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The Lost

Page 30

by Cole McCade


  “I don’t know what to do with this,” she said, resting her cheek to his chest. God, she hurt like she’d been in a fucking cage match, and she’d never felt more languidly glorious. “This feeling. I feel like I’ve screwed up everything in my life up until this moment. Like it’s all been wrong until now.”

  “Mm.” Rough fingers traveled a path down the dip of her spine. “If I tell you otherwise, you won’t listen.”

  “No. I won’t. But you know what hindsight is like.”

  “All too well.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and kissed the hard line of his jaw.

  “You can’t bring back what was, not for all the wishing.” He tilted his head down to look at her. “What would you have done differently?”

  “I should have done things the right way. Divorced him. Fought for Elijah in a custody battle, even though I know I’d have lost. At least then I could have said I tried, even if they took my son away from me.” She shrugged. “Instead I just accepted defeat without even making the effort, and just…got lost. I walked out and got lost and never tried to be found.” She bit the tip of her tongue, hesitating, then continued, “You see people on the street corners and in the gutters, and you wonder what happened to them—how they ended up that way, how they got so lost. But no one ever thinks that some people…some people want to stay lost.”

  “Are you really lost if you’ve found where you belong?”

  “Maybe not.” She laughed, her voice cracking. “You probably think I’m a horrible person, just leaving my son like that.”

  “I don’t think that at all.”

  “Then maybe I just think it about myself.” She closed her eyes and snuggled deeper into him. “I was young and scared and hurt and not thinking straight, after what Jacob did. And then…once I finally realized what I’d left behind, I couldn’t go back. Besides…who would want me for a mother?”

  Gabriel threaded his fingers into her hair, cupping her nape. “A boy who should’ve had the chance to answer that question on his own.”

  She winced. “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s not your fault, Leigh. But it’s the truth.”

  “I know, but giving him that chance would have meant going back…and I can’t. Not to him. Not to them. That family was toxic before I ever met Jacob. The things my mother taught me…the things he did to me…” She shuddered, and he gathered her protectively closer and pressed his lips into her hair.

  “Who was he?” he asked. “Your mother was the crone, in your story. Was he your father?”

  “Stepfather.” Just the one word washed her with a sick sense of guilt, the wrong kind of shame, gathering oily and dark in her gut. She huddled into him. “I know it’s not illegal or anything. I was eighteen, but it just…felt wrong anyway. He’d been Daddy for so long. And I guess I didn’t feel old enough for what he wanted. I was barely a senior in high school, but where everyone else was mature and growing toward their future, I just felt like this sheltered little girl who didn’t know how to jump off that cliff toward adulthood.” She fought back the horrible taste in the back of her mouth. “Maybe that was what I liked about it.”

  Gabriel’s low, soothing sounds couldn’t chase away that feeling, but they made it easier to stay curled in the safety of his arms, listening to the rumble of his voice and reminding herself it was all in the past. No more Daddy’s little girl, no more hand clamped over her mouth unless that was what she wanted, what she chose.

  “How old were you when he married your mother?” Gabriel asked.

  “Six.”

  “Leigh.”

  “I never saw him as my biological father,” she said a little too quickly. “I didn’t. Not really. He was Daddy, but…I still remembered my real father, barely. Even if it was just the way he would tuck my hair back when he put me to bed, I remembered. So I just…I just…”

  His touch, no matter how gentle, wouldn’t let her escape. He cupped her cheek, and she couldn’t find the will to look away from those knowing silver eyes that stripped away the blinders she’d forced herself to wear for the sake of her sanity for far, far too long.

  “You were preyed on by a man who should have seen you as a vulnerable child, whether he was your father or not,” he murmured. “He was still your father figure. The one who should have protected you.”

  “I didn’t need protecting.” The idea alone made her snort with bitter laughter, even if she wondered if it was true. “Other people needed protecting from me. God, I was a nightmare. Lashing out against things. This raging ball of hormones, struggling against my cage. But I did it in small, ugly, secret ways, you know? The way girls have to, sometimes.” She walked her fingers across his chest, watching the pale path she made against his dark skin. “Girls learn little acts of rebellion because we’re never allowed the grand acts of rebellion that make boys the heroes and rogues of their golden youth.” She ground the words like gravel between her teeth. “No…we’re supposed to be princesses, and stay at home and make runny cakes in little pink ovens that run off hundred-watt bulbs, and play with little sewing kits to make our dollies.” Her hand clenched against his chest. “I wanted to be the hero of my own story. Not the damsel. Heroically lost, heroically found. Instead I’m neither. Just some kind of Flowers in the Attic fucked up mess. Some girls act out by drinking and smoking. I acted out by fucking my stepfather.”

  His dry chuckle shook the bed beneath them. “There’s more to all of us than hero and villain, damsel and prince.”

  “Yeah? I think I’m a pretty textbook case of the broken doll.”

  “Does that make me the scarred antihero?”

  “Pretty sure that makes you an asshole.”

  He laughed again. “Same difference.”

  With a sigh, she settled back against him, letting herself relax. “I’ve never told anyone this. Not even my husband. I doubted he’d even believe me. They were golfing buddies, for fuck’s sake.”

  “You’ve been holding that in for a long time. It was time to let it out. Not to mention I’m fairly sure there’s no simple way to tell your husband ‘I had an affair with my stepfather.’”

  “I don’t know if I could call it an affair when I never had a choice.” She frowned. “He’d cover my mouth with his hand and hold me down, and hardly make a sound. But I don’t know if I’d call it rape, either. Not when…I wanted it.” She flushed deeply. “I waited for it. Thought about it all the time. Nights when he didn’t come would kill me, because I’d be lying there in the dark, wet and needy and wanting him. I don’t know if he knew that or not, so it doesn’t make what he did any better, but…”

  Gabriel rumbled darkly. “He raped you, Leigh. Even if you wanted it, that was rape.”

  “How?”

  “Did he ever ask you? Did he ever give you a chance to say no?”

  “…no.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter if you enticed him. It doesn’t matter if you wanted it. If you didn’t consent, if he took that option away from you…he raped you. And he knew it.” Heavy brows drew together; that deep voice growled lower with something Leigh might almost think was protective fury, for all Gabriel’s quiet stillness. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that was what he wanted. For scum like that, rape is about power, not about sex. He wanted to exert power over you. The fact that you were willing never factored into the equation.”

  Leigh’s mouth wouldn’t move. The words settled into her bones and etched deep, and she couldn’t shake them free. All her life she’d thought of herself as a lot of things. A broken goddess. A gutter-trash whore. A wild little girl, out of control.

  She’d never thought of herself as a rape victim, a rape survivor, but she wondered now if it was only because she hadn’t wanted to.

  “Oh,” she mouthed, and Gabriel tightened his hold.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” No. “I just…I guess in my head I always had this secret daydream. That we were roleplaying this fantasy, that he knew what I wan
ted and was giving it to me.” Prickles started burning behind her eyes and in the back of her throat. “But that’s childish, isn’t it? He couldn’t read my mind. And it wasn’t like he talked to me to find out.” She pressed her lips together. “I was just a child to him. He looked at me like I was a woman, but he never talked to me like one.”

  “If he had seen you as a woman,” he said gently, “he would have treated you as an equal.”

  “Yeah,” she repeated, with the sort of broken numbness that came with clarity she’d never asked for and wasn’t sure she wanted. “But…you get fed this line, you know? That if you enjoyed it, it’s not really rape. But that’s not true. Your body does one thing and your head does another, and then you spend ten years not even sure what happened, but knowing it changed you in ways you can’t get back.”

  “Consent isn’t just about sex.” Gabriel shifted to sit up against the headboard, propping himself against the pillows and gathering her close. “He took something from you against your will, and it had nothing to do with your body.”

  She tensed, and pushed away from him. How dare he sit there and pry at her, peel open all these old wounds and just…just… “Since when do you give two shits about consent?”

  “Leigh.” With a sigh, he let her go. “Do you think I would ever take you against your will?”

  Wrapping her arms around herself, she settled on the edge of the bed, curling her toes against the bed frame and bowing forward over her knees. “No,” she admitted. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “I will hurt you in any way you want to be hurt. But I need to know you want it, first. I need to know you want me.”

  She risked a glance over her shoulder. “Is that why you always stopped before?”

  He nodded. “Part of you said yes.” He reached across the space between them to gently flick a lock of her hair from one bare shoulder. “But women don’t always say no with their lips and their words. I wanted to know what you wanted, so I listened to all of you. I wanted all of you. And if any part of you said no, I stopped.”

  “So what? Now you’re going to psychoanalyze me and tell me all of this, my whole life, has just been me acting out my damage? Everything I like is just because my stand-in Daddy diddled me and didn’t bother with the formalities of asking?”

  “No. Not at all.” He counted off points on his fingers, one at a time. “One, you can like the things you like without being damaged. Two, you aren’t damaged. A little odd, perhaps, but not damaged.” His lips quirked. “Three…there may be things from that time you aren’t dealing with. Repercussions you aren’t facing. I can’t imagine how it would affect a girl that age to experience what you did. But I would guess that if it’s affecting you, it’s in areas that have nothing to do with your sex life.”

  She closed her eyes. Elijah. He meant Elijah, and she wanted to hate him for being right. Her shoulders slumped, and she curled in on herself.

  “Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Hart.”

  When he reached for her, she tensed—but she let him gather her close again, wrapping her within his arms and holding her as if he could keep her safe. From the past, from her darklings, from herself.

  “If I wasn’t honest,” he said, “you wouldn’t like me.”

  “What makes you think I like you?” She muttered and burrowed against him to hide. “I can fuck you without liking you.”

  His laughter shook them both. “So you’ve made clear a number of times.”

  They remained quiet for some time, Leigh alone inside her head with her circling, troubled thoughts, yet she didn’t feel quite so adrift with him there to anchor her. She wondered if she’d been so caught up in her own dirty-girl story, so adamant about not being a victim, that she’d been lying to herself all this time about what had happened to her.

  “Do you know how it feels to be fire wrapped in a woman’s skin, but always feel like you’re drowning?” she asked, words falling heavy in the stillness. “One crack and the water will rush in, and put that fire out.”

  “I do.” Gabriel rested his chin to the top of her head. “Afghanistan was like that for me. If I cracked, the horror of everything I’d seen, done, and had done to me would pour inside, put out my fire…and kill me.”

  Leigh closed her eyes against a pain that struck deep, struck hard. “Gary told me,” she whispered. “About you coming back alone. What you did. I’m sorry.”

  “But I wasn’t alone. Or I shouldn’t have been. Two of us survived.” His shoulders were rigid, underneath her. “Me and Priest.”

  “Priest?”

  “Manion. Vin Manion.” A sort of tired, wistful warmth edged his voice. “We always called him Priest. Catholic, Italian, never went anywhere without that damned rosary. It was either that or Mafia, but he’d shoot you between the eyes for that one.” He chuckled. “Priest was a good man. One of the best.” Yet that laughter faded, sucked into a weighty, pensive stillness. “Was.”

  Leigh tilted her head back, watching Gabriel. “What happened to him?”

  “He lost himself.” He stared fixedly at the ceiling, and she could tell he wasn’t seeing the here, the now. In his eyes were the reflections of faraway places, and haunted memories. “You don’t know the things that happen out there. The things you do to survive. It gets inside you, and you carry a piece of it with you when you come back.” He rested a hand over his thigh, and the twisted gnarl of the scar. “I carry it inside me. But the things Priest brought back with him…” His jaw set tight. “They ride his shoulders. They’re a demon in his blood. He’s…” He shook his head. “He’s dangerous. Insane. I couldn’t do the things he does.”

  “You miss him, don’t you?”

  “I miss who he used to be. There’s no saving him. I tried.”

  Leigh rested her hand against his chest. “It’s not your job to save other people, Gabriel.”

  “No?” A rough hand settled over hers, holding it close over his heart. “Yet I still feel like I failed. I failed everyone. My unit. My sister. It’s like everything came tumbling down, and there was no one left but me.”

  “Survivor’s guilt.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “I should have been here.”

  “If you’d been here, you might not have been there…and Priest might not have survived.”

  His mouth creased into a bitter line. “So I should be grateful for Priest’s life over my sister’s?”

  “Would being here really have saved her?”

  He stared at her, but said nothing while grief carved deeper lines in his weathered face. But then he let his head fall back against the pillows, and closed his eyes.

  “No,” he said. “But she wouldn’t have had to die alone.”

  Leigh didn’t know what to say, so she only snuggled close against him, and hoped that her warmth comforted him the way his comforted her. He held her tight, while the boat rocked and swayed around them. She’d never known grief like his. She barely remembered her father’s death, a distant thing muted by the dulling filter of childhood. Anyone else who mattered to her was still alive. Elijah was alive, safe, and hearing how easily people could be torn away made her that much more grateful—and made her wish that much more that she could do something, anything to ease Gabriel’s guilt.

  “Sometimes I think part of me wanted to die, when I first came back,” he whispered.

  “How did you do it?” She opened her eyes, studying the stark line of his profile. “How did you pick yourself up again and move on?”

  “I didn’t.” He sighed. “There’s no secret to it, little mouse. Not like in the films and these grand books, with their literary, emotional stories of coping with grief and tragedy until the epiphany that becomes a turning point toward recovery. It doesn’t work like that in the real world. Not really.” His thumb stroked along her hand, tracing a path over the ridges of her knuckles. “It’s not a sunrise after a long night, and a slow-breaking dawn. It’s the glacial ice that carves a canyon in you, deepe
r and deeper every day. Minute fractions that still cut you open irrevocably, unchangeably, leaving a hole that will never be what it was again. The canyon can never again become the plain. But after a while it stops growing deeper and other things start trickling in, like a river through a chasm. First just a few drops, then a stream, a brook, a river, a spate, rapids roaring wild and fierce while life grows up around them bit by bit. And one day you look, and that hole inside you isn’t a hole, but just a space filled with other things. It’s become something else, even if you’ll never be able to completely fill that hole to the brim.”

  She smiled, propping her chin on his chest. “So are you a river in full spate now, filled with whitewater rapids and surrounded by green growing things?”

  “Not yet. Maybe not ever.” He made an amused sound. “But I might be working my way toward a respectably sized creek.”

  “Gabriel?”

  “Yes, little mouse?”

  “…that was so cheesy.”

  His lips parted to flash white teeth on a grin—a grin that turned into a laugh, and drew her own snickers out until they shook against each other, and the heavy pall dissolved to leave the air just a little easier to breathe.

  “Brat,” he said, and tugged a strand of her hair. “It was rather bad. Hinóno’éí or not, I think I just made a racial stereotype of myself. Noble savage preaches the wisdom of nature.”

  “Oh, God. Let’s not go there.”

  “Alani would have hit me for that one.”

  “I’m about to hit you for that one.”

  “Careful, little mouse. You’re not my sister. And from you,” he growled, “that counts as foreplay.”

  “No. Don’t even think about it, you animal. If you go at me again tonight, I’m going to need reconstructive surgery.”

  He burst out laughing again, with a freedom she’d never have expected when she’d first met him. She wondered, then, how much of their feinting had not just been him earning her trust, but learning to trust her himself, and wondering if he could truly vouchsafe the last fragile bits of his humanity to her.

 

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