Page 65 of Redemption

“Presley, look at me.” When I make no move to do so, he adds, “Please, honey. Just look at me.”

When I finally get the courage to turn around, I find Beck sitting back on his heels, his eyes bloodshot and glassy. His spine is straight, his fingers are spread, palms down on his knees. I cringe when I see the teeth marks on his forearm, little droplets of blood pooling in them.

“I didn’t... I didn’t mean to bite you. I didn’t realize it was you. I’m sorry.”

“I know, Pres. It’s okay.” His tone is even. Soft. “Do you need a glass of water?”

Now that he mentions it, my throat feels like the Sahara. “Um... yeah, that would be nice.”

Beckett nods. “I’ll be right back.”

I take advantage of his absence to dress as quickly as possible. Thankfully, at some point this morning, Beckett must’ve picked my bra up from the hallway floor and brought it in here. He’s just coming back with a tall glass of water as I’m pulling my jeans up my legs.

I take the glass from his extended arm. “Thank you.”

I tilt my head back and drink. I had only planned on taking a small sip, but I wind up gulping down the entire thing. Beck wordlessly offers to take the empty glass from me and sets it on the dresser.

He nods to the bed. “Do you want to have a seat? Or if you’d prefer, we can go out to the living room.”

I sigh. “Beck, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you don’t need to baby me. This would be a lot easier if I just left.”

“Honey, if you want to go back to your folks’ house, I’m not going to stop you. But I will follow you, and I will wait as long as it takes until you’re ready to talk to me.”

I’ve already burdened my parents enough. The last thing I’d want is for them to know about what just happened, so I sit on the edge of the mattress, rubbing my temples, trying to alleviate some of the tension. “What exactly do you want to talk about?”

Beck takes a seat on the floor directly in front of me. His back is propped against the dresser, and his long legs are stretched out in front of him. This room isn’t huge, so if I stretched my foot out just a little bit, we’d be touching.

“Have you ever talked to a professional, Pres?”

I frown. “About what?”

He never breaks eye contact. “About what he did to you. Have you ever talked to a professional—or anyone, for that matter—about it? Or have you been bottling this up inside yourself, suffering in silence?”

My eyes fall to my lap. I suppose there’s no point in denying it anymore.

I lift my chin. “Beckett, I have at least a dozen injuries that never healed properly because I wasn’t allowed to go to the hospital. When would I have been permitted to go to therapy?”

He’s careful not to react, but I can see the shadows lurking behind his eyes. “It doesn’t need to be a therapist. It could be a support group or a trusted friend. You had friends in New York, didn’t you?”

I give him a sad smile. “No.”

Beck’s forehead lines with creases. “Not a single friend the entire time you lived there?”

I shrug. “There were a few in college... but as you know, I left after the first year. From that point on, anyone I had contact with was connected to Sebastian somehow.”

“How long have you been living with this, Presley?”

I shake my head. “You really don’t want the answer to that.”

He swallows. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know. I know our situations are completely different, but one thing I’ve learned from all my shit is how valuable having a safe space to talk is. How meeting people who understand what you’re going through can help validate that you’re not as isolated as you feel sometimes. Why do you think I’ve been working so hard to get this program up and running? It’s because I’ve learned firsthand how powerful a support system is. As fucked up as my head is right now, I guarantee it would be much worse if I was still trying to keep it all bottled up. If you won’t talk to me, that’s okay. But you need to talk to someone.”

I think back to the first time Sebastian hit me. We were on vacation in Sint Maarten. I had never seen a more beautiful place; I believe I had referred to it as heaven on earth. We’d lie on the beach during the day, go boating, or sip cocktails by the pool, which I thought was particularly fun because I was only twenty at the time. We’d dine on exotic cuisine, then spend the next several hours in bed. Back then, I was caught up in our whirlwind romance. All of the exciting places I’d gone and the things I’d seen. It was a welcome distraction from everything I’d left behind in Georgia.

Then, about five days into our two-week vacation, Sebastian started behaving strangely. He’d snap at a waiter for no apparent reason. Disappear for hours at a time, only to come back drunk and disheveled. He blamed it on stress from work and claimed he just needed some time to cool off. On our tenth day in the Caribbean, which was coincidentally our first wedding anniversary, Sebastian had a big all-day celebration planned, but that morning, he got an email from work that upset him. To this day, I don’t know what it was about, but he said he needed to take care of an issue. He didn’t want my day to be ruined, so he encouraged me to spend the day on the beach, promising he’d be finished by dinner, then we could spend the rest of the night celebrating.

I hadn’t seen or heard from him all day. I ordered room service for dinner in our private villa and ate it on the couch, watching some reality TV show. When ten o’clock rolled around, and I still hadn’t heard from him, I became angry. When Sebastian finally returned three sheets to the wind about an hour later, I gave him a piece of my mind the second he walked through the door. When he backhanded me so hard, I stumbled into the wall, I was shocked. He immediately apologized, begged for my forgiveness, and promised he’d never do it again. I think I was so stunned, I believed the lie. When he kissed me tenderly, telling me how beautiful I was, how lucky he was that I chose him, I actually started questioning my sanity. At one point, I thought I had imagined the whole thing. That maybe I had dozed off waiting for him to return, and he was just waking me from sleep with his sweet kisses.

The next night when we returned to our villa for the evening, he had accused me of flirting with a waiter. That evening, when we had sex, he was rougher than he had ever been before. He was vulgar and demanding, calling me his dirty little whore, which I’d later learn would become his favorite term of endearment for me. On our final day on the island, Sebastian had woken me up by straddling my chest and pumping his erection, aiming it at my mouth. That was the first time he told me that my wifely duty was to serve my husband, however and whenever he pleased. That if I couldn’t satisfy his needs, there were plenty of other women who would. In retrospect, I recognize the manipulation for what it was. Still, back then, I was young, and I was so determined to create this fairy tale life where heartache didn’t exist that I was blinded by it. So, I let him use me and demean me because I thought that’s what my husband needed to be sexually satisfied. I had convinced myself I’d learn to enjoy it eventually.

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