Chapter 56
Chapter Fifty-Six
I didn’t want to let her go home.
Being with Lauren now was like last spring all over again, finding hiding places in order to be around her. Except now she was the only one who was apprehensive about being seen with me.
She was here, though.
I knew that it was difficult for Lauren to take me at my word on such a serious issue, so it wasn’t surprising that she wasn’t all the way comfortable in my presence.
But evidently, she didn’t want to go home either.
Lauren sat in the passenger’s seat of my car, propping an elbow on the passenger’s side window with her head resting on her hand. She was staring at me.
“What?”
“How did you know that I was here?”
I didn’t think now was the time to tell her that I was the one who’d been paying for her therapy all this time, so I simply replied, “We have the same therapist.”
This wasn’t exactly a lie. It just wasn’t a full answer.
“You’re in therapy?”
“Yeah,” I confessed, reminding her that it had been her suggestion almost a year and a half ago. “I made you a promise when you were in the hospital. I said that if you woke up I’d start going. I also said that if you woke up—”
“You would do whatever I wanted,” she finished my sentence, which quite frankly scared the shit out of me. “That’s what you said, right?”
“Yeah, I said that, too,” I confirmed with an air of caution. This was only something Lauren would’ve known if she was coherent in her coma. Curiously, I questioned, “Were you able to hear what was going on in the room around you when you were in the hospital?”
Quickly, she shook her head, telling me she didn’t know. When I asked how she guessed, she got a sheepish look about her, like her answer was something that embarrassed her.
“Sometimes, I dream about you,” she admitted.
“For the longest time I wondered where they were coming from, and why they feel like memories, and not dreams… but… I had this dream once of you telling me that I was right about you needing therapy, and then you said you’d get it if I asked.
Then you added onto that and said you’d do whatever I wanted if I could just find the voice to ask.
I didn’t know what it meant, but… you were sad. You were always sad in my dreams.”
Hearing this made me nervous. All this time spent trying to protect Lauren from the truth about her father, and the truth might’ve been hidden in her subconscious mind all along. I pressed her for more details. “Are those dreams common?”
“More or less. Sometimes they’re just of us talking.
I’ve had dreams about conversations with you.
You’d just talk and talk and talk, but I rarely ever responded.
You would tell me things; things you’ve never told anyone, you said.
Like how everyone thinks you’re going to University of Miami for law school, but that you actually want to go to Yale if you can get in. Is that true?”
Damn, she really did hear me… “Yeah… Yeah, that’s true.”
“I once had this dream where you were talking about… the baby. You told me that you weren’t mad at me, and shared that you actually wanted a family of your own.
” A single tear rolled down her cheek as she continued.
“And that both of us would’ve meant the world to you.
Did you say that to me when I was in the hospital? ”
Whatever it was that made Lauren so emotional all the damn time was clearly contagious. “Yeah, I said that, too.”
There was a pause in the back and forth, Lauren lost in thought, and me sitting on the edge of my seat, nervous about what she’d bring up next. Whatever it was that was on her mind, it dulled the energy around her, it made her pause. She wasn’t sure she wanted an answer to her next question.
“Did my dad ever threaten you before, Kain?” she asked finally.
“Lauren…”
“Was there ever a moment where he made you feel like if you didn’t do something for him, he was going to let me die? Is that what you meant when you said you chose me?” I suppose my silence was all the answer she needed for those questions. “That’s how he got you in court that day, huh?”
I was at a loss for words.
How could I have ever forgotten how smart the girl in front of me was? Lauren didn’t seem surprised as she forcibly brought these truths to light. It made me wonder how badly her father had been treating her this past year for her to even see these situations within the realm of possibility.
“Is that the big secret?” she asked. “‘Cause if it is, then let me be the first to tell you that he actually made good on his threat after your show at the courthouse that day. The night I started breathing on my own… According to my sister, I only started breathing on my own because him and my mom had personally gone to the hospital to have me taken off the machines.” She looked away from me, her eyes, angry, and glancing out the window. “They were ready to let me die, Kain.”
Her voice broke with the last statement, and upon hearing the hurt in her words, something in me broke too.
I’d worked so hard to keep her from ever finding out about this, and here she was, putting together all the pieces on her own.
I reached over and pulled her in, her body sliding over the car’s center console until she was far into my embrace.
Unlike the times I’d attempted to hold her, she didn’t tense up or push me away.
Instead, Lauren pressed her face into my chest, and as quietly as she could, she cried for a very long time.
“So that’s what you were trying to protect me from finding out,” she whispered conclusively, head rising away from my chest to look up at me. Her eyes were pink and her cheeks were wet. She waited for me to give her some sort of confirmation.
“Part of it.”
“There’s more?” She sounded worried, scared to hear what else there might be. It painfully twisted my insides. There was still the truth behind how she even ended up in that hospital bed, the truth behind who shot her.
“Lauren, it gets so much worse.”
I felt her cringe under me.
“I want to know,” she asserted. “Just ‘cause I cry, doesn’t mean I can’t handle the truth. I’m not the person I was last year. I’m strong now.”
With a shake of my head, I let her know, “Baby, you’ve always been strong.”
Not many people could go through all the things that Lauren had been through and still get back up and essentially ask for more.
She spent months dodging the murderous promises of my father with a smile on her face.
She took a bullet, lost an organ, miscarried, and spent more than a year with the belief that a man who said he loved her betrayed her.
And here she was, a little different than the woman I remembered, but for the most part, barely changed.
She had to be one of the strongest people I knew.
“So… on a scale of one to ten, how bad is the whole truth?”
“Twenty.”
She nodded, releasing a slow and calming breath.
“I can take it.” And she wasn’t bluffing. Her eyes zeroed in, and I could tell that she was bracing herself. She seemed ready, but was I? I guess I needed to be. However, just as I prepared to honor her request, she stopped me. “Wait. Could you tell me next week, on Monday night?”
“That’s oddly specific.”
“The truth…” she paused, her front teeth sinking into her lower lip nervously. “It’ll change everything, won’t it?”
I was honest with her. “Yeah.”
“Maybe it’s best I hear it after Christmas Day.” She broke eye contact, looking down at her lap self-consciously. “That probably sounds so stupid, but—”
“It doesn’t sound stupid.” I tucked a finger under her chin, drawing her head back up so that she could meet my eyes.
Her sienna brown skin took on blueish tones under the darkening sky outside.
It was getting late, and as much as I would’ve liked to take her home with me, I knew she’d need some time.
Honestly, after the past few days that we had, we both needed some time.
Even if it was what we wanted, nothing could ever just jump back to normal out of sheer desire for it to.
Things like this took effort, relearning, and time.
Lauren’s face inches from mine could’ve felt like the most natural thing in the world, but I already knew that emotionally we might’ve been miles apart.
I ran my thumb repetitively along her cheek, my mind unable to recall the last time I got to touch her like this.
Lauren leaned further into my hands, the space between our lips shrinking to a single centimeter.
I could’ve kissed her right then. The permission was in the way she closed her eyes and seemed to wait for me to close that final gap. I thought I might hate myself for the decision I made, but I pulled back. “I’ll see you Monday night.”