THE AIR FEELS heavy.
Tingles paraded along my flesh.
Am I getting enough oxygen?
Blake squeezed the edges of my fingers, reminding me he was by my side, allowing me to draw from his strength. After years of building up a wall so high, convincing myself it would keep me safe, it felt good to allow someone else to shoulder some burden. To give into it. Finally.
The ice in my sister’s green stare sent a shiver down my spine. She hates me.
“Eva?” The weight of my mom’s questions sat in my name like a torpedo ready to launch. I hadn’t even been awake ten minutes, and my world was about to change. It was time to unload the boulder I’d been carrying for far too long. I only hoped it didn’t roll back and crush me in the process.
The noise from the hall lulled to silence, and my gaze drifted over as Jace turned and stood in front of the now-closed door. Appreciative, I silently thanked him. He blew me a kiss before clasping one hand in the other and giving me an encouraging nod. I closed my eyes and blew a slow breath through a pinhole between my lips, releasing whatever negative judgment still sat within me. When the last grain of self-hatred floated on that breeze, I opened my eyes and met my family’s waiting gazes. The water building in those familiar eyes told me my hesitation spoke as loudly as my words would.
“Eva, what’s going on?” The lines of worry cut deep on my mom’s forehead, the pinch between her eyebrows showcasing her pain. She didn’t even know yet, and already I could tell her heart was crumbling.
An ache consumed my chest as I dreaded the agony I was about to cause her—cause this whole family. Once I said the words, she would know for certain—and she could never not know again. My mother was about to find out that the baby part of her baby girl had been stolen way too soon.
How devastating.
Tragic.
Life-changing.
Aware that I had shielded her from that burden for as long as I had provided some comfort. Solace washed over me briefly, a sense of serenity that I’d sheltered her from this for all of these years, and for the first time ever, I felt I had made the right decision in doing so. Unloading my burden was sure to explode bits of grief into all of the people I loved, slipping their own load to bear beneath their skin, but I couldn’t think of such things, or I would never go through with it.
It was time to end my nightmare.
I didn’t look at any of them, kept my line of sight trained on some blurry faraway place, where snippets of my story floated about in space, moving in and out of focus. Blake squeezed my hand once more, and the first of my words dropped like a rock from my lips.
“I believed him.”
I faintly registered a sharp intake of air, but I wasn’t sure who it came from, and I didn’t dare stop. My insides felt as though they were being bashed with stones, my gut swirling with fright, nauseous and unyielding. I attempted to tamp it all down, to move past the flight of angry butterflies whipping through my core. The next words were uncertain as I lost a bit of the nerve I had built up.
“It was innocent enough, I thought. The first time he—” My throat tightened, and I tried clearing it, my eyes still swimming in a hazy mist. “The first time Da—” Fear of his name, of the truth, the lies, the filth and betrayal that they would slay at me halted my tongue. I squeezed my eyes shut, my face pulling into a pinch as I found the courage.
“Damon,” I spit out the disgusting taste of that name, “approached me, I believed what he said.” My upper lip twitched into a curl as I recalled the dip in my bed that fateful day, the look in his eye as he stared at my chest a bit too long. I remembered the confusion. “He was so close to us. I never thought he’d hurt me.” A small sarcastic laugh escaped me in a hmph, the memory fizzing into the washed out fog before me.
A strangled cry was swallowed down, and the hazy, gray hues snapped to a focused picture as my gaze swung to Abby in a far corner of the room. Her hand was clamped over her mouth, her posture feeble as her head swished back and forth in disbelief. My eyes burned with an ache as I tried to keep them dry, looking at the horror etched in my sister’s green eyes. Knowing it was because of me cut deep and weakened my strength. If I thought too much about it, I wouldn’t continue, so I looked away and finished the rest.
“It was only the beginning of the hurt . . .” I pinched my eyes shut for a beat, feeling the pressure on my chest escalate like I was sinking. “The scratch at the belly of the Titanic.” I gulped. “The water began to seep in at that point in a slow drawn out nightmare. As much as I prayed it would stop, it just kept rushing in, suffocating me until it took it all, drowning me.” I simultaneously leveled my breathing, and my gaze so there would be no misinterpretation. “After that first time—he never stopped hurting me. Each time he came to my room, he’d leave with another piece of me. He’d take a little more until eventually there was nothing left.”
“Oh, god.” My mother clutched at her chest and started to weep.
A shuddered breath hiccuped from my chest while I gathered a bit more strength, trying to pull out from under the weight of the memory. My father caught my mother’s shoulders with his hands, his own eyes brimming with tears. A look of confusion mixed with anger brewed on his face.
“But, how . . . why wouldn’t you tell us?”
How could I tell them? “Because I . . . He . . .” I hung my head. “I agreed to it the first time—kind of,” I rushed to add. “I didn’t think you’d believe me.” My voice cracked. “I thought you’d be mad.”
Their faces crumpled, that final declaration taking the last bit of restraint. The flowery world that had painted their existence was now tarnished in a coat of tar lying at the foot of my mother’s cries. Abby fled from the room in hysterics, knocking Jace in the shoulder on the way out. His spine sharpened as his gaze followed her and then fell back to me.
“Let her go,” I instructed, being pulled tightly into Blake’s side.
He kissed the top of my head, whispering, “I’m so proud of you. You’re so brave.”
I closed my eyes and wrapped my mind around those words, letting them soothe the open wound in my heart as I looked at the pain ripping into the people I loved most. In less than a week, Abby was supposed to be flitting around her engagement party—champagne in hand, euphoric and celebratory. Instead, she was getting the biggest bomb of her life dropped on her. I wasn’t sure she’d ever speak to me again. The hovering gloom was squashing the liberation I thought I would feel unloading this.
“I just don’t understand.” My mom’s voice strangled in her tears. “How did we miss this?”
I pushed thoughts of Abby aside, knowing my mom would need the attention of my answers. “He was calculated about it. Quiet. And . . . you love him. You always loved him. He puts on a good show.”
My mom wailed, her head dropping into the blanket covering my lap. Blake’s fingers dug into my side, reminding me that he was hearing this story from my mouth for the first time as well. This couldn’t have been easy for him. I kept my focus on my parents, but grazed a soothing thumb along the back of Blake’s hand, never more thankful for the support he was giving me.
“Don’t beat yourselves up over it. You couldn’t have known.” I rubbed circles over my mother’s back, trying to soothe the race whipping through her.
Red bumps paraded along the skin of my father’s neck and cheeks, his eyes bulging in a watery rage. “I’ll kill him,” he seethed through bared teeth, no doubt finally absorbing all that had gone on. He was always so passive and easy going. I couldn’t remember any other time in my life he’d looked so enraged. “All these years. Right under our goddamn noses.”
“I can’t!” My mom sat up, violently rocking.
I smoothed my hand down her arm. “Shhh. It’s not your fault. I’m okay.” All eyes were on me as I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and nodded, reassuring myself just as much as I was them. “I’m finally okay.”
My voice cracked as liberation flooded in, the weight that had sat on my chest for so long finally breaking into a million shards in an explosion of happy. Of acceptance. My rib cage expanded as I drew in a giant gulp of air, letting the lightest oxygen I had ever felt filter in. Reliving this secret from my past was the final piece of my healing. When you’re bogged down with burden, even the air feels different as it travels through your lungs—thick and unsatisfying. Regardless of what happened from this point forward, I was free. I could never change the past or what had happened to me, and I was okay with that. It made me who I was, and I was pretty kick-ass.