Page 51 of Indescribable

I swallow hard because I don’t want to tell her what I think. That he was emotionally abusing her in a slow and subtle way that she didn’t realize it was even happening. “Did you talk to Corbin about this?”

She shakes her head. “Not really, but she mentioned it once to me. That him demanding I stop being friends with someone I’d known my whole life was messed up. I agreed, but yet I went along with it.”

A tear slips down her cheek and that’s when I move, right to her side to pull her into my arms. The second I have her, she lets go. I pick her up and move us to the couch where she curls up on my lap and I let her cry.

I’m so angry I want to go beat the shit out of Wyatt now. The way he’s still getting to her pisses me off. Yet, she’s not with him anymore, now is she? And she’s much stronger than she realizes.

“Naomi.”

“Hmm?” she sniffles.

I hand her a tissue from the box on the end table and she wipes under her eyes. I hand her another and she blows her nose so loudly it makes me chuckle and she elbows me making me laugh harder.

Once she’s no longer crying, I tip her chin up with my thumb and forefinger.

“Listen to me, Naomi.”

She nods, her eyes still glistening with tears. Eyes red-rimmed and tip of her nose red, too. Beautiful.

“You are strong because you knew something wasn’t right in the relationship but we’ve been conditioned to think that abuse is more obvious than what Wyatt was doing. Hell, it didn’t really click with me until you mentioned it and I should have realized it, too. All of us should have. He wasn’t hitting you, but he was trying to control you. My guess is the infertility treatments is what triggered some of it but it was probably always there a little bit.”

She seems to think that over. “Maybe. I don’t know. Looking back, there were signs even when we were dating but they were so slight that I didn’t put it all together until I had a clearer head.”

“Let me guess, as you were getting your massages and facials and supposed to be relaxing, your mind wouldn’t shut up?”

She rolls her eyes. “Pretty much.”

I laugh lightly. “Never change, sweetheart.”

“It’s annoying. It’d be really nice to shut my brain down for a while.”

“It’s also how you get so many book ideas so it’s not such a bad thing.”

“True,” she mutters.

I need to get her out of her own head and help her to stop thinking the worst of herself.

“He knew what he was doing, Naomi. He made it seem like you were the one in the wrong, being friends with me, and you understood because I’m a guy and you wanted to respect your husband. He wanted you to think that you were the one hurting him.”

“I know that now, but Ilistenedto him, Brock. That makes me weak.”

I shake my head and take her face in my hands, forcing her to stay with me. “No, it does not. Not even a little bit. You were a wife who was devoted to your husband and the way he took advantage of that makes him weak, not you.”

She nods but I’m not sure I believe that she sees it yet.

“Okay, how about this. If I was the one married and I came to you and said my wife felt insecure about our friendship and I needed to take a step back, would you immediately see it as me being weak by supporting and respecting my wife’s wishes?”

“No,” is her immediate response.

“See? It’s not weak, Naomi. It makes you a good person.”

“But it wasyou,Brock. He didn’t want me to be friends with the one person who I’ve been friends with longer than I can even remember.”

Now’s my chance to tell her that maybe Wyatt wasn’t so far off, but I don’t want to make this about Wyatt. When I tell her how I truly feel, how I’vealwaysfelt, I want it to be about us, not her ex-husband.

“And that sucked, not having you be such a big part of my life, but it’s in the past and we’re moving forward.”

“Yeah,” she whispers. “We are.”

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