Within months of meeting August Kincaid, I was consumed. So consumed, I couldn’t remember where he began and I ended. He became the family I never had, the lover I’d always dreamed of and the friend I’d longed for. He was my everything. He took care of me and made me feel safe. He never made me feel trashy or let my shitty past define me. He was all I’d ever wanted, and soon I couldn’t remember what life had been like without him.
We could have floated away into our perfect fairy-tale love story and that would have been the end. The newspapers could have printed our perfect wedding announcement and everything would have been wrapped up in a neat tidy red bow.
But nothing having to do with me is ever neat. Or tidy.
And that’s where my fairy tale derailed and I found myself living something closer to a nightmare.
Several years into our romance, August became very successful in business—very quickly. Whenever I asked what he did he always just smiled, patted me on the head, and answered with something vague and ambiguous.
“I’m a stockbroker—you know that,” he’d said.
But part of me worried that whatever “business” he’d become involved in was illegal or at least not legit. I should have listened to that part more—she’s one smart bitch.
With the addition of wealth he began to change. He became more possessive, more clingy and domineering. A sideways glance at a party and suddenly I would be pulled into an empty room and fucked ten different ways just to be sure I understood who owned me. If another man looked at me, I was immediately taken home, like an errant child.
My fairy tale became a nightmare and I lived in a constant state of fear. Each and every day, his behavior worsened. It was as if success had made him crazy—pushing him into some sort of manic behavior where he believed everyone in the world was out to get him and I was their means to do so.
Parties and social events became a thing of the past, and I eventually became a prisoner in my own home, unable to leave because he was too paranoid to take me anywhere.
“You’re mine. Only mine,” he’d chant over and over as he pinned me against a wall and came hard and long inside of me. “I love you, Everly. Forever.”
Ryan once asked why I’d never run, why I didn’t seek help.
I knew the answer, but I just shook my head and said I didn’t know, averting his gaze.
Because sometimes the truth hurts worse.
* * *
“How are you feeling about your decision today, Everly?” Tabitha asked, in that soothing tone that used to drive me up the wall but now seemed to have the opposite effect.
I curled my feet under me on the worn couch, holding a cup of hot tea in my hands as I contemplated my answer. We were never supposed to blurt out an answer in therapy. Think before you speak—that was Tabitha’s motto, and as much as I’d despised it and everything about this place years ago, when I’d entered and found her sitting in front of me with her weird, frizzy gray hair and long, flowing skirts, I had to admit it worked.
Because of this woman and her soothing ways, I’d managed to break out of the rock hard tortoise shell I’d buried myself into after August vanished from my life. Although his coma had been something of a blessing—pulling me out of a life no one should ever have to live—suddenly I’d been forced back into a world I no longer understood.
As much as I hated to admit it, I’d been lost and alone without him. The world was scary and far too big. I wanted nothing more than to run back to the confines of my prison and never come out again.
But somehow, I’d found Tabitha. Attempting to venture past my own driveway, I’d gone for a walk that turned into more of a hike, and found her sign in a little neighborhood not too far from the one Ryan and I currently live in. Her eclectic ways and throwback looks were mind-boggling at first, but I soon found a home with her, or at least a place to return to once a week.
Slowly, she gave me a direction in life. I got a job at a coffee shop nearby and months later, I met Ryan. I took each day as it came, and eventually I stopped wondering when life was going to come crashing down again.
And then it did—or it was about to.
“Everly? Your decision regarding visiting August? How do you feel?” Tabitha asked once more, bringing me back to the present.
“Honestly?”
“That’s all I ever ask for,” she stated.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s okay to be unsure.”
“Even about this?” I asked, biting my bottom lip with uncertainty.
“What are you unsure about?” she questioned, tapping the butt on her pen against her crisp yellow notepad.