Free Salvation by Noelle Adams Page B

even as the harsh words came pouring out. To escape, I carried my nearly empty water bottle into the kitchen. I dumped the remainder into the sink and put the plastic bottle in the recycling. Then I stood in front of the counter for a minute and took a few ragged breaths.
    Gideon was still sitting on my couch. He hadn’t moved. I couldn’t seem to get rid of him the way I wanted.
    Finally, I went back, carrying a new bottle of water.
    He was watching me silently as I walked over and sat back down on the couch beside him.
    “You’re not going to push me away by saying things like that,” he said after a moment. “So you might as well not even try.”
    I knew he was telling me the truth, so I thought for a minute and took a different approach. “Despite what everyone says, pouring out all your innermost feelings doesn’t really fix things. I did all that at the Center. It didn’t help.”
    “See, I don’t think you were really talking through your feelings even then. You were just giving people what they expected.”
    I had absolutely no idea how he knew that. But it was true. It was entirely true. And I resented it. “You have no right to assume something like that about me.”
    “Maybe not. But I do.” He pushed a hand through his thick hair. It was getting longer now, and his fingers mussed it so that it stuck out in various directions. “Diana, I’m really not trying to make you mad. I just want you to be honest. No matter what the truth is.”
    “What good will that do? What possible good will spilling out all kinds of horrible things do, except make you feel horrible too?”
    He gave another rough burst of sound—either bitter amusement or disbelief. “Do you think I don’t feel horrible right now? I know it’s not going to fix things, but—if nothing else—maybe you won’t feel so alone with it.”
    All the anger dropped out of me like the air from a popped balloon. I was shaking inside and out as I stared down at my twisted hands in my lap. “I am alone with it.”
    “No, you’re not.” His voice was so loud and so impassioned that I almost jumped. And then I almost jumped again when he reached over and placed one hand over both of mine. “No, you’re not, Diana. Don’t you dare think so. I was there.”
    I couldn’t possibly shape a word or else something unspeakable would shatter to pieces inside me. I just kept staring down at his big hand on both of mine and shook my head.
    He used his other hand to tilt my head up so I had to look at him. “I was there, Diana. I was there with you. I couldn’t stop it, but I was in that room with you.”
    But they’d pulled me out of the room. They’d taken me away from him. He’d been beaten and bloody on the floor, when they’d dragged me away. And then I’d been alone.
    I still was.
    “I’m still right here,” he murmured, softer now. Almost broken.
    But I was broken too. More broken than him.
    I pulled my hands away from his, and he had no choice but to draw back.
    I stuffed all of the shuddering pain back into a little ball where I could contain it and was hit with a way to deal with this conversation, to take away its power. “Okay,” I said, finding my voice. “Fine. We’re supposed to be friends? We’re supposed to share things? Then that goes both ways. How much honest sharing have you done about your issues?”
    He blinked, obviously not following the shift. “What?”
    “You were undercover with monsters for eight months. How many of your innermost feelings about all of that have you poured out—to me or anyone else? Have you found that it makes you feel better to talk about all the things you saw, all the things you experienced, all the things you had to do during that time?”
    I was on a roll now, the words coming to me like a rushing stream. Gideon just stared as I went on.
    “You can’t tell me it didn’t make you sick, to be one of them for so long. You can’t tell me that you didn’t sometimes wonder if you