Chapter Thirteen

“So, is this over?”

The question stunned Kaylin, but as she watched Ryan’s eyes burn with anticipation at her response, she realized it wasn’t the question that she was unprepared for, it was her own response. She had grown accustomed to having relationships end; there were a multitude of reasons: things maybe got “too serious” or maybe she got bored. There were even a few times when she wasn’t the first one to want out. But there was something about Ryan. There was something about watching him, watch her. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him. She thought about how they left their shows together, and how he put his hand on the small of her back when they were out together, and she realized that she wasn’t ready to give that up; it had been a long while since she had felt that way, since she had felt that pull on her.

“I guess that’s a yes,” Ryan said, taking her silence for her answer.

“Ryan,” Kaylin began, trying to sort through what she was feeling without divulging too much,

“I’m not sure what you mean. What has happened that would make you think that?”

“Wha…are you kidding me, Kaylin? Why would I think...” he turned his head and couldn’t keep the sarcastic laugh from escaping his throat, “Nice. Here I am going crazy because I haven’t heard from you in five days and apparently you didn’t even notice.”

“Of course I noticed. I, I called out of rehearsal. I didn’t just skip it. There was, are, some things I need to take care of.” Ryan rolled his eyes as she bit down on her bottom lip and looked past him.

“I know you called out of rehearsal, Elizabeth told me that. She also told me that you weren’t on your deathbed sick, which is what I thought was wrong when you didn’t call me back. Then I come over and you weren’t even here? Charlotte next door said she hadn’t seen you go anywhere, I figured you were avoiding me.” He trailed off and watched her response, hoping he was wrong, but he saw her jaw clench at his last sentence, and he knew he was right. He knew that all his irrational fears were rooted in truth. “So it’s over. Fine, I wish I could say I just don’t care, but I do. You know I do or else I wouldn’t even be here.” His heart was racing madly, making fire course through his veins. For the last five days all he could think about was her, where she was, what could have happened to her, and now here she was – at home. Nothing was wrong at all. But there was something wrong; a distance had developed in the air between them that had never been there before. It’s like she had taken the five days to fortify a barricade, silent and imposing. “Are you really not going to say anything, Kaylin? Do I really mean that little to you that I don’t even get a reason why? I just get to leave?”

Her mind raced for a reason she could give him that would satisfy his curiosity, but not let him go. She took a deep breath and held in the exhale as she lifted her eyes to his.

“Stay,” was all she could say. His warm, blue eyes burned with a mixture of emotions she couldn’t read. She let her breath out slowly, controlled. “I don’t want you to leave, but I understand if you want to. It’s just, well, it’s just that I’m not used to having to explain myself to people. I wasn’t ready to have to.”

His brows pulled together with a look of confusion. “Why would I not want to know where you were? Why would I not care about what was happening to you? One minute you’re in bed with me, the next I’m pleading with Felix to find out if he’s heard from you,” Kaylin had to smirk at that: she knew Felix well. He’d probably made Ryan take him out to dinner only to say he knew nothing.

The fire that had been coursing through Ryan’s torso began to recede: she wanted him to stay. Kaylin looked down at herself, suddenly aware of her own existence. She had been in the same dress since her last rehearsal – how many days ago? Ryan had said five; could it really have been five days? Yes, today was Tuesday, she knew that - she called out today and they didn’t have rehearsal on Sundays and Mondays. She had worn this to Saturday’s rehearsal, the heather grey dance dress. It was so easy to wear that she hadn’t changed out of it since she had gotten home Saturday night and saw that she had a message.

Ryan followed her eyes down to look at what she was wearing. “Babe, is that the same outfit you wore Saturday?” He tilted his head down to look into her face. She was usually particular about her appearance, not in a vain way, but in a way that showed that she was aware of herself and how others saw her. Tonight she was standing before him in a rumpled cotton and spandex dress made for practicing dance routines, her feet were bare, and she had a faded white sweater jacket pulled over her shoulders. Across the top of her knee was a scratch with dried blood along the side where she had obviously tried to wipe it away.

He became intensely aware of the state of her house now. There was a small section of the faux-suede couch that had an unfolded throw blanket lying across it, and her cordless landline phone was on the end table. Her purse was thrown open on the floor in front of the blanket and her cell phone was lying open on the ottoman used as a coffee table.

“There is something wrong. What do you need to take care of?” his voice was softer now and his movements more deliberate. He moved his right hand out to pat her hair down where it was knotted in the back, but she jerked her head away. Instead he reached for her hand. She stepped aside, allowing him to come in. He sat precariously on the edge of her sofa, on the end without the blanket. She sat down tentatively next to him.

“Kay, I meant what I said the other night. I do love you. You aren’t like anyone I’ve ever met before. Whatever is going on, whatever it is, I’m here. Just tell me.” She was looking at her feet, all the confidence he’d become so accustomed to was drained out of her. “I know you’ve been hurt before, we all have, but Kaylin I’m not going to hurt you. Just tell me; just explain it to me, and I’ll understand.”

“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” she snapped, “I’ve done just fine on my own for the last ten years, I don’t need someone around now.” She saw the hurt in his eyes, but the ice in her voice remained unchanged; he needed to back off, and he needed to back off now. “Why can’t you just be happy the way things are? Why do you need anymore than this?”

He looked away and bit his lower lip. How could he make her see? How could she see anything different when she looked in the mirror than she had always seen? To him she was like a porcelain doll: carefully put together and meticulous in appearance, something to be cherished and adored, but he knew that she saw herself as less, as a plaything put together of bits and pieces of leftover material.

“Because this isn’t enough,” he waved his hands around her small house scattered with mementos of her life and the occasional remnant of his presence. “I love you, Kaylin. I love every bit of you. I want to show you, show the world, just how much. I want to live everyday of my life knowing that you are a part of it,” he moved to be closer to her. He wanted to hold her and let all the love, frustration, and happiness he held for her come out as he pulled her to him.
She threw her hands up and tangled them in her hair, twisting her fingers through the length of it, a defensive move. “You don’t know what you are saying, Ryan. I can’t give you any more than this. You’re happy aren’t you? We have a good time together, don’t we? Let’s just leave it at this. This is more than enough.” She looked almost panicked.

In the time he had known her, he knew she lived her life as a closed off box. Each aspect of her life compartmentalized into its own place. When they first started dating trying to get her to talk about her life before she moved out to New York was like trying to decipher a riddle. Whenever he figured one out, whenever he felt like he was getting closer to her, getting to know the real Kaylin McSandsen, she would pull away, disappear almost.

She had created the persona she wanted people to know. He knew there was more to her than the smile she put on like makeup every day; he wanted to know what she thought, what she felt, what made her this energy that fueled his every thought. She was like a drug to him, and he wanted to know every aspect of her. But as he tried to get closer to her, to show her how much he wanted, needed her, she made it clear in every way that she had long ago isolated herself so far from the person she had once been, that it would impossible for him to do so.

“I love you, Kaylin. Nothing is going to change that.”

Ryan stared down at her; she looked so small, pressed up against the base of the sofa like that. She looked defeated. He was ready to press the issue, he was ready to go to war with whatever soldiers she had lined up to protect the wall that surrounded her: he was prepared for tears, ready for screams, he had steeled himself to be hit, but he wasn’t ready for the look on her face that showed him that she had already been killed. This whole time he wasn’t breaking down a wall around her, he was climbing into her tomb.

“You’re not crushed; you’re not done,” he talked gently as he squatted down to her level. He picked up her hand, so small and delicate compared to his. She didn’t try to pull her hand away, but as his thumb caressed the swath of skin between her thumb and forefinger, resting on the scar nestled between them, something shifted in her eyes.

“You don’t know that,” was all she said. “You don’t know anything about me, about my past, how can you be so sure of anything? No one hurt me. No one left me. I was the one who left. I was the one who hurt someone. I was the one who left.”

She stared at a patch of wall beyond where they sat, her eyes unfocused and her mind racing along somewhere far away from where she sat now.

“Tell me,” Ryan whispered settling down on the floor beside her, not letting go of her hand. “Tell me about you, about your past. Because you still haven’t convinced me…” he trailed off. Something in his voice or what he said made her pull her hand out of his. She pulled her legs towards her body and stood up. She was striding off to a different room, her bare feet making quiet padding noises down the hall.

“Kaylin?” he called after her. Using the ottoman for leverage he stood up awkwardly. He could see her reflected in the mirror at the end of the hall. Her back was to the door; she was sitting on a box placed strategically under a big window, staring out into the black.

Ryan moved to enter the room and sat on the worn leather chair a few feet away from her. He decided that she didn’t need to hear him - she wasn’t talking for him anymore. He put his elbows on his knees and leaned in. He could see the stress on her jaw line, her beautiful profile set hard against the black night behind her.

“Kaylin,” he whispered trying to take her hand in his, “please, don’t be like this,” she allowed him to take her hand only for a minute, and then pulled it away. “I know how you see yourself, I know you better than you think I can, but I do. I know someone hurt you. I know you loved someone long before me, but I promise I won’t hurt you the way he did. I promise that no matter how broken you think you are, I can fix it. I can show you how amazing this can be.” Her chin quivered and she looked away. Her eyes were wet, but no tears escaped them. “How can you think you are anything other than perfect in my eyes?”

“Because it’s like you said,” she interrupted, “I’m not like everyone else. I don’t just have a broken heart, it was never broken - it was crushed. Do you know that? Do you know that you can’t just fix something once it’s crushed; you can’t fix me.”

“Kay,” Ryan whispered, “nothing you say about any scar - this one,” his thumb rubbed the jagged flesh on her hand, “or any other, will make me turn and run away, I swear.”

“It’s not a pretty story, Ryan,” Kaylin mumbled pulling her hand free from his grasp. She pulled in a long, deep breath steeling herself against the tirade of emotions that began to storm inside her. She clenched her jaw down as her mind went wheeled around the words ‘I’m not ready to talk about this,’ but she wouldn’t say that aloud. She had not talked about this, she had never talked about this; when would she be ready? It had been eight years: eight years and hundreds of lifetimes ago.

How could she explain that it had been years since she allowed herself to laugh without feeling guilty; eight years since she slept through the night without walking through a world of what might have been. It was Ryan’s arms around her that made her sleep soundly; it was Ryan’s presence that made the laughter escape so easily from her lips. How could she explain to the man standing before her, the man that made her feel safe, loved, beautiful, that he wasn’t the first to do so?