Crystal couldn’t point out what changed in Cruxan because his features never shifted. But somethingdidchange in him, so suddenly and startling that she was momentarily taken aback by it.
“I met him when I was seventeen. A child, really. I was naive and young and I just…I just wanted to be loved,” she admitted. “He was handsome and charming and he made me feel special. I dove into a relationship with him quickly and for the first five or six months, it was really good. I thought I was in love and I ignored some warning signs during that time. I ignored comments from my sister and my mom because I didn’t want to believe them.”
And she’d paid the price for that, she thought.
“But shortly after that, his true self began to come out, slowly but surely,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her body when she shivered.
“Tell me everything,” he rasped, his voice dark and hard and unyielding. She straightened at that voice.
“He had a temper,” she murmured quietly. “He would get angry really quickly. The first time he hit me,” Cruxan growled in the back of his throat, looking away for a brief moment, “he was mad that I was running late. We were going to his friend’s house for a party and he was picking me up. I kept him waiting for maybe five minutes and when I finally got into the car, he didn’t say anything. He just gave me this look, one I’ve always remembered, and then he slapped me across the face.
“I was so stunned, I just sat there while he drove to his friend’s house. He didn’t say anything but once we got there…it was like nothing had happened. He told me to smile and I did,” she admitted, disgust rolling in her belly though for Leo or herself, she didn’t know. “I acted like nothing was wrong because I didn’t know what else to do. He was in a good mood at the party and afterwards, he was so sorry about it. He apologized profusely, saying it would never happen again, that he loved me, that he just had a bad day, every excuse he could think of. And I accepted it. I thought it would never happen again.”
But it did.
Cruxan was unmoving from across the fire, his face so still. Except for the fierce ticking of his jaw, except for the slight clenching of his fists, she would have thought he was a statue.
“It started happening more and more. He started hitting me and grabbing me in places where I could cover the bruises,” she said. “I was eighteen by then, still in high school, and I would wear long-sleeved shirts, scarves, long pants almost every day to hide it. At first, he would always feel bad about the abuse. He would apologize, he would buy me gifts, he would treat me so well afterwards…and like a fool I always forgave him. In my mind, I thought I had evendeservedsome of it.”
Looking back, that hurt most of all. That she had such low self-esteem, such low confidence, that she always took him back.
“Those stretches of reprieve got shorter and shorter over time,” she said. “He started telling me that if I left him, no one would ever want me again. That I wasn’t pretty enough or thin enough or smart enough or talented enough or whatever shit he wanted to spew that day. Over time, I believed that too. It’s strange the way the mind works. He said it so often that I actually started to believe it as fact.”
She shook her head, wiping away the angry, mortified, sad tears that dripped down her cheeks.
“When I graduated high school, when I told him I wanted to go to art school, he said I couldn’t and so I didn’t. When I told him I wanted to go over to my mom’s house or go see my sister, he told me I couldn’t…and so I didn’t. I’d grown into someone that I didn’t even recognize. I liedall the timeso no one would know the truth, to my friends, to my family, until I had no one left but him. And now I realize that was what he wanted all along, so that he could control me completely and isolate me from the people that loved me most.”
Her gaze flicked to the fire. She didn’t need to see Cruxan’s face to know that he was barely restraining whatever was bubbling up inside him. Shefeltit, stirring in her own chest, like they were connected.
“I don’t know when I stopped loving him,” she whispered, knowing Cruxan would hear the quiet words. “But to replace that love, I feared him instead. I would do anything to keep him happy, to keep himcalm. He had good days, where he seemed like he was in the very beginning, but I knew by then that it never lasted. He would tell me that I could never leave him, that he would find me wherever I went and make me regret it if I did. It was like he knew I didn’t love him anymore, but he still wanted me. He still wanted to control me. And when…”
Her stomach clenched but she pushed through it, needing to get it all out.
“When I stopped wanting his touch, when I wasn’t receptive to sex anymore…he didn’t care,” she said. “He took what he wanted anyways.”
Crystal heard his guttural curse, felt the rippling tension in their camp, tension so thick that she felt like she could suffocate on it.
“I wish I could say that I left him after that,” she admitted. “I—I wish I could go back and shake myself, scream at myself,anythingto make me see reason. But I didn’t even leave him then. His hold was so tight on me and he’d told me enough that if I left, he would find me. I felt trapped. I felt scared. I felt alone.”
“Luxiva,” Cruxan rasped, like all the breath was pulled from his lungs.
“I told you my mother died. What I didn’t tell you was that she called me the night before she did,” Crystal said. “She called me, begging me to leave him, once and for all, that she missed me, that sheneededme, that it broke her heart every single day thinking about me with him.”
Her voice broke at the end and she could hardly bear to look at Cruxan through her watery vision, but somehow found the courage to face him as she told him her ugliest truths.
“It’s what I regret the most. It’s what Ihatethe most,” she whispered. “That I had chosen Leo over my mom and that she’d died knowing that I was still with him, knowing that I wasn’t strong enough to leave when she’d begged me to. I had experienced a lot of terrible days and nights with Leo…but undoubtedly the worst day of my life was when my sister called to tell me that our mom had died.”
She still couldn’t even put into words what that day had been like, all the emotions that had bombarded her. Crystal had numbed herself for so long that the moment the floodgates opened to those emotions, they haddestroyedher. They had broken her down until she was only left with two options: either sink deeper into nothingness or build herself back up, little by little, which was what her mother had wanted.
“I left him the next day,” she said. “I also wish I could say I said every last thing to him that I ever wanted to. But no. My sister and I packed up all my things from his place when he was gone…and I simply left. I snuck out like a coward. And it waseasy. I turned off my phone, my sister checked me into a motel until the funeral so if he turned up at the house, he wouldn’t find me. He showed up to her funeral, looking for me, but he couldn’t get to me, not the way he wanted, not with so many people around. And the day after the funeral, my sister flew me down to where she lived in California. She helped me get on my feet, I started therapy, I got a job, I started drawing again…Ilivedfor the first time in my adult life. And I haven’t seen him since.”
Crystal took a deep, shaky breath before exhaling it slowly. She felt drained after that. She didn’t think she’d ever told that story in full like that, only in pieces, here and there.
Most importantly, she feltraw. She felt vulnerable. She’d just laid bare the darkest time in her life and he could process it however he needed to.
Maybe he thought her weak now. Maybe he thought differently of her. But she couldn’t change her past, as much as she wished to. She would give anything to erase Leo from her life, to spend that time instead with her family, with her friends, to go to college, to explore that time going into her twenties without fear. But she could never get that time back. It was gone, just like her mother, just like Leo.
“I’m telling you this because…” she trailed off, biting her lip. “Because I want you to understand why I am the way I am. I can’t magically make the memory of him, of the things he did, the things he said, go away. The memories are scars that I might always have and they are the reason I’m so guarded. Ihaveto be…because I can’t ever experience something like that again. Iwon’t.”
