Page 34 of In The Darkness

But he just shook his head. She needed to say something more to get through to him or he’d never forgive himself. She couldn’t live with that.

Touching his back, she felt him exhale and watched his shoulders drop.

“Please listen to me. You shouldn’t feel guilty about anything you did. Without you, I’d still be at that house, tied up to that kitchen chair with a gag in my mouth. Because of you, Nick, I’m free from that. I know what you can’t forgive yourself for doing, but I already forgave you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” he said in a low voice laced with anger.

She walked around to stand in front of him, but still he wouldn’t look at her. “Please, Nick. You’re the only person on earth who knows what I went through. I have no one else who shares that with me.”

Nothing she said worked. He simply winced like her words caused him pain. She needed to get through to him, so she swallowed hard and bared her soul to the only person who might understand.

“I go to this therapist nearly every day since I got back. It’s the only time I get away from everyone’s eyes on me, so it’s sort of a break. Is that messed up or what? The people who love me watch me like a hawk, and that bothers me. I know why they do, but I’m not going to just disappear one day, you know?”

She watched for any response from him, but still he just avoided meeting her gaze. So she continued her confession.

“So I go to the therapist and she listens to me talk about what I went through. She’s helpful because I need to talk about it but there’s no one around who truly knows what happened, so I tell her. She doesn’t say much, Dr. Wilson. Sometimes she tries to explain why I feel the way I do, but mostly she just sits and listens. I tell her about how at the age of twenty-eight I’m suddenly afraid of the dark. How terrified I get in the darkness now. Things like that. She says that will go away. I don’t know, though.”

Nick pressed his lips together, as if he needed to stop some words from falling out of his mouth. Persephone desperately wanted to hear those words, but still he remained silent.

Turning away, she told him what she said to the doctor about the man who saved her. “I talk to Dr. Wilson about you. My father told me I couldn’t tell anyone your name, so I call you my guardian angel. I told her how you made me hope when I didn’t have any reason to hope I’d ever get away from those men. I told her how it got to the point that the only happiness I could find in my day was when you came to see me.”

Behind her, Nick exhaled a loud sigh. She couldn’t bear to see his face as she continued because she couldn’t handle his rejection again. For a moment, she hesitated telling him what else she told her therapist, but something inside her spurred her on, so she continued, her voice shaky from fear.

“I told her what we did and why it happened. I told her that I hated you when it was happening, but now I see that it was you trying to protect me from those monsters. She claims I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome or something like it because I care about you, but I think she’s wrong. It’s not that simple, even though she makes it seem like it is.”

She stopped talking for a moment before she admitted the raw truth she couldn’t escape. “I’ve stopped telling her how I feel when it comes to you because I don’t want to hear her say what I feel for you isn’t real or good. It just hurts too much to think that you and she think the same thing.”

The room around her fell completely silent, except for the sound of her heartbeat slamming in her ears. Never before in her life had she been so terrified of saying anything, and now that Nick seemed to have no response to her confession, every fear she’d had that the therapist was right threatened to overwhelm her.

“Persephone…”

Oh, God! She knew the sound of pity when she heard it. She’d had a lifetime’s worth of it since she returned home, and she hated it.

Spinning around, she saw Nick staring down at her. She looked into his eyes and there it was. Pity. He didn’t care about her.

“Don’t look at me like that! I’m not some pathetic thing who deserves pity! I know what I feel, so don’t try to tell me I don’t feel that way about you. I don’t need your permission or anyone’s permission to care about you, although at this moment, I think I must be as crazy as that therapist of mine thinks I am to feel anything for you.”

He said nothing, and as she waited in vain for even a single word, all the humiliation she’d dreaded washed over her. The therapist had been right. He didn’t care for her like she cared for him.

Pushing past him, she hurried toward the door as the room began to close in around her. As she reached for the doorknob, Nick touched her softly on the shoulder, making all the need for him come rushing back.

“Persephone…”

“Please stop saying my name if you have nothing else to say.”

She stared at the grey front door in front of her waiting for him to continue, to put her out of her misery or to let her go. Either one would be better than being stuck in this emotional limbo he held her in.

“Don’t go.”

Had he asked her not to leave? She questioned the ability of her ears to hear two simple words, sure they’d been mistaken.

Slowly, she turned around to see him looking down at her with anticipation in his eyes. Unsure of everything but how much she missed seeing kindness from him, she swallowed hard and repeated what he’d said to her.

“Don’t go?”

He shook his head and smiled. “No. Don’t.”

She waited for him to say something else, but he fell silent. Unlike that night at the gazebo, though, he didn’t push her away with his silence. She saw the man who had protected her all those times in that room at that horrible place once again standing in front of her.

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