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“I know how it ended, obviously, but how did it start? How bad did he hurt you?”
She couldn’t answer right away. Not because she didn’t want him to know, but … “It’s humiliating, really.”
His hand came over to rest on her thigh, and that slight touch actually helped.
“He was nice at first. Really nice. I thought there was something special between us. For a few weeks, things were really good. He got along well with Maisie and Linc, and that’s important to me.
“But then he started to get controlling. Actually, I think he was controlling from the start, but I took it as protective and chivalrous—stuff like insisting I let him open doors. If I did it myself, he made me back out and start over so he could do it. He wouldn’t let me pay for stuff, or be the one to step up to the counter and order food. Just little stuff. I thought he was ‘old-fashioned.’
“But then he decided he didn’t like it that Maisie and I have best-friend dates together, no boys allowed. He pouted about it as it was coming up on the calendar, and he kept making a ‘joke’ about what didn’t I want him to know. When I treated that as a joke and explained to him that Maisie and I have been friends since before we could talk, he got mad and said it wasn’t right that he wasn’t my number-one. It was the first time he got mad at me, and he really yelled. He stormed out and wouldn’t answer calls or texts for a day. Then he was back, and really sorry. He said he was in love with me and it was just hard to feel so much, he didn’t know where to put all this love he had for me, but he’d do better. And for a while he was, and I thought the fight had been an anomaly.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Actually, it kind of was, because a week or so later, the next time he got mad—because I got called in to cover for another vet at the clinic, so I had to cancel a lunch date—he was even angrier than the first time. He came to the clinic and threw a tantrum in the waiting room. He kicked a display case and broke out the glass. But that night, he cried and apologized and said he just didn’t know how to control all these feelings he had for me. It was just so much love.”
Recalling all that, feeling stupid for letting it happen, Kelsey got lost in the memories and their feelings. Until Dex squeezed her thigh gently, and she returned to the moment.
“It’s so dumb, and I hate it, but I felt guilty. Like it was my fault for being so lovable? I don’t know. But a couple days after that, he wanted to know why I hadn’t told him I loved him, and that’s when everything really went upside-down.”
“You told him you didn’t.”
“Yeah. I said I didn’tyet, but really I was starting to see that I wouldn’t at all, and I felt soguiltyabout it. Like, here was this guy who loved me so much it made him crazy, and I didn’t think I could love him back. There were already all these little discomforts and incidents beginning to stack up. I felt too guilty to break up with him, but I guess the way I saidyetmade him think he could make me love him. So that started an awful cycle for the next couple weeks where he’d do something that was just incredibly over the top—like buy tickets to Paris for the very next day, which I said I obviously couldn’t do, and then he got mad and … that was really bad. Then he was sorry, and to prove it he bought me a car, which I made him take back, and he was mad again, and that was worse. That was the first time he really hit me. Punched me in the face. That was when I said I wanted to break up.”
Dex tensed visibly. He took and released a breath, then said, “But you didn’t tell your dad about any of that.”
Kelsey shook her head. “He would have killed him. At the time, I didn’t want that. He apologized for the punch, he cried, he tended to my face, crying and apologizing all the while, telling me it was love that made him do it, if I could just love him everything would be okay, just tell him what he needed to do to make me love him. I told him there wasn’t anything. Finally, he let me leave.”
Her appetite had gone as cold as her pancakes had become, so she pushed her plate away and sipped her coffee. “He started stalking me then. Really scary stuff. He’d leave little signs, so I’d know. Like a rose on my pillow, even after I’d changed the locks. Or he’d email me a photo he’d taken of me somewhere—at my doctor’s office, going into a changing room at the mall, creepy stuff like that. Then one night, he was waiting here in the apartment. The night manager had let him in. It was really bad that night. He hit me a bunch of times, and he …”
She didn’t want to tell Dex what Greg had done that night. “Anyway, a neighbor came down to see if everything was okay, and that stopped it. Greg left right away then. That’s when I talked to Duncan and asked him for help. He’s the one who first told Dad.”
“And Duncan and the Jessup boys laid down a lesson on him.”
Kelsey wasn’t surprised Dex knew that part; it was, after all, what had led Greg to escalate so high he was now dead. Certainly, Duncan, Zach, and Jay had explained at the table what they knew of the man who’d attacked the clubhouse.
“Yeah. And you know the rest.”
Dex sat quietly, staring at his hand on her leg. The silence stretched and thinned until Kelsey had to say more, despite already having talked until her jaw was tired. “I know I should have been smarter—”
With a quick, firm tug on her hand, he shut her up. “None of that’s your fault, Kelsey. You didn’t do anything wrong. You gave somebody who didn’t deserve it the benefit of the doubt, but being good and kind can’t ever be a mistake, even if it goes bad.”
Because she needed to lighten things up, Kelsey laughed lightly. “That’s one way to look at it, I guess. Duncan thinks I need to wise up.”
Dex’s eyes settled on hers. “I think you’re perfect.”
Her heart fluttering, Kelsey set her hand on his. “I’m not, but it makes me happy that you think so. You’re pretty great, too.”
He took his hand back and turned back to his pancakes—which must have been as cold as hers. After poking at them for a bit, he set his fork down again. “The way you talk about that guy, it worries me a little. I know I can be intense, and what I’m feeling for you already is pretty … hot, I guess. Big. I don’t want to get in a place where I can’t control myself.”
“I know. Like I said, I know that little stuff shouldn’t be ignored. I’ll say something.”
“Okay. Good.”
“So … we’re a couple?”
He smiled. Each one was a gift, just for her. “I’d like that, yeah.”
