Page 45 of Kings Don't Break
…and the fact that he isn’t in this moment is what disrupts my spirit the most. It’s what makes me speechless and unable to process anything.
He means it when he says he’s where he wants to be.
“I guess it’s a sign of how fucked up I am,” I sigh. “The fact that I can’t fathom why you’d want to be around me. Even knowing how close we used to be.”
“Ever consider I like being around you? I’ve gone ten damn years without the privilege, and now I’m taking advantage.”
“That’s a much needed boost to my self-esteem.”
He rubs the ball of my foot out of what could only be absentminded affection. “How’d it happen, Kori? How’d you wind up with him?”
“Blake—”
“You left for college—you left me and everything behind. I always imagined you’d be some engineer working for some multibillion-dollar company. I always hoped you wouldn’t be dating some guy equally as great as you are. But never expected somebody like… him.”
“That makes two of us. Ken wasn’t in my plans. Dad passed my sophomore year in college. I was hours away from home. Mom was in Houston, and my brother had moved overseas for a work opportunity. I felt so alone. I was a mess.”
“You could’ve reached out to me. I would’ve been there.”
“I know you would’ve. And maybe that’s why I didn’t. Because it just felt complicated going back. I had convinced myself I only wanted to look forward.”
Blake’s disappointment drips from him. “Then what?”
“One day, when I was visiting Dad’s grave, there he was. Ken appeared with a flower. He offered his condolences. He was so kind, so compassionate… so different from the guys at school. He was a rookie on the force. He mentioned he’d seen me around the campus area when responding to a disturbance. He said he just had to talk to me,” I explain. “I’ve wondered if… maybe it was all a lie. He saw a young woman at a low point and knew he could sink his hooks into me.”
“When did he put his hands on you?”
“That’s the thing. Ken wasn’t always abusive. At least not physically. I think—on some level—he was always emotionally manipulative. Always a little controlling. But it was over small things. So I brushed it off. Stuff like what I wore and if a guy was too friendly. He would guilt trip me. Make me feel like I was doing it on purpose to hurt him.”
“And you’d feel bad about it,” Blake predicts.
I nod, feeling foolish at the memories. “You were my only serious boyfriend. Anyone else like Jordan was never serious and didn’t count. I was so busy with school my freshman year of college I barely spoke to another guy, let alone dated. I had no idea what Ken was doing. I was too inexperienced and vulnerable to catch on. Then, summer before senior year, he proposed. I told him I wanted to wait a while. A few years to get my career started. But that wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. We had a huge fight about it. It was maybe the first time he really got hurtful with me—as in raised his voice and lost his temper. He smashed things and stormed out. I should’ve known. But then I started questioning myself. Maybe I was being unreasonable.”
“I can tell where this is going,” he says. His warm touch on my feet has become soothing even as I rehash my trauma. His palm slides along the pad of my feet and gives me the encouragement I need to keep going.
“We compromised—or I thought it was a compromise. We waited ’til graduation, then we got married. I was twenty-two. I moved into Ken’s home, because he said his home was my home now. I believed him.” I pause to let out another breath that feels painful to my lungs. “I did get a job initially. I was working as a mechanical engineer for a local automotive company. That was around the time Mama’s health took a steep decline. Natural causes but also the trauma from losing Dad didn’t help. Ken insisted she move in with us. It seemed like such a selfless sacrifice on his part. But I didn’t realize the trap he was setting.
“When her health got so bad she could barely be alone, Ken suggested I quit my job. I could take care of her full time. He argued it’d save us the costs of a full-time home nurse or nursing facility. We moved a couple times—always for his career—but always to places that felt more isolating. It became normal that my only contact each day was with Ken and Mama. He’d grow angry if I spoke too long to anybody else. Especially any other men. Once, he even got mad at me for flirting with the mailman. Flirting—that’s the word he used.”
“I’m guessing he still made it your fault.”
“Every time. We started trying for a family. It was mostly Ken’s idea. He wanted to project a family image for his career. We struggled to conceive. The doctor’s were puzzled. I took so many tests trying to figure out what was wrong with me. But Ken refused to be tested too. He insisted it was me. That was around the time he really started changing—it’s like he began to hate me because I couldn’t complete his perfect picture of what life could be. The first afternoon he ever put his hands on me, we’d come from another clinic and gotten into an argument about his refusal to take the test for his sperm count. He backhanded me and I saw stars. Then he immediately apologized. He was horrified. He cried about it. Got down on his knees and begged me to forgive him. Said he couldn’t live without me.”
Blake’s anger has emerged. He’s tensed up. Even his grip on my foot has gone from gentle and affectionate to stiff. He’s restraining himself, but it’s by a thin thread.
“I believed him,” I mumble. “And… and from there it slowly escalated. It was over a few years. For a while he would apologize—he would seem so sorry. Then the apologies stopped coming. He’d only grow angrier. To the point sometimes even my presence seemed to enrage him. I took the blame for so many things. So many times he’d fly into a rage, and I didn’t even understand what he wanted. By the time it got so bad he was leaving me… well, like you saw me that night… I just… I felt so defeated. So beatdown emotionally I couldn’t get back up. Where would Mama and I even go? How would we survive?”
“You could’ve come here. You could’ve turned up at any time,” Blake says, catching my gaze. My heart aches as we stare at each other and I feel his sincerity. “I wish you would’ve. I wish you’d come sooner.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
And it’s the truth—I do wish I’d had enough self-worth to leave Ken sooner than I did. That I’d stuck to my decision the few times I tried to leave instead of letting him fool me into returning home again.
“Abuse can be funny,” I say, sitting up on the sofa. My smile’s a dark one, almost bitter. “You normalize it to make sense of it. The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to leave. After a while, it just becomes this part of your existence that you learn to live with, because escape just feels more and more out of reach. More impossible.”
Blake opens his arms to draw me into him. He kisses the top of my head. “I get it. How easy it can be to just… swallow it down. Just to survive another day. For years I told myself Bill’s temper toughened me up. Only a coward would cry.”
“I remember.”
