Page 55 of Where We Found Our Home
“Ask me. Whatever you want to ask me.”
He turns me so I’m looking him right in the eye. “Ciara, I don’t want to ask if you’re uncomfortable. I will never force you to tell me anything. But please don’t mistake my not asking for my not caring. I want to know everything about you, and I want to help you carry whatever burdens you have. I’m here. Whenever you’re really ready.”
And that right there is what changes this conversation from my telling him out of obligation for his well-being to my telling him because I trust him more than anyone else in this world and I know he’ll catch me when I fall.
“Two years ago, I was in a really bad car accident.” He winces, and I know part of his mind went to Erica, but he stays present with me and rubs my arm in support.
“A man driving an eighteen-wheeler crashed into me, and my car rolled four times before stopping. A few witnesses pulled me out before the car caught fire, but I still had a broken leg, a broken collar bone, a ruptured spleen, a collapsed lung, and I had to have surgery on my arm. It left extensive scarring. I hated the scars at first. It’s why I covered them up with these.” I gesture to the tattoos. He lays a kiss against my tattoo, and I already feel my composure falling, but I suck my tears back in. I need to get through this. “But now I see the scars and the tattoos as a reminder that I survived. The accident is what started the path my life took, and it was very traumatic, but it seems like nothing now in the grand scheme of things.” Lincoln still doesn’t say anything. He just continues to be a supporting presence. “The man who drove the truck is named Eddie Brighton. Apparently, he was drunk and high when he crashed into me. So naturally, he was fired. And he had his CDL revoked. He faced criminal charges, but he ended up just getting probation. He came to visit me in the hospital. I didn’t know who he was at the time. He was just some random white guy who stood over my bed, but the look in his eyes made me uncomfortable. He had these severely scarred hands, and he kept rubbing them together while looking at me. I remember looking at the call button on my bed, but it was actually a little out of my reach, closer to where he was standing, and he just looked me in my eyes like he dared me to try to reach for it. I asked him who he was, and he just said he worked in the hospital, but I knew that was a lie. I called out for a nurse and he left, but he said he’d see me soon. I found out it was Eddie later when a nurse said she saw him on TV regarding the accident.” I’ve researched Eddie, but I’ve never found anything besides the articles about my accident. I have no idea why he set his sights on me. It could be the influence of the drugs, but I doubt it. There’s more to it. There has to be. I take a minute to wipe the memory away before continuing. At least I try to. I start and stop my sentence three times before Lincoln steps in.
“We can stop if it’s too much,” he says.
I shake my head with so much force the tears fly off my face in all different directions. “No, I want to share this with you. Just…stay with me, okay?” He nods and squeezes my hand. I take a deep breath and continue. “I went through physical therapy after the accident, and the company Eddie worked for approached me and offered me a huge settlement so that I wouldn’t sue. I took it, of course, because I know better than to go up against a large corporation like that, and it was more money than I knew what to do with. I thought that was the end of it, but it was just the beginning.”
“What happened?” he asks. I chuckle because he knows me well enough to know I needed him to ask a question so I’d keep talking and not shut down.
“It started with phone calls from restricted numbers. The caller would breathe if I answered or on the voicemail if I didn’t but not actually say anything. Then I started getting deliveries to my house. Flowers, stuffed animals, chocolates. Then it escalated to dead flowers, stuffed animals with the heads cut off, rat poison covered in chocolate. The police told me that though it was weird Eddie visited me in the hospital, they couldn’t prove he was the one sending me the deliveries. The death threats started after I went to the police. He told me he’d kill me before he ever let the police catch him. I kept going to the police, and they kept doing nothing. It’s like they couldn’t be bothered. He would stalk me everywhere I went. He’d make himself seen only to me but would never put his name on any of the threats he sent me, so I had no proof it was him. Then he started sending me pictures of myself. Me walking into work, me out with my friends, me at the grocery store. I stopped going out. I basically became a recluse. Then he started sending me pictures of me in my house. In my bedroom and in my living room. I always kept the curtains closed so he couldn’t see inside, but the pictures looked like they were coming from inside my house. He had to have cameras set up inside my fucking house.” Lincoln clenches his fists, and he clenches his jaw so tight I think he may break it. I tap his hand and ask him with just a look if he’s still with me. I can’t handle him flying into a blind rage right now.
“I’m with you,” he says.
I smile and clear my throat. Thinking about the next part of the story makes me sick. I need to stand up. I jump up from the bed, and without a word, Lincoln follows me out to the kitchen and sits me down on a stool. He grabs me a glass of water, and I’m so grateful for this man.Deep breaths.Here we go. “I moved back in with my mom and called a company to come check for bugs in my house. They found five cameras and a wired bug. I had no idea when he had been in my house, but I felt so violated. I was losing my mind. One day, I was walking into work when he grabbed me and slapped his hand around my mouth so I couldn’t scream. I fought him with everything I had, but he hit me in the back of the head with something and everything went black. When I woke up, I knew I was in the trunk of a car. We weren’t moving. I looked around for a weapon or anything to cut myself loose and hit him with when he opened the trunk. But then, he didn’t open the trunk. Everything was just silent. I screamed and kicked the trunk as hard as I could. I knew I was running out of air. Up until then, drowning had always been my worst fear, but being trapped in a closed space and running out of oxygen blew that out of the park. I think that was the moment I accepted that I was going to die. I tried to scream again, but my throat was so dry I couldn’t. I kicked some more, but I was weak. Finally, someone noticed the car shaking and called the police. They got to me right as I passed out. Do you know where he left me?”
He lifts his brows in question.
“The fucking parking garage at my job. He never left the premises. He just left me there as some sort of sick fucking joke. The police found a note in the trunk with me that I didn’t see. It said ‘I can get to you anywhere.’ Still I couldn’t get a goddamn protection order against him because they still couldn’t prove he was the one doing it. The car he shoved me in? Stolen. From someone who worked in my building. I told them it was Eddie. That I saw his face when he grabbed me and that I had seen his face stalking me all over the city, but my word meant nothing.” I feel the anger from being so helpless rising, and I try to force it back down, but then I let it take over. I want to let the anger burn when I tell this story. I’m tired of wasting my tears on this monster of a man. “I pulled back from everyone. I stopped talking to people at work. I didn’t speak to strangers. Finally, my boss told me I could work from home for awhile because I was having panic attacks just walking to the building. Brittany, Simone, and Sarah wouldn’t let me get away with pulling away though. They were there at my mom’s house every day forcing me to let them in. Being my personal bodyguards. Not allowing me to drown myself in sorrow, but I think I had already lost myself by then. Fuck.” I stop when the tears come back, and I’m so mad at myself for letting them fall. Lincoln tugs my hand.
“Angel, we can stop. You don’t have to keep going tonight if you don’t want to. We can take it in stages.”
“No, no. I need to finish.” He nods and gives me a moment to collect myself. “My mom didn’t want me to be a recluse, but she understood, so she never tried to force me to go anywhere. But I wanted to be the woman she raised me to be, so I thought my big accomplishment would be stepping outside to get the mail. The fucking mail. I don’t know what I was thinking. I would always look outside before opening the door, but I didn’t that day. And when I opened the door, he was there. He stabbed me in my stomach and gave me this cruel grin as he twisted the knife. He left me there, bleeding out in front of my mom’s house.” Lincoln lays a gentle caress on the raised scar on my stomach, and it warms me. “Here’s the part no one knows. I never told my mom or the girls. He came to visit me in the hospital again. It was after hours. I have no idea how he got in there without anyone seeing him, but how was he doing any of this shit without anyone seeing him, right? I went to scream, but he pulled out a knife again. Honestly, at that point I was hoping he’d just kill me and put me out of my misery. But then he told me that he would never be done with me. And that if my friends and my mom tried to get in his way, he would tear them limb from limb just to get to me. He told me if I didn’t tell them to stand down from guarding me, he’d kill them all and make me watch. I knew they’d never stop. They would never stand down. If it were any of them in my situation, I wouldn’t stand down either. I’d sacrifice myself for them in a heartbeat, but I couldn’t let them do that for me. So I decided to leave. I told them I needed to get out, and I left. And now here I am. I wanted to self-isolate here so that if he ever did find me again I’d be alone and he couldn’t threaten anyone else on my behalf. But then Sasha and Nevaeh happened. And you happened. And Nina happened. And I’m so sorry, Lincoln. I’m so sorry. I’ve put you and your family in so much danger. I’m so sorry.” He hauls me into his lap and kisses my head repeatedly.
“Ciara, stop. You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing.”
“No, Linc. I do. I think I saw him today. That’s why I freaked out. I swear I saw him watching me across the street. I think he found me. I have to leave.”
“No, you don’t.” That’s it. That’s all he says. Did he not hear what I said? The source of my terror is probably here, in our city. And he doesn’t think I have to leave? Is he just as nuts as I am?
“Yes, I do. I have to move again and become a true recluse. I can’t risk you or your family. I can’t…I am not strong enough to handle this.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You are the strongest woman I know.” I roll my eyes, but he kisses me again before continuing. “You are. For the past two years you’ve been through hell. There are so many people who would’ve given up a long time ago. But you have stayed strong. You say you’ve become a shell of yourself, but the real you continues to shine. It’s what drew my sister and niece in. It’s what drew me in. Your beauty, your confidence, your strength—they can’t be contained. You moved to a new city where you knew absolutely no one just to attempt to keep your family safe. That’s brave. You are so strong for everyone else. Let me be strong for you. Please don’t run. Please let me be here for you.”
How the hell is this man real? I shake my head in disbelief. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“You’re not. I’m asking you. I am honored you’ve shared this with me, Ciara. I’m honored you trusted me with this. So now I’m asking you to trust me to make my own choice with the information you’ve given me. I choose you. I choose to be the person you lean on, the person to keep you safe, the person to be your strength when you feel like you don’t have any.”
Fuck.
Deep down, I knew this is what he’d say. But actually hearing it, I have no words.
“Please,” he begs again.
I look in his eyes, and I see a chance at a future. For so long, I’ve felt like I was on borrowed time. That I was just existing until Eddie got tired of toying with me and finally decided to kill me. But with Lincoln, I see a real future, and fuck, do I want it. Dr. Goodwin’s words play in my mind again, and for the first time I feel my head and heart align.
“Okay. I’ll stay.”
Ciara
Lincoln and I spent the rest of the night talking in more detail about everything. It feels so good to have someone know the entire story. Not even my mom or the girls know the full reason I left home, and that’s been tearing me apart.
I still have no idea why I became the target of Eddie’s obsession, but I find myself not caring. I know Dr. Goodwin said that I can’t dive into the psyche of someone else, I can only focus on myself, but I’ve been racking my brain looking for a reason this all started. But with Lincoln, I find myself letting go of the things I can’t control. I can only control my reactions, and I will not let Eddie win by not living. If he wants me to not live my life, then he’ll have to put his money where his mouth is and actually fucking kill me.
