Fighting the Fall ✔

Chapter Twenty Two

I turned to leave.

"Dustin." Her hand wrapped around my elbow and held on. "Please."

It wasn't so much the fact that she wouldn't let go that stopped me from walking away. It was her voice, the audible sadness, the ache that I had been all too familiar with. The ache of losing someone.

"Does... does it hurt?" Her fingers caressed my forehead, just above my left eye. I could see it all over her face as she tried to determine where it came from -- the ring or my father. She hated both.

"It's nice of you to suddenly take an interest."

Both of her hands fell back to her sides. "Dustin, you can't say that. I've always cared. You have to know that. I know you know that. Why haven't you answered my texts?"

"Maybe I've lost interest. Have you thought about that?" I regretted those words the moment they were delivered. I regretted the tone they were packaged in. I regretted making her cry, causing tears to cover the soft brown eyes that told me she genuinely cared.

"Stop. Just..." She dragged a knuckle under her eye to catch an escaped tear. "Just stop making me feel like the bad guy. Do you know why I couldn't do it anymore? Because I cared. I cared too much. I couldn't watch, Dustin. I cared too much to keep watching you get hurt like this... and hurt right here." She tapped twice on the left side of her chest. "I just couldn't. I couldn't handle it."

A sharp sigh escaped me. I tried to keep my cool, but she knew too much. She'd seen too much. She meant too much. "That's a load of crap, and besides, I'm over it, all right? It's done. There's no need to pretend anymore, Rach." I told myself I was over it, that I was over us, over the way we ended. The slip of her nickname from my lips, however, suggested otherwise.

"Dustin..."

"Do you remember the last words you said to me? In person."

"You're just like your father."

Rachel's gaze fell to the floor. She closed her eyes and nodded.

"Have I ever hurt you, Rachel?"

Her eyes filled with fresh tears. "I was scared. You know about... about my uncle and... what he did, why I couldn't stay there. I was scared." Of you.

Inside my mind, I, again, said the words she couldn't, finishing her sentence: of you. She was scared of me.

It made sense. I couldn't blame her. I hated that I couldn't blame her. It only left me as the one to be blamed. Rachel was afraid of me. I understood, but I still couldn't wrap my mind around it. I loved her. I would never lay a hand on her if it wasn't out of love. I loved her.

Not more than the ring. If you had, you would have stopped when she asked you to.

"I'm not your uncle." I hated the man. I would die before becoming anything like him. "I never was."

"But when you told me..." Her head lowered, and her voice did the same. "...every time you hit someone, in the ring, you feel... in control..." She whispered the words, hating them, hating what they meant in this context. I did, too. "...and powerful... You said you need it. You said you couldn't stop. It was -- is? -- an addiction. What was I supposed to do, Dustin? What was I supposed to think?"

"You're right."

She didn't hear me. "And the fact that you couldn't even protect your own siblings... How could I have expected you to protect me? That's what a man does."

My face flushed, stinging from the intense heat. It felt like I'd been slapped unpredictably. But it was worse, so much worse than an ordinary hit to the face, because it came from her.