AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She sat on the couch, rubbing her arms.
“Are you cold?” He grabbed a blanket and laid it over her lap before settling in next to her.
“Thanks.” After a beat of silence, she said, “My mother belonged to a very religious fundamentalist cult. She took a vow of poverty, which meant we lived in squalor. I didn’t even have a mattress. Our clothes were hand-me-downs, at best. It was just her, my brother, and me for the longest time. She had a few boyfriends. But when I got older, their gazes lingered. My mother blamed me. Said I was wicked. An adulterer. Temptress, she called me. Said I needed to be saved. That’s when the beatings happened.”
Finn clenched his fists, tension twisting up his spine.
“Damon is my half brother. He started hearing voices when he was eighteen. My mother was convinced they were from God. That my brother was a holy prophet. You have to understand, when you’re raised like we were, you don’t question your parent. We were taught that children should obey their parents no matter what, or it was a sin. That being hit was discipline. And it was our mother’s duty to beat the devil out of us.”
He reached out his hand to her knee in comfort.
“When I got older and learned about mental health in high school, I realized my brother had schizophrenia. I convinced him to go to the hospital and talk to someone.” She closed her eyes as tears ran down her face. “They shocked him. They . . . they were supposed to help, but they just made everything worse. He didn’t trust me after that. My mother got him back, took him off the meds, and by that time I had started seeing you. She convinced him that you were the devil trying to take me away. That you would hurt me.”
He shook his head, wrapping his arm around her, drawing her closer.
“He showed up to our house, and you got between us. He had a knife, thinking you truly were the devil, that you were holding me against my will. I moved between you, hoping to plead with him. But . . . he came at us with the knife.” She looked down and lifted her shirt, showing off the jagged scar. “That’s what this is from.”
“The journal said that I made the choice so you didn’t have to. I was trying to protect you,” he offered.
She dropped her top and nodded. “I know that now. And while that was truly what I needed at the time, I wish you would have told me. Before the accident or even after you found the journal. He called me once months later to let me know he was okay. That he was going to stay away so I could live my life and be safe and happy. He wouldn’t tell me anymore. I went five years without knowing if he was dead or alive. Wondering if he was safe or on the streets somewhere.”
“I wish I had too.”
She turned to face him. “I have never cheated on you, Finn. I’ve never even thought about it. You’re it for me. You were my first . . . and I want you to be my last.”
He rubbed his thumb gently over the corner of her mouth. “I want that.”
“You can ask Ricardo if you want confirmation that Laura did cheat. He runs the apiary with his brother, Roman.”
He shook his head. “I trust you.”
Her eyes bore into his, searching. “Do you?”
“I think maybe we’ve spent too much time looking behind us and not enough looking forward. It makes me feel stuck. I just want to take the next steps to move on with you, if you’ll have me.”
She leaned in, her forehead resting against his. Charli’s breath whispered across his lips. “I’d like that too. But I’m still hurting from what you did. You not only hid your interaction with her from me, but you sought her out and went to her house. Do you know how betrayed that makes me feel? When you won’t even communicate with me?”
He gripped the back of her neck, holding her in place as his thumb rubbed back and forth on the sensitive spot behind her ear. “I will regret that for the rest of my life. It felt like you were keeping things from me, and I . . . It was cowardly of me to go to her rather than come to you.”
“Everything I’ve kept from you was because I didn’t want to stress you out. I thought it would be too much. We were building something great here. I just felt like I wasn’t sure what was too much.”
“No more.” He ran his nose over hers. “I swear to you, Charli-baby, I’m in this. No more secrets. And I need the same from you. If it’s too overwhelming, I’ll tell you.”
“And no more Laura?”
“No more of my ex. Promise.” He pulled her into his lap, holding her to his chest. One hand on her hip, and one hand over the ink compass tattoo covered by her shirt. Closing his eyes, he vowed to follow her through the darkness like a guiding light. He may not remember their past, and he might have made a mess of their present. But starting now, he’d carve out a future with his wife. The woman he loved. The woman who was quickly becoming his everything. If only he could become the man she needed.
30
Charli
The next night, Charli pressed a hand to her lower back in an attempt to calm the dull ache. She winced as she kicked off her shoes, her swollen feet screaming to be freed from the confines of her Converse. Being on her feet for so long at the bar was getting harder the farther along in her pregnancy she got.
Finn shut the door behind them and bent to organize her shoes.
“Thank you.”
He stood, wrapping his arm around her waist and ushering her towards the stairs. “Let me run you a bath.”
