Page 10 of Trusting Laurence
She kicked off her shoes as she walked through her bedroom to theen suitebathroom. Turning the water on, she rummaged through her new and treasured collection of bath products – bubble bath, bath bombs, bath salts, and more. Admittedly, she’d gone a bit overboard with her purchase, but she’d been celebrating her return to Washington, and possibly her old life – a carefree life, a life before her marriage to Marcus.
Tahlia undressed quickly, looking forward to slipping into the bubbles and soaking her cares away. As she submerged her body in the warm water rapidly filling the tub, she couldn’t hold back a moan of sheer pleasure. The bubbles made the water silky smooth against her skin, the heat easing the tightness of her muscles.
As she lay back, her thoughts turned to her sister, Clarice. Tahlia had finally scraped together the courage to reach out to Maddie, but she had yet to achieve that level of courage to contact her sister. She wasn’t sure what kind of reception she’d get.
Clary had been the one to find her, broken and bleeding, on her bedroom floor – exactly as Marcus had left her — locked in a haze of pain so intense she’d been incapable of moving or calling out for help. She’d instinctively known that beating would be the end of her. And she’d made her peace.
She had worked so hard to shield her Maddie from the fact that her parents’ marriage was a sham and her father a monster. And it had saddened her that her daughter would grow up without her, but Tahlia had nothing left in her to fight. The pain that radiated from her body had been different from previous occasions, and her intuition told her the damage was worse.
That Clary had found her when she did was the only reason Tahlia had survived. The doctors had battled for hours to put her broken body back together, telling her family how lucky she’d been that her sister had found her.
When Tahlia had finally been brought out of her medically induced coma, she remembered how tangible her sister’s rage had been, as if it were a living, breathing entity in the room. Her sister had ranted about how Marcus had gotten away with his abusive ways for long enough. She was done standing by and watching him systematically break the happy, carefree, vibrant young woman she’d been.
Clary had taken matters into her own hands, contacting her friend in the police force, and had Marcus arrested. She’d forced Tahlia to lay criminal charges against him and had then organized for her to disappear when it was all over.
And she had. She hadn’t had much choice in the matter. But, at the time, it had been exactly what she needed. Her broken body had needed time to heal, and her broken spirit had needed counseling.
The organization, Friend of Patty, had not only given her a new identity and place to live, but they’d arranged for her to receive the counseling she needed from a psychiatrist sympathetic to their cause. And, with time, she’d begun to heal.
Now, she was back, and she had a feeling her sister wasn’t going to be quite as ecstatic about her return as her daughter had been. She knew, though, that it would be out of concern. Clary understood how powerful Marcus was, and Washington was still his town, despite his fall from grace.
But truth be told, Tahlia was tired of hiding away from the world. She might have been given a chance at a new life with no ties to the old, but still she hadn’t stopped looking over her shoulder. Her new name hadn’t taken away the old fear that one day, somehow, Marcus would find her and finish what he’d started.
She’d felt isolated and had missed her family terribly. It was no way to live. In fact, it wasn’t a life at all. So, she’d worked hard on overcoming her trauma and fears, on getting stronger emotionally, in order to return home.
While she would be eternally grateful to the wonderful people at Friends of Patty, she’d needed to come back. The forced separation would’ve finished what Marcus had started – it would’ve killed her spirit completely, and then he may just as well have finished her off that day he’d delivered her final beating.
A shiver worked its way down her spine, making her aware the water had gone cold while she’d lay lost in the unhappy memories of the past. Climbing out of the bath, Tahlia reached for the plush, fluffy towel to dry herself.
As she ran the soft fabric over her skin, she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on the wall. She dropped her hands and took a good, long look at her body. She was never going to be a runway model – life and two pregnancies had left their mark. But she’d tried to take care of herself over the years.
Age had lessened the elasticity of her skin, and things were starting to head south. At forty-five years old, her skin didn’t have the same firmness as it’d had when she was in her twenties and thirties.
Watching herself in the mirror as she continued to dry off, her mind wandered to thoughts of Laurence. Would he find her as attractive now as he had when she’d been a young woman, newly married? She’d caught him looking her at her a few times and had often wondered what he saw.
Laurence had always been gentle with her. Treated her as she wished Marcus would have. It hadn’t always been bad. In the beginning, her husband had treated her well. After Maddie had been born, he’d changed a bit. He was a little less loving, a little less attentive.
At first, Tahlia had been lost as to what had brought about the change. Until she’d overheard a conversation he was having with his father about Madison. Tahlia been left shaken to the core as she heard her father-in-law blameherfor giving Marcus a daughter instead of a son. His father had urged Marcus to keep trying; he needed an heir.
Her naïve belief that he’d married her because he loved her had died that day.
And the day she’d discovered she was pregnant again, she’d been terrified to tell her husband. What if it was another girl? She didn’t think her heart would survive his disappointment at being saddled with another daughter.
Instead, she’d waited until they’d been able to test for the sex of her baby. When she’d found out she was having a boy, she’d gone home and told Marcus she was pregnant. As if overnight, a switched had flipped, and things went back to the way they’d been when the two of them had first been married.
Three weeks after she’d announced she was pregnant, Tahlia had woken in the middle of the night in agony. She’d stumbled to the bathroom and, in the harsh glare of the light, had stared in horror at the blood coating the inside of her thighs.
When she’d woken Marcus to beg him for help, instead of doing so, he’d lashed out at her. He’d berated her, calling her some of the most hurtful names she’d ever heard before, telling her to sort herself out. He’d slammed out of the room and left her to do just that.
Hysterical, she’d called Laurence. He’d pulled up outside the main house minutes later in a staff SUV, dropped the back, and laid out a bed of towels for her to lay on before rushing her to the hospital.
As she’d lay praying her baby would make it, a distant part of her mind had grieved the fact that her bodyguard had cared more about her wellbeing than the man who’d promised to love her in sickness and in health. And when it became painfully obvious her prayer was not to be answered, she’d grieved the loss of her baby boy. She hadn’t believed anything else could possibly hurt as much.
She’d been wrong.
When she’d come home from the hospital, she’d tried to talk to Marcus. He’d visited her briefly each day for appearance’s sake. But he’d ensured she understood he blamed her for the loss of their baby and refused to talk about it with her.
They’d fought, and he’d been supremely clear that, in his eyes, she was a failure. As the argument had escalated, the first blow had come out of nowhere. Had taken her by surprise. With each blow he landed, she’d died a little more inside. Until she’d felt hollowed out and empty. Like there was nothing left.
