Endeared (The Accidental Billionaires #5) - J. S. Scott Page 0,54
couldn’t have known, because I was a master at hiding it. Nobody knew, and I was willing to suffer in silence to make sure that they didn’t. I wanted to be normal, Owen, so I did as much as I could to be an ordinary kid.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What could you have done?” I questioned. “My mother would have denied it. Believe me, she was a master manipulator. She screwed with my head until I actually believed that I deserved it.”
“Where in the hell was your father?” Owen said angrily.
“He paid his child support faithfully because he didn’t want to get into trouble, but he didn’t give a damn about me. When he left my mother, he left both of us. All he wanted was his freedom.” My father had been perfectly aware of my mother’s abuse, but he’d never once stepped in.
“You said he traveled,” Owen growled.
“He did. But even when he wasn’t on the road, he never answered my calls. We were never close. He rarely even spoke to me when he was home, but after the divorce, I called him. Several times. At some point, I just gave up.”
“Layla, how could you think for a single moment that any of this was your fault?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think that anymore, but I was seeing the whole situation through the eyes of an adolescent, Owen. I thought I was a bad daughter. I was ashamed that I wasn’t normal, which is why I tried so hard to pretend that I actually was ordinary. Don’t think that you didn’t help me back then, even though you didn’t know. You and Andie kept me relatively sane.”
“Bullshit! Somebody needed to be there to protect you,” Owen exploded.
I nodded. “Once I graduated from high school, I knew I had to get out.”
“Please, fucking say that you did,” Owen said gruffly.
“I did,” I answered obligingly. “I moved in with a female roommate after you and Andie went to Boston, and I tried to get ready to knock out as many classes as possible so I could get into nursing school. But somewhere during that summer, I lost . . . myself.”
“What do you mean?” Owen rasped.
“I got . . . really depressed.”
“Understandable,” Owen said. “Tell me everything, Layla.”
“I did all kinds of things I can’t really explain that summer,” I said, my voice shaking with emotion. “It was like I was searching for something I couldn’t find. You asked me if I was a virgin. I’m not. But I’ve only had sex with one guy, and it was the most horrible experience of my life. I just lay there, hoping I’d feel something, but all I felt was even more ashamed. I think I’d been looking for some kind of attention, but I didn’t get it. The only thing I got was pain, and some guy I barely knew grunting on top of me to get himself off. I spiraled downhill after that. I pulled myself out of bed to go to work because I knew I had to, but every day got darker, and eventually, I just didn’t care what happened to me anymore because I thought nobody else did. After years of nothing but abuse or indifference, I thought I was just . . . totally unlovable.”
“What happened?” Owen prompted.
“I took a razor blade, crawled into my bathtub, and tried really hard to just die.”
“What the hell?” Owen growled.
“In other words, I tried to kill myself, Owen. I was so fucked up that I really didn’t want to be alive anymore. At that point, it wasn’t a cry for help. When I slashed my wrists, I couldn’t wait to die. Sliding into that darkness from losing blood was nothing but a relief for me. I lay there bleeding out, and I didn’t even give a damn. That’s the part of me you don’t know, Owen. I just gave up. I quit. I actually hated my roommate for coming home and saving my life that day.” Tears were coursing down my cheeks, but I didn’t care. I finally let go in front of Owen, and I didn’t care if he saw this side of me, the side that wasn’t very pretty.
“Jesus, Layla. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “Don’t say anything. Just let me finish. Later, I finally realized that I’d been sliding into major depression for a long time. But once my life started to change after I finished high school, I was really lost. I wasn’t