I know better than this. Our home is now a trigger. The alleyway will always be where he beat up Professor Keller, where he will always question what lurks in the darkness. But I still lead him out the door and up the front steps with Reid and Sienna pulling the truck around to the alley after we’re inside.
Without words, I take his hand in mine, his knuckles scabbed and still a little bloody, as I lead him into the bathroom.
We don’t talk. No words need to pass between us to know how we’re feeling. The heartbreak and the anguish, the worry and the fear, grip us like a vice. I can feel it in my soul, in my movements and in my heart. The darkness that blankets Caleb is so thick I feel like I could touch it and as I remove his shirt, I rest my hand over his heart.
I feel the slow steady rhythm tapping under my palm and for a few seconds it reminds me he’s alive and well and we can fix this. I move my hand and press a kiss to the same spot and I hear Caleb’s breath catch in his throat, a choked back sob that he doesn’t want to let out.
But I want to hear it.
I reach back and turn on the shower, the water drowning out the sounds in the bathroom, giving us the privacy I know he’s craving.
“I can go,” I say, as I begin to clean the broken skin on his knuckles with soap and warm water from the sink. “But I don’t want to.”
“Stay,” he mutters, collapsing on the toilet, his hand in mine still as I finish cleaning off the blood. There are no more words exchanged between us as I undress and Caleb does the same, but this isn’t the undressing we’re used to. This is comfort and peace and the admittance of weakness and needing help.
Caleb steps into the shower first and I follow behind. He lets the water fall over him as I wrap my arms around him, my head resting on his back. I can feel his body shudder, the angry sobs leave his body in deep heaving breaths.
He turns in my arms, facing me now, his head dropping to my shoulder and everything about his posture and his demeanor is a silent cry for help. His body has been fighting a war within itself for so long and this is what it looks like when it finally breaks free, when he finally falls apart.
This whole time he’s been here, building his life back, working and starting a relationship with me, he’s just been surviving, not healing and I should’ve recognized this.
The simple innate things we all grow up learning; that we’re safe and people are good, and we can trust others, were already missing from Caleb’s life long before everything happened with Reid’s dad. But all these things were then compounded when he was attacked.
There’s so much more to deal with than just what happened with Professor Keller. It goes back a hell of a lot further than that. Closing my eyes to what he’s dealing with won’t make it go away and that’s what I’ve been doing all this time. I will be his voice now. I will fight for him when he can’t or won’t.
We stand together, wrapped in each other’s arms and I just hold Caleb as he cycles in and out, his body never really coming down from the adrenaline rush.
He doesn’t move away from me, his hands holding me so tightly like he fears I could disappear at any moment as he says, “It’s not my past. It’s my fucking present. It’s every day of my fucking life.” I can hear the fear and the rage in his words, the tightening of his grip on me, and the scrape of his stubble as he clenches his jaw.
I don’t know how to respond to him but staying silent seems wrong. It feels like I haven’t done enough to acknowledge his trauma and if I continue to ignore his small cries for help, I’m doing him no good by being here.
“I have the number of a therapist that Ed gave me. We can go together. I can go with you even if I just sit outside and wait for you.” I try my best not to be pushy or forceful, or to even make him feel like he has to go through this alone, but what I say still doesn’t feel like enough. “Sie can go too. There’s more here than just what happened with…” I don’t say Professor Keller’s name out loud, asking myself if it could be a trigger.
All of this is like navigating an unknown place in the dark, but maybe that’s been our problem all along. Too much tiptoeing around, wondering if I’ve said too much or too little. Now it’s time to just say it all.
“There’s more here than what happened with Professor Keller and Reid’s dad, Caleb,” I now say, steeling up the courage to be bold enough to crush the eggshells we’ve been walking on. “None of this is your fault.”
I run my hands up and down his back, kissing his lips, his cheeks, his eyes, in the softest of gestures, in a way that tells him he’s worthy of having his life back.
“You’re loved, Caleb. You deserve to be happy and what happened tonight wasn’t you. It was your trauma. That person in the alley, it wasn’t you.”
“Stop, Ruby,” he moans, his chest heaving again with grief and anger, the sobs returning.
“No, Caleb. I won’t stop. I won’t ever stop because I love you.” I place my hands on the sides of his face, forcing him to look at me, forcing him to see me, forcing him to hear me. “I love you, Caleb.”
Chapter Four
Caleb
I want to believe her. I want to desperately believe what she’s saying to me. But how the fuck can I? How can she possibly mean it after everything I’ve done? After everything she’s seen?
“Are you listening to me, Caleb?” she says, her hands still holding my face, not letting me look away from her as though she knows exactly what I’m thinking.
I swallow hard, nodding once as I drop my eyes, unable to watch the way she looks at me or face the truth I see in her eyes.
“I love you,” she whispers again, pulling me closer as her lips brush against mine. “I love you.”
Another sob escapes and I pull her closer, burying my face in her neck because I just can’t handle this right now. Not because I don’t feel the same way about her. I do, I really fucking do. But because I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve her or the love she gives me.
“Come on,” she eventually says, gently easing me back. “Let’s go to bed.”
We get out of the shower and dry off, neither of us saying another word. With towels wrapped around us, we walk back to her bedroom and I grab some boxers, pulling them on before turning to her. “I’ll sleep on the couch,” I say, jerking my thumb at the door.
Ruby shakes her head once as she walks over and takes my hand, her grip strong. “No, you’re sleeping here, with me,” she says firmly, tugging me toward the bed. “Where you belong.”
I let her take me, sliding between the sheets as she moves closer and wraps her arms around me, her head resting on my shoulder, just like it always does. The room is silent, the only sounds coming from somewhere else in the house as Reid and Sienna move around in the living room.
Eventually it stops, a quiet calm descending over the house, despite the craziness that still churns around inside my head. Memories and moments of tonight flash before me, like a never-ending loop that I can’t shut off.
I close my eyes and force myself to lie still as I take long, slow breaths even though my body is screaming at me to move. Screaming at me to get up, to run, to yell, to do anything to try and make this noise stop.