CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
DAPHNE
The knock on the door startled me. It was loud and sharp, and for just a second, I was afraid that it was my father again. Just in case, I looked through the peep hole.
It was Jace and he looked upset, or worried. I opened the door and as soon as he saw me, he smiled. I loved having that effect on him, even if I wasn’t supposed to.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” he said. “Can I come in?”
“Of course.” I stepped back to let him in, and he followed me over to the couch. I hadn’t heard from him since the day we had sex in the confessional, but that was okay; I had a lot of soul searching to do over that one. We sat down and neither of us said anything for a long time. At last, he said, “How do you keep your faith so strong?”
“What?” I was sure he was there to talk about us and figuring this all out. That wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t exactly answer. Instead I said,
“Maybe my faith is not as strong as I thought it was…considering.”
He knew what I was talking about, but he said, “No, there is something about you, Daphne. Something that is so special it transcended everything for me. Everything that I ever thought I knew or believed in. From the first moment I saw you in that bar…”
I felt my face go hot. That whole night of the bar started this mess and every time I let myself think about it, I felt so cheap. “I don’t want to talk about the bar,” I told him. “But we do need to talk about what happened in the confessional.” I didn’t want to talk about that, either, but we had to. It was taking its toll on us both.
Instead of doing that, he moved in closer and took my hands into his. Just that small touch set my insides on fire. “It’s not often, Daphne, that I meet someone your age that just has this…aura of faith about them. I feel it when I’m with you and it fills me with light. I need to know more about that. I need to know where your faith comes from because I feel like I’m losing my own.”
In my experience with men, which was very limited, whenever one of them wanted to have a conversation with me where we divulged secrets, it usually ended with him running for the hills.
The only really serious relationship I’d been in ended that way, the second I told him about my life. Then there were the ones that wanted to pity me and protect me. They didn’t understand that although there were times like the night I reached out to Jace that I needed protection, most of the time, I just wanted to be treated the same as everyone else. I wanted them to recognize that I was strong in my own right and what my father had done to me had not made me weak and dependent.
I didn’t want Prince Charming to swoop in and slay the dragons of my past. I wanted someone who would realize that as horrible as it was, it shaped the woman I am today. I wanted his respect and support, not his pity.
I wasn’t sure which man Jace would be, but I was afraid either way. My gut was telling me not to go there, and I was usually better off when I listened to it.
I couldn’t bear the thought of driving him completely away. Something inside of him called to me to, and I couldn’t deny it any longer.
“Daphne, listen to me, please. I can see you struggling with how much you want to share with me, but I’m having doubts about everything in my life—except you. If you’re feeling the same way, then maybe we can help each other through that. I think we have to tackle that first before we can figure out where to go from here.”
“I am.” I said with tears beginning to fill my eyes. “I’m feeling the same way. My faith has been strong for a long time, but now, the way I feel about you has overshadowed it and I’m not sure what to do.”
He was nodding. “I feel guilty all the time about what we’ve done, but there is something still inside of me that keeps saying it’s the right thing; it’s telling me that it’s my purpose, to be with you.”
“I know. I feel the same. The guilt overwhelmed me at first, but this little voice inside of me kept asking what if you were the one I was meant to be with? What if you were who God put in my path?
“I wish I knew, but I don’t. All I do know is that I can’t pretend any longer that you’re just my friend, because you are so much more than that to me.”
“I’m glad you said that about the path. That’s what I keep asking God over and over: if I wasn’t meant to be with you and if this is wrong, then why did He put you in my path and give me these overwhelming feelings for you?
“There has to be a reason we met. God has to have a plan for us, and I can’t imagine that plan is for us to have this kind of intense experience and then just walk away from one another and go on with our lives as we swallow the guilt.”
If Jace really believes that, if he really thinks we’re destined to be together, then maybe he won’t run away when he knows the truth. If I am going to expect him to give up his life’s chosen work for me, then the very least I can do is tell him the truth and let him decide what to do with it on his own.
I took a deep, shaky breath and said, “My faith comes from having nothing else and no one else to turn to. I turned to God when I needed someone to tell my secrets to because they weighed much too heavily on my young shoulders. Things I couldn’t tell anyone else…”
His brows were pulled together and he was looking worried again. “Things like what, Daphne?”
I felt a tear slide down my face. “My mother died when I was very young. I’m not sure if that’s what prompted it…or if my father is just a sick bastard who has always been so…”
Jace was giving me that look that other men had given me—the one that said they may be afraid they asked now. I swallowed the lump in my throat and went on.
“My father beat me…and he raped me. When I finally got away, I was sure it was because throughout it all, I had kept my faith in God. Otherwise, I believe he would have killed me. I needed a stable parent in my life and God gave me that. I learned that He would love me unconditionally and would never, ever hurt me, so that was where I turned.”
Jace was staring at me, and I couldn’t read the look on his face. I reached up and wiped the silent tears off my cheeks and waited.
If he was going to run, it would be now. If he was going to pity me, I would see it…and hear it in his voice. He didn’t do either. All at once, he nodded and said, “That’s it,” in a soft voice.
Confused, I said, “What? What’s it?”
“It’s that strength, that will to survive that I see and feel coming from inside of you. It’s immense, bigger than most people and the strongest kind of faith a person can experience. I know this for a fact.”
I smiled slightly at his analysis. It was the best I’d ever heard and instead of making me feel like a freak, it made me feel warm and safe inside. “How do you know it for a fact?” I asked him.
“I recognize it because I feel it. I feel it because I’ve been there, too.
“My mother was a raging alcoholic. She went through boyfriends the way she did liquor and each one of them got worse. My brothers and I were never sexually assaulted, but we were beaten, sometimes so severely that we had to go to the hospital. We all have different fathers and none of us knew who any of them were; that was probably a blessing.
“She got into drugs, too, eventually. She owed a lot of money to her dealers. I think she worked some of it off with her body and some of it by selling drugs. But apparently, not all of it.
“She was murdered in the house one night while we were all sleeping. Her boyfriend at the time wasn’t home when it happened. When he got home, he got high before he called the police.
“Ryan was just starting to pull himself up at the time. He grabbed a baggie of something off the coffee table and spilled it all over. He knocked Ryan across the room and then got up and went after him again. “Max and I got between them, and he beat us both so badly we all had to be in the hospital for a while. By the time we got out, they had finally tracked down my grandmother.
“Mom had taken off when Max was born and never told Grandma where she was. She had always told us that her mother was a horrible person and if we didn’t behave, she would send us there and Grandma would torture us like she did her.
“Grandma never stopped looking for Max. Mom wasn’t supposed to have custody of him because she was already a mess when he was born. Grandma had kept in touch with the police for years, and when my mother died, one of the detectives connected the two and called her.
“She was surprised when she found three of us and not one, but she didn’t hesitate to take us in. Ryan had a lot of problems after that and that was the biggest reason that he and Grandma ended up so close. I think it also has a lot to do with how he is still so childlike. We give him a lot of leeway because of it.”
“I’m so sorry, Jace.”
He gave me a weak smile. “Going to live with Grandma was the best thing that ever happened to us. She was an amazing woman and in all of the years I knew her, her faith in God never wavered.
“She was the reason I found mine and also the reason I began to question it. The night I met you, we had just buried her. I was drinking because I couldn’t handle the pain and I was questioning why God would take her.”
“That night, my father somehow got my phone number and called me. He said some disgusting things; that’s why I was there.”
“I guess we have a lot more in common than we thought,” he said.
I smiled. “Sadly.”
He reached for me and pulled me into his chest. He didn’t run, and he didn’t pity me. He understood me. I looked up into his eyes. I could see how strongly he felt for me.
I put my hand on the side of his face and kissed him. Our tongues tangled and our breaths meshed and I knew that he was right: we were meant to be. “Get undressed,” he said against my mouth.