Page 68 of Teach Me to Laugh

“Thank you,” my voice was gruff and heavy with emotion as I covered her hand on my chest with one of my own. “For giving me everything you gave me tonight.”

“Thank you for giving everything to me.”

“What did I give you?”

“Happiness. Laughter.” She stopped talking, breathing deep against my chest. “You gave me safety.”

“Safety?”

“Yes. Safety.”

“I don’t understand.” The thought that I’d made her feel safe had me both wanting to pound my chest in male pride, as well as demand to know what or who had made her feel unsafe to begin with—and then pound them.

“I think I have to tell you something, Beckett. Maybe I should have told you before, but I didn’t, and I think now I have to.”

“Okay?” My chest felt tight with worry and unease, but I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable or unsafe. So I let my hand roam along the length of her back, my fingers tickling her flesh softly the way I’d figured out these past few days that she liked.

“You know I was in the system.”

“Yes.” I confirmed, hating that she’d known any kind of pain.

“Well, I was with this one family. They weren’t good people and they raised an even worse son. At first he was exciting and fun and—well, I was stupid. I thought he was my friend. He wasn’t. Like I said, I thought he was exciting and I went with him when he did a few bad things. We vandalized and he bullied kids at school. By this time in my life, I really resented the kids that had good families who loved them. So, picking on them wasn’t something I was really all that against. It was early-ish into our relationship that he started sneaking into my room. Again, at first, I didn’t mind.” A sob caught in her throat and I felt a new kind of protectiveness I wasn’t fully prepared to comprehend. “He was nice to me. At least, he was in the beginning. Then it got weird. He started to do odd things to me, say things that made me feel worthless. He’d convince me I needed to do bad too, and by the time I realized he wasn’t doing harmless bad—it was too late.”

My mind was reeling against the uncharacteristic admission. I couldn’t see this woman who was so firm with her opinions doing anything out of force. She was always so—strong. She was always so firm when it came to protecting her own.

“Anyway,” shame and pain flooded her words. “I tried to distance myself, but when I couldn’t, I tried to tame him. He’d suggest something horrific . . .” her body was beginning to shake. “Toward an animal he’d see in someone’s yard or something . . .” a shudder passed from her and into me. “And I’d convince him to instead take his rage out on a building or a car or something that wasn’t alive to feel it. I knew the vandalism was wrong, but I couldn’t be a part of something as vile as physical abuse against anything. I couldn’t, Beckett. I’d once tried to tell his mom—shenever listened. She didn’t want to hear it, but her husband was the worst of them all, so she would have been adept at ignoring it all.”

“Amara,” her name was a whispered prayer. “You don’t have to go on. You don’t have to relive it.”

“I do. I do because after I give this to you, I won’t ever have to give it away again. It’ll be gone.”

She said the words with a concrete belief I couldn’t have argued even though I desperately wanted to. So I acquiesced, “Okay, baby.”

“He thought we were an item. He’d sneak into my room and he’d kiss me, touch me—make me touch him. He’d get really mad when I didn’t and he’d say things that hurt. It was easier to . . .” she shook her head against my chest, inhaling my scent on a deep breath. “I never gave him me. I was always able to stop things from progressing so far, but now, looking back, I think he was excited about one day taking that away from me—taking away my innocence. I think he had a twisted fantasy about it. And then one night at a party he took things too far. He drugged a girl. I hadn’t known quite what was happening, until it was well into happening. He’d always been attractive and girls easily fluttered around him, so when he took her into the room, I didn’t think. I didn’t think about the way she stumbled or the evil intent in his eyes. I didn’t think about it until I walked in on him. She was like a doll, barely able to move her limbs, Beck . . .”

“Amara,” Her name was tortured on my lips. I was filled with a rage I’d never before known. It was so intense, so strong, and so without control, that if I knew who this prick was, I don’t think I would have kept a level head.

I didn’t know his name, but he’d made the woman I loved a victim she didn’t deserve to be. She’d lived for years in her head, terrified of everything. She’d lived for years as a victim and all I wanted to do was free her forever from it all.

“I told someone after.” There was more pain in those words than there’d been in everything else she’d told me thus far. “I told someone because it was the right thing to do—even though I knew it was too late. That girl will live every day knowing something horrible happened to her. That night changed her irrevocably, altering the path of her future. I knew she’d never be the same. She’d never trust like she once did. She’d never look at herself and see strength, but instead a suffocating helplessness she can’t obliterate. Iknowthat—but I had to do something. And that was all I could do.”

“What happened?”

“There was an investigation. That’s how his father got caught doing what he’d been doing.” Her voice lowered, and although I wondered, I didn’t ask about the pricks dad. “I was old enough then to move out on my own. At first, I had government help to pay for my apartment. But I worked. I hated working around people who thought flirting wasthe thing,and somehow I built a wall around myself. I thought I was protecting myself from men, because I worried they were all like him. And then Joss hired me at the Library and I realized there were safe places out there. But I still didn’t look at men and think of safety. Until you. You showed me that there are good men out there, Beckett. You showed me happiness and laughter and safety.”

My arm convulsed around her as emotion, deep and raw, flowed through me.

“I’ll do everything I can to make sure you always know happiness. I promise I’ll give you laughter for as long as you letme be a part of your life, because when you laugh, I get happy.” My voice pitched low and I murmured in her hair. “And I’ll always give you safety. Always. I promise.”

“That’s why, Beck,” she said softly and I felt my brows furrow in confusion.

“Don’t understand, baby.”

“That’s why I love you. This is why I fell.” Her voice was soft and small. “We all have demons. I just met my monster before I was old enough to understand. It scarred me and until recently, until you, I never healed.”

“Definitely the best Christmas I’ve ever had.” I murmured in reply—and because everything always got better with Amara, I wasn’t surprised when my heart lifted and she made perfect even better as she pressed her lips to my chest where my heart was beating fast.

I lost myself in Amara Bloom for the second time in one night, obliterating all the past pains with the promise of a good and happy future where I was the man who kept this woman safe.

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