Page 63 of Savage Ruin
Her pink hair is whipping across her determined face, and she’s staring at me, not the ocean. “Feeling better?”
“Yes,” I state firmly. “The ocean is in my blood. It was the same for Marcos. Anytime either of us needed to escape life or the family, you would find us here or on one of my boats. When I was a kid, he’d jokingly search for gills and pretend he found them.” I chuckle at the memory.
She laughs. “I can see it on your face. What the water does to you. It’s like the cares of the world fall and the lines on your face smooth out. Want to sit or walk?”
I contemplate the question and decide to sit. “Let’s move back from the water and sit here.” About ten feet back from the waves, I plop down in the sand and bring her down beside me. “Are you comfortable?”
What if she hates me after she hears the story? Or worse, blames me? I clear my throat a couple of times. “I went away to a university in Texas. Kira and I met at a fraternity-sorority mixer, and it was pretty much love at first sight. For both of us. One date and we were joined at the hip from that moment. The whole first year of college was amazing.”
I pause, thinking back to my freshmen year. Every single aspect of my life was perfect. “All of these new experiences, along with an incredibly fun and gorgeous girlfriend? It was heaven. Until it slowly started to tarnish. Being in a fraternity meant I met a lot of people, including a lot of girls. When we’d walk across campus, both guys and girls would come up to say hi, but Kira only noticed the girls.”
I dig my fingers into the sand and scoop it up. “She started making snide comments about my behavior or the girls. If we were around my friends, she’d flirt with one of them to try and make me jealous. To be honest, I thought it was my fault. Maybe I was being too flirty. So, I went out of my way to compliment her, support her, and reassure her of my feelings. But no matter how many times I told her I wasn’t interested in other girls, she didn’t believe me.”
I open my fingers and let the sand fall through the cracks between them. “Fraternities hold a lot of parties. A girl I knew from high school came to one of our parties. She seemed lost. I took her around and introduced her to everyone to help her. We talked a lot about home and high school. The usual stuff. It was completely friendly and platonic. Kira heard about it and went ballistic. We had a huge fight. It was the end of our sophomore year and the whole year had been filled with these jealous scenes. I couldn’t take it anymore. For the first time, I refused to apologize for anything.”
The sun begins to set. It’s such a beautiful backdrop to this ugly story. “After the usual tears, silence, and threats didn’t work, we broke up. A few days later, her mom calls me from the hospital to tell me she had taken a bottle of pills, but she would be okay. She asked if I was coming to get her, and I immediately went to the hospital. When I got there, she insisted it was all a big mistake. That she’d accidentally swallowed too many while she was drinking. It shook me. We started talking again, and by the end of the summer break, we were back together.
“The first semester of our junior year went by, and things were great. I even brought her home to meet my family for the holidays. Relieved, I thought we were past it all, and I loved her so much. She would tell me I didn’t know how flirty I was being, and maybe she was right, and I was too flirty. She needed me to be better, so I started trying to do better. When we went back the next semester, we got an apartment. Most of the time, we stayed home together. I cut back on a lot of the fraternity stuff. There were a few incidences, but she made me feel they were my fault,” I admit hoarsely. Even thinking about everything I did to change myself to accommodate her jealous tendencies makes me cringe.
I sign. “I didn’t realize the overdose was the first in a vicious cycle of abuse and psychotic episodes. Even with the changes I’d made to my life, she couldn’t stand it when I spoke to another girl. My friends tried to tell me it wasn’t healthy, but I repeatedly brushed it off. She loved me and I loved her. I just needed to try harder.”
I lay my head on my arms and stare at Henley. “Things came to a head the following summer. We fought, broke up. I moved out. The usual. But this time, I could see how much I’d changed to accommodate her. I’d isolated myself for her. I refused to return and wouldn’t even speak to her. That’s when things really escalated. She had some guy beat her up, threatened to kill herself, threatened to kill me, she chased down girls I spoke to on campus, and a ton of other shit. My entire senior year was fucking crazy.”
Her knuckles are white where she’s clinging to her knees, so I lace my fingers with hers and pull her hand into my lap. “Without telling anyone, I applied to Wharton’s School of Business. Their master’s degree program was exceptional, and more importantly, it was far away from Texas and her. Eager to get on with my life, I completed the accelerated program in a year, then moved back to Miami and joined SEI. For the next two years, I was either working or hunting for the next extreme sport to try. It worried Marcos to death, but he knew sometimes you had to fight your demons yourself.
“It’s also when I started going on rescue missions with Zane. The first mission was bad. I was so green, I thought he would kill me himself,” I admit with a chuckle. “It helped, though. Gave me back my sense of truth. After years of swallowing her lies and believing her account of things, I’d struggled with telling the truth from the lies.”
She squeezes my hand. “You definitely got back all your super lie detector powers because you can always tell when I’m lying.”
I tap her on the nose. “That’s because you’re a really, really bad liar.”
She shrugs. I can tell she doesn’t really care, and it makes me very, very happy.
“I rejoined the dating world, but it didn’t go well. I found myself constantly scrutinizing my behavior to see if I was flirting too much, or worse, examining every word that came out of my date’s mouth to see if she was lying. It was horrible.”
My leg starts to cramp, and I stand to shake it off. “Want to walk?”
She eagerly nods and jumps up.
We head back to the water line to walk, splashing through the waves when they crest on the beach in front of us. “I ditched dating one on one and started going out in groups. Suddenly, all the pressure was off. It was fun. I was me again. My life felt like it was finally getting back on track. Then Kira showed up. Everywhere. No matter where I went, she found me.”
I stare out into the water, searching for the words to tell her the last part. “One night, I lost it. Told her she was crazy, and the world would end before I’d ever go back to her. The next day, I went to the police for a restraining order. Two days later, I came home to my condo and found her dead on the bedroom floor. Blood everywhere. She’d slit her wrists.” I don’t tell Henley about the vitriolic note Kira left me. Nobody will ever see the ugliness she spewed in her final moments because I’d burned it immediately after reading it.
Her hand covers her mouth. “Oh no. I’m so sorry, Grayson.”
She moves to hug me, and I stop her. “The worst part? I was relieved. Relieved,” I yell. “What kind of person does that make me? This person I’d once loved so much was dead, on the floor in a pool of blood, and yet, I wanted to get down on my knees. I was so thankful she was gone.”
She wraps her arms around me tightly. “Oh, Grayson. She abused you. Mentally and emotionally. Of course, you were relieved. When you’re constantly battered by the same person, escape is the only thing that matters. When we hear stories of abuse, we always think it’s the woman, but men are abused every day, too. She used your love to control and manipulate you. You didn’t deserve it. Do you hear me? There is never a time when abuse is okay. Did you think I’d blame you?”
I tighten my arms. “Maybe. I don’t know. As a man, it feels like I should have known better or been able to fight it, but I believed she was right, and I was wrong. At the end, it took everything in me to find myself again.” I lean back and look her straight in the eye. “When I met you, I was immediately attracted to you, but I pushed it aside. Slowly, I started admiring the sheer guts you displayed in coming to Miami to hunt for Marcos’ killer and the clever tactics you used to get the software.”
I slip the errant strand of hair blowing in the wind behind her ear. “But it also made me angry. I didn’t want to feel anything for anyone, and here you come along, and I’m intrigued, and I feel myself changing and wanting more. I tried to convince myself it was an infatuation. Until the night of the ball when you defended me. Me. I’d done nothing to deserve your defense, and yet you stood in front of everyone and passionately put that punk actor in his place.” My breath hitches. “Then, the kiss. It broke me.”
I lower my head until my lips are an inch above hers. “I’ve been fighting and fighting against us. Until yesterday. This entire time I’ve been worrying about the wrong thing—whether I could let another person in, give them—you—the power to hurt me, and trust it wouldn’t end the same way as Kira. But the question I should have been asking is whether I could live without you. Last night, when Thiago told us what happened, things became crystal clear for me. I want this chance with you. More than anything, including my fears.”
She moves her lips closer. “I know how hard it is to trust, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you never regret it. I want us. And when you need space to breathe, tell me, it’s yours,” she says breathlessly. “Kiss me, Grayson.”
With the sound of the ocean roaring in the background, I close the distance, unable to do anything else. Alive. In my life. It’s enough. The rest will come with time and trust.
