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"I don't want it to help my narrative," she suddenly mentions, her voice serious. "I'm not going to skew the facts and give you reason to doubt me again. I just…" she trails off as she takes a deep breath. "I want you to know me. The me I didn't have the courage to show you before."
I quickly mask my surprise at her words, especially since I don't detect any trace of deceit. She really believes this, doesn't she?"
"Is that so…" I muse. "What about the you until now? Who was that?"
Her lips spread into a tremulous smile.
"That? It was part me and part…who I wanted to be. Alas, we don't always get what we want, do we?"
I narrow my eyes at her.
"Then it seems we're at a standstill, are we not? Because the woman I fell in love with, by your own admission, does not exist. That makes our entire relationship invalid."
"No," she quickly says, coming closer.
She grabs my shirt, her fingers scrunching the material, her face inches away from mine.
"No," she repeats with a shake of her head. "Everything we shared was real, Raf. If there is one person in the world I can be vulnerable with, it's you—only you. It's just that there is another side of me outside of us. One that doesn't need protection, or to be taken care of. One that can take care of herself and her problems. It's just that…if I'm with you, I don't want to be that person. I just want to be yours," she takes a deep breath, her words uttered with such passion, I feel them in my fucking bones.
Yet no matter how pretty her words are, or how much they affect me because they are what I've always wanted to hear, I can't deny the truth of the situation.
"You should leave," I add quietly, not trusting myself to say more.
Disentangling her hands from my shirt, I push her aside.
She continues to shake her head at me.
"No. No, Raf. I can't leave," she says, her words becoming frantic. "Five days. One hundred twenty-one hours and five minutes. That's how long it's been since we've last been together. And I. Can't. Bear. It," she breathes heavily as she bangs her small fists against my chest. "Please don't send me away. I'll answer all your questions. I'll tell you everything you need to know. Just please…"
"Noelle," I sigh as I push her from me. "I don't want you here and I don't want to hear what you have to say."
"But…Raf…"
"As you said, I have no memory of those times I was under the influence. That means I don't know whether I gave consent or not. I don't know what you did to me. You or God knows who else…"
"No," she interrupts me. "I swear to you that no one else touched you," she adds anxiously. "I would have never let anyone harm you. You must believe me."
"But that's just the thing, Noelle. You could tell me the earth revolves around the sun and I would still doubt it. Please leave before we make this worse."
"No… Raf… Where does that leave us?"
The last question is barely audible as she stares at me with wide, teary eyes.
I don't answer her. The slight downturn of my lips is enough to convey what I think the future will bring—and enough to put more terror into her features.
"Raf… It's still me. I'm still the same Noelle, please."
"You need to leave, Noelle. I want to be alone," I tell her once more.
When she doesn't move, I do it myself.
I get to my feet and by-pass her to leave the room.
Despite my rather calm disposition until now, I know I won't be able to maintain the ruse for much longer. Not as her words churn in my mind and make me want to explode with anger—at her, at my brother, at everyone who had a hand in what happened to me.
Suddenly, the past is no longer the past. I've worked far too hard these last two years to move on just for one moment to make everything unravel and the very foundation I built crumble.
But that's what it's about to happen.
