Page 148
“All the time.” I laugh, no humor in it. “It’s . . . it was warm. And no one tried to get in my room.” I stop there, swallowing hard. By the time I met Ethan I didn’t trust anyone—man, woman, child. It was me versus everyone else.
“Goddamn it,” Bennett mutters, eyes darting down before wiping at his eyes. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know why that . . .”
I stay silent.
“I just . . . picturing you alone and scared, and sleeping in a fucking school?” His voice is still whisper quiet, soft and gentle despite the harsher language.
“It’s okay. It wasn’t that bad.”
He shakes his head, eyes darting to me like he wants to tear those words from my mouth and lay his anger into them.
I wait and Bennett calms, stays quiet while I tell the rest. But the tears slowly tracking from his ocean-blue eyes never quite stop.
The words pour from me like water, and he absorbs them all. The unshakable, constant shore bowing to my fraught waves.
I explain Ethan’s treatment—how his demeanor ran so hot and cold. How he was the first adult to take care of me, how I trusted him. The way he showed me affection when I’d never had any before. I might as well have been touch starved.
Desperate for anything. And he knew that, used it against me.
“I’d never had anyone pay attention to me like that,” I say, voice bitter and resentful. No amount of time changes the way I feel about myself at fifteen, sixteen, and so on—desperate and so stupid. “I was grateful, that he seemed to care for me. I thought I should be glad . . . but then he changed, and I didn’t realize he’d never looked at me like a daughter.”
The words dredge up the usual nausea, tenfold at having to confess this to Bennett.
“He—” My throat closes and I wipe away a few silent tears. “I didn’t want it, any of it. But I wanted someone to . . .” God, this hurts most of all. “I just wanted someone to care about me. Even if I didn’t want to be with him. And I didn’t.”
A sob stabs at my throat, voice sticky. “Please, believe me.”
Bennett’s arms loop around me, tugging me into his warmth so I can sob into his soft chest and release everything I’ve held back from him since I met him.
“I do,” he whispers. “I do. I believe you. God, Paloma.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I breathe, shame casting my eyes down.
“Don’t,” he nearly cuts me off. Water sloshes over the lip of the tub as Bennett picks me up and steps to sit in the bath, still fully clothed. He settles me onto his lap, facing him. “Please, P. I believe you. I believe you.”
He whispers the words like his own form of poetry, soothing and protective in equal measure.
“You’re okay—you’re safe now.
“I’m so sorry, P.
“I won’t let anything happen to you again.”
We sit like that for a long time. I try to focus on anything but the torrent of emotions still plaguing me—the left-out detail of my story that’s begging to be told. Instead, I take in the movement of the water. His big body taking up too much space. The soft damp fabric of his shirt against my chest where he’s got me crowded into his body.
My fingers fiddle with the button of his shirt.
“Can I wash your hair?”
The question is as soft as his fingers as he tips me back by the neck, until my hair swirls in the water. He keeps hold of my neck in one hand, using the other to grab for the shampoo. I turn in his arms, still naked and vulnerable. He spreads his legs to pull me closer between them, my back to his chest now. Bennett presses a soft kiss to my temple before sudsing his hands and massaging my scalp, careful and slow so he doesn’t get anything in my eyes.
He does the same slow movements with the conditioner. It’s our routine, at least a version of it—and I can feel that it soothes him arguably more than me.
Maybe this is the moment—a fresh start. A clean slate, all my darkened secrets finally in the light.
Not all of them.
“Take your time,” Bennett whispers after he’s wrapped me in a towel and shucked off his wet clothes, grabbing his own towel off the bar on the wall. “Take as long as you need.”
