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In the middle of the turmoil raging through me, I wondered what she saw when she stared at me then. A man housing a scared boy? A caged animal who had been abused too many times to recover from? A grown man terrified of losing the first flicker of hope? A desperate man trying to hold on to her and his secrets?
I held her golden gaze as I imagined the outcomes. I could run and hate myself every day for not trying? I could confess and see the disgust cross her face and have her push me away because she didn’t know how to handle such a damaged product. Would she judge me for still being chained to my past?
Or, I could confess, and she would share the weight of the burden with me. I could confess, and she would ease the haunting pain. Oaklyn was the first person I’d even considered telling. Not a single woman had tempted me to share. I’d only made enough excuses to hold off another stint of being alone. But with her? I felt safe. I felt comforted, and I didn’t want to give up so easily. Could I live with myself if I didn’t try to take hold of this opportunity?
With jerky movements, I put my shirt back on, needing all the armor I could get. Then I moved toward her and helped her put her sweater back on too.
“Cal,” she whispered, pushing her arms into the sleeves, watching me with concern and confusion.
I sat with my back against the arm of the other side of the couch and swallowed before taking a deep breath. “Just,” I started. “Just give me a minute.”
“Okay.” She breathed the word so softly I almost didn’t hear it, but it made its way across the space between us and sunk in to me as though she’d shouted her support.
I couldn’t look up as I began. Instead I focused on the way my thumb rubbed back and forth across the leg of my jeans. “I had a cousin,” I started. So simple. So innocuous to the nightmare that would follow those four words. But once I began, it all came out without pause, sticking to the basics. “He was three years older than me, and I idolized him. Looked up to everything he did. Thought he knew all.” I laughed a dry, humorless chuckle that hurt my chest. “So, when he put on a porn video, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want him to think I was dumb. I was only eleven and he was the much cooler teenager.”
Rolling my lips between my teeth, I prepared to say aloud what I hadn’t in more than ten years. “I didn’t say anything when he was touching my penis, saying he was doing me a favor by teaching me how to masturbate. Or that since he’d done it to me, I needed to do it back. After that, it continued, and I began to feel stuck when I really wanted it to stop and tell someone to make it stop. I was scared of what to say or how to say it. Then it slowly progressed to oral sex, then just sex. And I wanted it to stop. I didn’t want to learn anymore. But he threatened me. He told me no one would believe I didn’t want it when he was able to make me orgasm. He held my fear and shame over me, trapping me. After two and a half years, my parents really began to notice my panic attacks and how I acted out. You see, if I got in trouble, he couldn’t come over for sleepovers. It was how I could keep him away. After a while, my parents put me in therapy, and I guess one day the therapist finally asked the right questions, said the right thing to get me to open up. It ended after that.”
My whole body seemed to be shaking inside with tremors, but when I lifted my hands they barely moved. Inside, I crumbled, but somehow, everything still stayed intact.
I held off looking up, she hadn’t spoken yet and the loft screamed with the silence. Fear had frozen my muscles, making it feel impossible to lift my head, but I did. Slowly, I lifted my eyes to hers, preparing myself for the worst.
Her slim fingers were pressed to her lips as tears fell down her cheeks in a continuous flow.
“Callum.” My name came out broken past her tears.
“I don’t need your pity.” Fuck, I couldn’t handle her pity. Somehow that hadn’t factored into the scenarios I’d imagined. I hadn’t thought about what would happen if she felt pity for me.
“I don’t pity you,” she said, bringing my focus back to her. I watched her throat bob over a swallow before clearing it. “I’d be a monster to not feel pain for you and what you went through. That’s not pity. It’s compassion.”
