Keeping Secrets in Seattle

by Brooke Moss

  I covered my face and choked on a sob. This was becoming much too raw to deal with. Gabe had officially chiseled away at my protective outer layer, leaving all of my emotions naked and exposed. “I just…wanted to pretend it never happened…I wanted to…move on with my life…I…”

  He shook his head. “I would have helped you through it. I was in love with you.”

  “It was because you were in love with me that I didn’t want to tell you.” I used my sleeve to wipe the tears sliding down my cheeks. “I didn’t want you to look at me different. I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

  Gabe glared up at me, red rimming his eyes. “You’d rather let me think that you’d cheated on me, rather than let me know that you were raped, Vi?”

  “I was seventeen,” I said, my throat tight. “I was just a kid. I—”

  He finally moved to touch me, sliding off the couch to stand in front of me. His arms around me felt like a key sliding into a lock and turning effortlessly. My throat relaxed, and I breathed in the scent of his cologne, while his whiskers tickled the side of my forehead.

  He put his hand under my chin and raised it so that I was forced to look him in the eye. “Why didn’t you find me? Or yell for me?”

  I cringed. “I did.”

  Gabe’s jaw flexed, and his arms dropped to his sides. “I didn’t know. I had no idea.”

  “It isn’t your fault. The music was too loud. Nobody heard me.” I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand.

  “I would have stopped him if I’d heard. I…I didn’t know…” His voice pitched, and he put a hand over his eyes. “I came over that night. I went to your house. Leandra said you didn’t want to see me. Did you know I was there?”

  I pressed my lips together and nodded.

  He scruffed a hand up over his head and down the back of his neck. “I should have known. I needed to know. All of those times I hung out with Cam. All those times he came to my parents’ house and into my home. He was one of my groomsmen.”

  I shook my head. “Was?”

  He raked a hand through his short hair. “The wedding’s off.”

  “I…what?” There was nothing more peculiar than experiencing horrible pain and total elation at the same time.

  He looked away. “I called it off yesterday.”

  My mouth dropped open. “What?”

  “When I heard about you and Landon going to Vegas…” Gabe began pacing. “Vi, I’m in love with you. I always have been.”

  I covered my mouth and stood frozen in place. I’d been waiting nine years to hear those words. The hair on my arms stood up, and a tornado took flight in my gut.

  Gabe laced his fingers and rested his hands on the top of his head as he moved. “After you left for Vegas, I checked my credit card statement. She’d bought over twelve hundred dollars’ worth of shoes in the last week alone and hadn’t told me. When I stopped by Mizithra’s to speak to her about it, they told me that she’d quit a month ago.”

  “You’re kidding.” I bit my lip. I wish being right felt better than this. But it didn’t feel good, it felt horrible.

  His forehead wrinkled. “I’d seen her leave for work dozens of times. But she’d been faking it. She’d been faking everything. You were right. Her parents aren’t wealthy. They live in the suburbs of Portland, in a modest house, and her dad’s—”

  “A garbage man,” I finished for him. My fingers twitched at my sides, longing to reach for Gabe. My pulse pounded in my ears, and I had to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from pulling him close to me and pressing my mouth to his. We could be together now. My secret was out, and we were both free now. It was everything I’d been dreaming about…

  His eyes clouded over. “I almost married a woman who’s been lying to me from the beginning, and the woman I’ve been in love with since I was a kid has been lying to me for almost a decade.”

  The heartbeat in my ears stopped, and my shoulders dropped down an inch. “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know who to trust,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You…Alicia…Cam…your mom…everyone I know is a liar.”

  Anger replaced joy, and I pointed my finger in Gabe’s face. “You’re lumping me in a category with Cameron Hakes?”

  “He’s been walking free for almost ten years, Vi.” The muscles in Gabe’s neck flexed. “Who knows how many other women might have been hurt because you lied about what happened?”

  His words were a punch to the gut. “You’re blaming this on me?”

  “Of course not. But I can’t believe your mom and Curtis would let him walk after hurting you.” He shifted his weight between his feet and shook his head. “It’s asinine. Why would a parent let their daughter’s rapist go free?”

  I shivered as adrenaline coursed through my body. “My mom went through something similar. She—”

  “I don’t give a shit what Leandra went through!”

  I backed away. Every vein in his neck was visible under his tawny skin.

  “What about what you went through? You were just a kid! The thought of his hands on you…the idea of you yelling for help and having nobody answer.”

  “You need to calm down.” I took him by the arm. “Look at me.”

  Anger radiated from the pools of blue that were his eyes. “You don’t understand. I never stopped loving you. All these years, I thought you’d cheated on me. It never occurred to me that Cam was capable of something like this. I want to kill him,” he said through clenched teeth. His muscles hardened under his jacket sleeve. “I can’t even think straight. I could kill him.”

  My gut twisted nervously. His whole body had gone rigid with anger, sweat piquing on his hairline. “You don’t have to worry about it,” I told him. “The wedding is off. You never have to see him again.”

  Gabe shook off my touch. “Cam’s flying here next week. We were supposed to spend some time together before the wedding. He was coming early to see his dad, and so we could hang out since he missed the bachelor party.”

  “Just call him…tell him the wedding isn’t happening.” I was sick to my stomach and wrapped my arms around my middle. “You have to tell him that the wedding isn’t happening. Not to come.”

  His eyes were wide and bugging out. “I’m going to put Cam in the ground.”

  I put my palms on either side of Gabe’s face and made him look at me. “It’s over now, Gabe. It’s been nine years. I’m okay now. We’re okay.”

  “No, I’m not.” He shook his head slowly.

  “I love you, Gabe,” I said, my throat tight. It was the first time I’d said that to him in years. When he said nothing and just stared at me, quaking underneath my palms, I added, “Do you…still love me?”

  When his lips met mine, the kiss was brief, hard. Not the least bit reassuring. My insides chilled as fear spread through me like cold water in a bathtub.

  “I need some time.” His voice was scarcely above a whisper. He backed away from me and focused his gaze on the window overlooking Olive Way, his fists still clenched at his sides. “It’s not your fault. It’s Cam…and Leandra. One of my best friends is a rapist, and I just called off my wedding. I can’t wrap my head around this. There’s too much to process. I just…I just need some time.”

  “Time?” I echoed, goose bumps standing up on my arms as I watched him glowering at the cars passing below. “How much time? What can I do—”

  “Nothing,” he growled. “Just let me figure this out. That’s all.”

  “I…” My mouth opened, then closed. Then opened again. “Will you call me when you’ve got yourself together?”

  Gabe nodded. Just once, before stalking out the door and pulling it shut with a click. I looked around at the scattered papers he’d left on the floor and bent to pick them up. One was a flyer for an awards banquet his boss was throwing for the employees of Gabe’s firm, and the rest were discarded receipts for gas and groceries. On the couch lay my journal, open to the page that described the night Cameron attacked me in detail.<
br />
  I picked it up and hurled it at the wall, knocking over a lamp and shattering it on the floor.

  Chapter Twenty

  May 13, 2012

  Now that the truth is out there, exposed for all to see…the different details of that night are haunting my thoughts again. Especially the way my mother had looked at me that night when I stumbled through the door in a torn shirt with a swollen lip. She’d had pity written all over her face when she said, “This is what happens when you look like we do, Violet.” As if beauty constituted rape…

  I didn’t hear from Gabe the next day. Or the four after that. Every night, as I lay in my bed, his words would reverberate in my mind, over and over again:

  Why would a parent let their daughter’s rapist go free? I can’t believe they’d let him walk after hurting you.

  The first few months after the rape were filled with questions like that. Why had my mother kept it a secret? Was I not worth justice? Over the years I’d simply pushed my feelings of unworthiness to the back corner of my brain where I stored all the other memories of that night.

  I fished my BlackBerry out of my pocket after work on the fifth night and furiously punched the numbers on the keypad.

  “Violet, dear, are you calling to tell me that you’re sorry?”

  My molars ground together. “Hi, Mom. Um, no. What would I be sorry for?”

  “For running off to Vegas with a boy I haven’t even met.” She sighed dramatically.

  “I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, we broke up.” I wandered over to the couch and flopped down.

  “I guessed you did, considering you sent me an e-mail saying you were flying home alone and that the wedding was off.” There was a pause, and I heard the ice in her tumbler tinkle. It was four-thirty. Time to let her frosted hair down and begin her nightly ritual. Cocktails and vacation planning with my plastic surgeon stepfather. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I closed my eyes. “No. It’s over. In fact…um…Gabe came over after I came home.”

  Mother drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Nora told me the wedding was canceled.”

  “Gabe and Alicia were over before he came to my apartment.” I glanced at the center of the living room where Gabe finally told me he loved me.

  “Are you sure about that?” she asked.

  “Yes.” My head swam. “Why?”

  “Well, Nora said that Alicia’s been over to their house twice since Gabe called off the wedding.” My mom’s voice had a hint of enjoyment in it. She’d always had a thing for controversy. It was the southern belle in her. “Crying and carrying on and such. Nora says she’s just distraught, but that Gabe wants nothing to do with her.”

  Justified, I fist-pumped the air in my living room. “Well, she’ll get the hint eventually.”

  “Are you and Gabe together now?” She sighed. “Like…for good? I mean, I know that neither one of you ever stopped caring about the other.”

  “You did?” For years, I’d assumed that my feelings for Gabe were a secret I kept hidden from the world with all of the others. Apparently I sucked at being nonchalant.

  My mother scoffed. “Everyone did.”

  Case in point.

  She shifted her phone again. “It’s about time you two admitted that you love each other.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?” She laughed breezily. “You two love each other, and he’s not engaged to that redhead anymore. What’s there to guess about? Go get him.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said, my voice thin and tense. “The reason I’m calling is…” I paused as the thickness in my throat increased.

  “What’s wrong? You sound funny.”

  “Gabe knows.”

  That was all I needed to say. My mother didn’t even have to ask me what the hell I was talking about, because I practically heard her jaw drop over the phone.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was hoarse. “You told him?”

  “Gabe deserves to know everything.” I wiped my sweaty palms on the legs of my jeans.

  “I see.” She drew in a long breath, then let it out slowly. “And how did he take it?”

  Tears sprang to my eyes. “Not well.”

  She cleared her throat. “I guess I should prepare myself for Nora’s phone call, then.” My mother’s voice now sounded like a guitar string pulled too tight, on the verge of snapping.

  I nodded. “Probably. Gabe asked me for some space. I haven’t heard from him in days.”

  “Space?”

  “Yes. Space. He was really upset, Mom. He just found out that one of his best friends is a rapist, and that the other has been lying to him for almost a decade.” I was trying really hard not to snap at my mother, but I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out. I punched a hot-pink throw pillow instead. “This is all on top of finding out that his fiancée was a gold-digging liar. Let’s just say, Gabe’s got a lot to process right now.”

  “A lot to process.”

  I shook my head. “Is there an echo in here? Yes. A lot to process.”

  “I guess that’s understandable.” Her voice resumed its happily disconnected lilt. “You’ll just need to give him time, Violet. He’ll come around.”

  I closed my eyes. Talking to my mother was giving me a colossal migraine. “I really think you and I should talk.”

  A pregnant pause followed, filled with all of the comments and questions we’d dared not utter for nine freaking years. “Why’s that, dear?”

  Every exchanged glance between my mother and me, every stilted conversation, every ignored nightmare or panic attack—they all pressed against my skull, begging to be released and talked about. Possibly over coffee, and definitely in a Dr. Phil–style sit down.

  “Because Gabe really got me thinking about some things.” I held my breath. My mom was the queen of brushing things underneath the three-thousand-dollar imported Asian rug. If it was a subject that required her to step out of her chardonnay and aerosol hairspray-filled bubble, Leandra avoided it.

  “Fine.” She sounded meek. “Come over tomorrow for some brunch. I’ll make waffles.”

  The wad in my throat loosened the slightest bit. “Is ten o’clock all right?”

  …

  We stared nervously at each other. The mauve walls and Tiffany light fixture above our heads made me feel like my mother and I were meeting at a brothel, not her breakfast nook. A delectable aroma from the steaming plates wafted through the room. Usually our conversations consisted of local gossip, or we watched slideshows on her laptop of Curtis’s and her most recent vacations. But this morning, I had an agenda.

  “I want to talk about it,” I said, taking a long pull off my orange juice to try and wash the lump out of my throat.

  “Talk about what?” She blinked and took a dainty sip of her coffee.

  “Mom,” I said, gripping my fork tightly. “That night.”

  “Oh, that.” She cut a dime-sized bite of waffle. “Then we can talk, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  Unbelievable. She was treating the fact that I wanted to discuss being sexually assaulted like menstrual cramps. Take two aspirin, darlin’, and tomorrow mornin’ you’ll be good as new! I wanted to throw my breakfast in her face.

  I slammed my fork down on the table. “Dammit, Mom.”

  Her smile faltered. “What?”

  I cleared my throat. “I want to talk about what happened.”

  My mother’s eyes flitted around the room. “We decided that all of this needed to stay private.”

  “No, you decided that. I never decided that. I went along with what you said to do. And I should have spoken up for myself.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I gaped at her in disbelief. “We let a rapist walk free.”

  She leaned closer to me. “Lower your voice, Violet. Curtis is in his office.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You see? There you go again.”

  She was silent.

  The backs
of my eyes stung with tears. “Why did you tell me not to ruin Cameron’s life? Why did it even matter to you what happened to him after you saw what he did to me?”

  My mom looked down, her deliberately clueless façade crumbling. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “How was throwing me into the shower and telling me to pull myself together the right thing?”

  My mother covered her face. “I’m sorry.”

  My face heated with anger. “You’re sorry? Mom, it ruined my life!”

  “I…I…” Her words stalled like an old car in an intersection.

  I used a napkin to wipe my eyes. “Do you understand how awful it was for me to keep a secret like that?”

  “Of course I understand.” Her shoulders had shook. Holy crap, I’d made my mother cry. In twenty-five years, I’d treated my mother as if she were made of glass. As a kid, when she acted faint, I ran to get her a cold compress. And when she was upset over the loss of yet another boyfriend, I was always the one to curl up in her bed, stroke her hair, and remind her that there were more fish in the sea.

  I reached across the small table to touch her shoulder. “Don’t cry. I…I’m sorry.”

  She sniffled softly and used her napkin to dab at her eyes. Only my mother could look that lovely while crying. Her cheeks were slightly flushed while the rest of her was beautifully moistened. I hated that. When I cried, I was splotchy and red. Like I’d been punched in the face a dozen times.

  “Don’t apologize,” she said. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

  I sat back in my seat, my mouth hanging open.

  She wiped her nose with the napkin. “It only took me a few months to realize how wrong my approach was.”

  “How so?” I whispered.

  “As soon as you refused to go back to school, it occurred to me that seeing that boy every day in the halls at your school would be horrible for you.” She looked off in the distance wistfully. “I never had to face the man who raped me again.”

  She’d never shared any details about her own attack with me. Only the simple fact that she’d been assaulted during the preliminaries for the Miss Texas State pageant.