Page 63 of Give Me Strength

“Even if it’s true?”

“Especially when it’s true. Everyone use the word complicated like it’s some sort of catch-all for hard to explain, but when you break it down, it’s really quite simple.”

“We’re discussing this now?” I ask, my voice thick with emotion.

Her chest vibrates with a deep hum.

I blow out a breath. “Did I love Rachel? Yes. She was my best friend. But our relationship was never sexual. It was more… codependent.”

It was more than that, but I’m not sure now’s the time to bring that up. Not with my fingers playing with her pussy.

“Did you see her naked?” she suddenly asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

It’s a simple enough question, but no one has ever point-blank asked me that.

“Yes,” I manage to say, the familiar ache in my chest tightening.

“Has she seen you naked?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t have sex?”

“No.”

We sit there in silence for a moment, the weight of everything unsaid hanging between us.

“Help me understand,” she eventually says, breaking the silence. “I know my questions seem invasive, but I need to understand why. Or how. I guess I need to know the whole truth.”

I bite down on my bottom lip, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Do you know the difference between a marriage and commitment?”

“Aren’t those the same thing?”

“They’re not. Not always. People get married for all sorts of reasons, that doesn’t automatically make them committed to each other. Not in the traditional sense. Unless that’s something both parties mutually agree on. I’ll give you one guess, one you know all too well. Even if no one ever spelled it out for you like this.”

I envision the corner of her mouth scrunches up in her thinking face, and I can see the metaphorical wheels churning as she racks her brain, wondering what I could possibly mean. Then I feel it, the moment when the realization dawns on her.

“My parents.”

I nod, even though she cannot see it. “Even though your parents were married, but they weren’t committed to each other. Your father, rest his soul, was committed to his job. From what I know, he was damn good at it too. But the nature of his work meant he had no other choice but to compartmentalize, which meant keeping the professional and personal as far apart as Mercury and Pluto. I can’t say if your mother knew this going in, but she must have learned to accept it. After all, she had her own priorities and commitments that didn’t include him.”

“That part I did know,” she confirms. “I didn’t have to wonder why he wasn’t around. Mom filled both roles and that was enough for me.”

“Rachel and I had a different type of an arrangement,” I continue. “Our marriage was in name only, a means of escape for both of us.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It’s the truth, Ash. It doesn’t have to make sense to everyone.”

She leans back, resting the back of her head on my shoulder. “So, let me get this straight. In order to be free,” she says, placing the tips of both pointer fingers together, “you and Rachel legally bound yourselves to each other?”

A low rumble moves through me. “It sounds worse when you phrase it like that. But yes, we got married for the legal protections it afforded us.” It’s much more than that, but I leave it at that. “We were each very much committed to our respective careers.”

“But you were both adults, right? At the time you got married?”

“Yes, we were eighteen at the time. But really, there was nothing sexual about our relationship. See, Rachel preferred women.”

A beat passes.

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