“Something you haven’t told anyone.” He’s talking to himself now, not questioning me, but his painful voice breaks my heart.
How much will I hurt this man with my baggage?
I have no idea how much time has passed since I’ve been bundled in Zander’s arms. At some point, he pulled a blanket over me to stop my shaking, covering us both. But it did nothing to calm my chilling insides.
I turn to my side and notice our tea and coffee have gone cold. My tears have stopped, but my headache has increased tenfold now.
“I want to sleep.” Maybe when I get up, things will be back to normal.
He nods but whispers, “Why didn’t you ever tell anyone?”
All my childhood and teenage life, I’ve trained my brain to suppress those haunted years. On my sixteenth birthday—the day that Kindred Hearts picked as my birthday—Sophia asked if I remembered anything, and I simply said no.
By that time, I’d repeated the same lie to my face every morning.
I was lost. No one knew where I was, and I don’t remember anything.
Maybe the first two things weren’t so much of a lie.
I even repeated the same answer to Zander when he first asked about my past. But how could I lie to him now?
We’re going to start a new life together. I need to tell him why I can’t give him the two-and-a-half-kids-white-picket-fence life.
I just can’t bring a baby into this world, even if there is only a minuscule chance that it’ll be a girl with my eyes.
Just thinking about another baby, alone and lost—
“Rose. Rose, stay with me.” Zander pulls me back from his chest. “You’re safe,” he whispers as I clutch his cotton T-shirt, balling it in between my hands.
I lean in and smell his woodsy vanilla scent, which I now know is his Coach cologne in a steel flask. I think about the image of the horse carriage carved on the bottle. Any other thought to keep me grounded, to keep me in this moment.
“I know it’s hard, but you need to tell me.”
“I told you when I was found… I didn’t speak for a very long time.”
I feel him nod, his chin resting over my head.
“I was at the hospital and underwent grafting surgeries. During that time, police and social workers came in daily, blasting thousands of questions at me. When I gave no response, they all assumed I was mute. By the time I started speaking, everybody had forgotten. Like so many others, I was all but a case file gathering dust. No one cared enough to ask again.” I feel nothing but a sense of emptiness remembering that time.
“I’m asking, Rose. I’m begging you to tell me everything, everything you remember.” He stops rocking me just enough to say those words.
“Why? What’s the point now?” My pulse goes wild, imagining those words finally coming out of my mouth.
“Because I fucking care. Because you’re everything to me. Because it fucking matters to me.”
I hold his face between my hands, and his smoldering gaze lands on me. His livid face softens, and he whispers, “Do this for me, sweetheart. Please.”
I nod. I would do anything for him—walk on a bed of hot coals or relive the horrors that haunt me.
“I remember bits and pieces. I think if I didn’t have a photographic memory, I might not even remember these instances. That’s why I always curse this gift.”
I take a deep breath before I break the promise I made to my small self years ago. Before I open those bolted, chained doors that hide my worst fears and memories.
“I was heavily sedated most of the time. The doctors also confirmed huge amounts of drugs in my blood. But sometimes, in between, I remember”—I swallow hard—“a woman…and a man. The woman didn’t hurt me. In fact, she’d apply something like a balm on my wounds. It felt cold, numbing, and nice. But the man…he’d put s-something hot on my back. I think I must’ve cried in the beginning, but when he increased the pain and burn, I—I became silent.”
My back feels hot now, and the cotton of my T-shirt itches my skin. When I shift and twist, trying to get free, Zander’s hands crawl inside under my T-shirt. He runs them all over my back, assuring me there is nothing there and it’s just in my head.
“Anything else?” he asks gruffly, continuing the motion of his hands. When I don’t reply immediately, Zander presses on my shoulders, his hands still buried under my T-shirt. “Tell me.”