by Riley Ashby
Castel’s face settled like stones collapsing in a pile. He grunted as I hit him harder but didn’t put his hands down.
He asked questions for what felt like hours. Somehow, I answered each one. I told him details about the rooms that had made up my prison. The types of men who brought me food on the days I was permitted to eat. The day I broke a toe when I stumbled on the stairs after not eating or drinking anything for three days. I hadn’t been allowed to tape it straight, so it was bent because it healed at an odd angle.
I stopped swinging long enough to wipe my face and nose. Tears streamed down my face like rain, and my nose was running uncontrollably. I wasn’t ashamed of those tears. I had already destroyed my character in front of Castel when I lost my shit and sent him away. There was no reason he shouldn’t see me now when I was nowhere near my most vulnerable.
“What’s the point of these questions?”
“We have to get past what’s blocking you.”
So he wanted to play therapist.
“I don’t feel like discussing this with you or anyone else. Why does everyone keep pushing me?”
“This isn’t healthy, Vail. You must see that. You’re a nurse.”
“I want to make decisions about myself for once. You should respect that, even if you disagree.”
He shook his head. “No, I won’t. Not when it’s tearing you apart and ruining your chances at a happy life.”
“My chance for a happy life was destroyed months ago.”
“You can’t really believe that. We were doing well, going out in public. We had fun together.”
I barked out a harsh laugh that sounded a lot like a sob. “Until we didn’t.”
“That was—”
I hit him harder. “No one but you will touch me. Do you understand that? Everyone skirts around me, but you can’t seem to help yourself. And I thought I missed it. I thought I wanted to have someone in my life who would treat me normally again. But all that interaction showed me was that I’m broken beyond repair. I’m broken and changed and stuck back together helter-skelter. Those edges will cut you if you get too close.”
“You’re wrong about what you need. It’s not that you can’t be touched. You have to be touched the right way.”
He walked over to me, and despite everything telling me to run, I stood very still. When he reached forward to brush my hair behind my shoulders, the heaving of my chest became that much more obvious.
My heavy breathing had nothing to do with the workout. It was intoxicating to be near him after he had been gone for so long. I’d missed his presence around my cabin and rolled into the empty space of my bed more than once. Each time I woke up remembering that he wasn’t there felt like missing a step as I walked downstairs.
“It’s not going to happen.”
When he spoke next, it was in a whisper. “Then why are you looking at me like that?”
I tore my eyes away to look at the rest of the gym. Heads swiveled away from us; punching bags resumed their beatings. Soft hands closed around my face and directed my gaze back to him.
“You deserve to be happy.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I had really done.”
I was so angry with him. So angry that he would ask me to do this. Did he really think he could tell me how to live my life after what happened? I pushed him away, but he reached for me again.
“Please don’t push me away anymore. I can’t stand it.”
“It’s my decision. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“The entire time we’ve known each other, everything I did was to be closer to you. Leaving the state wasn’t my mistake, and you know that. The mistake was that I let other girls into my bed when you were the only one who should have been there.”
I coughed a little on the breath that stuck in my throat. “What are you talking about?”
He cocked his head. “You know what I’m talking about. I know you came to Virginia to surprise me. I know you saw me with a girl. But you need to know, Vail, that you were the only person I ever really cared about. All those others were just placeholders. If I had been braver, I could have been with you sooner. I let you down, not by leaving, but by not taking you with me, and I’m sorry.”
I was sick of him trying to play me off my own conflicted feelings. He didn’t understand. He’d never understand because he was just too thickheaded to see the truth.
I didn’t even make the decision to do it, and I didn’t realize it was happening until it was far too late to stop it.
My fist connected with his face a moment later.
I hit the floor before I even realized she had swung. I hadn’t thought for one second she would actually strike out at me. I figured she would at least pull back at the last second, so I didn’t bother to brace for impact. For a second, all I could see was the white of the ceiling, and a blinding light shining down on me. When I reached up to touch my mouth, my hand came away wet with blood.
Holy shit. She actually hit me.
The next thing I knew, she was kneeling over me, shock etched into her perfect face as she looked down at me. I raised a hand to touch the hair hanging over her shoulder and smiled.
“I always knew you had a good arm.”
“Oh, my God.” She was trying to pull off her gloves, but her hands were shaking too much. “I’m so sorry, Cas. I don’t know what I was thinking…”
Tori and Jamie appeared next, helping me to sit against the wall and dabbing at my face. For once, Tori was speechless, looking back and forth between us like she had never seen Vail before. Jamie, for his part, didn’t ask any awkward questions about what had happened. He looked at my lip to see how bad the bleeding was and determined it wasn’t serious. He walked away to get ice, dragging Tori with him.
“She must like him,” I muttered as he pulled her across the gym by her wrist.
“What?” Vail was still shaking, running her hands over my face.
“Tori. She’s letting Jamie put his hands on her. She must like him.”
She looked confused for a moment longer, then she actually laughed. “There’s no way.”
I shrugged. “Give it a few months. You’ll see.”
We stared at each other silently for a few minutes. I put my hand against her cheek, tracing the track marks on her cheek left by the tears that had dripped onto my face as she leaned over me.
“Come here,” I whispered. She leaned against my chest, and I opened my arms to welcome her. When she was wrapped up safe, we could finally speak. I didn’t care that half the gym was staring at us openly while the other half snuck glances between drills. This was a moment for us, the moment I had been trying to get with her for days, and I wasn’t about to waste it.
“I’m sorry I scared you. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that.”
She didn’t answer but wrapped her own arms tighter around my chest. “I’m sorry I hit you.”
I kissed the top of her head. “It needed to happen.”
We sat in silence for some time.
I tilted her chin so she faced me and put a light kiss on her nose. “We’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. We might have some setbacks, but I’m willing to fight through them for you.”
My shirt dampened beneath her cheeks, stained with tears. “I was so frightened, Cas. It was … everything changed. I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t understand why your voice was coming out of his mouth. And I was screaming at myself to get a grip, but nothing seemed static. I was falling, and there was no rope for me to grab.”
I squeezed her as tight as I dared. “I know. And I’m so sorry for making you feel that way. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to never put you in that position again.”
“But how can you? How can either of us know how to keep that from happening? I didn’t even know what was wrong until everything was wrong.”
“We’ll go slower. I rushed you the first time.”
“No, Cas—”
; “Shh.” I pressed a finger against her lips. “We both rushed. We’re trying to figure out a lot right now. You and me, you and yourself, us and everyone else. We should have been more careful. But damn if we didn’t learn our lesson.” I kissed her forehead. “I won’t let you go so easily. Not again.”
She kissed my lips, softly at first, like she was still afraid to touch me too much. She was still crying. I put my hands on her cheeks to hold her back.
“Don’t despair. We’re together. Nothing can stop that. Do you believe me?”
She nodded, and I kissed her back.
“I got rid of all your notes.” She wiped her nose and looked away, visibly forcing back more tears.
That stung. But if she did it … there was a reason. It must have hurt her too much to read them when she thought she was going to cut me out of her life. “I’ll write you a thousand more.”
We stood together as Tori and Jamie came back with an ice pack. I reached out to wipe a trace of blood away from her bottom lip as I held the ice against my face.
“Thanks, man,” I said.
Jamie nodded, flicking his eyes back and forth between Vail and me nervously. “I think you guys have probably had enough for today.”
Vail, Tori, and I nodded in unison.
“I’ll drive you home,” I said to Vail, and Tori, blessedly, didn’t argue.
I took the long way back to Ellery’s house. We drove through the city, sitting in the traffic and at stoplights and watching tourists get lost. There was no agenda, no plan. We stopped and got food from a street vendor when we were hungry. As the sun began to sink lower in the sky, I turned us back toward home. Her hand crept across the center console, prying my fingers off the gearshift. Our fingers twined together, and it felt like it was always supposed to be this way. The blue sky faded to pink and then black, and the stars appeared in the inky sky, but her hand never left mine.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Vail was leaning backward, staring up the rock wall as climbers who looked more spider than human raced up and down.
“It’ll be fun,” I said, but even I could hear the doubt in my voice. When she turned to look at me, I plastered a fake smile on my face and hoped she bought it. Her answering scowl told me that she most certainly did not.
It had been over a week since the incident at the fighting gym. I still wasn’t sleeping at her cottage, but I went by every day. It felt good to be back in her space and be able to check the locks on the windows to make sure she was safe even without me there. It killed me that she still trusted Tori to look over her better than she did me, but I had sworn to help her trust me again, and that meant taking things at her pace.
She didn’t need to know that I was sleeping outside the front door.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“Therapy,” I said, putting my fingertips on her back and steering her toward the reception area.
“Seems a little unconventional.”
“I think you’ll understand what I mean.”
I paid for our equipment, and we sat through a basic safety presentation. When we were both strapped in the harnesses and had donned our helmets, our instructor led us over to a far section of the wall that I had reserved for us. Vail stood at the base, eyes nearly to the back of her head as she tried to see over the top. I reached out and wrapped her braid around my hand. Even though it was barely a tug, she immediately froze and snapped her head toward me. For a second, her eyes were glassy, and I knew she wasn’t seeing me at all. Her skin broke out in goose bumps, and her mouth parted slightly as her breath came in shallow gasps.
“Shit,” I said, stepping back, and she blinked.
“It’s okay.” She took a deep breath and rubbed her hands over her arms.
“No, it’s not. Fuck. I shouldn’t have brought you here.” Maybe I was moving too fast again. I should have let her stay at home. I was asking her to put her physical well-being in my hands, and I’d managed to stress her out before she even got on the wall.
“Stop that.” She reached out and put her hand on my chest over my heart. I stilled, then took a step closer so that she didn’t have to reach as far. We stood like that for a minute, her eyes focused on her hand as she felt my heartbeat.
The ringing of a bell snapped us out of our reverie. She turned to see a woman about her size sitting at the top of the wall, sweaty and smiling as she rang the bell hanging from the ceiling. Vail watched her for a long second, then turned back to me.
“I’m ready. Let’s do it.”
“Are you sure? We can go home.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to go home. I want to be here with you.” She reached for the carabiner hanging from the ceiling and clipped it to her harness. After a minute, I similarly clipped on the belay device. She stood in front of the wall for a second, staring at the handholds.
“Keep your feet below you, and your hips close to the wall.”
“What if I fall?” She was twisting her fingers together and biting her lip. I resisted the urge to reach forward and pull it out from between her teeth.
“I’ll catch you.”
She looked back at me. Sudden understanding burned in her eyes. We had to re-establish the trust that had always kept us together before all this happened. She needed to remember that I would always be there to support her even in the darkest times. When she thought she would hit rock bottom, I’d always be there to seize her from midair.
After another long second, she nodded and turned back to the wall. Reaching for a handhold above her head, she started to climb.
I helped her up the wall, making sure she had the right amount of slack and calling out advice when she got stuck. She moved from hold to hold with a natural grace, her sharp eyes quickly assessing her options and making decisions. She stopped about halfway up the wall and made the mistake of looking down. I saw her whisper a curse and pull her chest against the wall.
“How are you doing up there?”
“I don’t think I can do it.”
“You can, Vail. I promise. The next handhold is to your left. You need to reach up and get your weight off that elbow.”
She looked at the handhold I mentioned and started to reach for it. It was a couple of inches too far from her fingers.
“I can’t get it.”
“You’ll have to push yourself. Use your legs.”
“I can’t. It’s too far.”
“Then you’ll fall.”
She looked down at me, her face a mixture of anger and fear. She was at least twenty feet above me, and I knew she was calculating the injuries from a fall of that height. A rolled ankle. Maybe a concussion if she landed wrong and the helmet fit wasn’t quite right.
“I’ll catch you,” I said again. She looked back at the handhold. She swallowed, bit her lip, and reached.
She didn’t quite push off enough. She was too afraid to jump even though she needed the momentum. She dropped right away, but I was ready with my hand on the brake. Her small cry reached my ears as I stepped forward into her weight as she fell a few inches, no more, and grabbed the wall again. She looked down at me, shocked.
“I fell!”
“And I caught you.”
The smile on her face was the largest I’d seen since she came home.
“Get yourself back up there and try again.”
It only took her a moment this time. She knew how much momentum was required, and she grabbed the handhold right away. Her feet dangled for a moment, but she held fast with her fingers, looking down to find the footholds and securing herself against the wall once more.
“Great job, babe!” I laughed as she smiled down at me. I blushed as the pet name left my mouth, but it was almost as if she didn’t notice. As if it were natural for me to call her that. She was already looking above her, searching for her next handhold, and she continued up the wall until the next time she fell. I caught her again, and she kept going until she reached the top. She beamed down at me as she rang the bell.
I lowered her down slowly, then unclipped us both. The moment we were both free of our contraptions, she threw herself into my arms.
“That was amazing!”
“You did great.”
“Thanks, babe.” The wicked grin on her face told me she hadn’t missed that little slip after all.
I slid my fingers beneath her chinstrap and unclasped her helmet, reaching up to smooth her hair as I put it aside. She stood on her toes to pull mine off, but only further mussed my hair instead of smoothing it.
“I always liked your hair better like this,” she whispered.
That was why I had been letting my normal grooming routine fall by the wayside. She had always stopped to run her fingers through my hair if she walked by me in the kitchen or sat next to me on the couch. It was only when I went East that I had started combing it down. I had unconsciously decided to let my hair go wild the moment she was back in the house. If she wanted me this way, it was the only way I could be.
I reached back and touched her braid again. I was conscious of the noise around us, of belayers and climbers calling instructions to each other as they struggled with more difficult climbs, the sounds of feet against the mats, hands slapping away excess chalk. But none of it reached us here in this corner of the room, where she stiffened as I touched her hair and then relaxed as she placed her hand over my heart again. She nodded infinitesimally.
I ran my fingers down the smooth rope of her hair until I reached the elastic holding it in place at the end. Pulling it loose, I slowly teased free the plait. I stilled my hand as her breathing quickened, but she tapped a finger against my chest.
“Go ahead,” she said, encouraging.
When her hair was free, I slowly brought my hand up through it until I was gripping a handful at the base of her skull. She sighed as I tipped back her head slightly.
“Open your eyes,” I whispered, and they flew open. We stared at each other like that, her in my grasp and totally under my control. “I will always be there to catch you. I will always come for you. And I will never do anything that would cause you harm.”
I didn’t ask if she believed me. She might not have. At least not right then. But I wanted to sear these feelings together, the high of achieving something she had been afraid of and the sensation of being caged like this by the person who had caught her when she fell. I wanted to replace that fear in every corner of her mind so she’d never feel it when she looked at me again. So that she would know I wouldn’t hurt her. So that I could undo that fear I had caused her in the bedroom.
