Page 32 of All I Have Left

GRAYSON

W hen the sun rises the next morning, Evie’s crying has slowed; though in the back of my mind, I know it’s temporary. You don’t go through what she went through and magically wake up and it all be okay.

I’m okay with my past. Shit happened and I can’t change that. But now Evie needs me and that’s all that matters. And I want to be strong for her, but I don’t know how to be. I don’t know if I’m enough. I want to be solid and sturdy, the man she needs me to be.

Just because you fool yourself into thinking you’re okay, doesn’t mean you are.

When the disorientation from sleep wears off, she will remember what happened last night. She will remember what he did, and what I didn’t do.

Lifting her head from my pillow, she stares at me. Her lip’s more swollen and there’s a new redness to her cheeks. “Morning,” she croaks, then clears her throat, her gaze on mine.

Rolling onto my side, I prop my head up with my hand. “Hey.” I want to go as far as to ask, “Are you okay?” But I don’t because look at her. She’s not okay. She’s holding on by a thread.

I stare at her intently, searching for any cracks in her demeanor. I know what they look like and how to detect them. I’ve known her my entire life, and two, I’ve been where she’s at. And while I look at her now and she seems better than before, I can’t be sure.

“I’m fine,” she insists, seeming to know what question I’m holding back.

Sitting up, she props herself against my headboard, her knees drawn up to her chest. I sit up, our shoulders touching.

I don’t want to say anything. I want to wait for her to speak, but it’s not enough.

I have to know for sure she’s okay, so I touch her face, cradle her cheeks in my hands. “Do you want some ice for your face?”

She forces a laugh. “That bad huh?”

I shrug. “You’re still beautiful.”

Searching her eyes, I hate the reminders she’s wearing.

The swollen eye, the lip, the bruises beneath the surface.

The ones he gave her nights before this.

I can’t imagine it. Him hurting her, but then I can.

I visualize every detail as if it’s happening before me.

Playing out like a movie. It’s… more than I want to imagine.

It’s like it hits me in the chest and refuses to let go.

Swallowing over the lump in my throat, I run the tip of my thumb over her lips, anger raging inside me again.

She stares at me intently, the planes of her face different, regretful. Tears fill her eyes once again. I quickly pull her to my chest again. I have to make her see that no matter what, I’m not going anywhere.

Again, not now, not ever.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t—” She pauses. “I’m so sorry. I thought if I didn’t fight him, it wouldn’t be as bad. I thought… well, now I’m not sure what I thought.”

I can’t believe she feels the need to apologize.

Or her reasoning for staying. Hadn’t she learned anything from her mom?

How could she even think she needed to stay with him, or think any of this is her fault.

But then again, when your fate is in the hands of others, you do and say things you usually wouldn’t .

I angle my body toward her, my words shaking as I whisper, “He could have killed you, Evie.”

None of this is her fault, but it doesn’t stop me from being annoyed that she felt she couldn’t tell anyone. Actually, it pisses me off.

I sigh, knowing me getting angry won’t help. If anything, it will make this worse for her. “It should be me apologizing,” I finally say, feeling lost and confused, anxiety building in my chest. It pulses, constricts, as if it has its own beat.

More can, and maybe should be, said, but I don’t. I’m not ready to tell her everything.

The day passes slowly. We spend most of our time in my room. Frankie brings us coffee, Ethan sends in bagels and donuts, and Evie touches none of it. She lies on my bed and says not much of anything. Around two, she takes a shower.

I sit on my bed, staring at my hands and the stitches Frankie gave me for punching my windshield, I broke open yet again.

Minutes later, I can hear crying coming from inside the bathroom and immediately, I open the door. I can’t let her be alone.

I don’t care that she’s naked in there.

“Evie, what is—” My words catch when I focus on the scene before me. Evie is lying on the shower floor curled up in a ball, crying profusely, trembling from the now cold water.

Gasping, I open the shower door and climb in fully clothed and pull her cold, delicate body in my arms. “Shhh, shhh, it’s okay. I’m here for you,” I soothe, rocking her back and forth. “I got you. I’m not going anywhere. Not this time.”

Evie clings to me as though I’m her lifeline to breathe and frantically grabs anywhere she can to get closer to me.

My shoulders, my neck, stomach, all over my body as if she’s trying to crawl inside me for protection.

Water pours down on us as I cradle her head to my chest, my fingers threading into her wet hair.

“Grayson.” She cries into my chest, gripping my wet T-shirt between her fingertips. “Make it go away. Make it stop hurting. ”

Reaching around her, I turn the water off. Refusing to let go, I lean into the tile wall and hold her against me. “Just stay with me. That’s all we need.” The problem is, I don’t know if I can make this better for her.

A searing pain rips through my chest and my lungs seize.

I can’t even draw in a breath when the reality crashes around me.

I can’t save her. As much as I want to, I can’t.

This girl, the one I can’t find the strength to comfort, she had been the only one to keep me alive.

At war, I endured pain, torture, moments in time that I didn’t know how to deal with.

A suffering too terrible to name. A man, all alone, fighting a battle I had no chance of winning.

And here she was, miles and miles away, enduring the same battle.

I’ll endure this pain, this new crippling feeling as long as Evie is safe and alive.

I think about telling her. What I went through.

Why I’m back. All of it. But then after everything, Evie doesn’t need to hear how they tortured Matt in front of me to get me to talk.

She doesn’t need to know the brutal details of what it’s like to be held as a prisoner of war and the vile things they do to soldiers who are captured. My scars are enough of a reminder.

I unconsciously rub one of the scars on my arm. Evie notices and quickly holds my forearm, gently touching the deep jagged wound. I offer her a small smile as tears continue to stream down her cheeks. “We both have scars,” she whispers.

“Someday I’ll tell you about it, but not right now.

” I want to tell her about all the physical torture we had to endure, the pain, the murders and rapes, the innocent children killed around us, but I can’t—she doesn’t need to hear those things.

No one should. It’s bad enough the memories are so deeply etched in my brain.

The problem is, those memories are nothing compared to the ones I now have from what Shane has been doing to her. Everywhere I look, there are bruises shading her body. It sends a newfound rage through me, intense and consuming and so much more than I’m prepared for .

I manage to get her out of the shower and on my bed, wrapped in blankets with just her head peeking out.

That’s when my apology is given. One she deserved from the beginning.

“I’m so sorry I left you. I thought… I thought I was doing the right thing.

The night I left….” I pause and look her directly in the eyes, searching for forgiveness I suppose, and finding it, though I don’t deserve it.

“I wanted to tell you I loved you. I always have, but I wasn’t ready to admit to you that my feelings for you were much more than a friend.

When I found you graduation night, I saw you sitting on the dock with Chris, and for the first time in a while, you looked genuinely happy with him.

I didn’t want to upset you so I left. I always felt like you were pushing guys away because you thought it would hurt me.

As your friend, you never gave anyone a chance.

You were always more concerned about my feelings than finding your own happiness. ”

“Grayson,” she gasps, her eyes widening. “All those guys I ever dated, I pushed away because I wanted you,” she interjects. “Were you really that blind that you couldn’t see I was so in love with you?”

“Don’t you see though… I didn’t want you to settle for me because you thought we should be together. I left because I wanted to give you a chance to fall in love and give someone else a try. I was the boy next door. Doesn’t mean I was the one for you.”

“You were though,” she whispers, the blanket around her slipping off her bare shoulder. “And I didn’t move on. I can’t move on from you.”

Anxiety builds in my chest as I process her words. I turn my head and stare at her, blinking slowly. “What do you mean?” I ask in confusion.

“The night you left, I looked happy because I broke it off with Chris.” Her explanation hangs in the air, pulsing between us with a familiar beat. “I went to your room to tell you and found that note.” Her voice is almost a whisper.

I shake my head at the irony of it and let out an agonized chuckle and reach for her hand. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

Evie snorts, shaking her head. “Yeah, you are.”

Laughter shakes through me. “Thanks.”

There are parts of being in love that people warn you about. The great poets, song writers, movies, it’s embedded deep within everything. The broken parts. The ones you have to repair to move on. It’s like trying to piece together shattered glass. If not done gently, it all falls apart again.

In a world where everything about the last three years has been ruthless and shit, I want to give this girl beside me a never-ending kind of love. But I don’t know if I’m capable.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to make this better.”

Evie sighs, lying back on the bed. “Just hold me. That’s all I need right now.”