AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I always had been.
And I didn’t want to waste one more second denying it.
CHAPTER12
Jim
“And that’s the whole story,” Anne said, tears streaking down her cheeks.
Acid rolled in my stomach, my world tipping on its axis as I listened to her tell me about her past, about what happened right after we broke up, about what that asshole did to her and the spiral she understandably had after.
It wasn’t just the asshole that made her run away from everything she’d ever known or make her disdain for her family grow. It was a culmination of so many things, the pieces all set up like dominoes poised to fall—what happened to her that night was just the tipping point.
“Anne,” I said, unable to form a coherent response. Saying I was sorry wouldn’t change the past and it sure as hell wouldn’t help her now.
I scooted closer to her on the lone piece of furniture she had, a vintage-looking loveseat she’d scored at one of the local markets when she first moved in. Slowly, I wrapped an arm around her, gauging her response to see if she even wanted to be touched after digging up the past.
She leaned into my embrace, holding tight to me.
“You didn’t deserve that,” I said, stroking my fingers through her silken hair. “You didn’t deserve any of it.”
Her body shuddered as she let out another sob, shaking her head against my chest. “You think I would be done crying over this,” she said, her tone angry and sad.
“You feel whatever you need to feel,” I said, knowing I wasn’t one to tell her that one day it would all be better.
I had no clue if it would be, and I’d never give her false hope. But there were truths Icouldtell her, so I shifted to look into her teary eyes.
“You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known,” I said, cupping her cheeks and swiping away her tears with my thumbs. “But crying and feeling the pain doesn’t make you weak, Anne. It makes you human. Asking for help doesn’t make you weak, it makes youhuman.”
Her family’s expectations her entire life—being the firstborn VanDoren—had given her a knee-jerk reaction to operate at inhuman levels and place unrealistic goals on herself. It was a source of strain for her and her sister even before the incident, because Persephone made living up to those expectations look so easy while Anne had to work at it.
“But I’m the one who ran straight to a bottle,” she countered, sucking in a sharp breath. “I’m the one who chose to behave the way I did after everything.Thatmakes me weak, makes me broken.”
I shook my head, moving my hands from her face down her shoulders until I could take her hands in mine. “Everyone reacts differently to the kind of trauma you’ve endured,” I explained, drawing on my history of being a police officer for years. “I’ve seen it countless times,” I continued. “Things like this happen way too often. It’s awful and gut-wrenching and you never know how the person is going to cope. But there is nowrongway. You simply had to go through the rough of it before you could get to where you are now. There is nothing wrong with that.”
A small, sad sort of smile shaped her lips as she met my eyes. “You’re too good to me,” she said. “You always have been.”
“I’m just me,” I said. “And I’d never be able to treat you any other way than you deserve.”
A sigh slipped past her lips, like unloading the story for me had been another weight lifted off her chest. I was honored she trusted me enough with something she’d kept buried for years, but I still couldn’t shake the instinct to head back to the station and pummel the piece of shit.
I’d locked him up in the drunk tank and filled out all the necessary paperwork before heading straight to Anne’s. I wasn’t in uniform anymore, but I was fucking tempted to head back there regardless of not being on duty.
But that’s not what she needed right now.
“There have been several other times I’ve tried this, you know,” she said, and I furrowed my brow, trying to follow her train of thought. “Sobriety,” she explained. “There were so many bottoms I hit. So many experiences where I’d wake up and not remember where I was or I’d find a text I sent to my sister or family when I was drunk.” She shook her head. “Something like that would happen, and I’d straighten up for a couple weeks. I’d tell myself I was stronger than this, tell myself that I didn’t need to self-medicate anymore. That everything in my past had no power over me.”
I held her hand, stroking my thumb over the top of it while she spoke, wishing like hell I had the right words to comfort her. “What changed this time?”
Anne visibly swallowed. “You’d think it would be the doctors telling me I’d die if I kept it up,” she said. “But it wasn’t.”
The reality of her liver’s condition sent waves of ice over my skin. The thought of losing her…
Fuck, it was unfathomable. I thought losing her all those years ago was bad, but at least I’d known she was out existing in the world, living her life in whatever way she chose. What if she hadn’t come home? What if she hadn’t gotten help? What if…
What if I never got the chance to tell her how I felt about her, even now, all these years later?
“Then what was it?” I asked gently, instead of dropping to my knees and begging her to see her worth, to understand how loved she was, how needed she was in so many people’s lives, whether she believed it or not. That would be a selfish move, and I couldn’t be selfish with her.
