Page 90 of Badd Love
Rune straightened. "So then you left LA?"
"More or less. I tried to go back to work, but…I kept seeing and feeling Danny behind me. I kept having little panic attacks. I'd feel him behind me in the parking lot. In the store. At home. Everywhere I went, I felt him. I knew he was in jail and not getting out for years at best, but it felt like LA had been contaminated. Like, he'd been there for how long? He could have shown up at any time. What if he'd found out I was there? Plus, everyone I knew in LA was gone. I didn't even have Mom and Pop Rigby to drop by and talk to."
"And a home-cooked meal," Rune added.
Lindsey grinned. "That too." A shrug. "I woke up one morning and just knew. At first, I was like, maybe I just need a new apartment. I dunno. I started cleaning my place out with the idea of maybe moving somewhere else in LA, getting a new job. But then I started boxing up shit to give away and bagging up shit to throw away, and I realized there wasn't a single reason for me to be in LA. Your parents weren't coming back. Raquel wasn't coming back. You weren't coming back. All I had were memories, and a lot of those weren't good ones. LA, for me, has been…difficult. I got my degree, and I'm proud of that. I met you and Raquel, and you guys saved my life. You're my best friends. Rune, you're closer than any sister ever could be. But there's also just so much shit. So much weight. And knowing Danny had been in LA at the same time, even for a fucking day, I just…felthim there. The whole city just felt…slimy."
Duncan cackled. “It feels that way to me all the time."
Rune whacked him. "Hey, I still love things about LA."
Duncan raised his hands in surrender. "As long as you understand that while I have no problem visiting, I'll never, ever live there."
Rune laughed. "No, no. I know." She blew him a kiss across the gazebo. "I'm an Alaskan now, anyway, sweetheart. And happily so."
Lindsey leaned back against me. "So, I gave up my apartment, got rid of most of my shit, and started driving north. I wasn't even sure I was coming here at first; I was just getting out of LA. And I…" She closed her eyes, sighing. "I faced things for the first time. When I had a nightmare about him, I wrote it down. Every detail. Everything I thought and felt. I wrote down my flashbacks. Memories. Everything that happened, I wrote it down. When I had a panic attack, I'd write about it. Figure out what triggered it. I didn't try to bury what I was feeling."
"That sounds…rough," I said.
She laughed. "Oh, it was. The first month or so was really,reallyfucking hard. I barely slept at night because the more I faced the shit, the more came up. I remembered things I'd suppressed or forgotten. Things he'd done to me. I'd forgotten how he used to literally dick slap me in the face when he was done fucking my throat."
Duncan growled like an angry wolf. "Fucking hell."
She turned to look at him. “Yeah, that's the kind of guy he was. He'd dick slap me and call me his good little whore."
"Fuck," Duncan mumbled. "I'm gonna be sick."
I turned in time to watch him lurch across the gazebo and lean over the railing, head hanging, breathing hard.
Rune went to him. "My sweet, soft-hearted man," she whispered, rubbing his back.
Lindsey turned to face me, her hands resting flat on my chest. "I'm not, like, all better. What I went through, what he did to me, it'll have its effects on me my whole life. That's not something you ever really, truly get over. But I'm…I can honestly say that I'm…maybe not okay, but on the way to okay."
"Linz," I whispered; I wasn't sure what else I was trying to say, and so managed nothing else.
She rested her forehead on my chest. "For the last month or so, you're all I can think about. I dream about you. I think about…" she buried her face against me. "You know."
"I do," I murmured.
I heard movement, but my focus was exclusively on Lindsey.
She sighed, pulling away to look up at me again. Her eyes were fraught and wet and searching me. "I want to try."
"Try?"
"Us," she whispered. "I…I don't know how to…how to be a good girlfriend. How to…how to love someone. There may be some things that will always trigger me. But I—"
It was my turn to shush her with my hand. "Linz. If I'd known even ahintof what you'd been through, that you had some kind of issue with—"
She tugged my hand away. "I never told anyone. I knew going down often triggered me, but I did it anyway."
"Why?" I asked. "Why do that to yourself?"
A shake of her head. "I felt like…like if I let the panic stop me from doing sexual stuff, he'd won. He’d be taking that away from me. I felt like if I let him win, I was weak, and I’m not weak, so I refused to let him win. I refused to let him ruin sex for me. Because it wasn't—it's not all the time that sucking dick gives me a panic attack. It’s always seemed random. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't."
"But Linz, at all is too much. If it causes you any kind of…anything negative, I don't want you to do it. No matter what it is."
"But I—"
