Pulled Within (34 page)

My stomach churned at the thought of all that.

I would never find perfect. Shit, I
hated
perfect.

But maybe there was a home out there for me, and Hart would
be able to help me find it.

As long as it kept the storms out, that would be enough for me.

I SAT ON
my bed with my legs crossed. Loose white sheets of lined paper lay in front of me, along with my chemistry book, open to the periodic table of elements. The family laptop was beside me as I searched for the answers I was looking for. It was complete bullshit that this assignment was due
tomorrow,
and we’d only been given one day to complete it. It should have been illegal to have chemistry first period, anyway. Even the smarties in my school needed a
minute for the coffee and half-assed shower to set in before they could
understand
anything the teacher was lecturing about. Really, the only thing I could focus on that early in the morning was how his rug was a different color than his sideburns. What element plus what other element would equal an
explosion was completely lost on me.

And Google wasn’t telling me what I needed to know. The empty
search window yawned at me.

I yawned back.

It was late. I’d snuck out to meet the boys and had returned well past midnight. Now it was close to one in the morning. My eyes were shot, and I was way too high for this.

Darren was probably sleeping, but he’d woken me up plenty of times to drive him somewhere, or to make him something to eat, or to help him with
his
English since he had a math brain. That boy was helpless sometimes. He’d
live on vanilla lobster ice cream if he could. But he rocked his science classes so I knew he’d be able to help me with this.

I crawled off the bed and tiptoed out of my room. Mom wasn’t home,
and I didn’t want to wake Grandpa as he slept on the couch. Darren, Mom and I had the bedrooms.

The living room was literally his “living” room.

I snuck through the hallway. It was pitch black, and silent. As I moved closer to Darren’s room, the silence turned to something else.

Strange noises came from behind his door. His bed was squeaking. It wasn’t super-loud, but loud enough that it seeped through the walls and the
door. And there was breathing. Heavy breathing.

Was my brother beating off? And was I really standing outside his
room listening to it?

Nasty shit.

Just as I was about to go back to my room, I heard another noise above
the others: a voice that didn’t belong to Darren. It was deep and crackly
from years of smoking…

Grandpa?

What was he doing in Darren’s room?

The bed squeaked. The breathing grew louder. The voice moaned.

It wasn’t possible.

My mouth watered at the thought of what might be happening, and my
stomach started to churn. I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob.
Slowly and silently, I twisted it and pushed the door open.

Darren’s room was dark. But the floodlight above the garage trickled in through the window by his bed. I could see everything that was happening.

The sight made acid rise in my throat.

Darren was on his stomach, naked from his waist down, his face buried in a
pillow. Our grandpa was on top of him. Grinding into him from behind.
Moaning as he moved back…and forth.

Back and forth.

I was frozen. My feet wouldn’t move; my hands wouldn’t reach out to
push him off my brother. I couldn’t scream. And I couldn’t believe what I
was seeing. I couldn’t process it. I didn’t understand it.

How could he do this?

His hands were visible in the light as they pressed Darren into the bed
and held him captive. The same hands that had stroked my head; the same fingers that had smoothed my hair every night before I went to sleep. They
were
the same hands that now restrained my brother like shackles to keep him
from getting up while he violated Darren over and over again.

I needed something sharp. Something that could hurt him.

Kitchen. I needed to get to the kitchen.

My body was still numb, but I felt the ice inside start to break. Acid burned as it hit the back of my throat. I pushed it down.

Kitchen, I reminded myself. I had to get to the kitchen.

Sharp, I repeated. I needed something sharp.

I took a step back and heaved. I ran to the bathroom, just making it to the toilet in time. Heave after heave came, until I was empty.

“Are you feeling okay, sweetheart?” Grandpa asked from outside the bathroom door. “I heard you throwing up all the way in the living room.”

Liar.

He wasn’t in the living room. He was in Darren’s room.

Raping my brother.

I saw him. I saw what he was doing to my Darren.

And I hadn’t stopped him.

There were tears streaming down my face and my stomach was telling me it wasn’t quite done and my body was barely stable enough to stand, but
I pushed myself to the corner of the bathroom. I crouched down and curled
into a ball and wrapped the shower curtain around me, and I rocked.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

“Rae, honey, please answer me.”

Back and forth.

“I’m okay,” I said. I pulled the shower curtain even tighter and tucked my face into my knees.

The doorknob wiggled and began to turn. “Let me in, baby, you might be coming down with something.”

“No!” I shouted. “I don’t have a temperature. It’s something
bad…something I ate. I’m fine…just fine.” My voice wasn’t my own.

He sighed. I heard the metal relax as he let go of the knob. “Come wake me
if you need me, okay?” I said nothing. “Oh, my good girl, I hate knowing
you’re feeling so sick.”

I uncurled from the shower curtain and heaved into the toilet again.

***

“Rae, I’m here, it’s okay…you’re okay.” Hart’s voice encircled
me
like a cloudbank. His body wrapped around me from behind, his thumb gently rubbing the base of my neck. He drew circles over my
skin—soft, tender circles that were meant to calm me.

They didn’t.

I was unable to purge myself of Gerald’
s
hands.

Of my grandfather’s hands.

The rain I heard pouring down on the roof above us only
complicated things. It matched the intensity of the storm that had been brewing within me for years. Five years, to be exact.

It had finally broken open.

I wiggled out of his grip and sat up in the bed, curling in a ball
with my back leaning into the headboard. And I rocked.

Back and forth
.

Shock drained from his eyes, turning into concern. “Did I do
this?” he asked. I didn’t answer.

Back and forth
.

“Rae, what happened to you? What did you see in your dream?”

I tucked my face into my knees and slammed my back into the
wood behind me. Then I pitched forward and did it again. Every
impact shot through me like electricity. The pain was welcome.

It took away the emotional edge that cut into my heart.

It disconnected me little by little from the scene playing again and again in my head.

“Rae…” Hart’s hands pressed into my knees. I rocked harder.
“All I want to do is make you feel better, and I don’t know how to do that right now.”

There was nothing he could do.

Hands
.

I couldn’t get my grandfather’s hands out of my head.

Back and forth
.

My hair fell over my shoulders as I rocked. People couldn’t compliment my face so they always said I had pretty hair instead.
But that was where his hands had been: in my hair…stroking it, smoothing it.

The scene of my grandfather attacking Darren had been branded into my soul. His hands went from being tools of comfort to
weapons
of my brother’s destruction. I couldn’t remove that memory from
me.
His hands were in my hair.

It felt as if they were still there, and had been all along. I couldn’t get them out.

Although I’d never tried before…

I unrolled from the shape I’d curled myself into and headed for the bathroom. Hart followed me, his footsteps echoing my own, his breathing as labored as mine. I yanked open every drawer, dragging
through their
contents until I found what I was searching for: scissors. I picked
them
up and held their cold steel against my cheek. I slid my finger and
thumb into the holes and spread them wide open.

Hart stood ready to reach in, to save me from whatever I was
about to do. I doubted he knew what that was.

I pulled a section of my hair away from my cheek, feeding it between the blades as I watched myself in the mirror. Light glinted from their surface and accented the groove of my scar, as if to
remind me:
The truth will always be written on your face.

I screamed at my own reflection.

Hart jumped beside me. I saw his hand reach for my shoulder, pausing just short of touching my skin. “Please tell me what you’re
doing
here, Rae…what you’re going through.” His breath hit my cheek as
he spoke. It was the only impact his words made.

I felt the blades resist as I squeezed them closed.

Something inside my lungs began to loosen.

I spread the blades open and pushed them closed again.

A flurry of golden hair drifted through the air, falling over the
sink,
the rug I stood on, my feet. I grabbed another handful and did it
again, and again after that.

So many scars…so many memories.

So much rain
.

“Rae, baby…”

My stomach fell calm, even as I watched the rain reflect off the windows behind me. Down it fell, just like my hair. Just like me. I
kept going until I felt I’d cut away everything that held the memory of my grandfather’s hands.

I wasn’t renewed, or reborn. Or whole, even.

But something in me had released. It was the grip of my
grandfather’s terror, which had held me for so long.

I turned and faced Hart, my hair jagged now, the uneven edges
stopping just below my chin. “Touch it.”

He shook his head, the steel gray of his glistening eyes as sharp and clear as the blades in my hand. “I can’t…”

I’d scared him. I could see it. After all my resistance, all my withdrawing whenever he’d reached out to touch my head, he
didn’t know how to do it now.

I placed the scissors on the counter and reached forward.
Clasping
his hand gently in mine, I carefully brought his fingers up to my hair. I was as scared as he was. But I wasn’t going to live in this
storm anymore.

We’d leave it behind. Together.

“Touch it.”

When I felt his hand against my locks, I let him go. My eyes closed. My lungs filled and emptied as I gasped. He held still.
“Touch it,” I pleaded.

His fingers worked their way between the strands, cradling my
head, closing together and opening again as he let my hair slide
against his
palm. He pushed it back, out of my face…away from my scar. It
tingled
with every motion. My heart beat, steady and thunderous in my
chest as panic evaporated from me.

I opened my eyes again. “Touch me.”

He was crying.

“Touch me…
please
.”

Those words would replace my
back and forth
. They set the tone for how I would move forward. He still had no idea what had caused all of this; there was so much to tell him, if I could even bring
myself to say it
all. I knew I needed to say it, and I knew he needed to hear it. He
wanted to help me overcome the anguish I couldn’t let go of, and I wanted to
allow him that. I had spent every other relationship trying to heal
whoever had the most pain.

I realized at that moment: that person had always been me.

I didn’t want it to be that way anymore.

Hart was my chance to heal
myself
, to finally let go of the storm.

“Please…touch me,” I begged.

His hands slid down, out of my hair and over my jaw. He cupped my cheeks tenderly—both of them. My mouth didn’t water;
I didn’t tell
him to stop. I didn’t seize or convulse or spasm with pain. I let everything
go and gave in to the beauty of his skin against mine. It was the first time
I’d ever let anyone touch my scar.

It felt like salvation.

I watched him lean down, his lips moving to where his hands had been, beginning at the edge of my chin and kissing their way up.
Long,
slow, sweet kisses over every inch of my cheeks. I felt his tears mingle with mine. “I love this face,” he whispered. “All of it.” He pecked his way around the spiral, stopping in the middle to linger
over the jagged
edges, as if to tell me they didn’t exist. Then he went around again. He moved up to the corner of my eye where the scar began and worked his way to the side of my lip where it stopped. He paused, his eyelashes
ticking my skin as he blinked, his breath creeping down my neck.
Seconds slid between us like the slowing of the rain. “I love
you
.”