When I admitted as much to my aunt, she again suggested counseling and possibly medication. It’s not that I’m opposed to either in principle, but I remember well that neither seemed to help Cassie through her erratic years of highs and lows.
When I found her in the shower earlier with blood on her hands and stomach, I was hit with a crippling sense of déjà vu. Spots danced before my eyes and I was damn close to a panic attack at the very least and having a fucking heart attack at the worst. Thank Heaven I had been able to get myself together and take care of her. For just a split second, I’d thought she had cut her wrists or something equally as bad.
I’d almost called my aunt then, feeling lost as to how to help the woman who had become my world. Losing her would shatter me, and this time, I don’t think I could put myself back together again.
While I was quietly panicking and trying to keep my mind occupied with taking care of her, though, something happened which maybe we both had been needing. We talked to each other for the first time in days. She told me how she had been feeling since her attack, and I listened in shock as she gave voice to her fears that I no longer wanted her physically.
I wanted to slump over in relief because I had been experiencing the same fear—that Lia no longer wanted what we had had before her stepfather got his vile hands on her. Our talk had continued before we left for dinner when Lia had admitted she loves me. A part of me wanted to run when the words left her mouth. But the other part had needed to hear them again, since the first time she said them in the hospital and I hadn’t been sure she even knew it because of the medication she was on. If I were honest with myself, my heart had soaked up her declaration like a flower seeing the sun for the first time in years. I was afraid, though, to give those three words back to her. I’m afraid to move forward and terrified of losing her if I don’t.
The past and all of the secrets festering there are getting to be too much to bear. I cracked yesterday morning and snorted a line of my white powder of denial. I was coming apart at the seams over everything that had happened to Lia, my fear of losing her, and pressure from Lee Jacks wanting to talk to his daughter. The daughter who had no clue he existed. I had given up the smoking, as it didn’t seem to help that much, and Lia had begun asking too many questions about why I reeked of smoke constantly.
Lee Jacks. Shit, the other man might be piling on the pressure to meet his daughter, but I can’t fault his dedication to avenging her years of abuse. How he had managed to get her bitch of a mother to turn herself in and admit to everything under the sun was a mystery to me. Judging by the rumors that circulated about Jacks, maybe I was even a tad surprised that she hadn’t just disappeared. Lee had also assured me that Jim Dawson would soon be in police custody to answer for his list of crimes, which was somewhat disappointing to me. No matter how much I enjoyed thinking of him rotting away in a cell with others hopefully torturing him just as he had Lia, I still would have preferred a world in which he didn’t exist at all. I had to believe that Lee was thinking of some bigger picture here. I couldn’t imagine that he would let Dawson off that easily if he had any say in the matter whatsoever. I was trusting him to have a plan that both he and I could live with.
Suddenly, I stumble, looking up in alarm when I realize I’ve almost plowed Lia down. At some point in my inner musings she had stopped as we reached Leo’s, and I being in such deep thought had continued to walk forward. I catch her in my arms, trying to steady us both. “Damn, baby, are you okay? I’m sorry; I didn’t notice you’d stopped.”
She gives me a wry smile, saying, “Yeah, I sort of gathered that when you kept right on going even when I called your name a few times. You were a million miles away.”