I shake my head, smiling, and touch my lips to his.
Three weeks ago, I couldn’t take the closeness of dancing with him. It scared me. It was too much to deal with. Three weeks ago, I ran out of class because everything felt wrong.
Now, with my body wrapped around his, and him holding me for all it’s worth, everything feels right.
~
“You didn’t tell me you were changing the dance.”
“You didn’t tell me you were.”
Blake turns, grinning. “For the record, I like the new ending.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course you do.”
“What?” He puts a large plastic bowl filled with popcorn on his coffee table and drops himself backward onto the sofa. “What do you expect from a guy?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” A sad tinge works its way into my voice.
He leans his head back and looks at me. “I want to ask why that sounds like an honest answer instead of a sarcastic one.”
“It sounds like it because it is.” I smile sadly and look down at my jeans, picking some lint off them. “I really don’t know what to expect. He… Pearce… He gave a new meaning to the words “Always expect the unexpected.” He took everything I expected and made me think I was wrong.”
“I’m not gonna like this, am I?” Blake mutters, taking my hand and threading his fingers through mine.
“Probably not,” I admit. “But… I want you to know… If any of what I’m about to say makes you feel any differently, I won’t be offended if-”
He cups my chin and raises my face so we’re eye-to-eye. “Abbi, there is nothing you could say to me that would make me feel any differently. Whatever’s happened to you in the past is just that. In the past. None of that will make a blind bit of difference to how I feel about you right now.”
I nod, silence falling as I try to gather my words. With Dr. Hausen it was easier. My brain had blocked out most of the memories, locking them away and letting them out gradually. Now they’re all out. They’re ready to haunt me the second I let them.
If I let them.
“I guess I should start at the beginning and tell you Pearce is Maddie’s brother. Yep.” I hold my hand up to stop him talking. “The Maddie you met. Their mom was killed in a drive-by shooting a few years ago. She wasn’t the target – she was just an innocent bystander caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maddie was there when it happened, and her death all but tore her family apart. Her dad isn’t the guy he was, and Pearce did what most grieving people did; he looked for an outlet for his emotions, a way to ease his pain. In high school it was easy enough, so he started staying out at weekends and partying. Alcohol soon turned to drugs, and casual usage became a full-blown addiction. By mine and Maddie’s senior year, he was hooked on heroin, but it wasn’t so bad there was no Pearce left in him. Or so we thought, and for some goddamn stupid reason, he and I ended up in a relationship.
“I thought I could help him. I loved their mom almost as much as they did – her death killed me, too – but I was wrong. I didn’t know it then. I wouldn’t know it for a while. Our relationship started as any other did, until he started talking me into going to parties with him. Maddie came too, and it wasn’t until then we realized Pearce needed heroin to survive. He was one hundred percent addicted, needing an almost constant high, and if he didn’t get that high, he would turn.
“On his comedown or his craving stages, he was volatile. He was almost evil, possessed with nothing but the need for more of the drug that put him like that. God forbid you got in his way during those times. If you did, it didn’t end well for you. He had a barrage of verbal abuse he’d throw at you, and he knew how to throw a good punch.” I close my eyes and whisper, “And he didn’t care who you were. His friend, a stranger… His girlfriend.”
Blake’s hand tightens around mine.
“As his girlfriend, I got the worst end of the deal. He was paranoid from using the drugs and he was obsessed with the idea his friends were trying to take me from him. I don’t know why it bothered him – he didn’t really want me himself. I was more an accessory for him, something to look pretty on his arm. Something to hide the reality of what he was.
“Anyway, the paranoia meant I was barely allowed to leave his side at a party. The few times I was, Maddie had to be there, and then she was lecturing me about leaving him, so I ended up just staying with him. Which meant I was there for every stage of his addiction. His craving, his high, and his comedown. I took the brunt of it all. Verbal and physical. He didn’t care who I was in that state. All he wanted was the drug, and it’s like he thought I was the one keeping him from it. I was, at first, then I learnt it was pointless because he was going to get it anyway. But I still thought I could save him. I always thought I could save him from himself.”
I breathe in deeply, images playing behind my eyes in quick succession, and I open them to stop them. I need to stop the box of memories opening and flooding into me, taking me under, drowning me in pain. I need to pause it, let the words come as I want them to, not as the past does.
“He’s the reason you cut, isn’t he?” Blake asks me softly, yet angrily.
I nod. “The pain from cutting took away the pain from him. When I cut, I couldn’t feel the bruises from the punches or the kicks. I couldn’t feel the pain inside from the person I trusted, the person I was sure I loved, breaking me into two. I lived in fear constantly. I had to double check what I was wearing, the way I’d done my hair, how I was acting, who I was talking to, the plans I was making. All of it had to be Pearce-approved. I wasn’t allowed to look attractive for other guys or spend my weekends with the girls like I used to.
“Maddie kept trying to get through to me. She’d accepted Pearce for what he was – hopelessly addicted to heroin without an escape in sight. I didn’t want to accept that, so I didn’t. Or maybe I was too scared to accept it. I think that’s probably right, considering how much I feared him. Eventually, she gave up because she couldn’t get through to me. I was blinded by the Pearce I remembered and a faint childish hope that Pearce would one day come back. He never did and he never would.”
I open my eyes, and Blake holds my hand even tighter, his other fist clenched. His jaw is clenched shut and his eyes are hard.
“I put up with it for so long. All the abuse… The kicks, the punches, the shoves… I hid it every time, relishing the winter when there was always thick sweaters to wear to cover the bruises on my arms from slipping on the ice. No one knew, no one except Maddie, but even then she couldn’t prove it. I’d never admit it. I was stuck in a loop; go out, get hit, come home, cut. It repeated itself several times a week until I finally broke. Until he finally broke me.