Page 102 of Cuffed (Everyday Heroes 1)
Either he doesn’t hear me or he doesn’t care, because he keeps talking. “After you left, I used to go there. I’d just sit there by myself because I missed you so much. I’d pretend that you were inside and you were going to come out to play any minute.”
Every part of me wants to reject what he’s saying. I want to cover my ears like the little girl he remembers would have done and shut him out. I don’t want to know that he was hurt, too. It’s so much easier to think I was the only one who hurt. It’s so much easier to remember how much I hated him for pulling my world apart instead of looking at it like an adult and realizing he did the right thing.
But I don’t lift my hands. I don’t turn to face him. I need to hear this. I need to listen to him. I need to face what I don’t want to know and am scared to death to remember.
“I missed you, Em. You were my best friend. You were the one I told all my silly secrets to. You were part of my every day, and then you were gone . . .”
I told him my secrets, too. But mine were far from any secret an eight-year-old should have.
I push up from where I’m seated and walk a few feet away from him, hating the hurt in his voice that somehow I had a part in putting there. But at the same time, I’m angry at him for driving me up here where I can’t exactly escape the conversation.
Was this his plan? Trap me here and force me to talk?
“Do you remem—”
“What are getting at, Grant? What’s the point to this conversation?”
“I just—” He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. “There are so many things I want to ask you, so many things that I want to know—”
“They’re none of your goddamn business!” I shout in an explosion of temper I’m not sure he was expecting.
“No?” he shouts back, crossing the distance and getting in my face just as unexpectedly.
“No.” I stand my ground.
“Oh, so, what? You’ll open your legs for me but not yourself?” His eyes burn with anger as we wage a visual war of contempt.
“Fuck. You.”
“That’s the point,” he sneers. “That’s all you want to do.”
“And?”
“And what?
“That was the deal, Malone. You agreed to the rules.”
“The deal’s changed.”
“Then the deal’s over.”
“No. I call bullshit on you. Why can’t you let me in? Why can’t you just talk to me? I know you went through a shit ton of horror, but I was the one who was there. I was the one who cared about you. Who still cares. And maybe I need to talk about it to wrap my head around how you dealt with all of that and turned out so goddamn normal when it still fucks my head up some days . . . did you think of that?”
I fist my hands and grit my teeth as I try to calm the riot of confusion laced anger swirling around inside me. “So you’d rather I be messed up too just so you can feel better? Well, I am,” I scream at him, hating to admit it but needing the catharsis of saying it. “Did that work? Do you feel better?” I sneer as every part of me vibrates with fury and shame.
“No.” His voice is barely a whisper.
“You don’t want inside my head, Grant. You don’t want to know what’s in the dark places there. It crippled me at one time. It sits there and waits for its moment to come forward and cripple me again. So, I shove it away. I don’t talk about it. I try not to think about it. Because if I do, then I can’t function. I can’t be the woman you see when I live in the shadow of what happened to the little girl I was. That past doesn’t exist to me. It can’t.”
I walk away from him, needing to process my outburst, my confession, and how I can still seem strong to him when suddenly I feel so damn weak. Looking out at the city, Grant at my back, I cross my arms over my chest and dig my nails into my biceps. I welcome the bite of pain. I use it to calm myself and bring me back to the woman I pretend to be.
“Emerson.” He says my name again. It’s a plea. A request. It’s pity. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t get it do you?” His apology only serves to aggravate me further. To remind me of all those shrinks and their sympathetic eyes and the pity in their tones. The one sound I never wanted to hear again. My temper rages quietly beneath the surface, and I’m not sure if I’m mad at him for pushing me or mad at myself for what I said.
It takes all my effort to make my voice even and calm—unaffected—when I turn to look at him and speak, but there’s still a bite to my tone. “Look, I’m sorry you can’t talk about the little girl because it’s police procedure, but that doesn’t give you the right to start poking into my past. Into my life. I don’t need to be saved.”
“I’m not talking about her because it’s police procedure, Emerson.” He throws his hands up and laughs but there is nothing amusing in its sound. “Don’t you get it? I’m not talking about her because I can’t. I’m not talking about her because I don’t want to upset you! A lot of fucking good that did me.”
