Jo stirred. “Mm?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Jo slowly came around, frowning as she focused on Amelia. “W-what’s wrong?”
Amelia sat up and pulled the cover around her. The only thing bringing her comfort right now was the soft T-shirt of Jo’s that she wore. The faint perfume that lingered on it. It was all she needed to keep her grounded.
“Amelia?” Jo’s voice was filled with sleep but laced with worry. She sat up slowly, mirroring Amelia’s position where she rested back against the headboard, her frown deepening. “You’re starting to worry me.”
“I don’t mean to. I just…” Amelia inhaled deeply. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve never really talked about with anyone.”
Jo reached out and placed a hand gently on Amelia’s knee.
“It’s about why I ended up at Satin,” Amelia said. “Why I went to that club in the first place. Why I ever even considered the dark room.”
Jo tensed slightly but nodded. “Okay.”
Amelia stared down at her hands. “My ex-husband…Callum’s father… He nearly killed me.”
Jo’s hand stiffened on Amelia’s knee, but she remained silent.
“It was years ago. Decades, even. But I still remember every time he cracked a rib, every time I couldn’t breathe. I remember the hospital visits…the lies I told, the sound of his boots on the stairs after a bad day. The way he’d always say he loved me before he landed a fist on my face.”
She heard Jo sniffle beside her. “Jesus…”
“I didn’t leave because I didn’t love myself enough to,” Amelia went on, swallowing the lump working its way up her throat. “I’d been reduced to nothing. I wasn’t me anymore. I was just someone trying to survive the next hour, the next night, the…next excuse.” She finally looked up at Jo. “I think, somewhere deep down, I thought I deserved it.”
Jo shook her head, her thumb tracing slow circles against Amelia’s knee. “N-no. No one deserves that.”
“But when you’re told for years that you’re worthless, you start to believe it.” Amelia sighed. “After he was arrested, after I’d spent months in the hospital, I didn’t recognise myself. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to.”
Jo’s trembling hand took Amelia’s beneath the cover, squeezing tight.
“Satin wasn’t about sex for me, not really. It was about control and about choosing to be seen in a way that I got to dictate. After so long of being hurt and silenced, I wanted to take something back. I wanted to be touched without fear, and I wanted to feel like I still had some kind of power over what happened to my body. I’d spent fifteen years before that locking myself away and always believing that I had nothing to give outside of my career. Then, four years ago, Evie introduced me to Satin.”
Jo covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking with silent tears.
“I wasn’t looking for love. I wasn’t even looking for a relationship. I didn’t think I was capable of it anymore. I didn’t think anyone would want someone so…broken.”
Jo lunged forward and wrapped her arms around Amelia as though she could physically shield her from the past. Amelia clung to her just as fiercely, letting the emotion finally break free. She had spent so many years bottling everything up, pretending that it wasn’t a part of her anymore, but here…with this woman, she could be open and honest. She couldbeherself. She could show her vulnerability instead of hiding behind business suits, heels that made people drool over her, and a personality she had carefully crafted.
“I’m so sorry,” Jo whispered. “I didn’t know. I never thought?—”
“You weren’t supposed to,” Amelia murmured against her shoulder. “I never let anyone see that side of me. I wear heels and lipstick and flirt like it costs me nothing. But the truth is that everything about who I am now came from that pain. It shaped me, Jo. It helped me find pieces of myself again…in the dark, at Satin, from the touch of strangers who didn’t know how to break me.”
“I don’t want to be a stranger.”
“You’re not.” Amelia pulled back and looked deep into Jo’s gorgeous blue eyes. “You could never be.”
Jo cupped her face and brushed away Amelia’s tears with the pads of her thumbs. “Youare the strongest woman I’ve ever met, and Ihatethat anyone ever made you feel otherwise. You’re perfect exactly as you are.”
“It’s taken me a long time to believe that.” Amelia exhaled a shaky breath. “But being here with you last night, and now this morning, I think I finally started to believe it.”
Jo kissed her forehead, her lips lingering against her skin. “I want to be someone youneverhave to hide from.”
Amelia closed her eyes. “I’m sorry you ever became a part of that world for me. It wasneversupposed to be that way.”
“No. No more apologies.” Jo held her tighter. “Right now, I just want to hold you. I just want to be here with you like this.”
