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My eyes filled. I wished I could be who he wanted, but the days when I believed in my deepest desires being filled were gone. Only shadows of the past and mementos remained. I was one of them.
“I don’t expect perfection,” he said gently. “I’m not perfect. I have my issues too. Everyone does. But together, I think we could be perfect. All you need to do is give us a chance. I don’t know how to make it any clearer.”
He went silent, but I could feel his gaze on me. I counted one beat of my messed-up heart, then another.
“Stop hiding and look at me, Addy.”
Unable to resist him, I lifted my head.
“Talk to me,” he said. “I’m here to help, not judge you.”
I didn’t want to do this. Not yet. I wanted more time with him. More time to hide from my world. More time to pretend the past didn’t exist. More time to believe all that mattered was him and me. But trapped like this with no way out, I began to talk, spewing ugly secrets that didn’t clear the air, but polluted it.
“Martin gave me the money for my business. I was his pet, his plaything, you see.” My eyes burned. Speaking the words out loud made me feel dirty and helpless again. “The scar is his initials. He carved them into my skin in case I ever forgot that he owned me. That night was only one night among too many that he fucked me so raw, I bled.”
“Addy, no.”
Barry’s horrified expression was the one I wanted him to have. It reminded me who I was now behind my wall, and how irreversibly I was damaged.
“He humiliated me. Made me beg for even the most trivial of things. He carved away my dignity bit by bit. I fought him at first.”
I grabbed my neck, clawing at it. Though the collar was long gone, sometimes I could still feel it choking me. My eyes filled, washing away wishes, desires, and dreams.
“Let me down, Barry. This is over. It was a mistake.”
“It isn’t a mistake,” he said. “If I thought it was, I wouldn’t be here.”
“It is.” I clenched my jaw. “You don’t get to call the shots. No one owns me anymore. No one tells me what to do.”
“What about Martin?” he asked.
Except the biggest monster of all. The one I was forever beholden too. The one I couldn’t defeat.
The truth was poison. Barry’s arrow dipped in it, then hit its target. Me.
A sob escaping, I crumpled.
“I’m sorry, Addy,” he said, trying to backtrack. “I’m reeling here. Fuck, babe, I suspected it was awful. I know he’s a bad man, but he seemed different with you.”
“It wasn’t your mistake,” I choked out. No, the mistake was mine.
“Wasn’t it?” Barry’s expression was bleak.
“No,” I said firmly.
“I hate it, hate knowing I didn’t realize what was really happening with him. If I did, I would have stopped it.” His hands on my thighs formed fists that were formidable but couldn’t change the past. “I hate that you went through what you did and the recovery process alone.”
“I prefer being alone now.”
“Bullshit. That’s a lie,” he spat out. “Caring is your central tenet. You know it. I know it. Your sister too. Anyone you let in your inner circle knows you would die to protect them.”
He was right, and sometimes I wished I had died, but though the truth he saw about me didn’t take away the pain of the other one, it helped. Love mattered. His love. Even my love, as flawed as it was, had to make a difference. Otherwise, what I’d endured, the abuse and the lonely aftermath, was all for nothing.
“You love what I do to you. You come alive when I touch you. You sparkle. You shine.” Barry kept at it with his beautiful truths, trying to rebuild what had already been torn down, but it was too late. The rest condemned me. “You crave my touch and my company, the same way I crave you.”
“I do. You’re right. You’re wonderful. Of course I do.” I pulled in a ragged breath and touched his face.
Barry saw the defeat in my expression, and he shook his head as if to ward it off.
