"I noticed all right," he said with a reminiscent little smile. "Your beautiful eyes aren't very good at hiding your emotions, sweetheart. You were so fascinating. Quite possibly the worst waitress I've ever had." She bit her tongue at that one, but his grin widened at the look on her face. "See? You didn't like that. Your eyes don't lie. Pierre couldn't understand my fascination, and I, in turn, couldn't understand how he wasn't seeing the most bewitching creature in the world. Like I said before, I just couldn't stay away from you. I kept going back, and the more time I spent with you, the more time I wanted to spend with you. The main reason I proposed-contrary to some of the cruel things I've said about it-was because I couldn't imagine my life without you by my side. You loved me. You had told me so many times and I so desperately wanted to say it back, but I couldn't. I was so happy with you but I didn't think that I knew how to love. I wanted you to teach me. I wanted you to make me a better person."
"I don't understand," she shook her head.
"I know, I'm sorry. I'm not doing a very good job of this." He cleared his throat. "Do you remember the conversation we had that evening after we returned from the aquarium?" She nodded and watched him swallow painfully before throwing back his shoulders like someone preparing himself for battle. He seemed unable to meet her eyes and kept his gaze fixed on the wall behind her.
"You asked me what my first memory was," he said dully. "What I told you, about my father, when he broke my arm-what he did wasn't an accident. It wasn't the first time he'd hurt me, just the first time I remembered it. And I certainly remember every damned time it happened after that."
"Oh my God . . ."
He didn't see her words. He still wouldn't look at her as he continued to speak in a terrifying dead voice. She had unconsciously brought both hands up to her mouth in shock. A part of her had been expecting to hear something like this, but now that he was saying the words, she couldn't quite believe them.
"After Richard was born," he never called his brother Richard, but for some reason the formality suited the gravity of the conversation, and Bronwyn didn't question it. "I had to do everything in my power to deflect the old man's temper and blows onto me. He never laid one filthy finger on my little brother. I wouldn't let him. I tried to ensure that Rick remained unaffected by the whole sordid mess. If the mean-spirited bastard had lived longer, I may not have been able to shelter Rick as much, but I was thirteen when he died. Rick was ten and still young enough to genuinely mourn our father. Our mother was just a withdrawn shell of a woman who died a few months before my eighteenth birthday. She died mere months after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She didn't even try to fight it. It was like she'd just given up on life. She'd checked out mentally and emotionally after my father's accident anyway. I was the one who raised Rick, I took care of him and made sure that he was fed and properly clothed."
"But I thought your family was rich," she murmured dazedly, but because he still seemed unable to meet her eyes, he didn't see her words and she waved a little to get his attention before signing them.
"Money doesn't stop an abuser from being abusive. My mother could have obtained the means to take us and leave, but she wasn't emotionally strong enough to make that decision. He had her completely cowed, and sometimes I hate her memory even more than I do his. She allowed him to hurt me, to hurt her, and if I hadn't been there to prevent it, she would have allowed him to hurt Rick as well, and I can't forgive that." He shuddered at the thought, and his eyes drifted back to the wall. "We were his perfect family. He had beaten us into submission, and yet he always found more reasons to hit my mother and me.
"But like I said, he never got his grubby fists on my brother." His words were fierce and shaking with outraged pride. "I was a pretty big kid, and the one time I confronted him was just before he died. He went after Rick but I stood up to him, chest to chest, and he backed off." Bronwyn could picture it, a scared young boy protecting his little brother by bravely facing down a monstrous man, and she had to curl her hands into tight little fists to keep from crying out at the heartbreaking images that were forming in her head.
"He hit me only once more after that and then he died, in a freak yachting accident. God, I hated him and that hate festered in me. The beatings I took, the verbal abuse he heaped on me, it all stayed with me and twisted me inside. My mother was pitiful, she couldn't love us and she was terrified of her own shadow. Rick, I was his big brother, he was duty-bound to love me. Nobody had ever just loved me . . . until you. But I didn't have faith in your love. I believed that you wouldn't feel the same way about me if you knew about how I'd let him hit me and learned about what an absolute coward I was. How could you possibly respect me once you understood how I had crawled to get away from him? How I had begged and pleaded with him not to hurt me, how I had pissed myself in fear and pain-more than once . . ." His voice broke on those last words, and she watched his face contort as he fought to control his emotions.
She was a lost cause. Her face was streaming with tears, and she reached for him but he flinched away and got up to pace to the window. He didn't want her to touch him, and she wept for the lonely, hurt child he had been and for the emotionally distant and psychologically scarred man that he had become. He was sharing what he felt were his most shameful secrets, and it broke her heart that he thought this was his shame and not that of the pathetic excuse of a man who had fathered him.
"I never felt like I deserved you," he said, keeping his rigid back to her. "But like I told you before, I just couldn't stay away from you after that first meeting. I kept making and breaking promises with myself just to spend time with you. When I proposed to you, I thought that I could manage the relationship; that I could keep your love for myself without tainting you, without hurting you. God, what a miserable job I did of that." He started pacing in front of the window, prowling back and forth like a restless lion and shoving his hands into the pockets of his tailored trousers.
"The night you told me you were pregnant . . ." He stopped moving and grimaced as if the memory pained him as much as it did her. He allowed himself a quick, haunted glance at her before turning away again. "I went off the deep end, Bron. I panicked. I couldn't be a father, not with my history. What if I hit our baby, what if I started hitting you? My mother always told me that my father never touched her until after I was born. She never said as much, but she made me feel like the catalyst to all that violence! What if I was the same? What if our baby's birth triggered the same reaction in me? What if I hurt you? I c-couldn't stand that thought, Bron. But then I ended up hurting you anyway, didn't I? I hurt you with my wild accusations and the irrational and stupid things that I said. Words can be even more painful than fists, I knew that, but I still couldn't seem to stop myself! I didn't even believe the crap I was saying. And I honestly did think that you would end up hating me for getting you pregnant in the middle of your studies, that you would grow to resent me." He shook his head and sat down opposite her again.
"This is going to sound like some lame, stupid excuse, but that night, when I told you to leave, I wanted to give myself time to think and to breathe. I never meant for you to leave the house, Bron, just the room. I calmed down almost immediately and realized what a fool I was being. I didn't know what kind of father I'd be, but I figured that with you by my side I could possibly be okay. I'd taken care of Rick practically from the moment he was born, without once hurting him, and the thought of raising a hand to you is so abhorrent that it sickens me. I stopped thinking of us as a couple and started imagining what it would be like to be a family. The thought of anyone, especially me, hurting you or Kayla is unbearable, but how do I know something won't set me off someday? How can you ever trust me around her, knowing what you do about me now?"
Bronwyn had her hands pressed over her mouth again as she tried to muffle her sobs, but she was wholly incapable of preventing the tears from flowing down her cheeks. She was a mess. She wanted to go to him but she knew he would not permit it, not until after he had said his piece. Yes, the emotional wound had been lanced, but the pus that had been festering away beneath the surface for so long had to drain before the healing process could begin.
"I'd just made up my mind to tell you everything," he continued in the same rambling, disorganized way that had characterized his entire monologue up till now. He was bouncing between the past and the present-just stating his thoughts as they popped into his head. "I heard your car starting up and I panicked, I was so sure that you would hurt yourself. I immediately gave chase and had my accident. Thinking I saw you there, I think it was the only way I could cope with having driven you away. I think that my subconscious had to have you betray me, because it gave me an excuse to tell myself that I hated you. I needed that excuse because knowing that I was to blame both for your leaving as well as for my deafness would have sent me even further off the deep end.