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“Dancing with you yesterday, the lyrics kept hitting me. I’ve been falling in love with you.”
Love? “No. You’re—you’re just . . .”
“Just what?”
“I don’t know. Caught up in the weekend?”
“That’s not it. This has been building since—since the night we met. You loved Boss enough to have Jillian check me out, and you still let me have him back. You said I should get to know a woman to see if I like being with her. You were right. Every time I’m with you, everything you do . . . you’re everything I want.”
He was breaking her heart because she couldn’t give him what he wanted. “We can’t be together.”
“I won’t ask you to give up your independence. In my line of work, that’s a needed quality in a partner.”
“It’s more than that.” More that she didn’t want to get into. Not now. Not ever.
“Every time I see you, I smile. When I’m away from you, I want to see you again. I send Boss over so I have an excuse to come sit on the front porch with you,” he admitted.
A ball of emotions caught in her throat. She wished she could tell him she felt the same—because she did.
With all he’d done, she owed him the truth so that he’d see it wasn’t him.
It was her. All her.
ChapterForty-Seven
WARRIOR – Demi Lovato
“I appreciateall you’ve done and enjoy spending time with you.” She started with the easier truth, summoning her courage to continue. “But trying to be more than friends wouldn’t be fair to you. You deserve more. Someone who can give you what you need—in the way of a physical relationship.”
“Is this because of things with your father?” John’s tone was even and guarded.
“He was physically abusive, but . . .”
“Your ex? You said he was controlling, but there’s more. What did he do to you?” Now, John’s voice dropped to an ominous threat.
She swallowed. There were only a handful of people who knew all the details. Adam. Her. Their attorneys. Nurses and police officers. Her therapist. She’d disclosed pieces to help build trust with clients. Even Jillian didn’t know the whole story. As impulsive as it was for John to think he might be falling in love, it left her limited options, with the ugly truth being best.
She drew in a deep, shaky breath and sank onto the side of the bed. “In the beginning, our marriage was happy and normal. We’d been married about a year and a half and were trying to start a family.” Or so she thought. “Adam’s son and daughter had been with us for the weekend, but he had to go out of town on Sunday afternoon. When I took the kids home, I mentioned to his ex-wife that we wanted to take them to New York City to see a musical and celebrate his daughter’s sixteenth birthday. Lorraine commented that just because I wouldn’t have kids, hers would never see me as more than Adam’s second wife.”
“That was vicious.”
“She didn’t want to see him happy. I just didn’t know why she’d come at me since I didn’t meet Adam until after they were divorced. I told her I wasn’t trying to be their mother, but I would want the kids to be on good terms with their half-siblings when we had children. She laughed and said I didn’t know Adam if I thought he would agree to adopt.” She shivered at the memory of Lorraine’s cruel, cutting laugh. “When I said Adam and I were trying to have children, she told me Adam had a vasectomy.”
“Was she making that up or . . .” John’s mouth hung open.
“That’s what I thought—or hoped—at first. But why would she lie about that? I confronted him when he got home”—three agonizing days later—“and Adam confessed he’d had the vasectomy after their son was born. In his defense, we had not talked about having kids before we got married. In my naiveté, I thought it’d been a given we’d have at least one child.”
“There’s ways around that, or you could adopt.”
“Except Adam blamed the stress and demands of parenthood for the rift that led to their divorce. He said he’d already raised his kids and our marriage would be stronger if it was just the two of us.” Classic narcissistic behavior. Adam wanted to be the center of her world. “After learning he’d kept that from me and let me think we were trying for me to get pregnant, things changed in our relationship.”
John gave a mirthless laugh. “No doubt, after him lying about something so important to you.”
“I felt betrayed and went into a depressive cycle. I wasn’t interested in sex, only he didn’t take no for an answer.” She couldn’t look John in the face when she said it. His hands fisted at his sides, but he didn’t interrupt. “I finally recognized our relationship was about Adam’s need for control and to have everything revolve around him, not him loving me or wanting to protect me. I had to leave. Only, as I’ve already told you, I had nothing. And nowhere to go. I started saving and planning. When I met with the legal aid lawyer, I told her everything. Denice explained that, without evidence, spousal rape is hard to prove.”
John inhaled sharply, fixing his gaze on the ceiling. Rage played out on his features.
“I used my escape money to buy motion-activated spy cameras.” Her voice went flat as she recalled hiding them while he was out of town for business—in the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room. He returned the next evening and wanted to celebrate the deal he’d landed. “The next morning, after he left for work, I went to the hospital for them to perform a rape kit. Only I was afraid it wouldn’t be enough to show a pattern, so I didn’t press charges. Not yet.”
