Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Ugh!
“Did she go back to him?”
“No, within a few months, she was with me.” He took a deep breath and continued, “Men like that aren’t big men, Willow. They aren’t strong men. A strong man knows his strength and he doesn’t have to prove it to anybody. They sure as fuck don’t have to prove it by cowing a woman, beating her and raping her.”
That was the absolute truth.
“But that guy also wasn’t a stupid man,” Gabe continued. “He took one look at me and steered clear.”
“Well, that’s good,” I muttered.
“But she was fucked up,” he said, and his tone had changed to something tight, but distant.
Like he wasn’t there with me.
Like he was somewhere else.
Somewhere I didn’t want him to be.
Somewhere he didn’t want to be either.
“I don’t know if it was the consistent rape, the beatings, the emotional manipulation, probably all of it, but it got under her skin, it sank into her bones, it infected her mind.”
I slid a hand up his chest so I could stroke the side of his neck and noted, “It was a rough go for you with her.”
“No,” he said. “For the most part, she hid it. Or tried to.” That faraway tone again when he said, “They do that.”
Oh no!
“They?” I asked unsteadily.
He cleared his throat, focused on me and didn’t address my question.
He said, “But she wasn’t right. We weren’t right. She didn’t trust me. She’d flinch away from me, and you know I wasn’t doing anything that would make her do that.”
I knew that for certain.
“I know,” I assured, giving his neck a squeeze before I went back to stroking it.
“She was uptight in bed. She couldn’t relax. Couldn’t get into what we were doing. It was like it was her duty, and that didn’t feel great.”
Yuck.
“It wouldn’t,” I agreed.
“I got it. She told me all about him. But she didn’t fight it. She didn’t fight what he did to her. What he left her with. I asked her to go to therapy. She said she would. Even lied once and told me she was going, and I found out she wasn’t. That was not a good scene.”
Yuck again.
“I bet,” I said.
“I explained we couldn’t move forward unless she got healthy. She kept telling me she’d get on it, but she didn’t. I told her it felt like she didn’t think I was worth it, or she didn’t think we were worth it, but worst of all of that, she didn’t think she was worth it. She made more promises she didn’t keep. And we stayed stuck where we were. With her away from that guy but still living that nightmare even when she was with me.”
And for a guy like Gabe, being tarred with the brush of a man like that, unable to break through and show her what she had, show her she’d made it to the other side, it would kill.
God, all of this was totally breaking my heart.
“I’m so sorry, Gabe.”
“So I broke up with her.”
Even if it meant that if she did what she should to try to heal, he wouldn’t be mine, my heart still finished breaking with the way he said that.
“God, I’m sorry, Gabe.”
“And six months later, we got a call someone found a body by the Colorado River.”
Oh…
Fuck.
Now it was my body that was strung tight.
“No clue,” he said.
I stopped stroking his neck and latched on to it.
“Went out, knew it was her by what was left of her hair, but she’d blown her face off with a twelve-gauge shotgun.”
“Oh my God, Gabe,” I moaned, and overwhelmed, my head dropped so I shoved my face in his chest.
He cupped the back of my head.
“She was fucked up, but she hid that part of how she was,” he said. “I had no idea she was even close to that place. No fuckin’ idea.”
I pressed my face harder into his chest.
“I dream of it sometimes,” he whispered. “Finding her by the river.”
I pushed up to press my face into his neck and struggled to round him with my arms.
He turned so I had my back to the couch, we were both on our sides, and I could hold him better.
“I wonder, if I’d stayed with her—” he began.
I pulled out of his neck and gripped his head in both hands. “Stop it.”
“I gave up on her, Willow.”
“She gave up on herself, baby,” I returned. “It’s an ugly truth, but it’s still truth. What she went through with that guy, maybe he took too much, there wasn’t anything left for her to work on. But what she decided to do to end the pain is not on you. And the bottom line is, obviously, she was in pain, and it was her life, so she got to decide what to do to stop that pain.”