Page 43 of Loving You

Since I couldn’t very well launch off the bed and start rage-destroying the guest room, I dragged a hand through my hair. Fuck,hearing her story did more of a number on my emotions than when she’d come in my lap.

“But even though he treated me like a prize on his arm in public, when we were alone,” she said, taking a deep, shaky breath, “he was much less impressed with… my looks. It was confusing.”

“I imagine so,” I said, hoping she’d hear in my voice how much I hated this for her.

“But the good news is, after years of therapy and a lot of help from my family, I’ve fully accepted that it wasn’t a normal dynamic. He took me to LA, away from my family, he did whatever he could to isolate me from them, and he broke me down strategically. It happened slowly enough that I didn’t realize how small I’d made myself, how fearful I was of doing or saying orbeingthe wrong thing, until—” She cleared her throat, eyes averted, but returned her gaze to me. “Until he took it too far.”

Nothing short of horror sliced through me. Had she lied earlier about what he’d done to her? No, I would’ve been able to tell the second I put my hand against her slick heat. No flinching then.

But I still needed to hear exactly what she meant bytoo far.“He hurt you?”

Her throat moved with a swallow, and she licked her lips. “I thought his threats were just a temper thing. I fooled myself into the idea that he loved me too much to actually hurt me. But what I hadn’t let myself admit was that he’dbeenhurting me. For years. Since the day we met, he had lied to me about the kind of man he was. So… yes. He hurt me. And I’m not gonna lie, the physical bruises healed up a lot faster than the rest, and it really sucks.”

A ragged breath escaped me, and my heart felt shredded. Just the thought of someone treating her like that made me almost nauseated. “But he didn’t—”

She seemed to know what kind of clarification I needed—again—and saved me from having to spell it out. “Eric, I promise. He didn’t force himself on me.”

Relief flooded me at the swift confirmation. None of this was okay, but the idea of someone forcing himself on my—shit, my what?

She wasn’t my… anything. Where had that come from?

She frowned down at the space between us. “I struggle so much with all of this because of who I became after him. I put up a shield for a long time, trying to swing myself back the other direction, away from the placating, scared doormat I’d become.”

“I hate that you went through that. I’m so sorry.”

Her fingers slipped into my hand and knitted with mine. She squeezed and drew my eyes to her.

I could tell she wanted to say something, but the way she kept opening and closing her mouth like she wasn’t sure if she should had me squeezing her hand in return. “Whatever you’re not saying—whatever you think you can’t or shouldn’t say—say it.”

13

APRIL

I bit my lip. It was official. I was in an alternate universe where up was down and down was up, because surely I wasn’t really sitting on a bed with a man—no,Eric, in particular—telling him all the little details I hadn’t felt comfortable sharing with my sisters or best friends or anyone else for the last five years.

“What you said before, about me not being who you thought I was—” His pained expression halted me, and I reached up with the hand that wasn’t still firmly clutched in his and cupped his cheek the way he’d done to me. “I turned into that person you didn’t like because I didn’t like who I’d become thanks to him.”

He frowned, but I shook my head and pressed on before he could say anything. “I didn’t want to be seen as weak, and boy, did Ifeelweak. I didn’t want people to see the pathetic shell of a person that dickwad turned me into.”

A ghost of a smile flickered over his lips, like he was trying to reconcile the April he didn’t know with the one he knew before, and also somehow make sense of the woman sitting here being real with him for the first time.

The one telling him things I knew made him ache on my behalf.

It was like watching someone put a puzzle together or compete in a chess tournament or something. I was fascinated. But then I remembered how much more we needed to discuss and snapped out of it.

“And with you especially, I never wantedyouto see me as weak,” I continued. “It sucks to admit, but I was a little worse around you with all the sex talk than I was with everyone else.”

“Why?”

I lifted my hands, then let them fall with a soft smack against my thighs. “Some part of me knew it bothered you that I was—well, I wasn’t, but I pretended to be—um, much more interested in hookups than relationships? Not that I was interested in relationships either. Maybe more interested inmen, in general? Either way, I could tell it annoyed you, so I played it up. I’m rambling now, so I’m gonna shut up.”

His lips quirked. “Again, why? Why me?”

I let out a weary sigh and shook my head, surprising both of us when I laughed. “Because you’ve always…ugh.I always thought you annoyed the shit out of me, but lately I’ve been thinking maybe you didn’t annoy me.”

He quirked a brow and dipped his chin, suggesting he wasn’t so sure about that. In fact, it also looked like he was suggesting thatI’dannoyed the shit out of him.

Ass.

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