Page 51 of The Way Back Home

“Don’t talk to me about feelings. You don’t know shit. You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t—”

“When I was seventeen, my mother’s dealer raped me,” I say, and I hurry through the words because I’m afraid my mouth will close up like a clam if I don’t. “I wound up pregnant.”

“Shit.” August drifts into oncoming traffic, but he jerks the wheel hard until we swerve back into our lane, and veer off the road. We come to a bumpy stop on the shoulder.

“I couldn’t tell my mother. I was terrified she’d accuse me of doing it deliberately, of seducing him. I didn’t have the money for an abortion, and I . . .” I swallow back tears. “We were living in a trailer at the time, but before that, we’d had a house, with a big back yard and a tub so huge you could get lost in the damn thing. Before my daddy was killed in combat. We lost everything when he died; I even lost my mamma. She went from a strong military wife to a woman addicted to pain pills. When she could no longer afford those, she turned to crack. She met a guy in the trailer park we’d moved into, and he became my mother’s dealer, my rapist, and the father of my unborn child.”

“Liv,” August whispers. I know his eyes are trained on me, I can feel them, though I can’t look at his face. I know it wasn’t my fault, but if I glance up at August and there’s even the barest hint of pity or blame, I won’t be able to unsee that, and I don’t want either from him. “I’m sorry.”

I nod and glance out the window at the blacktop baking in the heat. “It was the only place I remembered being happy. That house. I had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to, and I felt like within its walls, I’d be closer to my daddy. But someone else lived there now, a family, who were whole. Not like us.

“I waited until they left, the kids at school, probably, and the father at work. He wore suits. I remember thinking it was so different, you know? When my daddy left for work, it was in full uniform, and there were a lot of tears, always.” I smile at August, but inside I feel hollowed out. I’ve never told anyone, not even my best friend, Ellie. I shouldn’t be burdening him with this, but I was tired of keeping the worst parts of me hidden. I wanted him to know that I understood pain. I knew how it felt to harbor a broken spirit because I’d done it since I was sixteen years old. “I wandered through their house, and every trace of us had been removed; my daddy wasn’t there. He was long gone.

“I knew that. I’d known it a long time, but I still kept searching. I waited for him. I thought somehow, he would cross the veil that separated our worlds and he’d stop me, so I lay there on a stranger’s bed staring up at the ceiling, knowing I didn’t have time to waste, and waiting anyway. I was waiting on a miracle. It never came. I dried my eyes, and I ran a bath so hot I was afraid my skin would peel. I screamed as I stepped into it. It’s funny how your body fights for self-preservation, even when there’s nothing worth saving.”

I glance down at the scars on my wrists. I taste the bitterness of sorrow on my tongue, feel the tightening in my throat, and the sharp prick of tears sting my eyes. I know how this story ends, and still I want the chance to re-write it.

“I cut myself. Stuck that blade in my skin and I watched as the blood poured out of my body. I didn’t know what came next, and I didn’t much care what happened to me in the afterlife. All I cared about was not feeling this pain anymore. My daddy would have been so ashamed of me, but I couldn’t take care of a monster’s baby. I couldn’t even take care of myself.

“It hurt like hell. They don’t show you that on TV and in the movies, it’s always just a little nick and the character quietly slips away, as easy as falling asleep, but it isn’t real. Somewhere in amongst all the pain and blood, I woke up. I fought and changed my mind. I crawled out of that tub, but I didn’t make it two steps before I fell and hit my head.”

I can’t look at him. Instead, the words pour out of me as I stare through blurry eyes at the long, empty road before us. “I saw my daddy, August. I saw his stricken face, and I wanted to stay with him, but the next thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital bed. I’d lost the baby. That was a given, I guess, and I was doped up on despair and morphine. I tried to pull my drip out because I was terrified I’d become like her, like my mamma.

Salt water spills over my cheeks. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I don’t know what it’s like to fight in a war zone, to see the things you’ve seen and to have to be okay with what you’ve done, what you’ve lived through, but I do know something about feeling unworthy. I do know what it’s like to wake in a hospital bed and find you’re all alone, and to know that you’ve made decisions you’re not sure you can live with. And I know what it’s like to forgive yourself, and discover that there is a reason you’re still here. I don’t know if it’s divine intervention or just a series of events that led me to your door, but I do know I was born to do this, and you weren’t born to be alone.”

I wipe my tears away and search my purse for a Kleenex. I come up empty, but August leans over and opens the glove box, pulling out a travel packet of tissues and handing one to me. “Thank you.”

He unfastens my belt, and the next thing I know, I’m being drawn up against his warm body with his big arm wrapped around my waist. I hold my breath, afraid if I let it in, if I give in, I’ll break down completely, but he squeezes me tightly, and then I fall apart. I sob like I never have, not even when I slipped into that bath, or lay dying on a stranger’s tiled bathroom floor—not even when the doctors told me that I was going to be okay and I didn’t see how I could be. I didn’t see how I deserved to be after what I’d done.

He squeezes me so tight I fear I may crack a rib, but right now it’s the only thing holding me together, so I don’t move away. I just lean into him, and I take his strength.

When my mind is quiet, and my tears have all but dried, he presses a kiss to my hair and says, “You done good, princess. You did real good.” His voice quavers, and he tilts my head up to his, pressing a chaste kiss on my lips. I kiss him back, but there’s no heat to it, just a kind of acceptance that I didn’t think I’d ever feel from this stubborn, short-tempered Marine. And it’s as sweet a taste in my mouth as it is bitter, because I just poured my heart out to this man, and I know he’ll never let himself open up to me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

August