Ivy began to slide down the door to the floor and I followed her with my arms around her and holding her as close to my body as I could get her. Her hands covered her face and muffled her sobs, but to my ears, it still sounded as if it were on a loud speaker, filling the quiet room around us. I shushed her as I rocked on my knees behind her, hoping to quell some of the ache.
"I can't do this, Cade."
I barely heard what she was saying behind the cries and tears.
"It was hard enough earlier. I can't keep doing this with you. It hurts too much," she mumbled through more muffled cries.
I laid my chin on her shoulder and pressed my cheek into hers. Her hair was covering her face and smelled like fresh flowers. I breathed it in, hoping it would calm my erratic heart. "I have to talk to you, Ivy. Before you make any decisions, I need to tell you everything. You can't push me away until you know everything."
She started to turn around but I held her firmly in my arms, keeping her back to me.
"No, it has to be like this. I don't know if I will be able to get it all out if I have to look in your eyes."
Her sobs had stopped, yet the hiccups remained. "I don't know if I want to hear this."
"I don't know if I want to open up about this, but I have to and you have to hear it. Because it's the reason why I have gone my life believing marriages never last, and they always end badly. I need to tell you this because if you're going to own all of me, you have to know what it is you're owning."
She stilled in front of me as I searched for the courage to share the rest of my secret. The piece of my story that was the key, the missing link, it was what had generated all the demons that haunted me and tore me apart over the years.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath filled with her scent. "I was hiding under my parents' bed when I heard my mom let someone other than my dad fuck her."
"I know, Cade. You've told me this already," she interrupted.
"No, I haven't. In the middle of it, my dad came home. From the bottom of the bed, I watched as his shoes came through the doorway and stopped. The noises above me continued for what felt like a long time before I heard someone say, ‘What the fuck are you doing?' in a voice that reminded me of a villain from a movie. It was deep and angry and it scared me. Then I heard it again. It said, ‘Get the fuck off my wife,' and that's when I realized it was my dad who sounded like that. I had never heard him sound so menacing or angry in my life.
"The bed moved a lot but there were no other sounds in the room until my mom started to cry. In that same voice, my dad told her to shut the fuck up and then told the guy that he was going to cut his dick off and shove it down his throat for touching his wife. There was a lot of arguing and crying, and then my mom begged my dad to close the door before I heard any of it. He did but then made a comment about how I should see what a whore she was."
Ivy had gone completely still in my arms and I paused to hear if she was still breathing.
I took another deep breath, preparing myself for what came next. "My dad said some more nasty things and my mom continued to cry, but the guy remained quiet until my dad started talking to him. He asked him what made him think he could walk into his house and fuck his wife. The guy said he was in love with my mom and had been for a while. Come to find out, it had been going on for a long time and my mom was in love with him, too. That was the last thing I heard before my ears started to ring and there was a lot of pressure behind them. I didn't know what had happened or why I couldn't hear anything. It was just a loud pop and then everything went quiet except for the ringing in my ears.
"I remember curling into a ball at that point and trying to hide my face, but then I heard my mom scream my name. It sounded far off, but as soon as I took my hands away, ready to crawl out from under the bed, her words became louder and stopped me from moving. She was begging my dad to put the gun down. She said she didn't want me to walk in and see the blood. I didn't know what she was talking about; I didn't see any blood. I heard him call her a cheating whore and then the loud pop rang out again. And again-but more muffled that time. And then my dad's body fell to the floor next to the bed, his face turned toward me. But I didn't recognize him as my dad, or recognize his face because instead of the smile I had always remembered him wearing, there was blood-lots of blood. His eyes were wide open and he was looking right at me. The top of his head was missing and I immediately started to cry.
"I didn't move other than to turn away from my dad's face. I was scared I'd get in trouble for hiding in their room. I wasn't supposed to be in there. So I waited for someone to come get me. It was dark before I realized no one was coming and that I should probably call for help. But by that point I knew my mom was dead and I didn't want to see that. I was too terrified of what she looked like after seeing what my dad looked like.
"I was in the room, under the bed, for three days before someone came to the house. I was taken to the hospital, but I don't remember much of that. I don't even remember much of the three days I was in there. Out of that time, I remember the silence, the bone-crushing silence of death. And I remember the heat. It was so hot under that bed that I started sweating at some point. By the time I was found, I was covered in sweat and piss and my clothes were stuck to my skin. I will never forget that feeling or the sound of complete silence. It's why I can't handle the quietness and why I panic when I feel my shirt stick to me. It's something I will probably always carry with me. And it's also the reason why I have never believed in marriage-because I witnessed how it ended for the two most important people in my life. The foundation of my family, everything I had known, vanished within seconds. All because of lust."
Ivy pulled herself from my arms and spun around, looking at me with eyes full of pity. I didn't want those eyes to look at me that way. I wanted them to look at me with love and want … not sadness. She leapt up on her knees and wrapped her arms around my neck, latching on as if she was my lifeline and she wasn't going to let me drown.
"I didn't tell you that to make you feel sorry for me. I told you so that you'd have an understanding of where I came from. You needed to know where my darkness was born, the entire story." I gently pulled her away from me by her shoulders so that I could look into her eyes.
"I understand," she croaked out. "But how does that change anything? We still want different things and I would never ask you to give into my dream, just like I'd never ask you to forgive your nightmare."
I pulled her from the floor and looked around the room, needing a place to talk where we weren't just standing in the middle of the front hall. The only place she had to sit was her bed, and with the conversation we were having, I didn't find that to be appropriate. So I tugged her a few steps into the kitchen and lifted her onto the counter by her hips, standing between her legs with my hands flat on the counter on either side of her hips. She had sat in the same spot when we talked about foster homes as I made her dinner. That had only been two weeks ago, yet it felt like an entire lifetime.
"I need you to tell me what you want, Ivy-exactly what you want. That way I can tell you if I can do it or not. You had asked me earlier what I would do if you were pregnant. But you were very contradicting in your explanation. You made it sound as if you'd want to get married; yet then you said you didn't want to marry someone because you were pregnant. So, please, tell me what it is that you want."
She shook her head and wiped away a lone tear. "I didn't say I'd want you to marry me. All I said was that you'd live in your house and I'd live here because you don't think two people should live under the same roof simply because of a baby."
"Ivy … I fell asleep last night in my bed with you in my arms and for the first time in my life, I actually slept. I'm so used to closing my eyes at night and then opening them in the morning-nothing between the two times as if I had only blinked. But last night, I dreamed. I slept. And I woke up to you. Whether you're pregnant or not, I want to pack your shit up and move you into my house. I want you there every fucking night so that I can wake up to you every fucking morning. There's nothing more beautiful than your face, especially when it's the first thing I see when I open my eyes. I want to see you when I come home from work and then curl up on the couch like yesterday to watch TV. No, people shouldn't live under the same roof simply because of a baby. They should live under the same roof because they can't imagine being there without the other person. And I can't imagine being anywhere without you."