“Making love is so much more,” he whispered.
She longed for the solidness of his chest, the familiar scent of his skin. If he’d had arms to hold her, she knew he’d have crushed her to him.
And she’d have fallen short one more time.
“I really wanted to make that true, Cameron. For you. But it just wasn’t in me. It never has been.” She put her head back, gulped air, felt dizzy for just a moment, then dove in with the rest of it. “That wasn’t the first time I was raped.”
“Jesus,” he groaned.
His pain was a physical presence in the room, but she didn’t let it stop her. “I was thirteen.” Silence, except for the sound of a ghostly in-drawn breath. “Guess I must have missed telling you this one. Well, it wasn’t a big deal.” She waved a hand negligently in the air while her heart raced and the blood rushed in her ears. “You know, it didn’t even bother me. I just let them do it. There were two of them, eighth graders. It was at school. They caught me alone in the locker cage after the bell had rung. One of them held me down while the other one did it.” Even now, she could feel the chubby fists closing around her forearms. “Then they switched and the other one did it, too.”
She tipped her head to the side, as if she could see more than Cameron’s reddish glow. She almost expected him to say something, to interrupt her, but he didn’t. God, why had she ever started this? She swallowed, then continued, mostly to fill the dreadful silence she’d created.
“After ... it wasn’t like I was traumatized or anything. My grades didn’t drop. I could concentrate on my classes just fine. I guess I thought I should have felt bad about it. I even thought it should have hurt, physically, I mean, but it didn’t. I didn’t tell anyone, because I figured they’d find out I really didn’t care.” She’d lain awake nights utterly terrified someone would discover how she’d felt, discover her awful secret, that she wasn’t completely devastated the way a normal person should have been.
Now she’d told Cameron. It didn’t made her feel better.
“So that’s what happened to you, Max?” How did he get there? So close she could almost feel his lips at her temple.
“You mean is that what made me the way I am?” She shrugged off the question. “You could have read my mind long ago, and you’d have known it all.”
“But you wouldn’t have known it,” he murmured.
He caressed her nape with his breath, blew against her hair. “I’ve never forgotten it,” she whispered, closing her eyes and imagining he was alive.
“Remembering it and understanding it are two completely different things.” His whole being seemed to envelop her.
She heard him, felt him, and wanted him. But understand anything?
“You still don’t, my love. God help me, I’m very afraid you never will.” His breath sighed through her bones. “What else happened, Max? Before the boys. What made you feel nothing?”
Her mother died. She went to live in her uncle’s house. Cameron knew enough to ask the question, to push her. She didn’t have to answer. “Nothing happened.”
“Tell me,” he pleaded.
“Go fuck yourself.” Her tone was almost mild as she slipped into a gentle nothingness.
“Someday,” he whispered, “someday you’ll have to let that out, too.”
“Someday isn’t today.” Someday would never come.
“Let me hold you.”
She would have given anything if he could ... but it was too late. Too many men, two years, and a gravestone too late. “You’re dead, Cameron. You can’t hold me. I need a real man.”
And this time, she walked out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Max stood alone on the small deck outside her one-room apartment. Cameron hadn’t followed. In the dark, she wouldn’t have missed his faint phosphorescent glow. She sagged against the door and thanked God that for the moment she’d capped the festering memories like a natural gas leak. Before any other terrible secrets exploded out of her.
Her husband was a ghost and a mind reader, but some things were buried so deep, even he couldn’t bring them out. Though he desperately wanted to push her into dredging them up. Maybe that was the good deed that would get him in the pearly gates. Getting her to open up.