Page 46 of Jolene's Justice

He sighed. “There’s that age-old stigma that men can’t be abused by women. It’s too ridiculous for some people to even fathom. She’d laugh when I’d threaten to report her. She always maintained that no one would take me seriously. Nobody’d believe me. She used the fact that I was in the military against me. I had training. I was stronger than her. She’d tell me that everybody would believe I had started it for those reasons alone.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“People often won’t believe that men can be victims of domestic abuse. It becomes a joke. They’d laugh and say things like, ‘Can’t handle the little lady?’ Or my favorite, ‘Grow a set of balls.’ It’s easier to keep quiet instead of facing the ridicule.”

“Jesus. I never thought about it like that before.”

“Men have to be seen as passive. My military career took me out of that category. We also have to be victims with clear injuries, whereas a lot of times a woman can just make a verbal accusation and are believed much more easily.”

“That’s such bullshit.”

“That may be, but society perpetuates it.”

“How so?”

“You ever seen the animated version ofBeauty and the Beast?”

“One of my favorites.”

“There’s a brief part in the marketplace scene at the beginning. Belle is walking through the town, singing. In the background, a woman knocks a guy over the head with a rolling pin because she thinks he’s paying too much attention to Belle.”

“Hmm.”

“They remade the movie into a live action film. Do you think they took that scene out? No, they changed the weapon. She uses a frying pan instead.”

“Shit. I never noticed that before.”

“Most people don’t. A hit to the head like that could be deadly in real life, but in those movies, it’s seen as funny. Would a man hitting a woman with a frying pan be considered just as funny?”

“No,” she gasped. It was all so wrong. Things needed to change. Society needed to do better.

“Twenty-six years separate the two movies, and violence against men is still considered amusing.”

“Shit. That’s so wrong. I never realized. I guess I’m complacent in perpetuating society’s warped perceptions.” She suddenly felt a different type of shame. She’d probably laughed at scenes like he’d described before. And now that he’d opened her eyes, she could see how wrong it was.

“It took me years of therapy to understand it. Still doesn’t make it right, but at least I can get past most of the anger.”

“Only most of it?” Her teasing tone quickly disappeared when she saw the rage in his eyes. “What? What is that look for?”

“There’s more I haven’t told you.”

She inhaled sharply, apprehensive that his words could damage their connection.

This was the part that never failed to kill him. The level of betrayal he’d felt was just as fresh as the day he’d first learned about it. If his lawyer hadn’t uncovered the medical records, he still wouldn’t have known. Ten years he’d lived with her and her lie and never knew. It was an incredibly cruel lie, too. One he never imagined she’d be capable of perpetuating.

“I always wanted a family,” he started. Jolene propped her chin on her fist, which was on his chest. He avoided her gaze, but he could feel her anxious eyes on him. “After a few years of marriage, we decided to start trying. I was excited at the prospect of having children. She was, too, or so I thought. Years passed, and nothing happened. She blamed me, of course. Yet she refused to seek out fertility treatments. Anytime I’d bring it up, she’d scream and yell. She’d say if I was more of a man, she’d be pregnant by now. It was humiliating and frustrating.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t until just before the gala that I found out the truth. My lawyer took it upon himself to hire a private investigator. Little did I know how deep her cruelty really went.”

“What did she do?”

“After that first discussion about starting a family when I was deployed again, she went to a doctor and had her tubes tied.”

Jolene sat bolt upright so fast it stunned him. “The fuck you say?”

He pulled himself up, feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders, and rested his back against the solid headboard. “During all those years of ‘trying,’ she made me believe it was my fault. Finding out what she’d done . . . God, Jolie. It had been devastating. There are no words to describe what I felt. The rage. The embarrassment for how badly she’d fooled me. The weird sense of relief that it wasn’t my fault and that maybe kids would still be in my future. My therapist helped me work through a lot of it, but the rage still burns like embers inside.”

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