Sophie Oak - Pure Bliss

She’d watched them light up. The frail, filmy curtains had caught fire quickly, orange-and-red flames blooming and bouncing around. It had been like a dance. She’d thought for a moment that she should stay and watch. The world had been so cruel.

But something stronger had taken over. The world had been cruel because she’d allowed it.

“I walked out. I didn’t wake Christian. I just walked away and didn’t look back. I took the car and exchanged it for another one outside of Little Rock. And then I wandered for years until I came here.”

“What did you do with the money, Hope?” Noah asked.

James had gotten up. He started to pace, his hands on his hips.

God, she didn’t want to get into this, but she’d promised honesty. Trev’s words came back to her. He’d been right, of course. Words had power and holding the story deep inside herself had taken her to the brink this time. The only way to get herself back was to tell the truth, to let the poison out even though it would cost her their love. She’d never really had it in the first place. They hadn’t known her.

“I drank most of it. I stayed in motels and I drank because it seemed like a good thing to do. I had never had so much as a glass of wine until the night after I left Christian. I was only twenty, but I managed to get into a bar and some man bought me a drink and then two, and then I wasn’t seeing Elaine anymore. I wasn’t seeing Christian. I woke up the next morning in a strange bed, and I ran to the next town.”

“Fuck all, Hope, do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” James asked, his eyes narrowed.

She shrugged. James, it seemed, was beginning to get the picture. “I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. I thought the cops would find me. I thought Jerry might figure out how much money I had taken and come after me. But mostly I just wanted to erase that picture in my head. I wanted to erase me.”

“You know Trev from AA, don’t you?” Noah asked. He seemed calmer than James, but then distance could do that. Hope decided Noah was doing the right thing. He was distancing.

“I only just met him, but he’s been very kind to me. He’s right about what he said. I needed this. Honesty is the only way to stay sane. And it’s the only way to live. You needed to know this. I spent years trying to find a way to eradicate myself. I used alcohol and sex to do it. Nate found me one night. I’d passed out in my car. He brought me home, and he and Callie and Zane sobered me up and got me to a meeting. Nate knows about Christian. Zane and Callie know, too, though I avoided talking about all the sex stuff. I couldn’t be innocent anymore. It was stupid, but I wanted to obliterate the idiot girl who married a monster and didn’t even know it.”

A silence fell over the room, and Hope swallowed down her misery. She’d told them. She’d done it, and there was a certain peace that came with it. The worst was over. She was prepared for their reactions. They would stumble over words and try not to look her in the eyes. They would be gentle, because they were good men, but they would ease her out of their lives.

And she would make it easy on them because she loved them. If she could go back and change things, she would. She would have made all the right choices to bring her here to this place in the right way, but she couldn’t. The past had caught her, and she was done.

She took a deep breath and tried her damnedest to look calm. “So, if you don’t mind, I should probably get back to the station. If this really is Christian, I need to talk to Nate about what to do next.”

James walked straight up to her. He took her shoulders in both hands and shook her lightly. “You are never leaving this ranch again, do you understand me? After that story, if you think I will allow you to step one foot off our land, you’re insane.”

“James.” She couldn’t let him do this. “I need to get on with my life, and you and Noah need to move on with yours.”

“What are you talking about?” He didn’t release her, but he turned back to his brother. “Noah, what the hell is wrong with her?”

Noah stood, a deeply sad look in his eyes. “Guilt.”

“About what?” James asked.

Had he not listened? “Everything, James. Did you hear a word I said? I was willfully ignorant. I can look back now and see all the signs. They were there, but I didn’t want to see them. I wanted the world to be sugarcoated, and Elaine died because of it. Whatever she did, she didn’t deserve to die. I left Christian to die. I didn’t even think about getting him out. I took that money. It was blood money, and I still took it. I didn’t go to the cops. I can’t even tell you about the years before I came to Bliss because they were a blur of alcohol. I’m everything Christian didn’t want me to be. I’m a slut and an alcoholic and, in the end, I’m a coward because I never stood up.”

James turned back to her, his fingers tightening. There was a tic in his jaw, and then she saw it. A single tear balancing on his eyelashes. “I ever hear you talk that way again, and that spanking you got earlier will feel like paradise. I will tear you up. You listen to me and you listen good. There ain’t nothing wrong with you, girl.”

“I slept around.” She had to make him understand.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with you, girl.” Softer this time, but just as insistent.

“I’m an alcoholic.” She was breaking under his gaze. She’d held up when she’d been sure he would turn from her, but seven little words were finding the cracks in the walls she’d built. Seven words were splitting her open and exposing her.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with you, girl.” Noah came behind her, his body crowding her, his hand in her hair.

“Don’t you say it.” It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. After everything she’d done, everything that had happened. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let it happen. She didn’t deserve it. Forgiveness. She didn’t deserve it.

James pulled her close. The anger had fled his tone in favor of a loving, peaceful sigh. “There ain’t nothing wrong with you, Hope.”

“There ain’t nothing wrong with you, love.” Noah whispered the words against her ear.

And she was broken. The flood that had been dammed for years, that she had bottled up and fought against with only self-loathing and alcohol as her weapons, escaped like a cork popping open after years of tension. Horror flooded her, and she saw it all again. Felt it again. But she could cry this time. She could scream when before she’d been silent. It came out of her in a long wail, and they held her, surrounding her with safety.

She cried for the child she’d been, for the woman she was, for the person she could never be. She screamed for the injustices she’d seen. She let it out, her voice ringing through the room. Tears poured out, and they said it over and over again.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with you, girl.”

They said it, taking turns. They whispered it and spoke it out loud, and slowly it began to seep in, their words forming a promise she had never been able to make.

She was strong. She would survive. She was worthy.

They followed her to the floor when her legs gave way, never leaving her for an instant. She cried until she had nothing left, and she was empty.

So how was it that she felt so very full?

She sagged against James, his strength a welcome anchor now that the storm had passed. Noah leaned against her. The room was quiet, only the sound of their mingled breaths disturbing the silence. She closed her eyes and savored the sweetness of the moment.

“You’re still here.”

“I’m not going anywhere, baby.” James tenderly forced her head up. “I told you, we’re getting married. Now the way I understand it, you’re not legally attached to this dickwad, but I think Noah and I should make damn sure he understands that you’re divorced.”