“I’ll be right there,” he replies. “You want me to stay on the line with you while I come over?”
“No, I just…I just need to know you’re on the way.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Lila. Just sit tight, okay?”
I manage to make a noise that’s something close to ayesand then I hang up the phone and sink my head down onto the floor once more. The walls feel like they’re closing in on me, Thom’s words rushing around and around my head—whore, whore, whore…
But as long as I know that Martin is going to be here soon, I will figure out a way to make all of this alright. Because if he’s here….
If he’s here, I know I will be okay.
18
MARTIN
“Are they asleep?”
“Out for the count,” I tell Lila, gently closing the bedroom door and sitting the monitor on the table so she can see it.
She grips the cup of tea I made her like it’s the last thing keeping her pinned to planet earth, and her head sags to her chest. “Well, at least someone is getting some rest.”
I smooth a hand over her head as I join her on the couch, the doctor in me unable to ignore the seriousness of the state she’s in. Her skin is pale, her hands clammy, her hair stuck to her head in strands. Her gaze is distant, and there are dark circles under her eyes.
“How are you feeling now?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
“Awful,” she confesses. “I didn’t mean to—I mean, I shouldn’t have dragged you over here like that. I wasn’t in any danger, and the twins…”
She stops herself, closing her eyes for a moment. It seems like she’s having a hard time putting it all into words, everythingthat happened. She’s been tripping over herself since I got here, when I found her on the floor, leaning on the stroller with tears streaming down her face, her whole body trembling like she’d been dropped into the middle of the arctic.
Once I had checked her vitals, I figured it was a panic attack and got her seated on the couch with something warm to focus her attention on. The twins, thank God, didn’t seem to have noticed much of what happened, and they conked out as soon as I laid them down. That’s the thing about kids that age, they don’t register the same expanse of emotions as us grown-ups, which means whatever happened to her, they likely don’t know a thing about it.
“You ready to talk about what happened?” I ask her softly. It’s late now, nearly nighttime, the city starting to bustle with people coming back from work. She stares down into her tea for a moment, the corners of her lips turned down and her eyes drooping.
“I don’t know,” she confesses softly. “I…I thought this was all over, Martin. I really did.”
“That what was all over?”
She sighs, shaking her head. “I don’t even know where to start.”
I take her hand, winding my fingers around hers. She looks down at our intertwined grip for a moment, and at last she begins to speak.
“You know…you remember the night we first met? When you found me out on the road with that broken-down car?”
I nod. How could I forget? I’ve played over pretty much every detail of that night a million times over. It’s burned into my memory.
“Well, I…I was actually getting away from someone that night,” she admits. “My ex. Or, I’m not sure if he was really my ex then. But…my boyfriend at the time. I met him just out of high school. We’d been together for a few years, and he…”
She trails off, the memories rising to the surface again. The pieces are starting to fall into place now, how she reacted on that first night, how she responded to every bit of kindness I showed her as though she was waiting for the trap to snap shut around her leg.
“He didn’t treat me well,” she continues. “He…he got me to drop out of college. And to cut off most of my friends. And he…he made it all feel like it was my choice, like I was the one who had chosen all this, but I would never, not in a million years…”
She has to catch her breath again before she continues. It’s obvious she hasn’t put this into words before, and trying to say it out loud is tough for her.
“Was he the one who left those bruises on you?” I ask her gently.
She nods. “I didn’t even know you saw them.”
“They were hard not to notice,” I reply.
