The Promise of Christmas

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “It’s just…well, when that happened with Jonathan today, I realized you’re the one person I have to talk to about this.”

  “Okay.”

  “When it was just about the marriage proposal I wasn’t going to.”

  So much for his assurances to himself, as he’d fallen asleep the night before, that Leslie would confide in him as soon as she’d had a chance to rest.

  “But you’re Jonathan’s guardian, responsible for him and his well-being, and you have a right to know that I might not be good for him.”

  What? It took everything he had to keep his mouth shut.

  “The reason I can’t marry you, can’t marry anyone, is because I’m frigid.”

  Kip cleared his throat. Kept his hand steady. He had to disagree with her. “What gives you that idea?”

  “It’s not an idea. It’s just something I know.”

  “Leslie, are you forgetting who you’re talking to?” he asked, willing her to look at him. She didn’t. “I’ve kissed you, and let me assure you, there was nothing frigid about that.”

  “There was when you touched my breast.”

  The energy left his body. He had assumed she’d stopped so they didn’t rush things. Didn’t make mistakes. He’d never once considered…

  Couldn’t believe what she was implying.

  “You didn’t feel any desire at all when I touched you?”

  “No, I felt some.”

  He’d thought so.

  “And then it shuts off and I’m…repulsed.”

  Okay. So they had a bit of a problem. It wasn’t insurmountable. “We’ll go to a counselor,” he told her, his mind racing, “get some help…”

  “I’ve been seeing a counselor since I graduated from college.”

  This had been going on since college? And what did any of it have to do with Jonathan? “Why did you start seeing a counselor back then?” Seemed a good place to begin.

  “Because I was so anorexic I couldn’t find any professional clothes that fit me. They don’t make many good-quality suits or professional styles smaller than zero.”

  He’d seen her at her graduation and hadn’t noticed any excessive thinness, but then he hadn’t seen her without her robe, either. She’d come to greet him and Cal and Clara in the stadium after the ceremony. He’d left before they all went out to dinner.

  “So, why were you anorexic?”

  He knew a little about the disease, but mostly that it afflicted dancers and models. Not straight-A business majors.

  “Ah, Kip.” She glanced up at him, her eyes watery, as she squeezed his hand. “I really don’t want to tell you this.”

  He had to know. “You said it has to do with Jonathan.” Perhaps the reminder wasn’t fair, but there were times you just made a move, rules or not.

  She nodded. Stood, taking her cola with her. Leaning against the opposite wall, drink in both hands, she glanced over at him. “I lost my virginity when I was twelve.”

  Kip nodded. Sat, hands folded on his lap, waiting for words that would make sense. What he thought he’d heard couldn’t possibly be correct.

  “He…was someone…I trusted. Implicitly. When it started, I had no idea what was going to happen. I went along with it because he was older, an authority figure, someone I believed would want to take good care of me….”

  Blood rushed through his veins. He could feel it filling his face. Leslie, the woman he’d known practically since she was born—sweet, innocent Leslie—was telling him something that could not be true.

  Yet he knew she wouldn’t lie to him. Not about this.

  “He told me he loved me, in a special way, that made me the most important person in the world to him. He asked me if I loved him more than anyone else in the world, too.”

  Kip had known Leslie when she was twelve. Her wild curls had always been in pigtails. She’d had long gangly legs, never wore makeup and was the sweetest kid he’d ever known. She’d trailed along behind him whenever he was over, offering to help him with his science project when he’d had trouble getting things arranged artistically enough on the poster board. The end result had garnered him the highest grade in the class.

  He hadn’t been aware that she’d even been closely associated with a man, let alone spent enough time with him to…

  “He told me that if I loved him, I’d let him see my breasts. They were just starting to develop and he said only the most special people in your life were supposed to see them. He wanted to be that special person.”

  No! The word screamed silently in his brain. Your mother was that person. Only your mother. He could feel tears deep inside him. He didn’t know how he was going to just sit there. Who was it? A teacher? He’d have the bastard hanged.

  Hands still folded on his lap, he held her gaze, didn’t move.

  “I felt really uncomfortable, and I told him that, but he promised me it would be okay. He said we were different—lucky that we loved each other like that. He said if I didn’t, he’d have to go away and never come back.”

  Let him leave. Good God, please let the bastard leave. Before he sees anything. Touches anything. You’re a child! A little girl! I knew you!!

  I was right there.

  And I never knew.

  God, how could I not have known?

  “When he asked me to take off my shirt, I did.”

  Heart pounding, Kip clenched his hands so tightly they hurt. His back and legs were soaked with sweat. But she continued to hold his gaze. And he sat. Unmoving.

  Maybe it had been a neighbor. But who? He’d known them all. Couldn’t imagine any of them committing such atrocities.

  “At first, I thought that’s all it was going to be. I told myself it wasn’t so bad. Just letting him look at me. It was worth not losing him….”

  Still she stared at him and it finally dawned on Kip that she wasn’t holding his gaze at all. She wasn’t even seeing him.

  “Then he told me he was going to touch them. I asked him not to, but he said he had to. I was scared of that, but more scared to be alone. He’d convinced me he was all I had. That without him I’d have no protection. He convinced me no one was going to love me as much as he did. And he told me again how lucky we were to love each other so much.”

  Had it been a boy at school? A gang member, maybe? Someone who’d first frightened her to death, then promised to keep her safe? How could Cal have not known?

  “He touched my nipples.”

  Kip needed to yell stop. But he knew she had to go on. She’d been carrying that memory around for far too long and shouldn’t have to do it alone.

  “They got hard and he told me that meant I wanted him to touch me that way.”

  The bastard. He was going to kill him. Leslie deserved to have him killed for what he’d done to her.

  “He asked me to lie on the bed with him, just so he could hold me. He took off his shirt because he…he wanted to feel my nipples against his chest.”

  The cheese and crackers started to come back on him. Where was her mother when this was going on? Where were he and Cal?

  How could this have happened to such a sweet girl, from a good family, in an upscale neighborhood where there was plenty of everything to provide a happy, secure childhood?

  “I went to the bed with him, lay down with him and let him hold my chest to his. I thought we were going to sleep. And then I felt his hand slide under the waistband of my pants. He didn’t talk to me anymore. He just…did things.”

  Kip couldn’t imagine a torture horrible enough for the man. But he was trying anyway.

  “He pulled my pants down. He opened my legs and touched me there. He put his finger inside me and started to move his body against me, breathing heavily. He told me I was a good girl. That he was going to take care of me forever. I started to cry when he took his pants off, but he told me he wanted to give me the most special part of himself and that he wouldn’t ever give it to anyone else. He said I wouldn’t have to worry about him leaving me like my
daddy had. He promised he wouldn’t hurt me.”

  The expression on Leslie’s face never changed. Whatever hell was going on inside her, she was showing none of it.

  “He kept touching me with his fingers and when he climbed on top of me and pushed inside, he was mostly right. It only hurt for a minute. And then…it didn’t feel bad. He finished pretty fast.”

  Her chin puckered on that last word, and then tears filled her eyes.

  “It was wrong but it felt good….”

  She was dying. Right before his eyes. Feeling remorse for a crime against nature that was absolutely no fault of hers.

  Kip stood, crossed the room in two steps, reaching for her. Leslie collapsed against him, her legs weak, and he wondered how she’d managed to stand without falling. Leading her to the couch, he helped her sit. Took her glass from her. Was relieved when she crossed her arms over her chest—as though she was emotionally healthy enough to be able to protect herself.

  Whether or not the gesture signified anything of the kind didn’t matter at that moment.

  Sitting down close enough to tend to her if she needed it, Kip tried to keep some distance between them. He didn’t want her to feel threatened. She was so precious to him he ached with it. Watching her there, closing herself off, he felt the tears rise up within him, fill his eyes, spill down his face.

  And in that moment, everything that had been unclear to him his entire life became clear. Everything had led to this.

  He was in love.

  And he would spend the rest of his life doing whatever it took to honor that love. And Leslie.

  “WHO WAS HE?”

  Leslie sucked in air as Kip’s words registered. They were the first touch of reality she’d felt in what seemed like years. She was sitting on his couch when the last thing she remembered was walking to the wall.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Nine-thirty.”

  “Is Mom home?” She’d been due at nine.

  He nodded. “I heard her come in a little while ago. Sounded like she walked to her room.”

  Tears drenched her eyes as she thought about the woman she adored—even though she still felt anger toward her for something Clara knew nothing about. Leslie had considered herself beyond all that. She thought she’d forgiven her mother for being human, realizing that Clara would never knowingly have hurt her. That, in fact, Clara would’ve given her life to spare her daughter and that she’d been the best mother she knew how to be.

  Once the tears started again, they just kept coming—an unending well inside her, always present. So many of the books she’d studied said that shedding light on something horrible took away its power. But it felt as though the darkness had been illuminated so she could see the horror that much better—feel it that much more.

  She’d brought hell to the surface, and now even the parts of her life that had escaped the past were tainted with it.

  “I feel so dirty,” she said, seeing no reason to pretend any differently.

  “You look like an angel.”

  His voice sounded odd, and she almost believed him. But then, Kip had always been nice. Which was, she supposed, why she’d had such a crush on him all those years.

  Besides, how could he know who she really was? What she was? He still had no idea. “It didn’t happen just once.”

  “I wondered.” He sounded sorry, not shocked. “How many times?”

  Nice. He was a nice man who asked hard questions in a tone of voice that made her feel safe.

  “From the time I was twelve until I was sixteen.”

  It sounded like he hissed. Or swore, maybe. She didn’t have the energy to look at him. To feel what she’d feel if she saw his face. She just wanted to go to bed. To sleep forever.

  She’d tried that once, too. But the over-the-counter sleeping pills hadn’t been strong enough. Or she hadn’t taken enough. She’d ended up with a bad case of nausea and diarrhea and a week-long headache.

  “I never had an orgasm,” she felt compelled to say. “But after that initial time, he never hurt me.” The truth wasn’t pretty. It just was.

  “What happened when you asked him to stop?”

  How had he known she had?

  “Which time?”

  “Any of them. All of them.”

  “He’d tell me again how special I was. How much he loved me. What a good girl I was. He told me that if it wasn’t meant to be, I’d never be able to please him so completely. As I got older, he threatened me a time or two. He said he’d tell everyone it was my fault. That I seduced him. Sometimes he’d beg. One time, the last time, actually, he cried.”

  “Did you ever fight him?”

  She shook her head, the shame overwhelming her again. She’d often wondered why she hadn’t been stronger, hadn’t tried harder to get away. Why had she always looked to others to save her? She’d relived it all, so many times, until she was no longer sure about any of it.

  And, until she’d found Juliet and worked through the residual self-defeating behaviors, she’d destroyed herself with blame. Regret.

  “The requests to stop were always before we got undressed. Once that happened, I’d already agreed to go along with things one more time.”

  “God, I’m sorry, Les. So sorry. You don’t deserve this. Not any of it.”

  “He was good to me,” she said. And then added, “It wasn’t all horrible. Being with him made me feel safe. I was so afraid to lose him. I was weak.”

  “You were a kid. A kid without a father, Goddammit! He manipulated you! He abused you!”

  “I knew it was wrong.”

  “He told you it was special, as though he was above the law, better than the law!”

  “I could’ve told someone,” she said. She and Juliet had discussed that part of it many times. Leslie still hadn’t completely healed from the mistrust of self that had resulted.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Leslie felt the bitter laugh inside her, but was incapable of releasing it. “That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Kip said, facing her. But he didn’t touch her. She’d noticed that since she’d told him her dirty little story he hadn’t touched her once.

  It didn’t surprise her.

  “I asked because I want to know every bit of the torment you remember from that time. I want to know because I don’t want you to be alone with it ever again.”

  She began to cry. Where had he learned such beautiful words?

  “I didn’t tell…” She had to stop to breathe. To swallow. To find some numbness. “Because I didn’t see the point. As far as I was concerned, the damage had already been done. I wasn’t like any of the other kids anymore but as long as I kept quiet, nobody knew that but me.”

  “You and the bastard who was holding you hostage to his depraved urges.”

  “I also didn’t tell,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “because I didn’t want him to get in to trouble. You see, Kip, even after all that, I still loved him. Other than that he did things to me, physically, that weren’t right, he was very, very good to me—and I was scared to death to lose that. To lose him. Most of the time I really did believe he was all I had.”

  He grew deathly silent beside her, as though he wasn’t even breathing. She wondered what he was thinking. What he was figuring out.

  “Who was he, Les?” The words were quiet. Firm.

  She had to tell him. She knew that. It’s what this is all about. Jonathan. Kip. Her.

  The end of eighteen years of silence.

  “Calhoun.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “THIS AFTERNOON, with Jonathan…I thought…”

  Kip nodded. “I know.” He’d spare her what he could. It was three o’clock in the morning; they were still on the settee in his room, drinking water from the bottles he’d collected when Leslie excused herself to the restroom an hour before.

  “I’m afraid I shouldn’t be around him,” she said, her
eyes tired and swollen as she looked over at him. “He’s already facing such issues with prejudice and not fitting in—to the point that he’s shaving his head and cutting his sister’s hair—and I’m showing an even worse prejudice against him, tainting him with his father’s brush.”

  Kip longed to pull her into his arms, to find a way to soothe her heart and mind. But he was hesitant to do anything that might not be good for her. First thing in the morning, he was going to make some calls. He had to know what he could do to help Leslie—and himself as well.

  He’d never been so angry. If Calhoun Sanderson were alive, Kip would be hunting his sick ass down, and when he found him, he’d kick him in the balls until he suffocated. And then break his neck.

  Prison be damned.

  “You’re Jonathan’s family,” he said, finding reservoirs inside himself he didn’t know he possessed. “You’re one of the few blood relations he has left. He needs you.”

  He needed her, too. He needed her forgiveness. He’d been there. He’d been Cal’s best friend. He’d listened to Cal talk about sex. Women. One woman.

  “He needs someone who’ll help build his self-esteem, not doubt him.”

  He couldn’t think about Cal. He’d barely made it to the bathroom in time to throw up when he’d first heard the truth. But he’d recovered. Leslie needed him right now. He’d find a way to live with himself later.

  “You didn’t doubt Jonathan,” he told her, doing his best to communicate the love he felt with words and looks. It was all so new to him. The need to protect. Placing others before self. “You reacted based on traumatic past experience. And even then, you kept the reaction to yourself.”

  “If he’d known what I was thinking…”

  “We all have thoughts we’d like not to have, Les,” he told her, “The only thing that matters is what’s in your heart. You know that. More than anything, Jonathan needs love and you have that to give him in abundance.”

  She still didn’t seem convinced. “I need you to promise me you’ll be aware and that you’ll protect him from me if you think my past is affecting him in any way.”