Page 64 of Mending Me
“Hank…”
“I have to tell you something,” he murmured, still not looking me in the eye. I had never seen him like this before, not even when he told me about his father for the first time.
“Hank,” I whispered his name again and my voice hitched in my throat as I tried to hold back my emotions, “are you breaking up with me?” Tears welled up in my eyes as I said it because even just verbalizing it was too painful.
His eyes shot up and met mine, “What? Oh, hermosa, clara que no?2. I love you. I love you so much it hurts. I think about you from the moment I wake up to the moment I finally fall asleep and even then, I dream about you. You’ve made me the happiest I have ever been, happier than I ever thought I was deserving of. Please don’t cry, I’m not leaving you. I just don’t want to bring you any pain.” He used his thumb to swipe the tear that had fallen down my cheek.
“Why would you bring me pain? If you aren’t leaving, I don’t know how you would cause me any pain. I’ve never been happier than I’ve been since meeting you. What do you mean you don’t want to bring me any pain?”
He took a deep breath and swiped another tear away. He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek and as he did, I closed my eyes and committed the feeling of his soft lips on my skinto memory. I wanted to commit everything I did with him to memory.
“I know who attacked you.”
I heard him say it but my brain couldn’t fully process it. I sat next to him on the couch, completely stunned, as the five words sank all the way down into my bone marrow.
I know who attacked you.
“Wh–what?” I sputtered, blinking a couple of times as my brain caught up with what he had just said.
“I know who attacked you. Kolbi just gave me a name today. It took some time for him to find anything from that night, and a few more weeks for us to clean up the footage and track him down, but then today?—”
“Wait, fromKolbi?” My eyebrows furrowed in the center of my face trying to comprehend everything he was telling me. “What do you mean,from Kolbi?”
“Earlier this summer I was thinking about how you told me you felt like you couldn’t really move on from what happened to you because the man who hurt you was still out there. I wanted to try and help you, so you could move on from this and feel safe again, so I asked Kolbi to help me. It took him a couple of months to find anything but eventually he did. Once we had something solid, it took a couple of weeks for us to clean up the footage and see if the guy's face was in any database, and it was. We have a name, Bailey. You have a name. You could take this guy down if you wanted.” His eyes were filled with hope but my heart was filled with nothing but betrayal. I had trusted him with what had happened to me and he turned around and shared it with his friend.
“You told Kolbi about me…” I croaked, unable to hide my hurt. I’d trusted him with something so personal and even if he had the best intentions, he had shared my truth with someone else.
“Yes, but only because I wanted to help you.” He gently shook his head at me, crestfallen.
“But I didn’t ask for your help, did I?” I swallowed hard, trying to keep the tears at bay. “And I certainly didn’t ask you to share my deepest secret with one of your buddies, did I?” I snapped at him before standing from the couch on uneasy legs. I was struggling to decide if I was angry with him for telling his friend my secret or touched that he wanted to try and help me. And my head hadn’t even started to process the idea that the man who hurt me had been found.
“Bailey, please, don’t be angry.” He stood from the couch and reached for me as I started to walk towards my bedroom.
“Don’t be angry?” I scoffed, spinning around to look at him again. “How am I not supposed to be angry when you shared something so personal about me with one of your friends? And you said you asked him about this months ago? That means that every time I’ve gone with you to campaign night, he’s known about me all along. About what happened to me. How am I supposed to feel about that? Do the other guys know too?” I brought my hand to my heart and threw it out to the side as I spoke.
“No, they don’t know. Only Kolbi and I know, I made him promise that he wouldn’t say anything to them. Please, I know I broke your trust but you have to believe it was because I wanted to help. I love you.” He tried to pull me into his chest but I pushed him away. My head was spinning and I could feel the tears threatening to come any second now and I wasn’t going to cry in front of him.
“I don’t know what to think, Hank. I’m sure you did this from a good place, but I don’t know what to think right now.” I wrapped my lips around my teeth and bit the inside of my cheek. “I think you should go.”
“You want me to go?” His head hung to one side and his voice broke. He tried to pull me into him again, but I took a few steps away and wrapped my arms around myself, shielding myself from the shock of what he’d just told me.
“I need some time to think. You come here, drop this on me, and expect me to what? Jump in your lap and thank you?” I tried to take a few steadying breaths but my voice trembled anyway. “I just need some time to think. Please Hank, give me time.” I stood in front of him digging my fingers into my sides and holding my breath, mere seconds away from completely breaking down. He set his shoulders back and pushed out a breath before closing the distance between us. When he pressed his lips to my forehead, I nearly collapsed in a mound of sobs and tears at his feet.
“For you, hermosa?3, I would give you the world. Eres mia para siempre?4,” he whispered before pulling away. I stood in my bedroom and listened as he slipped on his shoes, pulled open the door, and closed it behind him as he left.
Once I knew he was gone, I dropped to my knees in the empty condo and sobbed.
1 delicious, beautiful
2 Oh, beautiful, of course not, no.
3 beautiful
4 You’re my forever (You’re mine forever)
37
HANK
