Page 60 of Forever Only Once

She frowned again. “Why would I want to leave? I need you to tell me.” And then her eyes widened, and she cursed. I kind of liked it when she swore. It was hot.

“What happened to me and what you and Chris probably just dealt with are two separate things. I know not everybody has the same experiences as I did, and not everyone would react the same if they went through similar experiences to mine. However, I know you. I know you’re not violent. Let’s go inside. I’ll take care of your hand, and you can tell me what happened with Chris. I knew you were going to talk with him today, but I didn’t know it was going to be an all-out confrontation.”

My heart hammered in my chest, and I leaned down and pressed my lips against hers. I knew my beard rubbed against her chin, and she smiled because I knew it sometimes tickled her.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” I whispered.

She blinked, her eyes filling for a moment before that went away as if I had imagined it.

“I don’t know why you think you don’t deserve me,” she whispered, and then I sighed and let her into the house.

“So,” I whispered.

“Come on, let’s ice your hand.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“It’ll give me something to do because all I want to do is baby you and make you feel better, and I’m really not good at that. If you can’t tell, I’m really only nurturing when it comes to my students, and even then, I’m not very good at it.”

I laughed softly.

“I’m really not good at this either,” I said honestly.

“You don’t have to be,” she said.

“Now, tell me what happened.”

I went through it all, and her eyes narrowed as I kept talking, her cheeks pinking with what I hoped was anger. Or maybe embarrassment for me. After all, I had hit someone today.

“That fucker.”

I barked out a laugh. “Really?”

“Why wouldn’t it be really? I cannot believe him. That is such a lie to try and save face. I can’t believe he would say that about Arden. I mean, I’ve only seen her on FaceTime, but she seems like a wonderful person, and she doesn’t deserve whatever he said about her. Hell, I want to hit him, too. And we know I’m never going to hit anybody. Not after what happened.”

The fact that she could say anything like that floored me.

“Maybe,” I whispered.

“Thomas was more emotionally abusive to me than anything. He belittled me, made me feel like I was nothing. He took my phone when I wasn’t listening to him. He cut me off from friends. I didn’t speak to Myra for my entire marriage because he thought she wasn’t good enough for me. My best friend wasn’t good enough. He cut me off from Paris even during school, so she thought I was a stuck-up bitch, even though he was the one that said she was. He did all of that, and I didn’t realize it until it was too late. He slapped me on my stomach and my thighs when I wasn’t skinny enough for him. He pulled me by my hair that one time, but never again because I flinched in public afterwards.

“He did all of that, and I hadn’t even realized he was doing it until it was too late. I became a statistic, and I didn’t even realize it. When I finally went to the cops, thankfully, they believed me. He’d told me over and over again that they would never believe me. He blamed me, just like Chris is blaming you now. It took a lot of therapy. It took a ton of talking and realizing who I was. I’m here now, and while I can never see myself hitting someone, maybe I could. To protect someone I love, maybe I could. But Chris deserves to go to jail. He doesn’t deserve any more of your time, and hopefully, no more of your thoughts.”

I looked at her then and cupped her face, wondering how the hell I found myself here with her. It made no sense to me. Not when I had spent so many years alone, making sure that everybody around me was safe and had what they needed. I hadn’t thought of myself.

“I want to find Thomas, and I want to hurt him. And that makes me feel like a horrible person,” I said, not wanting to hide that from her.

“Small parts of me want to hurt him, too,” she said, and I leaned forward, resting my forehead against hers as she iced my knuckles.

“I don’t know what that says about me that I want to retaliate. But in the end, I just want to be left alone.”

“Has he texted you since those first two times?”

She had finally told me about that, and I had seen such rage in her as she relayed the story that I wanted to wrap her in bubble wrap and take her back to my house, along with the rest of my family, where I could create a fort and no one could hurt us.

It was unreasonable, but sometimes, I got unreasonable for those I loved.

I froze. Loved? Wow, that was a new word. One I wasn’t ready to focus on.

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