Page 217 of Branded
Because my stepfather had been strict and stern and added abusive to the mix. That was what I’d been dreaming of.
No.
That was what my recurring nightmares were about.
How I could still hear, still feel those noises.
Still see myself in the corner of my room.
Could still remember the fear gripping me as I moved down the hall.
Could still feel the pain as his fists collided with my little body, hurting so much when I’d tried to intervene, tried to protect my mother. He’d never picked spots that would show, not for either of us, but he’d picked locations that would hurt.
Bad.
So badly that at some point…I’d stopped trying to intervene.
At some point, I’d stayed hidden and tried to ignore the noises, tried to pretend they weren’t happening.
And I’d told Raph all of that before the sun had come up, when he should have been resting for his game, after waking him up in the middle of the night, and…he wasn’t upset with me.
He’d listened.
He’d held me.
And…he hadn’t judged me.
I’d watched his face closely, not letting my gaze so much as slide away. Not hiding because I needed to watch for a change, to see if this glimpse into my past, into me, would have him looking at me differently.
But his expression didn’t change.
No disgust, no loathing or revulsion. He’d just been himself in that moment—soft and gentle…and God, I loved him.
And just that easy…several of my demons had been vanquished.
There were more.
Bigger ones, uglier ones.
But I couldn’t deny that some part of myself was testing him, giving him something heavy and dark and seeing how he dealt.
Maybe that wasn’t right.
But he’d passed my test, and the stranglehold on my insides, the pounding always present in the deepest recesses of my mind, had eased.
I’d been able to go back to sleep when I’d never been able to do that before.
Later, I’d woken to his lips on my brow, a plate of strawberry jellied toast on the nightstand.
Love.
Big and bold and filling every vein and capillary, every artery and cell.
So that was why I was in Raph’s bed, in his T-shirt, not a stitch of makeup on my face—not even my lipstick, gasp!—and watching the Breakers play.
It meant something completely different, watching Raph out on the ice, knowing he was mine, knowing that I wasn’t going to play the martyr, wasn’t going to just cut and run, pretending it was best for him, when really, it was safer for myself.
To hide my past, keep my demons locked behind heavy wooden doors.
