Beyond Resistance (The Ransom Series)

by A. T. Douglas

  31

  In the week I’ve given Lily to adjust to her new home, I’ve been secretly observing her. I want to know every single thing that bothers her, every nightmare she has, anything that makes her frown or show even a sign of being down or upset. If I can understand what’s wrong, I can better help with fixing her.

  I’ve learned there’s a lot to fix.

  I’m grateful to have Lily here in my house constantly at my side. She’s happy here, but she’s not back to her normal self. The lively, energetic woman who existed before everything that happened with Derek is gone or at least temporarily in hiding. It’s become my life’s mission to find that person within her again, to bring her back out into the world to brighten it with her presence and personality and life.

  Since Lily’s arrival here, we haven’t talked much about what happened in the time we were apart when she was with Derek or during the investigation and media frenzy. As much as it’s easier not to talk about it, I’m beginning to realize that this may be at the core of what’s holding Lily back from healing.

  “We should talk,” I suggest carefully as I roll to my side on the bed to see Lily’s face.

  She’s staring up at the ceiling and doesn’t turn to me when she responds. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “We should talk about what happened,” I clarify. “It would do us both some good, I think. It will help you move on.”

  “There’s nothing to move on from,” Lily retorts in an emotionless voice. “I closed that chapter. I’m moving on to the next.”

  I prop my head up with my elbow on my pillow and stare at her until she finally looks at me. “You were held captive in a relationship for a month by a man who was supposed to be your friend. He took advantage of you. He used your body…” My chest clenches as I can’t even finish the thought. “He hurt you in so many ways. You can’t just shut yourself off from that and pretend it never happened.”

  Lily’s face contorts into a grimace as she turns her head away from me and rolls to her side. Her silent tears quickly develop into painful sobs, and I immediately feel like an ass for pushing her too far with this conversation. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid since bringing her here.

  Wrapping my arm around her stomach, I conform my body to hers from behind and hold her gently. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be rushing you like this.” I nuzzle my face into her hair, wishing I could get inside her head to know what she’s thinking.

  We stay like this in silence for a long moment until Lily’s sobs diminish. When she’s stopping crying completely, she sits up in the bed and wipes away her remaining tears before looking at the small window in our room.

  “I need some fresh air,” she says in a raspy voice without looking at me.

  I’m immediately up out of the bed. “Outside it is, then.”

  We get dressed in layers of clothing to combat the chill that we know awaits us in the early winter air outside. Lily only manages a quick goodbye to my parents sitting at the dining room table before she walks out the front door. They give me a worried glance, but I return it with as much reassurance in my expression as I can muster before I follow Lily outside.

  She’s steps ahead of me, already making her way toward the entrance of the path into the woods that we’ve traveled a few times since her arrival here. As I watch her move one foot in front of the other with no sway to her hips and no bounce in her step, I realize something needs to change today or the Lily I knew will continue to slip away.

  I can’t let this consume her for a moment longer.

  I need to show her it’s okay to open up to me.

  I need her to understand how dangerous it is to keep it all bottled up inside.

  With a few quick strides, I catch up to Lily and grasp her hand in mine as we step onto the path together. I don’t push her to talk. I let the sound of the cold wind through the trees fill the otherwise silence between us the entire way to the small clearing in the woods and then to the rock bench along the creek.

  Lily approaches the rock, ready to throw herself up onto it but stops when I tug her hand in the opposite direction. She looks at me with confusion.

  “Let’s keep going,” I suggest, encouraging her to continue down the path with me. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  Lily seems hesitant to follow but ultimately complies. The silence firms itself into ice between us the entire way to our destination but finally shatters when we get there.

  “The waterfall,” Lily whispers as we approach the area where the stream throws itself off the rock cliff into the pool of water below.

  I carefully lead her to the small flat area of dirt and withering grass within a few feet of the edge of the rock cliff. We sit down together, sitting cross-legged in front of each other with the edge of the rocks to our side.

  I take a deep breath, working myself up to say the words that I hope will help Lily come out of this impenetrable barrier she’s put up around herself. In my hesitation, I realize if I wait too long to start talking, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get out what I need to say.

  “After you threw me out of your house, I was devastated,” I begin with a shaky voice, my mind screaming at me to leave these memories locked away inside even though I know I need to let them resurface. “I was lost. My future evaporated before my eyes, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I felt completely worthless again, and I promised myself never to go back to that place in my life.”

  Lily’s eyes are on me, but I can’t manage to get through this and hold her gaze. I glance at her only briefly before bowing my head and plowing forward with what I need to tell her.

  “My parents tried to help me, offering all their love and support, but I only pushed them away. I ran for it. I came out here to this very spot and was reminded of the amazing times you and I shared together at this waterfall.” A tiny smile briefly turns up my lips before I look out toward the rock cliff and feel the expression vanish. “The hopelessness turned to numbness, and I liked the numbness. I thought I could embrace that lack of feeling and make everything else go away.” My voice trembles, and I have to will my body to continue talking. “I was going to throw myself off this cliff into the shallow rocks below. I was ready to end it all right here, but my dad stopped me. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back, and when I realized the full extent of his devastation at seeing me almost throw my life away in front of him, I knew I had to let my parents in. I needed their love and support even though every instinct I had told me to push them away. The power of family and love is too great to resist. We have to give in to it. It’s the only way to find happiness. It’s the only way to be free.”

  I continue to stare out over the edge of the rocks, the stream rushing by at their side in its own desperate leap off the cliff. I’m surprised by the touch of warm skin to my cheek. A hand forces my head to turn, and my eyes lock on to Lily’s and the tiny waterfall of tears pouring out of her eyes. She holds my gaze for only a moment longer before her expression crumbles into deep sobs as she pulls us both to kneeling and envelopes me with her embrace. As her tears come harder and faster, she grips on to me more desperately. Even though I know she’s trying to support me right now, I hold her back with just as much strength, wishing I could absorb all her pain through our touch.

  “I almost lost you,” Lily whispers over my shoulder shakily. “The world can’t lose you, Dante.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I reassure her, holding on just a little tighter.

  She pulls back from me and quickly wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket as we both sit back on the ground. Her face remains tipped downward, but her eyes flicker up to meet mine with the hint of a smile. When she looks away, the brief moment of the reemergence of the Lily I knew fades as her expression turns somber again.

  “Derek approached me after work that day,” she begins, and I immediately shut out everything else around me to focus on what she’s saying. “He said he had something important to tell
me. I was worried, so I followed him just down the road from the tavern to a clearing where we could talk.”

  She swallows hard. With each passing second I can see just how difficult it is for Lily to talk about this with me, so I take her hand between us and give her every bit of support I can through our touch.

  “When he told me he knew your identity was fake and you were hiding something, I didn’t believe he actually had anything on you. I thought it was just another desperate attempt to mess with my relationship so he could make his own move. It wasn’t until he mentioned the connection to your grandfather that I knew he had exactly the leverage he needed over me, and I didn’t know what else to do. I was willing to do anything to keep his mouth shut and protect you.”

  I don’t dare interrupt her or move or do anything more to stop Lily’s retelling of what happened. I just continue to hold her hand between us, my offered lifeline to keep her from drifting away as she wades further into her difficult memories.

  “He demanded I break up with you. He ripped the necklace you gave me from my neck and pulled me against him and gave me the ultimatum that I be his girlfriend or he’d go to the police and the media and anyone else who would listen to tell them of his discovery about you, so I did it. I drove home and walked in that house and broke us both completely to pieces, saying the most vile things I could because I knew the only way I could get you to move on was to have you hate me for what I said. It was the hardest damn thing I ever did in my life.”

  As the words tumble out of Lily’s mouth, the tears come faster from her eyes. I lean forward to try to take her in my arms, but she waves me away, letting me know she can get through this. I take both her hands in mine instead, and she grips me back just as tightly as she continues at a rapid pace.

  “It was like we were playing some fucked-up form of house,” she cries with the weight of all her pain showing in every single syllable she speaks. “Derek moved in at my place. When I wasn’t at work, he expected me home. When I was home, he expected me to cook for him and dote on him and kiss him and love him but it all felt wrong because I didn’t want to do any of those things. All I could think about was you and how I had hurt you and how much I wanted to be doing those things with you instead.” She pauses and turns completely still, staring at the ground beside us with a completely expressionless and emotionless face. “Eventually he moved on from just wanting kisses. He would touch me, and when I resisted, he’d threaten you again and remind me of my place. The touching quickly turned into wanting more, and that’s when it all started to fall apart.

  “At first he wouldn’t use me for sex. He wanted me to give it to him. He made sure I was the one willingly throwing myself on top of him and letting him inside me, and it broke me. Every time I did it I felt shame and disgust and I couldn’t stop crying while I did it. He hated that. He hated my tears more than anything, so he started to take over and pin me beneath him and hit me until I stopped crying. He thought that’s what made the tears stop, but it wasn’t. The only thing I could do to stop them was to close my eyes and imagine you inside me. It was enough to get me through it each time until the days before I called you. Derek wanted to ensure I was his forever, so he demanded I become pregnant with his child. I tried to resist him. Even when he started to get violent with me, I kept up the fight, but when he dialed the police and had them show up at our door when I continued to deny him, I had no choice but to give in. That night he threw me against the edge of the dresser and fucked me from behind without protection, and I had to let him. There was nothing I could do.”

  The more I hear of Lily’s story, the harder it becomes to keep my breathing under control and my heart rate down. I knew from the beginning I wasn’t going to like what she had to say, but this is almost too much. Hearing the full extent of how Derek slowly destroyed the woman I love is almost more than I can bear to hear, but I need to be here for her. She needs to talk about this, and I need to listen.

  “I snuck out of work the next day and went to the drugstore. I took a morning-after pill, but I knew that was only a temporary solution. I couldn’t keep that up forever. I begged for a double-shift at work that day and made it home late enough that Derek wouldn’t ask for sex, and in the middle of that night when I couldn’t sleep, an idea popped in my head. I remembered your parents’ story and the desperate lengths they went to in order to ensure that psychopath couldn’t impregnate your mom.”

  Lily’s pained eyes meet mine, and it only causes my heart to break for us both even more.

  “You were created out of their love. An incredible person came out of that horrible situation, and I thought I could accomplish the same thing. I called you to the woods behind the tavern that day because I could think of no better way to protect you and keep a part of you with me than to have your child growing inside me, created out of our love for each other even though we couldn’t be together, but you knew I was up to something and wouldn’t let me go through with it. That was my only play. I had no backup plan to fall on, so when you rejected me, I left. By the time I got home, I still had no idea what I was going to do next, but it didn’t matter. Derek was there waiting for me. He made a surprise stop by the tavern as one of his attempts to keep tabs on me, and when he saw your car there with mine, he immediately went home and waited for me.

  “I barely got in the door before he slammed my head against the table and demanded to know what you were doing at the tavern. I tried to play it off with anything I could think of, but he saw right through my lies. He worked himself into a rage, and before I knew it, he had me pinned to the wall with his hands around my neck. I clawed at him and pulled at his arms with everything I had, but they wouldn’t budge. By the time I managed to get the switchblade out of my back pocket, my vision was turning red. I opened the blade and plunged it into his chest. His hands immediately let go of my neck and I fell to the floor desperately trying to breathe just before Derek hit the floor next to me. His eyes were wide and his face was white, but everything else was red. There was so much blood coming from his chest. I pressed my hand over the wound, but it did nothing to stop the flow of blood. Derek couldn’t speak, but his eyes were pleading with me to help him…”

  Lily’s voice trails off just as her hands begin to shake within mine. The rest of her body remains completely still as she goes quiet for a long moment, the rushing sound of the nearby waterfall the only thing to fill the silence between us.

  “I didn’t do anything,” she whispers, her words seeming to drift out from her mouth on a breath rather than actually being spoken. “He was bleeding out in front of me, but I didn’t call for an ambulance. For a brief moment, I thought I saw the man I used to be friends with lying on the floor in front of me and I wanted nothing more than to save him, then I remembered everything he did to me and threatened to do to you. I thought ahead to my future and how I wasn’t sure I could survive living with a monster like him. I watched the life fade out of him right there in front of me with my palm pressed to his chest and the blade that caused his wound still clenched in my other hand. I watched him die. I killed him.”

  “Lily,” I implore, demanding her attention so that she’ll actually absorb and understand what I’m going to say to her. “There’s nothing you could have done. The medical examiner confirmed the blade pierced his heart. He bled out in minutes. Even if you called for an ambulance, they never would have arrived in time to save him.”

  “But I didn’t make the call. I let him die right in front of me. What kind of person does that? Who lets that happen?”

  “He made you that way. He destroyed you.” My chest tightens as I realize just how true that statement is and how all of this happened just because Lily was protecting me. “You went through a lot. He was beating you, practically raping you. You were the victim here, Lily.”

  She shakes her head vehemently as her words explode from her. “I had the blade in my hand. I drove it through his chest. He’s gone forever. How the hell does that make me the victim?”


  “The Derek you knew was gone a long time ago. Think about what he did to you. Think about the position he put you in and what he was asking of you. He was a monster attacking you and forcing himself on you. All you did was fight back.” My explanation doesn’t seem to be getting through to her, so I say the words that I’ve been afraid to say or even think since the moment I walked into the bloody scene at Lily’s house almost a month ago. “He could have killed you.”

  Lily doesn’t immediately move or respond. I can see the debate in her mind playing out on her face. She’s torn between guilt and acceptance, and I want nothing more than to make her understand that Derek’s death truly was a tragic case of self-defense just as the police and media reported.

  With a deep inhale and exhale of breath, Lily looks at me with tears still streaming down her face, but I can see and feel some of the tension releasing from her body. “It’s just going to take me time to get over this, to get over everything.”

  I nod at her with a small but reassuring smile at this sign of progress. “You take all the time you need. Just know I’m here for you. Keep letting me in to help you. I don’t want you to have to go through this alone.”

  “I love you,” she says with the most strength I’ve heard from her in this entire conversation. “That’s the one thing that never left me throughout this whole ordeal. I never stopped loving you and never will.”

  “Come here,” I suggest as I motion her to me. She scoots over until she’s sitting between my legs with her back pressed up against my chest. I gently encircle my arms around her and bring our heads together with my chin resting on her shoulder. With all the warmth and comfort I can offer, I hold her until her breathing becomes steady and even. When I know she’s completely relaxed, I whisper, “I love you, Lily. Every single part of you. You’re my forever, and you always will be.”

  I can’t see her face, but I can feel the smile that forms there. I hope it’s that signature smile that I’ve loved since the moment I first saw Lily all those months ago. I’ll do anything to make that smile keep appearing more and more each day for the months and years to come.