by Sophie Stern
I rub my hand up and down his shoulder. I know he's hesitant still. We're still so new that we're both being careful. Neither one of us wants to fuck this up. Not just yet. Not before we really get started.
"Okay," I tell him. "I appreciate that you're willing to open up to me. You have no idea what it means to me." And I mean it. Despite my freaking out and panicking over everything he does, he's somehow managed to make everything okay with just a few simple words.
He nods slowly, painfully. He needs to be alone, so I get up.
"Why don't we do dinner?" I ask. "I'm actually looking at a house at 6:15, but I could come by after, or we could meet somewhere."
"A house?" He raises an eyebrow.
"I'm taking your advice. I'm moving to Pinebluff as soon as possible." I discussed it with Anna and she was thrilled at the idea of me moving out. Even Colby seemed pleased.
I turn and walk out of August's office without another word, but not before I see the little smile playing on his lips.
He's glad I'm moving.
And my heart soars.
25
It's a funny thing, falling in love.
You can feel like you're doing everything right.
You can feel like you're getting everything under control.
You can feel like you're floating and falling at the same time.
You can explode.
You can melt.
You can die.
You can feel everything and nothing all at the same time, but it's never quite what you expected.
Love is always a surprise.
When I finally get to August's house, it's after 8. I waltz up to the front door, still on a high from seeing the house I'll soon be renting. It's seriously perfect. I put down a deposit on the spot and can move in next week. I'll only be five minutes away from his house, five minutes away from work, five minutes away from getting the love and kisses I want whenever I want them.
That is, if I survive what August wants to tell me tonight.
He opens the door as soon as I ring the bell and lets me inside. He doesn't kiss me. He just steps aside so I can come in. There's a glass of whiskey in his hand. His eyes are dark. Has he been crying? No. I don't think he has, but could he have been?
"August?" I ask. "Are you okay?"
"Let's sit down." He walks to the couch and slumps down, downing the rest of his whiskey. He slams the glass onto the table and leans his head back. I don't say anything as he closes his eyes, obviously struggling. What is it that's so horrible? What is it that he has to say?
"Baby?" I put my hand on his knee, but he jerks away. What the fuck is going on? This isn't the August I know. This isn't the August I've fallen for.
"You can't touch me, okay?" He says it slowly and deliberately, as though it's painful to say, as though he can't quite express what he wants to. It's almost like touching him is a distraction and he needs all of his energy just to get the words out.
"I'm right here," I tell him. "I'm not going anywhere. Take your time."
"I was in the military," he says, but I already know. I saw the pictures in the guest room. I know that he served. With what branch or for how long, I don't know. He's never talked about it and that information wasn't exactly in his Wikipedia article.
"And I was overseas," he tells me. "I was happy to serve. I even volunteered to go. My dad tried to talk me out of it, said it was no place for me, but I wanted to do something. I wanted to give back." He pauses and I resist the urge to place my hand back on his knee. I want to touch him, to reach out, to have some sort of connection, but it's not what he needs right now.
He needs me to just be.
So I'll be.
"Everything was fine for the first few months," August continues. "We got into a routine, sort of. Things were normal. Things were fine. But one day, everything changed. One day, we got shot at."
I try not to gasp, but I can't help it. Shot at? Seriously? How terrifying is that? I've never even held a gun, much less heard one go off. The pain in August's eyes is evident, though. The horror he's feeling is real. He survived combat. He was in war and he walked away, unscathed.
Sort of.
"We didn't know what was happening at first. When it happens, you've been trained for it, you know what's going on. You get it, logically, but you don't really get it. There's a disconnect. It seems like it's happening to someone else."
August sniffs, and I look back into his eyes. Tears are running down his cheeks.
"Baby, we don't have to do this," I say calmly. "We can do this another time. It's okay. We don't have to talk about it."
"No," he says. "I've waited long enough. It's not fair to you to not know this. I should have told you a long time ago."
He takes a deep breath and continues.
"Mark was my best friend. We were inseparable. When the first shots happened, we all responded the best we could, but I didn't know he'd been hit until it was too late, until I saw the blood."
August starts sobbing now, crying louder, and I forget his no touching rule. Instead, I wrap him in my arms. What the fuck is going on? His best friend? Aside from my dad, I've never seen a grown man cry. The way his entire body shakes is unbelievable. The way he's breaking is unbearable. How am I supposed to be the strong one here? How am I supposed to support him through this?
"He died. He died in my arms. He died and I didn't save him. Couldn't. Didn't. He died. And I...I should have saved him."
"August," I hold him tighter. "August, it's okay. You did everything you could." I struggle to find the right words to offer comfort, knowing the entire time that nothing I say will be enough. He lost his best friend, his brother, his companion, during a time when there was nothing he could have done. He did everything he could have, but it wasn't enough.
How do you comfort someone when they're dealing with that?
August stops crying and pulls away, wiping his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm not trying to freak you out. You just...you need to know this about me, Charlotte. If we're going to make this work, you need to know what you're getting into." I know that he's right, but it doesn't make this any easier. It's not easy to listen to the person you love tell you how broken they are. It's not easy to listen to how much pain they've had to endure alone. It's not easy to hear how they hurt.
I nod and he goes on.
"When I came back, my girlfriend was waiting for me. She didn't know I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Neither one of us knew. I didn't talk about what happened and she didn't ask. She was just glad I was home."
My stomach clenches at the thought of him with another woman, a woman he shared a home with, but I try to push it aside. This isn't about jealousy right now. This is about August confiding in me. This is about August sharing his darkest pain with me.
"The nightmares were bad. Every night I'd wake up in a sweat, reliving that moment. I couldn't be in crowds. I couldn't watch television. I couldn't be around anything to do with war or guns or Violence. Shit, I couldn't even drive down a gravel road. The rocks hitting the car reminded me of gunshots. I couldn't do it. I freaked out.
"Eventually, Tiffany started to get worried. I stopped going to work. I'd just lay in bed all day. It got bad. She begged me to go to counseling and I did for awhile, but then I stopped. The diagnosis scared me. The medication didn't seem to work the way my therapist promised me that it would. The whole world seemed cruel and dark."
He pauses, catching his breath. My own heart aches for August. How could I have not known? How could I have not seen the signs? PTSD. Of course. This explains the no sleeping in his room thing, how uncomfortable he was at the donor luncheon on campus, even how he missed work unexplainably. It explains everything. He's not hiding a secret girlfriend: he's hiding a secret world of pain and horror.
August is suffering.
He's broken.
He's the strongest man I've ever met, but he's damaged and hurting.
And he's not even done talking y
et.
He takes a deep breath before he continues.
"One night, it all changed. The nightmare was the worst I'd ever had. It was so real. In my dream, I was seeing him die, but I fought back. Only, I was actually fighting back."
He looks at me, making eye contact.
"And it was Tiffany who was in my bed, not the shooter."
Oh my. Holy shit. What the fuck. What the fuck happened?
What the fuck did August do?
I don't have to wait long to find out because he keeps talking.
"I broke her wrist. She was my whole world, and I broke her."
The tears still fall, but they're silent now, racing down his cheeks and dropping onto his hands, casting me into a world I've never been a part of. No longer is this a relationship of joy and excitement, of newness and pleasure. Now there is only pain.
Now there is only darkness.
And I don't know how to find my way without a light.
26
I’ve never fallen as hard or as fast.
I’ve never been as afraid.
I’ve never been as determined.
August just opened up in ways most people have never dreamed of. He just told me his deepest secret. It wasn’t about a hidden family or an ex-wife. No, this is harder to swallow.
This is darker.
I already knew that August had been in relationships before. It’s to be expected when you’re over 30. Or, you know, over 16.
But I hadn’t been expecting his confession about PTSD.
I hadn’t been expecting the part where he broke his girlfriend’s wrist during a nightmare.
I hadn’t been expecting that if I want to keep dating him, there are going to be rules in place to protect us both.
I hadn’t been expecting to have to make a choice.
When you’re growing up, you hear all the warnings about bad boys. You always hear people say that if a guy hurts someone, he’ll do it again. If a guy is abusive, he’ll be that way forever. If a guy is damaged, then there’s no hope. Somehow, though, now that I’m faced with the decision, it’s not so black and white. I always thought that decisions like this were obvious, but they aren’t. They’re murky.
Now I have to decide.
Is August worth the trouble?
Should I give up and find another guy?
Can we keep working through this?
And do I really want to?
Though I’m surprised at August’s admission, part of me realizes that this doesn’t change who he is. It doesn’t change who I’ve fallen in love with. It doesn’t change the way I feel.
We’re all broken.
We’re all damaged.
It’s all a matter of whether we’re willing to fight for the things that we want.
And August Mason is all I’ve ever wanted.
27
Tiffany is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in real life.
She holds out her hand when she greets me, and I hesitate to take it. No, I haven’t forgotten my manners. I just don’t know how to behave around someone who looks like they just stepped out of a magazine.
“You must be Charlotte,” she says with a smile. “It’s really nice to meet you.”
I take a deep breath and shake her hand. Somehow, she doesn’t break and I don’t pass out. It’s a win-win for both of us.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” I say to her. “I know it’s kind of weird.”
She waves her hand, letting me know that it’s not a big deal to her, then she steps aside and ushers me into her home. Slowly, I make my way into the living room, trying to focus on why I’m here. I’m here because of August. I’m here to hear her side. I’m here to figure out where to go from here.
I’m here because I am so fucking lost that I don’t know which way is up.
Tiffany is the only person I can talk to, the only one who will understand how I feel.
When August told me about his past, I expected it to be something bad. What else would explain his weird behavior? What else would explain the way he randomly missed work or how he was afraid to let me spend the night in his room?
For a billionaire boyfriend, he's perfect in almost every way.
Except this one.
And I just don't know what to do.
“So you want to talk about August,” she says, making herself comfortable on her oversized leather sofa. I take a seat across from her in a chair and nod. I like that she doesn’t bother with pleasantries. She doesn’t waste time talking about her house or her perfect life. She doesn’t make me come up with a paragraph-sized introduction to myself. She just jumps right in.
“We’ve been seeing each other for just a few weeks,” I say. It’s hard to believe that it hasn’t been very long. It’s tough for me to realize that two months ago, I had no idea who August Mason was. I didn’t know what he looked like, what he did for work, what he tasted like. I didn’t know how hard he could make me cum or how much I would cry over him.
I didn’t know he had PTSD or that he had broken his ex-girlfriend’s wrist during a nightmare.
I didn’t know I would have to make a choice.
“And you just found out about the PTSD,” Tiffany finishes for me.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s only been a few days, but it’s really overwhelming. I kind of feel like I got blindsided.”
“I get it,” she nods. “You’re crazy about him and you’re wondering if he could be ‘the one,’ all that. Then you find out that the man of your dreams has this horrible secret. It’s natural to be scared.” She seems very calm. Too calm, like she's been through this many times before, like all of this is old news to her.
“You didn’t stay,” I say slowly, wondering how to broach the topic of August hurting her. August said that after his nightmare that day, she ran out and he didn't hear from her for weeks. When she finally called, it was to tell him that she was leaving. Not just him. She was leaving Pinebluff. She needed to get away. She needed a fresh start.
“I didn’t stay. I couldn’t. Not after what happened. Charlotte, August’s a good guy,” Tiffany assures me. “And now that he’s gotten the help that he needs, he has things much more under control than when we were together. When he came back from his deployment, he wasn’t the guy I fell in love with. He was dark. He was depressed. He was sad. He wouldn’t get help and I didn’t know what to do. We both knew something was wrong, but we were so damn young and naïve that we had no idea what steps to take.”
I find it hard to picture Tiffany as anything but what she is right now: a 30-something mother of two. She’s married, she has two little girls, and she lives in a huge house in a great part of town. Her husband is successful and she gets to stay at home with her kids. Her life seems perfect to me, but I know I’m just getting a glimpse of what her world is like.
The decision to move back to Pinebluff after years away must have been difficult.
It must have been horrifying.
She offers me a cup of tea and I nod, gratefully accepting the warm drink. I sip it slowly as she continues.
“I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you that when August hurt me, I was very scared. I can also tell you that he changed that night. He started going to counseling regularly. He joined a support group. He even went to church for awhile. Talking with people and surrounding himself with others who have been there really helped August. He really managed to get everything under control. That’s when his dad gave him the job at Strongdelt.”
So August hadn’t just been a shoe-in for the position. Interesting.
“I left August,” Tiffany tells me, “but we didn’t stop being friends. While I was away, we kept in touch through phone calls and emails. We still talk now, though not as frequently, and we work much better as friends than we did as lovers. I wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. I wasn’t ready for the work it took.” She shrugs. “I met Tom about two years after August and I broke up and it was very different. It was almost perfect f
rom the start. We only dated a few months before we decided to get married.”
Now she smiles and sips her drink, basking in the warmth of her sweet memories. I wonder, for just a second, if I could ever have with August what Tiffany has with Tom. When I left his house the other night, I couldn’t even think straight. I know I probably should have stayed and talked more, but I couldn’t. I needed to be alone. I needed time to process what he had just told me.
Finding Tiffany’s contact information hadn’t been hard, but I had been terrified when I emailed her and asked if she would meet with me. You always hear stories about bitchy ex-wives and ex-girlfriends who have it out for the new girl. To my surprise – and good luck – she hadn’t been that way at all. If anything, Tiffany had been more than happy to help me and to talk with me about what to expect.
“I don’t want to lose August,” I say timidly. “I’m crazy about him.”
“He feels the same way about you, Sweetie.”
I raise an eyebrow. He told her? Of course he did. She said they keep in touch. He must have told her he found someone.
“I just…part of me is scared. I know he has things mostly under control, but he still has bad days.”
Tiffany shrugs.
“Everyone has bad days. Whether or not you have PTSD, we all have issues. You just have to decide whether or not August is worth the difficulty, the struggle, the work. I can’t tell you what to do, Charlotte. You have to decide that for yourself.”
I know that she’s right, but she’s not making this any easier. How do you decide whether to keep trying when you’re faced with something like this? What if August and I get married and he has another bad dream and he hurts me? What if he slumps into a deep depression and he can’t crawl out of it? What if I can’t drag him out of it?
“Charlotte,” Tiffany’s voice breaks my thoughts, forcing me to return to the present. “I know that it’s scary.”