SCARS (17 page)

He kissed me. Not tenderly but with a harsh, bruising kiss. I savored the moment of connection. No man had ever kissed me like that. At least none I had wanted to kiss me like that. I stood there, holding onto him. I wasn’t one to submit to anyone. I was afraid. Of what I wasn’t sure. Pure desire wasn’t something I was accustomed to. So I stood dazed, unsure of what I wanted him to do.

He stepped away and I shivered with the cold of his absence.

He stepped out of the shower and when he returned he was wearing a condom. He took my arms and placed them around his neck. Pinning me to the wall of the shower he wrapped my legs around his waist and asked me, “Do you trust me, Rayna?”

I shook with anticipation. “Yes…”

He pushed inside of me. For a moment he stood there gazing at me. When I went to look away he said, “No, angel, trust me, trust in us. Trust in this. Don’t look away.”

As we made love in the shower he seemed to be praying to me and my body was his altar. And when I we climaxed I could have sworn our cries changed from ones of pain into ones of joy.

Chapter Twenty-Three

              It was morning for real this time. I had slept later than usual because of James’ breakdown the night before. It had to be talked about. As much as I loved him he needed to be under a therapist’s care. Not that I had ever believed that love was enough to surmount anything and everything going on in our hearts and minds. But the fact he had ended up out on that bridge a second time in our relationship was simply unacceptable. Understandable, but still unacceptable.

              Not because he’d loved another woman, but only because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him for any reason. I understood that ghosts haunted him, and perhaps they always would. But I couldn’t live with the idea of another death on my hands.

              I reached for him and there he was, sleeping soundly. He never slept soundly. Not really. There was always some hint of disturbance. Maybe I hadn’t been attuned to it enough. Light flooded the room. However, I needed to go on my run. But he needed sleep. So I crawled out of bed and made as little noise as possible. James needed his rest.

              But as I went to make my escape I felt his arm snake around my waist and draw me back in.

              “I know you run every morning, but not this morning okay? Let’s stay like this for a little while. You know just laze around.”

              “Okay, I got an hour or so to kill staying in bed with the love of my life is the best kind of torture.”

              He smiled and hummed, his eyes closed. His voice vibrating in his chest. He opened his eyes, touching my hair. “That bridge. We need to find a way to keep me off of it. Losing Lana haunts me. As much as I don’t want it to it tortures me to think she suffered one second because of me.”

              “She suffered because of the man she was married to. She was young, you were young. The life you two were entangled in was a treacherous one. Life isn’t necessarily a happily ever after affair for everyone.”

              “I worry the same fate awaits you.”

              “Why?”

              “Because of my past. It’s stayed put so far. But I wonder. Will someone from Lana’s life or my former boss’s come hunting for me and try to steal you away?”

              “Honestly I don’t think it’s your past we have to worry about at the moment. I think it’s mine.”

              As I said it I grew cold on the inside. I knew Georgia was just waiting for the perfect moment to come in like a wrecking ball and destroy whatever newfound happiness I had carved out for myself. Our versions of our childhood differed greatly. Hers cast me as the villainous daughter who had stolen away the only man who had showered her with unconditional love. When in all reality I knew the truth.

              That she was his next target. And whether we were close or not I couldn’t let what had happened to me happen to her. She martyred her father. My stepfather. Forever placing a wall between us. Georgia was a mean and vindictive person. I doubted she even loved herself. She said she loved our mother but there was even coolness there as I was, in my mother’s more recent years, caregiver. It was why I had the house in my name.

              “Georgia is small potatoes compared to the men who might come after me.”

              “You’ve never really seen my sister in action. There were times as a child when I knew George was showering her with attention because he wanted to do to her what he was doing to me. There seemed no way out. If I left I doomed her to the same fate I was living. She loved the attention. It seemed so innocent to everyone around us. But to me, when he placed me in the car that night,” I shuddered violently as I spoke, “I knew what was on his mind. He was taking me to the woods to finish what he started there. He was going to rape me and beat me and throw me over that bridge. I was lucky he’d been drinking.”

              “Why on earth would you say that?”

              I swallowed back a huge lump in throat and my voice cracked, “It made his reflexes slow.”

              “So you were planning his death.”

              “It didn’t start off that way.” I began to tremble and James held me tighter.

              “Rayna, you don’t have to say anything else.”

              “If I don’t it will always be there between us. I won’t be able to hide from it. I’ll always be afraid of it what Georgia might do with the information.”

              “Just know that you can stop any time you want to.”

              “He turned down the road into the forest and reached underneath his seat to get his gun. I grabbed the wheel and went careening off the road. He grabbed it back, but it was too late and we hit the tree head on. It should have killed us. It should have killed me.”

              I said the last phrase so softly had we not been so close to one another anyone else would have missed it. Not James. He never missed anything.

              He cradled my face in his hands. “You’re a born survivor. You were meant to live. You were meant to do big things.”

              “Like what? I’m blocked on my book and I can’t even bring myself to plan our wedding because all I can think about is what Kevin did to me and if Georgia comes knocking on our door bringing the law with her what then. I’m not sure I deserve a happily ever after.”

              “Never. Ever. For a moment believe that or say that. A woman like you is exactly what a happily ever after is made for.”

              “You’re my whole world, James.”

              “Rayna you have no idea what you are to me.”

              “I look in your eyes and I know all I need to know.”

              “I don’t think you do. I think if you did you would stop this nonsense about no happily ever afters and not really deserving them. You have saved my life three times now. You are my salvation and my redemption. As much as I loved Lana, she was never those things to me. I was those things to her. I loved her the way you love me. And trust me it’s intoxicating as hell. It’s part of the reason I love you so damn much. But it’s sure as hell not the only reason. You’re a smart, sexy, brave and courageous woman. You love wholly and fearlessly with your heart, critics be damned. Even when maybe it terrifies you. I want to be worthy of that. I try every day to be worthy of that.”

              “You are worthy of that,” I whispered.

              “You deserve to feel safe from harm. Safe from your enemies. Safe from your demons and inner turmoil.”

              “You do that for me every day. But that bridge. And the drinking. It’s gotta stop. I can’t live like that.”

              “Okay. I’ll get a therapist. You have to come with me at first. There are some secrets I’m not privy to share. My past life choices won’t permit it.”

              “It won’t be easy.”

              “I see you leave and come back from it every week. I can do that.”

              “It will test you. Healing comes at a price. I will say the work you put in though you get out of it.”

              He gathered me in his arms and he kissed me in a warm, passionate and loving way. James was never anything but loving to me to others who crossed him not so much. In the privacy of our home, however, he was never anything but the kind gentle soul I needed to him to be.

              Even when things were hard, and they would be hard it was always easy to remember our love, because it was our love that motivated everything he did.

Chapter Twenty-Four

              The running. Always with the pills. And always with the running. Until the day I died it would be that way. James would always lay my pills out the night before and set coffee to brew around 5:15AM. He would lay my oatmeal out and boil me an egg. So all that I had to do was pour my coffee and nuke my oatmeal and breakfast would be served.

              James called me an angel. His angel. But in effect he was mine. He had appeared faceless amid the shadows all those years ago and pulled me from the burning car. He hadn’t even tried to save George’s life. Of course the man was dead. I would always wonder what had drawn James to the car. George’s last howls of pain were incredibly loud. And I as I ran the streets of my old childhood home it was amazing how fresh those emotions still were.

              It seemed my whole life I had lived a lie. Slowly peeling back the layers of pain and incriminating actions I was naked in so many ways before James. Totally exposed and willing to do anything for him and our relationship. In some ways it made me desperate. I needed to know that he would always be there. That not even Georgia could steal him away from me.

              I never stopped to think of his past following us into our old age. Lana had been his first real love of any kind. So badly bruised, banged up, and broken by the cruel world around him, she was his first taste of a real relationship. A forbidden, but a very real, emotionally charged relationship. He was her hero and redemption for all the bad choices she had ever made. With him she could put everything right.

              I was that for James. But he was my hero too. He wasn’t my redemption so much as my salvation. Our bond was as real and as deep as anything he shared with Lana and we were both absolutely determined to protect it from the world. We both had secrets but we had stripped bare of them. He was my world and I was his. That was all that mattered anymore.

              There was Ellen. There would always be Ellen. She was my best friend, more like the Mother/Sister I never really had. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have never chosen to take the pills the morning. I would have never chosen to take care of my health. I would have lost the battle every morning. The run I took that led me to James? Ellen had to practically shove me out the front door to take it.

              No, I would be nothing if not for these brilliant stars in my night sky.

              It was hard to imagine a world without them.

              I didn’t want to.

              The mere thought of it nearly sent me into a panic attack.

              As I ran easily throughout the neighborhood passing the houses that still dotted the landscape I wondered if mine and James’ world would ever expand beyond the small trailer house buried deep within the woods on the other side of that damn bridge.

              He’d been out on it, drinking. Pondering death yet again. I understood why. It just hurt that I couldn’t reach that part of him that was suffering so much. At least when I had left he was on the phone with the psychiatrist and had the numbers of therapists lined up to call. He wanted me to come. He didn’t feel safe there. Which was normal. It was a new type of relationship one that demanded trust and honesty. I knew for him there was only so much he could say before incriminating himself in a big way.

              Perhaps Lana would always haunt us. It was something I had to prepare myself for. Would there be nightly trips to the bridge. Would I need to get a service cat or dog to help him? That was acceptable to me. I loved animals. I’d owned a companion cat for nearly twenty years when she finally passed. I wasn’t sure how I’d do with a dog but I was, for James’ sake, willing to give it a go. If it would save his life I would bring one hundred service dogs into the house.

              I would do whatever it took to keep him alive.

              Because I knew he was special.

              He was worthy.

              He made me feel alive inside and out when for the last ten years I had walked through life a living embodiment of death. Ellen had done so much heavy emotional lifting in our friendship. But this she couldn’t fix. No amount of therapy could put me back together until I was ready to be put back together. And when I saw James I was ready to be put back together. I just knew it. And it meant coming clean to someone I trusted and loved about everything.