Like a disease.
It’s my own personal hell.
This anger makes me want to destroy everything in sight because I feel like it destroyed me first. Like everything is being ripped apart inside me. When I was young, I used to scream into my pillow until I was hoarse so no one could hear me and think I was losing my mind. There have been times that it seemed like I had purged every ounce of emotion from my body, I couldn’t understand how there was anything left in there that allowed me to feel…anything at all. After the anger eventually wears off, desolation inevitably sets in and I break down. It’s the most debilitating kind of pain, feeling that lost and dejected, with no solution and no clear destination in sight.
And here’s the thing…if I’m the type of person who has that kind of anger inside of them, how then, am I worthy of feeling any kind of happiness? If I have such strong, powerful urges to lash out in such monstrous ways, why would the universe reward a person like me with joy?
My only conclusion is that I just didn’t deserve to be happy.
I believe that there are some people out there who constantly hurt other people, even those closest to them that they’re supposed to love the most. These are the people who I think live their lives paying penance for all the wrongs they’ve committed whether they were some type of unforgivable act or a despicable thought. And as ridiculous as it might sound, I believed that in that sense, Roy and I were cut from the same cloth. He was the type of person who committed horrible acts, and I was the type who conjured up deplorable thoughts.
The fact that I felt like I’d been paying penance for a large portion of my life actually made sense to me. Because there were a lot of people in the world—good people—who deserved all of life’s enjoyments, so much more than I did. If there was only so much happiness in the world—if only a certain amount of people were gifted with joyful lives—then God shouldn’t waste any of it on someone like me.
Not on someone who was a constant source of pain to those around them.
Call it self-loathing. Call it a morose outlook on life. I simply called it realism.
I recognized all of this in myself and I struggled every single day to fix it. And I was trying, so hard. But there were days when I didn’t want to have to try that hard. I wanted things to be easier, for my mind to work a different way. I’d never wanted to be like this. I wanted to be one of those people who deserved some of that happiness. I wanted to lift people up, not bring them down.
I wasn’t bipolar or psychotic. The therapists told me it was all a defense mechanism because of things I went through when I was young and was still dealing with in my adult life. Basically, I had stress and anger management issues. Not that I needed them to tell me that. They told me it was understandable and that I just had to find “productive” rather than “destructive” ways of dealing with the spurts of anger.
Well, I was getting close to the thirty year mark on my life, and that was something I still hadn’t figured out how to do.
It had always made my relationships with men hard to deal with because nine times out of ten, whatever was going wrong between the two of us was my fault. Something I said or did or the way I was acting due to my level of frustration was almost always the cause of fights. The fights would usually end with my apologizing and reflecting on why I was the way I was.
That was my relationship with Scott in a nutshell. I’d get angry, we’d fight, I’d beg for forgiveness, I’d hate myself, and then we would do it all over again.
That was what I’d meant when I told Mason that I wouldn’t be able to make him happy. I didn’t want us to end up that way, fighting and miserable. I also didn’t want to hate myself any more than I already did.
I honestly didn’t want him to waste his time with me, like Scott had.
I wasn’t depressed either. I could enjoy the beautiful things in life and smile and laugh as much as the next person. It was just those moments when I felt like the universe was conspiring against me that I would get annoyed and that annoyance would soon turn to frustration, which evolved into the anger that couldn’t be controlled. In those moments, it felt like I was falling into a downward spiral and there was nothing I could grab ahold of to stop the descent. I would scratch and claw and try to cling onto anything that would give me purchase, but nothing ever did.
Except Mason.
I had held onto him many times since we met when I felt like the rage was beginning to take over, and it immediately subsided. Feeling his presence weakened the potency of the rage and channeled it elsewhere, which usually ended up being sex. I never wanted to admit it to Mason, but the rough sex didn’t just help me avoid memories of Roy’s quiet molesting. It also served as a vehicle to release every bit of anger I had welling up inside me.
Somehow, I was more afraid to tell him that than to talk about anything else from my past.
But…drugs? He was doing drugs again? Something deep inside me told me that just wasn’t right. I had to be misinterpreting something. Maybe if you had let him explain, you’d have your answers. True. I’d run off like a coward before giving him the benefit of the doubt and hearing him out. And no matter how many different ways I spun the situation, the denial in my heart was sharp and prominent. He was stronger than me—stronger than anyone I knew—so he couldn’t have relapsed. That just wasn’t an option.
At that point, there was only one thing I knew with absolute certainty.
Mason subdued the anger inside me.
He turned the darkness into light and kept the monsters at bay.
And I couldn’t let someone like that get away.
##
I had been dealing with that anger ever since I picked up Katie the day before. I was going to keep her for the weekend until Social Services could place her in a temporary home on Monday—a good, safe one. I wouldn’t accept anything less.
She hadn’t said a whole lot since I brought her to my home, but I could tell that she was comfortable with me, which I hoped would get her to open up at some point. We had just finished eating a dinner of Hawaiian pizza—her favorite—and were contemplating what movie to watch when I decided to take another stab at it.
“I know I’ve already told you more than once,” I began, “but you know that you can talk to me about anything. I’m not trying to rush you, but any time you want to talk about whatever is on your mind, I’m here. Okay?”
She nodded and whispered, “Yeah.”
A few minutes passed while she perused my movie collection before I spoke again. “You know…” How to say this to a twelve-year-old? “I had a bad situation at my first foster home too.” Her body froze, her attention immediately focused on my words even though she wouldn’t look up at me. “My foster father Roy was like Ed. He wasn’t very nice to me and he did things he shouldn’t have. I was scared the whole time I lived there and I didn’t have a lot of friends at the time. And I was mad for so long because no one would ever listen to me about what was going on. Nobody acted like they cared. And then…one day they did. They listened to me and things changed and got better. I was never scared again after that.”
She sat quietly for several minutes before breaking the silence. “Did he get in trouble for what he did?”
Sharp pain pierced my chest. I didn’t want to admit it but I wasn’t going to lie to her either. “No, he didn’t. Not in the way he should have, anyway.”
“Then, how were things any better?” she asked, surprising me with her harsh tone. “Evil people should pay for the wrong things they do. That’s what they tell you. That the bad guys always lose and the good guys—people like us—always win. So, why didn’t that happen with you?”
She shouldn’t have to know these things at her age. She was so much like I had been at that age, it was scary.
“Because for whatever reason, life doesn’t always work out the way we think it should,” I told her. “It may not always seem fair, but I fully believe that those kinds of people never win in the end. I think that you
get out of this life what you put in, and those people will always get what they deserve. It may not always happen right away, but we have to believe that it does eventually.”
“Why?” she said on a broken sob, her head lifting to stare at me with tear-filled eyes. “Why should we bother believing it? Maybe the universe doesn’t always balance itself out like that. All the books I read where good always triumphs over evil, I don’t think that’s how it really happens. I think it’s what we’re meant to believe, but it’s just fantasy.”
Definitely like me. Already jaded at such a young age. That did not have to ruin her life, though. “We have to believe things like that, Katie. Because if we don’t, people like us won’t ever have hope. Hope is what will get you through this. It’s what got me through my bad times.”
“What gave you hope?” she asked, the sound of her voice the epitome of innocence.
A smile immediately spread across my face. “My family.” Her brow furrowed in confusion so I explained, “The last foster family I was placed into became my permanent family, I guess you could say. The Mitchells are the most loving people I’ve ever known, and my brother Pierce has been my best friend since I was thirteen. Knowing there were people like that in the world and that I could actually be loved by others was my hope. They saved me.”
Her head was lowered when she whispered, “I miss Sabrina” and then broke down into heart-wrenching sobs. I scooted over to where she sat on the couch and pulled her into my side, rubbing her back in comforting strokes as I fought to withhold my own cries. She needed to just let it all out. I suspected she hadn’t done much of that while she was at the Dole house. I just sat there, acting as a shoulder to cry on because sometimes that’s all you could do.
Eventually, I said, “I know you miss her. And I promise, you’re going to be with her again. No matter what, I’m going to make that happen.”
I didn’t care that I was breaking one of the major rules of social work and making promises to her. This was different. This wasn’t a case where I didn’t know if I could keep those promises. I would absolutely keep my word. There was no if about it.
After several minutes, Katie began to calm down and wipe away her tears. She leaned back and shoved her hair out of her face as she looked up at me. “By the way, that guy who was with you yesterday…he was pretty cute.”
I laughed—a full, belly laugh—for the first time since I’d picked her up. “You think so?”
She nodded, a small grin spreading on her lips. “Is he your boyfriend?”
I struggled to keep my smile in place because I didn’t want her to know how that question truly affected me. “Why? You thinking of stealing him away from me?”
She giggled, the sound a huge reprieve for my nerves. “I think he might be a little old for me. But I just thought I’d ask because I saw how he kept looking at you in the car.”
My heart rate spiked. “How was he looking at me?”
Her eyes searched mine for a second, looking too perceptive for her age. Then, she delivered the words that felt like a blow to my heart, making me snap out of the funk I’d been in since Mason dropped us off the day before. Who would have thought that a heartbroken, wise little twelve-year-old would have made me see the light?
“He was looking at you like you were his hope.”
Chapter Nineteen
Sage
We were having dinner at my family’s house that night, which I had to admit was a godsend from the emotional ringer that Katie and I had both been put through. She had met Frank and Connie a few times and they had all gotten along famously, so I was hoping this might give her some feeling of stability. Plus, Pierce would be there and he always made her laugh like crazy. His goofball personality had that effect on kids.
“Now, I know Connie’s cherry cheesecake is your favorite,” I said to Katie as we walked toward the front door, “but make sure you save some for the rest of us this time.”
She grinned up at me. “I make no promises.”
She was slowly getting back her sense of humor, which was a huge relief to me. She wasn’t quite back to her old self, but she was making nice progress.
Just before we reached the front steps, the door swung open.
And there stood my ex-husband, Scott.
I froze on the spot and Katie looked up at me in question. She didn’t know who Scott was and I could feel the worry coming off of her as she took in my shocked reaction to seeing him. Considering the fact that Scott worked for Frank, I honestly wasn’t surprised to run into him. I just wasn’t prepared for an encounter on that particular evening.
Scott looked somewhat uncomfortable but he put on a smile. “Hey, Sage.”
With dark hair and sharp features, he was as attractive as he had been when we were married. He had only developed a few more lines around his eyes since we were together, but they somehow made him look even more distinguished. His body was still slim and fit and I knew that the button-up shirt he wore was covering some pretty wicked-looking tattoos. Other than a slightly different haircut and smaller, empty holes in his ears that were once occupied by gages, he hadn’t changed much. Maybe more mature-looking.
“Hi, Scott.” I looked down at Katie and smiled reassuringly. “Go on and see if Connie needs help in the kitchen. I’ll be inside in just a minute.” And to really prove to her that everything was alright, I added, “Keep your hands off that cheesecake.”
She nodded and went inside, closing the door behind her, leaving me alone outside with the man I once thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
“I’m sorry,” he began, his brow furrowed in apology. “I just came by to tell Frank something real quick. I was trying to be gone before you got here.”
I waved him off. “It’s fine, really. It’s not like the world’s going to end if we run into each other.”
We both laughed, his shoulders relaxing. “How have you been?” he asked.
How to answer that? “Good.” That was the safe answer. “Busy, like always. Roxanne’s getting worked on, so I’ve been driving Frank’s baby.” I pointed back to the Nova. “But other than that, life’s been just as hectic as normal.”
He looked from me to the Nova and back to me. “Finally getting the old girl worked on, huh? That’s good. She needed it.”
“Don’t knock a classic.”
He put his hands up in surrender. “I would never.”
I chuckled, feeling oddly at ease with the situation. “How have you been?”
He nodded, rocking back on his feet. “Great. Everything’s awesome at the company and business is growing. Frank’s always busting my balls but that’s nothing unusual.” We laughed again and then he swallowed slowly, looking cautiously at me. “I was actually coming by to tell him that…I got engaged.”
A year ago—maybe even a few months ago—that might have stung a little. But with Mason on my brain, the news wasn’t even a pin-prick to my heart.
“That’s great,” I said, meaning every word. “I’m really happy for you.”
He smiled as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Thanks. It’s kind of crazy how we met, but it just felt right from the beginning.”
Sounds like me and Mason. “Well, I wish you both the best. She’s a lucky woman.”
His expression spoke of gratitude as his smile turned into one of appreciation. I wasn’t sure if he expected me to be a resentful shrew or what, but I really was happy that he’d found someone. I didn’t like thinking about how miserable Scott had been with me, and it was nice to know that he wasn’t going to be like that for eternity.
“I appreciate that,” he replied. “Well, I’ll let you get to your family. It was nice to see you, Sage.”
“You too.” He walked past me and headed toward his car. But right before he reached his door, something popped into my head, and I was afraid that I would forever regret it if I didn’t get it off my chest. “I’m sorry,” I blurted.
Scott paused, his head snapping up at me. “F
or what?”
“For wasting your time. For making you unhappy all those years. Maybe if you and I had never gotten married, you would have met her sooner and would have a life with her by now.”
He walked back around the car, his face drawn in sympathy. He was always good at showing sympathy, though I knew he wasn’t meaning to offend me. I knew that he’d always cared about me, but he never quite understood that his sympathy was the last thing I ever wanted from him. He stopped in front of me with his arms at his sides, his keys dangling from one hand.
“Everything happens for a reason, Sage,” he said, conviction evident in his tone. “Make of it what you will, but us getting married just fell in with the natural course of our lives. We both changed and grew from it and I’ll never regret that. And you didn’t waste my time. I would never look at our relationship as a waste.”
“But you were unhappy,” I said helplessly. “How could that be considered anything but a waste? You were always the one who said life is too short to live it unhappily.”
“It wasn’t that I was unhappy with you,” he said, taking a step closer. “It was just that I didn’t understand you. I felt like I couldn’t connect with you. And that always made me feel so guilty.”
My breath caught in my throat. “What do you mean?”
His eyes were almost pleading when they met mine. “You’ve dealt with a lot of things in your life, and it clearly still affects you on some level. But I could never really put myself in your shoes and understand where you were coming from, no matter how hard I tried or how badly I wanted to. You know I grew up in a solid family. We’re close and my sisters and I never wanted for anything. For some reason, I almost felt bad about that. Because your life was the complete opposite and I… I just never got it. I always felt like I was such a terrible husband because I couldn’t understand my own wife.”
The Art of Sage (Cruz Brothers #2) Page 20