the beer down, very carefully, as if everything hinged on his getting that beer down on the right bit of countertop.
Back on the farm, I used to have a rib that kept popping out of place. And it made it hard to sleep, to breathe. Impossible to work. I’d walk around trying to manage the pain, only half-living. My whole life lived in halves because I couldn’t do anything. And then Smith would notice, give me hell for not saying anything, and he’d give me one of those big bear hugs and it would pop right back into place.
Telling the secret was like that.
For the first time since I answered that phone call, I could take a deep breath. A real one. I had no idea what was going to happen next. But at least I could breathe.
“I’m sorry I got you involved in this,” I said, feeling oddly calm. “I…I didn’t think it would get this far.”
“Adultery?”
I nodded.
“Well.” His words had the sharp edge of sarcasm all over them. “It’s a first for me.”
“When…when we were just on the phone it didn’t seem so…wrong.”
“Where’s your husband?” he asked, and I couldn’t quite stop my flinch. Husband. That word always sounded like a threat. And he spit it out like he wanted to wound me with it.
“Still on the farm, I think.”
“Are you separated? In the process of getting a divorce?”
I shook my head, my hands in knots in my pockets. I couldn’t even give him that kind of comfort.
“Jesus, Annie, tell me what the hell is going on.”
“I ran.” I swallowed, hard, my throat impossibly dry. I grabbed what was left of my champagne on the table and finished it, my throat raw and painful. Had I screamed when I came in his bedroom? Or was it just the pain of telling what I’d never told anyone?
“Two months ago, I packed up a bag and I took all the money I could get my hands on and I waited until three o’clock in the morning, until he was sleeping, and I ran.”
He straightened up from the corner and took a step closer to me but stopped when I stiffened. I could not be touched right now.
“Why?” he breathed.
The tears it felt like I’d been holding back forever spilled over my cheeks. A hot waterfall trickling down over my chin onto my throat. “Because he was going to kill me.”
“What?”
“If I stayed my husband would kill me somehow. It was only a matter of time.”
“Oh, Jesus, oh…Annie.” He stepped toward me and I stepped back, my hand up to stop him. He ignored it. For the first time he ignored it and I realized for all his anger the last day, he’d been mine to control. If I said stop, he stopped.
Not now, though. Now, he pulled out a chair and helped me sit down in it as if I were an old lady. As if I were as old on the outside as I felt on the inside.
“Tell me,” he said, crouching down in front of me.
The urge to touch him, brush back his hair, trail my fingers over that scar tissue, was real and difficult to manage. But he was not mine to touch. Not anymore. Not ever, really. He was something I never should have reached for.
“My mom died when I was eighteen, and Hoyt was already working at the farm. I didn’t know how to run the farm, the bookkeeping and the paperwork. Mom did all of it. And when she died I was just so lost. So totally lost. Smith wasn’t good at that stuff, though he tried. We both did. But then Hoyt kind of stepped in. And he offered to do more and then still more. All the stuff I didn’t know how to do or was scared of—he just took over. And then I don’t…I don’t really know how it started, but it seemed like…we were dating. Like I was his, already. And that’s what I was used to, you know. I was like an appendage—first my mom’s and then Hoyt’s. I didn’t know how to be my own self. And I was really alone and really scared and when he asked me to marry him, it seemed like the right thing to do.”
“You were eighteen.” I nodded. “Did you love him?”
I smiled and tried to stop my tears. “I don’t know anything about love, Dylan. All I know is survival. And I didn’t think I was capable of surviving on my