AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her disappointment roiled in my gut and compelled me to speak. “I don’t want to be this way. Do you really think I like being the man I’ve become? You’re right. I wasn’t always this way, and I want to change so damn bad that I spend hours in different types of therapy every day to try to get my life back. I started the day I got back from England. Am I feeling somewhat better? Yes. Do I feel like I can find the man I used to be? No. But I’ll keep on trying until my head is on straight again. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but it has to be a hell of a lot better than the last two years.”
I was breathing heavily by the time I’d finished, still astonished that I’d blurted all that out at all.
Kylie looked taken aback, but her tone was warm as she asked, “Do you want to talk about your therapy?”
“No,” I grunted.
“Do you want to talk about what happened two years ago?” she tried again.
“Hell, no,” I answered. “I spend enough time talking about it every day. I’m not good at spilling my inner emotions until I want to vomit.”
“Okay,” she agreed readily. “Then I’ll tell you about what happened to me and why I’m not afraid of the dark anymore—if you want to hear it.”
Hell, anything was preferable to me having to talk about myself, and I was curious. “Tell me.”
“I’ll make it short because it was a long time ago,” she started. “I got married when I was nineteen, and my husband was a control freak who criticized every single thing I did or said. In his mind, nothing about me was attractive. My red hair was ugly. My freckles were hideous. I ate way too much for a female. My breasts were too small. My ass was too big. My cooking was inedible. I was stupid, ridiculous, and…well, you get the idea, right? I wanted to work, but he wanted me to stay at home. I turned myself inside out to please him. I dyed my hair. I tried every freckle cream on the market and covered what was left with makeup, but I still wasn’t enough, no matter how hard I tried. But I stayed for over three years, until I found out he was fucking someone else. I finally got up the courage to file for divorce, and when he found out, he beat me up so badly that I could hardly get off the floor.”
I was so astounded and furious that any man would treat Kylie that way that I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.
“Jesus! Kylie—”
She held up a hand. “Let me finish. I don’t talk about this part of my life anymore, so I just want to get through it. Kevin was a police officer, and when he went to work after leaving me bloody and bruised, he was shot and killed in a gang-related incident. He was a hero, and there was nothing I could do except sit through the funeral services in heavy makeup to hide the marks he’d left. Through that entire service, I didn’t know if I was mourning or if I hated him, and that confusion didn’t go away, even after he was buried. My whole marriage, his death, and my confusion messed with my head pretty badly. So I drank a lot to escape because I went through a really bad period of anxiety and depression. I had panic attacks that I couldn’t control. It was a difficult climb out once I’d gone down that rabbit hole. My mind went to plenty of dark places, but it wasn’t until I sat in my apartment one night with a bottle of pills, wondering if I should just put myself out of my misery, that I finally realized I needed help. That I couldn’t do it alone.”
“What happened?” I asked gruffly, my brain still trying to take in all that had occurred with a woman who seemed like nothing but light and happiness.
“I was fucked up, too, but I got treatment,” she said with a sigh. “And I slowly pieced my life back together. I told Nicole and Macy, and my friends supported me through the treatment. So yes, I do know what it feels like to be in a really bad place, which is why I could probably sense that you might need someone to talk to right now. I’m not sure what happened to you, Dylan, but I’m glad you’re getting help. Just know that if you ever do feel like talking, I kind of know what you’re going through. If you don’t want to talk about that, maybe you could just use someone to hang out with and have some fun. That’s probably something else you could use, too.”
I clenched my fists, and I felt physically sick that any man had laid a hand on Kylie, and had subjected her to years of making her feel like she wasn’t good enough. “If he wasn’t already dead, I think I’d be willing to kill him for you,” I rasped.
She shot me a melancholy smile and rose from her chair. “That part of my life is over, thank God. I know that maybe you don’t feel like it will happen, but you’ll come out the other side of this, Dylan. I’m going to go start our dinner.”
My entire body was humming with so many emotions that it was almost painful. After being numb and detached for so long, it was difficult to sort them all out.
I wanted to say something to her, anything to let her know that I appreciated her sharing a story that painful just to help me.
“Kylie?”
She turned back to me as she reached the door. “Yes.”
I struggled to try to utter the things I wanted to say, but in the end, all I could say was, “Thanks.”
She shot me an encouraging smile and nodded as she said, “Don’t be late for dinner. It’s mushroom chicken and rice night.”
After she left the room, I sat there for a few minutes, still thinking about everything she’d said.
Jesus!How had someone so young coped with so damn much, and then finally made that choice to get help instead of taking the easiest way out?
Looking at her now, no one would ever know that she wasn’t always the bold, outspoken woman she was today.
And the fact that she still had so much warmth, compassion, and empathy was pretty remarkable, too.
I finally stood up and shook my head. As I went toward my office, I had to admit to myself that not only was Kylie Hart stunningly beautiful, but she was also the most incredible, determined woman I’d ever met.
