Page 103 of Love Me Gently

He huffed and ran his hand up and down my back again in large, swooping gestures. “Me too, honey. Me too. But you’re safe, and that’s all that matters in the end.”

I gathered myself, spit, and then pushed off my hands so I was still on my knees. “He was arrested.”

Jonathan was currently in the back of a police car, smirking at me. He’d been evil and an idiot, and now he’d get what was coming to him. Whatever happened to those women, whatever he’d done to anyone other than me, I’d be joining their fight to ensure what Cole said was correct. That Jonathan went away for a very, very long time and could never hurt anyone ever again.

For the first time since he’d revealed his true colors to me, I met Jonathan’s smile and gave him one of my own. Hopefully, he read into it what I intended. A smile of vengeance, a smile prepared to fight tooth and nail, and a smile that said he would get what was coming to him.

He caught my smile and looked away.

I grinned up at Cole and held out my hand.

Like I knew he would, he took it and guided me to my feet. I was barely on both before his arms were around me, holding me tightly to him. “I love you, Trina. I love you so much.”

This time, I hugged him back. It came as naturally as breathing. Which was probably why I opened my mouth and found myself saying, “For the first time in a long time, I love myself too.”

He pulled back and grinned down at me. I reached up and cupped his cheek, which meant I was close to see the ways his eyes softened as I smiled back. “And I’m pretty sure I love you, too.”

Epilogue

Trina

Three Months Later

It waswild the changes that happened once I decided to stop living in fear and start reaching for freedom. The night Jonathan was arrested changed everything.

First, and most importantly, Jim Bower recovered from the gunshot wound. He’d bled out a lot, and that had been the most dangerous, but after being stabilized, I learned that Jonathan hadn’t hit anything vital. It was the fall to the ground that knocked him out, leaving him with a nasty concussion that took six weeks to heal from. Fortunately for Jim, he was in the hospital healing from surgery and the gunshot for half of it. Unfortunately, considering the number of times I talked to Kip and Valerie during that period, I learned he was not the kind of man who enjoyed sitting around and doing nothing. He'd become a friend of sorts, and he reached out, guilty and horrified he hadn’t caught Jonathan sneaking up on him and that I’d been in any sort of danger at all.

We talked, and I forgave him because there was nothing to forgive, and in the end, that act of forgiveness toward him led me to start forgiving myself too. Well, that along with therapy.

A lot of therapy. So much therapy I could have put a bed in my therapist’s office and moved in.

Jonathan wasn’t only arrested for attempted murder, but it turned out that during our marriage, he’d not only assaulted and manipulated his assistant, but many other women she had the job of scheduling time for with Jonathan. This all came out when I was finally able to call Valerie.

She admitted she’d been keeping it from me, but it was Jonathan’s assistant who went to Kip and told him what had been going on after I was hospitalized the last time. It was Lexi’s bravery that sent Kip and Valerie on a mission, and while there were now ten women who had come forward, all being abused or manipulated or assaulted by Jonathan, we assumed there was still more.

As soon as the sun rose the following Monday, I called a lawyer Kip trusted and filed for divorce. By then, Jonathan was back in an Atlanta jail and was being held without bail until his trials could start. He was fighting all the charges and since he was wealthy and his attorney was well-connected, they kept getting pushed back, which sucked for all of us involved. He’d also fought the divorce tooth and nail and while I’d signed a prenuptial agreement, given the proof of his infidelity and assault—caveats I couldn’t believe he’d even put in the prenuptial agreement in the first place—I was set to soon become a very wealthy woman.

And all of it, every single penny was either earmarked to be donated to multiple domestic violence women’s shelters in the southeast region or put into creating my new dream.

Deer Creek’s Pregnancy Center would be open in the summer and would serve not only the woman in our county, but anyone who found themselves in situations where they were uncertain how to navigate. I was currently working on hiring doctors, nurses, and counselors and we’d rely heavily on volunteers as well. Our jobs were not to judge or convince or push women in any specific direction. We were there to instruct and care for every woman who walked through our doors needing assistance. We would also offer classes, whether that be pregnancy or birthing or the first year of a child’s life afterward, and if their choices veered toward the one I made, we provided appointments and transportation. Looking back, I made the choice I did not purely out of naivety and stubbornness, but an alarming amount of fear. And while I was healing from my guilt, I also recognized not every woman would, so I wanted to ensure our center was accepting of all choices, whether they’d be mine if I had to make them again or not.

I stepped back, squinting at the bright and freezing February afternoon sky, and the building in front of me that was now a shell of a closed down dentist’s office. It would soon be all mine, and I squeezed the hand of the man standing next to me.

The man who hadn’t left my side. The man who’d been there for me every step of the way in the last three months. The man who held me while I cried after therapy, the man who was silent while I screamed and raged, and the man who joined me in now frequent laughter.

“It’s happening.” I grinned up at Cole.

“You’re doing great.” He grinned back at me. “But we didn’t finish our argument this morning.”

I rolled my eyes. It was a stupid argument, one that he was being stubborn about. “I need to get an apartment and do this on my own.”

I was still living in his downstairs bedroom. Some nights, Cole came down and joined me and held me. Other nights, I went up to his, but most of the nights, we slept alone. We hadn’t taken that step yet, and I still wasn’t ready.

My body hadn’t truly beenminein a healthy way in a very long time, and the thought of taking those next steps still made me tense with fear.

Cole continued to assure me it didn’t matter.

“And you’re not alone. You never have to do anything on your own again.”

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