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“Blowback,” I sigh, the sound weary to my own ears.
“Yeah. I gave myself over to the relationship. Trusted him to take care of me. He made me feel loved. When he asked for things that I wasn’t comfortable with, I did them because I loved him, and I thought he loved me. I told you that before and I’m not blaming him. I was adult enough to be in charge of my own actions and whatever else Dewayne is—and he’s a lot—he didn’t force me.”
“He didn’t want to force you.”
“No, it was more fun for him to get me to do it willingly,” she confesses.
“How did you find out?”
“He took great pleasure in telling me after a night of partying with him and two of his buddies, laughing the whole time. Bragging how he made the Savage Princess beg to be a whore for the children of the men who made her dad their bitch.”
I make a sound that is more animal than man. A wounded cry, filled with fury. I’m going to kill the motherfucker. There’s not a doubt in my mind.
“I was ashamed, shocked, sickened… until that moment I didn’t know any of my father’s past. I don’t think I ever knew the world could be that ugly.”
“Your parents have no idea you know, do they?”
“No. They think I have no direction, maybe that I’m a lost cause. Maybe I should talk to them, but if my father knew… It’d bring it back. It would open those wounds. It would hurt everyone.”
“So, you let them think the worst of you. Christ. How could your mother ever like this motherfucker?”
“Dewayne can be very nice and unassuming. I know I never once saw the evil that lurks inside of him and I’d like to think I can read people pretty damn clearly most of the time.”
“Please tell me the asshole has left you alone since this happened?”
“He pulls shit every now and then. He had me arrested for parking tickets once. None I had received but dated back to almost when we first started dating. He had a friend of his write them and turn them in, so my parents or his superiors couldn’t trace them back to him. Dad was so upset with me that he let me spend the night in jail, a night Dewayne volunteered for duty and took pleasure in taunting me. Luckily, it was county lock up and there were too many people and cameras for him to do too much.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I can’t blame Dad. He had no idea the tickets were bogus. He just thought his daughter ignored over a year of tickets because she thought they would magically disappear. The speeding tickets, the shoplifting allegations, they were all part of me running wild.”
“Jesus, Red. Why didn’t you tell me that shit? This ass-clown has made your life hell,” I bark, not able to control my reactions to everything she’s telling me. Part of me knows that she’s also glossing over this shit. She’s completely skating over it, her voice monotone—telling me without words that it’s worse than anything I’m imagining in my head.
“There’s no point. There’s nothing you can do, and Dewayne has pretty much left me alone for the last few months. I figure maybe he’s grown bored.
“Or maybe you’ve just been in Virginia and he hasn’t seen you enough to cause you shit.”
“Maybe,” she agrees with a shrug. Then she turns her head to look at me, I can see unshed tears in her eyes, glowing, but I also see a strength in her eyes. It glows on her face and she looks at me with a purpose. “I’m not a whore, Luke.”
“Damn it, Red, don’t you think I know that?”
“The things I did, what happened, I thought it was a safe relationship. I thought I was loved. I didn’t particularly enjoy parts of it and maybe others I did—”
“Red, stop,” I tell her, hating that she’s beating herself up over any of this fucking shit.
“Still, it’s nothing I would want long term. It’s nothing I want with you. I love you, if another woman touched you, I’d want to kill her,” she says, her voice defiant.
“Baby—”
“And I never want another man touching me but you. You need to believe that,” she’s daring me to argue, everything about her defensive.
She’s breaking my heart.
I pick her up then, no longer content with her body just pulled against mine. I pick her up so that she’s cradled in my lap. Our gazes lock and I don’t waiver, I don’t even blink.
“Your past is yours. I have one. We all fucking do, Red. It marks us, makes us who we are. You don’t feel ashamed of it. You hold your head high. You are one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. You walk into a room and you fucking own it. I’m so damn proud that I’m the fucker you’ve claimed, Red. Don’t you ever forget that. I’m thankful as hell you want to be a part of not only my life, but that of my daughter and one day, when Daisy grows up, I know she’s going to be a strong woman too, because she will have learned from the best.
