I’m going to be alone. And it’s nobody’s fault except for my own.
Owen wasn’t ready for the truth.
Echo is heading back to Indiana once we graduate. She wants to spend some time with her mom, keeping her company and then maybe take her on a few mini vacations so she can see the beauty in life.
Echo didn’t have the heart to bitch me out for clearing her family’s debt. It was something I needed to do. I was tired of seeing people I love suffering over things that they didn’t need to worry about.
“He called again,” Echo says, sitting on the edge of my bed.
I place everything back into the box and look up at her. “Some day he’ll eventually stop.”
As the water runs down my body, it starts to sink in that Michael was right. I would hurt Owen. I tried to protect him and look where that went.
I slam my hand against the wet tiles as a lump lodges in my throat, constricting the sob waiting to rip from my lungs.
Look where we are now. Broken and hurt.
I inhale deeply and lower myself to the floor of the shower as the cries of my broken heart finally come out. I’m not even crying for twenty seconds when I feel a pair of delicate arms wrap around me and I hear Echo’s soothing voice.
“My heart keeps breaking. It’s trying to repair itself but it’s pointless. With every breath I take, I feel like I’m suffocating and drowning in despair. I miss him. I kinda hate him a little too but I love him so fucking much and it just hurts.” My cries become heavier, and I have to rub my chest to ease the pain within. “I miss him. I was never strong enough to leave him. We’re connected, Coco. I feel like a part of me has died. And it hurts even more knowing he’s feeling the exact same thing. I did this. I killed us.”
Echo once told me that our love is infinite. We’re two souls tethered together for eternity.
What happens when that love is severed?
I’m back in Mary’s office, my fingernails digging into my palms as tears run down my cheeks. I caught her up to speed with everything that has happened since Christmas and she’s still sitting her in chair taking down notes, giving the occasional nod and murmuring “mmhmm.”
I need more than a “mmhmm” right now. I need someone to direct me toward a path that is less heartbreaking. I need someone to tell me that my broken heart is temporary and while the pain is excruciating, I’ll live.
I’m so lost and I’m mad and I’m hurting.
Owen knows what I’ve been keeping a secret for years and I don’t know if I can handle seeing him again. Not after the way we left things by the creek.
“How are you doing in school?”
“W-what?” School? Why are we talking about school? My heart feels like it’s being ripped apart slowly, I don’t want to talk about school.
“Do you think you can take some classes online is what I mean.” Mary shifts in her chair, setting the notepad down on her lap. “You have an internship waiting for you in New York. What if you went?”
I wipe my eyes quickly and swallow the lump in my throat. “You think I should take it?”
Her dark brown eyes hold mine. They give nothing up. She’s always been a little hard to read until she cracks a smile and we talk about something nice. Today there’s no smile. “I think taking that internship might help. You didn’t plan on telling Owen the truth about his father but now he knows and both of you are now somewhere where you need to think of what’s best for you in order to continue.”
“I’d just be running,” I answer.
“It doesn’t have to feel that way. What if you and Owen meet before you leave?”
I look down at my hands before I squeeze my eyes shut. “What if he looks at me differently? What if he hates me?”
“This was a big step for you, Zoë, and I know you wanted to avoid it at all costs but in order for a relationship to work both partners have to be open about a lot of things. The sexual abuse is one of them. I wanted you to be in a certain place where you felt like you could talk more about it with me, and possibly your family but I felt like you needed a bit more time. I’ve been helping you get comfortable with Owen. There were a few bumps to get through but you did it. You’re not at a standstill anymore. You have options.”
I hear her stand up and I crack my eyes open, watching her heeled feet come toward me. She sits beside me on the couch holding a tissue box.
I look up slowly, confused.
“I truly believe that you and Owen can work things out. You have to remember that the image he had of his father is now shattered. He spent years mourning a man he thought he knew. He needs time. And so do you.”
I uncurl my hands and grab the tissue box from her, dropping it onto my lap. “Do you honestly believe New York will help me?”
I’ve trusted her with helping me pursue a relationship with Owen when she thought that was something holding me back. She never understood why we were just friends when I was in love with him. In life we have to take risks, today I want you to step out of your comfort zone and try to hold his hand. Not as a friend but as a potential lover, she said the very first time she brought up Owen’s name. It worked. She helped me overcome a few of my fears, so now I’m trusting her decision on what comes next.
Give me guidance.
“You’ve spent your lives together and this distance might benefit you both.” She slowly stretches out her hand and lays it down on my left one. Mary looks a little stunned that she’s actually touching me. It definitely doesn’t fit her “let’s keep it professional and sit across the room from each other” motto. I actually kind of like it. It feels like she’s truly trying to help me by being both a professional and a friend. “To answer your previous question, I don’t think he’ll hate you, Zoë. He’s spent his whole life loving you.”
I try to remember that when I stand up and leave.
My heart is still cracked and hurting, but knowing what I’ll do next keeps it from incinerating into ash.
I wake up to the smell of a familiar sweet citrus fragrance that gets stronger with every breath I take, causing me to sit up and look around my room. My heart slows when I spot my mother standing by my bedroom window, looking out. She’s so still I have to blink a few times to make sure she’s really there. “Mom?” Am I dreaming?
She turns around slowly, her tear-stained cheeks forcing me to throw the comforter off my body and stand.
“Mom, are you okay?”
She shakes her head, not uttering a word.
I walk toward her, and the sound that comes out of her mouth makes me pause. It’s a sound that you know is full of heartbreak. It scares me because my mother is never silent. Raquel Whitmore is known for being vocal about everything on her mind. It’s why my father loves her.
“Is Dad okay? Did something happen?” She breaks out into a sob the second she pulls me into her arms. “Mom, you’re scaring me.”
“He’s fine,” she manages to say. “H-he’s fine.”
I pull back slightly, confused and worried. “What’s going on? You never come to Seattle. Mom?”
My mother shakes her head as her sobs slow to a soft cry. When her eyes reach mine, they shatter every wall I’ve ever built, trying to protect them. Because she knows. She knows.
“I should have known. I should have seen that someone was hurting my baby!” She pulls me back into her arms and cries harder. “I-I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you, Zoë. I didn’t… Why… Why didn’t you tell us?”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know how to feel. For years I’ve kept this from my parents and the moment I tell Owen…
He wouldn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t tell my parents.
Would he?
“Did Owen tell you?”
Mom pulls back a bit, bringing her hands up to cup my face. She looks at me like I’m still her little girl. Like I’m sweet and innocent and her angel.
If only I could see that when I look in the mirror.
“Hilary came over,” she
says, her voice shaky. “S-she wouldn’t stop crying. I didn’t know what she was saying.” Mom brings a hand to her chest, directly over her heart and rubs it roughly. “She said she was so sorry that she couldn’t stop it. When I asked ‘stop what’ she said he…he hurt you. Baby, I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you either.”
I feel something wet hit my cheek and slowly trail down until it falls onto my chest. “Does Dad know?” I whisper.
Mom wipes away my tears and shakes her head no.
A sob escapes my throat when I answer with, “Please don’t tell him. Please.”
We don’t say anything afterward. We just hold each other and cry over the truth that is breaking my mother’s heart. The truth that I tried to keep a secret for this very reason.
I never wanted to hurt the people I love.
Michael is dead.
No one had to know what happened. I’m dealing with it. Sure it’s taking a hell of a long time but I’m getting professional help. This is something I need to overcome.
My mother is heartbroken.
The Stevensons are too.
I’ve shattered our families.
They didn’t need to learn this gut-wrenching news.
They didn’t need to know.
I try to calm Mom down and I’m not really successful but I get her to take a few deep breaths until she’s not gasping for air.
We make our way downstairs, meeting Echo in the kitchen. There are a few burgers with fries from Carl’s Jr sitting on the kitchen table with three shakes sitting around them.
“I grabbed some food,” Echo announces, looking over at my mother. “I got yours with no mustard.”
Mom walks up to Echo and pulls her into a hug. “Thank you, sweetheart.” I hear the sob waiting to escape and I can’t handle it.
“Let’s eat. I’m hungry.” I thank Echo and grab some plates from the cupboard before sitting down.
Mom is the last to finish, I don’t even think she was really hungry. She cried twice while dipping her fries into ketchup. Echo and I reached over and squeezed her hands, silently telling her that we understand how she feels.
Echo leaves ten minutes later, not wanting to impose. She could never.
“The house…the house is almost ready,” Mom murmurs, wiping her eyes. She settles back into the chair and grabs my hand. “Your father is adding a few more things. We thought putting pictures up…” Her eyes drop and she winces. “I’ll look through the pictures before we hang them. We cried seeing how much you’ve grown up.”
“Can I see pictures? Of the house, I mean?”
I want to distract her from the horrible things she might be envisioning. Don’t think about it, Mom. You don’t want to know what he did to me. What he made me do. Please, don’t EVER think about it.
“I want you to be surprised. You’re going to love it, sweetie. It’s…you. You’d never want to leave.”
I smile as I stand and wrap my arms around her. “Some parents wouldn’t want their children to stay inside of the house all day.” When she looks up at me, water filling her sad green eyes, I lean forward and kiss her cheek. “Thank you for accepting my weirdness. Thank you for giving me books to read and fall in love with. They were my escape.”
And that causes her to fall apart in my arms again.
She asks if I’ll think about talking to a therapist. She was surprised to know that I’ve been seeing one already.
“But maybe you need someone else, someone you’ll be more comfortable with,” she encourages.
Clearly if I can’t tell my therapist that I ended someone’s life and almost ended my own that same day then something isn’t right between us. I need someone who can get me to fully open up.
I don’t want to talk about it with my mother though. I want her to go back to thinking my childhood was happy and perfect and full of love.
“I’ll ask if she can find someone for me. I promise.”
“I-I don’t want to lose you.”
I’m not going anywhere.
Mom stands, tilting her head back to look at me. She doesn’t say it but I see it in her eyes. She hates that this happened to me. She hates that a man she trusted broke my trust. She hates that he’s dead because she wants to kill him herself.
I see it all in her eyes.
“I love you, Mom.”
She pulls me into her arms, making me bend forward to fit in her tiny grasp. “I love you so much, angel.”
Hours later when I walk my mother outside and force her into a taxi to take her to the airport, I climb each step with a heavy heart.
They didn’t need to know the truth.
I look up at the darkening sky wishing it’d cry with me. I’ll take rain, lightening, and loud thunderstorms. There’s a storm raging inside me and all I want to do is scream until I can’t scream anymore.
Before I step through the threshold, a chill runs down my spine, causing goose bumps to rise on every inch of my body. I turn around slowly, listening to nothing but the wind howling. My eyes fall on a very handsome, very heartbroken man with forest green eyes.
He’s frozen on the steps leading up to me, one foot on the next step like he was on his way up but stopped when he saw me.
“Zoë,” he breathes.
I shut my eyes and wince at the sting hearing him say my name causes.
He didn’t believe me…
Who would even lie about something like that?
I turn back around and step into the house, trying to shut the door as fast as I can.
“Zo, wait. Please!” I hear him say as he runs up the steps. I shut the door and turn the deadbolt. “Zo, please, open the door.”
I stare at this piece of wood separating us. This is what it has come down to. Two best friends who love each other now nothing more than a faint memory.
“Zoë.”
He’s so close I can practically feel the vibration through the door.
“I miss you so much,” he murmurs. “I-I can’t… Zoë…”
My hand trembles, hovering over the deadbolt, ready to unlock it. What is wrong with me? He hurt me. I hurt him. I can’t open this door.
“I miss you so fucking much,” he says, his voice cracking.
I drop my hand and place my other one on the door, reaching for him even though he can’t see me.
“This doesn’t change my love for you, Zo.” I feel something hit the door and I’d like to think his hand is pressed up against the door, right where mine is. “It just means I need to love you louder.”
I cover my mouth before a sob can escape. He’s always loved that quote. I drop my hand and turn around slumping to the floor, crying for the love this man has for a girl who never deserved it.
“Zo, please open the door.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and count to one hundred.
“Please.”
I blame not having Echo home for what I do next. She wanted to give my mother and I some time alone so she left and said she’d be back later. She’s the one that reminds me that thinking of Owen causes me so much pain I can’t breathe.
She’s not here to stop me.
I get onto my knees and slowly reach up and turn the deadbolt.
I hold my breath for what seems like forever because the doorknob doesn’t turn.
Did he leave?
I wipe my eyes and stand up, slowly opening the door.
Owen’s eyes travel up, not believing that I did in fact open the door. “Zo.” He steps into the house and pulls me against him, kicking the door shut. “Fuck.” He hugs me to the point of almost suffocating me. When he pulls back, he slides his hands up my arms and into my hair.
“I love you. I love you so fucking much, do you know that?”
I blink back tears as I stare into his eyes. Eyes that cripple me.
I missed him so much.
I love him so much.
He suffocates and revives me at the same time. It physically pains me to look at him but it also crushes me when he’s not wit
hin reach.
“I’m so sorry for everything I said that day.” His eyes flood with tears and then he drops to his knees, hugging my legs tightly. “I believe you. I’m sorry for making you think that I didn’t. I was so confused but I believe you.” A muffled sob vibrates throughout my body as he buries his head into my stomach and cries. “I was supposed to protect you. I’m so fucking sorry, Zo.” A louder sob rips through him, and I die slowly. “I hate myself a little more each day seeing what I see when I look in the mirror. I wish I could change this. Me. I wish I looked nothing like him.”
I’m sorry he’s not the man you believed him to be.
We stay like this for a full minute, me holding his head against my stomach, and running my fingers through his hair until it becomes too much and my weakened knees finally give out and I join him on the floor.
I press myself against his chest, wanting his tight hugs again. I want to feel his warmth, his love, and his heartache. I want to feel it all because I put it there.
It is in this moment that I question if we’ll ever be happy again. Truly happy like we used to be when we were just children and adults didn’t become the monsters we feared at night.
Something this dark stays with a person.
It’ll never leave.
It’ll continue to eat away at you until it becomes too much and you’re looking for a way out.
“He was going to hurt her,” I whisper. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if he hurt Ari.”
Zoë, Fourteen years old
It was Owen’s fifteenth birthday and I forgot his present because I was too nervous about being in his house, being around the devil that stripped my soul from my body. Unfortunately, Owen’s father was the only one who could take me back home to retrieve the forgotten present. I would have walked but Michael insisted, making it hard to deny his request without raising suspicions.
My parents were already on their way to the airport for a family emergency. Owen was more important than my drunken uncle who always cried wolf so I begged Mom to let me stay behind. I should have just gone with them.
Let Her Go Page 16
