Temptation

6 - Madden

My mind is going a mile a minute, my heart feels like it's about to punch through my chest. My conscience screaming at me not to spill my deepest secret, not to tell this man I met only hours ago what brings me here. I can feel the fire in my cheeks as they brighten in colour. I pat the cushion next to me on the couch, and he sits patiently waiting for me to feel comfort in him.

There is something about his eyes that tells me that I can trust this man. His reputation is not perfect as I've seen on TV and he has his fair share of run ins with the law but because of who he is, he can afford those 'run ins'. Yet, Hero sitting here in front of me, I do not fear my safety as I have in my past. I feel comfort in this stranger, a stranger I somehow know so well.

I take a deep breath in and I explain my story:

I was in my third year at Brown University, my hometown. I met this boy who appeared to be so sweet and kind but 3 months later, after we started dating, he started to hurt me. In my dorm room, he'd come in the middle of the night and he'd literally beat the shit out of me. I'd wake up to his hands wrapped around my neck, gasping for air. I was so afraid that if I left him, it would get so much worse. He notices my hands shaking, so he holds them in his. It was the day before my final exam for my Sociology class when he saw me studying in the library and another boy was sitting across from me. A boy I didn't know. When we got into his car, he hit me and kept hitting until I couldn't see out of my right eye. My face was covered in blood and I had had enough. That night, I lay in the hospital bed and I called my mother to tell her everything that happened to me and she came to pick me up. I thought I was safe in my childhood home. I start sobbing. He tells me that I don't have to tell him, but I feel like I need to. Weeks later, I went out for groceries with my mother, leaving my father and my younger sister at home. We were only gone an hour. But when we came back, he was standing outside with a match in hand that was burnt down to its core. My childhood home was burning right in front of my eyes, my sister and my father inside. My mother was screaming, her heart ripping out of her chest. I called the police they came as fast as they could, but my mother couldn't bare to wait any longer. She told me not to follow her. She just told me to stay behind. He ran before the cops showed up. Coward. By the time the fire was out and controlled enough for the fireman to go in, it was too late. I pause to take a long breath before I can finish my horror of a past, the past of the broken girl who sits before him, the past I'm hiding from. My dad and sister burned to death tied to our own dining room chairs. My mother died, trying to untie my sister and bring her to safety but she suffered from terrible burns and smoke inhalation.

Days later, I was brought here to Vancouver. They couldn't afford to protect me back home, so they shipped me here. They never found him. He's still out there.

I breathe out, as if I've been holding in this breath for a long time and I wait for his reaction. His hands still holding mine and I don't want him to let go.