Page 20 of Not Another Yesterday
“Who were you talking to for the last half hour?” Steve asks in a hushed tone.
Ronan narrows his eyes at his brother. “My other girlfriend,” he says dryly.
“Oh, Kylie?” Steve asks, playing along.
“No, Violet,” Ronan whispers back without missing a beat.
“Oh, right, I forgot about her,” Steve chuckles.
I’ve never heard either name, so I assume this is random banter between the brothers and there neither is nor ever was a Kylie or a Violet. Still, I’m not amused. I put my fork and knife down. “Not funny,” I say, crossing my arms in front of my chest.
Ronan wraps his arm around me and pulls me against him. “You know I only want you, baby. Only ever you.”
We get swept up in conversation again when my grandparents ask about school and classes, inquiring not only as to my progress, butSteve’s and Ronan’s college experience as well. I don’t get the chance to talk privately with Ronan until later in the evening.
To my dad’s very obvious dismay, I inform my parents that I’ll be spending the night at Ronan’s place. I do offer to spend the night at home if my dad lets Ronan stay with me, but he predictably doesn’t agree. Not that I could have convinced Ronan to stay; I think the thought of spending the night with me at my parents’ house when my dad is home is as uncomfortable for Ronan as it is for my dad.
“So, how is the ‘processing’ going?” I cautiously ask when Ronan slides into the driver’s seat of his Mustang, ready to take us back to his apartment.
He glances at me only briefly, but it’s enough to let me know I hit a nerve. He doesn’t want to talk about his grandmother. Figures.
“It’s not,” he says, looking intently at the road ahead of him.
I keep my eyes locked on him. “Are you doing okay? I really w—”
His jaw flexes. “Baby, please. I don’t want to do this right now.”
“When then, Ran? You never want to talk to me. It… Why won’t you talk to me? Why don’t you trust me?”
“I do trust you.” He still doesn’t look at me, but I can clearly see his puckered brow and the tension in his jaw with the streetlights illuminating the car’s interior.
“Not with the thoughts in your head. God, Ran, I was there yesterday. I heard what your grandmother said. I felt how tense you were. I’m in this with you, don’t you understand that? Or am I just a pretty body to you?”
“Of course not,” he says, but an infuriating smile tugs at his lips. “I mean, itisa really nice body. One I plan on taking good care of in about half an hour.”
I groan loudly, throwing my hands in the air. “You’re always so god damn evasive.”
“What do you want me to say, Cat? Because I’m not going to have a fuckingtherapy session right now.”
His sharp words cut into me like razor blades. He never talks to me like this. It hurts. And not only that, it also bolsters my belief that his grandmother’s visit affected him deeply.
I ignore the piercing pain in my heart and take a shaky breath. “I don’t know, just anything. Anything other than just ‘fine.’ Tell me something that matters. Something that’s real.”
“I love you,” he says with an earnestness that causes my anger at him to teeter. But no, I won’t let him keep placating me.
“I know that,” I say quietly. The defeat, the frustration at his stubborn refusal to open up to me causes the back of my eyes to sting with tears like it has so many times these past few months.
I understand that the trauma Ronan endured requires time—lots and lots of time—to heal from. But his unwillingness to share that pain with me feels, to a very real extent, personal. Everyone I talk to about this tells me that trust isn’t the issue, but I can’t agree with that. Of course it’s trust. Trust that I’ll be there no matter what he divulges, trust that I won’t cut and run. It’s the foundation of any relationship—the ability to share the deep, the dark, the painful, the good, the bad, the unforgivable. And clearly he doesn’t trust me with that. There’s a huge, gaping ravine of things I don’t know about Ronan. And it’s been like that from the moment we met. At first he hid the abuse, then he hid the aftermath of his trauma until it was almost too late, until we almost lost him, and now he’s hiding… something.
“Tell me something Idon’tknow.Please.”
He looks over at me, holding my gaze for a beat longer than is probably safe while driving. He exhales deeply. “I was talking to Doctor Seivert. At dinner. That was Doctor Seivert on the phone.”
“Oh.” Relief surges through me. I may have gone the ninety, but he still came the ten. Something is better than nothing. For now. I study his gorgeous profile as he navigates the road. “About what your grandma said yesterday?”
“Yeah, that and…” His jaw ticks. “And the nightmare I had last night,” he says, avoiding eye contact.
I knit my eyebrows at his hesitation. I know about his nightmares; I’ve witnessed them a few times. He’ll toss and turn, talk in his sleep, then startle awake, his chest and forehead clammy, heart pounding until he’s able to focus on his surroundings and realize it was just a dream. I remember the first time I had to wake him from one and finally realized just how bad they were. It was disconcerting to see him in so much distress until he was able to come out of it. But he hasn’t had one in a few weeks.
