I open my eyes and look into hers when I answer. “Midas won’t hurt me. Not physically.”
“How can you be sure?—”
“Because I know. I can’t say he wouldn’t hurt anyone else, because he absolutely would, but never me.”
She looks at me, and I can see she isn’t as sure as I am, but she takes in my resolve and sighs. “Okay, Hazel, I’m going to trust your instincts here. They seem to be better than mine. But I’ve gotta ask, if he’s not a danger to you, why the tears?”
“He might not be a danger to my body, but he’s a danger to my sanity. I don’t know how to put it into words. It’s like…an alcoholic who has just started recovery being forced to work in a bar.”
She winces, so I guess my point hit home.
“I’m pathetic. I swear the craving I have for him is so all-consuming that some days, it’s hard to think of anything else.”
“You’re not pathetic. You’re in love. It’s not you who is flawed for loving him. It’s him for not loving you back, and yet refusing to walk away. That’s not love, Hazel. That’s possession,” she says to soften the blow, but I still feel the weight behind the punch of her words.
“I just don’t understand why. Sometimes I wonder if there is another us out there in a parallel universe living the storybook version of the happily ever after he tore up.”
When Del remains silent, I look back up at her and see anguish all over her face.
“Del?”
She shakes her head and puts on a grin, but a lone tear slips over her cheek. She quickly wipes it away, but her heartbreak is not hidden.
“You know this friendship of ours works both ways. You’re always listening to my woes, but you never talk to me. I’m not saying you have to, but the option is always there. I swear I don’t judge, and your secrets are always safe with me.”
She sighs and walks around her desk before collapsing into her seat. She stares at the window, but I have a distinct feeling that what she’s seeing is something far beyond the alleyway.
“Someone hurt you,” I say softly.
She blows out a shuddering breath. “Lots of people hurt me.” She looks over at me, considering her next words. “Did you know I used to be married?”
I shake my head. She’s like a closed book, and I’m not one to dig.
“He’s dead now, and that makes a lot of people very happy.”
I swallow. “He was a bad husband?” I hedge, not wanting to ask outright if he abused her, though I can read between the lines. Her answer shocks the shit out of me though.
“No. He treated me like a queen. Not a single day went by that I questioned his love or commitment to me. He was sweet, kind, and protective. He listened when I spoke, really listened, you know? He was one of those guys who pulled his weight without being asked. He took the trash out, loaded the dishwasher, folded the laundry—nothing was beneath him even though some of his brothers deemed it women’s work.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, Hazel. Neither do I. To me, my husband was the kind of man every woman coveted. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better version of the ideal man, but to everyone else, he was a monster.”
Another tear slips free, but this one she leaves as she gets lost in her memories. “I loved him. Even after I found out the truth about him. I still loved him, but I hated myself for it, and it seemed to be a theme. He wasn’t there for anyone to blame anymore, so they turned on me like a bunch of rabid dogs looking to tear their pound of flesh from my bones. The irony isn’t lost on me that the one person who would have protected me from them was the same person who made them hate me to begin with.”
“I’m sorry, Del.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. It is what it is. I’m not sure I’ll ever truly understand what happened. Maybe one day I’ll be able to look back and pinpoint moments where there were signs that I missed, but for now, I just have to keep moving forward. Becauseif I don’t, if I stay still enough for the memories to catch up, then the past will slowly kill me.”
I reach over the desk and grab her hand. “When I say I get it that you can’t just turn your emotions off, I get it. Life would be so much fucking easier if I could just hate Midas. And lord knows, part of me does. But a part of me loves him, even now. He’s entrenched in the fabric of what makes me, me, I don’t know how to unstitch him from my life…”
“Without unraveling completely,” she finishes. Her words validate my feelings. For a time, I thought I was going crazy. I know the shit Midas pulled would have turned most people’s love to hate. I thought there was something wrong with the way I’m wired. Maybe that’s not it at all. Perhaps some people just love differently. For some of us, we love so wholeheartedly that no magic switch turns the feelings on and off. For me, there is the person I was before Midas and the person I am after. Two vastly different people irrevocably changed by the same man.
“I say screw what anyone else says or thinks. I’m so damn tired of trying to please everyone at the expense of myself. I’m exhausted, Del, and it has fuck-all to do with being pregnant.”
Her eyes drift to my stomach behind the desk briefly before back to mine. For a second, she forgets to mask her pain. There’s more to her story, which is already a shitty one.
“How about you crash upstairs with me tonight? I have a couple of spare rooms. We can order in and binge-watch something that will rot our brains. Let your stalker spin on his heels for a little while.”
