Gravity: A Novel (10 page)

As expected, I heard him pounding on the cabin door a moment later.
“Gemma, open the door. Talk to me. Please,” he pleaded.

Realizing that I wasn’t going to let him in, the knocking ceased.

“I don’t know what that was all about, Gemma. But I’m here for you, if you want to talk about it.” That was all I heard before he walked away.

***

I spent the day in bed, nursing my hangover, mourning my infidelity. Part of me felt guilty that I had broken my vows, but another part of me relished in the awakening of my soul, revived by Drew’s touch. And I wondered if I could tell Drew my darkest secrets from that night, if I could trust him to be understanding without anger or judgment.

The way he had turned his back on me when I
had needed him the most was almost as painful as the nightmare itself. I don’t think that I could bear to lose him all over again. I feared the blame that he would direct toward me or the blame that he might place on himself. I knew all too well how the guilt would break him as it had me. I had blamed him for years until my therapist had helped me see who that blame belonged to. And yet it was still difficult to look at Drew and not think about the role he had played that night.

If he hadn’t left me alone to cry in the woods, if he had trusted me enough to tell me how he felt in that moment rather than running away
. . . But he was not the one who held me down against my will. He was not the thief who stole my virtue and my soul along with it; he was not the one who haunted my dreams. That was not Drew’s fault. No, the one who held the key to my torment—my nightmares—was not Drew.

The blame belonged to his brother, William.

Bile rose in my throat from the mere thought of his name. How could I tell Drew that his only sibling, his own flesh and blood had raped me that night, the night that changed all of our lives?

The look of disgust and disappointment on Drew’s face the morning after haunted my dreams almost as much as William’s cold eyes.
I had felt ashamed, dirty, but mostly broken as Drew said good-bye and stormed out of my life. Clutching a pillow to my chest, I tried to protect myself from the painful memories as I closed my eyes, succumbing to my exhaustion.

***

It was finally morning, and I stepped out of bed, exhausted from a sleepless night of ghosted whispers and phantom, brutal hands as the memory played out over and over again in my mind. I had squeezed my eyes closed tightly throughout the night, clamping my hands over my ears, trying to block out the image of his cold dark eyes and the sound of his voice whispering in my ear. I had fought it the entire night to no avail, as it was impossible to see, feel, or hear anything other than what I had in those shattering moments that I feared would haunt me for an eternity.

I t
ook a long scolding-hot shower in hopes that I could wash his memory from my body. I scrubbed every inch of my skin until the raw pain was unbearable, and then I scrubbed some more. Even so, I could feel the filth on my skin, along with a sensation that it was seeping inside of me, through my skin, my body, my soul, leaving ruin in its wake. I pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and wrapped my wet hair into a loose bun.

In a desperate escape, avoiding my mother’s questioning eyes and accusations, I ran to the beach.
I sat in my favorite place, perched on the end of the dock, fighting against my despair. It wasn’t long before I heard Drew walking toward me. It was hard to miss the sound of water sloshing beneath the slabs of wood that were floating on the lake, announcing Drew’s approach.

I didn’t turn to look at him, afraid that he would see the shame in my eyes.
I wasn’t sure what to say to him, and I felt the anger then, brewing just below the surface, slowly building. Part of me felt in that moment that he was the reason that it had happened in the first place. Emotions were running rampant inside me, and I could not grasp any one of them. I could not discern what it was that I was supposed to feel or what I wanted to feel or what I was afraid to feel. I felt too much.

Drew didn’t sit beside me like he normally would have.
I could hear him sigh in the still of the morning, his frustration evident in his silent brooding from where he stood behind me. I was expecting him to continue where we had left off the night before, still angry about my kiss with Logan—a part of the evening that now seemed so trivial. What I didn’t expect was what he said next.

“I can’t believe you
, Gemma. Who are you? Obviously not the innocent girl who you led me to believe you were.” His voice, hardened by sarcasm, could not hide the bitterness. I had never heard him speak with such disdain. I whipped my head around so fast, I felt a jolt of nerve sensations travel from my shoulder to my ear.

“William, Gem?
Really? My own brother?”

His words sucked the air out of my lungs
. I felt as if I might collapse right here on the dock where I sat. Before I could find words to convey my confusion and anger at his allegations, he continued.

“Don’t you get it?
You’re not just my best friend, Gemma. I’m in love with you. I’m so in love with you, I can’t see straight. That should have been me.” He slapped his hands against his chest in anger as he shouted at me. “It should have been me!”

I flinched at his words and
at the volume that he spoke them. I scrambled to my feet, using all my strength to stand tall and face him, despite feeling so weak and scared that my body trembled uncontrollably.

“Drew, it’s not
. . . it’s not what you think,” I stammered, tears spilling down my cheeks. “It wasn’t . . . I didn’t . . .” I tried to explain, the words threatening to push me off the cliff that I was standing on, afraid to say them, afraid of what it would mean if I did, afraid that it would be real.

“Forget it, Gemma,” he said, shaking his head as he held
up a hand to stop my incessant stuttering.

“Just listen to me,” I screamed, pleading with him for a chance to explain.

“No. I don’t really wanna hear the details. I just came to say good-bye. I’m leaving for school today. I can’t stand to be here any longer.”

A loud sob escaped me
, and I folded my arms tightly across my chest as if I could hold it all in. I wanted to tell him what William had done, but I was scared. Drew was so angry.

“Please don’t go.” It was all I could say through my sobs.

“Bye, Gemma. Enjoy the rest of your summer,” he scoffed as he walked back toward the beach, crossing the sand to his cabin. He disappeared moments later inside the wall of glass, and all I could do was stand there and watch him go.

I wanted to run after him, to make him hear the truth, to tell him that I loved him too.
But I was frozen in place, paralyzed with fear, afraid of running into William. As if my heart wasn’t already broken, I knew that I had just lost my best friend and the first boy who I had ever loved. And I needed him more than ever. I wanted to die in that moment, to end the pain and agony that was consuming me, and, in many ways, I did die that day—at least a part of me.

***

I opened my eyes gradually, overwhelmed with grief and a new sense of fear, rather than the jolting terror that usually woke me from my nightmares. I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand, as I cried for the thousandth time over the moment that had replayed in my dream. And I wondered how I got here again, back to the scared sixteen-year-old girl who I had been. I had worked too hard—through years of therapy and self-reflection—to move on, to know my worth, to love myself again. And yet here I was, back at the scene of the crime—figuratively anyway—fighting with a fresh sense of self-hatred, fear, and anger. Not to mention loss—mourning everything that I had lost in that one night.

I considered myself a strong person, overcoming a traumatic event in my life and coming out on the other side a good person who lived an even better life.
I was a lawyer, brilliant in the world of corporations and high-powered executives. I had made a small fortune, doing what I do best. I was proud of myself and all that I had worked for. And I had been happy and in love with Ryan, the perfect match for me, the other half to my whole, or so I had thought. I wanted for nothing, except the one thing that I couldn’t seem to have no matter how hard I tried—a baby.

My perfect world was
slowly unraveling, and I wanted to believe that it had all started the day that I had walked in on Ryan with that woman, but I knew it had started long before that. I had pushed away my husband, practically ran him straight into her arms. Of course Ryan had ultimately made the choice to betray me. We could have—should have—talked about our issues, our unhappiness. But my own fear of what I couldn’t give him, the fear of Ryan realizing that I wasn’t good enough for him—fear that stemmed from the night my self-worth was ripped from me—had driven a wedge between us.
I
had driven a wedge between us. My own self-loathing and insecurities had resurfaced at some point, leaving me to question everything that I had—or didn’t have—and everything that I was.

It seemed as if I had come full circle
, and I couldn’t ignore fate’s cruel knock on my door. I was back here again for a reason. Like I was being given a second chance to do it all over again, a chance to tell Drew what had happened. To set the story straight. And a chance for him to support me, to love me in spite of what happened. I wasn’t sure if fate was giving us this chance for his benefit or for mine, maybe both, but I knew that I had to take it. I had to tell him the truth—eventually.

Eighteen

That night I dreamed that I was standing on the top of Indian Rock, afraid to jump, my heart beating loudly in my ears.
I could hear my breath fill and empty my lungs, as if each one was my last. As I looked down into the cold blue water below, I could see a distorted image of Drew’s face staring back at me. His expression shifted between hurt and disgust—as it was the morning when he had said good-bye all those years ago—to pure longing and satisfaction, the look that he held in his eyes while we were making love.

His voice called to me from somewhere in the distance
—a throaty, whispery tone. “What are you afraid of, Gemma?”

The last thing I remember
ed before I was jolted from sleep was the image of empty dark eyes staring back at me as I fell from the rock, blackness closing in all around me. Wet. Cold. I woke, gasping for air, fighting for breath, as a fear of drowning shook my body to its core.

As dawn approached, I sat on the porch swing, hugging my knees to my chest with one hand and palming a steaming cup of coffee in the other.
I frowned at the sight of my car parked in front of the cabin, wondering who had driven it here for me.
Logan or Drew
? I sighed at the thought of Drew.
What did the other night mean? What will happen between us now
? I was, after all, still legally married; this had to be a one-time thing. And, in my heart, as much as I wanted to pretend that it was over, I still pictured Ryan as my future, the father of my children. I may not be
in
love with Ryan, but, underneath the anger and despair, I definitely still loved him. There were moments when I wished that I didn’t, but he had been my entire world for so long, and those feelings don’t change overnight.

I wondered how many more days I could spend with Drew before I had to tell him what happened.
I hadn’t spoken of it in years. I had tried to bury it deep inside during high school, where it slowly killed me one day at a time, robbing me of sleep, happiness, and a sense of security. When I had started college, I had confessed for the first time what had happened to me during a drunken game of truth or dare with my roommate, Cassie, and two other friends who I had grown close to. I remembered how it had felt to finally say it out loud.

Lexi had admitted to having an abortion during her junior year of high school after choosing truth to avoid the dare of running through the commons of our dorm
naked. Christy had revealed her deep, dark secret of a cocaine addiction that she spent most of her senior year recovering from in rehab. And I had blurted out that I had been raped by my best friend’s older brother, instantly wishing that I had chosen dare. In that moment I would have gladly streaked through the commons than deal with the looks on their faces as they processed what my words meant.

They
had asked a million questions, and I had answered them as best as I could, tears falling endlessly as I recounted each terrorizing moment. When they discovered that I had never told anyone and that I still had nightmares nearly every time I closed my eyes, they had suggested that I talk to someone, professionally, about it. I had been defensive at first, denying my need for help, but they had soon persuaded me.

Lexi was seeing a campus therapist, to deal with the guilt and shame of her abortion
, and Christy had shared how much her therapist in rehab had helped her. And so a week later I had started seeing Dr. Shepley, a campus therapist who specialized in date rape and sexual assault. Dr. Shepley—or Jude, as I called her now—had been my therapist for nearly twenty years. She had slowly brought me back to life, and I still went to see her occasionally, but not as often as I probably should have—given all the failed attempts to have a baby with Ryan.