Pulled Within (35 page)

 My eyes welled again. I closed my lids as the tears dripped
down
my cheeks. Holding the bottom of my face with his hands, he
gathered every drop.

I was raining, and he was catching me in his hands.

Hands I loved, to replace the memory of the ones I didn’t.

***

Three days
.

“It was pouring the night it happened…just like it is now.”

My voice didn’t surprise me this time, even if my choice of words had. I lay in bed against his shoulder. His hand rested on my
cheek, his
thumb tracing those same comforting circles. “My mom was
working the night shift, so I told my brother and my grandfather that I was spending the night with a friend. But I wasn’t.”

A strange feeling came over me as I spoke. I felt like I was floating. Instead of being caught in the memory, it was like I was
watching it play out before me.

“I waited in my car at the end of the street. The rain was pounding against my windshield. It was so loud…so fast. The wipers could barely keep up.” I glanced at the window across the
room. It was the same
sound, the same speed hammering against the glass now. “I just sat and waited. I don’t remember how long I was there. It felt like forever. And when I felt like I’d given him enough time, I went back inside. Quietly. My clothes were soaked. My hair was heavy,
drenched. It stuck to my
face, kept getting in my eyes. I took my shoes off so they wouldn’t squeak. I left a trail of rain behind me as I walked. I stood in the hallway. The lights were on this time…”

I was raining again.

I couldn’t help it.

Hart kissed the tip of my nose. “It’s okay,” he said, smoothing away my tears. “Let it come.”

So I did. And when it had passed, I told him more. “The door to Darren’s room was open. I saw my grandfather in there again, like I
had
the first night…the night I found him raping my brother.” I heard
Hart’s breath as it caught in his throat.

Mine remained surprisingly calm.

I was telling Darren’s truth as much as I was telling my own. I
had to do this for both of us.

“I’d told myself it wouldn’t happen again—that I would do
whatever I had to, to protect Darren from that evil fuck. When I’d asked Darren about what I’d seen, he told me it hadn’t happened,
that I hadn’t seen
what I thought I had. But I knew the truth. And I knew how
frightened
he must have been, and how that man must have terrified him into keeping his mouth shut. I could only imagine what kind of threats he’d made. I had to catch my grandfather in the act, so he’d know he
could
never do it again…so he would pay for what he had done to my brother.

“And there he was, in Darren’s room again. I pushed the door open a bit more so he would see me. I was ready to pull him away,
to knock
him on the ground and beat the life out of him. He was standing in front of Darren’s desk. His hands
—
those nasty fucking hands
—
gripped the chair behind him for support. He faced the
middle of the room, his
back to me. I didn’t see Darren anywhere. My heart was beating so loudly, I thought for sure he’d hear it and turn around. Then I saw his
shoulders shudder. He moaned and sniffled and wiped his face. He didn’t seem to hear me, and he still didn’t turn around. I couldn’t take it anymore. So I yelled at him,
‘What are you doing to my brother,
you sick
bastard?’
He
jumped. I’d startled him. He finally turned and faced me, moved
toward me…and as he moved, I saw Darren, lying on the bed. His eyes were closed…he was sleeping, I thought.
No, not sleeping.
His face was blue, and a belt was fastened around his neck…”

Hart’s cheek pressed against mine. I felt his tears on my skin.

“He’d hung himself.” I’d never before said how he had chosen to do it. I’d always said
Darren was dead
or
my brother committed suicide.
The impact of those words kicked me in the chest.

“I’m so sorry, Rae.” Hart’s voice was small, a rasping whisper
against my forehead.

“’
This is your fault!’
I’d cried out. It was the only thing I could think
to say.
‘I tried to save him,’
was his response. I stared at my brother’s
body, lying on the bed where my grandfather placed him
when he’d tried to
keep it from happening. But he was too late…and I was too late,
too.”

This is all your fucking fault!
I’d said again. That time, I wasn’t
sure if I had been saying it to my grandfather or to myself.

I watched the rain, preparing myself to tell him the rest. “Seeing Darren there destroyed me in an instant. I had to get away—not just from his room, but away from the house, from that vile man. I just had to get out. So I ran. Back through the door and down the front
steps.
Into the storm. No shoes. The wet grass squished under my feet as I sprinted across the lawn and over the sidewalk. I just ran.” I could feel the water under my toes again, even though I was safe and dry
in bed. I
could feel my hair
drip, drip, drip
in my eyes as I ran. “I saw it…the car. I saw it from the corner of my eye. Its headlights, the slick shine of the glass and metal. I heard its tires. I was in the middle of the street, and I could have kept going, but I didn’t want to.” Suddenly, the drifting feeling was gone. I wasn’t watching my life from a distance anymore. I was back in my body, telling my truth. Finally letting the
rain fall. “I wanted it to end for me like it had ended for Darren.”

Nobody had ever heard this part of the story.

When I’d told Shane and Brady and my mom what had happened,
it was a slightly different version. I’d said that everything had
happened so fast, that the rain was so heavy I hadn’t seen the car coming until it was too late and didn’t have enough time to get out of the way.

Some of that wasn’t true.

I knew exactly what had happened, and what I wanted to happen next.

“So I stood in the street, and I closed my eyes, and I rocked back and forth as the car came,” I said. “I let the storm take me wherever it wanted to.”

Instead of taking me, the storm shattered me and left me where I was.

Maybe it was what I had coming, even more than death.

I hadn’t helped Darren with the pain he was forced to keep
hidden,
so maybe I deserved to wear mine on my face, and carry it in my
soul for the rest of my life.

“Your scar…” Hart said.

I nodded. “I was in the hospital for a few weeks. There were broken bones and surgeries, nothing as severe as what the windshield did to my cheek. But none of it mattered. Darren was gone, and I was…not.”

“I’m grateful you survived.”

I stared into his eyes, tears blurring my vision. My sorrow
turned
him into a watercolor. “Then you should thank Brady the next time you see him. When I was in that hospital bed, I was willing to let it all go, not at all grateful to have survived. My mom couldn’t get
through to
me. Or the nurses. But Brady never left my side. He made me live again, even when I didn’t know how it would be possible. So when I
say that he and Shane are my family, this is what I mean.”

His brow folded, and I knew he understood how much they
meant to me. “What happened to your grandfather?”

Anger flushed through me. My hands began to shake. “My mom
said he waited at the house until the ambulance came. Then he got in his rusty old pick-up truck and took off. He left a note apologizing, the fucker. But he still left my mom with her son dead in his
bedroom and her daughter broken in the middle of the street.”

His lips brushed over mine. They couldn’t cool the rage.

“His note explained how he couldn’t handle the guilt of what
had happened to either of us. He played the victim.”

Hart nodded. “And your mom?”

“When I was strong enough, I told her the truth.” I exhaled
heavily. “She chose not to believe me.”

He tilted my face to meet his gaze, reading my eyes again. “Her son killed himself and her daughter was crushed by a car, and she
didn’t believe you when you told her the reason?”

I shook my head. “She chooses to be mystified about what made Darren commit suicide, she writes it off as
teen angst
. It’s complete bullshit.” Besides my uncle, we were the only family we had left,
and her denial
had ruined our relationship. “The most painful time of the year are the weeks leading up to Darren’s birthday…it’s three days away.”
His eyes
showed even more understanding. “I can’t keep food down very
well, and I don’t sleep without dreaming of dark things.”

“Of Darren and the accident.”

This time, he was wrong. “No. I dream of my grandfather’s
hands.”

He glanced down at his fingers on my face. “Did he…?”

“No
—
he never did to me what he did to Darren. He was actually a source of comfort before I knew what he really was. He
used to brush
my hair, and rub the top of my head…run his hands along my cheeks.
The same hands that violated my brother and drove him to kill
himself.” These were my ghosts, the hands of a man I considered to be beyond evil, and they haunted me at their will.

“It makes sense now.” His voice was as gentle as his touch. I didn’t
cringe or ache to push his hands off my face, even as I realized how much touch they were offering. Rather, I wanted to press them harder against my skin. “And now I understand why you did this to your hair.”

I nodded. “I’m purging my ghosts.”

“I’m going to help you however I can, Rae. I promise.”

I believed him. “It was all my fault. If I’d been strong enough to confront my grandfather as soon as I knew, or if I’d taken Darren
and
left, things would be different now.” I’d never fooled myself into
believing I could start over and leave all this behind. But I’d always held onto the idea that I could have done things differently.

Hart kissed my fingers. “This wasn’t your fault—none of it. You were a kid. Your grandfather is the one to blame.”

 It was too much for me to believe.

“Look at me,” he insisted. I couldn’t do it. “This wasn’t your fault.” He said it again, as if repeating himself would drive away the guilt. I’d failed Darren, and had been trying to make up for it ever
since. I was the caretaker in every relationship, to the point of sacrificing myself. The more wounded they were, the more I felt I could fix them.

But none of that would ever bring my brother back.

“
Look at me
,
Rae,
” he repeated. I let my eyes drift from his
stomach up to his chest, until I was looking into his cloud-gray eyes. He knew
everything now, more than anyone did. I couldn’t imagine how he
felt about it all. “Thank you.”

That was too much. “For what? For pulling you into my shit storm without telling you why it even existed? For taking my
insanity out on you instead of explaining the reason behind it?”

He shook his head. “Thank you for trusting me with your pain… and thank you for letting me back into your life, against your better judgment…and thank you for finding a way to love me, even when
you thought it wouldn’t be possible.” In all the time I’d spent
holding
the men in my life together and keeping them from falling apart, nobody had ever really said
thank you
before. And now, the man
who
was putting
me
back together was the one thanking me, when it
should have been the other way around.

I was overwhelmed.

His lips pressed against mine. Everything inside my body
poured out in our kiss: the regret, the desolation, the utter despair at having carried my pain alone for so long.

Everything I could never give to anyone else, for fear of having to tell them the truth.

I’d never gotten over Hart being taken out of my life; my feelings for him had been buried under layers of scar tissue. I’d never faced
the reality of what had happened to Darren when he’d been ripped away from me; that piece of my soul had gone numb. And I hadn’t gotten used to the idea that Brady was moving in a different
direction, drifting away as he worked to clean himself up.

Having love removed from my life without warning was
something I’d gotten used to.

Even more than the ragged spiral on my face, this was my scar.

DUE TO MY CONFESSION
to Hart, I had to make an appointment at a salon the next morning, so I met Shane at the rehab center instead of driving with him. It meant I wouldn’t have as much time with Brady, which I hated. It had only been a few days since I’d seen
him, yet so much had happened in that time. There was so much he and Shane needed to hear—so much that, for the first time, I was eager to share.

I walked in the front door and pulled off my beanie, running my
fingers through my hair. They only brushed through five or six inches before I reached the ends. The hairdresser had cleaned up the
length and added in some layers. It had never been this short before.