Page 51 of Castaway Whirlwind
“But you shouldn’t! It’s not right or fair to you.”
“Says who? Your dad?”
The tone he uses when he saysyour dadmakes him sound like Steven, and it raises my hackles. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”
Russell’s jaw hardens with each question. “Don’t tell you that you were raised with some effed-up notions of what a woman or wife is supposed to do? That you’re never allowed to accept a gift, or that, for some reason, you don’t deserve any compassion, any slack? That you can never, not once, complain or speak up when you’re exhausted or in pain? That you can’t rest for one millisecond, let someone take care of you, or else you’re taking advantage of them?”
I press my lips in a thin line, trying to pull his hand away from my neck. He firms his grip, though he’s still careful not to hurt me. I’ve never seen him so upset before, and his voice is the one too loud for this space now.
“Do you think you would have stayed with a piece of crap like Steven if your dad hadn’t raised you to believe that if you sleep with a man, youhaveto stay with him, no matter what? Overlook or forgive him every time he hurt you? Years and years of abuse—”
Temples throbbing with a headache as the air in the truck becomes stifling, I whisper-yell, “It wasn’t abuse! He never hit me!”
“Your dad or Steven?”
“Neither!”
“So because they never laid hands on you, that means what they did was ok? That they didn’t verbally or emotionally beat you down?” Ducking his head to look me in the eye when I try to turn my face away, Russell asks, “You don’t think it’s unfair or wrong that your dad raised you to believe that if you don’t break your back ‘contributing’ financially, then you have to—” He swallows hard, and I know I’m going to hate what comes out of his mouth next. “You have to do soliterallyon your back for a man ‘whenever he wants’? Made you believe you can never say no?”
“I did say no sometimes,” I manage to say through a dry throat, no longer fighting Russell’s hold.
Lowering his voice, which has gone rough and scratchy, Russell rubs his thumb up and down my neck and asks, “And what happened when you did, Layla? Were you punished for it? Have to work extra hard to make up for it?”
I catch a sob with my hands over my mouth, blinking fast, breathing as hard as if I were running a race from one side of Texas to the other, unable to answer. Old memories I’ve tried so hard to forget or ignore threaten to crush me—my dad coming out of his room with his belt buckle undone, rantingabout my mom; him making me run laps or pull weeds for hours in the summer heat until he felt I’d learned a lesson; of dreading Steven coming home because I knew what he would want from me as soon as he stepped through the door. I did all of it without complaint, rarely ever sayingno, just like I was raised.
“Since you were fifteen, darlin’.Fifteen,” Russell stresses, squeezing his eyes shut for a long moment. “It kills me what you’ve been through.” He switches to holding my face again, our foreheads pressed together. “It’s not right. You hear me? It’s. Not. Right or fair toyou. I don’t expect or need you to give me anything other than your heart, darlin’. You already have mine.”
“You have it,” I say with the barest whisper, crossing my hands over my chest. “It’s yours.”
His lips meet mine, soft and tender at first, then deepening between my sobs when I wrap my arms around his neck. But when I start crying so hard that I can’t kiss him back, he combs his fingers through my hair after taking my claw clip out with my cheek lying on his shoulder. After rolling down the window to fill the truck with fresh air, banishing the old, he kisses my temple from time to time while I fall apart on his lap, never rushing me or shifting in his seat, uncomfortable physically or mentally.
And when the last of my energy seeps from me and my body slackens with sleep, he continues to hold me and the heart that belongs to him together.
* **
Russell
I wake Layla long before I want to when Gauge cries from his car seat. I finish sending a text to Elliott from Layla’s phone, then erase it before helping Layla sit up and get out of the truck. My legs fell asleep long ago, and I have to stomp my boots on the ground to wake them up.
Layla’s cheeks pinken. “S—”
“Nope. No apologizing. I told you I wanted you sleeping on top of me every night, and I got exactly what I wanted.”
She smiles shyly, and I’m comforted to see a small semblance of her usual self returning, knowing that she was able to let go of at least some of the pain she’s been carrying on her back for most of her young life.
Layla takes Gauge inside while I unlatch the car seat and follow behind her into the apartment, setting the base down on the floor beneath the window.
“Oh, heck. It’s like a bomb went off in here,” I say through gritted teeth.
Layla huffs. “It’s ok. You can curse. I want to.”
I bite my tongue anyway since she doesn’t need the added stress with her apartment being stressful enough. Max and Cora appear to have moved in while we were away, as I feared, and made themselves right at home, currently taking a shower together. Max’s moans are louder than the running water.
Layla eyes the clothing spilling out of the open suitcases on her bed and the food wrappers and dirty dishes on the counter with distaste. How they made such a mess in such a short amount of time is a mystery.
She looks sick in the face when Max hits a particularly high-pitched note when he moans once more, and she holds Gaugeup for me to take. “Kitchen first,” she says, moving toward the sink.
“They’re old enough to clean up after themselves.”
