“When it happens the first time, it’s like you don’t really know it’s the first. You don’t knowthat’swhat’s going on until way later, you know?”
He nods.
“Because it doesn’t start off as…physical,” I sigh, rubbing my arms, “so when they’re yelling at you, or calling you names, or telling you that you’re not allowed to do certain things anymore, you don’t think it’s abuse. You think…they’re having an off day. It’s just an argument. Things’ll get better; it won’t be like this forever. Couplesfight.”
Tate is the quiet one now, letting me have the floor, but how he feels is written all over his face. He looks like I’m about to say the worst thing he’ll ever have to hear.
“And then one day, he backhanded me.”
Tate’s intake of breath is audible.
“He’d been going to party after party, every weekend, and I had asked him to just this once stay in with me. Told him I felt like we never spent time together anymore, and he took offense to that.” I take a deep breath. “I never even raised my voice, but he hit me, anyway.”
Tate balls his hand that’s sitting on his leg up into a white-knuckled fist, but still, he says nothing.
“He was so apologetic afterward that I thought, surely, he would never do that to me again. I mean, hecried, more than I did.”
Thinking back on that day, for some reason, I feel humiliated. Embarrassed that I stuck around after that. That I caved in so easily when he said he was sorry. Like I’m some idiot for not just leaving after the first time.
“But then, the next time, he shoved me back into the wall, and I hit my head so hard that it gave me a concussion…” I swallow thickly as I recall that day. “He took me to the emergency room, said that I fell. And I…went along with it.”
He flexes his fist out, like it’s physically hurting him to clench it as hard as he is.
“I don’t know if I did it out of fear or because I genuinely thought I could fix him…but either way, it was stupid. So, so stupid.”
“Hey,” he rushes out, shaking his head at me, “no, Maeve. You’re not stupid.”
“Felt pretty stupid when he choked me out the next time.”
“Maeve,” Tate whispers.
I blink through my tears over at him, giving him my most reassuring smile. “I’m okay now. Everything is okay. It’s over. So…you know. I’m okay.”
He doesn’t look the slightest bit convinced, but he bobs his head faintly, scooting over to put his hand on my thigh, giving it a comforting squeeze.
“Was it the last time?” he asks.
I nod. “It was the last time.”
“What made it the last time?”
“I thought I died,” I rasp. “I saw stars, then I saw nothing. There was just…nothing for a while.”
There’s a look that flashes across Tate’s features, one that I realize is fear, just before he reaches over to cradle my face in his hands. He’s searching my eyes for something, his eyebrows knitted deeply as he sucks in a deep breath.
“Are you gonna be okay?” he asks, blinking rapidly. “When you go back? Without me there, without someone to… Are you going to be okay if he shows up again?”
I grasp onto his forearm. “I will be fine, Tate. I promise.”
“And you’d tell me if something happened?”
“Yes,” I whisper, “you know I would.”
He nods in acknowledgment of my response, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones as his gaze flickers down to my lips. My stomach dips at that, sending that fluttering feeling to my core, but before I have a chance to process it, his lips are on mine.
And like I’m kissing him for thefirsttime, I feel that warmth again. The watching him staring up at the Space Needle with snowflakes in his hair warmth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
