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Leo barked out a laugh, his smile so wide I could feel it in my stomach. “You think it’s slutty?”
I shrugged as I looked back down at it. “I mean, it does have a certain effect. I can just picture a twenty-two-year-old Leopold Callahan banking on something like this to help him pull more young ladies at the country club.”
His eyes shone brightly. “While I appreciate the vision you have of young Leopold, I can assure you that I’ve never been much of a success with the ladies.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, right.”
“It’s true.” He reached down to capture my fingers as they made another ascent up the biggest peak, pulling them into his warm hand. Looking up at his face, I found his expression had grown serious. “Senior year of college was when my anxiety got to an all-time high. My body was quite literally breaking down from the inside out because of all of the pressure I felt from my professors and my parents—there was this weight on my shoulders to succeed. And I knew it was my last year of freedom before I was fully thrown into the claws of the family business, ready or not. The anticipation became too much because the truth was that I never wanted any of it.
“When I was a boy, maybe eleven or twelve, my grandfather took me on a skiing trip during a particularly hard winter. My father had made a few bad deals and there was significant financial loss. He would come home and just . . . yell. At me, at my mother, at the fucking dog. I think my grandpa knew that things were bad, so he wanted to get me out of there for a little while. He brought me to Colorado, to Durango . . . and it was there that I fell in love with the mountains. I remember feeling so small on those runs, so insignificant. Like the wild terrain didn’t care who I was or what I did. It didn’t care about my future or what I would make of myself. It was the first time I felt free. And I think I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.”
I squeezed his hand. “Is that why you came here last year? After what happened?”
“Yeah. My grandfather passed on years ago, but I still feel him and that sense of freedom here, so I wanted to be near the mountains again. And I wanted to work on my music. Until recently, those were the only two things in my life that ever made me feel wholly alive.”
My breath caught. “And now?”
Leo studied my face for a long moment before he spoke again. “You, Mara, give me that same feeling. You make me . . . You make me want to be braver. You make me feel like I might still have a fucking chance at happiness.”
A tear swelled out of my eye, spilling down my cheek. “You can’t give up on your music, Leo. Hearing you play the piano last night . . . it was unbelievable. You’re afraid to fail, and I get it. I do. But don’t let fear win—you’re really, really good.”
He blew out a breath as he eyed me intensely. “What about you?”
My eyes fell back down to his tattoo, skimming along the lines. I knew what was coming. “What about me?” I parroted, buying myself more time.
“Oh, are we going to pretend like I’m the only one who has a difficult time being vulnerable?” I looked up at him and found his gaze had turned almost expectant, though his tone was soft and comforting as he pressed on. “What happened with your ex?”
The corners of my eyes burned hot as I felt my skin flush. The all too familiar urge to protect myself came rushing to the surface, and I wanted nothing more than to climb out of this bed and run back home to the safety of my own apartment. But Leo had shared so much of himself with me, challenging his ego and fears to open up to me and bring me into his world. Over the last couple of days, he’d become more and more of a safe place, too. He showed me his scars, and in turn, made me feel like I could show him mine. And while both of us still had a lot of work to do in our healing, it felt like maybe we didn’t have to do the work alone.
I thought being alone was for the best—was safest. But I was starting to realize that the real healing was in allowing someone in, knowing he could hurt me but having a damn good inkling that he wouldn’t.
So I breathed through the panic, taking a moment to collect myself, and then started from the beginning. “I met Seth in college,” I began, watching Leo’s eyes widen for a moment, as if he hadn’t been sure that I would actually share. “I was . . . so different back then. So trusting, and maybe a little naive. My childhood was wholesome and loving, and I just always felt . . . safe. Maybe a little invincible, like no matter what happened I’d always be okay. When I met Seth, I hardly noticed his red flags. I liked the way he made me feel, at first. And that was enough for me to want more.
“He was one of those guys everyone knew. Everyone seemed drawn to him at parties around campus, like he was the nucleus of any fun to be had. So many girls wanted to date him but somehow I’d caught his attention, and when he looked at me it felt like I was the only girl in the world. Now I can look back and see that my lack of experience blinded me from the truth, and that he knew it. I was the perfect blank canvas for him, and he knew I’d let him build me up just so he could tear me down.”
I felt Leo’s legs tense around me, like he was bracing for the impact of the rest of my story, and I tensed too. This was the first time I’d ever spoken these words out loud, and I worried what Leo might think of me once it was all out. He must have seen my hesitation, because his thumb swiped gently against the top of my hand. “Let it out, Mara.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, and kept going. “We got more serious after graduation. We’d only casually dated during school, and I honestly thought that would be it, that I might not see him again once it was all over. But he asked me to take a leap with him, to be with him . . . move in with him. And I was so excited.
“Seth loved his things, and it took me years to realize I was just something else for him to own. To control. He struggled a lot with insecurity and would always have these ridiculous excuses to explain his failures. He’d find a way to blame other people, and made me believe that his friends were jealous of him, that he had to be careful about who he trusted. He isolated me away from my friends, saying that all we needed was each other. That other people would inevitably disappoint us, so what was the point?
“Sometimes I would try to push back and tell him I needed a little space. But that always led to some big dramatic blowout where he’d accuse me of not loving him. I constantly felt like I had to prove that I did, like I was never doing enough to make him happy. During those fights he’d say really awful things to me, like I should feel lucky to be with him, that I’d be nothing without him. That I was weak and foolish and naive. And he was right?—”
“Mara,” Leo cut in, “no he wasn’t.”
But I nodded my head. “Yeah, he was. Just, maybe not the way he meant. I felt so . . . alone. He’d made himself the center of my universe, and even though I knew things weren’t good between us, I was also way too scared to leave him. I was weak, I was naive. I was so inexperienced and incapable of seeing how bad things really were, and they just kept getting worse despite thinking I could fix it. He stripped me of every ounce of confidence I had. All my energy went into trying to make him happy, and I never could. I felt like such a failure.”
I took a deep breath before the next part.
The worst part.
“The first time he hit me was in the middle of a grocery store. He’d somehow tripped over the wheel of the cart I was pushing, and responded by smacking me across the face so hard I fell into a shelf of canned foods. He thought I’d done it on purpose, that I was trying to make him fall.
“I was too stunned to even cry. I remember just staring at him, waiting for him to laugh it off. Praying it was just a joke. But he looked at me with such hatred before turning and walking away. He walked right out of the store, and I didn’t see him until the next day when he finally came home, reeking of alcohol. He broke down crying in the kitchen, saying how sorry he was . . . and I was relieved, Leo. I was relieved that he wasn’t mad at me anymore, so absurdly happy that the man who’d just hit me in public was finally back home with me and didn’t walk away from me for good.”
Leo stayed silent, but his eyes had darkened into a deadly storm.
“I let myself believe it was just a blip. That he never meant to hurt me, that it must have been some defensive reaction that I was just unfortunately on the other end of. But then it happened again, and it kind of became a regular thing until he finally scared me so bad one night that I ran. It’s taken me a long time to get back to a place where I feel confident in myself again, and I know now that none of it was ever my fault. But I carry so much shame that I ever let someone bring me down so brutally and deliberately. I promised myself no one would ever hurt me like that again.”
