by Rachel Hanna
While they were dancing, Sharon came to ask if Ethan could spend the night. He and Howie wanted to leave already and go to the diner for dinner. Reluctantly, Bella agreed. She knew that meant she was on her own with Grant. She kissed Ethan goodbye just as the song changed to Garth Brooks’ “The Dance”.
As she turned to walk off the dance floor, Grant reached down and lightly took her hand, pulling her close. He slid his hands around her waist and started swaying to the music. Everything in her said to run, but she couldn’t. It was at that point that she realized she was in trouble. Big trouble.
She slowly slid her hands up his firm chest and around his neck. She could feel every inch of him pressed against her, and it ignited feelings in her that she never could have imagined. His eyes pierced through her as she broke his gaze and put her head against his chest. Grant’s heart was beating hard and fast, and she was thankful that he couldn’t feel the erratic way hers was beating.
Bella had never felt so safe, so secure, so wanted. She didn’t know what to do with any of those emotions, and with her ADD-addled mind, she felt like a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings. Why couldn’t she just let go and be at peace for a few minutes? Why did security and kindness feel more dangerous to her than abuse?
“Bella?” he whispered into her ear. She could feel the heat of his breath against her ear, and it sent shockwaves through her body.
“Yes?”
“You okay?” he asked. Just the fact that he asked made her want to cry. What was he doing to her?
“I’m okay,” she said softly without looking up. Instead of taking her word for it, he reached in and tipped her chin up with his finger. Looking her in the eyes, he leaned in slowly and kissed her gently on her forehead as if she was glass that might shatter into a million pieces if he touched her too hard. She smiled up at him, unable to say thank you with words. She wanted to thank him for every single moment he’d spent with her, and she wanted to tell him that he had been her saving grace - the thing that kept her sane since losing Lori and becoming a stand-in mother to Ethan. Instead, she put her cheek back on his chest and absorbed the masculine scent of his cologne as if she was transporting herself to another world a million miles away.
When the song was over, the speakers blared “Joy to the World” and ruined the romantic mood. Laughing, they walked out from under the pavilion, but Grant didn’t release Bella’s hand as they walked toward the truck. As he opened the door for her, she went up on her tip toes and kissed his cheek softly.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“Just for being you,” she said as she slid into the vehicle and buckled up.
A few minutes later, they were in Bella’s driveway. The thought of going into her house alone was daunting to her. She’d gotten used to Ethan being there, and there would be a void tonight.
“Would you like to come in?” she asked, surprising the hell out of Grant.
“You want me to come in?” he asked in complete shock.
“Well, I need a favor, actually.”
“A favor?” he said, squinting his eyes.
“You’re going to laugh, but Lori’s mattress is kind of worn out. She must have slept in the middle, and I sort of slide into this canyon every night.” By this time, Grant was chuckling at her description. “Anyway, I tried to flip the mattress the other day and almost threw my back out!”
“Ah, I see. So you want me to help you flip your mattress?” he asked.
“Yes. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all. But, I will warn you that if this is a ploy to get me into your bedroom, it might work,” he said, poking her in the side as he got out of the car. Before she could get out, he was right there opening her door. Oh, how she was starting to love chivalry.
Bella unlocked the front door and turned on a lamp in the living room. Lori’s house was very modest with just two bedrooms and one bathroom, but it was plenty of room for her and Ethan.
“Come on in,” she said as she took off her coat and put her purse on the kitchen counter. “Glass of wine or coffee?”
“Wine, of course,” he said as he walked around the living room looking at pictures of Lori and Ethan. “You and Lori looked a lot alike.”
“Yeah. We looked like our mother,” she said with heartache in her voice. “See this one? That’s the only one we had of our mother.” She pointed to a picture with Lori, Bella and a beautiful woman with waist length blond hair and stunning green eyes.
“She was a lovely woman. That explains your beauty,” he said, smiling over at her as she handed him a glass of wine. “Do you remember much about her?” he asked as he sat on an ottoman.
“Not a whole lot. Her name was Sarah. She had us very young, so she never went to college. When she died, she was working as a waitress and doing some side jobs as a house cleaner like Lori.”
“Any good memories?”
“A few. I remember that she loved Christmas time. She was all we had, but she made everything about Christmas special,” Bella looked off in the distance as if she was re-visiting that time in her life. “One thing I remember was that she loved to climb trees.”
“Climb trees?” he asked, laughing.
“Yep. Remember she was young, so she was still pretty spry. There was this huge tree over in Clayton Springs right by the river, and she would take us there every Saturday to climb it. It’s one of those big, old trees that’s been there over a hundred years. Wow, I can’t believe I just remembered that. I haven’t thought about it in years…”
“So you’re a tree climber, huh? I’ll have to remember that…” he said with a laugh.
“Ready to help me flip that mattress?” she asked, changing the subject from anything personal.
“Sure,” he said as he put his wine glass down on the coffee table.
They walked into Bella’s room, which was perfectly clean. If there was one thing she did inherit from her mother, it was her cleanliness.
“Do you even live in here?” he asked, looking around.
“Yes. Why?”
“It’s so… clean.”
“I don’t like chaos,” she said simply. “Okay, can you grab that side?”
They started to maneuver the enormous mattress. “Jeez! Where did Lori get this thing?” he asked as his face turned red. It was heavier than any mattress he’d flipped. Adding to that was the fact that the room was not very big, and the bed took up most of it.
“Hang on, let me try this…” Bella said, growling and turning red herself. As she maneuvered, she lost her footing and went over the mattress head first and toward Grant. Like a sliding board, she flew down his side and right into his lap as he hit the floor. Before they knew it, she was firmly laying on top of him as the mattress covered both of their lower bodies.
“Yeah, that didn’t work,” he said, grinning. She was so amused, all she could do was press her face into his chest and laugh. His hand came up and touched the back of her head as she raised her face to look at him.
“Are you okay? Did you hit your head?” she asked.
“I’m great,” he whispered as he pulled her face in and kissed her nose.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, fully understanding that they were still pinned by a mattress.
“Because I know you, Bella. You need time. So, I started with your forehead, then your nose. Maybe one day I will get a chance at your beautiful lips,” he said with a smile as he let go of her head and kicked to free them of the mattress. She sat up as he pushed the mattress back onto the bed. “I think we need a new plan.”
“This room is just so small,” she said, getting to her feet. Hands on her hips, she stood there trying to figure out what to do next. “Maybe we could flip it up and lean it against the wall and then…” she started to explain. But Grant was mesmerized by her hair, her eyes and those unobtainable lips. “Earth to Grant…” she said, waving her hand in front of his face. This time, he blushed.
“Sorry. I was thinking…”<
br />
“About?”
“Nevermind. Not important,” he said, shaking his head.
They pushed the mattress against the wall, and Bella gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Grant asked.
“Lori’s journal,” Bella said reaching down and picking up a red leather notebook. “I bought her a new one every year. She always kept them. Since we were kids.”
“Oh, wow…” Grant said, eying Bella for a reaction. Instead, she just stood there rubbing the front cover of it with her thumb. “Do you want me to leave?” he asked as he backed toward the door.
“No! Please don’t.” She was surprised at just how much she wanted him to stay.
“Are you going to read it?” he asked.
“I think I need to. Maybe it will help me know what she wanted for Ethan…” Bella said as she walked back out into the living room. Grant quietly followed her and sat down on the sofa next to her as she opened the journal.
Grant left her alone while she stared at the pages of the journal. He didn’t want to pry or look over her shoulder, so he focused on his glass of wine, refilling hers a couple of times.
Suddenly, Bella broke down into sobs that she couldn’t control or stop. She dropped the journal onto the floor and put her face into her hands, unable to catch her breath.
“Bella, what’s wrong? Breathe, honey…” he said, trying to calm her down. “Can I get you some water?”
“She… she…” Bella stammered and stuttered. She couldn’t get her breath back enough to speak, so she pointed at the journal. Grant slowly picked it up and began on the page where Bella dropped the book. It was the night before Lori was killed.
Times are tough right now. I never seem to make enough money to support Ethan and myself, but that just means I need to work more hours. If it wasn’t for my sister, I don’t know how I’d ever make it. Sometimes I envy her. She’s gorgeous, smart and has a great career in California, and I’m here in this little town struggling to get on my own two feet. She’s all I’ve ever had, and she’s always protected me from everything. I wish I had her strength so Ethan could see that in me. I hope she knows how much I love and appreciate her for all she does for us. She’s given up so much in her life to take care of me, and now Ethan. My New Year’s resolution is going to be to get financially secure so that Bella doesn’t have to worry about us anymore. When I think of what she went through when we were kids… the abuse she suffered so I didn’t have to… I just want to die.
“Bella…” Grant said softly as he put the book down on the coffee table. “I had no idea…”
Bella just sat there, quietly sobbing and shaking. She’d never wanted him to know how she was used and abused. It was the one chink in her armor that she didn’t want revealed to anyone. Porn was bad enough, but people would certainly be able to believe that if they knew that she’d been forced to have sex as a young child. What would they think of her? Choosing to do porn was just her way of proving them right.
Chapter 12
After a few moments, she finally gathered herself and picked the journal up. Closing it, she walked into the kitchen and put it in a drawer as Grant followed her.
“More wine?” she asked as she poured herself a large glass. Grant put his hand on hers before she could pick up the glass.
“Bella, wine won’t solve anything. It’s okay to have feelings,” he said softly.
“It’s not okay for me, Grant. I didn’t have the best experiences growing up, so sometimes I need to escape it.”
“How is that working for you? Does drinking more wine make it all better?”
“What do you want from me, Grant?” she asked. “If I give in to the demons of the past, it’s possible that I will never get up again. I can’t afford to be down. I’ve got a nephew to raise.”
“When are you going to trust someone, Bella?”
“Trusting people has always gotten me into trouble, Grant. People can’t be trusted.” She heard the words fall out of her mouth, but she knew they weren’t really true. She could trust him, but she didn’t know how to give up and allow him into her world.
“You can trust me, Bella. I promise,” he said softly as he put his hand on her cheek and stared deeply into her sad eyes. She froze in place for a moment, realizing that the decision she was about to make left her open to being hurt or abused.
She walked slowly across the kitchen and back into the living room. Sitting down on the sofa, she sat her glass of wine on the coffee table and patted the seat next to her for Grant to sit down.
“This is hard for me because I’ve spent my life running from my past. I don’t want you to think differently of me. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me or pity me…”
“Bella, our pasts don’t dictate who we are now,” he said. Oh, how she wished that was true in her case.
“When my mother died, we had no one. No family except for a very elderly great-grandmother in a nursing home. My mother was an only child, so she didn’t have a sibling to take us like Lori did. We ended up in foster care almost immediately after her death. First, we lived with the Logan family. Cal Logan was the father, and he was one of the scariest men I’ve ever met. He was a large man, both in height and weight, and had a terrible drinking problem. Lori and I were both physically abused almost daily. She was so tiny at only six years old, so I started admitting to things I didn’t really do to take the focus off of her…” By this point Bella was struggling to hold back tears. She’d never said what happened to them out loud, and it made it immensely harder to handle than just having thoughts about it all.
Grant gritted his teeth as he listened to her describe a dysfunctional history of being in foster care. He struggled with himself not to reach out and say how sorry he was for what she went through. He wanted to track down Cal Logan and beat the crap out of him.
“We were only there for about eighteen months or so before being moved to the Cramer family. That’s when the sexual abuse started for me…” she said through a sob he could barely hear.
“Oh, God… Bella…” Grant could no longer help himself as he reached out and took both of her hands in his. “You don’t have to…”
“No, I think I need to…” She felt like the weight of the world was crushing her shoulders, but at the same time she could feel a sense of it all washing away. She’d held on to so much in her life, and she needed to start letting some of it go. Maybe giving it a voice, even a shaky one, would make it less powerful. “I was ten years old. This time, it was two other foster kids - brothers, Allen and Levi. They’d been abused badly by their own parents, and there was a lot of anger there. Both had some serious issues, and I was their target. I was a beautiful young girl, and they took advantage of that. The Cramer’s worked a lot, and they never paid attention to what was going on. I remember the first night it happened. They’d gone out on a date night and left me and Lori with the boys who were thirteen and fifteen at the time…”
Grant steeled himself for the story she was about to tell. He could barely contain his own emotions, and he didn’t know how she was sitting there telling him this with such a flat, emotionless face. It was like she’d suddenly been transported miles away so she didn’t have to deal with it.
“It was dark, and Lori was asleep in bed next to me. I heard the creaking of the wood floors in the hallway and then the turning of the doorknob. Levi was the first to do it, but then it became a typical occurrence in the house. He made me promise to be quiet or he’d kill Lori, so I was as quiet as a mouse. It went on for three years before social workers removed us from the home out of suspicion that something was going on. I still never told… I feel so bad about that because they probably went on to do it to other little girls…” Her sobbing returned as she talked about what they might have done after she left the home. She never seemed to cry for herself, for the helpless little girl she was at the time. She cried for Lori and for other nameless, faceless girls, but never for herself. Grant was struck by that.
“
You were just a kid, Bella. You can’t blame yourself for trying to survive and protect Lori,” Grant said, stroking her hair with his hand.
“Finally, we ended up at the Ellington’s. I was a wild kid at that point, trying to get attention and show my strength to anyone I met. I was determined that no one would abuse me ever again, and I didn’t trust any adult I met. Carolyn Ellington was pretty kind to me, and so was her husband, Dale, for that matter. But, I didn’t think I needed parents at all. I was fourteen, I was hurt, and I knew everything. I rebelled a lot, and they threatened to send me to a group home. Lori freaked out because she didn’t want me to leave her, of course. I settled down eventually, but then Lori got pregnant at fourteen, and they were just done with us. They had no other kids, and I don’t think we were quite what they bargained for. They didn’t want to raise her baby, too, so they decided to send us to a group home.”