Tough Enough(57)

I take a deep breath, girding myself for what’s to come. Talking about it almost feels like reliving it. And I’d never want to do that. “He was charming and handsome, wealthy and accomplished. His father was influential. He was all that a girl with stars in her eyes needed to complete the picture. I dove right in, despite the fact that I didn’t really know him. Not really. For a while, it was perfect.”

When my pause drags on too long, Rogan prompts me. “But that didn’t work out either?”

I sigh softly, like the sound leaked right out of the never-quite-healed gash in my heart, along with a trickle of blood. Still too fresh. Always too fresh. “No. We moved in together before I found out that he had a temper. And that he wasn’t afraid of what a girl from nowhere might tell others. He knew no one would believe me.”

Rogan’s voice is steel when he asks, “He put his hands on you?”

I know he doesn’t mean sexually; he means physically. Abusively.

I don’t answer. I don’t need to. And he knows that my silence is answer enough.

“It was worse when he was jealous, which he often was. He didn’t want me to have friends, he hated everyone that I had class with, he didn’t want me acting on Broadway, which I’d had an offer to do. Unfortunately, he expressed all this with few words and a lot of flying fists. And palms. And the occasional kick with his boot or whipping with the mean end of an extension cord.” I don’t glance up at Rogan. I can tell by his posture from the corner of my eye that he is rigid with anger. “When I finally got up enough nerve to leave him, he followed me. I should have known he would. He found me at a friend’s apartment. I’d gone there to stay until I could figure out something else. He waited for me to leave for my night class. Waited until I got in and rolled down my window, like I always used to do. Then he walked right up and threw alcohol at me. Bourbon, I think it was. It hit my left side and splattered down the door and onto the floorboard. I remember looking up at him, wondering what the hell he was doing. I started fumbling, trying to get my window rolled up, but I wasn’t fast enough. I saw him strike the match. His face was almost sad. Almost.”

I can still feel the fear. I can still smell the alcohol. I can still hear the whoosh of flames erupting all around me.

“He threw the match through my window before I could roll it up completely. It landed right in my lap. Everything around me went up in flames. It melted most of the hair on my left side. Gave me third-degree burns on my neck and the top of my shoulder. Second-degree burns down my side and on my leg. All the places you saw. That was the end of my acting career.” Even thinking back to that time of my life produces a crushing weight in my chest. “I guess my parents were right after all. And that’s not even the worst part.”

“How can it be worse?” he asks, his voice a coarse, husky croak.

“My parents were notified. They’d been on their way home from church that Wednesday night. They didn’t even go home. They drove straight up to New York.” I stop to meet Rogan’s eyes for the first time, but I can’t stand what I see there—a reflection of my own pain—so I look away before I finish. “They were both killed in a car accident on the way. I never even got to tell them I was sorry.”

My throat is tight with controlled emotion. I haven’t talked to anyone about this in years. It was easier than I thought it would be, but still not easy by any far stretch of the imagination. I lost everything that night, everything that ever meant something to me.

Rogan says nothing. And that’s good because there’s really nothing to say. I’ve heard all the platitudes from my friends and friends of the family. Yet another reason I moved to the middle of nowhere. I needed to be someone no one knew. I needed to be someone other than this poor girl who’d had such a tragic life. I had to be someone other than the girl who everyone pitied. But I also needed to get away from Calvin. Permanently.

After a length of silence, I glance up at Rogan, trying my best to smile. “I was in a medically induced coma for three days and in the hospital for twenty-four more. I had surgeries following that. Skin grafts for some of the worst places. But as you can see, there’s no covering something like that except with clothes.”

“Katie, I’m so—”

“Please don’t,” I plead. I can’t take his sympathy right now. It would crush me.

He waits a few seconds before he asks, “What happened to the guy?”

“Since I was in such bad shape right after, the police ruled it an accident. Found a broken liquor bottle on the floorboard and two full bottles in the passenger seat. Calvin planned it well, made it look like I was heading out to a party or something. The friend that I was staying with had no idea what happened, of course. Turns out the police were going to charge me. I couldn’t believe it. Until I found out why they hadn’t. When I met with the cop who investigated it, he mentioned that my boyfriend’s father had cleared things up for me and that I’d better be thankful that I ‘had connections, young lady,’” I mimic, using my best deep, cop voice. “The whole thing was ridiculous. I knew right then that there would be no point in trying to tell them what really happened. Calvin was protected. When your father is a wealthy, influential politician . . . Well, you know how that goes. I just got tangled up with the wrong guy all the way around.”