Page 53 of Love Me Gently

At least, that was what I thought back then.

“Do they know I’m here?”

“No. Some men at the station know, Mom and Marie, my ex, and that’s because they had to. Mom and Dad said they’d keep it quiet until you were ready.”

“I don’t want to see them.” I doubted I’d ever be ready, and I wasn’t sure there was a point. Jonathan would find me. Why give them hope I was home if it was only temporary?

“Okay.”

There was a shrug from him in my peripheral vision and I turned, barely enough to face him. “That doesn’t bother you?”

“They’ve waited a long time to have you back. They’ll wait forever.”

The last thing I wanted was to give them hope when it would only be torn away. Truth was, he was probably right. My parents, Mom especially, still reached out to me. Not often, and I wasn’t brave enough to return her calls, but when Jonathan had told me to block their numbers so I couldn’t talk to them, I’d changed both of theirs toSpam Riskin my phone’s contacts. Amazingly, he’d never searched my contacts and found them, but it allowed me to occasionally, usually around my birthday or holidays, hear my mom’s voice.

Karen Mills was soft-spoken but bold. She was kind and loving and never showed a hint of fear. And she loved me despite myself. Which was why I always listened to her voicemails in the bathroom with the shower running…so no one could hear me cry.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told Cole and faced the window as he drove by the new library he’d mentioned. “My life ended the day I left town. I’ve been nothing since.”

Maybe if he finally saw the truth of who I was, he’d move on from trying to save someone who couldn’t be saved.

Twenty

Cole

Whatever I’d been thinking was wrong with Trina came to a crashing halt the moment those words left her mouth and hovered in the space between us like a weighted bomb.

She thought she wasnothing? Truly, completely believed she had nothing to offer this world?

I must have been naive, thinking she’d be grateful for us getting her away from Jonathan. Maybe I’d been too hopeful she’d be excited to be free of him. I’d worked with enough victims, heard their stories and how they consistently returned to their abusers that I should have applied that to Trina.

But man…I hadn’t expected this level of self-hatred and worthlessness to come from her.

Knowing nothing I said would make a difference in her current state of mind, I made a left that would take us away from the lake, toward the highway. If she’d been awed by the changes in town she’d already seen, nothing would surprise her like the businesses along that strip of road.

“You’ve always been everything to a lot of people,” I said, because I still had to try. Still had to speak the truth against the lies she believed. “You still are, especially your parents.”

I caught a quick flinch, and then she turned back to face the window. I turned and took us toward a new shopping strip that was packed. Who knew so many locals would go ballistic over a Home Goods and TJ Maxx, but the parking lot was always packed with cars.

“Tell me about your girls,” she said so quietly I almost missed it over the rumble of my truck and traffic.

“June and Ella. They’re four and five.”

She didn’t want to know about my girls. That was obvious with the way her lips scrunched up like she tasted something sour. This was a distraction to get the focus off her. I’d give her that, but if what Valerie said was true and she still hated herself for her choices when we were kids, I wasn’t sure it’d help.

“Their mom?”

“Marie. She lives in town. We split custody.”

“How’d you meet?” Her questions came by rote, with no joy, but considering she was talking instead of staring out the window with an empty expression, I told her.

“Through friends at the academy. She was the sister of another candidate’s girlfriend.”

Her fingers twisted together in her lap as she considered that. She was no longer looking at the window but down at her hands. “You said she’s your ex.”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

---