Brooke’s lower lip finds its way between her teeth as she processes what I’ve said. When she releases it, the flesh is pink and plump and in desperate need of my tongue against it.
“What if I’m not who you think I am?”
Her question draws my attention away from her mouth. “What?”
“It’s been almost ten years.” Her voice barely wavers. “What if you built me up to be something I’m not?”
I grin, because it’s so easy to quash that fear. “Sweetheart, you’ve barely been back two months and you’re already better than I ever could have imagined you.”
Part of me worried maybe Brooke had changed in a way that wouldn’t fit with the ways I’ve changed. But the longer I’m around her, the more it’s clear that’s not going to be a problem. And the more grateful I am I had this time to become a better man. Because that’s what she needs. A better man.
Someone patient. Someone calm. Someone secure in whothey are and what they want. Someone who’s not afraid to show her how they feel. To talk about important things. Someone willing to be vulnerable, and take a risk.
Someone who is sure so she doesn’t have to be.
Brooke reaches out to toy with the front of my shirt, her fingers messing with the cotton hem. “You’re better too.” One corner of her mouth lifts. “It’s kind of annoying.”
I pretend to be offended, letting my jaw drop open. “It’s annoying that I’m better than I was?” I shake my head. “Now you’re not making any sense.”
She rolls her eyes, huffing out a little laugh. “It’s annoying, because I’m supposed to be taking some time to get my shit together, and you are making it really hard to stay focused on the right things.”
Once again, I disagree with her. “Ithink you’re trying too hard to focus on thewrongthings.”
She sobers. “You don’t get it.”
“Then explain it to me.” I take a deep breath before asking for something I don’t actually want. “Tell me what happened.”
We’ve been here before, and I’m expecting this conversation to go similarly. That Brooke will give me one more piece of the puzzle of her past and then shift the conversation to safer waters.
Instead, she drops a bomb I don’t fully see coming.
“Matt said he’d kill me if I ever left him.”
I blink, my brain trying to wrap around the collection of words rattling through my head at a speed that makes them difficult to catch.
Did she say Matt threatened to kill her if she left?
One hand lifts to her neck, the way I’ve seen her do countless times before, as she explains. “He’d already come close a couple times, so I believed him.” She tugs at the neckline of herdress even though it’s nowhere near her throat. “He’d pushed all my friends away and had my parents in the palm of his hand, so I didn’t have anyone to help me.” She grips the fabric of her dress, holding it away from her skin. “I didn’t have access to any money. He had ways to track my phone. I was trapped.”
I try to keep my breathing slow and steady because I know if I react, she’s going to stop talking. My voice is low and soft when I ask, “How did you get away?”
She barely smiles. “Your mom.” She lifts her eyes to my face. “She gave me the keys to her rental car and snuck me out the back door of the church.”
I owe my mother flowers. Possibly a new car. Maybe a new puppy. I know my brothers don’t love it when she gets in their business, but I’m going to thank God every day she got into mine.
Because it’s what saved Brooke.
“It sounds like you haven’t been in a relationship for a while.” I carefully lay out the truth as I see it. “It seems like you were part of a hostage situation.”
Brooke’s head tips, her brows pinching. “A hostage situation?”
“Were you there by choice?”
She shakes her head.
“Would you have left if you could have?”
Brooke snorts. “A long time ago.”
