Worth the Wait(41)

My heart pounded so strongly I was sure he could hear it. His brutal honesty sent my emotions into a spiral that I wasn’t sure how to deal with.

“I want to be with you,” he continued. “And I want to be a part of those kids’ lives. And I’m gonna do everything in my damn power to get what I want. I just need you to know that. Might as well start preparing now, because you aren’t gonna know what hit you.”

I couldn’t understand why he felt so certain, especially without knowing my story. Sucking in a fortifying breath, I prepared to tell him the truth. A truth that would, no doubt, send him running in the other direction.





“I’m cursed,” I started, and then waited to see his reaction. He sat there quietly for several seconds before finally opening his mouth.

“Um…oookay?

“Well, not like, an actual curse or anything like that,” I stumbled over my words. “I just mean…well…I—”

“Breathe, beauty,” he soothed.

Trying to rein in my emotions, I closed my eyes and inhaled a deep, cleansing breath. Then deciding to just rip the Band Aid off once and for all, I dove in.

I told him everything.

I started by explaining what my parents’ marriage had been like before I entered the picture. I told him all about their abuse, my father’s affairs, how they blamed me for everything that was wrong. I told him how my father said I was the reason he was so unhappy, that if I’d never been born, he and my mom would still be happily married. I didn’t leave anything out, giving him all the gory details so he could see exactly how bad it was and why I was so desperate to escape by the time Lance came into my life.

I told him everything about my relationship with Lance. How he waited until I was eighteen to pursue me, how he would talk about taking me away from everything bad and giving me the life I deserved. I explained how I fell hard and fast for the man I thought Lance was. I didn’t hide anything. I didn’t hold a single detail back about how Lance went from a man I thought would save me into someone so much worse than my father could have ever been.

The entire time I spoke, Brett sat rigid in his chair, his knuckles white from how tightly he was gripping the arms of his seat. He didn’t say a single word until I finished, but I didn’t miss that ticking in his jaw, or the way his whole body tightened when I detailed some of the worst of the abuse. He was wound so tightly, he looked like he might shatter at any minute.

But I’d done it. I’d gotten through the entire ugly story. It took what felt like years to tell and three additional beers for courage, but I managed to spit all that nastiness out without shedding a single tear. I was proud of myself for that alone.

Neither of us spoke for several minutes after I finished, and my discomfort grew to the point where I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, scared to see the disgust in his eyes.

“What made you leave?” Brett asked, finally breaking through our thick silence.

I kept my eyes trained on the beer bottle in my hand, tearing at the label as I answered. “I’d been planning a way out for a while. I’d been stashing cash away, small amounts he wouldn’t notice, you know? I wanted to make sure I could support the kids when I finally left. I needed to make sure they would be safe and secure when we left him.”

“But something happened.” It wasn’t a question. Brett’s statement told me, loud and clear, that he knew there was something ugly there.

“But something happened,” I whispered back, still peeling at the label until the shredded ribbons lay in my lap.

“What was it, beauty?” I heard the legs of his chair scrape across the wooden deck before he took my chin between his fingers and forced my head up. What I saw in those deep brown eyes wasn’t disgust. Not even close. It was anger, not at me, but at my situation. It was sorrow and pain. From just one glance at his face, I could see how much he hated what I’d gone through. But there was something else there as well, something I couldn’t quite place.

“He came home from work one night and I’d burned dinner. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. But he was so angry. I tried so hard to keep the kids away when he got like that. I made sure they were never around to see him hit me. I tried to protect them from all of that. But that night, Cameron came into the living room when Lance was hitting me. He ran up to him and started hitting him in his legs, yelling at him to let his mommy go—” My voice cut off on a sob at the memory of my little boy running in to try and rescue me. My self-hatred returned in full force at the thought of what I’d made them live with for four years. Remembering that, the tears ran down my cheeks, unchecked.