Page 106 of My Heart Still Beats

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Ben.

Where is Ben? He was here.

And then I see him.

He’s standing a few feet away from me, keeping his distance, letting me be.

And then he’s all I see. His height, his potency, the way he fills up the room with his presence.

Everything falls around him, and he’s all that’s standing.

Heisstrength.

I turn away from my mother and fall into his arms.

…

Time passes in a blur, and the next thing I know, I’m lying in a bed.

It’s not a familiar bed.

“Mommy!” I cry out.

Someone comes to me, sits on the side of the bed. Strokes my forehead. “It’s okay, Tessa. You’re safe.”

That’s not Mommy’s voice.

I sit up. Ben Black is there. “Where am I?”

“I brought you to my house. I didn’t want you to be alone. Your mother and sister are here as well, in different guest rooms.”

“This isn’t your room?”

“Of course not. I’d never be so presumptuous.”

He looks down at me, and his face is so handsome and caring in the sunlight streaming in through the window. How much time has passed? I have no idea.

I feel so empty. So much emptier than any other time in my life. Even when I woke up in the hospital after what Garrett did to me. Even after remembering what happened at my first communion.

This is worse. A thousand times worse.

I wasn’t violated this time, but I lost so much more than what Garrett took from me.

What Garrett and the altar boy took from me, I can heal from. I can get back.

I can never get my da back.

“You need anything?” Ben asks.

“I should go to work.”

“It’s Sunday, Tessa.”

I shake my head to clear it. “Sunday? I don’t… It was late Saturday night when we flew from Jamaica.”

“Yes, and we arrived in the middle of the night, Sunday morning.”

“And we went to the hospital.”

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