Page 10 of His to Protect

Chapter 3

Trina

Despite my recent past, I knew not all men were like Kevin.

I knew that just because I married a man who ended up being a monster—a man who hid his lies behind a perfect smile—it didn’t mean there weren’t still good men in the world.

Some were decent. They had to exist.

Some loved their women and their wives. My father, as misguided and distant as he was, never spoke an unkind word to my mother or myself. He certainly never raised his hand in anger. In fact, he was so levelheaded that I don’t think I’d ever even heard him raise his voice in anger.

Except for the time I snuck out and took his brand-new Mercedes for a joyride just weeks after getting my license. My high school friend Kelly and I ended up wrapping that beautiful piece of steel around a telephone pole when, driving way too fast, I slid through a puddle that was deeper than it appeared, broke too hard, and popped a curb.

That night was the first time I heard my father shout, and even then it was, “My new car!” When he turned to me, fists at the back of his neck, a vein pulsing in his temple, I cowered behind the wrecked car and stared at the man in awe as he took five cleansing breaths. Then he lowered his hands and, with disappointment clear in his eyes and his voice, asked, “Are you okay?”

He pulled me into his arms, held me way too tight, and made me promise I’d never break the speed limit again. Or steal his car. Or sneak out.

I would have promised him anything that night.

In fact, I did.

I promised him I would always listen to him. So when he introduced me to Kevin Morgenson, son of Kentucky’s beloved Senator Morgenson, at a fundraising benefit, and insisted we were perfect for each other, I didn’t think twice about it. He wanted the best for me.

I was sometimes thankful that he passed away before he could see what my relationship turned into.

I learned after I said “I do” that there were strings attached when you became involved with a senator’s son, one who had his eyes on his own campaign in the near future.

You stopped being a woman.

You began being a possession.

Even before the first backhand to my cheek, I was exhausted from trying to maintain a facade.

At the Fireside Grill, slightly lost inside my own head, eating dinner in the kitchen of what appeared to be a typical sports bar, I felt more like myself than I had since I was twenty-one years old, when my palm slid slowly into Kevin’s and we shook hands, and he said his first hello.

I didn’t realize how much I had changed, how much of myself I lost in the last eight years.

How I had become someone I barely recognized when I looked in the mirror. I wondered if that’s what Kevin had planned.

Small, insignificant changes over a long period of time, to erase the woman he’d dated all those years ago.

He wanted me to stay home and raise our children someday, and frankly, I thought it was a great idea.

I’d never wanted anything more than to become a mom.

I’d never seen a bigger purpose in life than raising a tiny, helpless infant into a person of character and strength, who would then pour their goodness into the people around them.

Some thought the idea of being a stay-at-home mom was antiquated.

I believed it was honorable.

So when Kevin and I were married, I saw no problem with quitting my job at a public-relations firm in the heart of Louisville, despite the fact that I loved my coworkers and my boss and my work.

When Kevin suggested I begin working out to occupy my time, and perhaps volunteer at the hospital, I saw the value in his suggestions.

When he ran his hands through my hair and smiled with a wistful look on his face one night after we’d made love and whispered, “I wonder what you would look like as a blonde,” I wanted nothing more than to give him what he wanted.

But when I came home late one night after going out for drinks with some other volunteers at the hospital and hadn’t had time to prepare his dinner, his glass of scotch flew by my head right before his hand connected with my cheek, and I knew nothing would be the same again.

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