She blinks rapidly, then it’s like something snaps inside her.Her eyes close and she shakes her head.
“I can’t. I can’t talk about that.I can’t talk about it, Dominic.Please don’t make me.”
I stare at her, wondering where that came from.She just switched out on me.
"Candace, is there something more?"
She continues to shake her head."I'm sorry I can't. I promised her I wouldn't say anything."
I narrow my eyes.
Who is she talking about?
She breaks like she did before, and what follows is a replay of how she was in the past.Tears without words.
It’s not until she falls asleep and I watch her in her sleep, curling in on herself, tossing and turning that something strikes me that hit me before.
As she mutters the words, “please don’t hurt me tonight, I’m in pain,” my instincts awaken thoughts I’ve always pushed out of my mind because I didn’t want to believe it.
Not about her. I think about that day I noticed the light leave her eyes.The twinkle was gone, and she was different.
She was thirteen.
I think about how her father warned me away from her and how I stayed away.
I wish I hadn’t because deep down I knew.I just knew that Candace was acting like someone who’d been abused.