My Vows Are Sealed (Sealed With a Kiss)

by Carmen Richter

  “If…if I tell you guys something, can you promise to keep it between us?” I asked quietly.

  “I’m offended that you even have to ask us that,” Ashton teased. “Of course.”

  “I mean it,” I sniffled. “You’re going to want to tell someone. An adult. But you have to promise me you won’t. I’ll get in so much trouble if my parents find out I said anything, but I just…I can’t keep doing this. Not with you guys.”

  “You can tell us anything,” Kate assured me. “It won’t leave here.”

  So I did. I told them everything. About my dad, about my mom, about my dad’s unwavering rule that I wasn’t allowed to even think about dating, about Brendan and what happened at the dance, and about how I’d gotten hurt. And the entire time, they didn’t say anything beyond the occasional gasp or “Oh, my God.” They just listened. When I was done talking, they gently hugged me again.

  “Honey, I can’t…you need to get the police involved,” Ashton murmured, wiping away their own tears. “This isn’t okay. This is so many levels of not okay, I don’t even know where to start.”

  “I can’t,” I sobbed. “I’ve tried talking to teachers and adults at church, and no one’s ever believed me. Or they did believe me at first, and then when they talked to my dad, he told them I was a pathological liar who made up stories for attention and they couldn’t believe a word that came out of my mouth. And, I mean, he’s the pastor, so they had no reason not to believe them. Then he hurt me even more for talking when we got home because my punishments are a private family matter and not to be shared with anyone. I just…I can’t risk it, Ash. If my mom wasn’t a retired nurse, I would have ended up in the ER on Saturday night as it is. I don’t want to know what’ll happen next time.”

  “Listen, hon,” Kate sighed as she dried her eyes. “We’ll respect your decision, but can we at least help you come up with some sort of an escape plan? Just in case you need it?”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Those phone numbers we gave you when you first met us? They’re our own personal phone lines that hook up in our rooms. Both of us have one. If you need an escape or someone to call the cops for you, just call one of us and say…” Ashton trailed off.

  “Snickerdoodle,” Kate piped up.

  They looked at her like she had three heads. “Snickerdoodle?”

  “What? Snickerdoodles are delicious,” she giggled. “And it’s a funny word.”

  I chuckled weakly. I wished I could have my own phone line, but my dad barely let me talk on the phone at all as it was. Naomi had called me at home once a couple of years ago just to chat, and the first time she teased me about something and I laughed and countered it, he told me to find out what she wanted and hang up because I wasn’t allowed to have arguments over the phone. We hadn’t even been arguing, but there was no convincing my dad of that.

  “Snickerdoodles are yummy,” I mumbled.

  “Darla, does Brendan know about this? Any of it?” Kate asked. “Does he know why you turned him down on Saturday?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell him. I just…I can’t. He asked me how I hurt myself at church yesterday, and I just told him what my parents said, but I could tell he didn’t buy it. He wanted to talk more, but I told him I couldn’t talk there. I said we’d talk today, but I still don’t know what to tell him.”

  “The truth,” Ashton said. “Anyone with eyes – hell, anyone without eyes too – can see that boy is crazy about you. I get that you’re scared, but he needs to understand what’s happening with you. He needs to know why you said no.”

  “And you know what?” Kate added. “The only reason your dad’s so adamant about making sure no one finds out what’s going on is because this is abuse. It’s illegal, and he could go to jail for a very long time if the right people find out about it and believe you. If you’re not ready to tell the cops, that’s not a choice we can make for you, but at least tell the guy who loves you.”

  The guy who loves you.

  I was still trying to wrap my head around that. I was still trying to wrap my head around the kiss and the fact that I’d broken Brendan’s heart. He was the last person in the world that I ever wanted to hurt, and I’d taken his heart and stomped all over it.

  If he even wanted to do anything other than tell me to get lost when I saw him today, I knew Kate and Ashton were right. He deserved the truth. The whole truth.

  Jesus, help me, I prayed as I walked toward the cafeteria. Give me strength. Take this pain away from me. Please. I can’t keep doing this anymore. I can’t.

  Every breath felt like someone was jabbing a knife in my ribs. My shoulder was throbbing. My other arm was burning with muscle pain from carrying my thirty-to-forty-pound backpack all day. And to top it all off, my Tylenol had worn off about an hour ago, so I had no pain relief at all. I was lightheaded and I felt like I was about to pass out, but I was given very strict instructions by my father that I was not permitted to visit the nurse’s office today. Because it wasn’t like the whole dang school wasn’t seeing my injuries already or anything. I honestly had the feeling that it was less about that and more about him still wanting me to suffer. My mom had told him she’d call the cops on him if he even tried to administer any other punishments for what happened at the dance, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t milk this one for all it was worth, right?

  Kate had carried my backpack for me to first period and second period, but I’d been on my own since then. And no one else had offered to help. They could all see how much pain I was in, and they just didn’t care. Because I was the weirdo. The outcast. The “Jesus freak.” I might as well have been carrying leprosy or the plague with the way they avoided me.

  Oh, my gosh. How was I even supposed to carry my tray to the lunch table? I was operating with one hand, and that hand was being used. Not that I was even hungry. I was in too much pain to be hungry.

  “Jesus,” I heard a familiar voice say in something between a gasp and a growl as he tried to take my backpack for me. “Let me get this, Dar.”

  I released my hold on the bag and turned to look at Brendan as he shouldered it. He gave me a sad smile as he gently wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close. I halfway collapsed against him because I was just so exhausted and in so much pain.

  “Whoa,” he said softly. “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “I’m going to pass out. Everything hurts.”

  “I’ve got you,” he told me, tightening his hold. “Do you need me to take you to the nurse?”

  “No,” I mumbled.

  “Okay. Take a minute, and then we can go in and get whatever crap they’re trying to pass off as food today.”

  “I think I might actually puke if I try to eat,” I sighed as I pulled out of his embrace. I couldn’t keep letting him do that. Not when I couldn’t be what he wanted. “Do you still want to talk?”

  “Only if you’re up for it.”

  “I just want to get it over with,” I muttered.

  Whatever he had to say to me, I was almost positive I wasn’t going to like it. I’d just broken his heart, after all. And it wasn’t like anything had changed, except for my willingness to tell him why. If he even let me get that far.

  “Okay. Come on. I know somewhere we’ll have a little privacy,” he said.

  “Aren’t you going to get lunch?” I asked, confused.

  “Nah. I’m not all that hungry either.”

  He started walking in the direction of the gate I came in through every morning, and I followed him…into the shop classroom? The scent of sawdust invaded my nostrils the second we walked in, but the room was empty. Mr. Overstreet, the Carpentry teacher, wasn’t even in here.

  “How—” I started to ask.

  “Mr. Overstreet likes me,” he chuckled nervously. “I might have asked him this morning if I could use this room to talk to you at lunch, since I knew it’d be empty.”

  I walked around the classroom, looking at all of the partially finished pro
jects that were lining the work tables and lamenting that there was nothing like this class for girls. We got Home Economics and learned how to make cookies. The guys? They got to learn how to make and build things. I would have loved to take a class like this, but that would have made me even more of an outcast than I was already. The one girl who took Carpentry.

  “What are these going to be?” I asked.

  “Cabinets,” he told me, then pointed to one of the barely-started wood structures. “This one’s mine. I promised Nate that when I get to take it home, he can help me paint it.”

  I chuckled, just imagining the mess that would make. “I’m sure your mom’s thrilled with that idea.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, not so much. I’ve already been told it’s my job to give him a bath when we’re done. But he’ll have fun with it, and that’s what matters.”

  That made me smile. “You’re an amazing big brother. He’s lucky to have you.”

  “He’s lucky to have you too, you know,” he said, putting a hand on my good shoulder. “So, are you actually going to look at me at some point?”

  As I turned to face him, a knot twisted in my stomach in anticipation of what he was about to say, and I swallowed hard to keep the tears that were lurking beneath the surface from shedding. He was about to tell me he didn’t want to be my friend anymore. I knew it. He had to be. That was the only reason I could think of why he’d want this kind of privacy. So the whole school wouldn’t see him break my heart the way I’d broken his.

  He gave me a sad half-smile. “We’re not going to talk about what happened at the dance, Dar. Because I think I know why it happened. I just want you to answer my questions honestly. Can you do that?”

  I nodded. Honesty. I could do that. I wanted to do that.

  “You didn’t hurt your arm falling out of bed, did you?”

  All the turning gears in my brain came to a grinding halt.

  I wasn’t even sure why I was surprised that he was asking me that. I could tell yesterday at church that he didn’t buy that stupid explanation. But out of everything that was going on between us, that was what he wanted to talk about? Really?

  “Your dad did it. After I dropped you off at home,” he continued.

  I was sure my eyes got as big as saucers.

  He knew? How? For how long?

  I couldn’t help the few tears that leaked out of my eyes. “The second I walked in the door, he started laying into me because I’d gotten into a car with a boy, and even after I told him it was you and that you took me home because I wasn’t feeling well, he took off his belt and started hitting me with it. On my legs, my arms, my chest, my stomach. Then he threw me against the door, jamming my ribs into the doorknob, and started whipping my back, like he was flogging me. When I tried to get away because I couldn’t take the pain anymore, he grabbed my arm and pulled me backward. And it’s not my arm that he hurt. He dislocated my shoulder.”

  Brendan’s eyes started to tear up as his lips parted on a horrified gasp. “Oh, my God, Dar. Why didn’t…why didn’t you say something? Call someone?”

  “I wanted to. My mom wouldn’t let me. She told me that we couldn’t afford to live on just her disability check alone if my dad got arrested because he lost control this one time. And before you ask, yes, this is the first time he’s lost the plot like that. He’s hit me before, more times than I can count, but never like that. Anyway, since she used to be a nurse, she set my shoulder herself and she had this sling lying around for some reason. She’s been icing it when I’m home, and just giving me double doses of Tylenol for the pain. But she’d have to send it to the school and have the nurse dispense it here, so I’m just going without, because she doesn’t want the nurse asking questions.”

  He sucked a breath in and pinched his nose, closing his eyes like he was trying to control his anger. I could tell it wasn’t anger at me, though. It was anger at the situation I’d found myself in.

  “That’s such crap,” he muttered, then looked back up at me, his eyes a lot softer than I was expecting. “Can I ask you something else?”

  I nodded.

  “Is your dad the reason you told me you couldn’t keep having that conversation on Saturday?”

  I nodded again. “I think it was around the time that I started watching Disney movies and my dad would turn them off just before the kiss at the end when he started telling me I was never allowed to do what they were showing because it was a sin. And as I got older, he told me that if he ever caught me partaking in sins of the flesh, he’d punish me and the boy I was with in the way the Lord commanded adulterers and fornicators to be punished. It’s not just about me, Brendan. It’s about you too. I can’t let you get hurt because of me. Not when I can stop it.”

  By the time I was done explaining to him why I could never be what he wanted, I could barely get the words out through my tears. He dropped both of our bags to the floor and cleared the distance between us in two strides as he caught me up in a gentle, but firm embrace.

  “I wish I knew what to say to you,” he sighed. “‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t even come close. I wish I’d had this conversation with you years ago. I’ve known for a long time that something wasn’t right between you and your dad, but I just didn’t know how to talk to you about it. I wish I’d found a way to. I wish…God, I wish I could kill him. I know it’s wrong to say that, or even think it, but I don’t care. He wants to talk about you being a sinner if you kiss someone, but he doesn’t see anything wrong with whipping his own daughter with a belt and dislocating her shoulder just because she got a ride home from a guy she’s known for her entire life. Literally the only thing that’s stopping me from telling someone what he’s doing to you is that I know you don’t want me to, and I love you more than I hate him.”

  I pulled back and looked at him, and he let out a soft chuckle as he put a hand on my face, stroking my cheek with his thumb and wiping away some of my tears.

  “You heard me, Dar,” he murmured. “I love you. There’s never been anyone else for me, and there never will be. The only person I’ve ever wanted in the whole world is you. But what I want doesn’t matter. What matters is what you want.”

  I choked on a sob as more tears spilled over my cheeks, and he swiped them away. My resolve to obey my father was growing weaker and weaker by the second. With every word from Brendan, every gentle touch, I forgot a little more why I needed to stop whatever was happening between us from continuing. Why doing what my father said was so important. I mean, if I was going to be punished for my perceived transgressions, I might as well actually be guilty of them, right?

  I took a few breaths for strength before speaking.

  “It doesn’t matter what I want either,” I sobbed. “Can’t you see that? I don’t have a choice.”

  He shook his head. “You always have a choice. It might not be easy. You might not see how it’s going to work out. But you always have a choice. I made my choice a long time ago, before I even realized that I’d made it. I chose you. And he made his choice the second he decided it was okay to lay even a finger on his beautiful, kind, smart, and talented daughter. So, the question is, what’s your choice? Forget what I want. And forget what he wants, because he lost the right to have a say in this the second he made the choice to abuse you. What do you want, Dar?”

  And just like that, the last remnants of my will to resist withered away. I just couldn’t do it anymore. Not when everything my father said and did to me felt more and more wrong by the day, while being with Brendan had never felt more right.

  “You,” I sniffled. “I want you.”

  Within less than a second, his lips were on mine, and this time, I didn’t freeze. I didn’t hesitate. I immediately started to move my lips with his, and it was just like…like muscle memory almost. Like I already knew what to do because I’d done it a thousand times before. Or like it was just programmed into my brain to know how to kiss Brendan.

  His hand stayed on my face, while his other arm snaked aro
und my waist and pulled me close, and he gently tugged my bottom lip into his mouth, sucking softly. I opened my mouth and slipped my tongue out, swiping at his lip, and the next thing I knew, his tongue was curling around mine. I couldn’t help the moan that rose up in my throat, and that just made him hold me tighter and deepen the kiss even more as he gave a quiet answering groan. It felt so incredibly right to be this close to him, and I never wanted it to end, but I eventually needed to breathe, so I unwillingly pulled back. But even when I did, he only let me catch my breath for a second before going for another, much briefer, kiss.

  “Did that feel wrong?” he whispered.

  “No,” I breathed without a second’s hesitation. Because it didn’t. It didn’t feel even a little bit wrong.

  “That’s because it wasn’t. Love isn’t wrong, Dar. Your dad can quote all the Scripture in the world talking about how lust is wrong, and he’s right. Lust isn’t healthy. But what I feel for you? That’s something else entirely. God designed human beings to love. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ve even got a Bible verse of my own to prove it, from First Peter. ‘Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.’”

  A tear leaked out of my eye, and he swiped it away. Of all the things I’d thought would happen when I walked into this room ten minutes ago, this wasn’t one of them. I didn’t think he’d tell me that he knew the truth about what my father was doing to me. I didn’t think he’d kiss me until I ran out of oxygen and tell me he loved me all over again. And this fight. Oh, my gosh, this fight.

  Was it possible to fall in love with the same person twice? Because if it was, it might have just happened to me.

  “I know you’re scared,” he murmured. “I’m scared too. It won’t be easy, and I’m not going to lie, I don’t know what’s going to happen or how this is going to work out. But I have to believe it will. I have to believe that God wouldn’t have put you in my life and He wouldn’t have given me these feelings for you if we weren’t supposed to be together. So, will you take a leap of faith with me? Will you trust that He has a plan for us, even if we can’t see it right now?”