Page 118 of The Honest Affair

“A burden!” she burst out, practically a scream that echoed down the hall and through my damn chest.

Three syllables, but it was enough to make her look like she’d run a marathon, red-cheeked, wild-eyed, and exhausted.

“That’s all I’ve ever been,” she said fiercely. “And what he did. What he’s done. I refuse to be defined by it, Matthew. I refuse!”

I swallowed, wanting to fight back. I wanted to protest, to tell her that she was being ridiculous. But her words struck a chord I understood better than I wanted to admit.

I knew what it was like to be treated like I was nothing by the people who were supposed to love me. For the first fourteen years of my life, I had two parents who chose the bottle over me and their five young daughters. I had a father who was more willing to punch his son in the face than admit when he was wrong, and a mother who would have rather hidden from her kids than face her shortcomings and be the mother they needed. If it hadn’t been for my grandparents, I would have been even more angry and bitter than I was as an adolescent, with a safe home, yes, but always with the knowledge that in a perfect world, I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. That my sisters and I, while still loved, were burdens as well.

You live your live long enough that way…you come to believe it. You come to hate yourself for it.

But my girl had never even had a Nonno or a Nonna to give her the encouragement when she needed it. She had a heartless grandmother and a flighty mother. And then traded them for an unavailable professor, followed by an abusive husband. You could grow up with all the money in the world, but it couldn’t do shit to replace the core needs that every human deserves. Love. Pure. Unconditional. From at least one damn person.

Well. That could be me, couldn’t it?

We really were a pair. Which was why I knew that the only real way to save a person like that was to love them anyway. It’s what she had done with me. I could do the same for her. I always would.

“Fine,” I said as gently as I could manage. “I won’t call. Yet. But, Nina…you need to tell me exactly what happened in the elevator. Not because you’re a burden. You won’t be. But you deserve truth, baby. I will love you. No matter what. Do you understand that?”

She blinked, tears caught in the generous sweep of her eyelashes. “I—yes. I do.”

I pressed my forehead to hers. “Good. Now tell me the truth, Nina. What did he mean, ‘again’?”

Nina slumped into my shoulder. “Matthew, you don’t want to know.”

I tipped her chin up, forcing her to look at me once more. “I really do. And you really need to tell me. Nina, I love you, and you love me. I’m going to marry you, no matter what you say. I think I’ve earned your secrets. Haven’t I?”

Her eyes welled again, and her lower lip trembled. “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, my love, yes, you have.”

“Then tell me, Nina. Tell me everything.”

Slowly, she pushed my hand off her chin, then leaned back against the wall. With a quick glance at Calvin, she took a deep breath, and started.

“It was my first time organizing the gala,” she said, speaking more toward her hands, now clasped in her lap. “Olivia was four. I was twenty-four. It was the first time I had anything resembling a job or anything close to it since she was born.” She shook her head. “Calvin…he didn’t like it.”

I stayed quiet, keeping my eye on the slumbering giant in question. Above us, the party raged out of sight, quieted by the heavy steel doors at the top of the stairs. We were still alone. For now.

“It happened about a month before the gala,” she said. “I was working late a lot, and he didn’t like it. It made me…unavailable. In those days, he liked having me around, you see. Sometimes he would bring people back to our apartment just to show me off. To men he was trying to impress. Business investors or people he was trying to start some business with. You can imagine.”

I could, yeah. Way too clearly. Nina, at twenty-four, tall and queenly, young and bright—relegated to being literal arm candy for a bunch of slobbering, middle-aged hacks.

I swallowed. Maybe I needed to pray again.

“One night, he was throwing an impromptu salon, you might call it. Several investors were there—I honestly don’t know who. But I couldn’t come, because we were busy here. And he was so embarrassed—you remember how he gets about being embarrassed. I don’t know, maybe something else happened that day…”

“Hey,” I said gently. “Don’t justify it. Whatever that motherfucker did is on him. I don’t even have to know what it is to know it’s inexcusable.”

Nina inhaled deeply, then exhaled again. “Perhaps.”

I hated that she could even doubt it.

“Then what happened?” I prodded.

She sighed. “He came here to find me and bring me home. He was waiting for me at the elevators when I came out of the institute. It was late, around eight, but we still weren’t finished. He said I had to come home. I said no. And when I was going up to the exhibit to go over some things, he followed me into the elevator. And just like that day with you, it got stuck. And I was trapped there. With him.”

She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself.

“Usually he would wait until he we were home,” she whispered. “Until we were behind closed doors. But that night...oh, God, Matthew, he was so angry.”

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