his thumb.
It felt unexpectedly good, which immediately made me want to jerk my hand out of his. I forced myself not to, though. He wanted to help me, and I wasn’t going to rebuff even that small attempt.
He didn’t say anything, so I just went on. “I knew what I was doing. I knew it wasn’t good. I knew I had to hide it from you. From everyone. But I couldn’t seem to stop. I would feel the demons start to come, and I’m not always strong enough to hold them back. So, when I couldn’t hold them back, I would do that instead.”
“Do you think...” He trailed off, his thumb still stroking my palm.
The little touch kept sending pulses of pleasant sensation up my arm, all though my body. It was so disturbing that I panted a little.
Gideon began again, “Do you want to stop doing it?”
I nodded. “I do. I just don’t know if I can. I have to do something with the demons when they come.”
He seemed to understand what I meant, despite the metaphorical language. “Maybe...I don’t know much about this, so I might be all wrong. But maybe the demons wouldn’t be so strong and overwhelming if you didn’t try to force them back so much.” His little caress had moved up to my wrist.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Just maybe if you didn’t try to hide from them so much, they wouldn’t be so hard to manage.”
I felt a surge of defensive anger, but didn’t let myself indulge it. So my tone wasn’t sharp when I said, “It’s not that easy.”
He closed his eyes. “I know it’s not easy. I’m sorry.”
I made myself consider what he’d said. “I can see what you mean. And it’s kind of like what Dr. Jones and the other counselors told me too. But I don’t know how I can not try to push them back, to hide from...all of it. I can’t stand to even think about it. I don’t want to remember. I want to just forget.”
“I know. I can’t stand to remember that night either, and I didn’t go through nearly what you did. I just don’t know what you should do.”
Strangely, it made me feel better. That he didn’t have an easy answer, a thing to be done that was supposed to make me better. That he was just as lost in this as I was.
“But I don’t want you to keep hurting yourself,” he said, his thumb stroking up the inside of my forearm, lighter than the massage he’d given me the week before. “I know that can’t be right.”
“I know it’s not right.” I finally had to pull my hand away, since the sensations his little touch was generating were too distracting, too troubling. “But I can’t seem to always do the right thing.”
***
To my surprise, I started to do a little better. The demons still came, but I managed not to kill myself on the elliptical every time they did. Sometimes, the only thing stopping me was how worried and disappointed Gideon would be if he found out, but that was a better reason than nothing.
I went back to Dr. Jones too, increasing the frequency to twice a week, and that probably helped too.
I started to call Gideon more often. Before, he’d almost always called me. But now I called him sometimes myself, when I started feeling desperate at night. It wasn’t like he always knew what to say. Sometimes he said things so clueless that I had to snap at him. But I would often feel a little more capable of facing the night after I’d talked to him.
I even started seeing my old friends. I’d talked to them on the phone periodically for the last few months but kept telling them I needed space. But I had a couple of them over for dinner, and I had lunch with one or the other of them sometimes too.
And then, one evening, about a month after Gideon had found me on the elliptical, I agreed to go out for a girls’ night with several of my friends.
It was the first time I’d been for an evening out since I was kidnapped, more than five months ago.
It started okay. We went to a restaurant near my old apartment—one we used to go to a lot. We got a good table in the bar area, and we ordered frozen drinks.
It was loud and crowded and rather chaotic, and there were a lot of men hanging around, drinking beer. But it was a Thursday night, and it wasn’t unusual. I focused on my friends, who were all excited and happy that I’d joined them again. Everyone was in a celebratory mood.
I had a decent time for about an hour, but then I started to get jittery and anxious. There were so many people, and my head was spinning a little, even though I’d just had two drinks. And there were men behind me. I could hear their voices. I kept turning around to make sure they weren’t too close.
They never were. But I got more and more nervous just the same, and I tried desperately not to flash to memories of that other night, when men had been behind me in a different way.
One or another of my friends occasionally asked me if I was all right, and I always smiled and said I was. But it was getting harder and harder to hide my responses.
I finally got up and wen
t to the bathroom, having to convince one of my friends not to come with me.
I stood over the sink and tried to breathe.
I’d made an effort with my appearance tonight, which wasn’t something I often did anymore. I’d dried my hair straight and shiny, I’d put on makeup, and I was wearing a cute top with a dark pair of jeans. I thought I looked almost pretty. And unfamiliar.
I was telling myself I was fine and that I wasn’t going to blow the whole evening by being stupid, when my phone chirped with a text.
It was Gideon. How’s it going?
Okay.
Really?
Fine. Getting a little nervous with so many people. It’s hard with men behind me. But fine.
Tell them you want to go somewhere else.
I’m fine.
Don’t force yourself to suffer through it. It will just make it harder to do it again.
I’m fine. What are you doing?
Just leaving work. Where are you?
Marley’s.
Try to have a good time and leave if you need to.
I’m fine.
I actually felt a little better after the texted interaction with Gideon. He’d worked late tonight. It was almost nine o’clock.
It bothered me unduly that he’d been at work so late into the evening when he’d gone in early that morning, and I was distracted by those thoughts as I headed back to our table.
I wasn’t as nervous for the next twenty minutes, although I did have to keep glancing over my shoulder occasionally to make sure there weren’t any strange men too close behind me.
I happened to be looking at another table of women when I noticed a couple of them focused on the entrance to the bar area. I recognized the expression on their faces—an easy expression to recognize—so I turned to see what man had just entered that had captured their attention.
The man was Gideon.
I had no idea what he thought he was doing here, but he’d spotted me and was heading my way. For some reason, out of the normal context in which I saw him, he seemed somehow more handsome and compelling than usual.
He wore a suit, and his tie was pulled loose, and he looked tall and lean and confident and worldly. Women were looking at him. Obviously, women would be interested in him.
I really didn’t know why, but he seemed different. Not the man I knew so well, the one who came over every Friday evening and tried so hard to help me recover.
I was disoriented and a little upset by the realization, so my greeting was scattered when he said hello and introduced himself to my friends.
They were all eager and interested, obviously thinking he was a secret boyfriend I’d been hiding. I’d kept the details on my assault scarce, so they had no idea of his involvement.
“What are you doing here?” I finally managed to ask, as he commandeered a chair from another table and pulled it up beside me.
“Just stopping by for a drink on my way home. I live just a couple of blocks away.”
I’d forgotten that he lived so close to my old apartment. I’d not once been over to his place. Not in all the months that I’d known him.
“I don’t mean to interrupt the girls’ night. I can drink over there if you’d rather.” He nodded with a grin to the bar.
Every woman at the table except me immediately and earnestly assured him he wasn’t interrupting and he definitely had to stay.
He chuckled and readjusted his chair a bit, saying he wouldn’t stay long.
He was bombarded with questions. He told them he was with the FBI and discreetly made it clear he’d met me because of what happened. But he neatly avoided giving them any details about the specific situation in which we’d met and what our connection was now.
He was funny and charming—in a way I wasn’t used to seeing him—and it was obvious that all my friends adored him after fifteen minutes. I didn’t know this side of Gideon. He was like a stranger to me.
And I wasn’t sure what I thought of him.
I did stop looking back over my shoulder for lurking men, and I eventually realized it was because of how Gideon had positioned his chair. He was partly behind me himself, and so he was blocking any looming threats in my mind.
He stayed for about an hour. By that time, the place was so loud that we couldn’t even hear ourselves talk, so Julie suggested we go over to her place, which was less than a block away. She added that she had a bottle of champagne in her refrigerator that she could break out.
Everyone agreed this was an excellent plan, and I let out a sigh of relief as we walked out.
I’d done it. Had a minor breakdown but one I’d been able to work through. I’d even had a decent time.
It was partly because of Gideon.
I smiled up at him as I walked beside him to his car, which wasn’t too far away, since he’d somehow managed to snare a great parking place. My friends were walking ahead of us, and they stopped some distance away—to give us space to say goodbye, I assumed.
It wasn’t like I needed space to say goodbye to Gideon for the evening, but it was a nice thought on my friends’ part.
“You really didn’t have to stop by,” I told him, stopping next to his SUV.
He gave a half-shrug and a half-smile. “Like I said, I was on my way home. Believe it or not, grabbing a drink on the way home isn’t really that unusual.”
I thought about that and wondered if Gideon stopped at bars after work a lot. Maybe he did. Maybe he liked to hang out and talk to girls. Maybe he picked them up sometimes.
I didn’t like that thought, but I told myself it was irrational. Just because Gideon was an important part of my life right now didn’t meant that I was the only part of his. He wasn’t even thirty yet. Virile and attractive and probably very interested in sex.
It was likely he was getting that somewhere.
It was fine. Sex wasn’t a bad thing—even though I couldn’t think about it myself anymore. As long as I could keep Gideon in my life, he could have sex with whomever he wanted.
Just, preferably, I wouldn’t know about it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, reaching up to brush away a strand of hair that had blown across my mouth that I’d been too distracted to push away myself.
“Nothing. I’m glad you stopped by, though.”
He smiled down at me, and his eyes took on that warm look I was seeing there more and more. The one I liked and that scared me at the same time. “I’m glad too. You’ll be all right at Julie’s?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Although now I’m going to have to face an endless interrogation about you and my relationship with you. You know that, right?”
He laughed softly and brushed back that strand of hair again, although I wasn’t aware of it falling back into my face. “Just tell them it’s none of their business.”
“You try to tell that to six women who’ve been drinking champagne and margaritas.” My tone was teasing, and I couldn’t seem to stop smiling at him. Probably the effect of the alcohol, after I’d gone a few months without drinking it. “Anyway, goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” he murmured as he leaned down toward me.
For one crazy moment, I thought he was going to kiss me, and an intense panic reared up in an instant, chilling me, stealing my breath.
But he didn’t. Of course, he didn’t. That wasn’t who we were or who we could ever be. Instead, he just gently brushed his lips against my cheekbone and then pulled me into a hug.
We didn’t normally hug at the end of the night, but I returned it immediately, loving how familiar and safe he felt, loving how tightly his arms wrapped around me.
When we pulled away, I felt flustered. I didn’t know what to say, so I just looked down at my pretty shoes on the sidewalk.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice one I recognized. I knew, even without looking, that he was scrutinizing my face.
The familiarity actually made me feel more comfortable. This was a Gideon I knew, one I was used to. “Yeah,” I said, loo
king up with a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m trying out a new recipe.”
Tomorrow was Friday. He always came over on Friday evenings.
“I can’t wait,” he said, a smile in his voice.
“Okay. My friends are waiting.” I walked toward them, turning back once to give Gideon a wave farewell. He grinned again as he pulled his SUV out of the space and then made an illegal U-turn so he was heading in what must be the direction of his apartment.
I was indeed interrogated about our relationship, and telling my friends it was none of their business definitely didn’t work.
Eventually, they stopped the teasing, when it was clear that the questions were starting to upset me.
For a normal girl, in a normal situation, an evening like tonight might signal a budding romantic relationship.
But that wasn’t me. And I just didn’t see how it ever could be.
Six
The next day, I was looking forward to Gideon coming over for dinner—more than usual.
I actually had a good day. I’d slept well, only waking up once and without very intense nightmares. Then I’d taken a hike since it was such a nice morning. I even read a book—something I hadn’t done in months—in the afternoon.
I went grocery shopping and then spent an hour working on my new recipe for dinner—a Greek chicken dish with orzo and roasted vegetables.
I was finishing it up, excited because it was turning out so well, when Gideon arrived. I ran to open the door for him—he had a key but wouldn’t use it except in an emergency—and then hurried back to my chicken.
“Smells good,” he said, following me into the kitchen and setting a paper shopping bag on the counter.
“I think it’s going to be yummy.” I grinned over my shoulder at him. He’d been wearing a suit at work, but now he was taking off his jacket and slinging it over one of the chairs. Then he pulled off his tie and opened the top two buttons of his shirt.
Even with his suit undone and his shirt wrinkled, he still looked nice and well-dressed. It suddenly struck me that maybe I should have put on something a little better for company.