Kason fell asleep hours ago, but I still lie awake—haunted. It’s no longer the two of us because the ghost of Liam is ever present. He’s in my head. He’s everywhere I am. He’s in this very room.
I can’t sleep because I’m scared to be unconscious, to not be in control, to not know what happens between the time I close my eyes and open them again.
My imagination is my worst enemy.
It recycles my fears like a never-ending revolving door to which there is no escape. I’ve been lying here most of the night with the flashlight on my phone turned on because I’m frightened of the dark—of what I can’t see—of lost time and vanquished memories. I can’t lose anymore, so I stay awake with my pitiful nightlight, but it hardly comforts.
I flinch every time Kason rolls over or rustles the sheets beneath him, and I have to tell myself to calm down, that no one else is in this room except the two of us. It doesn’t matter how many times I say those words, every move he makes, every sound, every everything, startles me. But it’s when I hear a door closing and footsteps coming down the hallway that I jackknife. With my hand clutched against my chest in a feeble attempt to keep my heart from busting loose, I watch Kason’s door, terrified of the slice of light that pours under it. A shadow passes by, the light goes off, and I hear his mother’s door close.
It’s only his mom coming home from work.
I drop my hand and fist the sheets as I let go of a strangled breath. My heart beats so hard that I can feel it reverberating in my throat, and all I want to do is run—fast and far—away from here. Away from everything.
I look over to Kason to make sure he’s still sound asleep before easing my way off the mattress. Using the light from my phone, I pad across the room, find my flip-flops, and quietly slip them into my overnight bag. Very slowly, I turn the knob on the door before opening it just as silently as I close it behind me. With my bag slung over my shoulder, I tiptoe through the small apartment and out the door, leaving it unlocked behind me as I rush to my car.
I try not to let the guilt of what I’m doing bring me down any more than what I already am. I just couldn’t stay trapped in that dark room for another second. I drive into the night to the only place I can think to go that might offer me a sense of safety long enough to get some rest. It takes thirty minutes to reach my house, and when I pull into my driveway, it’s after three in the morning.
Not wanting to wake my mother, I open the home security app on my cell and type in the code to deactivate the alarm. Then, just as I did at Kason’s apartment, I quietly ease my way inside and up the stairs to my bedroom.
I shut the door behind me as the familiar scent of home consumes me. There’s an immediate emotional reaction that expands in my much too frail body. Without hesitation, I weep my way straight over to the bed and crawl in. Hugging my pillow to my chest, I cry quiet tears while praying to God to help me through this. It feels like hours that I bargain with Him, apologize to Him, and promise Him that I’ll be better, do better, commit to my faith better. Desperate pleas consume every inch of my room until the air becomes too thick to breathe and the walls close in on me and fear makes its presence known.
I hop out of bed to flip on the bathroom light and then crack my door open before tucking myself under the covers, only to find that I’m just as scared in my bed as I had been in Kason’s. The only difference is that when I wake up, I won’t have to face his questions, I won’t have to lie. And because of that alone, I feel like a tiny piece of weight has been taken off me.
Shallow sleep eventually finds me, but it’s short-lived and only comes in spurts that don’t even last a solid thirty minutes before I wake with my gut eating away at me. Eventually, the black outside my window begins to transform into midnight blue, growing lighter slowly as the sun returns to the sky.
I’m so tired, and my eyes hurt under the fatigued pressure of my lids straining to stay open. My room glows in the warmth of the morning sun, and I finally find a semblance of the peace I’d been searching for in the night. With everything beaming brightly around me, scaring away the monsters in the dark, my eyes fall shut long enough for me to drift away.
I jerk out of my sleep with an audible gasp when something touches me.
“It’s me,” my mother assures before I can process that I’m back home in my bed. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
I sit up and push myself back against the headboard, take a calming deep breath, and adjust to waking too fast.
“What are you doing here?” She’s wearing the same look of worry that Kason has been giving me.
“I was just . . . I guess I was a little homesick and wanted to sleep in my own bed.”
“When did you get here? I didn’t even hear you come in.”
“After midnight.”
“Midnight? Why so late?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell her and then try to deflect her concern with a fake smile, saying, “Sleeping on that thin twin bed is no joke, Mom. You’d be sneaking back here, too, if you were me.”
“Spoiled is what you are,” she teases before reaching her arms out to me. “Come here. I’ve missed you so much.”
I close my eyes and soften into her embrace as we hug.
“This house isn’t the same without you, you know?”
I nod. “I miss you, too.”
She draws back. “But you’re having fun, right?”
I nod again and feed into her idea that college will be the best years of my life. “Yeah, it’s a blast. And Lana is a good roommate, but that girl never slows down.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Ehh, not really, but quiet is nice, too.”
She has a moment of pause, tilting her head in wariness. “Are you sure everything is okay?”
“I’m sure. Stop worrying.”
With another passing second, she lets it be and moves on, asking, “How are you feeling about starting classes on Monday?”
I shrug. “Fine, I guess.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re home. Unfortunately, I have to run.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the office for a little while,” she says.
Before she leaves my room, I promise her that I’ll stick around until dinner so we can spend some time together. Just as I hear her setting the alarm, the doorbell rings. My stomach does a dip-dive when I think about it being Kason. I can only imagine his worry when he woke up to find me gone.
“Ady,” my mother calls. “I’m heading out, but Kason is here.”
I brace myself for whatever it is he’s going to say, wishing there were a way to avoid all of this. Wishing that I could cling to the little solace I’ve found and keep it from scattering now that he’s here.
He stops in my doorway for a moment and looks at me with uncertainty. Guilt and shame and anger come crashing down on top of me as his eyes take me in.
“Why?” It’s all he says as he steps into my room and over to my bed, but I give him no answer. My body trembles in nervousness from the inside, and when he sits on the edge of the bed next to me, I can see the snagged edges of frustration he’s trying to mask. “Tell me what I should be thinking right now.”
Like a cowardly child, I shrug.
“That’s it? That’s all I get from you? Do you have any idea what it felt like to wake up alone and realize that you snuck out sometime in the middle of the night without bothering to tell me what was going on or where you were going?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” He drops his attention away from me and clenches his fists a few times as he tries to keep his cool. “I love you, Adaline,” he eventually says. “I know there’s something you aren’t telling me. Ever since you moved out of here, you haven’t been the same.”
“I told you—”
“You told me a weak lie that does nothing to explain your erratic behavior.”
My anxiety snags on a sharp knife, ripping it open wider as I stare at him in silence. There is nothing I could tell him that would explain this away.
“Just talk to me,” he stresses. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”
“It’s nothing.”
“God dammit, Adaline, stop lying.”
“I’m not!” I defend on a pitched voice, growing irritated with his incessant questioning when I just want to be left alone. When I just need him to stop watching me and dissecting my every move. When I’m just trying to make it from one hour to the next without having to think about whatever defilement happened to me.
“You’re not lying?” he mocks angrily. “Tell me you aren’t acting strange. Tell me you don’t cringe every time I touch you—”
“Why are you pushing?” I snap, throwing the covers off me and storming out of bed. “If I tell you I’m fine, why isn’t it enough?”
He stands and marches over to me in his own bout of irritability. “Because you aren’t fine, and we both know it.”
“I am,” I lie as I stare at him dead on.
“Why are you doing this? Why are you pushing me away when you know how deeply I care for you?”
“Why are you pushing me?”
“Because I love you!” he shouts as he rips his fingers through his hair. His jaw clenches, and he takes a few steps away from me before turning back. “Talk to me. God, that’s all I’m asking you to do, to trust me enough with whatever is going on. But you’re hiding from me. Do you have any idea how that feels after everything I’ve told you about myself—about my past?”
“Just stop!” I can’t take any more guilt. I can’t be made to feel like I’m the villain just because he’s stronger than I am and is able to open up. I can’t do that. There isn’t an ounce of me that has the power to do so. If he only knew what happened to me, he’d understand my need for silence because it happened to him, too. Both of us have been taken advantage of in the most intimate way a person can be.
He suffered through years of sexual abuse, and even though mine was just a night—a night that I can’t even remember—it doesn’t mean I don’t feel every morsel of its misery. He’s had years to allow his wounds to knit themselves into scars inside him. I’ve had a few measly days. My pain is too fresh, a still-festering wound inside me. I know if I open my mouth and give him what he wants, it will be the final twist of the knife, the final pull of a stitch, that will open me up and leave me bleeding out onto the floor.
“Why can’t you just leave it alone?”
“Because that isn’t how this works. You’re mine to take care of, and you’re refusing to let me do it. There isn’t anything I won’t do for you. There isn’t anything I won’t fix and make right.” He walks closer to me. “Is it something I did?”
I shake my head and take a step back, needing to keep the distance because I’m scared of how deep he’s trailing with me. “I just wanted a night in my own bed.” My words come out too meek. “Why won’t you just believe me?”
“If I’m giving you all of me, then I’m going to want the same in return.”
“I’m not you, Kason, and to demand that out of me isn’t fair. So, if I say I’m fine, just let it be and stop pushing!”
“Is that what you really want? Me to walk away from you like I don’t give a shit?”
“I don’t know what I want because you’re making it impossible for me to think straight!” I grit my teeth as I walk across the room. My heart pounds for acceptance and solitude, both of which he’s denying me. I know he’s worried, but I just want to be left alone.
“So what is it then? Just lay it out there for me, Adaline. What do you want?”
“I want you to just let me be. I want to be able to sleep in my own bed without being questioned. If I don’t want to have sex or be touched, don’t assume it’s because there’s something wrong. And if I tell you I’m fine, then let it be and move on.”
My words slap him right across the face, and I drop my eyes, unable to handle the hurt I just caused him when this goes against everything we are to each other.
“So that’s how you want it?”
I don’t move to respond.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says in outright defeat, with so much hopelessness, before he walks from my room and out of my house, leaving me in more pain than I was in before he showed up here.
As if the loss of my self-worth weren’t enough, I now fear I stand the chance of losing so much more, and that very thought brings me to my knees in a torrential storm of heartbreak.