18. Bailey
18
Bailey
I pulled my hand away and looked out the front windshield, slowly shaking my head. “I…don’t know what my boundaries are.” I frowned.
“Does it bother you when I touch you?”
“No. I was never…raped. I, he—” I hated thinking about Ed. “He was my boyfriend. It was consensual.” My stomach rolled. I didn’t want to talk about it, but I needed to give Lachlan something. He’d told me so much.
Lachlan nodded, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. “What did Chase say or do that caused you to react the way you did?”
I went back to the parking lot, playing out the scene in my head. “He was angry… I just needed to make myself small because he was so angry. I thought if I made myself small, he wouldn’t—” I stopped, shaking my head.
“Hurt you,” Lachlan supplied. “Did he hurt you?” I looked in the rearview mirror, almost expecting Ed to be sitting back there, waiting for me to lie, wanting me to lie. I should lie. I couldn’t find it in me to lie to Lachlan, though, so I ignored the question.
I put the truck into drive and merged back into traffic, heading to town.
Lachlan went eerily still. Before, he was fidgety, bouncing his leg or playing with his lip ring, but now, it was like he turned predator, on a hunt. I could feel his eyes on me, his body calm. “Does he still hurt you?”
“No.” He would never hurt me again. Eventually, he would be taken off life support. Eventually, he would be dead. That was heavy on my shoulders. Eventually, he would be dead. “After you left, Chase and Ethan had their little spat and refused to talk to anyone. I was kind of on my own. This guy, he was nice to me.”
“Do I know him?” Lachlan sat back in his seat, appearing to be relaxed, but I knew he wasn’t, not completely.
I thought about it. “Maybe in passing, but I don’t think you ever talked to him.”
“Where is he now?”
I bit my lip, focusing on the road.
Lachlan waited for a moment of silence before continuing. “Tell me about you. Some days, you come to school shaking. Some days, you look like a zombie.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Lachlan’s fingers brushed the back of my hand, feather light. I glanced at him, relaxing when I saw his eyes were soft. “I’m sorry if I’m scaring you. I don’t want any of us to suffer in silence anymore. I don’t want to lose you again, especially not to some sort of miscommunication. We are different people, and we have different boundaries. I don’t want you to suffer because of something I say or do. I just want to know if there is something that sets you off?”
Lachlan was right. How long had he remained in silence? How often had he been hurt? We had to start looking out for one another. “I don’t know why I reacted the way I did,” I admitted. “I don’t have boundaries. I’ve never needed them before.” I shook my head. “Maybe talking about it in general is a boundary.” Because, right now, I was feeling queasy.
“It’s scary as fuck to talk. Sometimes it’s scary to the point it hurts physically—I get that. It helps to start with little truths. Ones that don’t hurt, ones that feel good.”
My fingers tapped on the steering wheel for a while. “He’s older. Much older, but we waited until I was sixteen, and it was consensual. I looked it up, it was legal. He’s not an authority figure.” That was a little truth I felt had to be told right away. I wasn’t raped; I’d been okay with it, so it meant I wasn’t raped. Why did I keep telling myself that?
When Lachlan said nothing, I sighed, keeping my eyes trained on the road. It was easier to talk when I wasn’t looking at him.
Okay. A little truth. “He made me happy. I was really isolated, and he made me belong,” I said. I had looked forward to seeing Ed every day.
“How long were you guys together for?”
“Three years.”
“Do you miss him?”
My hands tightened on the steering wheel. Little truths. Start with little truths. “No,” I whispered. My throat tightened. “He…changed over the last couple years.”
Lachlan was tapping his finger on his leg. “Tell me.” He whispered it in such a way that I found myself in a trance, wanting to say everything.
“I didn’t see it when we were together, but the more time I spend away from him, the more I feel hurt. It feels like a delayed reaction. He had a short temper, and I just thought it was him being him. I knew who he is, he wouldn’t hurt me. But when Chase raised his voice, I was scrambling to try and lower myself, almost as if I were afraid of being hurt. And I realized I did that a lot with my ex. I was afraid without knowing I was afraid. Is that even a thing, or am I making this up?”
“Why would you make it up?” Lachlan asked.
So I wouldn’t have to hold on to the guilt of what I did to him. The answer was on the tip of my tongue, but I kept it to myself.
“Did he hit you?” Lachlan’s voice was changing. He went from passive to assertive, wanting on an answer now.
“No.” I bit my lip.
“You’re lying.” The tapping intensified.
“And I don’t know why I keep lying.” Tears sprang to my eyes. I didn’t mean to say that. I wasn’t lying, it was the truth. I wasn’t a liar. I believed it, it was the truth.
Ed never really hit me like he was attacking me. Sometimes I would be in the way, and he would shove me, or he grabbed my arm a lot to hold me still so he could see me. He had an obsession with needing to look directly into my eyes when he demanded something of me. Oftentimes, though, he was just upset, and I had to find a way to calm him down.
After a bit, Lachlan stopped tapping. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to push. Lying is…a coping mechanism.”
“It’s wrong.”
“It’s survival. If the truth hurts, why would your mind put you through that pain all over again? Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
I scoffed.
“It upset you…what Claire did to me. I could tell it upset you. I was fourteen.” I focused on navigating to Lach’s house. “You were fourteen when you met this guy. He isolated you, harmed you, made you someone you weren’t. Can you not see how upsetting that would make me? That he harmed you, and I wasn’t there to stop it… Bailey.”
Damn Sunday grandma drivers. It was a Friday night, go home!
“Bailey.”
Come on, lady, it’s a stop sign, not a traffic light. It’s not going to turn green. Finally, she made her turn, and I drove through, only doing a rolling stop as I rushed toward Lachlan’s driveway.
“Bailey, are you even listening?” Lachlan snapped.
I pulled into his driveway. “What do you want me to say? I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out what the hell happened with Chase, but that just means I have to talk about him . I don’t want to. That’s a boundary, okay? He is off limits.” I turned to face Lachlan. “Did he rough me up now and then? Yeah, kind of, but he knew I was tough and could take it. He was a rough guy. He was a fucking cowboy, and they aren’t exactly known for being gentle. He said some things that cut deep, but I got it. I understood it.
“But you know what else he did? He stuck around, Lachlan. I couldn’t drive to the jailhouse to see you, and Dad was busy. But he drove me every time to see you, and every day you blew me off, he was there. He told me how special I was, how most people wouldn’t care about you the way I did. He told me young boys were just immature and, eventually, you would come around, and when you didn’t, he was there for me. He taught me how to barrel race. He was there when Ethan and Chase ignored me from the very first day of high school and every day after.
“I don’t know what to say. I can’t stand being yelled at—that’s a boundary. I collapse inside because, maybe, if I make myself as small as possible, I won't be a target. I can't stand the slamming of locker doors. It reminds me of the stupid garden shed outside my bedroom window, the one that slammed shut behind me and locked me in there with him. I can’t stand the fact that I lie. That I lie to myself and that I lie about—
“Damn it. I can’t. I don’t want to talk about it, feel it out, go to therapy. I just want…” I shook my head. “I just wanted to say hi to you. I just wanted to say hi to Chase because, for so long, I was forbidden to. I don’t want to be forbidden anymore. I want to be normal .”
Lachlan was…quiet. I was out of breath, all the words having stolen it from my lungs. In the frenzy of the moment, I wasn’t sure what I had even said, until I thought about it. Shit. I had basically said Lachlan was the reason for Ed.
Lachlan’s lips were moving ever so slightly, and it clicked that he was counting.
“Thank you for the ride.” His words were ragged, and then he left.
I jumped out of the truck. “Lach,” I called.
He stopped, his back to me as his hand rested on the front door handle. I held my breath, wondering if he would ignore me, if we were about to go back to the way things had been. But then he spun around and walked to me, his stride fast as he dropped his bag and pushed me up against the truck, his hand pressed against my cheek. Though his blue eyes were icicles, hard and cold, his touch was anything but. His body pressed against mine softly, and his hand touched my cheek tenderly.
“I promise I will no longer talk about him, but I will never forget what he has done to you. I will never forgive that I wasn’t there to stop it. But, baby, I will never allow it to happen again. If I ever find out who he is, I will end him. See my truth—it’s not a little one—I will never leave you again.”
I searched his face, his eyes, and I could see the conviction there. My body melted, a weight lifting from me, as though I could feel it being transferred to him. I collapsed into his arms, and he took me, wrapping me up while I buried my face into his chest. For the first time in a long time, I felt safe. I felt at home.
Lachlan was home.
As I pulled into the driveway at the farm, the relief I’d experienced since the moment Lachlan drew me into his arms came crashing down. A police squad car sat by the house while my parents stood on the porch, talking to two officers. If Lachlan was the victim, had been a child, and received a year in juvie for what had happened, how much time would I get for committing murder?