Page 24 of I See Red

“I spent years convincing myself it was all just a bad dream. I know now I wasn’t in the wrong, but that didn’t help backthen. Fuck, nothing helped except my memories of you. All those years, I wore that blame every day, for if something was wrong withme, then his secrets were safe.No one can ever know.God, that fucking phrase is embedded in me. If I am crazy, who would believe me? I’m just a defiant, fucked up kid who will say anything to not take responsibility, right? On the other hand, zombies can’t fucking speak.No, they just shuffle through the goddamn day. As I went to therapy all those years later, and trust me, it took forever to find one I could attempt to trust. To my surprise a woman, which you know I struggle with. But I thought if I could bare my soul to one, then that would be growth. Anyways,”

Making my way back to the chair, I tuck my knees back in my hoodie, finding comfort in my favorite position, refilling my glass I shoot it back, a hiss releasing from the sting.

“With her, I found validation that I probably was placed more often the last few years because I was no longer to his liking, or he was trying to keep me safe from him in his own fucked up way. But it never truly stopped; the time in between just became longer. I’ll never know, but as I got older, I couldn’t help but feel like I was just a daily reminder of his demons, and he needed to lock it away. What’s even more fucked up is, in a fucked up way, to be used and discarded hurt so fucking bad, even though I should have been so fucking grateful. I mean I was, but it’s a fucking twisted and dark double-edged sword. Sometimes, I like to imagine there was good behind his choice to send me away, that somewhere failing me became harder and harder for him to do, that he recognized how fucking dead I was, that he regretting stripping me of who I could have been and wanted to stop.Fucking pathetic, when I say it out loud.”

Taking another sip of whiskey, I think about the weight of all I just said, remembering there are still days I convince myself there was a single ounce of good in that man. I don’t think theabuser bond ever vanishes completely. I think time just lessens the depth in which you allow its teeth to sink into you.

“The truth, however, is the burning fear of me betraying him and speaking at any point was not a gamble he wanted to take. Unfortunately for me, those placements were tragic just the same. The things I saw changed me. The men in them changed me just the same. I spent my whole life surviving men in my past, being only merely a body for them to crave and a secret for them to keep. I did a year’s stint in foster care; little good the fucking state did; my first home of the many was awful. I mean, they all were, but that one imprinted on me.

I remember pulling up with the case worker and seeing this beautiful home with yellow lilies and honeysuckles everywhere. It smelt like heaven, and for once, I thought I was being saved, but nobody was ever coming to save me. Honestly, until I learned there was no saving for me, life was miserable, but once I accepted it, I was able to flourish in some ways. The places I was locked away in allowed me to learn how to survive with nothing. They taught me how to become evil to fight evil. I don’t think I will ever be able to undo all I had to become to survive—complete emotional vacancy, and it terrifies me. On my second night there, I was dressed in a red velvet gown, my hair brushed perfectly by my foster mother before I was requested to have my photo taken as Beethoven filled my ears. I wasn’t aware of what was happening at the time, which angers me. I should have seen it. When it came to love, staring up at the ceiling while my body was invaded was the only version I was ever shown, the times I was cruelly gifted the torture of being awake. For if I was a good girl, I got extra meds and just woke up feeling different. The saddest part is I was fucking thankful for those days. It was like a symbol of love—I was loved. If I was nothing else, I was beautiful, I was attractive, I was desired. As I got older, it became my superpower. What those men in my life didn’t realize as theygroomed and took from me was that they were teaching me my power. They were giving me power, for as I matured, I knew the inner and outer works of a man’s thoughts and sexual awakenings, and I would use this as my survival. One day, I would take what they stripped of me from them and use it as my own to know when I am simply being used or loved, and eventually, I learned the difference, but it took me a lot of wrong turns to get there. Some days, I’m not even close. I learned how to use men like I had been used to for so many years and single-handedly put myself into the success I am in today.No, I didn’t fuck my way to the top, but I made myself every man’s desire, and my ability to see their cues, read their body language and their tones, and respond without giving myself away was honestly merciful. I used my trauma to build my future. It came at a cost, though. When I was younger, I had to become evil to withstand the evil. I had to learn to dissociate in order to survive. Man, if ceilings could talk. The emotions you have for others are not like mine. I have the ability to separate them, the ability to force my mind to feel whatever I tell it because that is how I made myself unbreakable. I spent fucking years honing in on a mind-over-matter subconscious every day of my life, which led me to walk through it calculated and unable to have true joy or happiness. Every response is meticulously planned and calculated, like a fucking emotionless robot, because as a young girl, I never had anything to laugh or smile about. I learned basic social cues based on those around me of when I was supposed to display those emotions, and I did it so well. Now though, I’m not sure I’ll ever know genuine emotion, sporadic emotion, the kind that just happens without a blueprint to the ending of every possible scenario. Everyone laughs, subconscious comes in,you’re supposed to laugh. Further down the line came my dance coach, and even a therapist. That’s why I sought out a female, Evalyn. Imagine that—a fucking therapist. Fuck.” I reach out,chugging what’s left in my coffee cup, wanting to feel wasted at this point, my mind fighting against me as it has been trained to block alcohol, for everything is simply mind-over-matter. I can hear his tears, his breaths heaving, his world shattering all around him. I want to look at him so bad, but I know if I do again, my soul will crack wide open. I just need to finish. I need to rid my heart of it all.

“My father severed any friendship I ever tried to make because outsiders could only complicate things, and my thought process could be altered by outside influence, so I assume that is why I was cut out of your life the day of your birthday and after what I learned last night why your father played a role in it. I thought back last night laying there and he was probably just trying to protect you from whatever my father told him of me, as would any parent. I don’t blame him for his actions, and you honestly shouldn’t either. We were in love, true love. You were the only pure form of love I ever knew, and for my entire life, since the day you walked into it on the bus to S.M.K, you were the only reason I survived. I brought your letters with me to every facility. I talked to you in my dreams and imagined what your day looked like. You gave me a gift you never knew you handed to me, the gift of survival. Our relationship those few years gave me hope to hold onto. You were what I channeled when I thought I couldn’t handle it anymore. I know it seems odd for someone so young to hold on to a little boy who said he loved her, but without you, I would not be sitting in front of you right now. When I held the gun to my head many times, my toe on the trigger, you were what my tears cried for, not myself, and it was your voice that told me to keep fighting for one day I would find the beauty in my wreckage, and it all would be worth it. It’s why I’ve never stopped loving you and needing to talk to you from time to time. You were always the most importanthuman in my life and the breath that breathed life into me every day. You still save me in many ways. Hearing about your life and how beautiful it had turned out to be and the man you became allowed me to know I held on for all the right reasons. I needed to know that my decision never to tell you was worth it, and it was Tayden. I’d endure it all over again and never say a word to you if I had to because I wanted your life to be pure. I wanted you to have a normal childhood, and dragging you down with me wouldn’t have done either of us good, nor would it of changed a damn thing. I would have been shipped off either way. So when I did return, I asked my father to move me to the school in the next district, cutting all ties because I feared the older I got, the harder it would be not to tell you what was happening and ask you for help. It was hard to not slip up back when we were kids. I didn’t want that to ever happen. I needed to make sure that even though I couldn’t have the childhood I wanted, that you were out there living my dreams even if I wasn’t a part of it. I didn’t tell you I was disappearing for good because I wanted to protect you, as you protected me all those years and many that came after you. I wrote to you too many times to count. In my world, you were there with me every step of the way. You never left. Every adult in my life who should have helped me only harmed me. I needed something pure, and protecting you gave me that—loving you brought resolve to my demons. I couldn’t be saved then, and I will never be saved, and I don’t fucking want to be. The damage will always remain. It’s in the way I move and the ways in which I don’t, the way I do business, the way I love Liam at a distance, the way I love you and can’t let you go completely, the way I have no friends but Olive, and well, Red, andcertainly in the way I fuck. I can’t relate to people in which there is no relation between us, and there never is, no matter how hard I try. Forming bonds, trust, and being vulnerable are not traits I was raised in. Being cold, calculated, and building mywalls are all I’ve ever known. Surviving is my only emotion. Isolation is the only way to maintain my strength. It’s where I thrive. It’s why I built what I did so nobody couldeverhave control over me again, and even in all I do to create that, I’m still not safe, for my mind constantly reminds me that I can never run from what I went through. I’m simply left trying to understand it and fighting like hell to forget it. The ability to trust myself was never formed, only with those with an age triple mine because they are safe, raised in a world before mine that I like to believe was simpler and purer than my own.

There is so much more to my story, and it would take weeks, months, even years for me to unpack it all. Hell, I’m still learning it all from memories that resurface and struggling with all I know and those I don’t that trickle in. I have been homeless, beaten, discarded, held against my will, and tortured, even held at gunpoint more times than I’d like to admit. I know this is going to sound so fucked, but since the veil has been torn to shreds, I mise well. I know what my father did to me—what they all did—is unforgivable, but fuck, there were days I’d take what they did over those places. The amount of terror I experienced, cold and alone, knowing nobody was ever coming to save me, is fucking mind-altering. Frozen in my bed, fighting to stay up all night completely tucked in the covers stiff as a board, changed me. Seeing the exit sign but not capable of running through it to freedom was torture.Those places back then were fucking lawless, and we were their prisoners. My screams brought me nothing but more trouble, and I had to become all they said simply to survive it all. Even today, when I look in the mirror, all I see is her. Little me wrapped in a white gown practicing in a fogged state-funded mirror to become evil to survive the evil, for being normal like I truly was at one point wasn’t an option. They needed me to be all he wrote on those intake forms. For one does not get to leave because they came in and were perfect. No, onemust show growth, which meant I had to be all he said I was to make them think they fixed me. That is the only exit strategy, and the ugly truth in places like that with people like them and a father like mine.”

Running my fingers over my neck at the remembrance of all that was and the wreckage it left behind, my eyes lock in with the water off in the distance, thinking back, escaping the conversation completely as my thoughts drift away. The strokes of my fingers on my skin bringing me comfort, grounding my mind, emptiness stilling my reel as I stare off in oblivion before coming back to reality.

“As far as the VHS tapes are concerned, I hope you never watch them, and I hope your father never has, as well as the audios, and if at all possible, I’d appreciate the return of them. But you asked about my father, and I feel I have answered your questions and then some. Welcome to the inside look behind the mask of Ivy SageRutledge, Amor.”

My breath winded, I try to steady it as my empathy for him and all he must feel grows in my throat. The tingles begin consuming me, at the metaphorical nakedness he just beared witness to, but fuck do I feel lighter. Looking up, the tears not breaking as they beg for my permission, I muster the courage to look at him, my heart imploding into a million pieces as I see his face mimics mine, his lips quivering viciously as mine as I grant my tears permission to fall.Fuck, why did he have to find those files? I’d give anything to take the hurt away from him.The wind starts to pick up, or maybe our complete silence just makes it seem louder. I watch as he tries to find his words. His eyes don’t detour from mine; even in the fog of his tears, they are still so captivating. I know he’s trying to keep it together for me, and I love him so much more for that, but my anxiety just needs him to say something, fuck say anything.

“Ives um, I love you, Ivy Sage Reed.” His voice breaks in those eight words, glancing off into the distance, wiping his tears, as more fall out behind the ones he just cleared, and they have no end no matter how many times his strong hands strike them from his skin.

“I never would have imagined. My heart is fucking breaking for you, for me, for us. I can’t even begin to imagine what courage it took you to not only tell me but live through all that alone. I would have tried to help you if you would have told me. I would have fought to help you. I could have convinced my father it wasn’t true. If you would have told me, it may have been different. Fuck, Ives I know maybe I couldn’t have helped you, but I would have fucking tried,” his tone shaky like freshly shattered glass.

“T, look at me.” His eyes meet mine as our hearts break together.

“Understand me when I tell you this, there is nothing you could have done, not a fucking thing. You were a kid. Fuck, we both were, for Christ’s sake. You and your father were no match for him. I fucking knew that man inside and out, and there was no winning, T.None. Not even the devil he created in his wake could stop him. The reason I couldn’t was because I held onto love. I held onto the purest thing to ever walk into my life—you. You were the only piece of humanity left inside of me. Youdidsave me more times than you know, or I care to tell, T. Of all the bad I had done and became, trust me when I say that you made me hold onto love and kindness and fucking hope. You are the reason I love the world so big and every human within it. The shred of humanity you allowed me to cling to planted a seed within me for later in life would bloom. You saved me, and you still save me every fucking day, even when we don’t talk. I still struggle, and there are days when I know there is no place in this world for me, and I feel I will never truly live. I think endlesslyabout ending it all, but I don’t. You may not have saved me in the way you wish, but you most certainly did not ever fail me, Tayden Bergess,” I aggressively plea with him.

“I understand that, Ives, but fuck, I want to kill them. I want to kill him.” My body jolts at the crash of his fists onto the table, causing it to rumble beneath us.

Pulling the whiskey up to my mouth, hysterical laughter leaks past my lips uncontrollably. “Yeah, well, he’s dead. I got to him first. Sorry, love. That one was mine.” His eyes darken, a small grin forming across his face through the tears.

“You—I thought he took—wait, what?” he questions.

“Well,officially, the bastard took his own life. I think he just couldn’t live with himself any longer;such a tragic loss to the world;he was quite a loved man,” sarcastically rolls off my tongue, my cup floating through the air, bouncing with the beat of my words.

“Unofficially, Red and I make a damn good duo.” I smile, the whiskey pouring into my mouth until the last drop enters the back of my throat. I have officially hit the level of drunk, and there is nothing my mind can do about it. I must be drunk. I just confessed to murder; I would never have said that sober. I wouldn’t do a lot of things sober, though.

“A story for another day?” He quirks a brow.

“Yes, nowthatstory I’ve been dying to tell, and I know Red has as well. Feel free to ask her about it the next time you see her. As for me, I’ve had enough story time for one day.”

We begin laughing through the tears. Our glasses clink in understanding, and I suddenly feel lighter, as if unpacking this somehow brought light to a place in my heart that was still so dark, all the while feeling guilty because I know the darkness removed from me, just dimmed some of the light within him. Love sucks sometimes, this I have come to know.

“I’m never leaving you, Ivy, if only in the way we have known together. No matter what, I’m never leaving you. I can’t imagine my life without you in it. I cannot imagine a world where you do not exist in it. I am so fucking grateful you didn’t leave this world before we reconnected years ago. I never stopped thinking about you and hoping we would find our way back to each other eventually. Over the years, I convinced myself you had this wonderful life and were just always going to be a part of my childhood that I could cherish but never see again. I grieved you and moved on. Fuck was I so off base with it all. I know you aren’t perfect. You have made poor decisions, and listening to you own them over the years shows your heart even more, but I need you to understand this, if never anything else. You were a kid, a child, and you knew no better. The choices you made were survival and programming. It may not be today or tomorrow or ever, but fuck Ives I hope one day you forgive yourself because you deserve a re-write. You deserve peace, you deserve forgiveness, andfuckto forgive yourself, Mi Amor. As far as the ‘leaving the world’ part, I already know I don’t have to say this because you know it already, but I’ll say it anyway. Nobody, not even Liam, as little as I know him, would ever want that. It can be hard sometimes; we both know that. Even more so now, but there is so muchmoreto live for Ives than there is to give up. That option breaks so many hearts, countless hearts, and lives and, most importantly, robs you of the happiness you have fought so fucking hard to find. There are so many people that do love you in this world and care about you beyond measure, whether you see that or not, myself included. If you are ever struggling, you can always talk to me about anything. I know you already know this, but I still have to say it because I love you more than I could ever describe in human language, Ivy Rutledge. I can’t imagine, even just a few years ago, if I’d heard news like that about you before we had reconnected and us notbeing close like we are now, just how devastating that would have been. It makes me fucking sad to think we could have gone without ever reconnecting and sharing our love with each other all these years. It would fucking kill me if it ever happened in the future.” Tears roll like a raging river again from his eyes. It’s a quiet and reserved rage, which saddens me, for it is the calmest of breaks that sting the hardest, and I know he is hurting, and I am that reason. Jumping up, I race over to him, jumping in his lap, wrapping my arms around him so tightly. His embrace is the most comforting thing I’ve missed all these years. Lifting my chin with one hand as the other wipes the tears from my eyes with his sleeve, he whispers to me, “You survived for me, now I need you to live for me, Mi Amor. Live foryou. Promise me,” he demands.

“I promise,” I mutter through swallowed tears.

“I, in turn, promise to return all I have from my father’s office, but promise me you won’t ever go through them. That’s not you, Amor. She’s not you. I’d rather you destroy them, but if you don’t, please promise me you won’t open those boxes—ever.”

Wiping the tears from his eyes, I make both those promises, unsure if either is one I can keep. I’ve been wanting answers my whole life, and the only one capable of giving them to me is dead at my doing. Those tapes may give me what I’ve been searching for. They may have answers and fill-in holes I’ve been trying to fill for as long as I can remember. The worst questions to hold onto are those in which you can never receive an answer back. At least not in the way your soul so desperately craves. For now, I’ll keep that promise. As for the first one, that’s on time. Living for myself means having T in ways I cannot, in turn, hurting Liam. Love is never as simple as we wish it to be. Just as soon as I have extinguished one fire, another arises. Fucking Liam. God, I am a horrible person.I don’t deserve him.

Evalyn,

You asked me to write about one of the nights my world truly came crashing down, and as you are aware, the only way I can do such is in diary form. So here is the entry from that night.I know you’re a therapist and all and have no triggers, as you say, but please tread carefully with this one.

—Ivy

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