Free Damage Done by Virginia Duke

he wasn’t ready. He could’ve been ready for the
gala, but he wasn’t ready to do this with her now.
    He wanted to reach over and yank her by the hair, pull her
face to his, curse her for all the pain she’d caused. Curse her for moving on
with her life and starting a new family, for finding love somewhere else.
    He wanted to punish her, make her understand, show her what
true suffering really felt like. It wasn’t the tears she’d cried over her
parents divorce or having to put her fucking horse to sleep. It was the torment
he’d felt after losing her, it was the tragedy he was living through now. And
she deserved to experience it for herself.
    But like an ambush, his chest tightened, and his body
betrayed him, a magnet pulling him in her direction. He needed to be nearer to
her, holding her. Smelling her, touching her.
    Rachel.
    The long brown curls brushed against her bare arms as she
stood to greet him with cruel green eyes, and he nervously reached up to push
his hair back, desperate not to lose control, to reach out and hurt her.
    Or touch her delicate pink mouth, her ivory skin. Would she
still feel as soft against him? Had she always been so beautiful? No, she was
more beautiful now. And he was bewildered by how the sight of her still managed
to hold him hostage.
    This was the same bitch who destroyed him, and when he'd
finally found a restful place where she wouldn't pervade his life, when he'd
finally stopped looking for her everywhere he went, stopped imagining how
things could be now- she'd shown up again.
    But she was different now. She seemed afraid, wounded. And
she screamed at him.
    Fuck me?
    Then she ran out, left him again with his grief and a
renewed promise of a life filled with loneliness and heartache.
     
    ***
     
    Rachel ran the entire way to the car in her heels, jumping
over the cracked, uneven concrete on the sidewalk. It took her ten minutes to
catch her breath as she drove to Houston, straight to the Galleria where she
could disappear into a sea of people, smell the fried chicken coming from the
fast food shops, hear the laughter of the children on the ice rink, and maybe
get her hands to stop shaking.
    Running into her piece of shit high school boyfriend hadn't
been on her agenda today, but she felt pretty good about it since she’d yelled,
“Fuck you,” when he tried to be nice to her. Even if she’d run out like a spaz
after she’d said it.
    She was still shaking though, she needed to pull it
together before lunch.
    Rachel couldn't afford to screw up lunch with this
potential donor. If they agreed to sponsor the fundraising gala, she might be
able to bring in enough revenue to break last year's record, and they really
needed to hire somebody to help coordinate the volunteers. Rachel didn’t want
to do it anymore. She’d started the ReachingOut website to help victims who
didn't have anywhere else to go, nobody to call, no way to talk to people who'd
been there and done that. The internet was the perfect forum for people to
share without the fear of their neighbors learning their dirty secrets, without
having to show people the bruises, without having to listen to how stupid they
were for staying. She'd lived and breathed that organization for ten years. But
she couldn’t listen to the damage that poured into her office anymore. She was
burning out, but she’d never leave, so if she was going to build out her
organization the way she dreamed, she’d need more help.
    If she could just focus on the administrative side of
things, that would be manageable. They needed new blood, somebody who could
deal with the late night emails, stories about women losing their children to
abusive husbands in divorces, people being thrown through sliding glass doors,
broken arms, rape.
    No wonder she never slept. She used to feel like she was
making a difference, but for every woman she knew who escaped a violent
relationship, she'd known six who hadn't. It weighed on her, and seeing Dylan
had