Thirteen Hours To You

by Annie Emerson

  “Feel what, Violet?” I gently coaxed, not wanting to scare her away.

  She swallowed hard and shifted her legs out from under her, drawing her knees into her chest, wrapping her arms around them to keep herself in place.

  “When . . . that . . . happened to me, it hurt me so bad, Meekai. I screamed until he threatened that he’d go and get the little girl I was babysitting and hurt her like he was hurting me. So, I stopped screaming. I had to. No matter how much he was physically tearing me apart, I had to think of her. She was only five, Meekai, and he would have done it.”

  My body trembled with controlled fucking rage. I would end him. Even if she walked away from me right now, I wouldn’t stop. Not until he stopped breathing.

  She rocked gently back and forth, lost in the memory of that day. I felt every sway. Back and forth, back and forth. Each movement became a broken piece of my heart. I broke right along with her. I watched her sort through every last thing he did to her, everything she sacrificed for that child. My heart broke for every day she’d carried that secret alone. She could tell me every detail, but I still would never come close to comprehending the sort of pain that she experienced.

  She placed her chin on top of her knees and looked at me, tears welled like pools of poison she needed to expel, just so we could truly become an us, no barriers. She needed me to know her secrets. She didn’t want me to know them, but she needed me to understand her.

  “When somebody goes through that type of experience, it’s horrific. It feels like it will never end. You get to a point where you don’t even remember how it began. How you came to be face down, praying for it to end. All you can hear are your own screams, muffled by the filthy degradation as he lists everything he’s doing to you, will do to you . . . you bec . . .” Her words get stuck as she struggles to speak that day into words.

  She shook her head as I reached for her, letting me know that she needed the space, letting me know she was determined to finish what she had to say.

  “You become numb. You shut down. Survival 101, you know?” She let out a humorless laugh and briefly turned to look at me before squeezing her eyes shut. The pain that obscured her face tore me to bits, but I stayed quiet. I had to wait for her to process, to find the words that she needed. This wasn’t about me, and no matter how much I wanted to comfort her, I waited.

  “There are things they never tell you. In the movies, television, documentaries. Fuck, even in self-defense classes.” Her head rolled back as she scoffed, anger seething just beneath the surface. “They never tell you that even as your own blood is dripping down the insides of your legs, even when your skin is ripped from the most intimate parts of you, the sting and tearing unbearable . . . They never tell you that . . .”

  She stopped, fear taking over anger for a brief moment. She looked at me and desperately searched my face as if trying to unearth the disgust she was afraid she might find. I tried to hold her steady with my gaze, as tears rolled painfully slow down the curve of her flushed cheeks. I tried to wipe away the hatred and disgust I felt for him so she wouldn’t misinterpret it as being directed at her. There was no way I would give her a chance to see anything but support when she looked at me.

  I struggled to push down the bile, I held back from rubbing at the physical pain that clawed at my chest. I kept the devastation I felt from falling down my face, swallowing over and over to erase it. Radley needed my strength, not my tears. They could wait.

  As she tried to gather her words and I tried to keep mine locked tight, her nervous system finally gave up. She couldn’t continue. She reached out for me with a shaky hand. It was too hard, all of this was too fucking hard. I frantically tugged her onto my lap and pulled her into me, holding her firmly against my chest as she let out a heart wrenching howl. The torment in her cries tore me to pieces, so I gave up on holding back my tears and broke right along with her.

  I rocked her in my lap, shushing her as I kissed my sorry’s one after the other onto her wet cheek. I could taste the salt of her tears, and I was positive she could taste mine as she pulled back and turned in my lap to look at me. When she saw the tears, the slight tremble of my lips, it seemed to give her the strength to whisper the words she’d never spoken out loud. My tears, my vulnerability, they let her know that I wouldn’t walk away. There was no way in hell.

  “They never tell you that your nerve endings have a mind of their own,” she cried. “They never tell you that when manipulated and coerced just right, your body can still react. No matter how bad the pain is, no matter how loud my screams, no matter how filthy his mouth and depraved his actions . . .” She stopped, still looking for the reaction she assumed she’d see, but she wouldn’t find it. I wasn’t disgusted with her, and I could never reject her.

  “I’d never touched myself before, not really, before all this, I mean,” she whispered with embarrassment. “I didn’t know what was happening when his fingers stroked between my legs, when he wouldn’t stop but became more frantic. A feeling I’d never felt before began to build and take over. I was so fucking confused . . . It felt good, Meekai.”

  My heart sank, her grief tore through her, her own self-deprecation and disgust morphed into the anger she’d been holding onto as she finally let go. Her scream was guttural, infuriated and completely unhinged as the last link that kept her chained, broke.

  “Why Meekai?! Why would God let that happen? I came . . . I fucking came,” she repeated. “I came, I came, I came! What the hell does that make me?” She begged, looking for answers as she fisted her hands in my shirt. “Don’t hate me, please, Meekai. Please, please, don’t hate me, Kai!”

  We shook against one another. Her aching, screaming heart, and my silent devastated sobs danced with one another. I swore I’d fucking kill him.

  “I will end him baby. Just give me his name and I will fucking end him.”

  “I can’t. Please don’t make me. Please don’t hate me.”

  I took her head in my hands and shook my head furiously. “Violet, I could never hate you,” I affirmed with disbelief. I pulled her forehead to rest against mine, her plea to not hate her wrenched a hole into my already gaping heart. “Baby, how could I hate you when I’m so fucking in love with you?”

  Her sobs stopped. It was like a switch had been flipped. What I’d just confessed had the ability to drive her away, but I couldn’t help it. With her, honesty was all I knew how to do. Loving her was all I wanted to do.

  She sat on my lap, dead still. Her head still in my hands as she blinked on repeat. Whether it was the truth or not, it wasn’t the time to tell her something so monumental. I was as frozen as she was, and for once I couldn’t speak, the fear palpable. My heart felt like it slowed down instead of speeding up. I held my breath, internally beating the shit out of myself. What the hell had I just done? “You fought, Kai. Keep fighting, my boy.” I swore I heard my mama, felt her breath as she brushed past my ear, reminding me of where I was, who I was with and what I wanted.

  “Radley? I won’t apologize for what I just admitted, I won’t. But I’m sorry for saying it to you now. The last thing I wanted was to tell you like this. I don’t know, maybe it’s the perfect moment, maybe you need to know. Fuck, I don’t know.”

  She exhaled and her breath shuttered as I prepared for impact.

  “Even now? You can love this?” she asked, drawing back to point at her own chest. It was an honest question. It didn’t come from a place that searched for validation, it came from a place of true curiosity. She wondered if it was truly possible to love her through her past and hold her into the future without judgement.

  “Even now, even more,” I admitted.

  “Why? Because a dream told you to?”

  “No, not because a dream told me to. Because when I’m with you, everything else falls away. It doesn’t hurt as much with Mama gone. It doesn’t feel as empty with Mimi thirteen hours away. It’s because you’re here that I get to breathe again, full breaths, and I look forward to eac
h one, because there were times I didn’t wanna breathe at all,” I admitted. “I get to dream again, big dreams. I get to fall in love with the girl who was always mine to love. It wasn’t just a dream, Violet, it was preparation. I needed to become the version of me I am now. I didn’t deserve you before now. But you wouldn’t be here if now wasn’t our time.”

  My hands dropped to my sides as she lifted her hand to my face. She stroked her thumb down my cheek, across my lips, past my chin and down the length of my neck before her hand stopped at my heart. She spread her palm across the place that was hers.

  “Fight,” she whispered.

  “That’s right, Violet. Fight.”

  She leaned in, palm still pressed against my heart, against the words printed in ink as a reminder that I’d always fight when it came to her. She grazed my lips, a ghost of a touch that had me lean in to her.

  “Kiss me like you love me, Meekai,” she sighed.

  “Is there any other way?” I asked as my lips shattered against hers.

  Deep forevers pushed and promised between each breath. No beginning, no end. Just us.

  She broke our kiss, her lips raw, the perfect shade of kissed. Her hands clasped my shirt at my chest, our breaths strained, our eyes heavy, hearts erratic.

  “I’m scared, Meekai,” she rushed out.

  “What are you scared of, Violet?”

  “I’m scared to feel what he made me feel. I’m scared to feel that with you. What if I can’t get past what he did to me, and how I reacted to his touch?”

  I grabbed a hold of her hands that held tight to me, anchored and pleading. “When we get to that place, I will love you so fucking thoroughly, I’ll take that fear and turn it into a place where only you and I exist. He will never leave your memories, Radley, but I promise I will love you so completely you’ll only relate that feeling to us. It’s so beautiful, baby. The feeling when experienced with the right person is like love. If you get scared, I’ll help you let go and fall into it. I’ll make you feel it like you should’ve felt it, within the confines of trust, consent, and complete adoration.”

  “I don’t know if I can, Meekai. What if I can’t let go? I’m so aware of how I could ruin this, that it’s all I’ve been thinking about. It consumes me, and I hate it. I hate him. I hate him not just for what he took from me, but what he took from us.”

  I took in her words. They were valid, but sometimes the only way a person could get through their fears was by facing them head-on.

  I pulled our hands apart, and hers dropped to her lap. I lifted mine and gently traipsed my fingers along her defined collarbone. The sensitive skin rushed with a fever of goosebumps as the languid pace trailed up her neck and behind her ear. I brushed her hair to one side, the skin exposed, a target.

  Her head dropped to the side, welcoming me in as I dipped my head and ran my tongue along the path my hand had just travelled. I placed an open-mouthed kiss behind her ear with a hungry smile. She moaned, and I felt it run the length of my body, not leaving one place untouched or unaffected. My cock strained and pulsed as her head dropped back, mouth open, her breaths shallow.

  “Do you feel that, Violet?” I murmured. I raised my eyes to see her head nod a wordless yes. “What’s my name, baby?”

  “Meekai,” she answered breathlessly.

  “Who’s making your body feel?”

  “You. You are,” she whispered.

  “Who will you feel inside you when I make you come? Me or him?” I continued to work kisses across her chest and neck.

  “I’ll feel you,” she stuttered.

  “What have I promised you that you’ll feel? Tell me, Radley,” I demanded.

  “Everything. You’ll make me feel everything.”

  I grazed my fingertips along her pebbled nipples, her body stiffening for a fraction of a second before I felt her relax. Her hands shot out and grabbed my waist as I moved to her other nipple, running gentle circles around the sensitive peak. Her moans became scattered, hungry as she pleaded for more. My fingers stopped, and her head flung forward, her face riddled with frustration.

  “Why did you stop?” she whined, squirming with the aftershocks of a pleasure that hadn’t quite been reached. A taste of what could be, what will be. I had to show her she had the ability to distinguish the difference between a touch she wanted and a touch she never asked for.

  Her violet eyes had intensified to a deeper shade of blue. I wanted to feel her from the inside out. The sound of her responding to my touch hit me hard, but until she begged for it, there was no way I’d chase my own needs and fulfill them before she was ready.

  “I stopped because I want you to feel pissed off.”

  “What do you mean?” Her brows drew in with confusion and a healthy dose of the pissed I was looking for.

  “Tell me, are you pissed at me for stopping?”

  Her face flushed. I could see the wheels turning, the realization hitting as she nodded.

  “Why are you pissed?”

  Her lips rolled in and out as she tried to speak the words. I patiently waited because she needed to say it out loud. She needed to know she could say anything to me, no matter how mortifying she thought it was. I wanted her to get comfortable with asking for the things she wanted, the things she didn’t want.

  “I’m pissed because I liked it,” she mumbled. Her head dropped, unable to look at me as she said it.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t hide from me, Radley. You were meant to like it. You were meant to fucking love it, baby.”

  She raised her eyes to meet mine. She needed to hear me, and I was determined for her to listen. There was no shame in a touch shared between two people who wanted it.

  “Did you think of him?” I almost choked on the words. I felt a cruelty in asking her, but it was more important for her to come to the realization that she was lost in us, not him.

  Her lips quivered, and I felt like an asshole. I felt sick when her eyes welled with tears that were filled with the memories she’d do anything to forget. She took in a deep breath and ran a quick hand over her eyes before she spoke.

  “For a fleeting second, he was there, I can’t lie. But your touch was gentle. Your intentions pure. After I realized that, all I could feel was you touching me. All I could hear was you getting lost in me. All I wanted was more.”

  I pulled her in and left a gentle imprint of my smile on her lips. The pride I felt in her strength had me tumble even further into the love I felt for her. When she said the feelings were too big, she was right. They were bigger than I could have ever anticipated. There was no measure. There was a beginning, but it held no end. Love just grew; spiraled.

  “Do you trust me, Violet?”

  “Completely. Way too easily,” she laughed.

  “Good, because we’ve got homework.”

  She cocked a brow. The sass was back. I smiled to myself. She is so fucking beautiful. My mind filled with images of her. Mouth agape, eyes wide, moans needy. It was a risk; what I was about to ask of her was huge, but I knew Radley had to be shown. Words weren’t enough. They had to be backed up with no less than scientific evidence, a PowerPoint presentation and a TED talk.

  “More text messages? Maybe communication downgraded to a smoke signal?” she teased.

  “Nope, just answer my FaceTime call tomorrow night at eleven p.m. I need you to be naked and in bed.” I smirked at her and watched with pleasure as her mouth dropped open.

  “Umm, why?” she asked, her face a deep shade of what the hell.

  “Because without laying a finger on you, I’m gonna make you come, baby.” I kissed her nose, pulled back and winked. “You’ll have to participate, of course. I mean you’ll have to be my hands. Oh, and my hand will have to be yours. We’ll play swapsies,” I mused.

  “You’re so weird,” she said with a resigned curl of her lips.

  “Yeah, well you should see the shade of weird that’s gonna make you come,” I countered back.

  She leaned into my ear, g
rabbed my earlobe with her mouth and sucked hard, a pop echoed in my ear as she let go.

  “Is that right? Well, you should see the shade of weird that’ll be wrapped around your cock when I make you come. You know, swapsies,” she said as she pushed me back and levelled her eyes with mine. “Get ready to become truly complicated . . . baby.”

  Well fuck.

  21

  Radley

  Meekai dropped me back home, and it was like trying to detach a spider monkey from my body. To be fair, I was like an octopus and we were all types of tangled as I tried with great difficulty to remove myself from his car.

  Gamma stood on the porch, leaning against a pillar, lit up by the porch lights, amusement peeking from behind her eyes as she watched us.

  “I think Gamma is having way too much fun with this.” Meekai laughed, our arms a tangle, one of my legs out the door, the other still on the passenger side floorboard. Half of Meekai was draped uncomfortably over the console an arm wrapped around my waist and the other pulling my head in for a goodbye kiss.

  “I think she’ll have even more fun if you let me go and I fall on my ass.” The possibility not far from the truth as I swayed, and he hung on.

  After a few swift maneuvers, we safely detached. I straightened up my top and placed a fallen bra strap back in place.

  “You two remind me of me and Gampa back in the day. Did I ever tel . . .” I held a finger in the air signaling for her not to follow through with the rest of the story. I’d heard enough about her and Gampa. No one should be subjected to that type of audible torture. She pushed off the pillar and winked at us. “Come on, Miss Radley Cooper, Becca’s waiting for you up in your bedroom.”

  Why would Becca be up in my bedroom? It was nine in the evening.

  “I know about as much as you do, Sugarnuts,” Gamma said, reading my mind, concern etched over both our faces.