Leo (A Sign of Love Novel)(56)

"No one ever cared about who I was, just what I could do for them, except you, Evie, and my brother, Seth. And now I had destroyed both of you. I had promised Seth I would take care of him and now he was rotting in some state run facility somewhere and I had no idea where, and I had promised you I would save myself for you, be true to you, and it only took less than a week for me to betray you. I honestly thought about slitting my own wrists I hated myself so much."

I grab a tissue from the box on the table next to my couch and blot my cheeks. "Leo, surely you know now that she took advantage of you, right?" I say quietly.

His face gets hard. "I know what all the psychology books would say about it and yeah, she was wrong. But I could have resisted more. I could have run. I could have… I don't know. But I could have done more than I did. And not only that, Evie, but it didn't stop that day. It happened regularly until the day I moved out and went to college. Even then, she tried to continue things, but I could successfully avoid her then. She claims she's in love with me and that she knew it the minute she saw me at the foster home. How twisted is that? Jesus. I was 15." He scrubs his hand down his face.

I cringe. "You didn't think you could trust me enough to tell me?" I ask softly, a sob making my voice hitch.

"A million times I thought about how I could explain to you what happened. I needed you so desperately, I thought I would die of the longing. But what was I supposed to say? I couldn't even make sense of it myself, much less try to explain it to you. I was just so deeply ashamed.

"And eventually, I considered the longing my penance for being me, someone who destroyed the people he loved. The thing I couldn't get around was what my silence must be doing to you."

He stares straight ahead, stoic. "Eventually though, I convinced myself that being apart, you had a fighting chance. I figured I was broken and that some people can't be fixed, or if they can, it's only by love so big it destroys the fixer. I couldn't destroy you any more than I thought I already had, Evie. I convinced myself that knowing the truth about me would have hurt you more than leaving you alone.

"I just wanted to disappear. But, you also have to understand that I hated myself for leaving. And I suffered as much as you did.

We’re both quiet for several minutes, me still blotting my eyes, absorbing his answer, when he continues.

"I grew six inches the summer I moved to California and I started playing sports, working out. It helped a little as an outlet, and I continued through high school, but it didn't help enough.

"I started drinking, doing drugs, partying, using girls. In part it was all because I despised myself and I craved anything that would numb my pain, but in part it was because it made Lauren livid to see me go through one girl after another and I had grown to despise her, too. She's a manipulative bitch. She was lying to Phil, she…"

I interrupt him. "She's a pedophile, Leo."

He looks at me finally, then. "I guess, but I take responsibility, too. Especially, since it continued and it became our secret from everyone, especially my dad." He looks away, a look of shame crossing his face.

“Did you ever try to tell him?” I ask.

"A couple months after it started, I thought about telling Phil, but I felt so damned guilty and shameful for my own part in the situation. What if he didn't believe me? And what if he did and I destroyed them? Could I live with that, too? Eventually, I just focused on numbing myself.

"And then, even more shameful for me, I wanted to have a family so much. I loved all the things they were giving me, the luxuries, the trips, stuff I had never had before. And that made me hate myself the most." He scrubs his hands down his face.

"Anyway, I was a f*cking mess in high school. I dragged my parents through hell. Lauren always bailed my ass out with my dad, for obvious reasons, and my poor dad just tried to help me. But there was no help for me, not then. He had to think, 'what the f*ck did we do adopting this kid?' a million times, but he never, ever said that to me.

"Things started getting better for me when I moved out to go to college. I finally got some distance from my mom," he lets out a humorless laugh, "and started thinking a little more clearly. My dad and I were hanging out more, outside of the house and I developed a relationship with him - finally. He had to have been doubtful that I'd ever be trustworthy enough to learn the ropes at his company, but about a year after I was out of the house, he came to me and asked me if I'd work with him. I said yes and we started getting even closer. It was nice. He was a good guy. A workaholic and distracted, but decent and good.

"Anyway, when I graduated, he and Lauren bought me a Porsche as a gift. The night of my graduation party, Lauren cornered me in my bedroom and made another one of her passes. I pushed her off of me and she was pissed about it so she lashed out and then she told me that she hadn't wanted to tell me, but that she had gotten information on my brother years ago from the family attorney she had asked to investigate it for me. I was constantly asking her to find any information she could so that I could visit him. She told me that he died three years before of pneumonia but she hadn't told me because she knew it would upset me. Jesus. Upset me? I practically raised that kid from the time he was born. And she just threw it out there because she was mad that didn't want to have sex with her."

He stops and I can't help it, I grab his hand and I squeeze it. He turns his head to me, an expression of pain crosses his features again before he goes on.