“Yes?”
“He . . . he molested me. For nearly a year. He . . . raped me.”
20
I miss you so much. Can’t we talk, please? I need to see you.
“Still staring at that text?” Cary asked, rolling onto his back on the bed beside me and pressing his temple to mine.
“I can’t sleep.” It was torture to stay away from Gideon. I spent every minute—waking and sleeping—feeling like someone had hacked out my heart and left a gaping hole in my chest.
I looked up at the canopy above my mom’s guest bed. Like her sitting room, the bedroom she’d put me in was newly redecorated. With its palette of cream and moss green, the room was soothing and tastefully elegant. The guest bedroom Cary occupied was done in a more masculine style with grays and navy, with walnut furnishings on the opposite end of the spectrum from the white gilded pieces in my room.
“When are you going to talk to him, baby girl?”
“Soon. I just . . .” I lowered the phone to my chest and pressed it against my heart. “I think we both need a little time.”
It was so hard to think when Gideon and I were fighting. I hated it.
And it was worse because he was the one who’d f**ked up, and like everything he did, he had done so spectacularly. I couldn’t imagine how I could forgive him and live with myself. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine how I could go forward without him and live, period. I felt dead inside. The only thing keeping me going was the belief that somehow we’d work things out and be together. How could we not? How could I give so much of myself to someone and then let that person go?
I thought about the advice I’d given to Trey and how we were both facing the same decision—did we choose love or did we choose ourselves? I was so pissed off at Gideon for being the one who forced my hand. I’d recognized that certain situations were pushing me into that spot, but I had never thought my husband would.
And why the hell did the two choices have to be mutually exclusive? It wasn’t fair.
“You’re running him through the wringer,” Cary pointed out, unnecessarily.
“He’s done it, not me.” Gideon had taken something precious from me, but worse, he had taken something precious away from us—my free will and the trust I’d given him to respect it. After that last night we’d had . . . as much as I had trusted him and opened myself to him . . . And he’d already talked to Mark. The feeling of betrayal was heartrending. “Thanks for sticking with me.”
He shrugged. “I like Stanton. It’s no hardship hanging at his place a few days. We are eventually going home, right?”
“I can’t hide forever.”
“So you’ve always said,” he muttered. “Personally, I like hiding. Just taking a f**king break and forgetting about all the crap.”
“But the crap’s always out there waiting for you.” And knowing that, I always preferred to face it head-on. Get it out of the way and behind me.
“Let it wait,” he said, reaching up to ruffle my hair.
Turning my head, I pressed a kiss to his cheek. I’d cried gallons on him the last three days and curled up against him at night. At times, it felt like his arms were the only things holding me together.
God. I hurt all over. I was a f**king mess, a zombie in the vibrantly lively city of New York.
Where was Gideon now? Was the pain of our separation starting to ease? Or was he still as devastated by it as I was?
“Mark asked me to move to Cross Industries with him,” I said, just to force my mind onto something else.
“Well, you saw that coming.”
“I guess, but it was still surreal when he brought it up.” I sighed. “He’s so excited, Cary. He’s getting a hefty raise, and that will change a lot of things for him and Steven. They’ll be able to afford a really fancy wedding plus a long honeymoon, and they’re looking for a condominium now. It’s hard to hold on to my resentment when this is such a good thing for him.”
“Are you going to work for Gideon?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t kidding when I told him I was halfway toward making that decision on my own. But now . . . I kinda want to apply elsewhere just to spite him.”
Cary lifted his fists and shadowboxed. “Show him he’s not the boss of you.”
“Yeah.” I threw a few punches, too, just to give myself a little lift. “But that’s stupid. I’d never know if I got hired for me or for his name, whether that turned out to be a good or a bad thing. Anyway, I’ve got a month before Mark moves on. I’ve got time to think about it.”