WRAPPED: The Manhattan Bound Series, Book Two

by Juliet Braddock

  “Will you please talk to me?”

  “Can't...little one...” She could hear the gruffness in his voice as the tears began to fall from his face. He was crying. And Maxine didn’t quite know what to do as he continued on, only to berate himself. “I'm a horrible person...a fucking awful, stupid person...”

  “Stop, Drew,” Maxine said, gripping him with her last ounce of strength. “You’re scaring me, my love...please just come inside with me…it’s too cold to be—”

  While he wore nothing but his pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, Drew refused to budge, so she had no choice but to join him. She cared more for his well-being that her own. Slipping down to the chair beside him, Maxine forced him to allow her to hold him, and she pulled his head against her chest, rocking him and running her fingers through the thickness of his hair.

  “Talk to me, my sweet man,” she begged him, fighting her own emotions so that she could be there for him to pick up his shattered soul. “I love you, Drew. And I’m here for the long-haul—not just the happy times.”

  “So ugly, little one…” he whispered and turned away to refocus again on the skyline. “Too ugly to tell you…”

  “No, Drew…no, it’s not,” she said and placed her hands on his cheeks, turning him to face her. “If it’s hurting you, then I need to know. Maybe I’ll hurt, too, but that’s what this relationship is about. We share each other’s joys, and we support each other in our sorrows no matter how difficult the consequences might be.”

  “Far wiser than your years, little one…”

  “It has nothing to do with wisdom,” she said. “It has to do with what’s in my heart—and in yours.”

  “Fucking hate myself, Maxine...” he muttered. “You deserve so much better than me...”

  “I…Drew, I won’t listen to you saying things like that,” she said, exuding every ounce of patience she could find within herself. “You are one of the most generous, loving people I have ever known.”

  He'd moved his lips as if to speak, but couldn't readily find the words. Shaking his head adamantly, his face curdled as if he were imagining his worst nightmare coming true right before his eyes. How could he possibly tell Maxine—his beloved, innocent Maxine?

  However, Drew also knew that she wouldn't take his silence for an answer. He had to muster some of that old McKenzie bravery that seemed to dissipate over the course of the evening. He just had to spit out the words.

  “I…I haven’t told you everything, Maxine,” he said. “I haven’t even told my parents...”

  Her heart split with the weight of the pain through which Drew suffered. Maxine knew that she had to prepare herself for the worst. Declan and Maggie were Drew’s world. She couldn’t imagine anything that was so horrible that he would neglect to confide in them.

  “If you need to talk to them before you talk to me, Drew, I understand,” she attempted to assure him.

  Adamantly, he shook his head, like an obstinate child readying to throw a tantrum. “No. Never. They will never forgive me for this.”

  “Drew, they love you unconditionally,” she reminded him. “They would never turn their backs on you.”

  “Maxine…” She could see his lips visibly trembling with his utterance of her name. “Maxine, this is so…fucking…ugly…”

  “I can deal with ugly,” she insisted and took his hands as she stood up from her chair. “But Drew, it’s freezing out here. Your hands are like ice cubes. I want you warm and comfortable inside…and then we’ll talk…if you feel up to it…”

  Dazed, he took her direction. His mouth dangling open, he followed behind her like a lost little boy, promised by a kind and gentle stranger that she’d find his mother for him. Once inside, Maxine closed the door with a little too much force, then wrapped a velvety throw from the couch around him before she flicked the remote to get the fire going. She would have made some hot chocolate, too, but time was of the essence. She needed to talk to him before he lost his courage once again.

  Next to him on the loveseat near the hearth, Maxine allowed Drew some distance between them, but she took his hands and waited.

  Wincing, he closed his eyes again, unable to face her. “Louise,” Drew whispered. “Sh-she…she did it again...”

  For a moment, Maxine’s mind blanked, but she quickly put two and two together. “The woman who took you, Drew?”

  Slowly, he nodded, but he still refused to look at Maxine directly. “Yes…Louise…”

  “She kidnapped another child?” Maxine asked, only watch Drew coil away and curl into a ball in the corner, rocking himself as he wrapped his arms around his knees. “Drew, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No, Maxine…she…she…”

  “Take your time,” she attempted to calm him. “I’m not going to leave you, Drew. I’ll be right here once you open your eyes again…”

  At that moment, he forced himself to look at Maxine to rid himself from the nightmarish recollections spinning through his mind. He was here with the woman he loved. He was safe. Yet he couldn’t shed his greatest fears or discuss the terrors that continued to haunt him every single second.

  Essentially, he felt like he’d lied to her, leaving out a huge portion of the truth behind his pain. Maxine didn’t know what the hell she was getting into with him. Now he knew he could quite possibly lose every last bit of good in his life, but he couldn’t hide the truth from her for one more moment.

  “She…abused me…in ways…that I can’t…” He stopped in the midst of her absolute silence, then took a deep breath and blinked against his tears. “Tonight…she was arrested…for…sexual abuse of a minor…”

  Rage consumed her. Bile strangled her throat. Maxine’s mind erupted with pure ire. She could feel the blood pounding in her ears. Once again, she felt so naive, thinking that Drew’s abuse was limited to physical beatings and torture of his young and innocent mind. Yet the cruelties of that woman didn't surprise her. She’d been so callous as to turn a blind eye toward the cycle of abuse that her so-called lover forced upon three innocent children. Of course, she had a hand in it, too.

  Now, Maxine dared to wonder if there had been others. Predators so rarely stopped at one or two. Oh, how she wanted Louise to pay for her disgusting sins...but right now, she just needed to make Drew understand that the blame didn't rest within his own hands.

  “Before you go on…I love you, Drew,” Maxine whispered, venturing to lean in closer to brush a kiss against his temple. “Unconditionally. You know that, right?”

  “But this, Maxine—” he stopped when he realized that he was shouting, then lowered his voice. “This...?”

  “Yes, even through this...” she assured him. “This isn't your fault...”

  “No, Maxine, it is my fault that she did it to someone else,” he insisted. “If only I'd reported her...maybe that kid could have been spared.”

  “You were young...and you were afraid,” Maxine reminded him.

  “If you want the truth…” Drew filled his lungs with a deep breath, then a second. “If you want the truth, I didn’t even know that I was…sexually abused…until years after the fact…”

  “Oh, no…” While she circled her arms around a struggling Drew, she refused to cry herself. She had to keep it together—remain strong for his sake—regardless of how dreadful the details were. “My sweet Drew…how…?”

  “When all you know is abuse from the time you’re a baby, you don’t realize that something isn’t normal…that it’s the most heinous act of humanity…” he began, but his voice waned as he finished his thought. “I was locked away in that house. I knew no one, but those two fucking people…and my siblings. And the only time that he wasn’t hurting me psychically with his fists…or a hairbrush…or something else…was when she…when…that woman would…”

  Again, Maxine’s heart crumbled into a million little pieces. He’d suffered the unfathomable, and he still blamed himself for the criminal workings of his captor’s twisted mind. She wished she had
something comforting, something profound, to say to him, but her thoughts were consumed by images of a frightened, curly-haired boy who should have grown up in the loving arms of his real family.

  “It was all you knew…” she could only manage to repeat. “You were robbed of everything. They took your life—your innocence. Don’t blame yourself.”

  “It’s killing me, Maxine,” he said, as the tears just dripped down his face in steady streams. He couldn’t remember crying like that since he was a small boy, not long after he had returned home to the McKenzies. Then, his brother held his hand and told him that he was going to be fine. Now, Maxine refused to back away. “Adam called me tonight to tell me. He heard it on the news. And my parents…they left me messages…texts…I haven’t answered them. They don’t know about me, Maxine—they don’t know….”

  “Would you…what if you went to the authorities now?” she wondered. “Would you feel like you’ve gained some justice?”

  “Statute of limitations on sexual abuse runs five years after your eighteenth birthday in the State of New York,” he said somberly. “I’m a decade past my deadline…”

  That chilling fact of law left her unnerved. She couldn’t believe that absolutely nothing could be done to that woman for her crimes against Drew and likely others. However, now wasn’t the time to dispute legalities.

  “Drew…I…you’ve never told anyone else?” she asked. “Not even Adam?”

  The answer she feared fell from his lips. “No one.”

  “What about your siblings, Drew? Your siblings in the house?”

  “My brother was still a toddler, but Molly…I’m sure…I’m sure that’s what that man did to her…why she screamed…”

  “But you and Molly took care of each other…”

  “She’s gone, Maxine,” he raged and struggled to rise from the loveseat. “Gone!”

  Somehow, though, Maxine hung on with all of her might and held him fiercely in her grip. She wasn’t about to allow him to walk away, and she held him while those angry tears continued to fall, releasing nearly thirty years of unthinkable revulsion in their steady flow.

  As he sobbed against her—wailing for those three children who bore the agony of two angry fiends who preyed upon innocence to carry out their most-corrupted offences—Maxine clung to the hope that one day, Drew might have the chance to heal.

  “It’s my fault,” he continued to insist. “I should have realized that I needed to go to the police. I had until I was twenty-three to do it, and I just kept it all a secret. I never told a soul. I—”

  “Drew, you were a child who didn’t understand what was even happening,” Maxine told him and took his face into her tiny hands. “Whatever you felt wasn’t wrong—it was human. You were scared…and probably embarrassed…and shocked…and hurting…”

  “But my silence allowed another child to be hurt, Maxine,” he said. “I don’t know that I can live with that guilt. I could have saved him, but I didn't.”

  “Don’t continue to blame yourself—please, Drew, for your own sake,” Maxine said. “She's the one with the problem here.”

  “I wish I could think that way right now, Maxine,” he said. “This is just fucking tearing me apart...”

  It ripped Maxine to shreds, too, but for the moment, she knew she couldn't argue with him, telling him how he should feel—or trying to convince him that he wasn't responsible for that woman's deviant actions. She could simply love him as best she knew how—heeding her mother’s words in the dream— and that was with a devotion like none other.

  “I can’t just sit here. I have to do something—I have to see that poor child…I have to…”

  “Shhh…” she murmured, cradling his head and pulling him toward her once again. “There’s nothing you can do right now. It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I feel so guilty…I’m not worthy of you—of my family. I can’t even stand the feel of my own skin…”

  In her effort to hold it together, Maxine could only look to the heavens above and thank her mother for the strength and the courage she would continue to need as the days unfolded before them. She’d have her own time to cry, alone, but she refused to waver in front of him.

  “I know you’re not going to sleep tonight, Drew,” she began softly, “but will you at least come to bed and try to rest? We can figure out how to approach this in the morning. Maybe even make a phone call to your attorney?”

  “Just promise me, Maxine…” Now he held her shoulders tight. “Promise me you won’t leave me. Please, don’t…leave…me…”

  “Drew, I’ll be here for you every single morning,” she assured him. “And every single night. I love you, sweet man. Now trust that—and believe in it.”

  For the first time since she’d found him on the terrace, he relaxed, if not relented, to her delicate touch.

  With the sincerity of her words weighing heavily upon him, Drew whispered, “I love you, too, Maxine. And in you—I do believe…”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The trickle of running water provided a backdrop for the vaguely familiar pop beat that eventually awakened Maxine that morning. Drew’s side of the bed was once again empty, but at least she could pinpoint his whereabouts. He was in the bathroom, taking a shower and blasting David Bowie.

  At some point, Maxine had nodded off in spite of Drew’s tossing and turning in her arms. Now she struggled to remember the sweetness of her dream about Judy in the wake of Drew’s sorrow.

  She wanted so desperately to cry, but Maxine fought herself. This was not the time to crumble. Whether he realized it or not, Drew depended upon her to erase the torment from his troubled soul and to rescue him from the treacherous ledge to which he clung.

  The struggle continued within her own thoughts to process the severity of his childhood trauma. The kidnappings and constant circle of physical abuse were horrific, but the shock of his darkest revelation hadn’t yet settled into her consciousness. In so many ways, Maxine refused to accept it.

  Last night was just one long nightmare from which she hadn’t yet awakened. No one could possibly ever hurt a child so small in such inconceivable ways. A wrecked life of a wounded woman bore no excuses for the misery inflicted upon innocents.

  What continued to plague Maxine’s thoughts, hacking at the recesses of her mind, was Drew’s own admission that he was so young that he didn’t even comprehend the magnitude of what happened to him. Emotionally, that woman gutted his heart and soul, leaving him to wonder—even now that he’d found and fallen for Maxine—if he’d ever be worthy of true love.

  Now he was that child once again who needed help. And Maxine was determined to uncover a way to save his soul.

  She couldn’t just sit in bed, so she climbed out and headed to the bathroom. That morning, though, he wasn’t belting showtunes, reverberating the entire upstairs with the likes of Stephen Sondheim or Rodgers and Hammerstein. In fact, his silence behind the wall of music left Maxine feeling anxious.

  She knocked, knowing full well that he wouldn’t hear her, then opened the door. Behind the steamed shower, she could see him moving—and now she could hear his voice, crying softly to himself. He had no idea that she was standing there, and Maxine didn’t want to intrude on this alone time that Drew felt he needed.

  Torn, she shook her head in frustration. She wanted to hold him and assure him that everything was going to be fine…but she wanted to allow him some space, too.

  Her heart won the battle with her head, and she called out to him, “Drew, love…I’m awake now…”

  Suddenly, the music stopped, as did the running water, and the depth of his sigh echoed throughout.

  “Drew…?” she repeated and dared to step closer to the door. “I’m here. Can…do you need anything?”

  “I'm all right, Maxine…” he whispered. “I’ll be fine…”

  Maxine couldn’t help but doubt his words for the first time since they’d started dating, nor could she just allow him to dismiss her. Two
more steps brought her just to the glass door, and she pressed her hand against the pane.

  “You can open the door, Drew,” she began, “or I can do it myself.”

  You will not shun me, she thought. We need each other too much right now, and I love you. I love you…

  With great reluctance, Drew finally pushed at the handle, opening the door just wide enough to keep Maxine at bay. His eyes bloodshot eyes pleaded with her to leave; he didn’t want her to see him in that state of suffering.

  “How about some breakfast? Nanny Fi should be here any minute. We can—”

  Reaching out, he touched his thumb to her cheek then over her lips. “Not hungry, little one.” Maxine’s sad look of disappointment crushed upon his already wounded heart. She was only trying to help. However, nothing could deter his racing, angry thoughts at the moment—not even the sweetness of Maxine. “But...but thank you…”

  “Honestly, Drew…” she whispered, “I just wanted to see you right now—make sure…”

  “Make sure that I didn’t cut my wrists in the shower?”

  “Drew…” However, she couldn’t mask her own fears. “Drew, I love you, and you are not going to fight this alone. I support you in whatever you decide to do, so expect me to follow you along.”

  “I don’t deserve you….” Turning away, he closed his eyes and shook his head. “Not today, Maxine…please…for your own sake…please…”

  “What are you planning, Drew?” she asked.

  “Just…Maxine…no…”

  “Listen, Drew, you can boss me around in the bedroom, but when it comes to matters of your emotional state outside that door, I will not take ‘no’ for an answer,” she insisted. “What are you planning?”

  “Just...seeing my attorney…there’s nothing he can do…but…that child…I want to help that child...”

  “Your lawyer can come here,” Maxine said. “And I can call him personally if you’d like…”

  “Maxine, I—”

  “I’d also like to call my therapist, Drew, and see if she can sneak in a visit with you—with us,” Maxine said. “I remember a day not so long ago…when…” Her voice suddenly broke off. There was no fucking point in trying so hard no to cry. This was, by far, the hardest day of her life next to the Saturday that her mother passed.