Page 99 of The Worst Kind of Promise
It feels like there’s a battering ram of emotions beating on my chest, trying to break through the bone, trying to get to my slow-beating heart. Tears start to dollop my lower lids, and I fight the untamable quiver of my lip.
“I am so, so sorry. I have no excuse for the way I treated you. I should’ve never yelled. I should’ve listened. I was a fucking terrible brother. I was so upset that I overlooked what really mattered in the moment, and that was making sure that you were okay. I just…everything happened so quickly. I panicked, and I lashed out, and you didn’t deserve that at all.”
The genuineness in his voice, picked apart by restless nights of contrition, melts the wintry cold in my body, replacing it with a warmth I can feel all the way down to my toes. I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t expecting any of that to come out of my brother’s mouth.
Sensing that I’m not going to talk any time soon, he continues. “I couldn’t understand why you didn’t come to me. I was mad at myself for not realizing it soon enough, and that anger got redirected to you when it shouldn’t have been. I was so caught up in what I was feeling that I never took into consideration how you were feeling.”
Moisture teems over my rouged cheeks, a tattered cry stretching in my trachea. “Hayes…”
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness, Faye. I’m so ashamed of how I reacted. It’s no wonder you didn’t want to tell me. I’m a fucking mess. You needed me, and all I could focus on was my own pain. I never once thought to put myself in your shoes,” he blunders, zircon-blue piercing the fog in his eyes, looking like the brother I know again.
“It’s okay, Hayes,” I coo.
Wrinkles vandalize his skin, a frown sitting on bruised lips. “It’s not okay. I never created a space where you felt safe enough to come to me with this. You were carrying all this pain by yourself, all because you didn’t want to burden me. You could never burden me. Ever.”
Each of his words, trigger-sensitive, have my sobs and cries falling in a steady rhythm. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you so badly. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. It’s not that I was afraid of how you’d react—it’s that I was afraid of how you’d see me,” I reveal, feeling annihilated by the self-loathing, but at the same time, feeling freed from the prison cell I’d locked myself in.
Hayes grabs the hand that’s in my lap, staring into my tear-stained eyes with his, the softness of his touch juxtaposed with the urgency clinging to his face. “Faye, I wouldneversee you any differently. I know you think that you’re only a responsibility to me, but you’re not. You’re my sister. You’re the most important person in my life.”
In that moment, my emotions crash over me in a tidal wave. Emotions that I’ve kept bottled for years, emotions that have varied from disgust to hatred to pity. All that exists now, however, is relief. A red needle finally tipping to the zero of a dashboard gauge.
I can’t find any words to say, so I hug him. I hug my brother for the first time this entire summer, burying my face into his shoulder, gripping the back of his shirt as if it’ll steady the shuddering of my muscles.
He embraces me with equal ardor, holding my limp body up, providing me with the support he always has. I don’t know how long I spend in his arms; I lose count of the number of wails that leave my mouth. I feel like a little girl again, running to my big brother to protect me from the absence of our father, from the harrowing death of our mother.
“Shh, it’s okay. I’m here,” he murmurs into my hair, stroking my back.
“I’m so sorry”—hiccup—“that I kept it from you.”
“Faye—”
“I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you about me and Kit. He’s your friend. You had every right to know about us. I felt terrible keeping it from you. I never wanted to go behind your back. I didn’t think you’d approve of us, and I love him so much, Hayes. I wasn’t ready to let him go. If it came down to you and him, I wouldn’t be able to pick.” Regurgitation after regurgitation. Words all strung together that play at two times speed.
Hayes pulls away from me so he can wipe the water cruising down my face, gently brushing over the dark circles under my eyes. “I’d never ask you to pick between us. All I’ve ever wanted for you is to be happy. And Kit makes you happy. That’s the best gift you could’ve ever given me.”
My clamoring heart refuses to slow, fluxes of breath increasing as they escape my parted lips. “But your happiness matters to me too. I’d never want to do anything to disappoint you.”
“You could never disappoint me. I’m so fucking proud of you. Proud of what you’ve accomplished, proud of who you’ve become. And your happiness matters to me just as much. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to find your person.”
“Aeris is your person, isn’t she?”
“She is. She really is. The way I feel when I’m with her—I could only hope that you feel at least a quarter of that in your life.”
The thoughts in my head hit a curb. A Kit-sized curb. “I feeleverythingwhen I’m with Kit. I feel loved, appreciated, respected. I don’t feel shame or sadness or regret. There are times when I completely forget about the rape because he loves my body like it was never tainted in the first place.”
Hayes frowns. “There’s nothing tainted about you.”
“I know that now,” I reply, feeling the chronic pain begin to evanesce from my aching body. “Kit’s shown me how to love myself again.”
It’s true. I never thought I’d be lovable after what happened to me. If someone could ruin my body so easily, then I believed there had to have been something wrong with it in the first place. I convinced myself that I was easy, or that I gave him the wrong impression, putting the blame on myself rather than him. Nobody would ever love something that’s damaged, right?
Kit proved to me just how wrong I was. He doesn’t see me as a victim. He sees me as a survivor.
“I’m glad he could be there for you when I couldn’t,” my brother says, the beginning of a smile pushing back his cheeks.
“Does this mean he’s the first boyfriend of mine that you won’t beat up?”
Hayes nudges my shoulder. “I guess I can let it slide this time.”
