Page 55 of Shake the Habit

“Why do you think so?”

“You know how some dogs just have it in them to bite? I told you about that doodle who got kicked out of Sir’s class after the first day,” I reminded him. “As much as the owner tried, the dog wouldn’t stop nipping the other students. I think that Uncle Terrence could see what was in my character. He could see that I was weak and stupid, and that made me an easy target. I don’t know why I’m like that.”

“I don’t see it in you.”

“I was too weak to tell on him and I was dumb enough to believe that he would kill little girls if I did.”

“He was the kind of man who abused little girls,” Caleb stated. “Why wouldn’t he have done even more?”

“He was weak, too, but I didn’t know it back then. He was like…he was like a monster under my bed, always there hiding and waiting to hurt me. I used to cry and beg him to stop.” My throat got so thick that I couldn’t even swallow so I waited for a moment, staying still and breathing through my nose like I’d taught myself. A few years before, I would have tried to forget by reaching for a bottle, a handful of pills, or a guy who didn’t really care about me.

Now I just tried to breathe, because I knew it would pass. It was over even if it didn’t always feel that way. Sir bumped against the back of my legs and stayed there, warm and solid. Then I could speak again.

“No one understood why I acted so crazy,” I continued. “I didn’t have any boundaries or any limits on what I would do. You drank three shots? I’d have six. You wanted to jump from that window? I’d go a floor higher and try it, and I didn’t care if I could get hurt, not ever. I didn’t care at all.”

“Hell,” Caleb muttered. He held me tighter. “I’m glad you don’t do that anymore.”

“I scared my parents to death and they don’t know even the smallest part of all the things I got up to. I’m so glad they don’t, but they know enough. Now I’m asking them to trust me and you can understand why that’s impossible.”

“I don’t think it’s impossible, but I can understand why it’s so hard. They love you so much.”

“I’ll tell them that I’m sorry about today. Maybe we can try it again some time, like a party for your birthday. I promise that I won’t ruin it.”

“Stop blaming yourself for this. For all of it,” he said, and he sounded angry. “The man who hurt you is dead, and if what we hear in church is correct, then we know where his soul went and he deserves it. But you don’t. You didn’t deserve to have that happen and you don’t deserve to be unhappy now. I don’t want you to be.”

“I’m not, really I’m not,” I said. I looked up at him. “Some days are harder than others, but I wake up and do those affirmations, and they usually turn out true. I think my hair has been looking a lot better, and I don’t have to wait until I can get home to cry. I’m doing ok.”

“Good,” he said, but his expression seemed the opposite of “good.” He looked worried and upset, and there I went again making people feel that way. I hugged him more in order to reassure him, and that reassured me, too.

That night, after a long shower and some leftovers, Sir and I snuggled in bed. I had texted everyone to apologize and they’d said there was no need and other things like that. I’d sent a message to Aunt Paula as well.

“You told Caleb private information about me before I had a chance to tell him myself, or even to decide what I wanted him to know. You forced me to talk about the worst moments in my life before I was ready. Sir’s party was important to me and it was ruined. I accept your apology but I don’t want to talk to youfor a while,” I told her. I didn’t plan to go to church the next day so that I could take a break from everyone else, too. They also might have needed one from me and the stress I added to their lives.

The extra-long run had exhausted my muscles but not my mind, and I couldn’t sleep until it got very late. Even later, I woke slightly to Sir getting back into the bed. “Go on,” I heard Caleb murmur. “She needs you here.” I closed my eyes, glad I had both of them.

Chapter 12

“Isaw it coming a mile away. I didn’t want to, but there it was. It was like being stopped in traffic and watching a semi without brakes flying up behind me.”

“That’s a very scary comparison,” I told him.

“That’s how this feels,” Marc answered. “It’s like I got flattened by a truck.”

Of course, I had gone through break-ups, too. I figured that I’d been dumped at least fifteen to twenty times, and that was probably a severe undercount. But I’d never felt like my cousin did right now, because I’d never loved any of those guys like he used to love Taygen. No, he still felt that way—he continued to love her, which made this so much worse. They weren’t splitting because someone cheated, or because someone had left the other person in a gas station bathroom and then driven away. There hadn’t been any one, single incident, but he was telling me now that it just wasn’t going to work.

“What if you went to couples’ counseling?” I suggested.

“Yeah, we were going to do the premarital stuff, but we couldn’t agree on when and where.” He took off his hat and rubbed his head. “We don’t agree on anything. I had a thought that kept running through my mind, like the headlines at the bottom of the screen on the news channel that Grandma McCourt used to watch. I was always asking myself, ‘If we’re starting like this, how are we going to finish?’”

“What was the answer?”

“You already know, Kayleigh,” he said. “Taygen and I would have ended up divorced, and why would I go into a marriage if I expected that outcome?” Now he bent and touched the soil at the base of one of the fruit trees that Lara-Lee Woodson had planted around her farmhouse. “We always fought so hard about the little stuff, like the color of my tie for the wedding.”

“And the shutters,” I recalled, and he nodded.

“What was going to happen when we had to deal with something big? How would we have kids? Or if one of us got really sick?” He shook his head. “I was like a bulldog, and I don’t mean that in the cute way.”

I nodded. “Not cute, but stubborn. Pigheaded. Obdurate.”

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