Collision (36 page)

“Why did she do it?” I prodded.

As she looked back at me, I could almost see the blood drain from her face. She was completely colorless. I let go of her hands and placed my hands on her cheeks.

“Say it.”

“My father molested me,” she cried. “She caught him doing it and killed him and then tried to kill me because she knew that nobody would want me when they found out.” Her cries were so violent as she spoke that each word paused before it spilled out.

There it was, the truth. I couldn’t imagine how much courage it took for her to say it out loud, especially to a person for whom she had just admitted to having feelings. My heart broke for her.

“Go on,” I encouraged.

“I haven’t wanted anyone to be passionate about me because I’m afraid of what that will mean. I’m afraid of someone feeling so strongly about me that they can’t control themselves. You once asked me if anything frightens me. Passion frightens me.”

I sat down on the floor and then pulled her onto my lap.

“What your father had wasn’t passion, Kei. It was evil. What he had was an evil that compelled him to do what he did. There’s a difference. What he did wasn’t out of love. It was out of sickness.”

She rested her head on my shoulder, and we both cried for several minutes, so long that the music playing from my sound system ran through the entire CD. And we still sat in silence for several minutes more.

I wanted to say something to her but couldn’t think of anything, or there were so many things I couldn’t decide which to go with.

Before I formed a complete thought, she spoke. “The silence is unsettling. Please be honest and tell me what you’re thinking. I’m frightened to know, but I want you to be honest.”

I pushed her slightly away from me so I could see her and she would have to look at me. “My heart’s broken,” I admitted. “And I can’t wrap my head around it. I wish I could go back in time and protect you from all of it, keep it all from happening, but I can’t.”

“This isn’t a film,” she whispered. “It’s my truth.”

“When I think of you experiencing that…all I can say is that those things made you who you are and brought you to this place, to me. Knowing those things and that you trust me enough to tell me makes me love you more, not less.”

She blinked several times. “Love?”

I didn’t even realize I’d said it, but I was glad that I had. “Yes.”

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t know. I just know it is. Actually, I think it would be impossible for me not to.”

She crawled out of my lap and onto the couch, practically in the fetal position with her head on a pillow. “Cabot, I can’t—”

“Wait,” I said, turning to face her. “You’ve assumed what my response would be instead of letting me tell you for myself how I feel about it all.”

“I didn’t want to tell you because it’s bloody horrible. I want you to be able to escape the situation with as little awkwardness as possible.”

“That’s my point. I don’t want to escape the situation. And besides, aren’t you the one who told me that whole snake bite story and that sometimes we need someone else to help us heal?”

Her eyes rolled. “I was trying to sound brilliant. I didn’t necessarily believe what I was saying. It was all a mass of rubbish.”

“No, it wasn’t. You were right.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, in the last twenty minutes or so, conditions aren’t really the best for trying out a new romance, if that’s even what this is. And you certainly don’t understand the ramifications of dating someone who has the type of history that I do. I’ve got issues. I’ve worked through them, had a lot of trauma counseling…done a lot of trauma counseling. I’m doing well, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be problems or setbacks.”

“Kei, I won’t go into this blindly. I’ll research posttraumatic stress and all kinds of other stuff during my free time if I have to. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Her eyes blinked in shock. “You will?”

“Yeah. I understand the severity of this. And I understand that if I want a chance to be with you, then I need to realize what it is I’m getting myself into.”

“That’s for certain.”

“I learned a lot listening to you talk to those women during trauma counseling. And I also heard you tell them that what happened to them didn’t make them less valuable, didn’t make them less beautiful, and certainly didn’t make them less loveable.”

“It’s easier to believe it for them than for me,” she whispered.

“But it’s true for all of you, especially you.”

“How can you possibly accept all of this?”

I moved closer to her. “I love you, every part of you.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Those boys in the mission house, they all love and accept each other, and it seems like it should be impossible. And those people in the camps who have nothing to be happy about, they’re joyful even under the worst of circumstances. That should be impossible too, but it’s happened. Why do we have to be able to explain it? Why can’t we just accept that that’s how it is?”

Her brow creased. “Are you preaching, Cabot?”

“Maybe a little. I’ve learned from the best.”

She stared at me in shock.

“Oh, King of Glory,” I shouted.

She laughed. “You make me laugh when you do that.”

“I know. That’s why I did it.”

She smiled and then looked down at her crumpled dress and groaned. “How did I get here, Cabot? You’ve turned me in to a mess.”

“I think you’re beautiful.”

We sat in silence, looking at each other for a few minutes before she took a deep breath, threw her legs over the side of the couch, and stood.

“I need to go check on the fundraiser. They’ll begin to worry and come looking for me.”

Disappointment would be an understatement of my emotions at that moment. I’d finally told her how I felt, she’d finally come clean about her past, and she was still walking out my door like nothing had happened between us.

Just as she opened the door, I managed to say one word: “Stay.”

She froze, midstep.

“I didn’t say it last time, so I’m saying it now. Stay,” I repeated.

She looked at her hand on the doorknob for a few seconds and then pushed the door closed.

I climbed up off the floor and walked up behind her.

“I like our world,” she finally said, “this one, just the two of us.”

“I love our world too, and I’ll love that one out there if you’re in it with me,” I said as I walked around and stood between her and the door.

“I waited too long. You leave tomorrow,” she cried.

I leaned down and softly kissed her jaw just below the ear. “It’s never too late.”

I reached back, locked the door, and then pulled her closer. My heart raced when she leaned into me. Just as my lips touched hers, I lifted her off the floor. Within seconds, I realized we were lying on the couch. Somehow, we’d managed to move from the door to the couch, and my lips never left hers.

The weight of my body pressed her into couch. The material of her dress was so thin that I could feel every inch of her body against mine, so I quickly slid onto my side, my mouth still not retreating from hers.

No kiss with Sofie or anyone else felt anything like this. This was a kiss, a kiss that was filled with longing and hunger yet was gentle and pure.

Within seconds, common sense flooded my brain. I lifted my head and looked down at her. “We need to talk.”

“What? Now?” she shrieked.

I nodded. If I would’ve actually tried to talk, I’m pretty sure I would’ve caved and said, “No, let’s pick up where we left off.”

“Bollocks,” she screeched.

“I know, bollocks. But yeah, now. We should have talked”— I waved my arm over us—“before this. Lord knows I tried.”

I rolled over and let myself fall onto the floor.

She rolled onto her side and peered over at me. “Is this where you give me the speech about how you’ve suddenly come to your senses and you realize that we’re from two utterly different worlds and you don’t know if this should happen and—”

“No.” I propped myself up on my elbow until our faces were almost level. “This is where I give you the speech about how I can hardly stand going to sleep each night because it’s time spent away from you, and the speech where I tell you that I didn’t even like hot tea but it gave me an excuse to spend time with you, and that when you finally waltzed into the kitchen every morning, my heart literally wanted to explode because I was so happy to see you. And it’s the speech where I tell you that I flew around the world for no other reason than to see you and I’ll do it over and over again if that’s what it takes to make this thing work, to have you in my life.”

“This is
that
speech?”

“I’m not finished.”

“Oh.”

I repositioned myself so I was sitting cross-legged. “I think I fell in love with you the day I met you. While we were here over the summer, I sort of figured it out, but when I was in Uganda, I knew it. I knew how I felt. That’s why I ended it with Sofie while I was there. And then we got here, as soon as Oliver asked us to do that kissing scene, I knew I was done for. I knew there would be no way I could kiss you and then go back to things as they’d been between us.” I took a few seconds to think through what I wanted to say before I went on. Then I took a deep breath and went for it. “Prepare yourself. This is going to sound stupid and melodramatic and completely scripted, but it’s not.”

“Okay.”

I reached up and ran my fingers along her jaw line.

“My sun literally rises when I see you and it falls when we’re apart. It feels dark when you aren’t with me, and I say all of that just to say that you didn’t just turn my head once. It snaps your direction every time you enter the room.”

Her face flushed. “Cabot, I—”

“No. Wait. I’m not done.”

Her jaw slammed shut, and she nodded.

“As I’ve said, you don’t need a ton of guys to realize how incredible you are. You only need one. I’m one. I’ve realized it. I want to be the one. I need to know if I can be, if you want me to be.”

“I’m frightened of saying yes,” she admitted, “starting something one day and then being apart immediately. That can’t be good for—”

“Which leads me to my second speech.”

“There’s a second speech?”

I nodded.

“How does that one go?”

I grabbed her hands. “Give us a chance, a real go at it. Come with me to Italy, and let’s make this work for us.”

“You’re serious?”

“I couldn’t be more serious if I tried.”

“I’m not sure. I wouldn’t think twice about giving Cabot a shot. It’s Cab I’m not so certain about.”

“With you, I’ll always be Cabot. All you have to do is give me a chance to prove it.”

She slid onto the floor and let the top of her head fall against my chest and rest there. My heart was pounding so hard, I’m sure she could feel it against her skull.

My fingers swept her hair aside, and I leaned over and kissed the back of her neck. “Please say yes. Say you’ll come with me. Say you’ll give us a chance.” I kissed her neck again but didn’t remove my lips. They stayed attached to her skin

“It’s what you really want?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Damage and all?”

“Absolutely.” I felt the words reverberate off her skin. “We’re all damaged, Kei, some of us more than others, but we all have issues.”

She let out a large sigh, lifted her head, and looked back up at me. “Under one condition.”

“Okay.”

“You have to agree to it now, before I tell you what it is.”

My heart stopped pounding. It froze. “Kei, be fair.”

“It’s the only way I’ll agree to giving this a go.”

“Then I don’t have a choice.”

She stood up from the floor and walked several steps away before turning to face me. “Take thirty days. Go spend Christmas with your family, and then go to Italy without me—”

“No.” I stood up and started to walk toward her, but she backed away, so I stopped.

“Go without me. Live your life. Go back to your normal, back to your reality, and I’ll go back to mine. Let this new information about me sink in. If after thirty days you still want me to come to Italy, then we’ll discuss it further.”

“I wanted to spend Christmas together, and I don’t want to be away from you for that long.”

“I need you to be away from me for that long so that if, in fact, you decide you still want to be with me, I know you’ve had time to think clearly; I know that all your feelings weren’t because I was a challenge or out of pity or because of some high off of visiting Uganda; I’ll know that none of what you’ve learned about me has changed how you feel.”

“My feelings aren’t going to change.”

“Then this shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Kei, I don’t want this.”

“Thirty days. No phone calls, no e-mails, nothing. Pretend I don’t exist. If after thirty days, I hear from you, splendid. If I don’t, I understand.”