Dissonance (10 page)

I did not want Charlotte to close me out. In fact, the thought sent fear lancing through me, so I went to find her.

Huddled on the bathroom floor, I tried to fight off the panic taking hold of me. The room was spinning like a wicked merry-go-round. A cold sweat coated my skin, and my lungs were clamped tightly, forcing me to fight against them to get any air in at all.

A voice, full of malice, whispered in my mind, making my blood run cold. “
See, sweetheart? Your job is to please me. I’ll do whatever the hell I want with you. You want to act like a whore? I’ll fucking treat you like the whore that you are.”

I could feel his hand clamped tightly around my neck, his body restraining mine, the terror pulsing through my veins.

A gentle rapping on the door made me jump and sent a whole new rush of terror through me.

“Charlotte,” Logan called to me softly. “Are you okay?”

Trying desperately to force sound past the terror tightening my throat, I stammered, “I… I’m… I’m fine.”

The doorknob twisted hesitantly, and I frantically attempted to appear collected, swiping haphazardly at my face to wipe away the beads of sweat on my forehead.

Logan looked pale as he kneeled down next to me. I could not look up at him, so I just kept staring down at my hands that quaked in my lap. The slender fingers shook violently, giving away all the fear that continued to torment me.

“Hey,” Logan said more gently than I had heard him speak before. When I kept my head lowered, he reached out and grasped one of my cold hands in both of his steady, warm ones.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a resigned voice.

Surprise startled me further from my despair and back into the moment. Why was he apologizing? I was the one who had run off. I was the one that still could not control my panic after nearly seven years.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Did I set it off?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I replied in a small voice.

“What happened?”

“It’s… It’s nothing.” I could have hardly been less convincing.

“Look, you don’t have to talk about it. I just don’t want to set you off like that again. I won’t pry beyond that if you don’t want to talk,” Logan said earnestly.

Making an attempt at a deep breath that came out like a choppy gasp, I gave in. “The pet name.”

Logan just nodded slowly. His eyes gave away that he wanted to know more. He wanted to understand how a simple endearment could reduce me to a nonfunctioning pile of nerves, cowering on the bathroom floor. He wanted to know what the hell was wrong with me. But he kept his word. He didn’t ask.

We sat in silence for… I don’t know how long. He just gently stroked the back of my hand and let my body release all of the tension I had built up. Eventually, when my muscles had relaxed, and my breathing and heart rate returned to normal, he spoke again, “Okay?”

I looked at him and nodded.

“We should get back out there then. Your brother will be back soon,” he said, rising to offer me his hand.

Once on my feet, I asked, “Back from where?”

“Grocery store. Alex threw half a thing of parmesan cheese in the garbage when you ran out of the room. She wanted to distract him, I guess,” he explained.

“There’s… a lot that Eli doesn’t know about.”

“But Alex does?”

I sighed. “No. Not really. She knows a bit more, but that’s all she needs to understand.” My answer was evasive at best, but he had already agreed not to push me. He just silently accepted my explanation and followed me out to the living room.

Alex was still working away in the kitchen. From over her cutting board, she looked us over. “Feeling better?”

I gave her a small smile, all I could muster. “Thanks for getting rid of Eli.”

“No problem, honey. I still know the score.” She assessed me seriously for a moment. “Are they still bad?”

I shrugged. “Not as frequent.”

“Did you talk to Brooks about it?” She meant Dr. Brooks, the rather annoying shrink I had been seeing before the move.

“No.”

“It will get better if you talk about it,” she reminded me for the hundredth time. Alex wouldn’t push me. She knew better than that. But she had been down the same road, so she knew the only thing standing in the way of my recovery was myself. Hell, on good days, I knew it, too. Still, knowing and actually acting are very different things.

“I… I’m not ready,” I replied in a small voice.

“I know. But someday,” she gave me a hopeful smile as I returned to the couch.

Logan sat across from me again, his attractive face still marred by confusion. “Why does Alex know more than Eli? I thought you two were close.”

“We are, but I told you, this is how Alex and I met. I didn’t go to group therapy for fun.”

At my words, I could see Alex freeze her prep work and glance up at me. She was shocked that I shared that piece of information. It wasn’t because it included such an intimate detail about her. Alex had always been very open about her past in therapy, even if she preferred not to talk about the issues that led her there. When she did talk about it though, she always left me and our connection out of it. My past, including my treatment, was a card I always played very close to the chest. The fact that I had already told Logan was frankly shocking.

In the next moment, “1, 2, 3, 4” by the Plain White T’s came pouring from the kitchen. Alex picked up her phone and answered, “Hey, baby.” I grinned, wondering if Eli knew that his ringtone was such a
cute
song.

Almost immediately, Alex’s phone was back on the counter again. “So, he apparently got more than we needed and he needs a hand,” he said to Logan. He rolled his eyes and headed out the door.

Alex was on me as soon as it closed. “You told him about group?”

“Just that it was how we met, not the topic of the group.” No, nothing good could come from telling my new roommate that Alex and I met in a support group for victims of abusive relationships.

“Okay, mum’s the word.”

As she finished speaking, the front door flew open again. Logan carried in a couple of grocery bags, followed by Eli carrying a box tied closed with twine. It was obviously a cake, and I was at once touched and a bit irritated.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

He placed the box on the counter and opened it up. Inside was a round cake decorated to roses in variant shades of purple and simple script that read, “Welcome Home, Charlotte.”

Emotion welled up in my chest as I wrapped my arms around my big brother. He was right. Wherever we were together, wherever I had him and Alex with me, that was home. He pulled me into a bear hug that lifted me off my feet.

“Thank you, Eli. I love you.”

He planted a loud kiss on my temple. “I love you, too, Lottie.”

Regardless of any discomfort I felt over the move or the still developing and confusing relationship with Logan, I was going to be better off in Seattle. My family was around me again. No matter what, I would have them by my side.

We were quite a little group. After food and cake, we sat around for a long time just talking about this and that, joking and laughing, all of us at ease with each other.

Eli and Charlotte were fighting through a story about an ex-girlfriend of his that had left a bad taste in Charlotte’s mouth. Apparently, she was so bad it justified planting the idea in the poor girl’s mind that Eli was having an affair with Alex.

“It’s not like you can still be mad at me!” Charlotte laughed. “If I hadn’t done it, you two of you wouldn’t be together!”

“I would have broken up with her before long anyway,” Eli countered.

“Oh, really? You didn’t break up with her when she thought a mandolin was a fruit, or when she begged you to go see Lady Gaga with her,” Charlotte responded passionately.

“Will you ever let that go?” Eli inquired. “She was dumb. I knew that. People make stupid choices.”

“But you
dated
your stupid choice!”

I jumped in, “You’ve never dated someone that you knew was a bad choice?”

Eli was taking a drink, so he didn’t notice the momentary shift when Charlotte dropped her head and Alex looked at her, concerned. He missed the entire thing, but I had not. “Oh, she definitely has,” Eli plowed on.

Charlotte sat up, and there was scarcely a sign of any sadness on her face as she scowled at him. I wondered how she managed that all the time. Was she that used to wearing a mask? “What are you talking about?”

“Scott,” Eli retorted.

“Scott?!” Alex half-shrieked.

“Oh my God,” Charlotte groaned.

“Who the hell is Scott?” Alex was clearly unhappy about not being privy to this information.

Charlotte sighed. “He was my first boyfriend. If you can even call it that, since Eli ran him off so quickly.”

“You’re damn right I did!” Eli countered.

“Why?” Alex asked.

“Because Scott was an asshole. He and I were friends. We met because we used to smoke pot together. He smoked more than I did, even at my worst. He was a junkie, a drummer, and I’d watched him take girls home without even asking their first names.”

“A drummer? I know you go for musicians, but come on. Drummers are
never
a good choice,” Alex scolded Charlotte. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t taken particular note of the fact that Charlotte preferred to date musicians.

“What? He was a nice guy, to me at least. He taught me to skateboard one day, and things just… got close.”

“I walked in on him trying to make out with her one afternoon. The dick was trying to get with my little sister!” Eli told us emphatically. “I ripped his scrawny ass off of her and taught him to stay the hell away from her.”

“You sent him to the hospital with a broken jaw and a concussion!” Charlotte objected.

“He got lucky,” Eli muttered.

I couldn’t help but agree with Eli. The thought of some punk-ass drummer with his hands and lips all over Charlotte made me think brutal thoughts. “Good job,” I told him.

Eli laughed, but Charlotte eyed me suspiciously. Apparently, my comment hit a nerve, because the next words out of her mouth were a low blow. “What about you, Logan? Any questionable relationship choices?”