Page 62 of Hero Unbound

“I’m glad she protected you from it. Glad you didn’t have to live under the weight of that.”

She glanced over at him and shook her head slowly. “I love my mom and my dad—I consider Noah my dad, not my biological scumbag of a father. But I grew up knowing she’d been abused. Hell, she runs a women’s shelter, and part of the reason she’s so good at it is because she’s willing to share her own story.”

“In my book, that makes her brave.”

“She is. A survivor. She’s the most amazing person in the world.”

“But…?” There was very definitely abutin this conversation.

“But she was abused, and I grew up knowing that. Grew up thinking that because I was so aware of Mom’s story that it could never happen to me.”

Theo forced himself not to stiffen where he sat on the floor leaning up against the couch. “Were you abused?” She’d said no yesterday, but…

“Not like Mom was. I was telling the truth about that. But I know you have to be wondering why I was living out of my car rather than going home to her and Dad. Why I’m not having you call them right now.”

“I won’t lie, the thought has crossed my mind more than once.”

She was silent for so long, he thought she was done talking and he still wasn’t going to have any answers.

“I met Gareth my senior year in college,” she finally said.

Gareth. A name. Theo already hated that motherfucker.

“He was a few years older than me. Had an established career in the medical field as a doctor. Friendly. Charming. Handsome.”

Theo glanced over at her with an eyebrow raised. “Sounds like a complete asshole.”

The corner of her lips tipped up in the barest hint of a smile. “Actually, that’s kind of what my parents thought too. I brought him home, and something about Gareth just struck them wrong. They didn’t say anything at first, but when we got more serious a couple years later and I decided to move in with him, Mom sat me down and told me her concerns.”

Eva set her tea mug down beside her then tucked her legs underneath herself. “Mom told me she felt like something was off with Gareth. She couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, but she thought I should wait before moving in with him.”

“That wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”

“I said terrible things to her, Theo.” Eva’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “Unforgivable things. I was an unbearable, know-it-all brat. I told her I wasn’t her and I would never make the same mistakes she did.”

Pain dripped from Eva’s words. He turned to her, placing a hand gently on her knee. “We’ve all said stuff to our parents that we regret later.”

“I haven’t really talked to my mom in two and a half years. I mean, we’ve talked, but notreallytalked. I’ve kept my distance, first because I was so sure she was wrong about Gareth. But then…”

“Because she was right?” he finished for her when she trailed off.

“Aren’t mothers always right?” She rubbed her eyes like they were gritty. “By the time I knew I needed to get away from Gareth, I’d allowed myself to be so far separated from my family and anything resembling friends that I had no one.”

She stood up. Theo remained where he was on the floor as she began to pace back and forth in front of the fireplace.

“I had no job. I…lost it a few months before I left Gareth. He said not to worry about it. To stay at home and regroup. That he made enough money to support both of us.”

Theo was starting to see the pattern.

“I didn’t want to just stay home, but I let him talk me into it. And I didn’t think about it when he talked me into closing the credit card that was in my name and just using the one he put me on as a secondary signer.”

She paced back and forth, hands clenching and unclenching. “I was too stupid to realize what was going on when we transferred most of the money out of my bank account into our ‘joint’ account that he kept forgetting to add me to. He gave me cash instead.”

“He kept you dependent on him.”

She stopped her pacing. “And for way too long, I was very happy with that status quo. I thought we were dependent on each other. That it was the two of us against the world.”

He wanted to hold her more than anything, but he knew she needed to get this out. “What made you realize that wasn’t the case?”

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