Page 52 of The Perfect Heart

“I do have to tell you. You deserve to know.” She held my gaze and didn’t look away this time. “You were always my best friend, Nash. You were always there for me through everything, to listen to everything, to hold me up when I needed help, or a shoulder to cry on, or a cheerleader.”

I couldn’t help the small smile at her words. “I was always your biggest cheerleader, Hal. You know that.”

Her answering smile was sad and tense. “I know. And that’s why you deserve to know. More than that, I’m not going to keep any secrets from you if we’re going to make a run at this relationship. You don’t deserve it, and I won’t start something this important on a bed of lies and half-truths. I’ve been on the other side of that, and it’s terrible.”

Halle moved closer, though the tension in her shoulders didn’t lessen, and she still gripped her knees to her chest even though she laid her head on my shoulder. I curled my arm around her and pulled her into me, kissing the top of her head, communicating my support, and she turned her head into me, breathing deeply.

“Tell me, Halle. Tell me what happened,” I said quietly, softly, carefully. I was on a razor’s edge—one wrong step, and I feared I would scare Halle off without hearing her story.

“I’m afraid you’ll think less of me when you hear it.”

Muffled and quiet though the words were, I still heard the anguish in them. A kind of anguish that made me want to hold Halle until it went away, kiss her until she forgot all about an idea as ridiculous as thinking I could ever believe badly of her. Make love to her until she felt my love for her in her heart and soul, down to the very marrow of her bones.

“Halle.”

I pulled her away to look into her face and make sure she saw just how serious what I was saying was.

“Halle, I could never think less of you. I don’t care what you’ve done or what’s happened, I will not, and will never think less of you. I know you, inside and out, all of you. I know what’s in your heart, and mind, and soul, and it’s all beautiful.” I gripped her shoulders and didn’t let her look away, though I knew my gaze must be intense. “I love you, and nothing you could do could ever change how I feel about you, Halle. I’m not going to walk away from you, from this.”

At my words, Halle’s eyes suddenly glimmered, and she closed them tightly, squeezing the tears away. She didn’t open them again until I hooked my finger under her chin and lifted her face to me. I kissed the escaped tears from her cheeks, kissed her forehead, and wrapped her hands in mine as I stroked my thumbs across their backs.

“Tell me, okay? I don’t want you to carry this burden alone anymore. Tell me what happened so I can be there for you.”

Halle swallowed, nodded, rolled her lips, and took a deep breath, then another before she could speak.

“I left Jack because he was, well, he was an abusive piece of shit. There. I said it.”

I thought the words were more for herself than for me because Halle let out a short, heavy breath afterward, as though forcing those words out had been torture. Her eyes searched my face, waiting for a response, waiting to see if I would keep my word and refrain from judging her.

But that wasn’t my response. At all. Instead, I felt like someone had punched me in the gut, leaving me gasping for air, my mind grinding to a halt and trying to comprehend the words that had just come out of her mouth. And just like I’d been sucker-punched, rage welled up behind the shock and breathlessness.

It took all my self-control to keep the feelings inside from showing on the outside, to remain calm, to keep my hands and touch gentle and soothing.

“Did he hurt you?”

My tone was soft, light, gentle, but I thought perhaps Halle heard the undercurrent of heat and anger because her eyes flicked to mine for a heartbeat before she looked away.

“Not physically, no, nothing more than a tight grip on my wrist or something like that when I didn’t do what he wanted me to do. No, he was just toxic and unstable. Shouting and screaming constantly, never happy with anything I did, and he wasn’t shy about telling me. Belittling me, always making fun of me.”

Halle shrank with each word, curling in on herself, pulling her knees in so tightly I saw red marks on her legs beneath her hands.

“He did”—she swallowed again and took another deep breath—“he did threaten me sometimes. A few times, I feared for my life. Ouch!”

At Halle’s last revelation, my hands had curled into tight fists around hers without thought, and I relaxed them through pure force of will. “Sorry,” I muttered, stroking my thumb along the backs again.

“It’s okay. I know it’s a lot.” Halle didn’t pull away, though she still had trouble looking at me.

“It’s not a lot. I’m here for you.” I meant it, though internally, I was still trying to push the anger down where Halle wouldn’t see it. “Keep going. It’s not too much.”

Her eyes searched my face again, but whatever she saw must have been reassuring because she continued.

“The worst part is, he tried to cut me off from my life. I stopped attending school because he told me he would support me and give me everything I could ever want so I didn’t need to work. At first, I thought it was true, and he was just taking care of me. But then I realized it was just so he could cut me off from the world, make me entirely reliant on him. After a while, I didn’t have any friends. I even lost contact with everyone here because it was too difficult, and he was too suspicious. And I was too embarrassed. I got tired of coming up with stories and excuses when people asked me what I was up to, and all I could say was another day spent in the house, shopping, or pretending my life was some fairy tale. Because it wasn’t, even if it looked like it from the outside.”

“Is that why you stopped talking to me?”

Halle nodded but didn’t look at me, her gaze on the bedspread. “You were the first person Jack made me cut out. You were on the guest list for the wedding, but Jack didn’t want you anywhere near me because of our friendship. He was jealous, possessive, and paranoid, and it became too hard and painful to try to fight him about it.”

Well, that made more sense.