[Editing]
He's the grumpy CEO of the company she works for. The very boss, no one gets enough words with before he pushes them far away. And then Sierra Bloom happens. She's the complete opposite of him, and he hates it. But something about her is w...
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Right in this moment, I hate myself more than I've ever had.
Seeing Sierra cry, seeing her fight an internal battle with herself...it breaks every piece of me.
I want nothing more but to hold her in my arms, tell her everything's alright and that she's safe with me. I want nothing more but to take her pain away and give her the happiest life she could ever have.
I want nothing more but to love this woman for the rest of my life, take care of her, be there for her and protect her with all I have.
Minutes pass. Minutes neither of us speaks in. I'm still holding my hands up for her to see, for her to know that I will not go beyond her boundaries. I won't touch her, even if I want to pull her into the biggest hug there is.
"He was tall," Sierra sighs. Her hands are shaking. She looks down at them, not meeting my eyes. But that's alright. "He had a couple of tattoos on his arms, and he smelled of cigarettes and whiskey. He..." her shoulders shake as she starts to cry even more.
I want to speak, tell her it's okay and she doesn't have to continue. But she has to. She has to share her pain, speak it out into the open before it's eventually eating her alive.
"He had dark hair, always wore a suit when he came over," she says. Sierra isn't talking to me, she's laying information out to herself. "He was strong, intimidating. He had a firm grip when he touched my arm and dragged me down the hall. His hands were so big, they closed around my arm."
Sierra looks up at me, her eyes meeting mine. They're filled with so much pain, yet she looks numb. Like talking about all this is killing every single emotion she has. And they're red, so red and puffy, you'd think she'd done drugs for days.
"I was three years old." Sierra lifts her hands to mine, slowly pushing them down, showing me that it's okay, that I no longer have to hold them up. "Cody wasn't there when he came. And I always wondered why he only ever showed up when Cody went to a friend's house."
"I would be asleep, and then feel a hand grip onto me tightly. He would drag me out of my bed, drag me down the hall and force me into the bathroom with him."
Sierra takes my hand in hers, interlocking our fingers. She holds my hand, looking at them instead of looking at me. But I can't blame her.
"He would beat me, call me names of which most I don't remember. He would speak a whole different language, Russian, I think. He didn't touch me otherwise, at least not that I know of it. But he made me watch. Watch as he took a shower and...did things."
Her grip on my hand tightens. She lets out a strangled breath but she tries to steady it, tries to breathe normally.
"I was too young to understand what he did. Too young to really comprehend it as well. I know he never made me 'help' him. He used to say that a lot. 'When you're older, malyshka, then you'll be helping me', he said it every time. But by the time I turned four, he wasn't coming over anymore. I don't know where he went, if he had died or just went away, I wouldn't know."
