“There’s a lot of reasons, the main one being my parenting agreement with Garrett. I can’t really move out of the state without changing our custody agreement. I told him I’d return next Sunday, and I should keep my word.” Nothing about my future would be for myself.Everythingwould be an attempt to appease the courts, support my girls, and keep the peace with Garrett. “Plus, I can’t live with Tag and Bea forever. If there was a way for me to stay, maybe I would try to do the legal stuff from a distance, although I don’t even know if that’s an actual option. I’d have to call my lawyer and ask.”
“Why does the custody agreement matter if he’s not following it anyway?”
“Because it’s still a court order whether he follows it or not. Technically, I’m risking trouble even coming here for a month.”
“Really?”
I shrugged. “I guess if he gets a wild hair one day and wants to see his kids then, yeah, we could get in trouble. But at this point, I don’t think he’d notice if we moved to Brazil.”
“Congratulations on the job offer.” Jesse softly encouraged. “You should be proud of yourself for making the best of a difficult situation. Doing something you don’t want to do is courageous.”
I tipped my head to the side, considering that. “Nothing about this is courageous, Jesse. It’s passive at best, a coward’s move at worst.”
His brow knitted. “Why’s that?”
“I feel like I’m doing everything I can to fly below the radar and not cause waves. If I was braveI would drag his ass to court and make him pay and not stop until I had full custody of my girls. I would do what I want for my future instead of thinking about his all the time.”
Jesse hummed in understanding. “Well, what do you wantfor your life? Maybe you should start there.”
I gave an incredulous laugh. “That’s the thing, Jesse. I don’t even know. Without Garrett, I…” My words faltered. Jesse and I had been real plenty of times, but this was raw and ugly. I wasn’t sure how deep I wanted to go. Some of these memories hurt. Bad.
The back of Jesse’s fingers touched my arm. “It’s just you and me here. You don’t have to find the right way to say it.”
Swallowing down my reservations, I continued. “Without Garrett, I don’t know who I am. The last real Hollie I remember was seventeen with childish hopes and dreams. I’ve spent the last thirteen years being whoever Garrett wanted me to be.” My voice cracked. “I mistook his approval for love and…and I lost myself in pursuit of it.”
Muscle memory kicked in, and my right hand reached for my left, ready to dig the pain out of my heart via my cuticles.
In one motion Jesse pulled my left hand into his lap to keep it safe and plowed his work-scarred fingers between mine. Desirepooled low in my belly as his thumb moved over my skin. I knew he only held my hand to protect me, but our palms together and our fingers entwined felt so right—like my hand belonged in his. He continued our conversation like nothing happened. “I take it he was hard to please.”
I jerked my head back to our conversation. “Impossible. And even if I did pass his tests, he never wanted me to be happier, needier, or angrier than him. If I got sick, he'd be sicker. If I was tired postpartum, he had nineteen hour work days. If I had plans with a friend, he had an emergency work meeting.Everythinghad to be about Garrett.”
“And if it wasn’t?”
“Then he withdrew from me and blamed me for things.” I shrugged. “If I confronted him about how he treated me, he’d go on this long tangent about how I was forgetful and overbearing or too sensitive. And somehow I’d leave the conversation agreeing with him.” I huffed, realizing how crazy that was. “He could make me view myself as the root of all our problems—I have no clue how he managed to do that. Maybe I’m not making sense.”
“Isn’t that called gaslighting someone?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“It makes a lot of sense.”
“It happened so often that I spent years thinking I must be totally insane. The narrative was that Garrett was this selfless, great guy who was just doing his best and I was some merciless woman whose standards were basically Jesus Christ in the flesh.” Tears blurred my vision but I blinked them back. “I don’t know how he got me to believe it, but I did.” I gave a watery laugh. “And because I wanted to love him, I justified his actions with the rationale ‘we all make mistakes, I’m not perfect either.’”
Jesse quietly shook his head, his thumb tracing the length of mine.
“Anyway, sorry?—”
“Stop.” He squeezed my hand. “No sorries.”
“Still. That was a lot to dump on you. The point is I’m afraid my current plan is simply being what I need to be for Garrett again.” Myright hand picked at the seam of the tent chair for lack of cuticles to torture.
“If you don’t know who you are without him, it might be time to find out.”
A lump of emotion choked me. “I agree. But I don’t even know where to start.”
“What were your seventeen-year-old hopes?”
I scoffed. “Trust me, they aren’t even worth repeating.”
