“Don’t go,” he says, grabbing my arm.
I yank it away. “Stop.”
He stands too and takes both my forearms. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
I twist sideways to walk away, breaking his hold on me. “Sure you should have. Why lie? Just say what you really think and we’ll all be better off, trust me.” I walk to the door, anxious to put as much distance between us as I can. I’m going to go run my head under ice-cold water in the bathroom so I can try and forget what just happened.
“I didn’t lie. I’m not. I will! Tell the truth, I mean!”
His shout has my hand freezing on the door handle. I don’t turn to face him, but I don’t leave either.
“Alissa, just … listen … I do like you, okay? Jesus, I can’t believe I’m saying this.”
My face burns again, but this time not with humiliation. I can’t believe he’s saying this either. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him holding out a hand in my direction.
“Don’t go,” he begs. “I want to talk to you. It’s important.”
I turn around and rest my back against the door. My hand stays behind me on the handle of the door. I can make my escape quickly if I need to, and the idea of it acts as security for me. I can listen to what he says without fear.
My chin goes up. “Fine. Talk.”
He sits back down on his stool, puts his feet up onto the rungs, and slouches, fiddling with his fingers between his legs. “Things are changing really fast for me.”
I nod, pretending like I understand when I don’t.
“Just a couple months ago I had everything all figured out.”
“I know the feeling,” I say with only a slight trace of bitterness.
“I had work, I had a hobby, I had … girls.” He looks up at me. “Sounds great, right?”
I shrug. I don’t think he really wants an answer to that question.
“But I was angry all the time. Anytime someone looked at me sideways, I wanted to punch their teeth into their skull. I hated the entire world. I was drinking all the time, trying to drown all that anger or something, I don’t know. But it only made it worse.”
My eyes widen at that. I’m not sure that I’ve ever been that angry.
He shakes his head and looks at the floor again. “I miss my mom. I miss my sister. I miss them every single damn day of the week and the month and the year.” His voice has gone rough, and the sorrow in his confession loosens my feet. I walk closer to him, my hand leaving the door and my security at having it there.
He looks up again. “My sister was raped. Did anyone tell you that?”
I shake my head as my heart is gripped by icy terror. It’s like the Devil himself is holding onto it, squeezing it until I feel like I can’t breathe anymore.
“I was supposed to pick her up after work, and I was late. She took a ride home from someone else and he raped her. He beat her ass and left her for dead.”
Colin, the biggest, baddest, toughest guy I’ve ever met is crying. There are no sobs, just tears. His eyes are glowing green. I don’t know what to do.
“It’s not your fault,” I say, my voice barely cracking a whisper.
“Of course it’s my fault,” he says angrily. His eyes show me the tortured soul that lives inside him. “If I’d been there when I was supposed to be, she’d still be here!”
“You don’t know that.” I put my hand out towards him, but he scowls at me, so I let it drop. I feel like I’m standing in front of a very angry tiger who might possibly be in the mood to eat me.
“I know it. Everyone knows it. Leave it at that.”
“You have a pretty high opinion of yourself,” I say, trying to rile him up and throw him off. He’s too stuck on that one track to listen otherwise.
My ploy works. The muscles all over his body are tensing up and flexing.
“What?” he grinds out.
I shrug, keeping up the game, keeping him on edge with words that are meant to seem careless. “You think you have direct control over everyone’s destiny? Like you’re God or something?”
“No. I never said that.”
“Well, you claim that you could have changed the direction of your sister’s life, as if you made the conscious decision to take her out of this world.”
“It wasn’t a conscious decision. It was a choice and the consequence of that choice. That was all on me.”
“Maybe it wasn’t, though,” I say, my voice softening.
“How so?” he asks, clearly not ready to believe anything other than the fact that he is the reason she’s no longer on this earth.
“We all make choices, don’t we? She made a choice to get into someone else’s car that night. You didn’t make that choice for her, did you?”
“Basically I did.”
“No, basically you made a choice for yourself. She made a choice for herself. Her rapist made his choices that had nothing to do with you. Only she is responsible for her own choices, as you are for yours, and it was her choice that got her … in a car with the wrong person.” My voice hitches at the end of my sentence because I have the strangest sensation that I’m talking to myself and not Colin. “Girls do that all the time, Colin. They just get into a car with the wrong person.” Images flash through my mind. A car. The wrong person. The wrongest person I’ve ever met.
“But if I hadn’t been late …”
I snap back to reality. “Maybe she would have gone with you. Or maybe she would have said, ‘No thanks, Colin, but I’m going to ride with him instead.’”
He shakes his head. “She wouldn’t have said that.” His voice is missing some of its earlier conviction.
“Says you. But you can’t possibly know that. No one could. Life rolls out the way it does either by grand design or by fate or by chance, but you only have control over yourself. You cannot take responsibility or credit for someone else’s choices. You are not God. And even if you were, you wouldn’t be able to take credit for anyone’s choices anyway because we’re supposed to have free will.”
He stares at the floor for a long time, his mouth twisted up into a half-scowl, half-smile. After wiping off the tears that have made it to his jawline, he looks up at me again. “How’d you get so smart?”
The icy hand that was gripping my heart loosens just a little. “I guess I just live and learn. Or try to learn, anyway. It’s not easy. Some of the lessons are very hard to take.”
“Painful,” he says, his voice still raspy.
I nod. “Very.”
He holds out his hands and tilts his head up to look at me.
I’m drawn to him like a magnet. I don’t stop until I’m standing in front of him and we’re holding hands. My giant belly rests between us and my baby is flipping all over the place. She’s apparently very excited about what’s happening.
“Will you please tell me why Randy came here to threaten you?” he asks in a gentle tone.
I swallow three times; once to keep the tears away, once to keep the vomit in my stomach, and once to get up the nerve to finally give a voice to the nightmares that have been haunting me for months.
“Yes. I’ll tell you. If you promise not to tell anyone else for as long as you live.”
He nods once.
“I need to hear you say it out loud. Promise on your life.”
His jaw muscles bounce out a few times as if he’s about to resist, but then he speaks. “I promise not to tell anyone what you’re about to tell me for as long as I live.”
A giant sigh escapes me, like it’s been pent up in my lungs for days and days and days. “Okay, then. But first I have to tell you about Charlie…”
CHAPTER THIRTY
I GET BACK UP ON my stool so I can tell my story without suffering from my aching ankles.
“Charlie was my first real boyfriend. We started dating almost two years ago.”
“He go to school with you?”
“Yes. We met during rush week our second year. He
was … I guess you could say … hazing some students rushing his fraternity, and I was at one of their parties. I wasn’t in a sorority because I was afraid all the activities would interfere with my studies, but occasionally I went to different parties when I could afford a break.”
He nods to encourage me.
“I can’t believe what a dork I was. I had such a crystal clear vision of how I was getting from Point A to Point B back then.”
“Don’t be mean to yourself. Just tell me what happened.”
I nod. It’s too late for regret. It’s just going to muddy the story anyway, so I steel myself for the reality that is my life and continue.
“After we met, we started seeing each other around a lot. I got the impression that he was making some of those meetings happen on purpose. I was very flattered.” My face turns pink. “He’s very good-looking. His family is wealthy. He drives a Porche and owns a boat. He could date anyone, but he was choosing me.”
Colin doesn’t say anything to that, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling ashamed that those things meant so much to me. I never considered myself a gold digger until those words came out of my mouth.
“He went to a fancy prep school before college, so he was a little older. He was on the crew team. He had a lot of friends who had families in Congress and other high places. One of them is a heart surgeon up in San Francisco. Charlie’s father and mother are both lawyers. It was all a very big deal for me. My family is very religious and set in their ways. They believe it’s important to make the right connections and follow a certain path towards success. They were impressed by Charlie’s family and background.”
“And that path they wanted you to follow included this Charlie person?”
“Yes, but not just as a means to an end. I mean, not really. I loved him. Or I thought I loved him.” I sigh with the memory. “Or maybe I didn’t. I don’t know. It’s hard to remember any good feelings where he’s concerned these days.”
“How does Randy figure into this?” Colin takes one of my hands and laces his fingers in with mine. I don’t fight him, instead enjoying the feeling of closeness it brings.
“Randy is Charlie’s best friend. He was always around. Sometimes I thought he was jealous that we were together, and other times I thought he encouraged it. I found out later that Charlie used to date Randy’s sister and that their families had vacationed together a lot growing up.”
“So Randy was jealous?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it was, it made him kind of angry. He was rude sometimes, but usually not when Charlie was around. And he’d say things that could be taken different ways, so I was never sure if he meant them in a nasty way or was just being funny.”
“Give me an example.”
I shrug, feeling uncomfortable as Randy’s words come back to me in bits and pieces. “One time we went to the beach together and I wore my favorite bathing suit. Randy took one look at me and said something like I must not get out much.”
“Get out much? What’s that supposed to mean?”
I shake my head, trying to rid it of the memories. I can still feel the burning pain of embarrassment. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe that my suit was out of style. It definitely was more conservative than the ones their other friends were wearing. But he laughed it off like he was just commenting on my lack of a tan. It was just … uncomfortable.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Charlie started asking to sleep with me - have sex - right from the beginning, but I wasn’t going to do that until I was married.”
Colin’s gaze drops to my belly, and I laugh bitterly.
“Yeah. As you can see, that didn’t work out quite as I planned.”
“Stop,” Colin says, putting his free hand on my cheek, forcing me to look up at him. “Just tell your story, not the story you think others are telling about you.”
My lips tremble over the loving feeling his statement creates in my heart.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and continue, pulling back a little so his hand falls away from my face. “I always told him no, that I wasn’t ready. He would press me pretty hard about it sometimes and then he would let off the pressure, like it didn’t matter and that he was willing to wait.” I can’t look at Colin anymore, so my gaze shifts to his canvas. The angry black and red mirrors the emotions in my soul.
“It was my twenty-first birthday. He told me he was going to take me to a party and then he had a very special gift for me, something to show his commitment to me. I was so excited.” A tear slips past my rapidly blinking eyes and slides down my cheek. “I thought he was going to propose or something or maybe give me a promise ring. We’re young for that kind of thing, but he fit so perfectly into my life. He understood my drive to succeed and desire to move up the rungs of society. He encouraged me to be better.”
“To be someone different, sounds like,” Colin says softly.
I shake my head but then realize he might be right. Charlie was always telling me I could be a better person. Before I saw it as encouragement. Now I can see it as the demoralization that it was.
“Anyway, we went to this frat party and he brought me upstairs to one of the bedrooms. He also brought champagne. I thought we were just going to do a private toast and he was going to give me my present. But Randy was up there too.” The memory comes back as clear as day, like I’m standing right there in the room again. I shiver with fear.
“When I saw Randy in the room, I looked at Charlie and said, ‘Why is Randy here?’ And Charlie just smiled and said, ‘He’s bringing part of your present.’ Randy sneered at me. I remember that very clearly. Then he laughed, shook Charlie’s hand, and left. I thought I saw him give something to Charlie in his hand, like a small piece of paper or something, but then when I looked at Charlie’s hand again, I saw nothing there.”
“Charlie poured me a drink, said a toast to us or something, I can’t remember, and I drank the bubbly champagne. It was bitter, I remember that, but Charlie told me I had to drink the whole thing or the toast wouldn’t come true. And I remember staring into Charlie’s eyes as he told me how much he’d been looking forward to my birthday, how we were going to celebrate it in style.”
I stand up, feeling agitated about being too still. I want to run. I haven’t thought about this night since it happened. It’s like a heavy drape has been pulled across this stage, this scene in my life, so that I won’t have to look at it. But now Colin is here and he’s told me to push the curtain aside so we can both watch the scene play out. My heart-rate picks up and my blood pressure goes through the attic roof as everything comes into view.
“I remember asking him… ‘Where’s the ring?’” I laugh bitterly at my own naivety. “I actually said that. I’m such an idiot.” Pain slices through my heart. “He laughed at me. He said, ‘What ring? You want me to wear a cock ring or something?’”
I look up at Colin. He’s furious. I’m afraid I’m going to vomit, my stomach is burning so much right now. I rub my belly to try and calm it down. My voice drops to a whisper because I no longer have the energy to speak like a normal person. “I didn’t even know what that was. A cock ring. I had to look it up online later. I don’t know why I remember that part of our night so clearly when so much more of it is a blurry mess.”
Colin stands up and grabs me into a fierce hug around my shoulders, causing my arms to flop out to the sides. I can feel his muscles trembling around me, but it makes me feel safe because I know he’s not afraid.
He’s angry. And I’m angry too. For the first time in months, I am angry at Charlie instead of demolished by him.
“I don’t remember anything much after that. He pushed me onto the bed. I remember his weight on me and telling him no. I think I passed out. I remember voices. Laughing. Sounds that don’t make any sense in my head right now.”
“Jesus Christ,” Colin says over my shoulder. “Jesus Christ, God almighty…”
I’m on a roll now. I can’t stop. I just want to get the wor
ds out of my head, hoping once they’re gone that they’ll stay gone. “I woke up in someone’s house with my pants off. I couldn’t find my underwear anywhere. I was sore … down there … and there was some blood. So I knew I’d had sex, even though I don’t remember it at all. Charlie was gone.”
Colin pulls away, holding onto my shoulders and squeezing. “Tell me you went to the police.”
My eyes go wide and panic takes hold. “Of course I didn’t go to the police. Are you kidding me? I wanted the whole thing to just go away.” Tears flood my eyes and the terror comes back. “I couldn’t face anyone and tell them what happened to me. My whole life …. everything … it was taken from me. My choice was taken from me. My plan to be a virgin on my wedding night was taken from me. He stole my life away. Nothing anyone said or did was going to change that.” I’m shaking and a couple of hot tears escape.
Colin shakes me once, not unkindly. “But he’s a criminal. He needs to be in jail.”
I put my hands on Colin’s cheeks and stare into his eyes, trying to calm him and the atmosphere that’s gotten very tense. My hands are trembling, but I keep them pressed to his face and force myself to speak in a normal tone of voice. “You promised me that you wouldn’t say anything to anyone about this. You promised.”
His eyes are bright with unshed tears and anger. “You’re going to hold me to that?”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “I am. Charlie does not know that he got me pregnant, do you understand? He doesn’t know and I want it to stay that way.” I’m hoping Randy hasn’t said anything to him. Maybe it’s not realistic, but it’s the only thing I have to hang onto right now. I have to count on Randy’s possessiveness of Charlie to keep my secret.
“But …”
“He’s rich, Colin. Wealthy. And his family is powerful. They’ll take this baby away from me and I’ll never see her again. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“They can’t do that.”
“You don’t know them. Their son raped me. You can imagine what his parents are like.”