Page 79 of In You
I grind my foot into the floor, glancing away from him as my chest gets tight. I knew he was going to see through the facade. "Well, to be fair, the night I called you was incredibly fucked up and I didn't exactly know how to articulate what was going on with me at the time other than the basics..."
He snorts. "To say the fucking least."
I heave a deep sigh, putting my fingers to the bridge of my nose and squeezing, fighting the urge to pace. "She's fucking with my demons, Frank."
“What good woman doesn’t?” He grunts a soft, scoffing sound and then shakes his head once, keeping his eyes on mine. "What did I tell you all those years ago when I told you to get help, and then you ignored me?" Though he cocks his head and a sad expression graces his face, I don't balk at it. No. I try everything in me to meet it head on, like he told me to years ago. The same advice I'd ironically given Tamryn the first night she was in my house, yet the very advice I myself was unwilling to put into practice. He drives it home with his next words. "Now look at you,notprepared because you were unwilling to do the work."
I lower my head in shame. Frank never was one to sugarcoat shit.
He crosses the few feet of distance in between us, but I'm unable to pull my eyes from where they're nailed to his boots.
"Look at me, son." I look up, watching as he places a finger to his ear and holds my gaze. "Who can't hear, must feel," he says,his eerily silver eyes hard on mine as he brings that finger to the center of my chest. I tense, but don't pull away like I do with Tamryn. "And right now, you're feeling."
I shake my head. "I can't afford to feel, Frank."
"You mean you don't want to be hurt again."
I nod, my throat stuck shut.
Precisely.
His eyes turn warm, "Just say what you mean, Caleb. There's no harm in it."
Snow begins to drift down softly through the trees beyond the opened doors of the shed, and it looks like it might stick this time. Though the stove doesn't need it, I bend and toss another log of wood into the furnace, watching as it spits and crackles. I stay silent, mesmerized by the flames, wondering if my mom's burning in hell right now, or if we're going to be forced to meet up after I die so she can give an accounting for what she did to me before she gets thrown into hell.
And what about me? Am I going to be burning up right alongside her for all the men I've killed in my life?
Probably.
Fuck.Aw, fuck, man.
I feel sick. I don't even think I'll be free of the bitch even when I'm in hell.
"Son, a man who hates himself will punish a woman for loving him," he narrows his eyes at me, tilting his head in that way of his that lets me know heseesme. "If this is something you really want to work out, then you need to reach down deep inside and start healing that broken part of you. It's okay to be shattered, but it's not okay to let yourself cut everyone else up because you don't want to do the work to pick up the pieces."
I stare off to the side, biting the inside of my cheek, knowing Frank is right.
"Do you love her?" he asks me softly.
The question brings my eyes back to his. That lump that wont seem to leave my fucking throat gives me trouble as I swallow thickly, not able to look away from this man's hypnotic gaze.
"If you love her, then tell me about her," he says, reaching over to grab a sandwich out of his cooler.
When he offers me one I hold up a palm and shake my head silently, almost grinning at the stunned look on his face.
"What's the matter? You never turned down a hog cheese sandwich before," Frank says, his eyes narrowing as they scrape down my body in judgement.
I scoff, putting a hand to the back of my neck and squeezing. "Yeah," I huff. "I’ve pulled back a lot on eating pork.”
He scrunches his nose judgementally. “Why?”
“The thing is one of her personalities-” I shake my head, heaving a sigh. "Look I'm no clinician, but it's the best way I know how to explain it. One of the identities, Camilla, doesn't eat pork. Tamryn, her main identity, does…Looke, there’s so much here, Frank, that’s been bewildering, other than the diet changes when she switches. The back and forth constant switching is enough to drive anyone crazy. But that's not the difficult part for me. The hard part is I love her, but only Camilla knows that. What if we're dealing with this for the rest of forever, and only one of her personalities loves me, one barely tolerates me, and one of them wants me to be herdad."
He whistles. "Not going to lie, son," he says, biting into his sandwich. "That's real fucked up." He chews for a second, contemplating. "What if she switches to the child alter while you're fucking her-"
"Cunty?"I say roughly. In my horror I accidentally let slip the real name of her alter.
Frank's brows about fly off his face. He even stops chewing, his lips curling.
