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“Don’t.” Breathing hard and ragged, Gerard placed his hands on his hips and bowed his head. “Please don’t.”
“I want to help you.” Crying hard and ugly, I fisted his shirt, terrified that he might walk away again. “Please let me help you!”
“Claire, stop,” he choked out, craning his face away when I tried to kiss him. “Please stop, will you?” A huge shudder racked through his big body. “I can’t do this right now.”
I wanted to push. I wanted to knock down his walls and storm his heart and secrets like he had done mine all those years ago, but the look in his eyes told me that he was seconds away from losing his temper with me. “Gerard, I want to help you if you just—”
“I don’t want your help!” Reaching up, he pried my hands from his shirt and backed away from me. “I don’t want anyone’s fucking help, okay?”
“Gerard, please.” My heart cracked clean open when I watched the first tear land on his cheek. “I’m here for you. Please talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about!” His entire body trembled when he held a hand up to warn me off. “Because I’m fine, Claire! Do you hear me? I’m okay, dammit. I am always okay, Claire!”
His response only caused the both of us to cry harder. “You were raped.”
“No.” He shook his head, futilely denying what we both knew was the truth. “No!”
“Gerard, he’s a predator,” I tried to reason. “I can’t sit back on this.” Shaking my head, I felt my tears trickle down my cheeks. “I won’t. Because what about the other children he comes in contact with?”
“That wasn’t your secret to tell, Claire,” he choked out, body shaking violently. “It was mine.”
“It was your secret?”
“It was my fault!”
“That monster abused you, and that’s not your fault!” I pushed, unwilling to back up or give up on him. “It’s not your fault!”
“Don’t look at me like that,” he warned, using the back of his hand to roughly wipe at his eyes. “Don’t fucking look at me like I’m not the same person you’ve been looking at for sixteen years!”
“I’m not, Gerard,” I sobbed, desperate to console him. “I know who you are.” My feet were moving straight for him again. “I do, baby. I know.”
“Stop fucking looking at me like I’m broken, Claire,” he snapped, backing up further when I tried to get close. “Stop looking at me, dammit!”
Oh god.
He was beyond broken and I couldn’t break through the wall he had erected. Break through the lies he had invented to hide the truth. Like ivy on a house hiding the walls beneath, hiding the true colors and the cracks in the cement. He had cracks in him that I couldn’t repair because he refused to acknowledge they were there in the first place.
“Gerard,” I tried again, hearing my voice crack under the weight of my torrent emotions. “Please come back inside with me.”
He shook his head slowly and continued to back up. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re not hurting me by telling your truth, Gerard.”
“I am,” he strangled out, chest heaving. “It’s hurting you now, Claire.” Sniffling, he choked out a pained cry and ran his hand through his hair. “Fuck!” Losing his cool, he looked up the night sky and roared the word, “Fuck,” at the top of his lungs. “You fucking push, Claire. You push and you push!” He threw his hands up helplessly. “And I don’t have anything left to give.”
“I have enough to give,” I promised, reclaiming the space he put between our bodies. “I have enough for both of us.”
“You hurt me,” he strangled out, chest heaving. “You broke me, Claire.”
Pain.
It devoured me whole.
“That was never my intention,” I whisper-sobbed, clutching my chest, as his words ricocheted through me like buckshot. “I am so sorry for hurting you, and for it coming out like this,” Sniffling, I sucked in a sharp breath, before adding, “But I’m not sorry for speaking up for you, Gerard.”
My words were of no comfort to my boyfriend in this moment, because instead of taking the hand I had outstretched to him, he shook his head and stepped further away from me. And then he said the words that ripped my soul to ribbons. “I don’t want to be your friend anymore.”
“You don’t mean that.”
