Page 29 of Redeem

I would fix this. I would make it better.

I didn’t know how, but I wouldn’t rest until I did.

I didn’t say anything else, but I reached for Dana’s hand, squeezed it.

This time, she squeezed back.

Thirteen

Dana

When we got back to the farm, we spent the day working in perfect silence. But even though he didn’t speak, I could see that my words had affected Ciprian. I couldn’t tell how, though. Did he find me weak? Pitiable? Why did I care so much?

I’d hoped so hard he would come to his senses, leave here, leave me, but he hadn’t done so, and now I was trying to unravel what that meant.

Why hadn’t I just kept my mouth closed?

Again, I blamed him.

Avoiding people had been easy. I hadn’t even been tempted to let anyone in. With him, I found myself powerless to stay silent.

And inside, I knew he was right. I had been careless, reckless, and that hadn’t bothered me in the least.

My life, such as it was, hadn’t felt like it was worth living for a very long time. I’d never quite worked up the nerve to kill myself, but more than once, I’d thought about how nice it would be if someone took the choice from me. I’d never said that out loud, had no intentions of ever saying it out loud.

Yet, Ciprian had gotten it out of me in the space of one car ride.

I didn’t know how or why and wasn’t any closer to a solution that evening as we sat in the kitchen.

I looked across the table at him, completely unsurprised to find his dark eyes assessing me. I wasn’t surprised by the clouds in his usually clear gaze, either. What surprised me was the compulsion to make those clouds go away.

“Ciprian, look…” I started, then trailed off, not sure how to finish.

“What?” he said.

His voice was different than I’d heard it before, and I felt the stirring of embarrassment, burning shame began to grow.

“What I said before…”

I trailed off again, still not quite sure what to say, and not wanting to finish. Just thinking about what I had said before left me flustered, embarrassed, but I also didn’t want to shy away from it. I didn’t welcome sharing these things with him, but for the first time in my life, I halfway believed I’d met someone who wouldn’t judge me.

Not that I had wanted to test it, not so dramatically, not so quickly, but here we were.

“What I said before… I…”

I trailed off again, not sure what to say. I’d lowered my lids but lifted them to look at him, saw that I would find no help from him.

“I meant it. But I didn’t mean it,” I said.

I went quiet then, flustered, wondering why I couldn’t express a coherent thought. Maybe all these years alone were finally getting to me. I looked at him again, struggling for the words to say, hoping that I hadn’t chased him away permanently.

“It’s… Things get…” I shook my head, went quiet for a moment, trying to gather my thoughts.

I sighed, tried again.

“Things have happened, and they hurt. It got…bad for a while. But I’m not crazy. Well, I am, sort of,” I said, laughing, the sound shrill, high-pitched, and not at all believable to my ears.

Ciprian didn’t laugh, didn’t do anything at all.