Hidden

by Selena Laurence

  “Fucking stop it, Kristi, you cunt!” he snarled. I laid back down on my back and thrashed from side to side, causing my ankle to slip in his grasp. He brought his leg back and kicked me in the ribs with his heel so hard that all the breath left my body. I curled around the injury in reflex, unable to breathe for what seemed like minutes. He leaned down and grabbed my hair, yanking me up to a standing position. Tears sprang to my eyes, but I couldn’t even get the breath to cry out.

  Suddenly, the door to the bedroom flew open, light spilling in from the adjacent living area. Shock and fury played across Chris’s face seconds before I turned and looked into Nick’s eyes.

  Nick didn’t give me a second glance as he launched himself at Chris, throwing a hard punch to Chris’s jaw at the same time. Chris released me to put his hands up to defend himself. The two of them piled onto the floor, kicking and hitting like whirling dervishes. There were grunted epithets as well, Nick snarling, “Fucking cocksucker,” at one point as he punched Chris in the face again. I frantically looked around the room for something to use as a weapon. Nick grabbed Chris’s hair and slammed his head into the floor. Chris grunted in pain, but didn’t release Nick’s throat.

  My eyes landed on a heavy snow globe on the dresser across the room. I skirted around the two men, their struggles now shaking the entire room. Just as I reached for the glass globe, Chris managed to get a knee into Nick’s balls, and he yelled out in pain. Chris was able to shove Nick off of him and he stood up, then he reached down and yanked Nick from the floor. He threw Nick against a wall, and put his forearm across Nick’s throat. Nick threw punches at Chris’s midsection that made him bend in pain, but weren’t enough to force him to move his arm. I could see him pressing harder and harder on Nick’s windpipe. Without a second thought I grabbed the snow globe off the dresser and raised it over my head in both hands. Screaming like a banshee, I brought it down as hard as I could on Chris’s head. He made a strange choking noise and collapsed onto the floor in a heap.

  I didn’t realize I was still standing there screaming until Nick’s arms were around me and his voice penetrated the static in my head. “You got him, honey, you got him. It’s okay now. Shhh. You got him.” I leaned against Nick’s warm chest, my breath coming in gasps as I finally got quiet. His arms banded around me, and I never wanted to move from that safety. I struggled not to scream anymore, my head a dark vortex of pain and fear.

  The next thing I heard was a voice from the living room shouting, “This is the Volcano police, we need to speak to Lyndsey Anderson.”

  The police charged in and aimed their guns at Nick as I screamed again. He stepped away from me raising his hands like they told him to. It took several minutes for the police to get clear about what had gone on. They checked Chris, found that he was still breathing and called for the paramedics. At some point I realized that I was still in a large T-shirt with no underwear and half a dozen strange men in my bedroom. By that time, I was back in Nick’s arms as the police questioned us and wrote down the sequence of events. I whispered to Nick about my lack of undergarments, and he discreetly asked the police if I could go to the bathroom to change.

  Once I came out, the paramedics had left, taking Chris with them. Nick was sitting on the sofa in the living room finishing up his statement, and only two other police officers remained. I could see the strain on his face. Someone had found an ice pack for him in the freezer and he held it on one side of his jaw gingerly.

  One of the other officers took me aside and questioned me extensively, including asking me repeatedly if I needed to go to the local hospital for a rape kit. Once I’d assured him that I didn’t, he suggested I go get my bruises, and especially my ribs, looked at, but I knew from experience that there was nothing that could fix my physical wounds but some warm baths and a few days. If I was able to breathe as well as I was, nothing was broken, and afterall, this wasn’t the first time I’d been beaten. But, I promised myself, it would damn well be the last.

  Nick

  After I’d shown the last cop out the door of the cabin, I turned around to look at Lyndsey who was huddled in the corner of the sofa, wrapped in a blanket. The cops had told me to watch for signs of shock, and I could see her shaking from across the room.

  I was to the sofa in three strides, but I sat down carefully, leaving space between us so she wouldn’t feel threatened.

  “Hey,” I said quietly. “How are you doing?”

  She looked up at me with those beautiful brown eyes and it nearly tore my battered heart in two. Her cheek was swollen, and her hair was a disheveled mess, chunks of braids unraveled, and a big mass on tangles on one side. A tear trickled from one eye, and she bit down on her lip.

  “They got him, Goldilocks. It’s all going to be fine now, he can never hurt you again. I swear it, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “How did he find you? Do you know?”

  She cleared her throat and shivered again, pulling the blanket tighter around her. Her voice was dead. “A private investigator.”

  “But why now? After all this time? You didn’t . . . you didn’t contact him or anything did you?”

  She shot me a fierce look, and I lowered my eyes. “I’m sorry, I just don’t understand what the hell happened here.”

  She sighed. “It’s okay. He said he’s been drafted by the NFL, and he used his advance to hire a P.I. I guess he’d just been waiting until he could afford to get someone really good.”

  “Lynds? How long have you known he’d found you? Was it the day he almost ran us down in the parking lot, or after he broke in to the apartment?”

  She shuddered and flushed, obviously surprised to hear I’d pieced it all together. “The break-in,” she answered quietly. “He left me a note. I didn’t find it until later that night. It was in the medicine cabinet.”

  I felt anger well up in my chest, but I knew she was in no condition to deal with a pissed man, so I swallowed it down and tried to speak as quietly and calmly as I could. “So, you’ve known for four days and you didn’t tell me? Why? Why wouldn’t you trust me to help you?”

  Tension and pain warred for time on her face. She leaned toward me. “I trust you, but I couldn’t. I can’t explain it, I just couldn’t. There’s stuff you still don’t know. You’d never want to be with me again if you knew. It’s just . . . I’m not who you think I am. I’m not this good person who’s had bad luck. I’ve done something. Something really awful. I don’t want you to know the truth.” She collapsed back in her corner, looking smaller and weaker than I’d ever seen her before.

  “So, I don’t get any say in it? I don’t get a chance to decide what I’m willing to put up with and what I’m not? Lyndsey, I know I didn’t say it the other night, but I love you. I really love you. Can’t you believe in that enough to tell me the whole story? You really think that I’d be scared off by anything after all of this?”

  She was racked with silent sobs now, and it was all I could do to keep from grabbing her and holding her close, leaving the secrets alone. But, I kept hearing Scott’s words in my head, “the only one you can save is you.”

  “Lyndsey, I do love you, but I think I’ve been going at this all wrong. I thought that you needed me, and, that somehow, if I could save you it’d make what happened with Aubra go away. But, someone really smart pointed out to me that it doesn’t work like that, and I can’t save you if I haven’t saved myself first.”

  She looked at me like a deer caught in headlights, her face ravaged, but still so incredibly beautiful it caused my heart to burn with pain inside my chest. “If you can’t trust me enough to tell me the truth about everything, then I can’t help you. And maybe the reason you can’t trust me enough is because you can sense that I’m not whole yet. As much as I love you, I’ve got to get me in order before I can be of use to you or anyone else.”

  Now she sat up straighter, sensing where this was going. “No,” she whispered.

  I reached out and stroked my thumb down her
cheek, wiping away tears as I did so. “I’m sorry, honey,” I whispered back to her.

  She sobbed once, then sat frozen in place, taking shuddering breaths one after another.

  I stood up and held my hand out to her. “Come on, let’s get you into bed. We can deal with the rest of it in the morning.” She nodded, tears winding silently down her cheeks.

  We lay next to each other in bed that night. My chest hurt so badly, I wondered if it was possible for a twenty-two-year-old guy in perfect health to drop dead of heartbreak. Lyndsey was completely still and silent, lying on her side with my arm wrapped around her waist. She clutched my hand and within a few minutes was fast asleep. I lay there all night, wide awake, trying to commit to memory the feel of her in my arms, the sound of her breath as she slept, the curve of her waist where my arm rested. In the morning, I quietly got up, dressed, and left her.

  Lyndsey

  I woke up to banging. I was disoriented and my entire body hurt, but I stumbled out of bed and to the front door, only half-aware that Nick was nowhere to be seen. I threw open the door and was enveloped in Leesa’s big hug before I could take a breath. Raoul was close on her heels. As I looked at him over her shoulder, he shook his head and reached out to pat my hair.

  “My hanai girl! You poor thing!” Leesa clucked as she set me away from her and looked me over. “That bastard,” she snarled. “If he doesn’t die in the hospital I might make sure he does when he gets out.”

  I sniffed as she put her arm around my shoulders and led me inside, Raoul following with a bag of groceries. Before the door closed behind us, I turned to look out at the driveway. Nick’s truck was nowhere to be seen.

  Leesa set me up on the sofa with a blanket over me and Raoul came and sat next to me. “How did you know to come? Who told you about him?” I asked as I laid my head on his shoulder and just closed my eyes, relishing the safety.

  “Ssshhh,” Raoul whispered. “You just rest for a while.”

  I don’t know how long I slept before Leesa woke me to make me eat something, but when I opened my eyes Nick was still gone, and that’s when I couldn’t pretend anymore. He was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. I wasn’t very hungry, but I knew if I didn’t make an effort she’d never let up. Finally, the three of us settled in on seats in the living room, cups of tea in hand.

  “All right,” Raoul said in a firm voice. “I want to know exactly what the hell happened here. Nick told us the basics, but he said you needed to be the one to give the details.”

  I nodded. “So, he called you?”

  “Yes,” Leesa looked at me, and I could see the pity in her eyes. “He said we should come help you home, but we need to hear it from you hanai. You’re ours in every way that counts. What happened?”

  After everything they’d done for me and everything they were to me, they deserved the truth. The whole truth this time, because keeping it from Nick was shaping up to be the worst choice of my life. I decided there was no easy way to do it, no soft or gentle way, so I spilled it, fast and hard.

  “I was born Kristi Travis in Charleston, Illinois, and that’s where I lived, not Albuquerque, I’ve never even been to Albuquerque. My dad left when I was five, and my mom left when I was seventeen. I don’t know if she’s dead or alive, I woke up one morning and she had taken all of her clothes and the car and left. I never heard from her again.” Leesa gasped at this, and a stabbing pain shot through my midsection at the humiliation. What did it say about me that my own mother couldn’t even stay long enough to raise me fully?

  “When I was eighteen I had a boyfriend who hit me, and I let him. Everyone let him. His friends let him, their girlfriends let him, and the police let him. But then I found out I was pregnant, and I knew I couldn’t let him anymore.” I took a big shaky breath, watching their faces for the rejection I was certain would come. Leesa jerked toward me, but must have seen something in my face that caused her to hold back.

  I stood up and started walking the floor of the cabin, pulling on the ends of my braids as I paced. “A female cop who got called to the apartment one night gave me a number for a domestic violence underground group. They get women out by giving them fake identities and a ticket to a new town. I called them and set it up. They gave me everything I needed to become Lyndsey Anderson. It cost me every dime I had at the time, but it was worth it because I got away from him and I knew he’d never get my baby.

  Raoul made a strange sound at that point, and I looked over to see him with his knuckles in his mouth, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. His eyes glistened, but I had to get this out or it would stay locked inside me forever, so I blasted on.

  “I was here in Hawaii for six months before I came to get the job with you. I had the baby on June 17th.” I could hear my own voice shaking at this point. “It was a girl. I gave her up for adoption, and she lives right there in Hilo. I go sometimes to watch her, you know? They told me where she was going. It was supposed to be an open adoption, but I never pursued it. I mean, what could I ever offer her? What kind of example would I be? Someone whose mother abandoned her, whose only boyfriend smacked her around, who gave away her own baby? Still, I can’t help going to watch her sometimes. She’s so beautiful. She’s blonde, the exact same shade my hair was when I was little, and she has the most perfect tiny legs you’ve ever seen. She can climb the stairs to the play structure all by herself now.” I looked around me for the first time, and Leesa had tears streaming down her face. Raoul looked pensive and reached over the back of the sofa to capture my hand in his.

  I stood still now, letting the warmth from Raoul’s hand seep into mine. “Last week,” I said. “The guy—my old boyfriend—he found me. He broke in to the apartment and left me a note. I couldn’t let him stay around Hawaii because he might find out about the baby. I had to protect her no matter what. So, I figured if I left it would draw him away. I called the same underground group and arranged for them to get me relocated again. I was supposed to go to Honolulu today and get a plane to Vancouver. I’d have a new name, and hopefully he’d never find me again, and even if he did, at least I wouldn’t be in the same place as the baby.”

  I stopped talking and the only sound that could be heard was Leesa’s quiet tears. She sniffed and finally looked up at me. I couldn’t meet her eyes. My shame was like a physical thing that sat on my shoulders and weighed them down. I shifted and let go of Raoul’s hand. “I’ll get my stuff and get out of your way. It’ll only take me a minute, and I can walk down to town and get my car.”

  Raoul grabbed my hand again. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere. We’ve got a lot of things to talk about, starting with the fact that you are loved more at this moment, in this room than you’ve ever been loved anywhere before, and that’s not going to change. Now sit down and listen to my wife, because I know she’s got some things to tell you.”

  Chapter 15

  Nick

  Things moved quickly after the night Lyndsey was attacked. I got back to Hilo and used the rest of my money for the semester to get a studio apartment downtown. Gabe was bummed, but he understood that it was time for me to go it alone, and that meant I couldn’t lean on him anymore either. I withdrew from school, knowing that while I’d probably want to pursue a degree in the future, I wasn’t in a place to do it justice at the moment. I started into therapy daily with Scott, and within a couple of weeks I had formulated a plan. I got a part-time job working nights as a security guard in an office building downtown. It was boring, but with my military background they were only too happy to have me, and it left my days free to study for the police entrance exam I wanted to take when it was offered in a couple of months.

  The police academy came to me in a flash after the night Lyndsey was attacked. I remembered how helpless I’d felt as I tore up that road to the cabin, knowing most likely that bastard had already gotten there and could be killing her. More than anything I wanted to be able to stop him. I wanted to be able to stop all men like him.
Men who did things like Aubra’s brother had done, men who hit women, who raped them, who punished them and treated them as if they were less than human. After the police left that night all I could think about was if I had their authority I could at least make a dent in the problem. As a college student or a surfer or even a soldier, there wasn’t jack I could do about it. At least the cops had some impact.

  I was energized by my new path in life, and I felt better every day that went by as I proved to myself I could handle my own shit without falling apart, but I knew what was missing. It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch, and when I slept it was worse. I’d dream of her nearly every time I closed my eyes. Her smile, her skin, the way she smelled. I didn’t tell Scott about it because I figured that was only asking for a lecture on my recovery and how weak I still was. But it was an ache that never really went away, no matter how much I wished it would.

  I’d get together with Gabe once a week or so to grab a beer and catch up, but we made a point of never going to The Grill. Surfing was still my moment of peace. I’d hit the waves with Gabe sometimes, but mostly those days I went alone, first thing in the morning after I got off of work. I’d head to the beach in the chill of the morning and ride the waves at dawn until the tides turned and boats started coming out on the water.

  Some days I wouldn’t even surf, I’d just go sit at the edge of the water and look out at the vastness, thinking about how huge the world was and how out of all those people in all those places I’d somehow ended up here, where she was. I knew that if she was ever ready to tell me the truth about her past, I was becoming the kind of man she deserved. But, no matter how ready I was, until she could come clean with me, she wasn’t.

  I wondered what her future without me would hold. I tried to picture the things for her that I thought she’d want, a family, babies, a nice husband. It tore at my heart to imagine her with someone else doing those things, but I only ever wanted to picture the best for her because I couldn’t bear the idea of her being unhappy in any way.