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No, I awoke curled up in a position that my body remembered, one that I’d forced my mind to forget, one that was the reason I cried myself to sleep, falling apart and woke up trying to hold myself together, even in my dreams.
But someone else was holding me together.
At the same time as they were ripping me apart.
I didn’t try to rectify this situation as soon as it became apparent that I’d searched for Liam in my sleep and that he’d curled his arms around me, holding me tight to his chest.
I didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
I wanted to force myself back to sleep so I could stay here in oblivion.
But I was awake.
Liam, of course, with his new super badass man senses knew this immediately, since his arms tightened around me.
“What was your trauma?” he asked in a voice that signified he’d been awake a lot longer than I had, it wasn’t gravelly and choked with sleep like it had been that morning in the kitchen.
I sucked in a breath. It was the question I’d expected weeks ago. On the night that both of us itched for answers but didn’t have the strength to ask the questions. I wondered what gave Liam the strength. Maybe now he’d let some of his weaknesses go, he could find it. Or maybe he needed to feign strength after last night.
I didn’t have enough wherewithal to figure that out moments after waking. Nor did I have any self-preservation to deflect the question with one of my own.
Maybe that was his intention, maybe he hadn’t asked the question that night because he knew he couldn’t get answers unless my guard was down.
Or shattered.
“I dated after you,” I said, my voice still thick with sleep. “Not in the first four years. Not once. I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t even see men. Not live ones anyway. I only saw you.”
His arms tightened around me and I tried to tell myself to move from this position that was far too intimate for this story.
For this life.
But I didn’t move.
“If it were up to me, I don’t think I ever would’ve wanted to start with anyone else,” I continued. “Mostly because I didn’t imagine anyone else could give me what you gave me, and a little because I couldn’t survive anyone else taking away from me like you did. But it wasn’t up to me. Moreover, it was a decision I made because of my family. They worried. They meddled.” I rolled my eyes, making sure to keep them safely focused on the door with the ruined hinges instead of the man who ruined my heart. “You know them.” I paused, violently and brutally. “Well, you knew them,” I muttered.
Liam’s arms flexed around me in what I supposed was some kind of flinch.
“So to appease them, I dated,” I continued, forcing myself to pretend that after last night I still didn’t care about his pain. “Sporadically because of my job. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was almost kind of…nice. Empty. But nice not to be so fucking lonely all the time.” I shrugged, trying to shrug off the truth that right here, right now, imprisoned with the man I’d mourned, who’d let me mourn him, was the least alone I’d felt in a decade.
When I needed that loneliness, when it was vital to survival, it didn’t come.
“Nothing was serious,” I continued. “Nothing ever could be. Not just because of…” I trailed off. “My job didn’t exactly foster relationships,” I said, a half-truth to cover up the reality that went unspoken but unavailable. “Men tended to be threatened by me. My job. They don’t like women who don’t want to be protected from the horrors of the world, women that seek them out. It doesn’t bode well for their fragile masculinity. It was whatever.”
I did a weird shrug with Liam’s arms still around me.
“I didn’t need to be tied down,” I said to the door. “Marcus was no different than the rest. We were casual. He was nice.”
I paused, still focused on the door, sitting at an awkward angle, closed as much as it could be given the damage Liam had done to it. I hadn’t even bothered trying to close it last night. I wondered who did it. If Liam had gotten up at some point and done it or a passerby had taken it upon themselves to protect our privacy and my modesty. It was a laughable thought. These were men that fucked women in front of an entire party. They didn’t protect privacy or modesty.
I focused back on my story, on Marcus. It was almost easy to talk about it now, to think about it. Well, it would never be easy, but years of therapy had made it bearable at least. “He was nice,” I repeated. “Until he wasn’t. He got…intense.”
