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“Blake, if this is something you’re not ready to talk about, we don’t have to.”
Shaking my head, I looked away and out into the darkness.
“It was on a night like tonight, unusually warm. I remember hearing my mother on the phone with my father. He was on a business trip. She was telling him about someone she had seen. This guy had frightened her, and she kept asking my dad what she should do. Next thing I knew my father was coming home early, and she told me to call my brother, Dustin, and tell him he needed to get home right away. I had no idea why she was panicking, but at the age of seventeen, I thought she was overreacting.”
“Who was the guy?” Morgan asked.
I swallowed hard. “I didn’t find out until later, but it was her first husband. Dustin and I never knew our mother had been married before our father.”
Morgan pinched her brows in confusion.
I pulled in a deep breath then slowly exhaled. “Let me start at the very beginning. My mother was in an abusive relationship with her first husband for two years. According to my father, the beatings didn’t start right away. Not until a few months after they were married. They got worse as time went on. He had beat her so badly one night she ended up in the hospital, where she lost the baby she was carrying. That’s where she met my father. He was an intern working that night in the emergency room. He stayed with her the entire night and even after his shift ended.”
“That was so sweet of him,” Morgan said softly.
“Yeah. When it came time for her to be discharged, she had nowhere to go. The bastard husband of hers was waiting outside the hospital for her. My father took her out another exit and right to the police station, where she filed a restraining order. Then they went to her family’s lawyer, where they petitioned to have the marriage annulled. My grandfather eventually paid off the bastard to make him go away and leave my mother alone. Since she needed a place to stay, Dad convinced her to stay with him. My mother had been in medical school before she married, and Dad talked her into going back and finishing. She chose her specialty because of the baby she lost.” I looked at Morgan. “She was an OB/GYN. At least, that was what Dad had told Dustin and me.”
“When did they realize they were in love?”
I smiled. “Dad says it was the moment he saw her. Something in him changed, and he knew he needed to be with her the rest of his life. To protect her so she would never have to face something like that again. Mom always said she fell in love with him the first night he cooked her dinner. I guess he was exhausted from working all night in the ER, then helping Mom with all of that stuff that day. He even took her to Target so she could buy some things like clothes and toiletries since she only had the clothes she went to the ER in.”
“It’s so tragically beautiful.”
“Yeah, I guess it was. Anyway, Dustin and I never knew any of this. Mom had decided that her past was just that. Her past. Then that day, when she saw the guy she had been married to, she panicked. I begged her to tell me what was wrong. If only she had told me, I would have been able to protect her. She didn’t want Dustin and me knowing. Something about being embarrassed she had gotten into such a toxic relationship.”
I jerked my fingers through my hair, thinking back to it all. I could have protected her. “If only she had fucking told me.”
Morgan reached for my hands and squeezed them. “Do you want to stop talking?”
I out a gruff laugh. “Why stop? I’ve already put a damper on the night.”
She shook her head. “No, you haven’t. If you want to keep going, I’m here to listen. If you want to stop, I’m here for you.”
Morgan’s words left me momentarily speechless. She was the most amazing woman I had ever met, besides my own mother. After my mother died, I had vowed never to let another woman into my heart. But when I saw Morgan, I knew I didn’t want anyone else.
“I need to tell you, Morgan. I don’t want to hold anything back from you. I don’t want anything between us.”
“Blake, something like this is not ever going to come between us. This is not a dirty secret you’ve been hiding that will change the way I feel about you.”
“You don’t know the whole story, Morgan.”
She swallowed when she heard the darkness in my voice.
“Then tell me.”
I looked at our hands clasped together.
“Dustin was pissed he had to come home, and I was mad that I had to cancel a date with the girl I had been seeing. Both of us were pretty upset with our mom. Neither of us had any idea why she was acting the way she was. I went to bed early that night, and Dustin snuck out to go to the party. After he was gone, I heard glass breaking, and I bolted out of bed. Then I heard my mother screaming.”
When I glanced up, Morgan was fighting back tears.
“I ran to my parents’ bedroom, and I saw a man over my mother. He was punching her while trying to rape her.”
“Blake,” Morgan whispered.
“I pulled him off of her and started hitting him as hard as I could. My mother was screaming for me to stop, telling me to run, to get away. I just kept fighting him. He was bigger than me—a built son of a bitch. I couldn’t get the image of him hitting her out of my head, and I just kept hitting him. He managed to get a good punch in, knocking me back enough to get up and grab my mother again. I stood up, ready to go after him again, but he pulled a knife out and stabbed my mother right in front of me.”
Morgan lost her battle, and tears silently fell down her cheeks.
