by Sykes, Julia
I nodded, but I didn’t share her confidence. In truth, I had very little valuable information to offer. I didn’t know the Bastard’s name, I didn’t know where he had held me prisoner, and I didn’t even know what the Mentor looked like. Still, I had given Kate everything I knew. I could only hope that it would be enough.
“I’ve referred you to a psychologist,” Kate informed me. “Dr. Stanger will help you work through what happened. You’ll be able to rebuild your life, Lydia.”
Again, I wasn’t nearly as confident as she sounded. I would never be the same woman I had been before I was taken. And I wasn’t at all sure if I was capable of finding the strength within me to rebuild. My life had been shattered, and even the tiny shards of it seemed to weigh a ton. I wasn’t strong enough to wrestle them back together. Not on my own.
I realized that my fingers were fiddling with the silver chain around my neck.
Yes. I definitely needed to see a psychologist. I had to get my head back on straight. And I couldn’t do that while Master still had a hold on my heart. I needed someone to help me deal with my disturbing obsession with him.
But the idea of purging him from me made my soul ache.
That afternoon, I found myself sifting through boxes of too-big clothes alongside my mom. She had stored everything from my apartment in my childhood bedroom. While every other aspect of my former life seemed subtly different than it had been before I was taken, this room was exactly as I remembered. My twin bed was still made up with the girly, garish purple-and-green duvet that I had chosen long ago, and my beloved autographed Dave Matthews Band poster still hung above my dresser.
“I found this in your chest of drawers when I was cleaning out your apartment.”
I looked up to see that my mom was holding a small, red velvet-covered box. My throat constricted at the jumble of emotions that arose within me at the sight of it.
“Mom…” Her name was a weak protest.
She reached out and gently took me by the hand, pressing the box into my palm and closing my fingers around it. Her eyes were sharp, significant. I knew that look all too well. Mom was about to put her foot down.
“Tucker has been a wreck since you… Since you went missing. He loves you, Lydia.”
My left ring finger burned with the memory of the simple gold band that the box concealed. As though angered by the sensation, Master’s mark on my neck flared even hotter, insistently reminding me of its presence.
“I know,” I said quietly. “I love him too. But I’m not in love with him, Mom. And he’s not in love with me.”
Her eyes softened, but the set of her jaw was still determined. “You might feel like that now, honey. But marriage is forever. The all-consuming love you feel when you first get married grows and changes. It feels different, but it becomes something deeper. Everyone goes through rough patches. Stick through it, and you’ll come out the other side stronger than ever.”
I sighed. I really didn’t want to have this conversation right now. “Tuck and I did grow and change, Mom. We grew into different people. We got married so young. We didn’t even know who we were then. I tried to make it work, but the people we grew to be just aren’t right for one another. I know you think divorce is wrong, but do you really want me to spend the rest of my life in a loveless marriage when I could be happier with someone else?”
She touched her hand to my shoulder caringly. “Of course I want you to be happy, honey. But I think you could be happy with Tucker, if you just open up your heart to him again. When you were… Tucker has had a year to realize what he lost. I know he’ll want to make your marriage work. He doesn’t want to lose you. Not again.”
Anguish gripped my heart. I didn’t want to hurt Tuck. Especially considering all of the hurt I had already caused him. Was he really in love with me? And even if he was, would that love be enough to sustain us forever? Or would we grow bitter over the long years of passionless companionship?
The affection I felt for Tucker filled my chest to the point of aching. I did love him. He would always own a piece of my heart. And the thought of having him out of my life completely, permanently, was almost too painful to bear. If he was in love with me, it would be disgustingly selfish of me to expect him to be in my life while not allowing him to be with me as he truly desired.
I sat down on my bed heavily. “Can I have a minute, Mom?”
She squeezed my shoulder. “Of course, honey. I’ll be in the kitchen. Come down when you’re ready.”
Once she had softly closed the door behind her, I took a deep breath and opened the small box that was still nestled in my palm. The gold band glinted dully in the afternoon light. Nearly eight years of wear had left light scratches across its surface. I thought back to the day Tuck had first slipped it on my finger. Despite the way we had drifted apart, the memory was still sweet.
I had been so nervous that day. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I loved Tucker Chase, but we were so young. Marrying at nineteen had never been part of my plan.
I smiled wryly to myself. If Tuck and I hadn’t both had a rebellious streak a mile wide at the time, we might have dated for years before the beautiful wildness of first love had finally run its course. Our conservative families were proponents of prudence, of abstinence. And Tucker and I were both artistic types with decidedly imprudent dreams. We read Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, and we snuck the occasional joint when our parents were out of the house. Tuck would jam on his guitar and I would draw. And we would make love.
But we were careless in our passion, and two months after high school graduation, I found out I was pregnant. Tuck did the “right” thing by me and proposed. He hadn’t even thought twice.
I had been crying for hours. The little blue plus signs on the pregnancy tests mocked me. They told me I was stupid and irresponsible and had ruined my life.
I touched my hand to my belly. I didn’t feel any different. My body wasn’t telling me that something beautiful and horrific had blossomed inside of me. But all five of those little white sticks yelled it loud and clear.
All of those small plus signs added up to one thing: the destruction of all of my plans and dreams. I wouldn’t be able to go to college. My parents loved me, but once they found out, there was no way they would pay my tuition. What if they kicked me out of the house? Where would I go? What if they didn’t love me anymore?
There was an insistent knock on my bedroom door.
“Lydia, baby, let me in.”
I couldn’t hold back my raw sob at the sound of Tucker’s voice. I had been avoiding his calls all day. I had no idea what I was going to say to him. What if he didn’t love me anymore, either?
Tuck didn’t wait for an invitation; he burst through the door at the sound of my distress. He crossed the room in an instant, joining me where I was sprawled out on my bed and holding me to him tightly. His expression was alarmed, his sweet blue eyes filled with concern. I had fallen in love with those eyes on the first day he had arrived at school during my junior year. They were a deep, dusky blue, soft like well-worn denim.
“What’s wrong, baby? Talk to me.”
“Tuck, I…” I choked on the words. “I’m pregnant.”
I dropped my gaze, unable to face the horror that would swirl in his eyes. I couldn’t bear to see the light of love in them extinguished.
His fingers were instantly beneath my chin, lifting my face up to his. The raw love in his expression took my breath away.
“Marry me, Lydia.”
“Wh-What?”
He pushed himself upright, settling himself on one knee on the bed beside me. He tugged off his class ring and gently took my left hand in his.
“Will you marry me, Lydia?”
“Tuck. You don’t have to -”
“I’ve known that I want to spend the rest of my life with you since I saw you in Art class on my first day at Jones Prep. You’re passionate, Lydia. You’re beautiful and smart. And you have great taste in music.” He gri
nned, that wide, boyish grin that held the joy of innocence untainted by the trials of the real world. “I love you. I know I always will. What’s the difference if we make it official now or four years from now? Marry me, Lydia. Please.”
A mad giggle bubbled up from my throat. Tucker Chase loved me. And I loved him. Of course I wanted to spend my forever with him. There would never be anyone else.
“Yes!” I said emphatically, suddenly giddy. “Yes, of course I’ll marry you, Tuck!”
Beaming, he slid his class ring onto my finger. It was far too big for me. Laughing, he slipped it onto my thumb instead.
“I love you so much, Lydia.”
“I love you too, Tuck.”
Our kiss was a sweet promise of our devotion to one another. It turned feverish as we poured all of our love and longing and joy for our life together into one another. There was a sense of urgency as well, an anxiety that neither of us would openly acknowledge, not even to ourselves.
We made love, our bodies desperate to join, to convince ourselves that our union was all that mattered in the world.
Tuck held me afterward, and the slight trembling of my fingers wasn’t the product of residual passion. My future, so secure and assured only a day before, was suddenly a terrifying unknown.
“I’m scared, Tuck,” I whispered.
“I’m not.”
I studied him skeptically, but all I found was surety in his beautiful eyes.
“I want to have a family with you, Lydia. I’ll get a job. We’ll get a place of our own. I’ll take care of you, baby.”
“But what about Notre Dame?” Tuck was supposed to study for a Music major, and I was going to study Studio Art for my BFA.
“We’ll put it on hold,” he said firmly. “I’ll support us. Once our baby’s born and we’re settled, we can think about school. We’re going to be happy, Lydia. I swear I’ll make you happy.”
Our baby.
Suddenly, the idea of being pregnant wasn’t so terrifying. This was Tuck’s baby. Tuck’s and mine.
A new future unfolded before me. It wasn’t so different from the one I had harbored the day before. Tuck and I would attain our dreams. It would just take a few years longer than we had originally planned. And our baby would be a part of those dreams.
But that beautiful, blissful picture of our little family that Tuck painted for me never existed. I lost the baby only a few weeks after the wedding. We never tried again. And neither of our dreams ever came to fruition.
Chapter 18
Officers Santino and Johnson – the CPD officers who had been assigned to my protective detail that day – drove me from my parents’ house back to Tucker’s.
My parents’ house. Tucker’s house.
I didn’t have a place to call my own anymore. I didn’t belong anywhere.
My mind flashed to a starkly black-and-white apartment. Bare of sentiment but for my drawings hung on the wall. A pang shot through my heart at the memory of my unbridled joy on the morning Master had asked me to put them on display.
I wondered what had happened to them. Had Master kept them? Had they ever really meant anything to him? Or were they simply a means to an end, his interest sprung from his desire to help me recover rather than true emotion?
I jerked my fingers away from the silver chain around my neck. My head was enough of a mess without thinking about Master. I had to deal with Tucker now.
I had to try to make things work with him. After everything he had given up for me – his dreams, his freedom – I owed him that. I stared down at the gold band on my finger as I unlocked the front door to the townhouse.
“Lydia!” Tucker sounded slightly alarmed when I opened the door. He practically leapt to his feet from where he had been sitting on the couch. The woman sitting beside him drew away from him hastily as well, her cheeks flushing slightly.
“Becs?” I said her name questioningly, but I recognized my best friend instantly.
Rebecca Thomas was as beautiful as ever: short and busty with olive skin and a silky curtain of black hair. Her soulful dark brown eyes widened at the sight of me.
“L,” she breathed my nickname.
She quickly blinked away her moment of shock at my altered appearance and rushed over to me. She was already crying by the time her arms closed around me.
“Oh my god, Lydia!” She sobbed into my shoulder. I returned her hug with equal fierceness. Becs had been in my life since I was nine years old. We knew one another better than I even knew Tucker. She had held my hand through the pregnancy, the miscarriage. She had let me crash at her apartment when my marriage started to fall apart.
As soon as the familiar scent of her Coco Mademoiselle perfume enfolded me, I was transported back three years.
The wind buffeted my hair into wild tangles around my head as I drove down I-94 at sixty miles per hour with the windows down. Rebecca rode in the passenger seat, practically bouncing with giddy excitement.
“Come on, L!” Becs insisted. “Punch it!”
We were road-tripping to Detroit for a Ben Folds Five concert, and in her mind, we couldn’t get there soon enough. But I wasn’t going to break the speed limit. Especially not in my dad’s old Buick sedan. For some unfathomable reason, he was obsessed with the beast of a car, and I wasn’t about to risk damaging it.
I shook my head and shot her an imperious smile
“Sorry, B. Driver’s rules.”
She rolled her eyes at me, scoffing. “Well, if you get to control the speed, I get to control the music.”
She reached forward and fiddled with the audio controls, switching from my Guster CD to a Top 40 radio station. Miley Cyrus’ nasal voice instantly filled the car. I groaned in protest.
“God, B. Put Guster back on.”
She just grinned at me evilly and proceeded to “put her hands up” because they were “playing her song.”
“Speed up, and I’ll make it stop,” she stipulated before throwing herself full-force into tormenting me.
She sang shrilly, nodding her head “like yeah,” and moving her hips “like yeah.”
What the hell did that even mean, anyway?
It meant my best friend appeared to be having some sort of fit in my passenger seat.
“Okay!” I capitulated loudly as I pressed down on the gas pedal. “Okay, you win!”
I tried and failed to hold a glare. We both burst into a fit of giggles as Becs followed through with her end of the bargain. I heaved a dramatic sigh of relief when “What You Call Love” blared from the speakers once again.
The little exchange had seemed so insignificant at the time; I hadn’t even realized I had filed it away in my lexicon of memories. But there it was, sharp and sweet.
My humming “Party in the USA” so happily when I had hung my drawings in Master’s living room suddenly made more sense. I hated pop music, but I associated that particular song with joy.
Even when I had been keeping Lydia Chase resolutely locked away, denying her existence, Becs had still been there with me.
And that was Becs all over: insistent to the point of being irritating. Usually intentionally so. She was teasing and bluntly assertive and annoying as hell.
She was the best friend a girl could ask for.
I don’t know how long we stood there, holding each other, reassuring ourselves that the other was real. Eventually, Becs pulled away from me with a watery laugh.
“Don’t let the tears fool you; I’m really happy to see you, L.”
Laughter burst forth from me as well, the sound of it almost shocking me. It was the first time I had laughed since I had left Master.
God. He couldn’t keep popping into my brain like this. I was constantly comparing everything in my newly re-discovered life to the life I had known with him. But that wasn’t really a life at all, was it? I had been a shadow of a person, a mere extension of Master’s soul.
But being a part of him had brought me bliss more pure than I had ever known in my entire exist
ence as Lydia Chase.
And that was wrong. So very, very wrong.
I shook it off.
Later. I would deal with him later.
“Can I stay with you tonight?” Becs asked eagerly, her hand still clutching my arm as though she couldn’t bring herself to stop touching me.
I didn’t want her to stop. She was the sister I never had, and I never wanted to lose her again. A small part of me feared that if she left my sight, I would forget her again. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t do that to myself.
But I also couldn’t stand the idea that she might bear witness to the nightmares that I knew would torment me in the night. It was one thing to allow my mother to hold me as I thrashed and cried; she had been taking care of me since I was I child, and I couldn’t deny myself the temptation of her maternal embrace on that first night back in my old life.
Becs and I were equals. We had leaned on one another throughout the years, but this was something different, something deeper. I never wanted her to know the extremes of the trauma I had gone through, just as I couldn’t bear it if Tucker suspected just how torturous my existence had been over the last year. It was jarring to return to my old life; the subtle changes in everyone I had loved were difficult to take in. I didn’t want our relationships to change, as they inevitably would if they discovered just how messed up I was inside. If I was ever going to re-assimilate myself into their lives, their hearts, I couldn’t allow them to see me as the broken victim that I was.
“B, I… I think I need some time alone.”
I need some time to fall to pieces without you witnessing, without you realizing just how shattered I am.
Her face fell, and I squeezed her hand reassuringly.
“Let’s have coffee together tomorrow afternoon. Please?”
She smiled at me weakly, her eyes filling with sad understanding. That understanding didn’t quite erase the hurt that lurked within them.
“Okay, Lydia. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She pulled me into another fierce hug. “I’m so glad to have you back, L. A part of me still can’t believe you’re real. You have no idea how much I missed you.”
