Nearly Broken (37 page)

It seemed he couldn’t
handle the rapes either, because shortly after, I heard glass
breaking in the living room. Lots of it. And I was pretty sure the
thunk
I heard was his fist punching through the drywall. And I
felt so guilty for not telling him sooner. I was a fool to think he’d
never figure it out.

But I never had this
problem the first time around. I knew I had been raped, could feel
the damage when the drugs began to wear off each afternoon before the
next dosage took effect, but I was so out of it when Charles violated
me, that I didn’t remember the actual rapes as they happened.
But with Zander, I remembered everything. Every touch, every kiss,
every disgusting lick his tongue made, the way he sucked on the
tender parts of my body. Worst of all, I remembered the way he felt
inside me. And it was all too much. My body had cringed and tightened
in all the wrong ways, as that night of horror cruelly replayed
itself over in my mind.

For the first time
since Nick came home from the hospital, we slept apart all night, but
it was more my doing than his. He had wanted to comfort me, but I
silently shrugged him off. Several hours later, I still didn’t
know why I did that.

“Come here,”
he murmured in his sleep. His arm reached out to pull me closer, and
I lay my head on top of his chest, his hand lightly stroking my back.
“I’ve told you. You won’t hurt me.”

He was too asleep to
remember what happened last night. For now…

“Did you sleep?”

“Yeah,” I
replied.

“Liar.”
Somehow he always knew. “You need to suck it up already and
take the sleeping pills.”

I murmured, “Uh-uh.
I don’t want to become addicted.” Another lie on my part.
Truthfully, I feared being so out of it, that when Zander did come
for me, I wouldn’t be able to put up any kind of fight.

His eyes shot open and
his body jerked shortly thereafter.
Now
he remembered, and for
a moment his arm retracted from around my body. I guess he realized I
wasn’t shying away from contact anymore, so his arm slowly
returned to offer a softer hold. He was hesitant, but I knew what was
coming before he even put together the words. Resigned, his head fell
back. “Why didn’t you tell me? I never would’ve…
I thought we were waiting because of me. Not because…”

I buried my eyes into
his chest; my stomach was tightening, my intestines knotting.

“God, Megan.”
Combing his hand through his hair, he hissed, examining the cuts that
mostly surrounded the knuckles of his right hand. There was no
telling what household items he destroyed last night when the anger
took over. And though he was calm and soft with me right now, I knew
it was a front for a crapload of emotions that were plaguing his
insides. But at least he didn’t pull out the gun he now kept in
his bedside table and take it out on the trees outside – like I
did when he first brought it home. “I was afraid to be with you
back when you had a year and a half to try to cope with it. I never
would’ve done more than kiss you had I known. Hell, I probably
wouldn’t have even been kissing you.” His arm wrapped
more tightly around me. “Six weeks is not enough time to deal
with this.”

“Nick,” I
whispered with an exhalation. “It’s not you, I promise.”

“I know it’s
not me,” he soothed, though traces of pain came with it. “But
you’re not ready. Why would you even let me touch you that way?
How long were you uncomfortable before you began crying?”

“I thought I
could work my way through it. It was
you
, and I knew that. I
thought I could mentally convince myself that it was okay to let you
touch me that way.”

“But it wasn’t,”
he stated. “At what point should you have stopped me?” he
asked again.

The kissing was fine,
because the past month I had mostly kept my eyes open to keep the
horrible flashes at bay. It was once his face left my sight that my
insides began to panic. “I think it was the darkness. When I
couldn’t see your face anymore, I could no longer convince
myself that I was here with you.”

He sighed, his free
hand pinching the bridge of his nose. “Today I’m putting
a dimmer on that ceiling fan. I don’t care if we have to sleep
with the light on the rest of our lives, you’re not sleeping in
the dark anymore. It’s probably one of the reasons you can’t
sleep, right?”

“Maybe.”
Yes. Darkness was definitely an issue with me.

“Damn it,
Megan.” His body pulled out from beneath me, leaving us lying
side by side. I extended my arms and laid flat out while his upper
body arced up on his arm. His hand settled on my waist, his eyes now
noticing that I had put my clothing back on sometime during the
night. His face was so void of expression I was afraid he was annoyed
or mad at me, but the tone of his voice eased that fear. “I
know it hasn’t been that long, but will you please tell me what
really happened?”

Oh, God.
How
could I ever tell him that it was my choice to stay there and be
raped by Zander? I knew it was manipulation and that I didn’t
have a better plan at the moment, but still…it was disturbing,
and I knew I would take that awful secret to the grave.

It took me awhile, and
he waited patiently, but all I gave him was a deadpanned, “Rape
is rape. I don’t need to talk about the how or the why. I just
need to tell you two things.”

“Okay,” he
acknowledged, worry tinting that word.

“First off, I’m
always going to be looking over my shoulder. I did it before, but
being around you made me feel so safe that I began to neglect my
surroundings a little, and look what happened. There’s no way
I’ll ever feel safe in that aspect ever again. So please don’t
take that as an inability on your part to make me feel safe. Because
I do feel safe with you. I’ve been taken twice and been
threatened a third. I will never stop looking for danger or checking
the locks ten times before we go to bed, and I need you to just
accept that and not try to
fix
me.”

He pressed his lips
together tightly, signaling his disapproval, but he nodded
regretfully anyway.

“Second, I need
you to fix me.” He looked at me confusedly. “I mean in
another way.” I hitched my neck up on my hand like his. “I
know you think it would be bad to touch me, but I do want to be
touched by you. I
need
for you to build it up. I want to be so
overwhelmed by your hands, your lips, your smell, that it’s
impossible for me to focus on anything else. I know it’s not
going to happen overnight, or even in the next few months, but I want
to get back what we had.”

His hand reached out
for my face, his thumb momentarily stroking my cheek before tucking
my stray hairs. “I’ll do all this for you, but you have
to do something for me too.”

“What?” I
asked warily.

“I want you to
start talking to Dr. Vitriz about the rapes. I don’t want you
doing this alone anymore. Not when my touching you made you break
down like that.”

I groaned and shook my
head, but before I could contest verbally, he cut me off with, “No.
You’ve been keeping things from me, and I understand why. I
don’t like it, but I won’t push you if you don’t
want to share with me yet. But you have to start telling your doctor
about this. I don’t want you trying to do this on your own this
time. You need this and you know it.”

I did know it. I knew
I should’ve seen someone the first time around, but I didn’t
want to truly admit what had happened to me. I just let time heal my
wounds as best they could. But this time was different. I didn’t
have vague memories that were nothing but a blur. What Zander did to
me was front row center, the picture and sounds so crystal clear it
was high definition echoing around inside my head. And it had damaged
me even more than I originally thought, because I wasn’t even
able to be intimate with the man I loved anymore.

“Are you
comfortable with her?” he asked.

Dr. Heather Vitriz. I
began seeing her a month ago for my memory loss. Using hypnosis, I
actually began getting a few memories back, including ones that both
Nick and my family were a part of, but I still had a long way to go.
For some reason I thought it would be like a veil, and once lifted,
everything would come pouring back. Instead, it’s been more
like chipping away at a block of ice, freeing memories one sliver at
a time. But I’m still hopeful that one of my sessions will be
the one
and it’ll all come rushing back at once.

And was I comfortable
with Dr. Vitriz? Yeah, I thought I was. She was gentle and respected
my wishes to not unearth the memories around the time I disappeared.
I just wasn’t ready to handle those yet. And most importantly,
she was a woman, so it was just easier for me to talk to her. “Yeah,
I like her.” Breathing deeply, I took my time letting it back
out again, enjoying the way Nick’s fingertips lightly dug into
my skin. Even now, he was trying to secure me in his arms,
continuously trying to protect and keep me safe. “And I’ll
try to talk about…
it
.”

“Good. Because I
want to be with you forever, but we can’t move forward with
that until you begin to heal yourself.”

I inhaled another deep
breath as his hand caressed my cheek again. “Forever? That’s
a long time. You sure you want to put up with me that long?” My
left hand snaked up his body and caressed the side of his face.
Trying to lighten the mood between us, I added, “I can be
incredibly stubborn at times.”

His cheeks pinched as
his lips extended outward. “I’m willing to embrace your
imperfections.”

His eyes immediately
shifted to the hand securing my head, scanning down to my where my
burn was. None of the burns had faded completely with just the single
treatment. But even if they had, even if those spots had blended with
my skin, they’d never be completely invisible to us, a constant
reminder of the past.

Another forever. One
of the more painful ones. Maybe I’d look into continuing the
laser treatments, maybe I wouldn’t. The tables had finally
turned. Where my burns used to bother me more than the rapes, the
rapes now bothered me more than the burns.

Nick reached out and
pulled me over him as he rolled down on his back again. I loved lying
within his tight grip, the side of my face flush against that spot
between his chest and shoulder, my breaths adjusting to match the
rise and fall of his lungs. He didn’t have to tell me that he
loved me, nor I him, because it went without saying.

I kept telling myself
that all Zander got was my body, just a shell that protected my mind,
but I was lying. He’d managed to rip my soul in ways that still
continued to sting, because in less than three days, he had managed
to break me in ways I never thought possible. I could only pray that
Nick could bring me back from the darkness a second time, because I
was in deeper now, more traumatized than ever before.

I didn’t know
what was to come of us, what tomorrow would bring. Or if the constant
worry inside my head would ever play out in reality. I just knew that
Nick and I could always move, could always find new jobs, could
always find new starts in life, and we’d do anything necessary
to make our life together work. So when the night brought out the
darkness and its shadowy tendrils tried to ensnare me once again, so
long as his arms were wrapped tightly around me, keeping me safe and
warm, I knew I’d always find the strength to face those
nightmares head on.

And that was a forever
I could hold onto.

*Due to high levels of
under-reporting, the number of sex-trafficking victims worldwide is
impossible to determine. The US Dept. of State estimates that in the
last decade, 20 million women and children across the world have been
forced into the sex trade industry, which generates more than 32
billion dollars annually.

Devon Ashley resides in Texas with her
husband and son. She has a Master of Science degree in Biological
Sciences with an emphasis in Microbiology. In her free time she loves
to write, design, knit and read an eclectic range of books (super
exciting, right?)

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