Page 122 of The Time It Takes
The whites of his eyes are now red. I reach up to touch his face—to wipe away his misery. He catches my wrist and my heart aches. My eyes squeeze shut at the thought of his denial. My chest begins to crack, but only for a moment, because he’s placing my hand on his heart, right over the tattoo of our butterfly. He places his palm over my hand there. Silent tears leave my eyes at the words I know he doesn’t know how to say. I feel all of them.
Relief threatens to overwhelm me.He still wants me.
He knows nothing can change what happened. This touch is proof. Proof that even when we survive wars, no one really wins. No, in this war I lost a sense of belonging. I lost a home. I lost myself. It’s time I find her again. Starting here—starting with this. My heart beats in sync with the man I’ve always loved. The man I have not once ever stopped needing by my side. He drops his forehead onto mine, our breaths mingling.
At this moment I know that I’ll be okay. I’ve never been more certain of it. There’s nothing else that matters but him. I feel warmth like I’ve never felt it before as Ollie stands here basking in all my pieces—not running from them.
“I’msosorryI’msosorryI’msosorry.” His words blend together as his voice shakes just as hard as his body. “You will never go through that again. You are so brave, Willow.”
I shake my head, tears stealing my vision. “I’m not,” I whisper. “I never stop being scared.”
He presses a kiss so softly on my forehead that I float. “I’m here,” he whispers. “And it’s just us. You and me.” His voice cracks and my forehead dampens from his tears. His tears become mine and mine become his. Right now we’re something more—something utterly infinite. “No one will ever get close enough to hurt you like thateveragain. I won’t allow it.”
My face crumples and I wrap my arms around him, digging my head under his chin. He dips his head down so that his cheek rests against my own.
“Never again,” he repeats the words into my ear as if trying to engrave them into fine print. “Never again.” As if he would fight fate if he had to. “Never. Again.” The more he says those words the more I believe him with every single atom that exists inside my body. “I love you.I love you.I love you.”
We eventually find the bed and I let him hold me. I let him cry and I cry with him. I let him be here for me in a way I couldn’t before.
After a while, I tell him the man’s name. Kristoff Ferguson. I tell him how it took me a year to speak up. It took the man who broke the door down to seek me out and tell me that the man was his cousin. I learned then that another one of his victims had stepped forward. I hated myself at that moment, knowing I was so weak back then that I couldn’t even come forward to someday save someone else.
It turns out that the voicemail I deleted on Ben’s phone still managed to go to the cloud. Reliving that moment was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I didn’t feel entirely alone anymore, but it still didn’t free me from the burden and trauma it had given me. I’ll be healing for the rest of my life and that’s about the only thing I can make peace with.
He only got two years in prison while I'm left to survive a lifetime sentence.
And the men who barricaded the door? The law couldn’t touch them. They went on living their lives as if they didn’t assist the man who held me down and took what he wanted.
Opening up to Oliver was the force I hadn’t realized I needed. Though everything still hurts—the pain is dulling. It’s a closing wound that will soon become nothing more than a scar. A reminder of where I’ve been and what it has led me to become. There will never be an end to recovering from something like that. That night will stick with me forever. It will continue to wreck me until I no longer let it.
The stars don’t tell you about all the bad things—or at least we can’t imagine anything bad while looking at them. Stars symbolize hope. We give them all of our dearest wishes without asking what it will take to make them all come true. There are consequences for everything we do.
You can’t shoot a gun and then lure the bullet back into the barrel. Nothing can be erased, no matter how much we wish it was possible.
My father always told me that life is a lot like a hurricane. That no matter how prepared you walk into it, there’s no saying how bad it’s going to get. Sometimes it’s a whole lot of nothing and other times it’s high waters capable of drowning even the strongest souls.
The world is built to break and my entire life I felt as if I was to bend at its will. To take what it gave. I only realize now that’s not what my father had meant. He was never saying to accept it—though it seems that is exactly what he had done. No, he left because he hadn’t accepted it at all. I will never understand the sort of pain that he was in, but I didn’t need to. The important thing is knowing that he isn’t hurting now. That somewhere he and Ben are hogging all the waves in the afterlife. There will come a time when I see their faces again and until that day, I will live. I will live and I will fight the hell out of whatever tries to destroy me.
OLIVER TRACES HIS FINGER along the curve of my jaw as his eyes bore deeply into mine.
It feels as if he’s reading into my soul—breathing me directly into him. Though we aren’t talking, we’re still communicating. He knows that his words can’t soothe me in the way that his soul can. The worst part of the story is that I’m not finished telling it. He still needs to know something else. Something that’s not my secret to tell, but this is Oliver, and he deserves every truth I can offer.
I rest my hand on his forearm softly, halting his movements. His brows knit together slightly in confusion. I bring my lips to his wrist and murmur into his skin, “Open the folder.”
To my surprise, he immediately shakes his head. “There’s nothing in there that you can’t just tell me yourself.”
I work on a swallow that feels rough in my throat, my eyes bouncing nervously between his. His face softens as his thumb grazes my earlobe. I instinctively want to close my eyes to his delicate touch, but I need to focus.
“Please,” I whisper. “I need you to open it.”
Concern fills his lazy gaze. I’m almost afraid to tell him more. After a moment, he dips his chin and sits up to grab the folder off the nightstand. He stares down at it but makes no move to flip it open. I sit up and press my body into his, needing to keep him close to me.
When he finally moves to open it, I place my hand over his to stop him. His head swivels toward me and he frowns. I reach my hand around the back of his neck and kiss him. He doesn't hesitate to kiss me back. I can feel everything in this kiss.
I pull away from him, breaking the kiss. He looks down at me, his eyes dazed and focused on my lips. I grip his hair in my hand gently and his attention shifts to my eyes. “Promise me you won’t hate me for this.”
He shakes his head, frowning. “Nothing could ever make me hate you. Not ever.”
Too anxious, I drop my forehead onto his shoulder. He kisses the top of my head. “I love you with no bounds, Willow. There’s nothing in the world that exists that could ever make me look at you differently. You’re my ocean. So, whatever’s in this folder, whatever’s waiting for us on the other side, we’ll get through it together.”
