“I don’t care.” He tucked her head under his chin, as if he could get her even closer. “Lindsey, I know more than you think I do. And I don’t care. Baby, I don’t care what you’ve done, how many other guys you’ve been with, the lengths you’ve gone to…just to hurt yourself.” She tried to make herself smaller against him, as if she could hide from his words.
“God, baby, you’re so full of that spite.” His words made her feel cold, achy, as if she had the flu. “Watching you do this to yourself…it’s like seeing you eat rat poison, but you think you’re hurting someone else, don’t you? You’ll show them, right?” He squeezed her tighter when she snorted and nodded through her tears. “And all the while you’re just killing
“I know.” She drew a shuddering breath. “But I don’t care.” He sighed, kissing the top of her head. “Because if no one else cares…why should you?”
She nodded, holding back a full-blown sob, her throat closing off any words.
“
Burying her face against his chest, she gave a deep, shuddering sigh, sliding her hand down over the hard, flat surface of his belly, reaching under the sheet to find his cock, soft in a nest of dark, kinky hair.
“Lindsey!” Zach jumped, startled, at her touch. “Oh, baby, no no…” He took her hand, pulling it up to his waist, wrapping it around him. “It’s so not about that.”
“It’s always about that!” she choked, trying to push him away, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he held on, rocking, until sobs racked her body, trembling them both. It was a while-to Lindsey, it felt like forever-before they subsided into little hitching noises, the same kind she used to get when she was very small and had been crying a long, long time. Zach kissed the top of her head, using the sheet to wipe the tears from her face, his chest.
“He raped me,” she whispered, the words lifting a weight in her chest like an anvil.
“I know, baby, I know,” he crooned, stroking her. “I’m so sorry…”
“My stepfather. When I was twelve.”
His silence stretched until he managed a breathy, strangled, “Oh…god…” in response, his arms tightening around her.
“I had never even kissed a boy before.” The words, once begun, seemed to form themselves now.
“Oh Christ.”
“There was blood everywhere.” She shuddered. “And I tried to clean it-he told me to, before my mother got home. I tried…” She sighed, remembering. The memory wasn’t far away, like it usually was-the circle-face of the moon through a pane of glass-instead it was close, bright, painful. She wanted to push it away and found she couldn’t. “He was always like that. I couldn’t ever do anything right with him. It never mattered what it was. I wasn’t ever good enough.”
“Oh my god, Lindsey,” Zach’s voice cracked and she could feel how tense his muscles were, felt his jaw clench as he tucked her head under his chin. The words came and came, spilling out of her mouth, a fountain of pain, and he listened, mostly quiet, his jaw working, as she told him everything.
“I remembered…” She tried to swallow the memory, but she couldn’t. It hurt more than any of the others. “When I was little-little and I’d fall down and skin my knee…I remembered my father, putting on that spray stuff that hurt and telling me to go to the moon…”
“The moon?”
”It was something we did…” She smiled through her tears, remembering her chubby little girl finger, pointing at the glass. “At night, he would show me the moon out my window before he put me to bed…so whenever I was hurt, he’d try to distract me, tell me to remember the moon…think about the moon…”
Zach nodded, just holding her.
“I think I got to the point where I became the moon,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She could see it, tucked neatly into one square pane of glass. “I went to the moon whenever he touched me, Zach. I went away. Whenever anyone touches me, that’s where I go. And tonight…I went there, too. I felt like I swallowed the moon tonight, and it burned…”
“Oh baby…” He gave a deep, shaky sigh, swallowing hard. “Can I ask…what about your mother?”
“I tried…once.” Lindsey shook her head. “She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to know.” Her lip trembled and she pulled the comforter tighter around her. “She always loved him more than she ever loved me.”
“Oh no…” His denial didn’t make it not true, and she blinked back more tears.
“And after that…I just wanted someone to pick me up and tell me it was going to be okay, you know?” She felt him nodding. “But there was never…anyone. And it felt like…like I just kept falling down…over and over…and there was no one there…”
“To catch you?”
She nodded her assent, her throat closed tight.
“I promise you…” Zach’s voice was hard, but his hands, cupping her face, were tender. “No one is ever going to hurt you again. And I will always, always be there to catch you, Lindsey.”
