Finally snapping out of it, I lay back on my bed and wiped furiously at my eyes as they filled with tears.I refuse to cry about this. It’s done.
I spent the next few hours drinking, wallowing in self-pity, and then slept through most of the next day until something roused me at three in the afternoon. Frazzled and confused, the nagging sound starts again, and I realize that someone is beating down my door.How long has that been going on?My head throbs when I slowly pull myself out of bed and head toward the entry. The knocks get louder and more frantic the closer I get. “Jesus, I’m coming,” I yell.Did Cory forget her keys?I open the door, expecting Cory, and jump in surprise when it’s not.
Dylan stands before me looking like hell. His clothes are the ones I stripped from him yesterday, and he has dark circles under his eyes. Eyes that are boring into mine. His hair is so messed up, he must have run his hands through it a hundred times. To sum it up, he’s broken.
A sharp pain radiates through me as I look into his eyes. I want to slam the door in his face, but the emotion in his gaze stops me. He may not realize it, but he’s conveying so much with that one look. Heartbreak, sympathy, pity, concern. They all confirm my own fears.He knows the truth.
I open the door wider and gesture for him to enter, closing it behind him. I pause for a second, still facing the door.Deep breath, Summer. Now turn.I look up at Dylan’s face, ready to speak, but before I can get a word in, he moves toward me and engulfs me in a hug, tucking me into his body. His cheek presses into my head, and his chest rises and falls at a fast pace against my own. We stay like that for a few minutes until Dylan pulls away. “I’m so sorry, Summer. Sorry for what you’ve been through, sorry that you have shitty parents, sorry that Thomas—”
“You don’t need to be sorry. For any of that,” I say, cutting him off. “I’m fine.”
He stares at me for a moment, maybe trying to figure out how not-fine I really am. “Then I’m sorry I hurt you. It was never my intention, but, Summer…when you’re hurting,I’m hurting. I needed to know the truth.”
“I didn’t want you to know!” I say, raising my voice, not ready to forget about him breaking my trust.
“I know,” he rasps, and I have to give him some credit because he appears remorseful. He sighs and then runs his hand through his hair once more. “How many times did it happen?”
I could play dumb. We technically haven’t discussed how much he knows, but…
“Only twice,” I say softly.
“Twice! Only twice? Summer, it shouldn’t have happened at all.” Dylan starts pacing, giving me flashbacks to the last time I saw him doing that. He was hurting for me then too.He really does care.
“Did he hurt you because you stole from him?” he asks, and I wince. For some reason I believed that Dylan wouldn’t buy into the rumors, even if they came from Thomas. I hoped he’d see through them, and if I’m being honest, his comment hurts…a lot.I drop to the couch and rest my face in my hands, silently begging for this nightmare to end.
I feel movement in front of me and lift my head to see Dylan crouched down, his hands itching to touch me, but he holds back. “I never believed you’d done that,” he says, and I release a held breath, “but Thomas…and then…it’s just not adding up. Help me understand, Summer. Please,” he begs, and I soften a little at his obvious concern for me.
I sigh and then speak without thinking. “I’ve never stolen from anyone; my parents gave me that money so that I’d…”Shit!
The softness of Dylan’s expression hardens in an instant, and I know he’s worked out what my comment means. I blush with embarrassment, the heat of it traveling through me, scorching my skin, as my most shameful secret hangs in the air between us.
“Please tell me it wasn’thushmoney?” Dylan whispers, even though he knows the answer. “Please don’t tell me your own familypaidyou to keep quiet. And you accepted it?” He stares at me, dumbfounded, but somehow stays calm. Too calm. I want him to yell. It’s what I’m used to. I can’t handle the raw emotion on his face. The hurt. The pain. For me. It’s all too much.
He’s right.Of course, he’s right. This is why I don’t deserve him or anyone else. I took money to cover up a crime. What if my father moved on to hurting someone else? That possibility, however unlikely, drifted into my mind from time to time, but I always pushed it back down. I have no excuse except… “I…I had to. I had nothing.”
“So, you let him get away with it and just moved on with life?” There’s disbelief in his voice, but he still hasn’t raised it. He doesn’t need to. His words do enough damage.
“Moved on with life? Are you kidding me, Dylan?” I glare. “I will never get over what he did to me. It’s ruined me.”
“And yet you leave him free to hurt someone else.” This time his words feel like a stab to the heart. In a matter of seconds, Dylan has moved from being caring and sympathetic to bitter and cruel.
“You know nothing about the situation—”
“I know that no one deserves to be hurt like you were, and he could be…God, Summer.” He shakes his head in disgust.
“You have no idea what I’ve been through, or how I feel. Of course, I worry about that. But it’s unlikely considering it was only ever me that he hurt, and only when he was drunk. Why are you getting so worked up about this? It happened to me, not you—”
“Because I couldn’t stop it,” he yells, and I freeze.
What?
My gaze bounces from one of his eyes to the other as I try to process what he means. “You didn’t even know me,” I whisper before breaking our stare.
“I’m not talking about you,” he says, his voice a little raspy from yelling. He runs his hands over his face and sighs. “When I was about twelve…” He trails off and drops his head. Realization hits me. Oh.Oh! He remembers? I wait a moment, but he’s clearly not going to continue, so I move from the couch to the floor beside him, leaving a space between us.
“What happened?” I ask, desperate to hear his point of view of my strongest memory.
“The short of it is, I saw a man…maybe a father? I don’t know. I saw a man forcefully drag a little girl away from our football practice one day. I watched as she was dropped to the ground and then picked up and thrown into a car. I ran. I ran as fast as I could, but I was too far away. Nobody did anything. I yelled, and…I tried to stop it, but…And then my Dad…” The pain in his voice is heartbreaking, bringing tears to my eyes.