Page 53 of All Our Ghosts

Holden is never going to believe me.

Dex slides the chair out next to me, sitting himself down in it. I can feel his dark eyes roaming my features. “O’Neil if you don’t calm the fuck down, I’m kicking you out.” Even Dex can feel the tension in the room crackling and splitting down the wood table like a fire.

I suck in a breath, my eyes falling closed at the idea of reliving everything. The last thing I want to do is go down fucked up memory lane with men I hardly know. I don’t want any of them to look at me like some kicked puppy. I’m not that person anymore, or I hope I’m not.

“He’s lying.” I sigh, running my hands over my face.

Cole lets out a long breath and I hope it’s to calm himself down. I need him calm. I need myself calm and the only thing grounding me right now is the man I’ve barely spoken more than a few words to sitting next to me.

“What do you mean?” his deep voice drops into a whisper.

A glass of water appears in front of me before the door clicks shut. Trey takes a chair across from us, leaning back and I can feel his glare boring into me. Cole leans against the window behind him, large arms crossing over his chest.

My eyes slide closed, images of that night bubbling just below the surface.

“Jeremy is my ex-fiance. That much was true.” I say so quietly that I’m not even sure if they hear me. “But I never burned down that townhome. I loved–” I suck in a breath, my chin trembling as the words get stuck in my throat, “I sold it after everything happened.”

“Youarerunning.” Cole speaks, shaking his head.

“Not for the reasons you think,” I finally look up at him, “Iwaspregnant with his child.”

Dex tilts his head as I glance over to him watching his brows pull together, his jaw ticking. “You don’t have a childnowdo you?”

I shake my head. Tears bite at the corners of my eyes again as I breathe in, “I had a miscarriage after–” I want to be anywhere else right now. The crushing weight of the bottom of the ocean would be more comfortable than the suffocating memories flooding me.

None of them say anything, as if the weight of my words is finally sinking in.

“The man on the screen?” I nod my chin to the TV, “The grief-stricken, worried boyfriend? It’s an act. It always has been.”

“What did he do to you?” Dex asks. Only this time, I can hear his teeth grinding against each other as he speaks. Somethingwithin the way his jaw ticks and the dark flames flicker behind the dark brown in his eyes tell me he already knows.

A laugh bubbles from my throat as the night begins to replay in my head. “Everything… anything that he could that wasn’t obvious. I made lasagna that night… he didn’t want lasagna.”

Dex’s gaze flickers to the two men sitting and standing across from us. “I didn’t fold his socks correctly. I ate way too much of the tiny portions he would only allow me to eat.” It’s like a different person is talking as I stare at the wolf engraved into the wooden table. “So I was punished.”

“Punished?” he asks gently, my eyes flicker to his.

I nod, “A slap across the back of the head usually, that was his quickest and less cruel of punishments.”

“What happened?” Cole asks, “To make you run?”

“What did I fucking tell you!” A loud crash echoes through the kitchen. I’ve backed myself into the same corner I always did. The one that allows the dining room table to separate me and the rage. “I said this goddamn morning that I wanted anything but fucking pasta!”

My eyes squeeze shut, his voice ringing through my ears.

“I ran from him that night instead of taking it like I usually did, but things were different. He hadn’t been cruel since we found out about the baby. Well, not as cruel. But I was stuck and when he finally got a hold of me,” my voice breaks but everything inside of me went numb, “it wasn’t until I got to the hospital that I found out I had lost the baby.”

Dex’s head drops as the three of them stare at me. This is what I was afraid of, I don’t want to be pitied or to be felt sorry for. I want to forget everything and just… live whatever resemblance of a life I have left.

“I’m sorry,” the first apology comes from Cole and my eyes flicker to him. The rage is gone and replaced by the softest shade of blue in his eyes, “why didn’t you just tell–”

“To complete strangers? Would you want to relive your worst nightmare?” I cut him off, “I just wanted to get away Cole. I wanted to live my life without the judgment and the lies that everyone was so quick to believe.”

“What about your family?” He asks, his brows knitting together when I laugh.

“What family?” I shake my head, “Jeremy had my mother, if you can even call her that, wrapped around his finger the moment she laid eyes on him. She’s dating the doctor who helped me that day. They’re off on some island in the Bahamas. She hasn’t been my mother for a very long time.”

“So you’re alone?” The question comes from Trey this time.

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