“Wait. Hear me out—”
“Drink first,” Cherise ordered, topping off her shot glass.
Wren licked the salt, knocked back the tequila, and bit down on the lime wedge. A shudder rolled over her, but her skin tingled, making it easier to say the words.
“His folks… You should have seen the way they looked at me today.” Wren shook her head as the memory stung her again. “It was like they were staring at a criminal. His father actually said I looked like an addict.”
Cherise scowled. “But you’re not an addict. You’ve never even smoked pot. You didn’t try your first drink until you were twenty-one. I know. I was there.”
Wren sighed. “You don’t understand—”
Cherise put a hand up. “Hang on, I have to drink now…”
“What? Oh, sorry.” She watched Cherise toss back the shot and silently scream against the lime. “At least we’re even.”
Cherise nodded, her eyes still shut. “Okay,” she panted, “keep going.”
“It’s not so much how they saw me,” Wren began, struggling to put it in the words. “It’s more that I know what they see is the truth.”
“Bull—”
Wren threw up a hand. “Wait, before you say it, let me explain while I’m still sober.”
Rolling her eyes, Cherise sighed. “Okay, fine. Explain.”
Wren took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’m not an addict, but I’m not clean either.”
Cherise met her words with a frown. “Wren, what happened to you wasn’t your fault. You’re innocent. You were a child.”
“I was innocent,” Wren corrected. “But something innocent can be tainted, and that’s what happened to me. I’m not innocent anymore.”
Silence.
Cherise wasn’t calling bullshit. Because she couldn’t.
“If I ever had a chance of being washed clean after what Darryl did to me, it died with Laurie.”
The woman beside her narrowed her eyes at Wren and stared hard. “Bullshit!”
“That’s the truth, and you—”
“Aah-aah-aah!” Cherise stuck out a palm again before reaching for the tequila. She filled both their shot glasses. “I’m preloading so you don’t interrupt what I’m about to say.”
Lick. Shoot. Suck.
Wren shuddered and wiped her mouth with a knuckle. The room seemed to go a little fuzzy at the edges. “I won’t be able to keep this up much longer.”
With a shiver, Cherise shook her head. “Me either. Okay… what was I saying?” She frowned at Wren and seemed to pick up the thread. “Oh, right. If you believed that, why did you get the phoenix tattoo?” Cherise lifted her hand and tried to aim it at Wren’s chest, but it bobbed in front of her in a loose circle.
Maybe Cherise’s hand bobbed, or maybe her vision wobbled. Wren couldn’t tell.
“Because I made it past twenty-three,” she said as though this was obvious. Her words might have slurred, but she couldn’t be sure. Her tongue was definitely heavier.
“What?” Cherise squinted at her. “What does that mean?”
“Laurie was twenty-three when she died. My Uncle Lyle was twenty-three when he died,” she explained. “The day I turned twenty-four, I started the phoenix tattoo because I’d outlived them. It felt sort of like a big deal for my family… like we were coming out of the ashes.”
Cherise narrowed her eyes at Wren, but it seemed to happen in slow motion. “There’s more to it than that. I can tell when you’re holding back.”
Wren sighed. Even with three shots down, Cherise knew her too well.
“I knew then that what killed Laurie wasn’t going to kill me.”
“Heroin?” Cherise asked, frowning.
“Not heroin,” Wren said, shaking her head and losing her balance just a little. “Heroin was the instrument of her death, but it’s not what killed her. She couldn’t live with what happened to me… with what she allowed to happen to me.”
Cherise said nothing, but her gaze never faltered.
“For a while… for years, I wasn’t sure I could live with it, either. I wasn’t sure if it would take me too,” Wren said the words aloud for the first time. “That’s what the phoenix is about. It’s sort of a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let that shit kill me.”
Cherise’s hand shot forward and grabbed Wren’s. “You’d better not let that shit kill you, girl.”
Wren smiled at this, squeezing back at the hand that held hers. “I’m not planning on it.”
Cherise looked at her hard for a moment. “But you know what? It can kill you in different ways. If you let it steal something good that should be yours, you’re letting the shit win.”
Pulling her hand away, Wren flopped back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. The room tilted, so she picked her head up again. “Lee Hawthorne shouldn’t be mine.”
“Bullshit.”
“I might puke if I do another shot.”
Cherise rolled her eyes. “Lightweight. Fine. Just listen then. That guy is crazy about you. When I sat across from you two at Dwyer’s, his eyes were on you the whole time.” She leaned forward and grabbed Wren’s hand again. “The look on his face… it was like he was having the time of his life just eating breakfast with you.”
In spite of herself, Wren’s smile broke free. She’d seen that look. She’d felt its power. It had washed over her like a warm rain.
“And that look right there,” Cherise said, pointing in her face. “That’s what you looked like when I caught you staring at him. It was so cute, I almost barfed, and I want you to have that forever.”
Wren looked down at their hands. “I can’t. I’d always feel like I was ruined… like I carried a stain.”
“So clean it off,” Cherise whispered.
Wren felt her face fall. “I don’t know how.”
At that moment, her phone chimed.
Cherise reached for it, but Wren snatched it up just in time. “Um, mine, thank you.” She looked at the screen.
She shouldn’t have looked.
Lee: It’s humbling, you know? You disappear on me for a couple of hours, and I have no peace. I’m completely at your mercy. Please tell me you’re okay.
Guilt twisted in her heart. Lee would start a twenty-four-hour shift at 6:00 p.m. He really needed to be resting up for it. Ignoring him, she realized, was just selfish and cruel. She held her breath and typed.
Wren: I’m okay. With Cherise.
His response was immediate.
Lee: Thank God. Thank you. Can I come get you?
His plea broke her heart and made her smile at the same time.
“What?” Cherise hissed, trying to see the screen.
Wren pulled her phone closer.
Wren: I need some space.
Lee: Texting sucks. If I could hear your voice, I’d know if you meant you needed some time when you said you needed some space, or if that really meant don’t come near me again.
Wren sighed. She was hurting him, and she hated it.
Wren: I need some space.
She’d told him to give her space, and yet she waited to see if he’d text something more. Wren felt Cherise’s eyes on her, but she wouldn’t take her own from the screen.
Lee: You own me. You might as well know it.
Breath tore from her throat. “Oh, Lee,” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes.
Cherise picked up the tequila bottle and poised it over her shot glass.
Wren nodded.
“If you leave that man, I may never stop drinking.”
“Just pour,” Wren said.
“I LET HIM do that to me for four months.”
Wren stared at Cherise’s bedroom ceiling as they both curled under a sapphire duvet. The only light came from the TV, making shadows dance over the walls. It was almost midnight. The tequila had worn off hours ago, but Wren didn’t want to sleep.
Cherise raised the remote to pause the fourth episode of Buffy. They were hitting all the great ones, and
“Hush” had just started. The two sinister, smiling demons opened their magic box and stole the voices of everyone in Sunnydale. No one could speak. No one could scream for help. Everyone in Buffy’s dorm had just awoken voiceless when Wren spoke.
“You were six, Wren. You don’t get to blame yourself for that.”
Wren shook her head. “I could have said something, but I didn’t. Because I knew it was already too late.”
“Too late for what?” Cherise asked, mystified.
“Too late for me to be good.”
Cherise turned to her in the darkness. “That’s crazy, you know.”
She sighed. “But it’s not, really. It’s true. Do you know the first thing everyone asked me after Darryl was arrested?” She didn’t wait for her best friend to answer. “Why hadn’t I told them what was happening? That one question — that Laurie asked, that Mamaw asked, that the police asked — made it clear I’d had power to stop it, so if I hadn’t stopped it, then I was, in part, responsible for it happening. I victimized myself. There’s a part of me that is just as bad as Darryl. And I knew that when I was six.”
“Wren…” She could hear the tears in Cherise’s voice. Her best friend’s hand slid across the mattress and grabbed hers. “…you can’t believe that.”
“I do believe that. Why didn’t I start screaming the moment he touched me, Cherise?” Her lungs burned with shame, and her throat swelled with regret.
“Because you were a child! And he was a monster.” Cherise closed in and pulled her into a hug.
At the loving touch, Wren let go and sobbed.
“I still knew it wasn’t supposed to happen, and I just lay there and let it.” She cried into Cherise’s hair. “That’s why I will never be free of this. I will never be clean. How can I be with Lee if I am never clean?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
HE NEEDED MORE babies.
Lee had been at the hospital for more than six hours, and he’d delivered one baby. Just one. When Wren told him she needed space, Lee couldn’t wait to go into work so he could think about something besides his failure to protect the woman he loved, and the sickening feeling in his gut that told him he’d lost her for good.
But dwelling on his misery seemed to be his fate. Lee knew the odds were against him. February was statistically the slowest month in maternity wards nationwide, but May pulled a close second.
Still, one baby in six hours was downright odd. Any other night, and he would have welcomed it. He would have camped out in the bunkroom and relished the chance to sleep, but tonight, lying on the bottom bunk in the darkest corner of the room brought him no relief. Sleep had abandoned him.
Because Wren was hurting, and he hated it.
Space. That’s what she wanted, so he had to give it to her. Even if it drove him nuts. He’d rather have kept calling her, exorcising his guilt onto her voicemail and maybe nailing the chance to actually talk to her. But she’d have thought him crazy — if she didn’t already.
Still, Lee dug out his phone in the off chance she’d texted him in the last ten minutes and he hadn’t heard it. Of course, there was nothing, but he found himself opening his camera roll instead.
It held three pictures of Wren. He hadn’t looked back at any of them after snapping each one. It wasn’t much, but, at the moment, Lee gave thanks he’d taken any. He was in love. He had it bad. And when he tapped the thumbnail of the first, his breath caught at her beauty.
There, in the front seat of his Jeep, Wren sat with Victor in her lap after they’d come off the lake. Lee remembered the moment he’d snapped it. He’d just finished securing the kayak, and he was about to take Wren home for the first time. In the picture, her chin angled down toward Victor, but her piercing green eyes were tilted up to him. She wasn’t smiling, but her face was soft, her eyes knowing. They were going to make love. It was inevitable. And her look held a welcome.
The second picture he’d taken hours later. The image made him laugh. Victorious, Wren took a celebratory bite of pizza and raised her ping-pong paddle in triumph after besting him the first time. Even mid-bite, she was laughing, looking carefree and at home in the new world they’d created. A world he wanted to live in for the rest of his life.
Lee was about to flip to the next shot when the phone rang in his hand, and her name filled the screen.
“Wren?” Lee bolted up, smacking his head on the top bunk. “Ow!”
“No, it’s Cherise,” the unfamiliar voice whispered.
His breath stilled. “Is she all right?”
“Yes,” she said, still whispering. “She’s asleep in my room. I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be calling you. I’m violating every commandment in the Best Friend Bible, but…”
Cherise sounded desperate, and Lee’s felt his armpits prickle with fear.
“But what?”
“She’s… she’s a mess. I’ve never seen her like this. She feels like it was her fault.”
“What? No!” Lee protested. “It was totally my fault. My dad—”
“No, no,” Cherise hissed. “Not that. The shit that happened to her when she was a kid. Darryl the Dick.”
Lee got to his feet, his jaw clenching at the sound of that name. “Darryl — the pedophile?” he growled.
“Yes. She feels like she’s to blame in a way. Like she could have stopped it.” Cherise’s voice sounded pinched as if she might cry. “She keeps saying she’s unclean.”
Shock washed from his forehead to his gut. “But that’s…” Crazy? Messed up? Wrong?
Normal.
Sexual-abuse-survivor-guilt was normal, not just normal, but almost universal. Lee slumped back down onto the bunk with a sigh. He should have known. He should have seen it as soon as she’d told him. Lee wasn’t a psychiatrist, but he’d covered it in his psyche rotation. Survival guilt manifested for all sorts of reasons — some that even helped to protect victims — but it could also be destructive.
But when she told him what happened to her, Lee hadn’t been thinking about Wren as a patient. She was his girlfriend. His love. And he’d responded viscerally. Vomit and violence… in that order. Easing her fears and helping her build trust with him had been his biggest concerns.
“It’s common,” he muttered finally. “It happens a lot.”
Cherise blew her breath out in disgust. “Well, it’s ruining her life. That’s why she bolted on you. She said the way your folks looked at her only reflected how she sees herself. That she’s not good enough for you.”
Lee felt punched in the stomach.
Cherise groaned in frustration. “She needs help. That’s why I’m calling. That’s the only reason I’m going behind her back.”
“I get that.” Lee appreciated her loyalty, grateful that the woman he loved was at least safe tonight with someone who cared so much about her.
“She needs help,” she said again. “And she’s got it bad for you, so you’d better not give up on her.”
“I won’t give up,” Lee swore. “Not ever.”
He heard her breathe in relief. “Okay, so what do we do?”
Lee stood again and began pacing the bunkroom. “Do you think she’d be willing to see somebody?”
“A shrink?” The doubt in her voice left little room for misinterpretation. “Hell no. When that shit went down, social workers tried to remove her from her home, even from her grandparents. It was fucked up. She had to go to mandatory counseling for years, and that just pissed her the hell off.”
This didn’t surprise Lee at all. Not the fact that Child Protective Services tried to take Wren or her resulting resentment. That happened all too often, and it sometimes reinforced survivor guilt. Still, Wren was an adult now. Being in control might make it easier. And she didn’t have to be alone if she trusted him to help her.
Would she trust him to help her?
“Let me see what I can do,” Lee said, striking an idea. “Can I call you tomorrow?”
Lee wrote down Cherise’s number, thanked her, a
nd left the bunkroom. He checked with the charge nurse to see if any deliveries were imminent, and when he learned that there were still none, he headed for the elevators.
The Rape Crisis Center served all of Lafayette Parish, and it was housed on the second floor of UMC. The hospital unofficially tried to keep it staffed with female doctors and nurses, but Lee had covered a shift there twice during his residency, and he liked and respected the director. The center kept at least one doctor, nurse, and social worker on site around the clock, seven days a week.
When Lee entered the office, he was relieved to find no police officer by the desk waiting to take a statement, and the door to the exam area stood open. The social worker — one he recognized — came through the office door wearing a puzzled look.
“Hi, Dr…” She drew the title out as she scanned his badge. “…Hawthorne. What can I do for you?”
He read her badge as well, remembering the name from his last stint at the center. “Lee, please… Sheila, do you have a minute?”
Keeping Wren’s identity private, Lee told Sheila Thornton the basics. He had a friend who’d suffered months of sexual abuse as a child, who’d lost her mother shortly after, and who was dealing with survivor guilt now in her mid-twenties.
As he spoke, Sheila nodded, her face clouding with concern at all of the details. “She’d benefit from compassion therapy,” she said once he’d finished.
“Compassion therapy?”
“Well, it’s self-compassion really. The survivors need to develop compassion for themselves. For who they were when the abuse happened and who they are now,” she explained. “It takes time, but it’s very effective. Survivor guilt, shame, and self-blame affect adult victims of rape and abuse, but, in victims of childhood abuse, the wounds go deeper.”
Lee took it in, ready for whatever needed to happen. “I want to help her. Can you give me a referral for somebody in town? Somebody you trust?”
Sheila smiled. “Absolutely.” She stepped to one of the desks and came back with a business card. “Evelyn Reed. She’s great. Your friend will like her.”
Lee took the card, and, for the first time since that awful morning, he felt something close to hope.
IT HAD TAKEN four days — four of the longest days of his life — to work out everyone’s schedule, but things were finally coming together. His residency had officially ended. Lee hadn’t seen or spoken to Wren since Sunday — giving her the space she wanted — and in that time he’d learned that longing could be almost as maddening as grief.
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