In the middle of the turmoil raging through me,3I wondered what she saw when she stared at me. A man housing a scared boy? A caged animal who had been abused too many times to recover from? A grown man terrified of losing the first flicker of hope? A desperate man trying to hold on to herandhis secrets?
I held her golden gaze as I imagined the outcomes. I could run and hate myself every day for not trying? I could confess and see the disgust cross her face. Maybe she’d even push me away because she didn’t know how to handle such a damaged product. Would she judge me for still being chained to my past?
Or, I could confess, and she would share the weight of the burden with me. I could confess, and she would ease the haunting pain. Oaklyn was the first person I’d even considered telling. Not a single woman had tempted me to share. I’d only made enough excuses to hold off another stint of being alone. But with her? I felt safe. I felt comforted, and I didn’t want to give up so easily. Could I live with myself if I didn’t try to take hold of this opportunity?
With jerky movements, I put my shirt back on, needing all the armor I could get. Then I helped her put her sweater back on too.
“Cal,” she whispered, pushing her arms into the sleeves, watching me with concern and confusion.
I sat with my back against the arm of the other side of the couch and swallowed before taking a deep breath. “Just,” I started. “Just give me a minute.”
“Okay.” She breathed the word so softly I almost didn’t hear it, but it made its way across the space and sunk into me as though she’d shouted her support.
I couldn’t look up. Instead, I focused on the way my thumb rubbed back and forth across the leg of my jeans. “I had a cousin,” I started. So simple. So innocuous to the nightmare that would follow those four words. But once I began, it all came out without pause, sticking to the basics. “He was three years older than me, and I idolized him. Looked up to everything he did. Thought he knew all.” I laughed a dry, humorless chuckle that hurt my chest. “So, when he put on a porn video, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want him to think I was dumb. I was only eleven and he was the much cooler teenager.”
Rolling my lips between my teeth, I prepared to say aloud what I hadn’t in more than ten years. “I didn’t say anything when he was touching my penis, saying he was doing me a favor by teaching me how to masturbate. Or that since he’d done it to me, I needed to do it back. After that, it continued, and I began to feel stuck when I really wanted it to stop and tell someone to make it stop. I was scared of what to say or how to say it. Then it slowly progressed to oral sex, then just sex. And I wanted it to stop. I didn’t want tolearnanymore. But he threatened me. He told me no one would believe I didn’t want it when he was able to make me orgasm. He held my fear and shame over me, trapping me. After two and a half years, my parents really began to notice my panic attacks and how I acted out. You see, if I got in trouble, he couldn’t come over for sleepovers. It was how I could keep him away. After a while, my parents put me in therapy, and I guess one day the therapist finally asked the right questions, said the right thing to get me to open up. It ended after that.”
My body shook with anxiety, but when I lifted my hands, they barely moved. Inside, I crumbled, but somehow, everything still stayed intact.4
The loft screamed with silence. Fear froze my muscles, making it feel impossible to lift my head, but I did. Slowly, I raised my eyes to hers, preparing for the worst.
Her slim fingers pressed to her lips as tears fell down her cheeks in a continuous flow.
“Callum.” My name came out broken past her tears.
“I don’t need your pity.” Fuck, I couldn’t handle her pity. Somehow that hadn’t factored into the scenarios I’d imagined. I hadn’t thought about what would happen if she felt pity for me.
“I don’t pity you,” she said. I watched her throat bob over a swallow before clearing it. “I’d be a monster to not feel pain for you and what you went through. That’s not pity. It’s compassion.”5
The fire behind her words—the depth of feeling—mad my eyes to burn, and I looked away. I swallowed hard past the lump threatening to choke me before my final confession. “I’ve never really been able to be touched after that. I’ve touched women, kissed them, dated them, but they tend to want more. Who wouldn’t when they’re trying to build a future? But they eventually got fed up when I continued to put them off without an explanation and refused to let them touch me intimately.”
“Have you ever been…” Her words trailed off, but I knew what she was asking.
“Once.” I cringed remembering the night. “I was in college and got very drunk to help me follow through. I was shaking and sweating the whole time and she was too drunk to notice. I left immediately after. Never tried again.”
“What a horrible bitch.”
My lips twitched at her anger on my behalf. I hadn’t thought I’d smile at all after I confessed my past.
Silence hung between us, and I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t want to pressure her to say anything she wasn’t ready to discuss, so I decided to give her an out. Give her some space to think about it and an opportunity to have me leave without asking.
“Do you want me to go?”
“What? Callum, God no.” Her vehement denial shocked me into finally looking up. “If nothing else, you’re at least my friend. I would never…” She shook her head, not finishing the thought. “I care about you. I want you to stay.”
Wanted me to stay. She cared about me and wanted me to stay. The words were so simple and yet, they seeped through my skin and filled some of the damaged holes inside of me. I’d told her about my past and she hadn’t doubted me, questioned me, or looked at me differently. I felt…lighter. Oaklyn filled me with tangible hope, like I could possibly be whole someday. It was like she’d helped me set down some of the load I’d carried for so long. How could one girl do that?
I didn’t know, but I didn’t want it to stop either.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
We stared at each other from either side of the couch, both unsure of what to do next. I missed the heat from earlier, and I wanted to put away my confession. It was said, it was out there, now I wanted to move on. “You can come closer, give me another chance to kiss you. I won’t break, Oaklyn.”
She smiled, and her eyes scanned me up and down with one eyebrow cocked. “I never thought I’d break you. There’s too much of you to even put a dent in.”
I latched on to the joke and flexed, puffing out my chest, succeeding in making her laugh.
