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“The next morning in the hotel was the best moment of my life, and every day I’ve spent with you as your man since has topped it. I felt like God had finally cut me a break, giving me an angel to love and protect. It was the first time I felt whole.”
Opal sucks in a ragged breath but doesn’t comment. She stares off into the horizon, waiting for me to continue. Hurt is as clear as day on her lovely face. I hope to eliminate most of it with my confession.
“Showing me the picture of you in your keepsake box was the start of my issues. I was ashamed of my comments after you revealed your age in the photo. You looked no different from how you do now. I could have sworn it was a recent picture. It bothered me. I couldn’t see the girl in the photo, only the woman.”
Nervous, I run a hand through my hair. “When you finally confessed what happened to you as a teenager, it relieved me you were opening up, proud of you for taking that first step. I was fine until you told me more abouthim. My heart sank with every detail that could have been about me. Everything from his age to his physical description made me compare myself to him.”
Opal turns toward me, staring at me with puzzled light-blue eyes.
“It made me sick to my stomach. I started thinking about what you must have been like at that age, how mature you looked in that picture, how your naïve innocence initially attracted me to you…” I shake my head, bile rising in my gullet. “I worried I was no better than him because his interest in you wasn’t any different from mine.”
Opal gasps. “You saw yourself as a child sex offender.”
My head falls into my hands, shame shrouding me. Opal’s dainty hand rests on my bicep. It feels like heaven, a heaven I don’t deserve.
“Gauge, you’re nothing like him. You’re not a monster. You’re amazing in all the right ways.”
“But I couldn’t see that. All I saw were the similarities, and I despised myself. I kept seeing myself in his shoes, worried you got rid of one pervert only to wind up with another.”
“Gauge, you’re not a pervert. Everyone thought I was older than I was then. It isn’t just you. You can’t beat yourself up when you never knew my age,” Opal placates.
“I realize this now, but at the time, it ate away at me. Every time I was next to you, I kept visualizing the fourteen-year-old girl in the picture. It was vile to even imagine being intimate with you again. You were pure, and I fucking tainted you with my filth.Gah!I couldn’t allow you to be tied to me when you deserved someone who wasn’t sick like me.”
Opal wraps her arms around me, tears spilling onto my shoulder. My arms snake around her, pulling her tight against me.
“That’s when I distanced myself. I knew I had to call off our relationship, but my twisted, perverted heart couldn’t let you go. Desperate, I let my hate for myself take over, pushing you away. That night in the kitchen, when you clapped back, was the moment I decided to end things. I wasn’t strong enough to keep going, pretending what I felt for you was normal when I thought it wasn’t. I said every repulsive thing I could think of to make you hate me. But nothing I said was working. You were so determined to fight for me, fight for us.
“When you told me you loved me…” I swallow. “I nearly buckled. I wanted to forget everything and get lost in your love, but I couldn’t do that to you. You deserved better than me, and if I had to break your heart to make you see reason, so be it. That was when I hatched a plan I knew would end us.”
“Candy,” Opal mutters coolly, her body tensing in my arms. I need to do damage control before she shuts down.
I nod. “It was the ultimate betrayal, and it was all fake. I swear I never touched her. Fuck, I mean, before I met you, I had, lots of times, but this last time, no.”
“Do better, Gauge,” Opal warns. “Make it make sense before I walk away.”
I need to get myself together. Everything is on the line.
“I was sick to my stomach the entire time. Nothing was gratifying about it other than knowing I was giving you the freedom I felt you deserved. I’ve not been with anyone else since I met you. You’re all I want.”
Opal says nothing. I take her silence as doubt. After the shit I pulled, I understand why she wouldn’t trust me.
“I’m being honest, Opal. I didn’t sleep with Candy. Call me an asshole for using her. I deserve it.”
Opal’s eyes are filled with angry tears. “And I’m just supposed to take your word for it? What I saw—”
“Was staged,” I can’t let her entertain the idea any further. “Convincing as hell, but staged.”
“You’ve given me every reason to doubt you, Gauge,” Opal seethes, but I can see the fight leaving her body as her shoulders slump.
“I’m a bastard for what I did, but the one thing I didn’t do was sleep with Candy.”
“You swear?”
“On my life.”
Opal blubbers, her body shakes as I rock her in my arms. My arms lock around her, refusing to release her.
“The days that followed were the worst in my life. All I wanted to do was fall at your feet, beg you to take me back. I wanted your powdered sugar kisses and missed the flour in my hair. I ached to hold you in my arms at night.
