Bent not Broken (215 page)

He runs his hand down his face again. “Yeah. She found out I was in town and surprised me in my room. I basically told her to leave or I’d call security. I know from experience how ugly it could have gotten, and I wasn’t up for it, and so I told her that I was going to get in the shower, and lock the door and if she wasn’t gone by the time I got out, I’d have her thrown out. I wasn’t ready to give you details about her at that point and so I lied. It just felt like the lies were piling up, and I didn’t know how to deal with it without telling you everything. What a fucking mess. And it was all my fault.”

He pauses for a second and then continues. “She also came to the club we went out to that night with Landon and his friend. Joe, the lobby deskman told her where we were when she told him who she was. He won’t make that mistake again. That’s the point when I decided I needed to come clean with you. I just needed to figure out how to do it.”

He takes a deep breath, seeming to rally a little bit. “Anyway, after my dad died, they sent the hospital psychologist up to see me the next day and I liked him, a real straight shooter, we hit it off. He started to come see me regularly after that and I opened up to him, the first time I had ever talked about my past, the first time I had talked about you.

“One of the things he said to me that really hit home was, ‘Looking at the past can be painful, but you can either run from it, numb it, or learn from it.’ I had run from it and I had numbed it. Neither one had worked. It was time for me to learn from it.”

I close my eyes for a minute, and when I open them, we are both staring at each other with tears in our eyes.

“I realized that I couldn’t remember a time when you weren’t the first thing I thought of in the morning or the last before I fell asleep at night. You own me, Evie. You always have.

“It took almost dying to realize I needed to do something about that, fuck my fears. I couldn’t deny you anymore. I was terrified though and I didn’t know how you’d react to me. They had had to rebuild several parts of my face, nothing so drastic that I don’t recognize myself, but enough so that, along with the other things that had changed about me since I was fifteen, I wondered if you’d recognize me right away.

“First time Gwen saw me when I moved here, she said she loved what the doctor had done to me, ‘perfected me’ she said. As if I had almost killed myself so that I could get some free plastic surgery. She’s a piece of work.”

We both actually manage a small smile.

“Do you have a picture of yourself before the accident?”

He thinks for a minute. “I have my old license. Hold on. He pulls his wallet out of his jacket and pulls it out and hands it to me. I see what he means. His face before the accident was still devastatingly handsome but almost more rugged, less Hollywood perfect. Truthfully, he doesn’t look
that
different, but I think I can see a little more of the boy that he was in it. I wonder, though, if that’s just because I know who he is now.

He continues as I hand him back the card. “I took over my father’s company when I got out of the hospital and told the board I’d be relocating to Cincinnati. And when I got here, I found you. I was so fucking nervous though. I had all these feelings wrapped up in you, and I had dreamed about you every night of the past eight years, but I didn’t know if you were married, maybe had a kid… I didn’t know. I also questioned whether you were the same girl I knew, whether my fantasies of you were partially of my own creation or if they were reality. So I decided to follow you around a little, get a feel for you. I realized that you were my same Evie, only, unbelievably, even more beautiful in every way than I remembered you. You took my breath away and I hadn’t even gotten near you yet. I had thought about presenting myself as someone who had known Leo but I wasn’t sure the best way to play it or if you’d recognize me or what. I was trying to figure it out, trying to look at it from all angles when you surprised me. I know that sounds like I was trying to manipulate you, but you have to understand. I realized that I was even more deeply in love with you than I had been when I was fifteen and that was only from following you around for a week. I couldn’t risk telling you the truth and having you run.

“You took me by surprise that day and forced me to make a decision on the fly. But when I realized that you didn’t recognize me, I blurted out the lie about Leo dying. You told me that
h
e had betrayed you, and so I just kept going with it. I just wanted to be near you so much. I didn’t want you to tell me to leave you alone.

“I almost told you so many times. I was almost sure you realized who I was the night I drove you home from our first date and we sat in the car forehead to forehead, just exactly like that night I first kissed you on our roof.”

I think back to that moment in his car, realizing I
had
felt something, but I had chosen not to examine it too closely. I had wanted so much just to bask in the new excitement of spending time with Jake.

I also think back to the strange moments in the penthouse suite at the Hilton when he surprised me. I had known then too, hadn’t I? Or in the nightclub when his angry expression as he protected me was somehow so familiar… But again, I had chosen not to think about what those moments meant.

Or how I had let him lead me so far out of my safety zone again and again, and how I had trusted him despite the questions that kept popping up and the things he wasn’t explaining. Something in me had innately trusted him and now I understood why.

“I don’t know if I did the right thing, Evie, but after I lied to you, I told myself that I’d just give it the time it took to make you realize that we belong together, and then I’d tell you the truth. It just got harder and harder to do and I was so damn happy to have you back in my life, to get to hold you, and make you smile, and also to re-discover you, that I kept putting off the moment when you might decide to leave, the moment when you might tell me you couldn’t forgive me for abandoning you.

He runs his fingers through his hair and pauses before continuing.

“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for hurting you, for lying to you, for all the lies that kept piling up, but I can’t completely regret what I did, because it made you realize what we are together, without having to address the way I hurt you eight years ago right away, without having that baggage. I knew we’d have to go there eventually, but I can’t be sorry that you saw who we still are together, before having to face the hurtle of our past. Does that even make sense? Does that make me a complete asshole?”

I take a deep breath before answering him. “I don’t know, Leo. What I do know though is that I can’t even completely put all the responsibility on your shoulders. If I’m honest, all along I felt like something between us was so familiar, something was niggling at me the whole time, and I chose not to address it, even to myself.”

I pause and he lets me gather my thoughts before I continue.

“I’ve always been good at pushing things aside that I didn’t want to think about, good at losing myself in my own head. It’s why I’m good at making up stories, I think. Being able to escape to a dreamland was a survival instinct for me. Maybe I did that with you too. Inside I knew that there was something I wasn’t allowing myself to think about. I
let
you lie to me because the lie felt good. I admit that now.”

He turns to me fully, his eyes pleading. “I won’t let you take responsibility for any of this. Maybe you made some unconscious choices, but you can’t blame yourself for that. I made all the conscious decisions. I’m the only one at fault in this situation. I understand that you need space to digest it all. But please, please, Evie, I can’t lose you again. I’ll never survive it twice. Can you at least try to forgive me? To understand why?” His voice is choked.

I pause and then say quietly, “I don’t know. I just need some time, Leo. You’ve just caught me up on eight years of life… a really fucked up life… for both of us.” I laugh humorlessly. “Can we… can I have some space to think? Please?”

He stares straight ahead for a minute, and then he starts to stand, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking me in the eye. “Yeah, it’s hard for me because we’ve lost so much time already. But yeah, I’ll give you whatever you need.”

He stands up and heads straight for my door. He puts his hand on the doorknob, but doesn’t turn it, and doesn’t turn to look at me as he says, “Your gift with storytelling, Evie? It’s not about you getting lost in your own mind, or living in a dreamland. It’s about the beauty of your heart. It’s about being able to rise above even the worst of situations. It’s one of the reasons I’ve loved you every single day since I was eleven years old.”

And with that, he opens my door, exits and closes it quietly behind him.

I stare at the closed door for a minute, and then I draw my knees up to my chest, close my eyes and let the tears fall once again.

CHAPTER 28

I end up falling asleep on my couch, exhausted, mentally and physically by everything that’s happened over the past twenty-four hours.

I feel achy and hollow, and I think, numbly that this must be what people mean when they say they’re “heartsick.”

When I wake up, it’s after eight, and so I put a single-sized frozen pizza in the oven, and then stand at the kitchen counter as I eat it.

I fall into bed at ten after watching
Braveheart
on dvd, and I sleep straight through until seven in the morning when my alarm goes off.

I drag myself to work, and as I pull my cart into the penthouse suite, memories of me and Jake, no
Leo
, in the chair in the bedroom assault me.

I put in my headphones and begin to clean, and my mind goes to work too, trying to make sense of everything Leo dumped in my lap yesterday.

I’m not an expert by any means on male sexual abuse, but I have to imagine that it’s a really complicated issue, since the abuser most likely doesn’t use force or violence. Lauren definitely didn’t, although it’s clear to me that she took advantage of the naiveté and innocence of a minor, her
son
for God’s sake! Even if Leo himself refuses to put the responsibility entirely on her shoulders.

Maybe I should talk to an expert on this subject to try to understand it better? God, what a completely disgusting situation. I thought I had heard it all. But it was always these types of stories that
preceded
kids getting put in foster care. I shake my head.

But what of his decision to let me hang because of his own shame? I think back to the devastation and desperation I felt as the months went by with no word from him. And then I picture him there in San Diego, numbing himself with alcohol and drugs, having sex with multitudes (apparently) of random girls and then women.

I cringe. But,
God
, he was fifteen! And he was a kid from a messed up background, with absolutely no one to guide him. He made the wrong choice, but can I forgive him now for what he did then, knowing he’d go back and council that hurt, confused kid if he could and help him make a different decision?

And then the third issue, the lie he told to insert himself into my life,
again
putting his own needs and wants before mine. I can’t completely say that his thinking was off base. As I’m pondering all this, I have the advantage (disadvantage?) of knowing that Leo and me are magic together, we fit in every way there is to fit. It would be easier to write Leo off as someone from my past who let me down and can’t be trusted if I wasn’t intimately acquainted now with the man. And he’s a good man. I can’t deny that.

Is this so confusing? Am I answering my own questions easily? Or am I trying too hard to make this okay because I’m in love with Jake, er, Leo Madsen?

I stop vacuuming as that thought resonates. I’m in love with Jake/Leo Madsen. Yes, I’m definitely in love with the man. I have been for a while now. I loved the boy, yes. But my love for the man is of an intensity I never could have imagined when I was fourteen years old.

I just need to live with these thoughts for a day or two. I’m sorry, Leo, I know you don’t want to give me a lot of time, but you can’t rush this either. I push my cart out of the room and continue down the hall.

****

The next day, I meet Landon for coffee after work and fill him in on everything that’s happened since I last saw him, finally also telling him all about Leo… Jake… who is Leo.
God!

He stares at me with his mouth hanging open slightly after I’ve talked for a solid thirty minutes.

“Is there a reason you invited me to
coffee
to lay all this on me instead of for shots in a bar? Jesus!”

I smile softly. “Yeah, I’m on the wagon temporarily. If I start drinking now, I might never stop.”

“Right. Well, wow is the understatement of the century. What are you going to do?”

I sigh. “I’m still trying to figure it out.” Then I start telling him what I’ve worked out so far and why.

He nods. “I don’t condone lying, Fancy, but if I think about it, I can understand his case for wanting to start out with a clean slate and see what you two could be all about together. I don’t know that it was right, and it certainly wasn’t honest, but I can see where his mind was.”

I nod, biting the inside of my cheek. “I don’t like it, but at the same time, it is more difficult for me to discount the fact that we are really good together. What’s hard is that I think I would have given him a chance to explain, and I would have tried to listen to him if he had just presented himself as Leo right off the bat.” I frown. “I think.”

“He didn’t want to count on that though. And he had just spent six months lying in a hospital bed realizing that you were and are the only woman he’ll ever love. He kind of had a lot riding on you accepting him back into your life.” He holds his hands up. “Just playing devil’s advocate.”

I sigh. “I know. There are just so many different levels of emotion for me. I’m trying to sort through them all.”

He’s quiet for a minute or two. “You know, I know a little bit about male sexual abuse.” He’s looking at me nervously.