I have known and not-known for ten years. I called it bad sex, or the price of survival, or a choice I made when I was too drunk to make better choices.
But now I know it for what it really was.
Assault.
And Caleb is down the hall reading our son to sleep, patient and steady and present in the way he has always been present. While I’m sitting in this clean, expensive room with a horrible knowledge I can’t stuff back in the bottle. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.
I press my palms against my eye sockets.
I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep again for a very long time. I pull the covers up. Higher. Higher still, until they’re over my head. I can’t imagine possibly summoning the strength to ever get out of this bed.
TWENTY-FOUR
CALEB
I walkthe one hundred and forty-three steps from the kitchen to Harper’s bedroom door and back. I know because I counted on the first pass, and every pass since has matched exactly.
Which means I have not varied my path once.
Which means I have been wearing this groove into the floor for long enough that it has becomethegroove. The default. The thing my body does when my brain won’t shut the fuck up.
Domhnall watches me from the sectional with the patient expression of a man who has personally been talked down from several ledges and now considers himself qualified to staff them. It’s annoying to be on the other side because it’s usually my job.
“She hasn’t left that room in two days,” I bristle. “She barely eats. When Bruiser goes in she tries—I mean, I can hear her trying from out here— But the kid comes back looking sadder than when he went in because he can tell she’s really off. Kids can sense that shit. But the doctor didn’t find anythingwrongwith her.”
“Some kinds of sickness don’t show up on a stethoscope,” Domhnall says with a small shrug.
Which only frustrates the fuck out of me.
“This isn’t like what Anna went through at all!”
The words leap out before I can stop them, and I immediately hear how they land. Like I’m arguing against Harper’s right to break.
I drag a hand through my hair. “I know, I know. I just heard myself.”
Domhnall doesn’t rush to fill the silence. He’s always had that willingness to let uncomfortable things sit at full size in a room rather than manage them down to something easier for everyone else’s comfort. I’ve valued it in him for our entire friendship.
I just find it particularly maddening right now.
“Walk me through what she actually survived,” he says. “Out loud. All of it.”
“Dom, I don’t need to?—”
“Caleb.” His quiet, cool tone silences me. “Walk me through it.”
I put my hands in my pockets because they’ve started doing the four-count thing against my thigh again and I don’t want to watch myself do it.
“Z manipulated her to convince her he was Bruiser’s father,” I say. “She had no reason to question it. He was her oldest friend and the person she had when she had no one else. Her one constant. She trusted him the way you trust the ground beneath your feet. And he used it against her to build the foundation of her life on a lie.”
The tightness in my jaw spreads up to my temples. “Then he started controlling her. Not dramatically at first. That’s the way guys like that move. He probably started in small ways that don’t register as a pattern until you’re already in too deep. It soundslike he kept her world small and made sure his needs were always the largest thing in every room. Ten years of that.”
Domhnall says nothing.
“And when she tried to leave for good, he locked her in a closet. In her own house. And then he pointed a gun at her and her son.”
The lamp on the end table is within reach. I’m aware of it the way you’re aware of things you shouldn’t touch. Because I want to grab it and smash it into the wall, I feel so murderous. I never knew I was capable of a violent feeling so intense, but here it is. My hand shakes and I clench it into a fist.
“That’s what was done to her.” My voice shakes with furious restraint. “By her oldest friend. The person she trusted most in the world.”