Her face crumpled as she fell apart again. I couldn’t stand to see her like this. Why she hadn’t called me sooner didn’t matter. My Violet was in pain and she called me for help.
My knees dropped to the wet concrete, and I leaned in to wrap my arms around her. Violet fell into my embrace, her body shaking, her cries thick and watery. It washer. It felt like some surreal fever dream. Three years? It had been three years. Rain drenched the back of my shirt while her tears soaked the shoulder of it. I held her tight. Stroked her back. Kissed the side of her neck.
“It’s okay, baby. Everything’s going to be okay.”
That made her cry harder. She had just been in therapy. What kind of therapist would let her leave this upset? Her fingers dug into my skin, a desperate grip.
“It’s okay. Just breathe, baby.”
Vi hiccuped and did those gasps you do when you’ve cried too much. Gasps that I knew from dark nights when I missed the very woman in my arms.
“You c-c-c-came,” she stuttered out.
I sat back from her, my legs and feet soaked from justwearing sports slide sandals in the rain. “You called,” I said, using my thumbs to clear her cheeks, something of a pointless task. “I’ll always answer for you.”
She pulled me to her again and ratcheted her arms tight around my neck. I drank it all in: the way my arms fit around her body, her warm breath on my neck, her shivers.
I couldn’t have her shivering in the rain.
“Hey, do you want to move to my car? Your seat’s all wet now.”
“Okay.” She grabbed her purse and box of tissues. I held out my hand for her purse, then her hand. I opened my passenger door and let her sit. Once she was all tucked in, she looked at me with a thumbs up and an attempt at a smile. I jogged around to the driver’s side and got in.
The summer night remained hot and humid, but with both of us being so wet, I blasted the heat and turned on her seat warmer. Once I got all the controls settled, I turned to face her. She combed her fingers through the front of her dripping wet hair. “I’m going to ruin your seat.”
“I’m not worried about that.” I extended my hand, palm up, fingers wiggling. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”
With a reluctant glance, she laid her palm across mine, fingers loosely curling around the back of my hand. “I figured out the thing that messed me up all those years. With you. The thing that made me run.”
I squeezed her hand and my throat tightened, not sure what to say. For years I’d wanted an answer and had made peace with the fact that I might never get it. “Okay.”
She nibbled the inside of her lip. “I was assaulted in college. Before I met you. The first week of school, actually.”
“Oh my god.” I sandwiched her hand between mine, scouring her face to see just how bad it was. It shocked me howquickly my stomach turned. This wasn’t about me, but it produced a visceral reaction in me. “I’m so sorry, Vi.”
She nodded, starting to cry again. “I’m sorry too.”
“Why would you be sorry?” I asked. “Someone hurt you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then I hurt you. I pushed you away because I was too scared to deal with it.” She sucked in a choppy breath and blew it out through her lips, then swallowed. “I couldn’t just push through it, and I couldn’t face it either. I could have stayed with you and tried to work through it, but I chose not to. I ruined . . . everything for us.”
I shook my head and lifted our joined hands to kiss the back of hers. “You did the best you could. I could never be mad at you for that.”
I wanted to say it, to make her feel better about ruining everything—us. But it had a cost. Long nights where I wondered if I was insane. A stint in the tattoo chair. A lot of polite declining offers from friends to set me up with someone. A lot of turning down perfectly nice women.
But most of all, the biggest cost was what we didn’t have: a life together. A family.
So even ifshedidn’t ruin everything, the situation did.
Since I couldn’t tell her it didn’t hurt, I focused on what I could give her. “I was serious when I said I’d always be here for you. That hasn’t changed.”
“Thank you.” She pressed a soggy tissue to her lashes with her free hand. “God, I’m sick of crying.” She steadied her palm in the air and squeezed her eyes shut. “All this time, my brain had blurred it out, like it was protecting itself from the memory or something. I knew something bad had happened, but I couldn’t remember what. That whole period of my life, my memory was just . . . gone. I knew certain things would triggerme. Certain things about sex. Seeing him. And I just figured out why today.”
My elbow leaned on the console and I stroked her forearm with the hand not holding hers. “Tell me as much or as little as you want. You don’t owe me anything, but I’m here if you need someone to hear it.”
Her voice sobered. “I need you to hear it. Because it involves you.”
THIRTEEN
