“I haven’t picked up many of those.”
“You may be the rare exception.” After giving him a tiny smile, she grew more serious again. “But my trust issues could rear their ugly head at some point. It’s happened with other men.”
She had trust issues with men, specifically?
He wasn’t liking the sound of that.
Trying hard to maintain a calm tone despite the sudden tension thrumming through him, he kept his question as general as possible. “What’s the source of the trust issues?”
“Not what you’re thinking. No one ever physically abused me.”
Thank God for that.
Yet something very traumatic had happened if it had left her cautious around men after all these years.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“The truth? No. I’d rather not think about it ever again.”
“Then don’t. I won’t push you.” Even if he was tempted to. “I understand how hard it can be to talk about painful experiences.”
“But you told me about yours.”
“It felt right to share them with you.” He left it at that. If she decided to trust him with her story, that choice had to come from within. And if she opted not to tell him today, that didn’t mean someday in the future she wouldn’t—
“Do you have a few more minutes?”
Apparently today was the day after all.
The knot in his stomach began to unwind.
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll try to give you the short version.” She focused on her linked fingers. “When I was three and a half, I got the measles. That led to ear infections, which resulted in severe hearing loss. Deafness can be a complication in up to 10 percent of measles cases, and I was in that unlucky percentage. My verbal development had been normal up to that stage, but after the hearing loss my speech suffered and my father ... he started making fun of me.”
Though her tone was dispassionate, the hurt in her eyes was almost palatable.
Brad’s gut clenched.
How could a father belittle a vulnerable child who’d beenthrust into a sound-deprived world and was floundering to cope?
No wonder she didn’t trust men, if the man who was supposed to love and support her had mocked her instead.
Brad reached over and stroked a finger down the back of her hand.
She lifted her chin, irises shimmering. “It shouldn’t hurt this much anymore. I shouldn’tletit hurt.”
“It’s not easy to erase hurts.” As he knew too well. “Where was your mom during all of this?”
“Doing her best to shield me from his ridicule, as far as I can remember, but she worked long hours during the day as a waitress and wasn’t around much. My father was a shelf stocker at night in a warehouse. He was gone while I was sleeping. I’ve often thought how different it might have been if their jobs had been reversed.” She sighed. “But it didn’t matter in the long run. Mom died when I was five, and after that there was no one to protect me. I finally stopped speaking altogether.”
“And no one in your world noticed this? What about the person who took care of you while your father was at work?”
“He put me to bed before he left for his shift, and I stayed there until he got home. A neighbor’s daughter slept at the house while he was gone for the first year. I never interacted with her.”
“What about after that?”
“I was by myself.”
