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Love lies. Love whispers that living well and loving well are the best revenge. It convinces you to let go, step back, and leave justice in the hands of God or karma or some other imaginary thing that will never get the job done.
If there is a God, then he let four men brutalize me and continues to allow unimaginable horror to befall innocent people every day. If that God is real, I want no part of him and nothing in my personal karma earned me a gang rape or a not guilty verdict for the men who violated me.
God and karma are lies and maybe…
Maybe love is a lie, too.
If love were real, then I wouldn’t be able to look at Danny without bursting into tears and running into his arms. I wouldn’t be able to cross the room and stand facing him through the glass without saying a word. Not a word, after so long. If love were real, I wouldn’t be able to reach out and draw the curtain between us, shutting myself in even deeper darkness and leaving Danny on the other side.
But I do it.
I draw the curtain and then I wait, breath held, ears straining for some sign of what he’s doing on the other side.
I don’t know what I’ll do if he forces his way in. I was prepared for someone to hurt me—I’ve been preparing for that for months. I’m not prepared for someone to care or to go hunting for the girl they knew hidden inside the woman I’ve become. That girl is dead. I wouldn’t know how to be her if I tried and I’m not going to try. I can’t, not until I’ve finished what I’ve started.
And maybe not even then.
Hope, faith, and a soft heart made that girl weak. I refuse to be weak again. If I have to choose between happiness and strength, I choose strength. I choose to be hard and cold and ready to fight my own battles without anyone else to protect or disappoint.
Danny wouldn’t love the person I am anyway, I think, the thought sending a sharp feeling spreading through my chest. He should go and spare both of us an exercise in pain and futility.
Finally, after five endless minutes that seem to stretch on for an eternity, I hear the fire escape creak as Danny climbs down to the street below. I hear the soft thud of boots on concrete as he lands and the softer tread as he walks away. Only when I’m certain he’s gone do I let myself crawl back onto the bed and curl up in a ball so tight my abdomen cramps and my spine starts to ache.
I press my fist to my closed mouth and fight to steady my breath, but I don’t think about Danny and I don’t cry.
I haven’t cried in a year and I’m not going to start now.
I am going to breathe, sleep, and then get up in the morning and try to forget I ever saw the man I used to think would be my forever.
Chapter Four
Danny
“If I love you,
what business is it of yours?”
-Goethe
* * *
If this had ever been about me, I might have kept walking.
If I’d come to Costa Rica looking for Sam, instead of the monsters who hurt her, her dismissal would have cut me apart. The only thing worse than not knowing where she is or how she is or if she needs me is looking into the big blue eyes of the woman I love and seeing…nothing.
No love. No hate. No sadness or regret.
No emotion at all aside from the clear desire for me to leave and never come back.
I had thought I was frozen on the inside, too cold to feel much of anything anymore, but the past two days have proven otherwise. From the moment I spotted Sam at the airport, my pulse has been unsteady.
My heart races every time I spot her newly blond head bobbing through a crowd. My throat locks up with fear every time I watch her make another dangerous decision. And last night, meeting her eyes through the glass and realizing I mean nothing to her, I felt like I was going to die.
Maybe I did die, a little.
I feel like it.
Every muscle in my body aches, my eyes are blood-shot and throbbing, and my stomach churns and spits, protesting every drink of coffee I force down my throat. But I don’t go back to my hotel room on the other side of town to sleep it off. I stay on the sour-smelling couch in The Allegro Hotel lobby, watching the stairs, waiting for Sam.
There’s no other way out of her room except the fire escape and I doubt she’ll go that route. She won’t expect me to be here.
