The tears in her eyes are hard to look at as she sits here. “Don’t doubt for a second that you don’t have a family full of people that love and support you because you do. They might not be your blood, but they are your heart.”

She takes a second before she speaks on a soft breath, “So that’s it?” referring to her parents.

“I think so.”

Defeat washes over her as her shoulders slump.

“I know it hurts, babe, but I also know that you haven’t done a thing wrong here. It’s them, not you.”

“Can you just take me home?”

“Yeah,” I whisper and help her gather her things before I drive us home.

She’s quiet, and I hate that I had to dampen her night, but I swore to her that there would never being anything that I would withhold from her again.

It’s cold and rainy when I open the garage so we don’t get wet. Walking into the house, everything is dark and quiet until a faint, “Meow,” from outside filters in.

Cocking my head at Candace and giving her a knowing look, she knits her brows together, silently pleading with me.

“No.”

“Ryan, it’s freezing outside,” she says.

“We’re not bringing that stray cat in here.”

“You’re being mean. She’s a nice cat. I’ve never seen her be aggressive,” she defends.

Shaking my head at her, she pleads, “It’s pouring out there.”

Candace is giving me the most pitiful look, and knowing she’s already feeling defeated tonight, I give in and sigh out, “Fine.”

She tilts her head and questions, “Really?” for clarity.

“For tonight.”

She doesn’t waste a second when she runs to the front door and opens it, bending down and picking up the tiny cat who huddles in her arms. I smile at her as she coos and starts walking over to me.

“I’m gonna give her a bath.”

“What?! No, you’re not. The cat is gonna sleep in the garage,” I tell her.

“She’s filthy.”

“You do know cats hate water, right?” I say, but she ignores me as she starts walking back to the guest bedroom.

Not trusting this animal in the slightest, I follow her back and proceed to help her grab towels and run a little water in the tub. This cat is terrified as shit, so I take it out of her hands and hold it while it squeals and writhes in fear as Candace washes her. But it’s when she begins thrashing in my hands that she slips out of my hold, jumping out of the tub and tears through the house, no sound but her claws clicking against the wooden floors.

“Fuck!”

Chasing after her, all I hear is Candace laughing, still in the bathroom.

“Help me find her!” I call out while I make my way upstairs.

I follow the dreadful meows to the bedroom and find her under the bed. Getting on my knees, I peek my head under, and see her curled against the wall in the middle of the bed.

“Come here,” I say in a singsong voice, mocking my liking for her. Giving the floor a couple light taps, I call again, “Come here,” when I see Candace’s head poke down from the other side, giggling.

“This shit isn’t funny,” I tell her.

She rolls her eyes at me, and then calls to the cat, but she still doesn’t budge. “Great,” she huffs out. “You’ve scared her.”

“What?”

“She knows you don’t like her.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” I say as we continue to go back and forth with our heads underneath the bed. “You’re the one that tortured this thing because you just had to give it a bath.”

“I didn’t torture her,” she argues.

Tapping the floor a few more times, the cat slowly inches to me, and I can’t help but look over to Candace with a victorious grin as I reach out and pick up the cat.

When we reemerge from underneath the bed and get up, cat in my arms, she stands, hands on hips, miffed.

We manage to get the cat dried off, and after everything is cleaned up, we head to bed. Lying there together, Candace stares at the cat that is sleeping down by our feet, purring softly.

“She’s so cute.”

“You’re so cute,” I tell her, and when she looks at me, she smiles.

“I bet she was the runt of the litter,” she says. “She’s so small.”

“Hmm,” I hum as I pull her closer to me.

“I wanna keep her.”

“I knew this was coming.”

“What?” she questions when she tilts her head up to me. “You can’t tell me that you don’t think Tatiana is adorable.”

Laughing, I question, “What did you just call her?”

“Tatiana.”

“I’m not calling her that,” I say firmly, refusing to call the cat a name like that.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s way too girly.”

Candace laughs at me when she says, “Well . . . she is a girl, Ryan.”

“She’s a cat,” I say. “And where did you get Tatiana from?”

“She’s a famous ballerina that I’ve always loved. I like the name.”

“What’s her last name? Maybe it’ll sound better than Tatiana.”

Candace answers through her giggles, “Riabouchinska.”

“What the hell is that?”

“She’s Russian.”

Sliding down in the bed to face her, I kiss her lips before saying, “I’ll call her Ana.”

She gives me a sweet grin, asking, “So we can keep her?”

“No. She can stay here until we can figure out what we’re gonna do with her. But we’re taking her to the vet as soon as we wake up to get her checked out before we bring her back here.”

I kiss her again, slowly, lingering against her soft lips when she begins to mumble, “I’m glad I had this with you.”

When I pull back, she adds, “Everything about today . . . I’m glad it was all with you.”

Rolling on top of her, I spend a great deal of time letting her know, in my own way, how much I love her as I thoroughly kiss her.

50

“Baby, make sure you leave enough food out for Ana,” I call out to Candace who is upstairs.

The seasons have gone by fast and now we are packing up, getting ready to head to my mom’s for Christmas. We were just there for Thanksgiving a few weeks back. I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time with Candace because she was too busy plotting Black Friday shopping tactics with my mom and aunts. It was fun to see her so into it, finding deals on toys she thought we should buy the kids for Christmas. She left me at home while she spent the whole night and half of the next day shopping just to wind up sleeping for the rest of the afternoon.

“Do you have everything?” Candace asks me as she walks down the stairs.

“Yeah, it’s all in the car.”

“Did you give Tatiana her new toy?”

“Yes, babe,” I sigh. Candace insists that we buy that cat a new toy every time we leave her for a few days. Even though the cat has been living with us for over a month now, I still haven’t fully agreed to letting it stay with us permanently. Life has just been crazy with Candace’s performance schedule around the holidays; she’s lucky she was allowed this time off to go out of town. Plus my photography has really picked up, and I’m now in several galleries in the city. Needless to say, trying to contact vets and whatnot hasn’t been high on the list of things to do. I know she loves that cat, and it’s so funny to see how they mirror each other. Tiny, quiet, and both very timid. I can’t lie, the cat is adorable, and when Candace isn’t around, she spends a good amount of time in my lap. But I love teasing Candace about my loathing relationship with Ana, so I keep up the charade because she’s so fuckin’ cute when she gets all defensive over that cat.

Picking up Candace’s coat, I help slide it over her arms before we head out into the blistering cold. Once I help her into the car, I hop in, blast the heat, and start heading down to Oregon.

“Jase called this morning,” she says as she takes my phone to sync it through the speakers. “Their connecting flight got delayed and they didn’t make it to Ohio until after midnight.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah. And then it took them over an hour to get to Mark’s house. Said they are having a horrible snow storm.”

When Candace selects The xx to play and sets the phone down, I take her hand in my lap, and ask, “So what do you wanna do while we’re away?”

As she leans her head back against the seat, she responds with, “Nothing. I’m so worn out, all I want to do is lay around in my pajamas.”

“So I get to keep you hidden away in my bed the whole time?” I say with a smirk, and she smiles back at me.

“No, but I think lying around, watching movies, and eating are all my top priorities.”

Bringing her hand up to my lips, I kiss her knuckles as we sit back and listen to ‘Angels.’

“I always think of you when I hear this song,” she murmurs as she gets comfortable in her seat.

I give her hand a light squeeze as I listen to the love song that is laced with a haunting melody.

Candace and I continue to work together with Dr. Christman, still focusing on the events of that night with Jack, but since running into Charles, we’ve been discussing more of our childhoods and how they’ve impacted us as adults. I’ve learned a lot about what it was like for Candace growing up and how she taught herself to shut down emotionally so she wouldn’t be forced into feeling worthless and sad all the time. She learned how to bury it and hide it away, to just move on through life by avoiding. But I do the same thing. Although we’ve dealt with two very different sets of parents, we both used masks to cope.

Candace still deals with anxiety around crowds. She continues to wake from night terrors, although not as often as she did a few months ago. I have a feeling these things will stick with her, along with the blame she carries. She’s still my same Candace, but she’s beginning to settle with herself, no longer living inside of her chaotic head all of the time, constantly haunted and shadowed. Her personality is starting to brighten, and I love seeing bits and pieces of the Candace that was so far destroyed when I first met her.