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“You know you can talk to me, right?”
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m scared of small spaces,” she admitted in a whisper. It came as a surprise to me. Something told me that talking about her family wasn’t easy for her, except when she was talking about her mother. Even when we were together, she didn’t talk about Ryan or her father. “It isn’t usually this bad but with how fast everything happened, I panicked.”
“You’re all right now,” I pointed out, resting a hand on hers before rubbing her skin with a thumb. “Do you need to see a doctor after we’re out of here?” I didn’t know if she was seeing a therapist back in California, but I knew that with her financial issues, she wasn’t seeing one here. But I was happy to provide her with anything she needed. She just has to say the word.
“No,” she said. “I’m fine.”
A thick, deafening silence followed, forcing me to ask her more questions.
“Can I ask why you’re afraid?” I asked, not just to distract her from her panic but because I was genuinely intrigued and wanted to understand her. Her vulnerability made her more real to me, and the connection between us deeper. I knew this wasn’t going to end well for me. I was in too deep now.
“When Mommy died,” she started, her voice thick and shaking. “Daddy wasn’t the same man. He was drunk every night he came home. He couldn’t accept the fact that his wife was gone forever. He was an angry drunk, Matthew.”
My chest ached for Reagan as I watched her take a deep, shaky breath. She fidgeted her fingers as she pursed her lips together, gathering the courage to carry on. I took her hand and wrapped it with mine, my thumb stroking the back of her palm.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head. “Not physically, anyway. A month after Mommy’s death, I was in the kitchen studying when he arrived and I knew that he was too drunk to remember what he said to me.”
“What did he say?”
“That he hated looking at me. That I reminded him too much of her. That thing would have been better if I was the one who died, not her.”
“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath, but in my head, I was cursing Ricardo St. James. And what was worst was that he didn’t remember this shit, and Reagan had carried it with her for most of her life.
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry, Reagan.” I dragged my hand across my face in exasperation as if attempting to physically scrub away the frustration that had etched into my skin.
“All these years, I thought he was right. Because she was picking me up from a school dance in the middle of the night. Daddy said I couldn’t go because he was going to a business gala that night and he wouldn’t be able to pick me up. So Mommy offered to do it. And I waited for her in the parking lot hours after the dance. She didn’t come.”
“Reagan—”
“Then Daddy came for me, picked me up from school, and brought me to the hospital to see her body. I couldn’t even recognize her, Matthew. She looked like she was beaten into a pulp. The doctors said the other driver who crashed into her was drunk and that he was dead as well.”
“You know it wasn’t your fault.”
It really wasn’t. Ricardo St. James was an asshole to say that to his daughter. And he shouldn’t have prioritized a stupid event over family. How hard could picking up his daughter have been?
“I know that now. But I hid from him every night after that. I didn’t want him to say more things about me and Mommy. I hid wherever I could. And one time I was getting water from the fridge when he arrived so I hid under the kitchen sink. Then he started trashing everything he could lay his hands on—plates, glasses, all of Mommy’s Versace mugs.”
I wanted to shut Reagan up, pull her into an embrace, and take all her trauma away. But that wasn’t how things worked so I sat there in silence and in pain as I listened to her pour everything out.
“I hid there until I fell asleep. But I heard everything, saw everything in that little crack of space between the doors. I woke up to one of the maids pulling me from under the cabinet and bringing me to my bedroom.”
“Is that why you—”
A nod. “For a second there, I was under the kitchen sink again, and I was listening to him break everything. I went to see a therapist when I was eighteen, and she said that the claustrophobia wasn’t serious, but it could be triggered from time to time.”
She cleared her throat as she rested her other hand on top of our intertwined clasp. And I listened to her now steady breaths before I said anything else. I didn’t really know what to say. But the silence was so heavy. And it continued for another second, during which I had to acknowledge the soft tug in my chest.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said again. “Your father is a jackass for saying that. He should’ve been there for you instead of blaming you for it. And Ryan, too. Where was he when all of this was transpiring, anyway?”
Thankfully, the atmosphere had lightened up. Reagan had relaxed and we were getting cozy in our little elevator corner. But I was also getting impatient because the elevator hadn’t yet started. And there was a big meeting I was supposed to be in charge of that was going to start soon.
I was sure that Clair was flooding me with messages and calls, wondering where I was but I had promised Reagan I wouldn’t look at my phone when she was talking to me.
