“The thing is, Carrie, I didn’t know. How could I? The woman that I love is the child of the man that killed the woman I first loved. What sick twisted game is this? How is this my life? Can I tell you something else, Carrie? The reason that I left her place tonight is because I am so fucking scared. I am so scared that I’m going to lose Tessa too, that I can’t fix this, fix her. All I can picture is that the monster is going to win and take another person that I love, and I can’t handle that. I can’t go through that again. I can’t lose her too. I barely came out on the other side of losing you.”
Yawning widely, emotional exhaustion overtaking me, I lie down on my back alongside her grave. Staring up into the sky, the stars seem to be sparkling extra bright tonight. I picture Tessa, as if she’s lying down next to me like we were in the park. We’re star gazing, her hand in mine. I turn to look at her and she smiles at me. My eyes take in her sweet face and I try to count her freckles, but it’s impossible, there’s too many. A few tears escape the corners of my eyes, and I let them. I own each one and feel no shame in them. My heart is breaking.
My mind suddenly flashes to the moment I found Carrie again, but this time, as I approach the bed, frantic to make sure she’s okay, hoping she’s just sleeping, when I look at her face it isn’t Carrie I see. It’s Tessa. She’s lying there and I’m helpless to help her too. I fail her too. Closing my eyes to the pain, I whisper, “I’m so scared, Carrie.” My eyes feel heavy and I close them to rest for just a little bit before I leave. I feel emotionally and physically drained.
I’m running. She’s in front of me, just out of my grasp. She’s wearing a long white gown and it flows like water when she moves. I can hear her laughter. It sounds like music and it makes me smile. I want to catch her so I can see the laughter in her eyes too. I run faster, reach out, and take her hand. When she spins around to look at me, she takes my breath away. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so happy, so healthy, and so…free.
“Carrie,” I whisper and my heart aches so much from the sight that I put my hand over my chest as if to ease the hurt.
“She needs you, Ryder.”
“Who needs me?” I ask confused. “Why did you leave me, Carrie? You left me.”
She reaches out and touches my face, “Sometimes when things don’t make sense, it’s because we haven’t seen the bigger picture yet. She’s your bigger picture.”
“But, you and I were supposed to be together,” I tell her in confusion. I feel torn.
“We were. We were together when we were supposed to be. Now, it’s time for you to be there for someone else. You needed our story so that you could start a new chapter with her. She needs you now.”
“Tessa,” I whisper and she nods and smiles a smile so bright and beautiful, it’s blinding.
“Be happy, Ryder. And let your faith be bigger than your fear.”
Jerking awake, I look around forgetting where I am for a minute. Hours must have passed because the sun is rising. Looking toward the east I can see oranges and pinks painting the sky behind the mountains. My dream comes back to me and I look immediately to Carrie’s gravestone. Usually my dreams are fuzzy and broken, but I remember every single second of this dream. It was vivid as if Carrie were really here.
“I don’t know if that was real, or if I manifested it in my mind because it was what I needed and wanted to hear. I don’t think I care either way. It was exactly what I needed. I miss you, Carrie, and I love you. A part of me always will. Thank you for loving me too.”
Leaping to my feet, I run down the hill and to my car as fast as my feet can take me. I need to see Tessa and beg for her to forgive me. She poured her heart out to me, told me the biggest secret she has, and instead of holding her I left her.
Oh god, I left her.
The clock on my dashboard says seven o’clock. I hope I haven’t managed to lose the woman I love in only a few short hours. I won’t blame her for hating me right now, I only hope she’ll give me a chance to explain. To start that new chapter.
When I get to her apartment I pound on the door and I don’t stop. I will be the biggest pain in the ass at this door if that’s what it takes to get her to talk to me. I will camp out here if I have to. It takes a good five minutes before the door opens and Gina glares at me. She’s wearing, a long t-shirt and has a tone of pink things in her hair that look like worms. She’s holding a bat and looks like she’s going to beat me with it.
“What do you want?” she hisses.
“I want to talk to Tessa. Where is she?”
She grips the bat in her hand tighter, “I think you’ve done enough. You need to leave.”
“No. I’m not leaving until I talk to her.”
“She’s finally sleeping, you are not going to wake her up.”
“Gina, please. I freaked out, okay? I need to apologize and beg for forgiveness.”
Her grip loosens, “Keep talking,” she says.
“Look, it’s a long story and I think Tessa deserves to know first, but just know, I love her. I love her, Gina, and I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
She stares at me for a while and I’m still about fifty percent sure she’s going to slam the door in my face, but then she opens it wider. Keeping my eye on her as I squeeze past and come into the apartment, I murmur, “Thank you.”
“If she wants you to leave, you’re leaving.”
“Understood.”
She nods and I turn so I can go to her bedroom. “Hey, Ryder?” Gina calls and I spin around to face her.
“Yeah?”
“I’m not going to be far and I’ve got this,” she waves the bat around and I step back quickly to avoid a slice to my face. “Don’t make me use it.”
When my eyes open, I blink rapidly wondering why they feel so heavy. For a few blissful moments, the events of the night before are forgotten, but then they land on my chest and heart with a palpable thud. Raising my arms over my head, I stretch my body and roll over to the side, tucking my pillow under my head, I consider closing my eyes again and trying to go back to sleep.
“Tessa.”
Jerking and yelping in fear, I sit up, looking in the direction of where I heard my name. “Ryder?” I leap out of bed suddenly wide awake. “What are you doing in my room? How did you get in?”
“Gina let me in, I was waiting for you to wake up. I’d like to talk to you.”
“Well I don’t want to talk to you.” I cross my arms over my chest, “Please leave.”
He rises from the chair he’s sitting in, “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said no. I’m not leaving until I talk to you.”
Pointing at the door, I say firmer; louder, “Leave now.”
“Tessa,” he whispers my name like a solemn prayer, “I said no.”
Angry, I walk up to him and push him hard on the shoulder, “I want you to leave!” I yell.
“No, Tessa,” he says again with so much emotion that all it manages to do is make me feel worse and in reaction to that, I push him again. “Leave!” I say again. This time, he wraps his arms around me and holds on, once again telling me, “No.”
I struggle in his arms, “Leave. Just leave. You already left once. I told you the truth and you couldn’t deal – so just go again. Go.” I begin to cry along with my struggles, but Ryder simply holds on. My heart feels like it’s breaking and I want to kick, hit and punch him in retaliation for the hurt he’s caused. I feel exposed and vulnerable and my heart aches in my chest so hard that I can barely breathe from the pain.
“Tessa, listen to me. My girlfriend was Carrie Mann.”
I immediately freeze.
Pinpricks run from my scalp all the way to my toes. My stomach immediately rolls and it makes me gag. “Oh god,” I murmur, and the tears flow even harder. “Oh God.”
Ryder holds on to me as I sink to the floor, he follows me down, and I proceed to sob uncontrollably. He rocks me back and forth, whispering words of comfort, but I barely hear them. “I’
m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” I continue to repeat like a mantra. I can’t stop. I know who Carrie is. I’ll never ever forget her face. Or her story. Her death is all my fault. And Ryder, oh my god Ryder. No wonder why he left me. How he is still here and holding onto me, is beyond my comprehension.
Once I calm down, I realize I’ve saturated the front of his shirt. Pulling back in embarrassment, I wipe my nose with the back of my hand – very lady like. Tentatively, my eyes meet his, and I find he’s already looking at me.
Before I can say a word, he speaks. “Please, just hear me out. I know you don’t owe me anything, but I’m begging you.” Staring into his eyes and seeing the yearning and intensity there, I nod. “First,” he begins, “I want to apologize for leaving.”
“You don’t have to,” I interrupt understanding his actions. “Now that I know Carrie was your girlfriend,” I pause as a couple more tears escape at my words. “I can understand why you left.”
He nods and sighs, “Yes, it’s why I left. It was more than I could process and I needed to get away. I felt like the walls were closing in on me and…” he stops and looks at me. “I’m sorry.” He hesitates and my brows furrow as I watch and wait. “But, you also expected that I would leave. Why?”
Shrugging, I try to display a lack of feeling, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. My self-preservation walls are raising again, brick by brick, “You did exactly what I was expecting you to do,” I shrug. “It’s why I set up what I did with Ronnie at the fire station. I needed to push you away, to make the decision for you. I never intended to tell you the truth, in all honesty. But I guess that’s because a part of me doubted that this thing between us would ever go anywhere.”
“What changed?”
Staring at him, tears fill my eyes again at the truth. “Because I never expected to fall in love with you,” I whisper. “And when I realized the truth, all I could think about was needing to protect you.”
“Protect me? How is breaking my heart protecting me?”
“Because a broken heart can be healed in time. What happened to me? How you will look at me because of it… that will never go away.” I look down feeling ashamed.
His large hands cup my face and he waits for my eyes to find his again, “If I could do things over, I would have reacted differently. I’m sorry that I can’t, but what happened to you, what happened to Carrie,” he drifts off and swallows hard, “it isn’t your fault. That, I know and nothing you can say will ever make me think differently.”
“But, you don’t know…”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But, I didn’t tell anyone until it was too late.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I pull away from him roughly, “How can you say that? What happened to Carrie, what happened to others, if I had come forward and told someone, maybe he would have been caught much sooner and never would have had a chance to hurt anyone else.”
“Tessa, you were a child – and more than that, he was your father. You can’t blame yourself for what he did. There’s no one to blame other than him. Don’t you dare take that burden from him – he doesn’t deserve it – and neither do you.”
“You’re wrong, Ryder. And it doesn’t matter now, I can’t change it, no matter how much I wish that I could. I would gladly give my own life in exchange if it meant saving others.”
“Don’t you dare say that!” he says angrily. “Never again say that.” I flinch at the anger and despair in his tone. His breaths are rapid and he drops his hands from my face and takes my hands. Once he calms himself, he states, “You know who Carrie is.”
“Yes. I know what happened to her. I know the names and stories of every single person my father hurt. Every. Single. One. They are all burned into my mind like a tattoo.”
“When Carrie died,” he swallows heavily again and sniffs. He takes a deep breath and begins again, “When Carrie died, I was the one that found her.” My horror must show on my face and a single tear falls down his cheek. I reach up and catch it with my fingertips, clutching it in my hand. “She called me and said goodbye. The article had just come out naming her as a victim and whispers and looks had started at school. She said she was fine – said all the right things actually – but in reality she was anything but. Want to talk about feelings of guilt and feeling like I should have known or could have prevented it? I lived them for a long time. My life was destroyed the moment I found her – I was completely shaken. I blamed myself for a very long time, and while I now know that what happened to her wasn’t my fault, I still chose to live my life in a way that would prevent me from ever getting close enough to another person again. I chose to live a lustful life because it’s dangerous entwining your life with someone else’s. You hurt when they hurt, you laugh when they laugh, you find yourself living for every one of their smiles. I never wanted that again – I wanted to stay safe. But then, one encounter with you and my life was flipped on its head. For the first time I found myself wanting again, and living for those special moments. I don’t want to lose you, Tessa. And I refuse to let that man take another person from me. I left because I have never been so scared in my life.”
“You were scared of me?”
“No!” he cups my face again, “Hell, no, I could never be scared of you,” his thumb runs across my cheek in what has become my favorite gesture of his and I close my eyes at the feeling. “But, I am scared of losing you.”
His words don’t make any sense. “I don’t understand.”
He leans forward and softly kisses me on the mouth as if reassuring me first, then he begins to tell me more about Carrie. I may know of her story, but I don’t know her. He begins to explain as a man who loved her. He tells me about her battle with depression, how hard it was for her to come forward and admit what my father had done, but how proud she was too. He tells me that she was horrified when the article came out, and how there were those at school that were supportive and those that were mean and hateful. How she lied and said she was doing okay even when she wasn’t. How he found her. How he lost part of himself when she died. How he blamed himself immediately after her death for not being more aware, more in tune, for perhaps only hearing what he wanted, what he needed to hear. He thought he could have made her get help - saved her. Even though he went through therapy, he decided to never love again. “I really felt like loving –really loving someone so genuinely, so totally, so deeply could only result in pain and loss. But, you taught me that love is worth the chance.”
“Me?”
He smiles and it’s beautiful - a bright beacon in the middle of such darkness. “I already told you once that I didn’t expect you, and that’s true. You rocked my world in that bathroom, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. I felt in that moment that I met my match. And while I pursued you, got to know you, spoke to you,” he strokes my face, “kissed you. I began to love you. And I do, I love you.”
I look down, immediately not understanding how he could say this to me. “But, Ryder-”
“No. Tessa, hear me.” His eyes hold my own, “What your father did to you, and the fact that you didn’t come forward immediately is not your fault. And the hurts and pains inflicted on others are not your fault. And how others chose to or were able to heal - or not - is not your fault. You do not own any of that. And furthermore, it has absolutely no bearing what so ever on how I feel about you. None. I love you.”
“But Ryder,” I begin again, “how can you not look at me and be horrified? How can you not see him and what he did to your life when you look at me? I’m just broken.”
“You’re only broken if you allow yourself to be. If you let him continue to win. I told you what you aren’t responsible for. But you are responsible for letting him continue to win. When I look at you, I see someone that’s a little bruised and battered, but has managed to come out of the dark a beautiful, strong, woman. One that I love. One that I want to be with. One that I refuse to let walk away
from me. There are no shadows of your past covering you, Tessa. All I see is the beautiful person that you’ve become. And I want all of it – every piece – because there’s even beauty in the darkness. Out of all of the things that have happened in my life because of the actions of a sick man – this is the best part. You’re my bright star in the middle of the darkness. And I’m not letting go.”
Tears fall down my face unashamedly, “I love you, Ryder. Every single broken piece and those few whole pieces too – they love you. I love you.”
“I love you too,” he says and then he smiles. “But you’re not broken. You’re perfect, and you’re beautiful. Every. Piece.”
And as he looks at me, I can see in his eyes that he means every word. Shining in his eyes, I see love. So much love. And it takes my breath away. Leaning forward, I place my lips on his. And while I know what he said is not true, for the first time, I have hope that is ready to take wings. We remain connected for a few moments, just reveling in the meaning of our kiss, and then slowly we open, and our tongues come together, finding a rhythm of their own. It’s sweet and it’s meaningful. It fills my heart and my soul and all I see is this man.
Somehow, here on the floor, in the middle of devastation, he’s managed to start the process of putting me back together piece by piece and all I want, all I see, is him.
Pulling back to look at him, my hands move to his shirt and I pull it up and over his head. He looks at me with a question of uncertainty in his eyes. “Show me how much you love me. Make the stars shine for me – even if it’s during the day.”
He smiles softly and kisses me on the forehead – if I didn’t already love him, I would have started in that moment. My heart fills to overflowing at the loving gesture and I stand, and quickly undress. I’m naked and ready before he’s even risen to his feet. I look down at him with what I’m sure is an anxious look, and he laughs. “Wow. That was something to see.”
“Shut up,” I tease, “stop making me wait.”
Fighting Lust: A Deadly Sins Novel Page 20
