Hopeless(81)

“Baby, please. We need to talk and I can’t do it from out here. Please, open the door.”

He knew. The first time he saw me at the grocery store, he knew. And when he saw my bracelet…he knew I got it from Lesslie. He saw me wearing it and he knew.

My grief and confusion soon turn to anger and I push myself up off the floor and walk swiftly to the bathroom door. I unlock it and swing it open. His hands are on either side of the doorframe and he’s looking directly at me, but I feel like I don’t even know who he is. I don’t know what’s real between us and what’s fake anymore. I don’t know what feelings of his are from his life with me or the life with that little girl I used to be.

I need to know. I need to know who she was. Who I was. I swallow my fear and release the question that I’m afraid I already know the answer to. “Who’s Hope?”

His hardened expression doesn’t change, so I ask him again, but louder this time.

“Who the hell is Hope?”

He keeps his eyes locked on mine and his hands placed firmly on the doorframe, but he can’t answer me. For some reason he doesn’t want me to know. He doesn’t want me to remember who I was. I take a deep breath and try to fight back the tears. I’m too scared to say it, because I don’t want to know the answer.

“Is it me?” I ask, my voice shaking and full of trepidation. “Holder…am I Hope?”

He lets out a quick breath at the same time he looks up at the ceiling, almost as if he’s struggling not to cry. He closes his eyes and lays his forehead against his arm, then takes a long, deep breath before looking back at me. “Yes.”

The air around me grows thick. Too thick to take in. I stand still, directly in front of him, unable to move. Everything grows quiet except for what’s inside my head. There are so many thoughts and questions and memories and they’re all trying to take over and I don’t know if I need to cry or scream or sleep or run.

I need to go outside. I feel like Holder and the bathroom and the whole damn house are closing in on me and I need to go outside so there’s room to get everything out of my head. I just want it all out.

I shove past him and he tries to grab my arm, but I yank it out of his grasp.

“Sky, wait,” he yells after me. I keep running until I reach the stairs and I descend them as fast as I can, taking two at a time. I can hear him following me, so I speed up and my foot lands further than I intend for it to. I lose my grip on the rail and fall forward, landing on the floor at the base of the stairs.

“Sky!” he yells. I try to pull myself up but he’s on his knees with his arms around me before I even have the chance. I push against him, wanting him to let go of me so I can just go outside. He doesn’t budge.

“Outside,” I say, breathless and weak. “I just need outside. Please, Holder.”

I can feel him struggling from within, not wanting to release me. He reluctantly pulls me away from his chest and looks down at me, searching my eyes. “Don’t run, Sky. Go outside, but please don’t leave. We need to talk.”

I nod and he releases me, then helps me stand up. When I walk out the front door and onto the lawn, I clasp my hands together behind my head and inhale a huge, cold breath of air. I tilt my head back and look up at the stars, wishing more than anything that I was up there and not down here. I don’t want the memories to keep coming, because with each confusing memory comes an even more confusing question. I don’t understand how I know him. I don’t understand why he kept it from me. I don’t understand how my name could have been Hope, when all I’ve ever remembered being called was Sky. I don’t understand why Karen would tell me that Sky was my birth name if it isn’t. Everything I thought I understood after all these years is unraveling, revealing things that I don’t want to know. I’m being lied to, and I’m terrified to know what it is that everyone’s trying to keep from me.

I stand outside for what feels like forever, attempting to sort through this alone when I have no idea what it is I’m even trying to sort through. I need to talk to Holder and I need to know what he knows, but I’m hurt. I don’t want to face him, knowing he’s been hiding this secret all along. It makes everything that I thought was happening between us nothing but a fa?ade.

I’m emotionally spent and have had all the revelations I can take for one night. I just want to go home and go to bed. I need to sleep on this before we go into the fact of why he didn’t just tell me he knew me as a child. I don’t understand why it was something he even thought he should keep from me.