Page 49 of Wounded Dance
But then I realized I’d lost him. Denham. My love. My sweet, sweet love.
My emotions crashed against each other. Betrayal, anger, devastation, loss. I loved him. But we were related. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t go after him. He was gone. I sobbed and sobbed into my pillow, my body curled around it, my mom’s hands on my back.
Then I heard Andy crying, softly saying, “Livia, Livia, Livia,” over and over again.
This got to me and I shoved the blanket aside enough that he could crawl in with me. His little arms went around my neck and clutched me like he was drowning. I rocked with him, our mother wrapping herself around us, until he fell asleep.
Eventually Mom took him to his bed. The house was eerily quiet. My hair spun wild and snarled around my face. My skin was hot and damp from crying and sweating beneath the blankets. I slid to the floor, my back against the bed.
My body was still tender from the last time Denham and I were together. The last time. It was over. A cry bubbled up from my chest, but there weren’t any tears left. I was too dehydrated, too tired.
Mom came back into the room and sat on the floor next to me. She took my hand and we just existed for a while as she hummed softly.
Finally, she asked, “Did he force you?”
I shook my head no.
“Did he hurt you in any way?”
I shook my head again, although my heart was certainly in unimaginable pain.
She sighed. “Okay, so how far did it go?”
I didn’t want to answer that. That it went every way, every distance, over and over again, night after night, stolen moment after stolen moment. That I loved him completely, and had given myself over to him totally.
“I’m going to assume pretty far,” she said. “We’ll need to get you to a doctor. God, you’re so young. Did you even know what was happening?”
I let go of her and covered my eyes with my hand. I couldn’t handle those questions. It was too much for one night. Way too much.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s get you in bed. There will be time enough to face all this tomorrow.”
She stood up and took my arm to lift me up as well. I lay on the bed fully dressed, but she still covered me with the blanket.
Mom was at the doorway when I finally found the voice to ask, “What will happen to Denham?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Livia. But he won’t be coming back here.”
I buried my face in the pillow as she closed the door. I was wrong. There were more tears. So many more. A whole ocean of them, just out to tide, and now they spilled all over again.
~*´`*~
Blitz lazily strokes my hair as I finish this part of the story.
“I’m so sorry, Princess,” he says. “That is more than anyone could live through.”
I turn my face into his robe, letting the soft white cotton absorb any stray tears so that he won’t see them. I don’t want to cry about Denham in the presence of Blitz. My life is good now, perfect, full of love and dance and time with my daughter.
But the young version of me, the not-quite-fifteen-year-old with her first broken heart, traumatized and lied to, still hurts after all these years.
“Did your dad throw him out?” Blitz asks. “What happened?”
“Dad came back early in the morning,” I say. “He got Denham’s things together in garbage bags and shoved them in his car. He told us he took Denham back to his Aunt Didi. I’m guessing that he did, but his aunt must have called CPS because he ended up in foster care. At least that’s what he said.”
“I remember him saying that,” Blitz says. “That’s how he got the DNA test.” He exhales slowly. “Hell of a thing. And you had to live all those years thinking he was your brother.”
“None of us had any way to know otherwise. I guess Dad could have done the DNA test himself. I think it was available then.”
“Not easily,” Blitz says.
