Page 50 of Peaches & Pistols

“I need to hear it all.” I start to interject but he cuts me off, “I need to know what kind of man might show up here one day to take you and Everly back.”

It’s a fear that long suffocated me, but I’ve felt so safe with Greyson, I’ve worried less as time’s gone on. The reality that my presence here could bring danger to Greyson’s door, and affect Harper, makes me sick.

“Greyson, I’m so sor—” He holds a hand up.

“Don’t apologize. I just…need to know.”

I gather my composure but can’t look at him as I confess further.

“I thought he was unbelievably patient and understanding when I wanted to keep my virginity during our courtship. Not that he had to wait all that long, in the end. Our wedding night was nothing like the soft touches and careful lovemaking I’d hoped for.”

Greyson pops to his feet, pacing the length of the living room in front of me. I fold in on myself, revolted by the onslaught of memories. I had to detach myself for so many years, it became easier to pretend those terrible things happened to someone else, not me.

“It was as if as soon as I was legally bound to him, he shed his disguise and the monster beneath slithered out.” My admission is quiet, but clear enough. Greyson rakes his hands through his hair, pulling at the strands so hard it must hurt.

“I was scheduled to work the day after we got back from our honeymoon, but he wouldn’t drive me to my shift. Instead, he made me call the manager and quit. I hadn’t made many friends because my family had only moved to Kansas City a few months before graduation. So, no one noticed when I disappeared.”

“No one? Does anyone know where you are?” he asks pointedly.

“No. I think my parents moved away after they kicked me out, so I was completely alone until Carter. Then he isolated me, only showing me off at his work events when it suited him. Those were infrequent, so I doubt anyone’s thought twice about my absence. He could easily dispel any suspicion by saying I was home sick or taking care of Everly.

“He liked to boast about being the ultimate family man, when in reality, he only valued us as pieces he could move across a chess board. I was Mrs. Carter Whitaker, because that’s all I was anymore. My identity disappeared. I only existed in relation to him.

“Before we were married, he called me Mia, like I asked him to, after explaining why the name Amelia hurt me. The only people who ever called me Amelia were those who didn’t respect me, love me, or even notice me. Once we were married, he only called me Amelia, saying it was more sophisticated, that ‘Mia’ was childish. He never missed an opportunity to make me feel less than him,” I explain.

Greyson processes this information by his resumed pacing.

“Everly wasn’t in preschool?” he asks, not judgmentally, but straight to the point.

“No, Carter didn’t think it was necessary. He never let me use a babysitter or anything of the sort. So aside from our neighbors and his family, I don’t think anyone even knows Everly and I exist,” I admit.

“Wouldn’t his family be concerned having not seen you in all these months?”

A derisive laugh escapes me, resentment giving me the courage to meet his eyes.

“Apparently, marriage was a condition for them to release the remainder of Carter’s trust fund. I was a pawn, nothing more than an object to be shuffled around. The extent they concerned themselves with me was if I was keeping their secrets. They were kind enough to Everly, but they nor Carter were warm or affectionate with her.”

“Did you try for her?”

“No. I got pregnant soon after the wedding. I wasn’t on birth control. I didn’t even have a doctor. He told me husbands didn’t need to wear condoms…let alone ask permission.”

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Greyson seethes, almost like a promise.

I don’t respond, because what would I even say?

“I’ll never know if getting me pregnant was an accident he used to his advantage, or part of a well thought out plan to keep me tied to him and eager to submit.

“Even during the most turbulent seas of my adolescence, never did I think I’d be a mother at nineteen, married to a man fifteen years my senior—trapped. Everything I thought I knew about my new husband had been a fabrication. He presented himself as a sweet, kind man who’d fallen head over heels for me after a chance meeting.

“I spent every night for years agonizing over if our meeting was chance at all, or if he preyed on my vulnerability. It was all too easy for him to lie about his age, values, and dreams. He fed into every insecurity I had beautifully. The ultimate con.”

I take a deep breath in through my nose and exhale slowly, the wreckage of my life weighing heavily on my chest.

“He got his wish. A young, docile wife who wouldn’t dare talk back or stand up to him. I was barely older than a child, and he was a grown man who used his status, age, and physical stature to intimidate me into unquestioning obedience.”

Purging seven years of poison from my body has left me with a gaping wound, bloody and raw. After long moments of silence Greyson stops the recording on his phone and sits beside me on the couch.

He sets his phone on the cushion between us without looking at me.