Come Together Read online

  “Please calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down, young lady. I just spoke to Bill, and I just, I just don’t believe it. Tell me he’s mistaken.”

  “Mom, please, it’s very complicated – ”

  She gasped. “So it is true? You cheated on him?”

  David crouched at my feet, and my eyes slid to his. He held my knees, and I put my free hand over one of his.

  “Yes,” I said, holding David’s gaze. “It’s true.”

  “How could you?” she screeched, and I snapped the phone away from my cheek. “I raised you to be a lady, not a slut!”

  David’s hand squeezed around my leg.

  “It’s not like that,” I said, clenching and unclenching my jaw. “Things with David are serious.”

  “That’s outrageous. How can you be with another man when you love Bill?”

  David wiped away my tear before I realized it was there.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I know this is hard for you to hear.”

  “It’s just nonsense. You stop this immediately, and go take care of your poor husband. That poor, poor man.”

  “Mom, I want to be with him.”

  “With who?”

  “With David!” I exclaimed.

  “How could you cheat after you saw what I went through?”

  “Dad didn’t even cheat on you!” I cried. “It’s in your head!”

  “This is all his fault. Your father did this, always pampering you. He spoiled you, and now you only know how to be selfish.”

  “There’s another side you haven’t heard,” I said as more tears escaped.

  “You’re selfish,” she slurred as if she hadn’t heard me, “and you’re going to ruin the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Running off with some letch who can’t keep his hands off a married woman.”

  “He’s not like that.”

  “Oh, Bill told me everything. Bill deserves better than this. He deserves better than you.”

  I choked back a sob. “How can you say that? You’re my mother!”

  “Because I know what it feels like to be betrayed. I’m horrified that after everything I went through, you could turn around and do that to a husband who’s always been there for you. You’ve not only hurt Bill, but you’ve hurt me too. Just like your father, never cared about anyone else. I don’t want to speak to you again until you’ve worked things out with your husband.”

  “But, Mom, I’m not – ” I pulled the phone away and stared down at it. “She hung up on me.” I didn’t cry over my mother; it was just something I didn’t do anymore. So I was confused when I set the phone down, put my face in my hands and burst into tears. The bed dipped with David’s weight and he lifted me onto his lap, where he rocked me back and forth, whispering comforting words in my hair.

  “My mom . . . doesn’t . . . love . . . me,” I sobbed.

  “Oh, baby,” he said, clutching me to him.

  I looked up at him suddenly and searched his eyes. “This will get better, won’t it?” I asked. “Easier?”

  “Yes.” He paused, stroking my hair. “But until it does, you have me. Let me have some of the hurt.”

  I nodded and nuzzled into his chest again, taking a deep whiff through a runny nose. When I imagined Bill calling and telling her everything, explaining my selfishness, I cried harder.

  “Hey,” David said softly, separating us by my shoulders to look at me. “We’ll not only make it through this, but we’ll come out better for it. We have something strong, baby. Stronger than all the bullshit.”

  Do we? I wondered. Can love alone overcome everyone and everything – even ourselves? “I hope so,” I murmured, wiping the wetness of my tears from his bare chest. The words ‘slut’ and ‘letch’ rang through my ears, a perfect pair. But the blows were softened by the man who held me. Though I wanted nothing more than to stay there, he picked me up off his lap and disappeared into the bathroom.

  Oh, what a mess I’ve made. Bill is heartbroken and blindsided. I’ve lost friends, and now maybe even family. And what will my dad say when I see him next weekend? Why have I done this? What have I done? Is it worth it?

  I looked up at a noise. David was leaning in the doorway looking concerned as he watched me in only his underwear. He’s worth it. For him, I would give up everything. My body tensed at the unbidden thought. I had this strange feeling that he meant more to me than anything ever had, even though we’d known each other for such a short time. If I hadn’t known before, I knew now: I was desperately in love. It was a kind of love I didn’t recognize, a kind of love I’d fended off my whole life. As I stared at him, this man who filled the doorway, I felt . . . cold, stark fear in my gut.

  He walked over and pulled me off the bed. He kneeled in front of me, and I gripped his shoulders as, one at a time, he lifted my feet to remove my tennis shoes and socks. Next, he pulled down my pants, taking my underwear with them. He rose, and I lifted my arms so he could pull my t-shirt over my head and unfasten my bra.

  “Step,” he said, and I did, leaving the pile behind. He guided me into the bathroom by a hand on my back.

  The bath was luminous, with overflowing bubbles and soft candlelight. The thought of David owning, dusting off and lighting candles for me made me smile.

  “I’ll be back, but you get in,” he instructed.

  I did as he said, easing in one limb at a time. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a bath, and I’d forgotten how healing it could be. I sank down slowly and let the bubbles swallow me. I heard, rather than saw, David return.

  “Last thing,” he said, waving a bottle of red wine. I sat up and watched as he poured it into a glass, handed it to me and walked away.

  “You’re not getting in?” I asked, sniffling back a rogue tear.

  He turned. “I haven’t kept my hands off you since the moment you got here. You need some time alone.”

  “I need you.”

  “I want you to feel comfortable here.”

  “Please?” I asked.

  He shifted on his feet. I was beginning to notice that he was prone to do so when he was fighting himself.

  I gave him my best, most exaggerated pout, preying on the indecision in his eyes. “Please,” I whispered.

  He nodded and pulled down his underwear. My pout vanished instantly and was replaced with a smile.

  “Like what you see?” he teased.

  I splashed him, laughing as he, in one quick movement, submerged himself in the water across from me. His long legs hit the back of the tub behind me, and he broke down the bubbles between us. His hands found my ankles, and he circled them in his fists before running his palms along my calves.

  “I don’t even know your mom’s name,” he said.

  “Leanore.”

  “She still drinks, I gather.”

  “I don’t know how often. We don’t talk much. Last time I brought it up, she got angry and said she wasn’t an alcoholic because she only drinks when she’s stressed.”

  David sat forward and placed his hands on the outsides of my thighs. His gaze narrowed, and I knew what was coming. I’d heard it before, mostly from Bill. Lectures on how I needed to be there for my mom, to help her through the hard times. How she deserved more from me because she was my mother, and family was always first.

  “Olivia,” he started sternly. “I’m sorry that she called you a slut.”

  I nodded. “Heard that, did you?”

  “It’s not true.”

  I shifted against the back of the tub and looked down into the bubbles. “I know.”

  “Look at me.”

  I met his gaze, and his grip tightened on my legs. “What you did – what we did – does not make you a slut.” He took a tentative breath. “Does she call you names often?”

  I shook my head. “She’s more of the passive aggressive, cold-shoulder type when she’s sober.”

  “I see,” he said. “That’s not necessarily better.”

  I shrugged. “I’m tou
gher for it.”

  “You keep people out. Because of her.”

  I looked away, my mind blanking. I keep people out? “You think I’m cold.”

  “Cold? Baby, no. Why would you say that?” He flattened his hand on my chest and said, “You’re warm. So warm that you make me warm. I can see you’re hurting from all the things you carry inside.”

  I put my hand over his and squeezed. “Bill thinks I’m cold.”

  “He doesn’t know shit. But it doesn’t matter anymore what he thinks. What I think is that you take it all in, and you keep it there. You have to let it out at some point. You can’t shut down with me like you did with him.”

  “I won’t hide,” I whispered.

  “Don’t tell me what I want to hear. You will hide, and I will continue to find you. But you have to promise to try. You trust what we’re doing here, don’t you?”

  I bit my lip. “It won’t happen overnight, but I’m taking small steps every day. And yes, I’m terrified of this, but there’s no one else I would take those steps for. No one at all.”

  His answering smile was goofy but proud, for which one of us I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care, because he looked happy in that moment. All because I said I would try to open up – and when a smile like that was my reward, it made me want to.

  I inhaled a steady breath and closed my eyes. “I didn’t really understand how bad things were between my parents until the last year that we all lived together. Dad told me later that I usually slept through their big, blowout fights.”

  I leaned my head back against the tub and kept my eyes closed as David massaged my ankles. “She didn’t drink often, but it became more frequent that year. One particular night, Dad was really late and he hadn’t called. He’d stopped allowing alcohol in the house, but I guess she had some secret stash because before long, she was drunk.

  “Before I went to bed, she told me that my dad wasn’t home because he was ‘fucking another woman’ and that she was going to leave him in the morning and take me with her.”

  I lifted my head and looked at him. “I loved my mom, David, but she was cold. To me and to my dad. I never felt like she really wanted me around. I heard her say once that he loved me too much and that I was a spoiled brat because of it. He accused her of being jealous, which she was.

  “My dad was never that way. He constantly reminded me that I was his little girl, and he would take care of me no matter what. That I was safe with him.” At this, I searched David’s eyes and sighed.

  He sat up and inched toward me. “Keep going,” he said and stretched forward for a kiss.

  I shifted, that familiar feeling blooming between my legs. When he pulled back, I grasped his arm. “Don’t leave,” I whispered.

  He straightened up and held his arms open, so I turned and settled my weight against his chest. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and kissed me on the temple before sifting my hair through his fingers.

  “I was terrified by what my mom had told me and couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to leave my dad. It was the alcohol talking; she never would’ve gone through with it, but I didn’t know that at the time.

  “When he eventually came home, they had a huge fight in the middle of the night. I came out of my room, scared to death. My mom was yelling about perfume and sex and lying, and things got very surreal. I can’t remember much more than that. She pulled the knife. My instincts kicked in, and I ran in the middle. She lunged. She stabbed me by accident. There was screaming, the sound of the knife hitting the floor . . . I had this long hair, down to my waist; it was tangled and almost black with blood. That’s the last thing I remember thinking before I passed out, that I needed to get that blood out of my hair. I woke up in the hospital. My dad cried and apologized – that was the most painful part of it – and told me that I’d never see the inside of that house again. Because he was divorcing her.”

  His fingers paused in my hair, but then continued threading after a moment.

  “I couldn’t understand it really,” I said wistfully. “I had just started middle school. Before that, divorce was just a word I’d heard because of Gretchen’s parents. Still, I didn’t really grasp the concept. I asked the nurse for a dictionary, and when I was alone, I looked it up to make sure I understood it correctly. In the definition, the word I could never get out of my head was ‘dissolve.’ Nothing had dissolved; it had broken in half, suddenly and without warning.

  “Everything changed. I didn’t want to be with my mom, but she was still my mom. I didn’t want to be away from her either. I begged my dad to let me stay in Dallas, so he and I moved into a new house. I got to stay close to Gretchen and her brother, John, my best friends. There were stories at school about why I went to the hospital, and it sucked, but John threatened to beat up anyone who came too close. Gretchen told me that I needed to cry and that she knew how I felt, she’d been through it . . . but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I knew I was supposed to cry, but nothing came. So it built inside of me. And built and built and built. The tears, the shame, the pain.”

  David’s hands were still playing in my hair, soothing and comforting me as he listened. “When did you finally talk about it?”

  I twisted off his chest to look at him and steadied myself with a hand against his pec. “I didn’t.”

  His jaw hardened. “How is that possible?”

  “Gretchen’s caught me in a vulnerable moment once or twice over the years. My dad took me to a therapist, but she had no patience for me. After our third session she gave up, and I told my dad I never wanted to go to another one. It’s difficult for me to talk about, because I don’t think I ever really got over how suddenly things changed. This is the most I’ve ever said about it.”

  His eyes were darker it seemed, not their normal, beautiful chestnut brown. “Bill?” he asked gruffly. “Surely you talked about it with him.”

  “He knew the divorce was hard and that I hated talking about it. I gave him the bones of the story, but I drilled into him that I never wanted it brought up. He respected that.”

  “Unlike some people,” David said.

  “Going through everything that Bill and I have has taught me some things about our relationship. I think I didn’t want Bill to know because it would mean showing him my pain and letting him in. And on some level, he didn’t want to know. It was easier for him to ignore.”

  He leaned his forehead in and cupped my jaw. “That will never be me,” he said close to my face. “I want you to give me everything, because I can take it. Because I want to take it.” He looked at me earnestly, truth in his eyes. He was strong enough to take it all, to shoulder what I couldn’t.

  “I lied to you,” I whispered. “I lied when I said Bill and I had talked about my scar. He never asked, and I never brought it up.”

  “Never?” he asked.

  “A few weeks ago, after he found out about you, I finally told him. I wanted him to know he’d fucked up by never asking.”

  “He didn’t deserve you,” David said. “He was lucky as fuck that he ever got you, but he didn’t know what to do with you.”

  “It was my fault too,” I said. “I kept him at a distance.”

  “It’s not your fault, Olivia. He wasn’t worthy and somewhere inside, you knew that.”

  I twisted back and rested against him again.

  “Things are starting to make more sense,” he said, as he returned his arms around my shoulders.

  “What things?” I asked.

  “When you told me you had never experienced an orgasm with anyone – I almost didn’t believe you. But I get it now. Somewhere inside you knew it wasn’t right. You need to feel safe and loved in order to open up, even physically.”

  “Bill loved me, though,” I said.

  “But you didn’t trust him enough to let him have all of you. And you were right not to. You were holding back for a reason. In the end, no, you didn’t feel safe with him, couldn’t trust him, and your body knew.”

  I took a
deep breath and let his words sink in. Bill loved me, but he didn’t know me. Not like David knew me. And David had had to wait for me to figure that out. “That would mean . . .” I let the sentence trail.

  “That would mean that you feel it with me. You know you’re safe with me, you can open underneath me, and you do. You open for me like a fucking flower, baby, and it’s beautiful.”

  “It’s nice to talk to you about this,” I confessed. “It’s the first time I’ve ever wanted to.”

  “You asked me once why it’s so nice walking together. This is why. It’s supposed to be.”

  “Do you really feel that way?” I asked, tilting my head to look up at him. “After everything I just told you, and after last night with Bill and Maria, and then my parents, and your family, and we might lose Andrew and Lucy? Do you still think this is supposed to be?”

  “No question,” he said, smiling.

  “Okay.” I rubbed his forearm and eased deeper into his body, letting my head fall back on his chest. The bath was warm, and I was never safer than when David was wrapped around me. I relaxed.

  “So sweet to have you fall asleep in my arms,” he whispered in my ear.

  I blinked my eyes open to a hazy bathroom. “Did I fall asleep?” I asked softly.

  “Just for a couple minutes,” he replied.

  I smiled and sat forward so he could climb out. He stepped over the side while I watched, holding my knees to my breasts as the water drained around me. He dried himself off and wrapped a towel around his waist.

  I followed and let him wrap me in another towel. He disappeared for a moment and returned with a simple white satin nightie, the partner to his favorite robe. He slipped it over my head when I raised my hands. My skin was sensitive from the hot bath, and the fabric was cool and soothing.

  We didn’t bother with anything else. The night was chilly, so we wound ourselves around each other and buried our bodies under the heavy comforter. I was certain I’d never been so happy.

  CHAPTER 11

  A WEEKEND OF FEVERISH, FRANTIC SEX turned out to be the best sleep aide. I woke up to an empty bed and gave my body a hard stretch. I couldn’t remember sleeping so well two nights in a row, and I knew it was because David had worn me out. At this, I smiled to myself.