CHAPTER THREE
Sam
Trying not to panic, I mentally check in with my immediate surroundings.
There is no one by the door to the room, so if I need to run, that way is clear. My gun is still on the mattress beside me, just a few inches from my curled legs, so that option is available, too.
Now I just need to find out what I’m up against.
Keeping my lids slitted just enough to see, I roll over to face the balcony doors. I do my best to look like I’m still asleep, keeping my arms and legs heavy, not wanting the intruder to know I’m conscious until I make my move. Once I complete my shift in position, I intend to stay completely still. I am anticipating that the person who has broken into my room will be a man, dangerous and possibly armed, but nothing more.
I have no other expectations or suspicions.
I am entirely unprepared to see him standing on the other side of the patio doors, watching me through the smeared glass.
It’s Danny.
Here.
Close enough to touch.
Close enough to throw my arms around him and hug him breathless.
All I have to do is open the door.
My eyes fly open and my throat locks, strangling the sound of surprise rising inside of me, transforming it into a soft whimper. But Danny hears it, and his gaze shifts, settling on my shadowed face.
“Let me in, Sam,” he says softly. He looks so beautiful, so familiar. Safe, but alien at the same time, like something from another world than the one I’ve been living in for the past year. “I think we should talk.”
Talk.
After a year apart.
After I ran from him and shut him out and severed the connection between us without even a goodbye or a note telling him I’m sorry but that I couldn’t love anyone when I was filled with so much hate. After a year of knowing that he’s looking for me, longing for me, and ignoring it. A year of hiding from him and the memories of the girl I was when I was with him.
I was a girl. Just a stupid little girl, playing at being a woman, thinking I understood what it meant to promise someone forever.
But I understood nothing.
Forever is impossible. Forever in a vacuum, maybe, but not forever in the real world.
The real world has too many ugly variables. It chews you up and spits you out and then goes back for seconds, gnashing you between its teeth until you barely recognize your own face in the mirror, let alone the face of the person you love. The person you loved when you were someone else, someone with a functioning heart, who hadn’t been forced to choose between two masters.
I could never have hated the men who hurt me the way I needed to hate them if I was trying to love Danny at the same time.
Love lies. Love whispers that living well and loving well are the best revenge. It convinces you to let go, step back, and leave justice in the hands of God or karma or some other imaginary thing that will never get the job done.
If there is a God, then he let four men brutalize me and continues to allow unimaginable horror to befall innocent people every day. If that God is real, I want no part of him and nothing in my personal karma earned me a gang rape or a not guilty verdict for the men who violated me.
God and karma are lies and maybe…
Maybe love is a lie, too.
If love were real, then I wouldn’t be able to look at Danny without bursting into tears and running into his arms. I wouldn’t be able to cross the room and stand facing him through the glass without saying a word. Not a word, after so long. If love were real, I wouldn’t be able to reach out and draw the curtain between us, shutting myself in even deeper darkness and leaving Danny on the other side.
But I do it.
I draw the curtain and then I wait, breath held, ears straining for some sign of what he’s doing on the other side.
I don’t know what I’ll do if he forces his way in. I was prepared for someone to hurt me—I’ve been preparing for that for months. I’m not prepared for someone to care or to go hunting for the girl they knew hidden inside the woman I’ve become. That girl is dead. I wouldn’t know how to be her if I tried and I’m not going to try. I can’t, not until I’ve finished what I’ve started.
And maybe not even then.
Hope, faith, and a soft heart made that girl weak. I refuse to be weak again. If I have to choose between happiness and strength, I choose strength. I choose to be hard and cold and ready to fight my own battles without anyone else to protect or disappoint.
Danny wouldn’t love the person I am anyway, I think, the thought sending a sharp feeling spreading through my chest. He should go and spare both of us an exercise in pain and futility.
Finally, after five endless minutes that seem to stretch on for an eternity, I hear the fire escape creak as Danny climbs down to the street below. I hear the soft thud of boots on concrete as he lands and the softer tread as he walks away. Only when I’m certain he’s gone do I let myself crawl back onto the bed and curl up in a ball so tight my abdomen cramps and my spine starts to ache.
I press my fist to my closed mouth and fight to steady my breath, but I don’t think about Danny and I don’t cry.
I haven’t cried in a year and I’m not going to start now.
I am going to breathe, sleep, and then get up in the morning and try to forget I ever saw the man I used to think would be my forever.