AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Tricia woke up, she was naturally disoriented but when she remembered what she’d told me, I saw horror etch her face. Sensing she may vomit, I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the first vessel I could find, which turned out to be a large glass Pyrex dish. By the time I ran back she was heaving. I lurched forward and caught the spew before it went everywhere.
“You’re okay, take it easy,” I said calmly, as she met my eyes with a pained look that crushed my heart. “It’s okay, baby, you fainted, but everything’s going to be okay,” I told her softly, as I gathered up her hair after handing her the dish. Once she had stopped throwing up, she cast me a sideward look that asked ‘are you still here?’
“Yep and I’m not leaving,” I confirmed, removing the bowl from her hands and setting it down away from her on the floor. Tears rolled down her face unchecked, and my heart went out to her. I immediately knelt in front of her. “I got you, baby,” I soothed, kissing her head, and cradling her to my chest. “I got you.” I hugged her tight and rubbed her back. “You need to keep talking about this now you have started, but for now, cry, let it out. It’s okay, you’re safe, cry. Tricia, you’re so brave. You’ve told me what happened to you and the sky hasn’t fallen, we can try to deal with this now.”
My reassurance was to let Tricia know what she’d told me had made no difference to how I felt about her. I could never have turned my back on her because of difficult circumstances in her past, my love was unconditional. What I felt more than anything was rage, for all that she’d been through, and had obviously dealt with all of that in silence. Tricia had been through a traumatic ordeal and it had scarred her for life.
Holding her firmly in my arms, my heart ached as she cried quietly into my chest, her fist twisting my T-shirt.
“Let it all out, baby. I got you,” I told her, holding her tight to me, rubbing her back.
After a few minutes, her sobs subsided and she gently pulled away, looking up at me with red-rimmed puffy eyes, and my heart felt like it had cracked down the middle. I hated seeing how devastated she was. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, rubbing away her tears with the heels of her hands.
“You don’t get to say sorry to me. You don’t owe me an apology. I love you, Tricia. Whatever happened before we met—”
“But you can’t—”
“So we don’t have kids. Let me be happy and concentrate on what I do have… you.”
Standing, I gave myself a minute to keep my frustration in check by picking up the bowl from the floor, striding through to the bathroom, and disposing of its contents down the toilet. After rinsing it in the sink, I took it back to the kitchen and put it in the dishwasher. I went into her bathroom and began filling the tub.
“You need to relax after the shock you’ve had. I’ve turned the faucet on in the tub and you’re going to be kind to yourself. We’ll talk more when you feel stronger.”
“I’ve never told anyone before,” she remarked quietly.
“You mean in a relationship?”
“I mean anyone. Since the day I walked out of that hospital, I’ve never spoken about it since.”
“Fuck.” I let her statement sink in for a minute and my temper grew even hotter.
“Didn’t you talk to your mom? You were sixteen. Didn’t she take you to counseling or something?”
She shrugged. “I was told it was done and she never wanted to hear about it again. I’d brought shame on my family.”
“What did your sister say, surely she was supportive at least?”
Tricia hugged herself again, her teeth biting down on her bottom lip. Taking a deep breath, she held out a hand and waved it apathetically. “She has no idea.”
“Huh? How can she not? She’s only what… a few years older than you?”
“Marnie was on deployment at the time, left right before I started showing and came home a month after it was all over.”
“Except it wasn’t over… it has never been over for you, never will, unless we try to help you find some peace with it,” I stated quietly.
“Never a truer word has been spoken,” she said, nodding and staring at the floor.
“Come with me. Let me try to take care of you. I can’t take your pain away, but I can at the very least support you by showing you I care and what happened makes no difference to how I feel about you,” I replied in a serious tone, before tugging her into my chest and leading toward her bathroom.
Turning her away from the mirror I carefully undressed her, kissing each swollen eye on the way, and guiding her into the bathtub.
“Why are you being so nice to me? That was a heinous thing I did. I can never forgive myself, so why should you be okay with it?”
Kneeling beside her, I pushed her gently backward, her head landed on her bath pillow and I lifted a sponge. I began soaping her torso while I spoke. “I’m not so old that I don’t remember being sixteen, Tricia. Had I gotten someone pregnant at that age, I’d have been devastated… and I’m a guy. The thought of living my life knowing I had a child out there somewhere I guess I’d feel… no, I can’t guess about that because I can’t imagine the anguish and distress it’s caused you. You’ve carried a massive burden for what, thirty years?”
“Thirty this past Easter, she was born a few weeks before my seventeenth birthday,” she stated, frowning as she mechanically sifted water through her fingers with her eyes transfixed on her hand.
