Tough Enough (16 page)

Katie

Rogan suggested a picnic in the park with Dozer. He said I had promised to help him with his lines and he was holding me to it. As he spreads out a plaid wool blanket, I smile thinking of it, stroking Dozer’s head as I watch Rogan’s lithe body move this way and that until the little oasis in the shade is perfectly smooth.

When he straightens and brushes grass off his hands, he grins up at me. “How’s this for a place to rehearse?”

I sigh loudly. “I guess it’ll do. I mean, if I have to rough it,” I add, sniffing theatrically.

“Well, if this isn’t to your liking, I feel sure I can think of something more . . . comfortable for you to sit on later.”

I feel heat sting my cheeks and all the play drains right out of me, flushed away by the surge of desire.

“What, no smart-ass retort?” he teases, stretching out on his side and patting the blanket next to him.

“I’m sure I’d have one if I could
think
,” I reply honestly.

Rogan laughs, a sound that I’m quickly falling in love with. It’s a rich rumble that seems to come from his soul. It always makes me want to smile, like I can’t help enjoying what
he’s
enjoying. “I like your style, Ms. Rydale.”

I know he doesn’t mean
that
kind of style, but his comment brings to mind my wardrobe, which in turn brings to mind the concealing blouse I chose and the comforting swath of hair that resides where it does every day—covering my scars.

I kneel on the spread and set Dozer down. He walks all of four feet, to the edge of the blanket, and flops down, falling almost immediately to sleep. Rogan, watching him, shakes his head in amazement.

“A narcoleptic cat. Who knew?”

I giggle as I slide in beside Rogan, pulling my feet up under me. “So, what feast did you bring us?” I ask, inclining my head toward the huge basket resting behind Dozer.

“Ah-ah-ah. Work first, play later.”

I’m surprised. “We’re
really
going to run lines?” I thought it was just his way of teasing me.

“Yep. Sure are. I want to get this right the first time tomorrow.”

“I’m sure you will. You’re quite good.”

Rogan looks genuinely pleased. “Thank you. I noticed that you’ve got mad skills at all this. Have you ever acted? Or considered acting?”

I feel myself tense. I know Rogan’s question was innocent enough, but it still stirs memories that I never like reflecting upon.

I could hedge. Make up something to put him off, but since he’s been so honest with me, told me such painful things, I feel that I owe him the truth.

I take a deep breath, gathering my courage. “Actually, that’s what I originally went to school for.”

“What? Acting?” Now he seems surprised.

“Yes.”

“Why the hell didn’t you pursue it? Is it because of your burns? Because—”

“No, no. Not really,” I interrupt, not wanting to discuss them again. I would still much rather pretend that they aren’t there, or that he can’t see them. “Since I was a little girl, I always dreamed about being an actress. I tried out for every school play that I could, watched as many movies as I was allowed, studied the greats. You know how kids are. But my parents were very, very strict. They didn’t want me in the spotlight like that. They wouldn’t even consider letting me attend The Julliard. But I applied anyway and was accepted with a full scholarship.”

Rogan sits up from where he was resting back on his elbow. “You got a scholarship to The Julliard?”

I smile, but it’s no longer a proud smile. It’s just sad. “I did. But they still refused to let me pursue it. They wanted me to be a pharmacist.”

“Well, it’s not too late, you know,” he says, his expression rife with resentful determination. “You should chase your dreams, damn it.”

I wave him off. “No, I actually did that. Only it didn’t work out so well.” I clear my throat, twirling a stray piece of grass between my fingers, anything to give my hands something to do and my eyes something to focus on other than Rogan. “It was what I wanted, and even though my parents were against it and very upset with me for applying anyway, I packed up and left. I did what I wanted to do. At the time it didn’t matter what they wanted.”

“But it didn’t work out?” Rogan asks, his warm palm covering my bare foot nearest him.

“Not in the end. At first it was great. I accepted the scholarship and moved to New York. Within a couple of months of being at The Julliard, I was getting a lot of attention. Instructors, directors, local
theater. They keep an eye on all the productions put on at the arts center and I guess for a while, I was the apple of their eye. The up-and-comer to watch.” My laugh is bitter. I can’t help it. It wells within me when I think back on my life, on my decisions. On fate. “I was in the paper a few times the summer after my freshman year. It was surreal. And
that
got me the notice of a guy.”

I take a deep breath, girding myself for what’s to come. Talking about it almost feels like reliving it. And I’d never want to do that. “He was charming and handsome, wealthy and accomplished. His father was influential. He was all that a girl with stars in her eyes needed to complete the picture. I dove right in, despite the fact that I didn’t
really
know him. Not really. For a while, it was perfect.”

When my pause drags on too long, Rogan prompts me. “But that didn’t work out either?”

I sigh softly, like the sound leaked right out of the never-quite-healed gash in my heart, along with a trickle of blood. Still too fresh. Always too fresh. “No. We moved in together before I found out that he had a temper. And that he wasn’t afraid of what a girl from nowhere might tell others. He knew no one would believe me.”

Rogan’s voice is steel when he asks, “He put his hands on you?”

I know he doesn’t mean sexually; he means physically. Abusively.

I don’t answer. I don’t need to. And he knows that my silence is answer enough.

“It was worse when he was jealous, which he often was. He didn’t want me to have friends, he hated everyone that I had class with, he didn’t want me acting on Broadway, which I’d had an offer to do. Unfortunately, he expressed all this with few words and a lot of flying fists. And palms. And the occasional kick with his boot or whipping with the mean end of an extension cord.” I don’t glance up at Rogan. I can tell by his posture from the corner of my eye that
he is rigid with anger. “When I finally got up enough nerve to leave him, he followed me. I should have known he would. He found me at a friend’s apartment. I’d gone there to stay until I could figure out something else. He waited for me to leave for my night class. Waited until I got in and rolled down my window, like I always used to do. Then he walked right up and threw alcohol at me. Bourbon, I think it was. It hit my left side and splattered down the door and onto the floorboard. I remember looking up at him, wondering what the hell he was doing. I started fumbling, trying to get my window rolled up, but I wasn’t fast enough. I saw him strike the match. His face was almost sad. Almost.”

I can still feel the fear. I can still smell the alcohol. I can still hear the
whoosh
of flames erupting all around me.

“He threw the match through my window before I could roll it up completely. It landed right in my lap. Everything around me went up in flames. It melted most of the hair on my left side. Gave me third-degree burns on my neck and the top of my shoulder. Second-degree burns down my side and on my leg. All the places you saw. That was the end of my acting career.” Even thinking back to that time of my life produces a crushing weight in my chest. “I guess my parents were right after all. And that’s not even the worst part.”

“How can it be worse?” he asks, his voice a coarse, husky croak.

“My parents were notified. They’d been on their way home from church that Wednesday night. They didn’t even go home. They drove straight up to New York.” I stop to meet Rogan’s eyes for the first time, but I can’t stand what I see there—a reflection of my own pain—so I look away before I finish. “They were both killed in a car accident on the way. I never even got to tell them I was sorry.”

My throat is tight with controlled emotion. I haven’t talked to anyone about this in years. It was easier than I thought it would be,
but still not
easy
by any far stretch of the imagination. I lost everything that night, everything that ever meant something to me.

Rogan says nothing. And that’s good because there’s really nothing
to
say. I’ve heard all the platitudes from my friends and friends of the family. Yet another reason I moved to the middle of nowhere. I needed to be someone
no one
knew. I needed to be someone other than this poor girl who’d had such a tragic life. I
had to be
someone other than the girl who everyone pitied. But I also needed to get away from Calvin. Permanently.

After a length of silence, I glance up at Rogan, trying my best to smile. “I was in a medically induced coma for three days and in the hospital for twenty-four more. I had surgeries following that. Skin grafts for some of the worst places. But as you can see, there’s no covering something like that except with clothes.”

“Katie, I’m so—”

“Please don’t,” I plead. I can’t take his sympathy right now. It would crush me.

He waits a few seconds before he asks, “What happened to the guy?”

“Since I was in such bad shape right after, the police ruled it an accident. Found a broken liquor bottle on the floorboard and two full bottles in the passenger seat. Calvin planned it well, made it look like I was heading out to a party or something. The friend that I was staying with had no idea what happened, of course. Turns out the police were going to charge
me.
I couldn’t believe it. Until I found out why they hadn’t. When I met with the cop who investigated it, he mentioned that my boyfriend’s father had cleared things up for me and that I’d better be thankful that I ‘had connections, young lady,’” I mimic, using my best deep, cop voice. “The whole thing was ridiculous. I knew
right then
that there would be no point in trying to tell them what really happened. Calvin was protected.
When your father is a wealthy, influential politician . . . Well, you know how that goes. I just got tangled up with the wrong guy all the way around.”

“So that’s it? No justice? That bastard just got off scot-free?” His tone has a hard edge.

I shrug. The ending to my story is far from perfect, far from even satisfactory, but I came to terms with the unfairness of life a long time ago.

“Some people have a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

There’s a pause during which I can hear Rogan’s controlled breathing. I know he has something to say and I appreciate that he’s not saying it. It won’t help anything to be angry. It didn’t help me at all.

“At least now I understand,” Rogan finally says, his voice quiet as he sits up and reaches forward to stroke my cheek with his fingertips.

“Understand what?”

“Understand why you push people away.”

“Most people don’t. They don’t get it. But it doesn’t matter. This keeps me safe. Keeps me from getting hurt.”

“I hope you know that I would never hurt you.”

My grin is lopsided and humorless. “That’s what they all say.”

“Only
I
mean it.”

“I think Calvin did, too. In his own twisted way. He just wanted something of his own, something no one could take away from him. And that thing was me.”

“I don’t care what he wanted. There’s never a good enough reason for a man to hurt a woman like that. Never.”

“I had to stop thinking that way a long time ago,” I say, pulling Rogan’s hand away from my face. I can’t lean on him right now. I can’t accept his strength. I need to be able to relive this and be at peace with it on my own. “I carried a combination of fear and anger
and horrible grief with me for two years afterward. My family was dead, my dreams were dead. My present, my future, my hope—everything was gone. I had nothing. Thankfully one of my professors came to visit me at the hospital. She thought maybe one day I’d change my mind about acting. She thought I should at least keep my foot in the door, so she gave me the number of Sebastian, a man she knew in the makeup business. I’m glad she came, because without her and Sebastian, I’d have had no future.

“So, almost a year after the fire, after rehab and all the surgeries, when I felt and looked almost human again, I called Sebastian. He said my professor had talked me up and that he’d take me on as his apprentice, but only if I could show promise. He flew me out to California for what amounted to an audition. Turns out I had a knack for making ugly things pretty and beautiful things more so. I worked with him for a year and a half before I got the job here with the studio. I moved to Enchantment right away and haven’t looked back since. Until now.”

“I don’t even know what to say,” Rogan confesses. I see all sorts of tightly controlled emotions on his face, but there’s only one I’m searching for. It’s why I understood him that day in the makeup room when I first saw his scars.

“You see why I didn’t pity you when I saw your scars? I knew how you felt. I knew that pity is like acid for people like us. It eats away at what little there is left of our soul. I’d rather someone hate me or think I’m backward and shy and weird than pity me.”

“I don’t pity you. But I do pity that asshole ex of yours if I ever run into him.”

I shake my head. “He’s not worth it. He’s not worth another second of my misery. I gave him too much already.”

“Sometimes we don’t give it. Sometimes people take it when we
aren’t looking. It’s like they rip it out and by the time we realize it, the damage is done.”

“Is that how you feel about your father?”

“In a way. It’s like we were an okay family, and then, before I even knew that we were broken, he’d already stolen something from me. Something I couldn’t get back.” He looks off into the distance behind my shoulder, lost in time, falling silent for several seconds before he turns his eyes back to mine. “The thing is, we can still survive. Even if pieces are scarred. Or dead. Or even missing. We can
still
survive. We can still
live.
”