Embracing the Fall (20 page)

Two nights later, Evan tripped on a landmine. He was at the girls’ apartment and Ziporah
was making dinner while he was in the living room with his brat. Cami was playful
tonight, he was pleased to see. She’d been more and more playful and bratty the longer
they were together and he loved to see her blossoming like this. The polite and soft-spoken
shy little girl was a distant memory; in her place was a sweet brat that he found
irresistible. She was currently hiding the remote behind her back and refusing to
change the channel from her ridiculous vampire show.

“I’m not gonna tell you again, brat,” Evan said with his hands braced on the back
of the couch. He’d chased her around it three times already and though her giggles
filled his heart with joy, enough was enough. “I’m watching football and that’s the
end of it. Now hand over the remote.” Her lips parted and he could see her remember
at the last minute not to stick out her tongue. “Yeah, you know what will happen if
you poke that thing out at me.” She smiled big and bright and more of that heartwarming
laugh flowed forth.

“I bet you wish I would,” she taunted, her little tail end shaking back and forth
to add emphasis to her already sassy words. “But you’re not gonna get that lucky tonight.
And we wanna watch Buffy. So no, Sir. Take that.” With a mock roar, Evan bolted over
the back of the couch and was after her. She turned with a delightful squeal to run
for the hall and Evan reached out to grasp her by the arm. His aim was just a hair
off and what he caught was the edge of her blouse instead. The thin material gave
with a resounding rip.

The world turned upside down in the flash of a moment. His playful, sweet, innocent
brat went cold with terror and her giggling squeals turned into the torturous screams
of the damned. Dimly, he heard a surprised shout from the kitchen and the clang of
pots hitting the floor from Z, as Cami swung out in blind fury and backpedaled into
a wall.

Evan reached for her with both arms, trying to draw her in so he could calm her down
but that only seemed to make it worse. Her body arched back violently in an effort
to escape him and the crack of her head hitting the plaster was as loud as a gunshot.
Evan’s gut turned to a cold, hard ball of ice.

Ziporah was there now, so even though it was the last thing he wanted to do, Evan
opened his arms and stepped back.

“Shhh, it’s okay baby. Shhh now, it’s okay. I’m here, I got you. Shhh.” Both women
were crying as Z eased them to the floor. Cami lay flat on her back with her head
and shoulders cradled in Z’s arms as her body jerked like she was having seizures.
Evan wanted to kill someone once Cami started talking. All Cami could say was, “He
hurt me. He hurt me, Z. He hurt me.”

“I know baby,” Z whispered, cupping her friend’s face and pressing it close to her
own heaving chest. “I know he did. But it’s over. That was a long time ago. Come back
to us now, Cam. Come back to me.”

Evan crouched down and braced his elbows on his knees. He watched helplessly as the
two women flailed in the trauma of their past. He didn’t dare touch either of them
while in the grips of this flashback and though necessary, the restraint was a wound
on his heart.

His legs had started to go numb when Cami finally passed the worst of it and curled
into a ball on her side around Ziporah. “Okay, there she is. There’s my girl.” Z tightened
her hold on Cami and kissed her repeatedly. On her head and cheek and temple, wherever
she could reach. “There you are, my sweet Cam.” With one last kiss to Cami’s sweat
dampened hair, Z nuzzled her cheek against the matted curls and turned to look at
Evan.

Those fierce and confident brown eyes that could level entire courtrooms were haunted
and drenched. The pain there, the anguish was every bit as crippling a blow as Cami’s.
Both of the women before him were survivors, although from the way this scene had
played out, only one of them had suffered an attack.

Even though he couldn’t touch them, Evan refused to leave their sides until this had
passed. Eventually Cami gave a watery sniffle and peeked out at him from Z’s arms.
When she saw him there waiting, her face told him everything. That expression said
‘I’m sorry’, ‘it’s not your fault’, ‘please forgive me’, and it made him crazed.

“I can see what you want to say.” It took a Herculean effort to keep his voice gentle,
when all he wanted to do was shout. “And I’m begging you–don’t. Don’t say one word
of apology to me. That doesn’t belong here, not for this. Not ever.” She nodded at
him and her face crumpled anew as fresh tears fell.

“You ready to get up now?” Ziporah gave a last squeeze to Cami and then briskly rubbed
her back. “Let’s go wash up. Come on, I’ll help you.” The two women staggered to their
feet and stumbled down the hall like they’d spent the night drinking.

Only then did Evan shove to his feet and walk away. Needing to do something, anything,
to keep from breaking everything in the house out of frustrated fury, he marched into
the kitchen to see what he could do there. He’d heard things dropping earlier, so
there was bound to be something in here for him to keep his mind occupied until they
came back.

What hadn’t fallen to the floor, had been left on the stove to burn. So Evan threw
all of it away and took his aggression out by scrubbing the pots and pans. Unfortunately,
the chore didn’t take up enough time or enough of his thoughts.

He wanted to ram his fool head into the walls until he knocked some sense into it.
Why hadn’t he asked them? Why hadn’t he delved into the pain and vulnerability that
they both wore so clearly? Evan scrubbed hard enough at the pan in his hands that
he was scratching it with the iron wool mesh as he berated himself for what he considered
unforgivable negligence.

It was the same with the birth control and medicals. He’d been so turned inside out
and upside down by his desire–no, his need– to have them, that he’d taken a risk he’d
never
taken before in his life. Evan had let the pleasure and the joy that they brought
to him cloud his judgment and his lack of action had brought them to this night. The
memory of their pain weighed on his heart like a cancer and Evan could only blame
himself. There was a part of his brain trying to argue that this trauma wasn’t his
doing, but the truth in his eyes was that he should have known. That if he’d only
talked to them, delved into their pasts, then this whole sorry mess could have been
avoided.

With a snarl, Evan ordered food to be delivered, he had no idea what kind of food
the girls would be in the mood for after something like this, so he ordered from three
different places and enough to feed an army. He might not be able to go back and keep
this from happening tonight, but he damn well promised himself that he was going to
do everything in his power to insure that neither of them would have to suffer through
another like this again. Not if he could help it.

With a smorgasbord of food spread out on the coffee and end tables, Evan heard the
tale that had changed their lives forever. He refused to keep his hands to himself
once they had come back in the room. They were his and no ghost from the past was
going to come between him and the women that belonged to him. So he sat in the center
of the couch with each of them tucked under his arms and their legs draped over his.

“Oh my God, Evan,” Ziporah said after a while with a shake of her head and a sad laugh
that was nothing like the laugh he normally heard from her. “Look at all this food.
There’s no way we can eat all this.”

“It was really sweet of you though,” Cami offered in a shy watery whisper. “I can’t
believe you ordered so much just because I was upset.” Evan squeezed them both a little
tighter and gave them each a soft kiss on their temples.

“It was the only thing I could think to do,” he told them. “Let’s just eat what we
want and the rest we’ll drop off at a shelter.”

So they did. The girls ate French fries with chow mein and spaghetti marinara with
Philly cheese steak sandwiches. Nibbling and munching as the night wore on and as
they did, they filled in the details of the attack and the events that followed.

Much later, after the girls had talked themselves out and eaten until they swore they
were going to burst, Evan was in the kitchen dealing with the leftovers. “You don’t
have to do all this yourself.” Ziporah’s weary voice sounded just behind him and Evan
turned to face her. “Let me help. She’ll be fine. This was a bad one but we got her
through okay.” Evan leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his
chest as he studied her for a moment.

“What do you mean we got
her
through it?” Evan wanted to know.

“Her flashback. It was a bad one but at least it was over relatively quickly.”

Evan took two slow deep breaths before he could speak. It astounded him that she thought
this flashback, the pain, was all on Cami’s part. “Sugar, I know Cami gets help for
dealing with what happened but have you ever gotten help for it?”

The baffled look on her face was all the answer he needed and on a soft curse Evan
opened his arms and pulled her tight against his chest. “Oh, Ziporah. Your innocence
was shattered that night right along with Cami’s. That was the night you both found
out monsters were real. Where was your family when this happened? You were there to
take care of Cami. But who was there to take care of you? Didn’t anyone see that this
tore you up same as it did her?”

His words seemed to sink in and reach inside her. She didn’t say a word to him but
her arms cinched tight around his waist, she tucked her face in his neck and quite
simply fell apart. She sobbed with silent, heart-rending grief that shook her entire
body, and Evan’s heart broke even more.

That no one had been there for her was another tragedy on top of an already tragic
situation. He knew that she was the strong one, the one to always appear confident
and unruffled, so he could understand how she had fooled so many and hid the devastation
within her. But that didn’t make it okay. All he could do now was hold her as she
cried and promise himself that as long as she would let him, she would never have
to be the strong one again.

It was an effort to keep up a calm front for their sake. On the inside, a murderous
rage was boiling within him. That night, as the two of them slept, each curled tight
against him in trusting slumber, Evan lay awake in torment.

It been more than a week since that fateful night, and Evan hadn’t made love to them
since. He wanted to give them time to heal, and if he were honest, time for himself
to come to terms with it. That some asshole had done what he did to sweet innocent
Cami brought tremors of rage to his hands every time the thought crossed his mind.

She deserved better than to have him touch her while he was still processing and dealing.
It was only right that he wait, until nothing of what he now knew could taint their
lovemaking. So, tonight he felt he could at least put it behind him and bury it. It
would be there always, the helpless rage that he hadn’t been there to protect her
when she’d needed him, but he felt he was at a place where he could touch her without
her seeing it.