“Oh, sweet girl.” He crouched down next to me and picked me up and set me down on my bed, stretching out beside me and brushing the tears from my face. He kissed the tip of my nose and I couldn’t stop him.
“Dusty, don’t.”
“Stop telling me what to do, Jos. For this once, I’m not going to be a gentleman and listen to you.” He pulled me tight against him, and I struggled a little to get free, but his arms were like steel cables and I didn’t really try that hard.
“Let me. Just let me for a little while.” He locked his arms around me and I turned my head so it was against his chest. His heart pounded like the rough beat of a drum, and I listened to it, trying to let everything else go.
Once he was sure I wasn’t going to try to get away from him, his hands loosened on my back and started moving up and down in soothing waves.
The tears continued, but they weren’t as bad as before.
He didn’t sing. He didn’t speak. He just held me and breathed with me and let me cry my tears into his shirt until I was wrung out and didn’t have any left. At least for now.
My arm was falling asleep, so I shifted and he tensed up.
“Sorry. I just need to move.” He loosened his grip, and I turned so I was in a better position. One of his hands went under my chin, tipping my face up so he could look at it.
“I’m a mess. I know,” I said as he brushed some of my hair out of my eyes.
“A beautiful mess I don’t know how I got myself roped into.”
“I didn’t rope you.”
“Yes, you did. It just isn’t your fault.”
That wasn’t, maybe.
“Joscelyn?”
“Mmm?”
“You’re not this upset about the virginity thing, are you?”
I couldn’t lie anymore. “No.”
“It’s something else. Something bigger.”
I nodded with his hand still under my chin.
“Then I have to tell you that you’re not the only one who has something so big and so bad that they can’t tell anyone. You’re not the only one. Do you understand?”
“What?” I’d known there were lots of secrets about Dusty’s past that he would rather leave buried, but I just assumed he had a bad home life, or he’d been abused, or something like that. What was it with people and secrets? I seemed to attract them. First Hannah and now Dusty.
“But you know what? Compared with the thought of losing you, my secret doesn’t seem so big anymore. You’re the first person I’ve told about this.”
I tried to put my hand on his mouth, but he moved it.
“No, I’m going to tell you, not because I want to, but I need you to hear it.” I held on to his shirt. “You saw that picture of me and my brother, right?” Oh, no. Oh, nonononono. I stiffened in his arms, but he didn’t stop talking.
“Well, he died. Nine months ago. And it’s my fault.”
At the exact moment my brain took the things he said and translated them, I was sure my heart stopped.
Chapter 21
I sat up, wrenching myself out of his arms.
“I can’t listen to this. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” I dived for the door, but Dusty stopped me, trying to pull me back.
“Let me go, let me go, let me go!” I screamed. My door burst open and Dusty froze.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” Dusty let go of me and Renee pulled me away from him. “I think you need to get the f**k out of this house and I hope the door hits you on the way out.”
“I’m so sorry.... I just...” Renee held me and turned her body so she was between me and Dusty.
“Get. The. Fuck. OUT.” He gave me one last desperate look and pushed past us and went up the stairs.
“Did he do anything to you?” Renee said, holding my face as if she was looking for bruises.
“No, nothing like that. He didn’t hurt me.”
“That’s not what it looked like from my perspective. Shit, I never should have trusted him, but Hunter was all for it. I swear, I’ll never let him near you again.” She hugged me, and I tried to tell her that it wasn’t Dusty’s fault. That I was to blame. For this, for everything.
But the words were too big and too heavy for my tongue to form, so I just started crying again. It seemed to be my default form of expression lately.
“It’s okay, Jos. It’ll be okay.”
It was less okay than it had ever been.
We both heard yelling upstairs and then the front door slammed so hard it shook the whole house.
“It’s okay, baby girl. I’m not going to let anything hurt you.”
* * *
Renee insisted on putting me to bed and then bringing me soup. No one else came downstairs, but I could hear them upstairs, and even if I didn’t know what they were saying, I knew they were talking about me. I wondered who had taken what side. When Renee left to go make the soup, after tucking me in bed, I checked my phone. Nothing.
I’d expected at least a phone call or something from Dusty, but I finally seemed to have driven him away for good.
So why did I feel like someone had frozen my heart and then smashed it into a million pieces with a hammer? I curled up in the fetal position and tried to stop myself from crying. Seriously, how many gallons of tears could I produce? I was apparently going for the world record.
Renee came back with the soup, and I had some of it, just to appease her. She also handed me some Tylenol PM, and I swallowed it down without thinking. I wouldn’t sleep otherwise. I’d done this routine nine months ago, only that time I didn’t have Renee.
“You just rest. Don’t worry about school or homework or anything else. I’ll take care of everything. Okay?” She kissed my forehead and turned off the light as she left the room, and I lay there in the dark silence.
“Come on! I’ve never been to a concert before. Please? I can’t do this without you,” I said, clasping my hands together. “Please be with me when my concert cherry gets popped.” That made him laugh.
“Fine, fine. But you’re paying for gas.”
“Deal!” I said and threw my arms around him. “You also need to tell me what to wear. I don’t really have concert attire in my closet.”
“I know. What is up with your wardrobe? You look like you just stepped off C-SPAN all the time.”
“I’m going to have to dress like this all the time someday, so I might as well get used to it.”