Page 58 of Secret Sins

This wound couldn't be patched with a Band-Aid and a popsicle.

"What's going on, Van?"

Staring hard at the stretch of water beyond her yard, I tried to form words. "I messed up."

With a tsking sound, Riley took my hand and urged me to sit on the grass beside her. "Let's try earthing for a few moments."

"What the fu-udge is earthing?"

She laughed boisterously at my attempt to cover my foul language, and I couldn't help smiling in return. "It's a therapeutic technique that reconnects us to nature. We're asking the earth to share its grounding energy with us."

And Bailey said her mother wasn't a hippie. "I guess it can't hurt."

"Sure can't."

Silence surrounded us, interrupted at regular intervals by a buoy clanging in the distance. As I settled, I could also hear the waves lapping at the shore. A warm breeze ruffled my hair, and I inhaled the briny sea air. Goats wandered freely, climbing on rocks and butting into each other. It was serene, and I knew I'd made a solid choice coming here.

"Now. How can I help you?" Riley folded her hands in her lap, her shoulder angled a foot away from me so we didn't accidentally touch.

"Bailey asked me something personal." Gulping down air, I tried desperately not to freak out again.

"Stop for a minute and reground yourself, Van."

She was right. When I stopped talking, stopped allowing stupid thoughts to revolve in my head, I felt more at peace. "She's amazing, Riley. More than I could have ever expected to find in a woman."

"I'll agree to that."

"Then why can't I tell her this one thing?"

I felt her gaze on the side of my face. "If it's traumatic, then it has to be difficult to think about it, much less speak of it."

"I've told her everything else." My palms felt itchy, and I pressed them into the grass. "Every idiotic thing I've done, all the sordid details of my past. And yet . . ."

"And yet, this one sticks in your craw?"

How could this woman who hardly knew me speak so nonjudgmentally? "You've raised an outstanding woman. I can see where she gets it from."

"If you're trying to flatter me, it's working."

I smiled briefly. "No, but it's the truth."

"All I’ve ever tried to do was help shape her into who she's meant to be."

A tear hovered over my lower lash, and I swatted it away in frustration. "My parents stopped speaking to me."

"Oh, dear."

"My sister stood by my side, but I had to leave her behind. For her safety, and for mine. And I hate it. I hate dragging Bailey into my mess and asking her to understand why I can't admit what happened to me."

"Sweetheart, you can't drag my daughter into anything. If she willingly fell in love with you, as I know she did, you can't take that back from her. If you're not ready to tell her what she asked to know, then at least tell her why."

It was too fucking difficult for me, that's why. How hard I'd worked to suppress those memories was still fresh in my mind. The effort to be more than my past had nearly killed me.

"Prison broke me, Riley." I suppose if she hadn't known the truth about me before, she did now. "Not cleanly, not in two neat pieces I could glue back together, but in jagged, horrible shards. I'm afraid of cutting her on those edges, of injecting too much of my tragedy into her heart. Her perfect, beautiful heart."

My lungs labored then, air whistling in and out as I failed to regulate my breathing. Riley rested her hand on my back, sitting silently beside me.

"What do I do?" I choked, shoveling my hands through my hair.