“Baby, wake up,” I say as I hover over her, scared to touch her.
She begins trembling, pleading in a strained voice, “Please, not again.”
Fuck. Knowing exactly what her dream is, I panic. “Candace, babe. Wake up.”
“Get off of me!” she yells, frantically kicking her legs.
Quickly straddling them, I grip her upper arms as she thrashes herself against my hold.
“Get the fuck off of me!” she shrieks, and when she opens her eyes, tears fall freely down the sides of her face. She looks at me, but there’s nothing there. No focus. Her eyes are completely glazed over, scaring the shit out of me. “God, please stop!”
“Candace, wake up!” I bark at her, desperate for her to snap out of her nightmare.
She’s in a frenzy, screaming hysterically. Crying. I let go of her, and when I do, she desperately shuffles back and away from me, falling off the bed and hard onto her hip. I hop off the bed and kneel down in front of her as she’s huddled in a ball against the wall, sobbing.
“Don’t fuckin’ touch me!” she screams when I hold her shoulders with my hands, but I don’t take them off of her.
“Candace, open your eyes,” I beg as she covers her face with her hands. She’s so loud, and my mind is overwhelmed with anxiety.
Her breathing is rapid and she’s terrified, but I need her to know she’s safe.
“Candace, please. Look at me. It’s only me here with you.”
I take her wrists to move her hands from her face, and she turns her head to the wall as she cries.
“Babe, please don’t hide from me.”
She struggles to breathe through her tears, and when she begins to gasp, I tug her between my legs and her body gives in, falling limp into my arms. I hold her tight. Tighter than I have ever held anyone. She has to get this secret out of her. It’s agonizing to see how this is tormenting her. I just need her to get it out.
I rub her back while she has her head tucked into my chest. She’s no longer screaming, but the crying continues.
I don’t want her to hide from me, so I tell her, “You have to look at me. Please.” With my hands, I move her head up to face me. She opens her eyes, and I hate the fear and embarrassment I see in them.
“You okay?”
She simply nods.
“What happened?”
Lowering her head, she takes a couple deep breaths before asking, “Can you please call Jase?”
“What?” I hate this shit. That she would run to him in a heartbeat like I don’t exist. Like I’m not enough for her, but he is. “Shit, Candace, no,” I tell her, refusing to allow her to run from me. She told me she loves me, I just need her to trust me enough to be here for her.
“Please.” She begins to cry again.
“Candace, no. You can’t always run to him. Need me for a change,” I beg. “Talk to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” I urge. God, just talk to me. Tell me. Get this out of you so that you can start dealing with it.
“No, I can’t. Please. I just can’t,” she strains through her sobs.
“But you can with Jase?” I question in disbelief. I thought we were past this.
“I want you to need me,” I plead, tightening my hold around her. I feel desperate.
“I do.”
“You don’t,” I say. “You cling to him for everything. Look at me,” I demand and then hold her hands, pressing them hard against my chest, and beg, “Cling to me. Love me enough to need me.”
“I can’t . . . I . . .”
“Why?”
“Because . . . you’d leave me.”
“Not happening, babe.”
“Ryan, please.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I assure her. She can tell me this; I know she can, and I need her to. “Nothing you could say would make me want to leave you.”
“I’m just too fucked up.” Her face is covered in tears that I just want to kiss away. I wanna take all of her pain away, but I resist the urge to give in to her. So I keep encouraging, knowing that I’m guiding her to a painful place.
“We’re all fucked up,” I tell her. “I want you to let me in.”
Her body is shuddering as the sobs wrack her. I’m powerless, and it fuckin’ sucks.
“I can’t! You’ll never look at me the same. You’ll run away.”
She says this and I want to cry for her. Take her pain and shove it deep inside of me. I’d take her misery as my own in a second.
Wrapping my hand behind her head, I hold it close to my heart when I vow, “I promise you, nothing will change the way I look at you. Nothing will change what you do to me when you’re next to me. You make my heart beat in a completely different way—nothing will ever change that.”
“I’m so embarrassed,” she cries into my chest as she slips her arms around me, clinging to me like she’s about to fall—maybe she is, but I need her to.
“God, babe.” I’m fighting my own tears so hard. “Please, don’t be.”
I strengthen my hold on her, and when I do, she falters with a whimper when she releases it.
“I was raped.”
Those words. I already knew it. I even saw her body afterwards. But hearing those words. I can’t take the pain and guilt any longer. It’s like a knife to my lungs, and I can barely breathe. I take a hard breath in when the tears slip out and fall.
I’m helpless. I don’t know what to say to her, but I knew that she had to tell me. To stop hiding it away, but what have I done to her? She’s broken in my arms right now, sobbing, and I don’t know what to do to help.
We sit, clinging to one another as we both cry. Time passes and she begins to tire, now softly weeping as I continue rocking her and planting kisses on top of her head.
“I’ve been lying to you,” she mutters quietly.
“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”
“I feel horrible.”
“Candace, don’t do this,” I tell her. “You have every right to lie.”
“I can’t go to see you at work because . . .”
“Shhh . . .” I want her to stop because she doesn’t need to apologize for shit. She shouldn’t feel bad for trying to cover this up. I get it. Understand it.
“Because it happened in your parking lot. By the dumpster,” she tells me, and I figure she simply needs to get it off her chest, so I don’t say anything. I just listen as she relieves herself of whatever guilt is weighing on her as she continues. “That’s why I freaked out. I didn’t know where I was until I saw the dumpster.”
Hearing her say this to me is hard. It’s hurts to think about her trying so hard to hide this from me and what that was doing to her. My breath catches, and when a small noise cracks, she pulls back to see my tears falling. Her face scrunches up as she begins to cry again.
“I’m so sorry,” she chokes out, and I’ve had enough of her apologizing for shit that doesn’t matter.
“Don’t ever fuckin’ say that again,” I tell her when I cradle her cheeks in my hand. “Don’t ever be sorry for anything again.”
“I’m just so far from what you thought.”
“You’re not.”
“I am. Every day is a struggle. Everything. I’m scared every day,” she admits as she drops her head from my hands.
I’ve always wanted to know what she was hiding, but I couldn’t have imagined this. And that she lives with this every day. Terrified. The fact that she has held herself together around me so well is shocking.
Candace finally looks back up at me, pained when she tells me, “I’m fading.” I shake my head at her, hardly able to stand the misery in her voice. “He took all my light, and I’ve been fading ever since.”
Giving her nothing but the core of my intentions, I tell her, “You’re not fading. I won’t let you.”
Her words beat at me. In disbelief because she’s brought so much to my life in such a short amount of time. The mere idea that she would see her life in such
shambles that she would fear fading ignites a fight in me to do everything I can to pull her out of this darkness. To show her just how bright she is. How amazing and powerful she is. She’s nothing but heart, and I’m going to make sure she sees every bit of it. That there’s no way for her to fade in my eyes.
She tucks her head down and leans into me as I fold her securely in my arms, vowing to myself that I will do everything I can to show this girl how strong she really is.
“That’s why Kimber is mad,” she says as she continues to talk. “I didn’t go home after it happened. I stayed with Jase and never told her why. She knows I’m lying.”
I listen. That’s all she wants from me, so that’s what I give her.
“I’ve been taking sleeping pills, but I stopped last week. That’s why I haven’t been sleeping.” She pauses before revealing, “I dream about that night—about him. All I see are his eyes. He made me watch him.”
A new bout of sobs courses through her, and anger courses through me, but I keep my cool for her. I take myself out of this and focus on her when she adds, “So, I take pills to keep him away.”
“Babe, why did you stop taking them?”
“Because every night when I take them, it’s only a reminder of what happened. I just want to forget, but I can’t.”
“Have you told anyone?” I ask as I brush her hair behind her shoulder.
“No. Only Jase and Mark. Jase was with me in the hospital. Mark only knows because he walked in and saw my face. I was pretty banged up.”
“Your parents?”
“God, no. It was because of them that I went out with that guy at all.”
“You knew him?” I ask, not expecting that she knew the fucker. “But you didn’t do anything?”
“No.”
“I wanna fucking kill him,” I spit out, anger swelling inside of me. I swear to God, I’m gonna kill that piece of shit. My body tenses up, and I do everything I can to bring myself back down—for her. It takes a while, but I begin to focus on Candace and what she needs out of me. I know she’s afraid I’m gonna run, but she’s wrong.
Looking at her straight on, I assure her, “This changes nothing for me. Okay? Nothing. No one will ever love you like I do.” I kiss her. I feel it’s all I can do right now to show her that I’m here and I’m not leaving her. When I do finally drag my lips away, I give her more of me when I say, “You are the only reason there’s light in my life. Before you, there was nothing but darkness.”
As the tears linger on her cheeks, I lean in and kiss them, tasting the salt of her secret that’s been eating her up. But now it’s out there, and she doesn’t have to find ways to hide from me anymore. She trusts me enough to allow me to see the darkest side of her, and I love her for that.
I didn’t want to leave Candace the day following her nightmare. I felt like being close to her, but she told me that it would have made her feel uncomfortable if I cancelled work to stay with her, and even though I didn’t like it, I understood it. She’s afraid things have changed between us, and just because I assured her that they haven’t, I need to show her. So I went into work, and she went to Jase’s where she managed to drink way too much wine, and for the first time in her life, got wasted.
Candace is still sleeping when I finish my shower and get dressed. Bringing her home last night was an adventure. She’s gonna feel like shit when she wakes up today, but seeing her drunk was about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
I woke up in the middle of the night to find her fighting sleep. She said she was scared of having another nightmare, and it was tearing me up inside, so I stayed up and talked to her so that she could fall asleep. After she was out, I found myself wanting to stay awake to watch her, make sure she slept peacefully. Her nightmare scared the crap out of me, so I can’t imagine how scary it was for her.
The past few weeks have drained me emotionally, so while she sleeps, I decide to head up to the bar before anyone gets there to get a little space from everything. I write Candace a note before I leave, letting her know where I went and to call when she gets up.
Walking into Blur, I leave the front door unlocked while I busy myself filling bottles behind the bar. I spend a good amount of time staying occupied, but my mind is elsewhere. It’s in that alley, and my stomach won’t seem to unknot itself to buy me any relief. I grab a bottle of scotch and take a seat at the bar, filling my glass.
I don’t take a sip; I just sit and stare at the burnished liquid. It’s placid, and I get lost as I zone out in the glass. I’m so deep in my head that I don’t even hear the door open, but when someone takes a seat next to me, I turn to see Jase. His expression tells me that he knows I know. Candace must have told him last night. I focus back on my glass that’s still sitting on the bar, cradled in my hands.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I can barely move my head up and down to acknowledge his words that take me out of my daze and bring me back to the mass of emotions.
Without looking at him, I talk. “I always knew she was hiding something, I just . . .”
“I know.”
“She has these moments in her sleep . . . almost nightly . . .”
“It’s a lot better now,” he says, and I turn to look at him.
“Better?” He nods and I ask, because I want to know, “How bad was she?”
His head drops to the side, not wanting to tell me when I ask again. “How bad?”
“Don’t do this.”
“How bad?”
He takes a pause before he tells me, “Bad. It was like suddenly the Candace I had always known was gone.”
I turn back to my glass and take a drink before setting it back down, relishing the burn in my chest. Warmth.
“So she was different?” I ask, wondering what she would have been like if only I’d met her before that night.
“Yeah, but like I said, she’s better.”
“Better,” I repeat, not knowing what else to say, trying hard to keep the pain at bay. “How?”
“She used to have these hallucinations. It freaked me out. They were intense, and I’d always find her vomiting in my bathroom.”
His words punch me in the gut. Thinking about her like that is almost too much, and I feel the tears return, but I fight to hold them back.
“She said she knew him.” My words crack as they find their way out past the lump in my throat.
“Yeah.”
I turn back to him and ask, “You know him too?”
Shaking his head, he tells me, “I met him once.”
“Who is he?”
He releases a hard sigh when I press, “Who is he?”
He still doesn’t respond when I question, “Did you ever do anything?”
“I wanted to. I still do.” His breathing staggers as his eyes redden and gloss over. “But I can’t. Candace made me promise, and I just can’t break that promise. It would hurt her too much.”
“Why didn’t she do anything?”
“She was scared. Embarrassed. I tried talking to her, but she’d rather bury it, so that’s what she did.”
I shake my head, and when I do, he speaks up, “Look, man, I wanna kill that bastard. I do. I saw what he did to her, and he fucked her up . . . bad. But I love her. And as much as I hate that all she wants to do is hide this shit, I don’t fight it because I don’t want to hurt her.” I watch his tears fall as he adds, “I know what you two have is completely different than what I have with her, but she’s my fuckin’ heart, man. I hate her choices, but I also know how fragile she is right now, so I let it be. Right or wrong, I just give her what she wants.”
I can’t speak even if I wanted to because the pain in my chest is nearly unbearable at this point. All I can do is give him a nod, and I know he sees the emotion on my face. How could a person hide it?
He stands up and grips my shoulder, saying, “I couldn’t deal with this shit if it weren’t for Mark. If you ever need to talk . . .”
“Yeah. Thanks,” I respond
on a breath before he turns to walk out the door.
When he’s out of my vision, I drop my head in my hands and let it out. It’s a haze of unrecognizable emotions beating through me. To look past this and let her continue to sit and do nothing is something that I don’t think I’m capable of. But Jase is right. My girl is so damn fragile even though she’s so damn strong. It’s a paradox that’s hard to deal with. She’s gonna break one way or another.
Irritation boils inside, and the longer I sit here it starts to eat away at me until it takes over and I stand up, kicking over the stool, screaming, and smashing my glass against the brick wall behind the bar followed next by the bottle. The blast of glass shattering and sprinkling to the floor is all I hear through the ringing in my head. I grab my keys, leaving the mess, and head to my jeep.
I drive. Making my way back to my loft and upstairs to find Candace standing in my closet, slipping on a sweater.
“Why didn’t you do anything?” I ask, unable to control my frustration.
She turns to look at me, confused, when she asks, “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“Ryan, please. Don’t,” she says and then walks past me to sit on the edge of the bed.
“Who is he?” I press, emotions getting the best of me.
She keeps her chin tucked down. Avoiding.
“Candace, tell me his fuckin’ name!” I belt out because sitting around and not doing shit isn’t gonna work for me.
“Please don’t do this,” she chokes out as she begins to cry.
“Why aren’t you more pissed?”
“I am.”
“You’re not,” I tell her as I stand in front of her. “I don’t see it.”
She doesn’t respond, and I plead with her, needing to make sense of all of this. “Tell me why I don’t see it. Make me understand because this shit is killing me.”
“Because I don’t know how to show it,” she weeps as she looks up at me.
My heart is hammering hard in my chest. She’s so locked up, and I don’t know how to help her.
“I need you to show it. I need to see it,” I tell her as I kneel down in front of her, gripping her legs.