All I Have Left (33 page)

That road is a scar for me.

I’m still mad at the world that I couldn’t see it coming.

I’m still mad at myself that I let it.

I’m still mad at Grayson for leaving, and coming back.

I’m still mad at my mom for letting me think that putting up with abuse was ever acceptable.

I’m still mad at my brother for not intervening when he knew what Shane was doing to me.

I’m still mad at my friends who suspected and did nothing.

I’m still just mad and I’m not sure when that feeling will subside, or if it ever will.

It has to or Shane wins.

September 2004

We all make stupid mistakes from time to time.

Most therapists will tell you that the power to change your situation is all on you.

But how do we forget?

It’s not easy.

For a while I thought it impossible. Hell, I believed it was impossible.

Though the events of that day with Evie are fuzzy, I remember bits and pieces and not the ones I wanted to remember.

I remember them raping her. It’s a vivid memory and far worse than I ever imagined it would be. It was so bad I couldn’t have sex with her because anytime we tried, I was reliving watching that event.

It took us ten months after that day to finally have sex and me not to have a panic attack. Liquor lit to control myself, we had some of the best sex we’ve ever had. Given it was only our third time, but still, it was fucking good.

Regardless, Evie and I had to base our relationship on something else besides physical contact. I couldn’t use it as a bandage to avoid my real problems, something I was doing whether I wanted to admit that or not.

I see a doctor once a week. He’s fucking crazy if you ask me but maybe it’s helping. Evie sees him too and once a week we see him together.

That helps. It has to. Anything is better than nothing.

When something like this happens to you, all of us seem to ask the same questions.

They start with, who am I? What’s the meaning of this? Why is there so much pain? Why am I afraid?

And then finally, how can I let go?

It’s almost like those stages of grief. Well, actually, it’s exactly like that.

We don’t want to feel, but then again, we want to feel. Just not what we’re feeling right then. When that happens, you turn to something. Liquor, drugs, sex, you name it. The problem is, it’s a distraction. A moment where you feel better and you could escape.

Those first few days when Evie and I got together, we had control over our situation because we were feeling something other than what we had been for so long, both for different reasons. The problem was we didn’t see that we had some real problems before it was too late.

I thought if I came back, she could fix me. The problem was no one can fix you but yourself.

I didn’t want this to be our life, my life. We moved on because we needed to, not because we wanted to. If you want to change, you have to do it for yourself and no one else.

I changed for me, but also Evie.

I felt guilty about what happened to Matt. I still do. But I no longer blame myself. I didn’t kill him. They did.

I felt for a while I needed to protect him. I was older, but I couldn’t. I had to accept that I couldn’t control that.

You’re probably thinking, who is this guy?

I asked myself that a lot too. It didn’t mean that I didn’t have problems. I still wanted revenge on Shane. I would willingly go to jail for the rest of my life if it meant he suffered and slow painful death.

I went a little crazy when I got out of the hospital. Destroyed my truck and burned it to the ground. Screamed, took my aggression out on a punching bag. Ran. Anything I could do to let off steam.

Evie and I talked but after a while, we had to stop. We couldn’t get past it if we kept bringing it up. We needed closure.

We also had something in common. We wanted the visions to go away. We wanted our memories of that horrific day gone.

The problem is, the mind is a funny thing and won’t let you. You can get counseling and what doctors call healing but it never fully goes away. No matter what you do the memories will stay with you forever. I knew exactly what she was feeling. For the longest time I’d been haunted with the vision of Matt lying beside me, motionless, caked in blood from his beating and I wanted the vision gone, erased.

Evie now had that very same memory of me.

We both finally accepted the fact that it wasn’t going to happen and we just needed to move on and find peace with it all but it’s still a constant battle with for the both of us not to let the memories consume us.

It made us stronger. I will say that. We went through hell and back again.

Shane and his friends were all charged with attempted murder, assault, and rape. Shane was sentenced to twenty years, his friends were sentenced to ten. It was nowhere near enough in my eyes but at least they were held accountable for their actions.

Twenty years was a fucking slap in the face for what they did to us.

If I ever see any of them again I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t kill one of them, just saying. The trial did not go well. I had to pay $5,000 in damages to the court room while Shane spent the night in the hospital before heading off to jail, that part was worth the money to me. They tried to stick me, and Ethan with assault but we had a good lawyer thanks to Aiden and his connections with Jameson, whose lawyer was a fucking badass.

What wasn’t worth it was watching Evie toss and turn throughout the night, it was excruciating. There were times when I thought I was at my wit’s end when she would let out a strangled scream for them to stop. It took everything in my power not to find him again and kill him this time. I knew what was happening, she was remembering. I knew because I’d been there before.

And then I broke. I fucking broke into a million tiny pieces right before her eyes.

I thought I was okay but it was apparent that I wasn’t.

It’s been over a year since that day. And unfortunately, I still thought about it. Some things are just unforgettable.

I found Evie in our bedroom that morning before I left for work.

“Don’t be late tonight,” I said to her, kissing her forehead as she searched through garbage bags for a pair of gloves. She was working outside today, with my mother of all people, getting ready to work on our backyard. Evie didn’t work anymore and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I felt better knowing she could relax and do what she wanted to. I made pretty good money working construction so it was easy for her to take some time off. She talked of going back to college and getting her degree in psychology but hadn’t yet. I knew with time, she would.

We hadn’t moved into our new house we were building just yet but half our shit was already over here so now we were living out of bags while Ethan and I finished it.

“I’m never late. You’re the one who is always late,” Evie smiled when she found the gardening gloves and held them up as if surprised that she actually found them. “Don’t forget, we have therapy at three,” Evie reminded me before I made it out the door to work.

I groaned. “Do we still have to go? The guy’s a weirdo.”

“It’s our last session,” Evie giggled. “If you had to listen to other people’s problems all day long, you’d be weird too.
” She kissed my cheek. “We’ve have emotional damage. We need to go.”

“No we don’t,” I argued reaching for my spare jeans so I didn’t have to sing tonight in my work jeans. “I don’t think we need to keep going.”

She gave me a skeptical look. “Okay, so,” she paused and I knew what she was about to do, she did this every time I tried to talk her out of going to therapy. “You being held captive in Iraq. I was beaten and raped…” my throat got tight at the word. That fucking word, “and you have nightmares and now I have anxiety attacks.” Evie raised an eyebrow. “Do you need any more reasons?”

“Nope, got it—three, right?” I laughed, light but a little annoyed.

She smiled and reached up to kiss me. “Yep.”

“And then I have a surprise for you.”

“I hate surprises. They give me anxiety.”

“You’ll love this one.” I said, winking and not waiting for her to argue with me.

I picked up Ethan on the way to work, their house was just up the road.

He smiled when he got into my truck. “I like this one!” He ran his hands over the leather arm rests. “Try not to set this one on fire.”

I laughed but it didn’t sound like me

Being the smart intuitive guy that Ethan is, he knew something was up as soon as he got into the car.

“All right, so what’s going on?”

I chuckled but kept my eyes on the road. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“You have my blessing,” he said, as if he knew. And he did. He knew exactly what I wanted to ask.

“How do you even know what I’m going to say?”

“Grayson, you’re sweating, get your shit together and ask her to marry you.”

“It’s September. It’s hot. That’s why I’m sweating.” I had to point out. “And I’m asking her tonight.”

The truth was, I was nervous. I was a fucking wreck.

For months I’d been thinking about this, waiting for the right time, wondering if we were ready. My answer was yes. We were finally ready for this step in our relationship.

I always thought that a gentleman would ask permission before asking the woman to marry him but since Evie’s father wasn’t around, I decided to ask Ethan. Now I realized this wasn’t tradition these days but I found it appropriate for the situation and it was the way I was raised. Kathy gave her blessing two weeks ago when I told her I was thinking about it. She even helped me with getting Evie’s ring size.

“You aren’t even going to drill me on shit?” I finally asked.

“On what? I know you can take care of her. I’ve always thought of you as my brother, now it will be official. You know I could say the same thing here. I married your sister. It would be a little hypercritical of me if I said no to you.”

“You think?”

Ethan suddenly had a serious expression on his face. “I’m sure of it, I mean, Evie…I’ve never seen her like this except for when we were kids. She missed you. After you left things just weren’t the same with any of us and now it’s just, it’s right. Even with all that shit, you two made it. Most people wouldn’t have survived that.”

I nodded, not really knowing what to say. There was a lot of truth in that.

“Thanks, Ethan. I just want you to know that I love her more than anything and I know you don’t want to hear that sentimental shit, but I do.”

“Hey, as long as you don’t let her stop our love for music, I don’t have a problem with all this fucking love talk.”

“That won’t be a problem, I assure you. Which reminds me, I’m doing it tonight on stage.”

His eyes got wide. “She’s gonna kill you,” and then started laughing at me.

“Nah, she’ll love it.”

Ethan and I played every Friday night at The Point. Our whole family would come out too. It was sort of like our family night.

After the accident, Josh and Kelly moved back home. It was nice to have them back. We all missed Josh’s sense of humor and needed it now more than ever.