I crossed my arms, rubbing my hands up and down my sleeves. My mind flicked back to what my conductor used to tell me before a performance:Picture yourself in your underwear. It’ll calm your nerves.
I’d always teased her back,Aren’t I supposed to be imagining the audience in theirs?
She’d just grin and answer,If you’re picturing everyone looking at you, you stop worrying about hitting every note perfectly.
It made no sense, and yet it had always worked. And that was why I’d developed a habit of buying pretty lingerie. Even after I’d stopped performing, I’d always wind up in the lingerie section of a store, thinking,One day ... one day I’ll play again. One day I’ll wear that pair onstage.
At my brother murmuring my name, I remembered where I was and why I was there.
“The night before Mitch’s last deployment, we had a fight,” I finally shared. “Chase was with Trevor’s parents that weekend.” I continued massaging my arms as if that could hold me together. “Mitch had been acting different for two months. Going out at all hours. Drinking. Just acting strange. I tried to be understanding and patient since he’d lost his best friend not long before that, but then I started wondering if he was cheating on me.”
I should’ve turned around to face them for this, but I couldn’t handle the weight of their reactions or the reflection of my pain in their eyes.
So I kept my back to them, chin lifted and eyes on the jagged mountain peaks beyond the glass. A fortress out there—I needed that kind of strength right now.
“I wound up confronting him about it. I wanted the air clear before he deployed. To know if he was unfaithful.” The words tasted bitter as they came out. “He was furious that I’d asked him that, and he snapped. Flipped it all on me. Told me how dare I accuse him of that with everything he was going through, and he’d only ever been trying to protect me. That he loved me more than I could possibly understand. He was so mad.”
My stomach clenched so tight it felt like I might throw up. The memory slammed into me with the force of a closed fist.Mitch’sfist.
“I’d never seen him like that before. One second, he was yelling, and the next—he was raising his hand, and he hit me. Hard enough that I fell.”
I rested a hand on my cheek, like it was still bruised. Phantom pain bloomed alongside the real ache already there.
“He panicked right after and began apologizing. Blamed drinking that night, something he didn’t often do. Then he punched the wall while yelling at himself for putting his hands on me. When I was too scared to talk or go near him, he picked up a bottle of Jack and took off.”
I slowly turned around to see the three of them in a line, spaced apart but connected in one purpose: protecting me.
My son’s father.
My brother.
And the man I wanted to let in, even if I didn’t know what that meant yet.
“I decided to leave him. I was sorry for whatever he was going through, but the damage was already done. No amount of excuses or apologies would cut it.” My heart thudded rapidly as my voice became smaller.
Trevor’s arms visibly flexed, his hands curling into weapons. For a second, my gaze dropped to the shield of armor with the red cross on it, then shifted back up to his face. To the rage radiating from him like heat.
I didn’t give them time to speak. I needed to rip the rest of the Band-Aid off and get this over with.
“That night, Mitch came home late and crawled into our bed drunk, pleading to make up. He begged, even cried. Pleaded for me to accept his apologies, saying he’d do anything in the world for me and it’d been an accident.”
I could feel Alex’s eyes on me, steady and burning, like he was trying to absorb my pain just by witnessing it. I’d told him I’d stop making things awkward between us. And there I was, dropping the ugliest pieces of my past at his feet. But he didn’t flinch or look away.
“Then he forced himself on me. He said he needed me before he deployed in the morning and that he wouldn’t survive without having me.” My voice was raw and scratchy as I attempted to push through and share one of the worst nights of my life. “He said I was his wife and it was my duty. That he’d die if he didn’t have me one more time before he left.”
At Trevor’s sharp inhale, I closed my eyes.
Until now, only my lawyer had known the truth. Not even my mom or Hollis knew.
“What happened?” Trevor asked, terror and fear seeping through his tone. “Please tell me he backed off.”
Shame crashed over me like a wave, destroying the last of my composure.
My bottom lip quivered, and then I broke.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, hot and fast, as I sank to my knees.
“I gave up fighting and resisting. That’s what I hate myself for the most. That I let my noes go ignored. I told myself it’d be quicker to just cry my way through it and let it happen. Then he’d fall asleep and ship out the next morning, and I’d be safe.”
