AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was tired of living in fear of my own shadow.
Something needed to change.
Then, one evening, two years after settling in Harborview, I closed my shop and decided to take a chance and look for the source of the loud music echoing down the street, leading me to discover Duke’s, a dive bar situated near the waterfront.
After numerous internal debates and looking like a crazy person walking back and forth by the bar, I mustered up enough courage to step inside.
It was there that I crossed paths with Colin Spencer, a local police officer whose self-assured demeanor and irresistible, mischievous smile drew me in like a moth to a flame. We bonded over ample servings of alcohol and our shared affinity for the water. What began as a single date blossomed into two, then three, accompanied by stolen kisses behind the bar, and we became inseparable.
Our relationship began as a lust-filled, high-school teenager romp in the sheets, and Colin was the first person I trusted sexually since everything happened. I turned off my emotions and kept our relationship purely about sex.
I needed to feel something—to distract me from the bad shit that had happened to me.
It may not have been exactly healthy… but it felt good.
Sometimes the best way to get over something is to get under someone else or something like that, right?
It made sense at the time.
Fuckinghim felt good.
He was very adept at making me feel good, and he didn’t push for more…until he did.
Until it wasn’t just sex for him.
For eight months, Colin and I were content with our sexual courtship until he proposed that I move with him and take our relationship to the next level.
Panic consumed me, and I freaked.
Of course, I did.
I believed that I was too damaged on the inside to be in a committed relationship with someone. I hadn’t disclosed the truth about my past to him, and the burden of my deception weighed heavily upon me. He didn’t deserve to be lied to.
Tearfully, I struggled to explain that it wasn’t about him but rather my own internal turmoil that I wrestled with.
Yes, I did use the line, “It’s not you. It’s me.”
Did I think he believed me?
No.
His face bore a solemn expression tainted with a hint of skepticism. Perhaps it stemmed from his profession as a police officer, or maybe it was just a facet of his personality.
Either way, he could see right through me.
How could I tell him the truth about who I was and the dark past that still haunted me?
He knew I wasn’t telling him the whole truth, but he let me go like the honorable man he was. In his own way, I think he knew I had secrets that I didn’t feel I was ready to share. He never pressed me about them, and that was another reason I was attracted to him in the first place. He let me be me.
But, it was my own guilt that plagued me.
I heard that he had no difficulty moving on with girl after girl, and from what I heard, he seemed happy after our breakup. I knew I made the right choice for him mostly, but it still crushed me.
I retreated to living my solitary life, free from prying eyes. I wanted to be able to open up and trust someone, but I didn't know if I would ever find someone who would be able to handle my past and not look at me like something that needed to be fixed, tiptoeing around me, afraid that I might crumble in their hands. I am not some delicate, fragile flower that needs to be treated like at any second; I might lose it.
When that someone found their way to me, I would be ready, and I would be the person they deserved, come hell or high water.
For now, I focused on building a home in Harborview and creating a healthy life for my new self, even if that meant I did so alone.
