Breaking Skin (30 page)

Fully dressed now, he sits on the bed, takes my hand, and tugs me down beside him. “Nikki. I hope you know you can tell me anything.” His voice is low and soothing.

I trust Cole. I trust him with my heart, and I suppose it’s time to trust him with everything else too.

“You’ve heard the rumors?” I ask.

“I told you, I don’t put any stock in rumors.”

“I know. But tell me what you’ve heard.” I want him to say it out loud because I need to know what he knows.

His throat works, moving up and down as if some offensive word is lodged inside and he doesn’t want to let it out. That in itself tells me something.

“You can say it, Cole.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Incest.” I whisper the word as if that could lessen the impact. “I haven’t talked about this since I was fourteen years old.”

“Jesus, Nikki.” He reaches out for me, but I hold my hand up to stop him.

“It wasn’t me. It was never me, thanks to Renee.”

Nine years ago . . .

“N
ikki, come on.” Renee tugged on my arm and pleaded with me to get out of her bed.

“But it’s so much warmer here with you. There’s no heat again, and I can’t find my blanket.”

The heat was always getting shut off. Actually it was all the electricity, and since I slept on the couch in the living room, which had the draftiest windows in the house, I got the worst of it. I kept catching colds, which meant I kept getting sent to the nurse’s office in school. Every time she had to call Mama to come get me, sick or not, I got into trouble because Mama worked by the hour and every hour counted.

“Just let me stay,” I begged. “It’s freezing out there.”

“No!” Renee yelled it so loudly, I was sure she’d woken the whole house.

Her angry tone made me sit up and blink at her in the dark. Renee’s eyes glittered with tears, and seeing them shine made me want to cry too.

“Please let me stay,” I whispered. “He might not come tonight if I’m here.”

Her eyes turned hard because we never spoke of it, and I should have known better.

“He always comes,” she said. “Your being here won’t stop him. Knowing him, he’d probably like it.”

A disgusted smile twisted her lips, followed by the defeated look she wore more and more often. She either looked blank, like she wasn’t there at all, or like she’d swallowed something rancid.

“Tell him no,” I said. “You don’t have to let him.”

“Stop it. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Nikki. Go back to bed.”

I didn’t want to go back. This used to be my room too until one night my father dragged me out of it, tossed me into the hallway, and shut the door. He was alone with Renee for the rest of the night, and the entire time I could hear her crying softly. Now she cried every night since while I sat in the living room on the couch, unable to sleep, knowing he was hurting her. But lately, she’d stopped crying, and that worried me even more.

I had just turned thirteen when my father kicked me out of my own bedroom, and I had an idea of what was happening behind that closed door. I’d seen enough television and heard enough hints from Renee to understand. I understood more than I wanted to. What my father did was the deepest, darkest of wrongs.

Dejected, I trudged back to the couch, and after a while I heard my father go into my sister’s bedroom like always. I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I never slept anymore.

Shivering, with tears spilling down my cheeks, I decided it was up to me. I had to do something because no one else would. I was losing my sister, bit by bit. Pieces of her soul were breaking off and disappearing in that dark bedroom, and the one time I dared to talk to my mother about it, she hit me, slapped me hard across the cheek. I was stunned into silence, my words washed away by the wave of reality that crashed over me. Mama didn’t want to know. She’d rather hit me than stop him, and despite my devastation, her actions gave me an idea. The red mark her hand left behind had me thinking about a boy in my class.

Last year, that boy came to school every day with bruises. I heard he told the nurse his father hit him, and the nurse told someone else who came to take his father away. They took that kind of thing very seriously here. There were flyers on the wall in the nurse’s office and in the gym too about how important it was to tell someone if you ever felt afraid or if anyone touched you in the wrong place.

I’d told Renee she should tell someone, but I knew she wouldn’t. I wondered if I told the nurse about my father if she could have him taken away, just like she did for that boy.

It was the only way I knew to help my sister, and I’d been thinking about it for a while now. If I was going to help Renee, I needed to tell an adult besides my mother, and the school nurse seemed like a good choice. Miss Emily was another possibility, but I knew Renee would be twice as mad if Miss Emily found out. She idolized her. We both did, and neither of us wanted her to know how bad things were at home. Miss Emily suspected, but that was different from actually knowing.

As I sat on the couch that night, biting my fingernails down to the quick, wavering back and forth, I made a decision. It was time to stop this before any more pieces of my sister disappeared.

When I got to school that day, I didn’t go to my first class. I marched directly to the nurse’s office. There were two boys ahead of me waiting to see her. One kept coughing into his hand and the other had a bloody knee. Nervously, I sat there on the hard wooden chair in the tiny waiting area, twisting my hands together, hoping I was doing the right thing, but I never wavered. I was determined. I loved my sister.

When it was finally my turn to see the nurse, I walked into her office and after a few flubbed words and false starts, I finally told her what was happening at home. The words I used weren’t very specific. I started by saying my father went into the bedroom each night with Renee and closed the door. I also told her Renee cried.

The change that came over the nurse as I spoke told me she understood. Her face paled and all signs of good humor disappeared as her back straightened and she listened carefully. By the way she looked at me, I knew she believed me, and I had a strong feeling she intended to do something about it.

I was right. Nothing was the same after that day. One nightmare ended but a brand-new one began. This new nightmare included the police and the school principal coming to our house. It was filled with rumors and half truths, accusations and raised voices.

No one thanked me for what I’d done, especially not Renee. She stopped going to school. She refused to talk to the police when they came. But my father was gone just like I’d hoped. The police questioned him and when they released him, they said he couldn’t come back home for a while, not until the investigation was complete. So he took an apartment in town.

When my mother went to see him there, he wasn’t alone. He was living with another woman, and he told Mom he wasn’t coming back.

That’s when she fell apart and blamed it all on me. My mother and Renee both blamed me for everything that happened and every single thing that went wrong in their lives from that point on. They accused me of betraying our family, of ruining us all; that is, when they weren’t ignoring me.

They never stopped being angry with me for talking. After that, I withdrew from them and from everyone else too, but I had no regrets because only one thing mattered. My father never touched Renee again.

“R
enee protected me. She saved me from him.”

I’m on the bed beside Cole, my legs folded into my chest and my arms wrapped around them.

“And then you saved her.” Cole bends his head so his gaze can find mine.

“But I also humiliated her. Once I told, people found out. I don’t know how, maybe the nurse or maybe someone at the police station. My mother claimed she couldn’t show her face anywhere after that. The same thing happened to Renee. At school, she was treated like a pariah. The one good thing was that my father got transferred to another county because people here didn’t want him delivering their mail or going near their houses.”

“What about you?”

“Me? I was the hero of the story.” I laugh bitterly. “Everyone said I did the right thing. Everyone except the people who mattered.” Emotion clogs my throat. “Renee knows what my father did to her was horrible, but I’m the one she believes ruined her life. She was perfectly fine pretending everything was okay and keeping her secret. She was popular. She had a boyfriend. I took all that away from her.”

Cole’s arm comes around my shoulder. “You know that’s not true.”

“Do I? I’ve thought about it so many times over the years, and despite the terrible consequences, I’d do it again. I’d still tell, but maybe I’d tell someone else. Maybe I could go about it differently so that Renee didn’t suffer so much. She’s my sister and I took away everything good in her life.”

“Your father did that. Not you. My God, Nikki. You were only fourteen. Do you have any idea how brave you were? You did exactly the right thing. They’re the ones who were wrong. The fact that your mother wanted that bastard to come home after what he did is unconscionable.”

“I know. That’s why I don’t talk to her. I don’t understand how Renee can.”

“I don’t understand how Renee can blame you and treat you the way she does.”

“It’s not so hard to believe. After she left Cooperstown, I followed her to San Francisco as soon as I could. She was the one who loved dance first. I got into it because I idolized her. I wanted to be just like her. When she got accepted into SFBC, I wanted it too. I wanted to go with her. I thought if we weren’t in Cooperstown anymore, things would be better between us. But once I got to San Francisco, it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen. Renee was still too angry. She thought I’d ruin everything for her again.

“When I realized how she felt, I was devastated. I decided to leave and auditioned for other companies. But Dennis found out, and he took it personally. He said I was deserting him and the company. He refused to release me from my contract, and he never forgave me for it. In the end, it was all for nothing because a few weeks later, our mother had her first stroke, and Renee moved back home to take care of Langley. Our mother had been raising her up until then.”

I recall begging Renee to stay, offering to move in with her and help take care of Langley. But she’d already made up her mind. She was going to give up dancing. It was her dream, and she walked away from it without a fight.

“Our relationship was already in tatters, but it got worse once she moved back to Cooperstown. It was like I didn’t have a sister anymore.”

“Has she ever gotten help for what your father did to her?” Cole asks.

“She’s been in therapy but she never sticks with it.”

“She needs help.”

“I know, but you try making her get it.”

I turn and really look at Cole for the first time since I told my sordid story. What must he be thinking? Why isn’t he running for the hills? I shake my head, ashamed of the blood running through my veins, mortified by my own history.

“Hey,” he says softly. He cups my cheek and turns my face until I’m looking directly into those startling blue eyes of his. “Thank you for trusting me. You never have to be scared to tell me anything. I know you’re afraid I’ll think less of you, but that’s just not possible. I’ve never admired anyone more.”

The tears I’ve managed to hold back roll down my cheeks. I wrap my arms around him and let him hold me tight.

“How is it you can make me feel so good when everything is such a mess?” I ask.

“Because we make each other stronger. The two of us together could slay dragons if we had to.”

I laugh, but I can tell that he means it. He thinks I make him stronger. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but I know having him on my side makes me feel like I could face anything. Even a fire-breathing dragon.

When Cole kisses me again, it’s different. It may be the same lips, the same tongue, the same swarm of butterflies rioting in my stomach, but it’s more than that. It’s a touch that sinks deeper. It’s a kiss that claims me and shakes me to my core, a kiss with the potential to change everything.