Sunday, April 2nd #4
Just ahead, tucked between the trees, is a clearing with a beautiful, still lake, its surface sparkling beneath the afternoon light. A long, narrow wooden dock stretches about twenty feet into the water like it’s reaching toward something. Or someone.
“Oh my gosh,” I breathe, completely overwhelmed. “It’s incredible.”
Before I realize it, I’m out of the truck. I meet Ronan at the front. Unlike me, he doesn’t hesitate. He takes my hand, bold and steady, and leads me down the dock like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“This,” he says, gesturing out over the vast expanse of the lake with his free hand, “used to be my hideout. I guess, in a way, it still is.”
“It’s… Ran, this is…” I have no words to adequately describe how perfect this place is. It’s quiet and peaceful, nature in all its perfection. It almost feels like Ronan and I are the only humans on this entire planet.
He nods. “Yeah, I know.”
We stand in the silence for a moment, allowing this place to seep into our bones. I feel rather than see Ronan shift beside me.
“Cat, I’m so sorry,” he breathes. I turn toward him. The anguish on his face forces my windpipe shut. “I fucked up so badly. So, so badly.” He lets go of me only to run his hand roughly across his face.
I part my lips to speak, but he doesn’t give me the chance. He turns his body toward me, his gaze locked on mine as if his next words are the difference between living and dying.
“I love you, Cat. I’ve always loved you, and I will love you until I die. There’s no one else for me,” he finally says, his eyes serious. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I hurt you in so many damn ways.” His breath stutters with emotion.
“I hurt you, too.”
It’s the truth, but still, my heart stings when he nods. “Yeah, you did. And you know what’s weird? Even though I’ve hurt way worse than that, for some reason, seeing you kiss that guy cut deeper than anything before.”
I swallow the boulder-sized lump in my throat.
“I’m so sorry, Ran. I… I wish I could take it back. I wish—”
“Cat,” he says, his tone soft. “I didn’t end things because of the kiss. It hurt like a bitch, but it wasn’t the reason. Not even close. I…”
For a minute, only the sounds of our breathing interrupt the silence around us.
“Please just tell me what you’re thinking,” I croak, on the verge of tears. I’m so ready for him to bare it all and allow me to bare it all in turn. “Please.”
He doesn’t respond, letting the silence sink between us like an anchor at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe this will drown us after all.
“Ran, please!” I say more desperately. “We can’t keep going like this.”
He nods. “I know,” he finally says. He inhales deeply, but I don’t dare breathe at all.
“Cat, you need to know that I never meant to hurt you. In my head it all made sense. I… I have a really hard time, like, putting the things in my head into words. Part of it is that… I just don’t know how to say some of the things, and the other part is…
” He pauses. “I’m scared of speaking them into existence. ”
I swallow, but don’t interrupt. My gaze stays glued to his, cataloging every emotion flashing across his face. There’s mostly pain, fear, and sadness. It makes me want to throw my arms around him, but I still don’t dare move.
“I wasn’t okay after my grandmother showed up,” he says.
Yeah, I knew as much. “When I was in Montana last year, when my dad called me and told me my mom was forcing a trial, that’s the first time I heard that she had been abused by my grandfather.
That was the first time I wondered if I was capable of doing the same—if that violence was part of my DNA or something, you know? ”
I nod.
“I tried to shove that fear down, lock it away with all the other crap. It worked for a little while.” He sighs. “But then my grandmother showed up and… well, you were there for that, so…”
He drops his eyes. “That afternoon, that’s when Rashana first made contact with me.”
Every fiber in me is wound tightly. I know close to nothing about Ronan’s conversations with Rashana. All I know is she wanted to write an article about what he went through as part of her master’s degree.
“She told me she had stumbled across my mom’s case. She obviously wanted to write about it. I shut her down,” he says, stilted. “But when I walked away, she yelled after me, said something about my mom’s sister—my aunt.”
My eyebrows dip while my eyes widen. I didn’t know Ronan even had an aunt on his mom’s side.
His next words make it clear that, up until Rashana’s comment, Ronan didn’t, either.
“I was so confused. For a second, I considered asking her what the hell she was talking about. But I decided no good could come from knowing, so I just walked away.”
He cracks his neck. “I think Rashana’s comment was the kindling to my grandma’s fucking spark, because that night I dreamed…” His voice cracks.
Ronan slams his eyes shut, his jaw ticking once. Twice. “I dreamed,” he starts again. It seems to take all his willpower to say the words.
When he opens his eyes, they’re swimming with tears. “I dreamed I was beating you,” he chokes.
The breath leaves my lungs.
“I didn’t see your face at first. Just the sound. Your voice. Begging me not to hurt you.” His voice is barely audible now. “And then I realized it was you. You were in my dad’s living room. On that rug…” His voice breaks, tears spilling from his eyes.
I don’t think. I just move. My arms are around him a fraction of a second later.
“It was just a dream, Ran. Just a dream.”
“No, Cat. It’s not that simple.” He steps out of my arms like he’s afraid staying too close might undo him completely. “That rage I felt in that fucking dream… it didn’t feel foreign. It felt like something already living inside me. And the worst part?”
He swallows hard. “It didn’t go away. I had the dream again. And again. Like it was following me. Like I was becoming a monster in my sleep.”
My stomach twists. He broke up with me… because of this? A nightmare? I shake my head. “Ran, dreams aren’t real. They don’t define you. They don’t mean—”
“In January,” he says, “Rashana came back.” His voice sharpens, like he’s bracing for impact. “I told her I wouldn’t talk to her. I should’ve left it at that. I should’ve left it alone. I should’ve walked away.”
“But you didn’t,” I say softly.
He shakes his head. “No. I asked her about my mom’s sister.”
My heart tightens.
“What did she tell you?” I ask, even though I already know that whatever it was, it’s about to destroy him all over again.
Ronan presses his lips together. His whole face contorts like he’s trying to physically contain the pain. He closes his eyes, just for a second. “My grandfather killed her.”
I stagger back a step, like his words are a punch to my chest. “Oh my god,” I whisper. “Ran…”
“She was only days old, baby,” he croaks.
I don’t protest his use of his nickname for me, much like I didn’t protest it yesterday.
“She was in my grandmother’s arms when my grandfather pushed my grandmother down the stairs.
Always those fucking stairs…” He wipes a hand across his face, muffling the sound of his sob.
“Did your grandfather get arrested?”
This is more horrific than I ever would have thought.
Ronan shakes his head. “No. When my grandma got to the hospital with my aunt, she said she tripped and fell down the stairs with her baby in her arms. They lived in a small community; people were already aware of my grandfather’s temper.
The cops were suspicious enough to look into things, but my grandfather was chummy with the chief of police.
Nothing ever came of it, just like nothing ever came of any of the other shit he probably did to my mom, and her brother, and his wife… ” He sighs heavily.
I have no words. All I’m able to whisper is his name as I reach for him, desperate for some physical contact.
He blinks his watery eyes at me. “I broke up with you because I was scared of becoming like them, like my mom and grandfather. Of turning into someone who could destroy his family. If there’s even a fraction of them in me, then I’d rather rip my heart out than risk ever hurting you.”
I nod, but he speaks before I can say anything. I let him. It’s so rare that he opens up like that, I’ll be damned if I cut him off now.
“It kept simmering under my skin. That fear. And then, it’s like you made the decision for me. You did what my mother had always told me you would do: figure out that I’m not good enough for you. And even though you never said the words, when you kissed that guy—”
I flinch. “No. Ran, no. That’s not what happened. I never, not for one second, thought you weren’t good enough for me.” I swallow, then meet his eyes. “I was just… afraid. All the time. Of losing you.”
I press a fist to my chest, like I can keep everything from spilling out. But the words come anyway.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
But somewhere along the way, I started thinking that if something went wrong, it was my fault.
That I missed something. That if I just paid more attention, stayed perfectly in tune with everyone around me, I could stop bad things from happening. That if I upset you, you’d leave.”
My voice breaks. “I didn’t understand why you shut down. Why you wouldn’t talk to me about your grandma, or Rashana, or Randi. I didn’t know how to read that silence. And instead of asking, I let fear fill in the blanks.”
Ronan’s mouth opens, but I cut him off gently.
“And yeah, I didn’t understand your relationship with Randi. I thought she was a threat. But I didn’t talk to you about it because I was scared you’d see me as jealous or insecure and walk away. Even small things, like not getting a key to your apartment right away, felt huge to me.”
His eyebrows lift, like that’s the thing that makes no sense.