Page 2 of All I Have Left

I never saw it coming. Never thought he’d react that way. I left his house that night, wore a hat and cheered on my brother without Shane. The next day, he showed up at my house, crying, begging me to see that it was a one-time thing. He’d overreacted.

I wanted to believe him. I did. I was in love with the idea of him, but something told me I shouldn’t.

I should have listened to my gut.

Ethan, my brother, doesn’t know about the times he’s hit me, but he can’t even be in the same room with him and refuses tocome home when he’s over. And my mom, she hasn’t said anything, but I know she doesn’t trust him. I haven’t let on there’s any problems, and I fear if I do, she’ll hold herself responsible.

Probably because she’s been in my place before. Shane is exactly the way my father was to her. I remember his name. Crawford Brooks. Extremely charming when he wanted to be, the kind of guy who was always riding the edge of what he could and couldn’t get away with. And unfortunately extraordinarily… toxic.

She’d just turned seventeen when she had us; he was eighteen. Raised in a house full of secrets, I don’t remember much about that man, but I do remember when Ethan and I were four, he showed up trying to take us away from her. She had to file a restraining order against him while Ethan and I stayed at our neighbor’s house for a week.

Two days later, my dad ignored the restraining order and put Mom in the hospital. Sixteen stitches in her neck where he tried to slit her throat and thankfully failed.

Needless to say, we haven’t seen or heard from him since. Mom says he’s dead, a motorcycle accident, but we don’t know and I don’t care.

So how’d I go from that, to dating someone who treated me the same way? You don’t go into anything thinking, damn, I want to be in a relationship with a man who hits me. It doesn’t work that way. It’s months, maybe even years of building a relationship with someone and trusting they’d never do anything to hurt you. Until they do. Until that trust is shattered. You want to go as far as to say, that will never happen again. That’s the one and only time they will ever hurt you.

I said that too. And then he cried and begged and promised it would never ever happen again. I believed him. I felt sorry for the broken man he portrayed and let him in.

I never wanted to be that girl who fell into the ways of their mother, mirroring my life with hers, but somehow I’d becomeeverything I promised myself I wouldn’t. I don’t want to hurt her in knowing I’m living a life I swore I wouldn’t. I promised her at five years old I’d never let a boy lay a hand on me. She made me swear “You owe no one your forgiveness.”

I thought I’d keep that promise. I wanted to.

When will I finally say, it ends now? Staring at myself in the mirror, I touch the tender spot on my stomach from the last time he promised.

I won’t do it. Not again.

I reach down and pick up the picture again. I try to remember what his face looks like. The curve of his sharp jaw, his eyes, his smile. If I saw him again, would I remember all the intimate details I loved so dearly about him? Would he remember me? What would he think of what I’ve become?

That boy, he’d be so disappointed to find me like this. I run my fingers over our faces and cry. No matter how many times you think your life is going to turn out one way, it never plays out the way you want.

2

GRAYSON

Something happens to your brain when you’ve been to another country and forced to fight for your life, and your freedom. You look at the world, and everyone in it, differently. There’s life before, and life after a deployment, and the in between you’d like to forget.

I’m not sure when, if ever, my mind will allow me to think about what happened over there, but I do know that I’m alive today because of two people. One died in my arms and the other I’m terrified of returning home to.

Her memory has been burning holes in my mind for so long it’s singed every other thought but those ones of her. And I have to tell you I’ve had enough of it.

I’ve existed without really living and that isn’t as easy as you would think.

And now I wonder if coming home is the answer.

Part of me doesn’t want to see Evie. Not after the way I left her. I don’t want to see those green eyes or those familiar blonde waves. I don’t want to say her name, feel her breath on my skin or hold her close. I don’t want to because I know once I do, I won’t be able to resist her. I know it’d be over for me. And that scares me. It fucking terrifies me.

I’m an hour outside Pinckard, Alabama, when I finally decide to tell my family I’m coming home. I wrote letters every once in a while, but for the last few months, I’ve had no contact with anyone. I can’t imagine my lack of communication is going to go over very well, but believe me when I say they didn’t want to hear from me with my state of mind.

I figure I should call Frankie first, and then possibly my mom.

“Hello?” Frankie’s voice is strained, and it’s been so long since I’ve heard it, it’s almost unfamiliar to me.

“Frankie?” I’m not entirely sure it’s her or not. I even check the phone to make sure it’s her I dialed. It couldn’t be Evie, could it? No, she sounds different. Older? A wind-blown rush crackles the line. She must have been driving with the windows down. “Is that you?”

She’s quiet for a moment, and then it hits her with a squeal. “Holy shit,” Frankie chokes. “Oh my God. Grayson?”

That’s relief in her voice, right? I knew she was worried that she hadn’t heard from me since I was deployed to Iraq back in January. My entire family had tried to contact my commanding officer only to be told I was missing. My dad knew I’d gone missing, but I doubt he told the women in our family I had been presumed dead. I imagine he hadn’t accepted it either.

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