Still, I slam through the door to the rooftop like a grown man with strength and not a little boy.
It’s pouring outside. I don’t care. All I care about is sucking the fresh air into my lungs. It’s cold. It drips down from the sky onto my head and soaks down into my suit quickly. If my nose wasn’t already blocking up, I’m sure it’d smell remarkable.
I can’t focus on the rain though, in fact, I can’t focus on anything but taking one deep breath after the other as I try to will myself to settle down.
I can’t believe I said those words.
That word.
I’ve never actually said it out loud before. Now, I can’t take it back no matter how much I want to. It’s done, over with. Much like the act itself.
If I’m completely honest with myself, the wordrapedoesn’t even feel like it covers what happened. It feels like so much more somehow, and at the same time, less. Not enough. Like I’m making it all up and every image that is running through my brain is just a figment of my imagination.
I know it’s not. It can’t be. Still, I find myself at the edge of the rooftop, clinging to the cement wall and feeling the rough textured edges against my palm. I press my hands harder against the top of the wall, because I need to know that I’m real. That everything is real, and I’m not just a figment of a dream. I won’t wake up and be back in that bed. Small and helpless.
I flinch as I hear the door I came through open and slam closed again.
“Carmine!” Soren calls out to me.
I shake my head. “Go away!” I shout back at him. Except it doesn’t come out of me as loud as I intended and my voice is thick with emotion that I can’t stand.
Tears stream down my face and I hope to God the rain hides it. I know it won’t. The rain can’t hide the fact that my eyes are red and my cheeks pink. The sound of the rain won’t hide the shakiness in my voice.
“Talk to me,” Soren insists as he stands behind me. I squeeze my eyes closed.
“This is your fault,” I tell him.
My voice carries through the rain and so do his steps as he moves even closer. I feel his hand against my arm.
“You’re soaking wet,” he comments. “Let’s go inside.”
I yank away from him. “Don’t touch me, no. I want to be out here.”
He pulls his hand away, but doesn’t leave me.
“Tell me what happened with your father,” he says quietly. Just loud enough for me to hear over the downpour. Our skin steams as the cold rain hits it, creating a slight cloud around our bodies.
A stabbing feeling overwhelms my chest. I clench my jaw and shake my head. “I can’t I—” I cut off and bite my own tongue so hard that I taste the iron of my blood.
“Why?” Soren asks.
Frustration continues to flood me just like the water that’s weighing my clothing down more and more with each second.
“Because…then it’ll be true, Soren,” I explain. “It can’t be true. It can’t.”
Soren steps just a little bit closer. I finally open my eyes to look at him. Lashes wet. My vision is blurry. I can still see him though, the outline of his rugged body and face. He’s soaking wet too. The rain bounces off his leather jacket in rapid pitter patters.
“You’re safe,” he assures me. “You’re safe, and I want to listen. I shouldn’t have said what I did back there…and I can’t take it back. Fuck, there’s so much I can’t take back but…I care about you, Carm.”
I take a shaky breath. “You don’t understand.”
He looks at me with his own pinkened eyes and nods his head. “I do. Maybe not entirely, but I get it.”
“How? How the fuck could you possibly get it?” I snap at him. More tears drip, drip, drip down my face and I taste the saltiness on my mouth. I struggle not to turn around and walk away. At the same time, my knees feel weak.
Soren’s own jaw shifts and he looks out to Greece.
“My uncle,” he starts, “Eivor, he…he tried with me.”
