Blind Side (15 page)

W
hen it rains
, it pours. I’m drowning in a lake of rain pooled at my feet as I step out of my car. The sun is due to set at any moment, but heavy black clouds paint the skyway with doom and gloom.

Wind howls and twists around me, autumn leaves caught in the whirlwind tangling with my blowing hair. I stare straight ahead at the Sunset Motel as I pace toward the chipped-green door. My heart that would once race is leveled with forced apathy. The only thing I feel is the cold storm against my skin.

And then the metal under my knuckles as I knock on the door.

Kemper pulls the door open wide-eyed, and I step aside him. He closes the door behind me, and rushes to retrieve a blanket off the bed. He throws it over my shoulders. “Christ, Stassi.”

“It’s raining,” I say deadpan as he dries me off with the blanket, but I didn’t come here to be reminded how much he cares about me, so I push the blanket off my back. It coils on the soft carpet.

“You haven’t answered your texts.” He bends at his knees and switches the heat dial upward. “I’ve been worried about you since Mrs. Salt said you had to take care of an emergency.”

“Is that what she’s calling it?”

“What happened?” He takes my hand and guides me to the bed. “Why are you—“

“She knows, Kemper.”

“Shit.” He raises his palm to his chin. “How did she find out?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What are we going to do?”

“You don’t have to do anything.” I cock my head to him with a can’t-miss frown. “It’s what I have to do.”

“Don’t say he it,” he says low and husky. “I need to tell you something first, and you’re not going to like it, but I need you to listen.”

Now, my heart begins to race. There’s sorrow in his tone, riddled with a wave of nerves. “You’re scaring me.”

“That’s probably a good thing.” He rises to his feet and steps to the window. Rain dances along the glass, painting a backdrop of tears. “You should be afraid of me.”

“You are the softest, most gentle man I’ve ever known.”

“I’m not who you think I am.” He twists his head over his shoulder. “I never lied to you, but there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you since I felt that first true kick against my heart.”

“What is it?” I question, but begin to feel as if I don’t want to know the answer. I came here to do what had to be done. It was supposed to be a quick in and out job, because I knew the longer I stayed, the more I’d lose my nerve to run.

“It’s about Nathan,” his words shoot straight through my heart. His face contorts as if he’s about to throw up. I, too, want to throw up. Release all my nerves in a pool at my feet.

“What about him?” I ask, my throat seeming to collapse.

“When this all started, I wanted nothing more than revenge.” He sighs and shifts his eyes upward at the ceiling, shaking his head. He’s not sure if he should continue, but he knows it’s too late. “I wanted to destroy Coach for what he set in motion.”

“You knew him?” I move to stand, but my feet give out on me before they’ve even landed on the carpet. I sink back onto the bed, dizzied and spinning. “This doesn’t make any sense.” His feet tap against the floor, his leg shaking. There’s an earthquake beneath us, and neither of us are prepared for the aftershocks. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I know you came here to break up with me, and I’m hoping that by being honest, by forcing you to see how much I’m in love with you, you won’t do it.”

“I don’t have a choice, Kemper,” I scoff, because why does he think this is so easy for me?

“You do.” He nods. “You always have a choice.” His lips curl. “You make them or you don’t, but don’t’ stand here and tell me it’s out of your hands.”

“I’m married.” I jump to my feet and pace around the bed. I need the space of the bed between us, to give me some measurable distance so I can think clearly.

“You’re going back to him?” He questions, almost to himself. “After everything he’s done to you?”

“What has he done to me that I haven’t done back? He cheated. I cheated.”

“He tore our lives out from under us,” he screams and points a finger to his chest, rage boiling to the surface and tearing me to shreds. I’ve never seen him this way, raw and visceral, exploding in a fit of blind anger.

“Who was Nathan to you?” I stare him in the eyes, trying to piece the jagged pieces of this jigsaw puzzle together. “Family? Friend?”

“I was with him that night.”

The revelation sends thunder through my veins, lightening shocking my heart into overdrive. “That’s not possible.”

“You know what I’m saying, and you know it’s true,” he yells, but calms himself down after a deep breath. “Please don’t make me say it out loud.”

“If you were with him, then why are you with me?”

“Because I knew how much Coach loved you.” He buries his hand in his palms and drops down into the chair beside the bed. “You were his prized possession, and I thought if I could steal you from him, I could hurt him the way he hurt me.”

So many question, so much confusion. “You’re gay?”

“No,” he scoffs. “Sometimes.” He eyes me. “That’s so not the point.”

“I think it’s pretty on the nose, if you ask me.”

“This started as something evil, but it became something else.” He stands and begins a slow careful march toward me. “Now, I don’t care about revenge or whatever. I was never supposed to fall in love with you, but I did, that first night under those bleachers, and I know that it’s crazy. You can’t fall in love in one night, but I did. And I’m standing here owning it because I don’t know if I can make you stay.”

“You can’t,” I say dryly, wanting him to know I’ve made up my mind, but that’s nowhere near the truth. “I need to process everything, but I don’t have time.”

“We lost someone we both cared about for different reasons.” He pets a gentle caress against my cheek. “That connects us, forever and always.”

“I love you, Kemper,” I whisper and lean into his touch, closing my eyes and reveling in the way he can make me feel; loved, wanted, full. Those three words, I love you, were always so elusive. I couldn’t say them before, but I can say them now, only because I’m about to flee. “Truly. Madly. Deeply. Over the moon and around the sun, I love you with every bone in my body.”

“Then why walk out that door?”

“I wish I didn’t have to make these choices, because when I do, I don’t even want to live in this world.” I trace my hand along the back of his palm, caressing him, but I know I need to pull myself away from him, and that’s just what I do. “I want to crawl in a hole and die.”

“I’ll wait for you.” He follows me to the door. “A thousand years if I have to. I’ll sit this lifetime out and wait for the next.”

“You need to live.” I place my palm on his chest. “Take that heart and love someone who deserves it.”

“Do you think I don’t understand how wrong this is?” His voice shatters, pleading for me to think this through. That’s the problem, though. I’ve thought about it too much and not enough. I’ve thought about every scenario, and it always ends up leaving someone with a broken heart. “I think about it every night. I know what I’m asking you to give up.”

“Then you wouldn’t ask it.”

“What about me?” His eyes are swollen, his breath broken. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Every second I stay here is another second I’m not running.” I twist the knob of the door, but hesitate pushing it open. “If I don’t walk out that door soon, I’m never going to walk out.”

“That’s fine with me.” He forces a beautiful smile, cracked open with despair but he hides it well.

“I know it is, and that’s why this is so hard.” Wind pounds against the door, forcing it open. “I wish I could be who you need me to be.”

“Don’t you get it?” He braces his hand on the edge of the door as it swings open. “You already are. You’re damaged and broken, and you’re all the more beautiful for it.”

Behind me, a storm rages on with thunder roaring through clouds that are darker by the second. Before me is another storm, standing tall above a broken foundation. “Goodbye, Kemp,” I say lowly, because that’s all the strength I can muster. We exchange one last look. He’s full of longing and words left unspoken. I can’t know what’s written on my face, but I feel empty and can’t help but feeling I look it too.

I smile one last smile and turn to the rain. It pounds against my head, rolling down my face, and with every sharp inhale, it sputters on my lips. With every inch I distance myself from that fateful motel, my need to breathe escalates but my ability to do so withers. I’m left suffocating, claustrophobic in an empty parking lot that floods higher and higher with no end to the storm in sight.

I hear footsteps kicking through the water behind me. My eyes fall shut. When I open them, Kemper’s standing in front of me, his chest heaving, his lips shuddering, his body shaking. From the cold or pure adrenaline, his entire being vibrates. The rain pushes his hair flat against his head, dripping near his eyes.

“If you drive away right now, I won’t stick around,” he threatens, but it comes out more like begging me to stay. “I can’t go to that school everyday and see you. It’d kill me.”

I don’t say a word. I know that I can’t.

We stand face to face in the freezing rain. Anyone could see us, but it matters no more. After this last passionate embrace, the game is over and we’re both back at square one, fumbling through this field they call life. There’s hope on the horizon, but we can’t see it beyond the storm clouds.

We just see each other, bruised and damaged, soaked from the storm. Tattered and shredded for the world to see, drowning in the emotional pool gluing us to the ground at our feet.

Neither of us speak a word. We don’t have to. He had to have known that the second he gave chase to me. It was over before it started, and though I love him, it’s with the heaviest of hearts that I must let him go.

It makes no sense, and maybe it doesn’t have to. How can you truly love someone you hardly know? I’m not the one to ask, because I honestly don’t have a fucking clue. I just know what I know, and I can feel it too.

It’s worth repeating; Love has no rules, and it has no limits. I used to believe it was a balancing act; a carefully crafted equation of give and take. Now, I know it can never be balanced. To love, you must lose. To lose, you must truly love first.

I’ve loved. I’ve lost. I’ve had my goddamn heart torn out of my chest, and somehow I’m still standing with enough strength to walk away from him, when I want nothing more than stay here with him.

We stare each other down for a moment more, standing as still as statues while bolts of lightning flash from above. Something about the electricity in the sky breaks me from the spell and I turn to my car without saying a word.

“Don’t do this to me, Stassi,” he pleads from behind me, the last words I’ll ever hear him say. “I love you so goddamn much.”

“I love you, too,” I whisper under my breath and slide into the front seat of my car.

I turn the ignition and throw the car into gear. It’s when I’m pulling out of the parking lot that I break. I make the fatal mistake of looking in the rearview mirror. Tears brew from my eyes, clouding my vision of him with every stifled inhale. He stands there motionless, his hard body weathering the storm but his boyish face defeated and irrevocably broken.

I’m broken too. I guess we’re all broken in our own ways. Some of us survive, persevering through the pain. Some of us wither and die. And some of us are stuck in place, damned to live the same mistakes over and over again.

T
oday is
the day we battle to the death. There won’t be a secret left in the dark as we rip apart our house from the inside. Wounds will be pulled to the surface, ugly truths uncovered under the harsh light of day.

The rain has come and gone, and now it’s back again, thunder threatening to rip a hole in the sky. Windshield wipers forge their own battle, slashing away at droplets of rain as they stain the glass.

My fingers fumble with the cap of a prescription bottle, tumbling into the orange canister for a magic pill to calm my nerves. I toss it into my mouth and down it with a swig from a bottle of beer.

I roll down the window, rain spraying into the car, and toss the bottle into the forest, then press my foot against the accelerator as I roll the window back up. It’s been twenty-four hours since I left Kemper standing in the rain. It’s been just as long since I’ve seen anyone else.

I took some time to be alone. At first, it was only supposed to be for a few hours, but after a few too many drinks, I passed out in the back seat of my car. I threw my phone out the window about twelve hours ago, and I’m left unfazed about all the calls I’ve missed.

As I pull up the long winding driveway of my house, the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, rays burning against my back. Just as quick as the clouds came, the sun pushes through the white puddles of the early evening sky, granting a brief break from the chaos.

I glance around the property when I step out of my car. An ancient house still standing, though large portions of the hillside have eroded over the years. Fall leaves cover the yard, brushstrokes of dying brown clashing against the white exterior of the house.

I hear the screen door creak and prepare myself as Brock stampedes onto the porch, and perches himself over the railing. “Where the hell have you been?”

I roll my eyes.
To hell and back, and now, apparently, back to hell again.
I came here armed and ready for battle, but at least allow the courtesy of settling in first. He latches onto my arm when I attempt to pass him.

“You have no right,” he scolds me. “You disappear without telling anyone where you’re going.”

“Let go of me,” I command and rip my arm away from him. “Don’t pretend to be concerned. There’s nobody here you have to put on a show for.”

“When did it begin?” he questions, jumping straight into it, leaving my mind reeling with whom told him what.

“I’m not talking about this,” I say lowly and pull the screen door open. He follows me into the house and slams the front door shut, sending a photograph of him and his mother straight to the floor, the glass shattering against wood. “You’re cleaning that up.”

“When did it begin?” he questions again, following me into the living room.

I turn to him as I throw my jacket on the couch. “It’s an illusion and nothing more.”

He recoils, his face screaming of confusion. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m out of excuses.”

“That doesn’t give you a free pass for the things you’ve done.”

“Oh,” I chuckle at the hilarious hypocrisy of his words. “I’m well aware of that.”

“What is this to you?”

I zero my eyes on him, somber and broken. “It’s the part of this tragedy where I break free.”

“Tragedies always end in death.”

My eyes widen and I can’t help but laugh to myself. “And for the last nomination of the night, Brock Hamilton throws his hat in the ring for literacy.” I pound my fist against the wall and laugh with the gusto of a crazy person. “I guess not all football players are brain dead after all. One huge fucking step for all of mankind.”

“You’re high,” he accuses with a finger, but it doesn’t hit all the right spots.

“I’m going to need you to eviscerate me with a little more oomph.”

He lunges across the room and grabs me by the arm, directing me into the foyer. “You need to go to bed.”

“I’m tired of sleeping all the time.”

“Your eyes are burnt red—“

“From the exhaustion of keeping up this charade.” I twist to face him, freeing myself from his grasp. “I thought that maybe we weren’t as broken as I thought we were, that maybe what we had the other night wasn’t a one-off, that maybe we could get back to that.”

“We can,” he assures me with a twinkle in his eyes. “We can go back to the way things used to be.”

“I can’t forgive you.” I lower my head and let out a soft exhale. “I’ve tried. I’ve honest-to-God tried.”

“We’ve been on this balancing board before. It always levels out the same.”

“You are so naïve,” I scowl, the anger and heartbreak rising from the pit of my stomach. “What do you see when you look me in my eyes? What do you see when go a little deeper to the point where the genetic makeup of my eyes are all that you can see?” I push my face up against his, invading his personal space and forcing me to stare me down, to take survey of the way my eyes lie dead and buried.

“I see pain.”

“What do you see that I don’t see everyday?”

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “You won’t let me in.”

“This will always go back to that crash,” I sigh and turn away from him, bracing my hand on the railing of the stairs.

“I’ve told you a thousand times, that we’re past that.”

“Easy for you to say when you don’t carry the scars.” I pull my shirt over my head in one devastating motion, exposing the scar that runs a curve around my side like a trench long buried.

His lips draw tight and his eyes fold over into a retreat where he doesn’t have to see the monster I’ve become. This is the way he’s been able to carry on with our lives as if nothing happened, but I’m tired of bearing the burden of his actions, a sentiment I don’t even need to voice. In the back of his head, he’s always known if he hadn’t been so quick to alert Nathan’s parents, Nathan wouldn’t have been drunk in a car and thusly I wouldn’t have jumped into the car with him.

“Look at me,” I whisper to him. “You want inside my head? This is your chance.”

He cranes his head away, and by the balance of his right foot leveled ever so slightly before his left foot, I know he’s about to run. Oh, how the tables have been turned.

“Look at me,” I scream, my own blood curdling from terror. I’m terrified of myself and what I might do, and what I might say, but it’s too late to stop the truth, even if I risk burning this house to the ground by saying it out loud.

He looks at me, as commanded, but his eyes are lost elsewhere, somewhere between the floor and my scars. I reach for his hand, to guide his fingers over the raised skin of my scar, and then continue on until his palm is pressed firmly against my stomach.

There’s a chance, no matter how small, that the two of us could reconcile here in this foyer on a chilly autumn Tuesday. But not after what comes next. “These scars are a constant reminder of what I lost that night, and it’s more than you’ve ever known.”

His eyes are too lost on my scars, and why shouldn’t they be, this is the first time I’ve allowed him to see them for longer than a split second at a time. “What are you talking about?” he questions softly, but he’s not ready for the answer. I’m not ready, either, but I’ve been holding the weight of our loss alone on my shoulders for too long.

I give myself a moment to prepare myself, but there’s never enough time. “I was pregnant,” when the words slip from my lips, I’m overtaken by a flood of tears, my eyes blurry and hollow.

Brock stills. Contempt and sorrow weaving into the fabric of his face. Is it hurt? Sadness? A potent combination of both? His throat tightens, his lips too. He reaches a boiling peak, and I know tonight’s the night I finally die. Maybe I won’t be in a casket six feet deep, but my soul is gone.

So is his.