The Brick Wall

Chapter 63

Collins POV

  "You don't love me!" I cry out, interrupting him. "You can't love me! I'm not what you pictured, Curtis. The more I tell you about this, you'll see that. Maybe that's why I don't want you to know all of it. I want to stay this perfectly screwed up, slightly manic version of Collins Kennedy that gets to experience the way your face lights up when you see me." 

  Like I'm the freaking sun.  Like I'm the best person you've ever met in your life. Like I hold all the keys to your happy future.

  I don't want to lose that.

  "I don't want the pity party you're going to be wanting to throw at me if you learn more about it."

  And I meant it. The heaviness in my chest resulted more in what I would lose with him, than the actual pain of reliving the whole ordeal, the pain.

  Curtis speaks with a gentleness, like he's trying to make sure I'm not going to run away, flee the awkwardness of this very real and personal situation.

  "I don't believe there is any part of what happened to you, that could change the way I feel about you. We all have a past, choices we make."

  I'm ready to blow when I hear the statement. Nothing about what happened to me was my choice.

  He senses my shift and continues cautiously, but reassuringly. "Something like this was a choice that was tken from you, I get that. I don't question the validity of that at all. Please, know that. But everything that ever happens to us, whether it be from something on our own, or caused by other people, make us who we are and-"

  He's saying all the right things, but I can't hear them.

  "And I'm broken! This wasn't like a parent choosing to give me a bad haircut or disagreeing with whatever college I wanted to go to. This is something that changed the entire course of my life, Curtis. You wouldn't understand that."

  "I think I understand something changing a life's course."

  I want to scream. I don't give a single ounce of care that it is midnight and I'm standing in the middle of a room in which people are on either side of the walls. My hands fly in the air as I groan, loudly. "Your little girl being dropped on your doorstep isn't the same as my being raped," I spout off more plainly, wondering if I actually say the word then he'll really grasp the enormous ramifications of the situation.

  In an instant, he's off the bed, trekking across the space to get to me. "Collins, I-"

  "No." I'm direct with the word, just as my hand puts a stop to his advances. 

  I may not have been able to stop the advances that night, but here with Curtis, I have that control.

  Words that I know will break my heart are sitting on the tip of my tongue. I can't swallow them down, even though I know they'll be poisonous to not only myself but the two people that have helped me find myself again.

  "I think I need to look for another job when we get back to Raleigh."

  "Baby, please-"

  And they keep coming, honest words but statements that I know will ruin the most amazing thing that's ever happened in my life.

  "You're going to learn that you deserve perfection," My voice begins to crack, the heavy weight in my chest becoming too much. "That angel baby deserves a much better example of a mother. That's not me, no matter how much I wish it was," I cry out. "I want to be that for you, but you deserve better. You deserve more, both of you." 

  Curtis watches me. He watches me break, but doesn't go against my wishes, staying away from me just as I'd asked. 

  This man is a good man. I know that. He's changed his entire lifestyle to make sure that he's everything to that beautiful baby girl.  

  He's a damn good hockey player, certainly the best in his league.  I've never questioned my belief in the fact that he can go incredibly far in his career.  He's going to give Lennox a beautiful life with a woman that can give both of them her everything.

  But it's not me. 

  I am no longer an everything to anyone. 

  And I'll live with that.

  Once my breathing steady's, I realize I owe him an apology. "I'm sorry I ruined your night," I tell him quietly as I return to the bed, suddenly no longer interested in the delicious pizza he ordered with me in mind. "For what it's worth, you deserve to be in that net, with the real loves of your life watching you."

  Those words gut me worse than I could've imagined, but he'd needed to hear them. He needed to know he and sweet Lennox deserve the world.

  I close my eyes as I feel the edge of the bed dip. He mutters words, but I hear them and begin to cry silently. "I already have that. She just doesn't understand it."

  I use one hand to pull the blanket further up, hoping to cover part of my face before the same hand is being held over my mouth, fears of making this moment worse for either of us are threatening to slip through my lips.  My teeth cut into the skin of my cheeks as I bite back any possible sound that may escape my mouth. 

  I lay  there motionless, hoping and praying as the minutes move by that I'm giving off a good indication that I've fallen asleep. When in reality, my mind is at war with itself.  Every ounce of my desire is to replay the happier events of the night. 

  Seeing Curtis skate out onto the ice of a real National Hockey League team meant the world to me. Getting to share something so incredible, his actual dream, with him was more than I could've imagined. 

  Hearing him say that he loved me should've been the icing on the cake of the most special day of his life. And if it had been with any other woman, it would've been. But it was with me. Screwed up, poor pathetic, me. 

  He deserved so much more.

  But as I drift off to sleep, the happy moments aren't what's flooding my mind anymore. Even talking about my ordeal in the shortest way possible had planted the seeds of that night, all over again.

   I did my best to push the memories away, imagining sweet Lennox's face or her voice when she called me mama, all the things that should break my heart at this moment. Yet, now, I'm just wanting to feel anything other than the feeling of breaking over and over again at the horrific memory of that night.

  However, when I finally drift off to sleep, it's not the face of the blonde haired, blue eyed, angel baby that I see.  It's the face of the man who I'd trusted before he turned into the monster that haunts my daily life.

*Unedited

*I wanted to give you a little bit of the interaction from Collins' side.