Page 195 of His Virgin Romance Series

“Well… yeah.”

“How lax do you think we are?”

“Hey, stranger things have happened,” Abby said. “And in any case… Walter seemed like the kind of guy who could do anything.”

I frowned. “Did he?”

“He was determined, persuasive…. I would even go so far as to call him charming.”

I gritted my teeth a little, but I didn’t allow the jealousy to come through. “Is that how he got you?”

Abby sighed, and the smile faltered slightly on her face. “I suppose, but it had more to do with my insecurities than anything else.”

“You thought he would protect you?”

“Yes,” Abby nodded. “And when I told him I wanted to wait to have sex, he seemed to totally agree.”

“Because he needed you.”

“Possibly,” Abby nodded. “But at the time, I just thought he was a really decent guy.”

“How long did that last?”

Abby sighed. “A few weeks, I suppose. And then… he started getting more and more aggressive. It wasn’t with me though, which is why somehow, I justified it for a long time. He interacted with a few different guys… he said it was all ‘business,’ but who the fuck knows anymore. I saw him punch a guy in the face one time. I was sitting in the car waiting for him, and I watched them talk for ten minutes before it broke out into a fistfight.”

“What did he tell you when he got back to the car?”

“He said that the guy was trying to cheat him, and he didn’t put up with shit like that,” Abby admitted. “I was so shocked that I didn’t ask more questions. I think that’s what made me really uncomfortable, and I think from that moment on I was looking for a way to get out.”

“Did you ever just try to break up with him?”

“A few times,” Abby nodded. “But I never got around to it.”

“Why?”

“I think deep down inside I understood what he really was,” Abby told me. “I was scared of his reaction. I was terrified I would see the aggressive side of him that he had shown to others on previous occasions. Then one night, we were at this bar, and a woman came up to him. She obviously didn’t see me, or if she did, she just didn’t care. She started talking to Walter, and she was flirting a lot. And the way she spoke it was like… they’d seen each other a lot the previous week, and I was pretty sure that Walter was fucking around on me.”

“Did you confront him?”

“As we got back to his place,” Abby nodded. “In a sense, I was almost relieved. This allowed me a legitimate excuse to leave him. So I asked about the woman, and he was impatient with me because he really didn’t want to talk about her. Then, I came right out and asked him, and he just looked me right in the eye and said ‘Yeah, I fucked her. I fucked her five times last week.’”

“He admitted to it?”

Abby nodded. “I told him I was breaking up with him, and I was leaving, but he grabbed me by the hand and pushed me onto his sofa. Then he leaned down over me really close, and he told me that he owned me now. That I was his possession and I didn’t have the right to leave before he decided he was done with me.”

I felt my fists clench, but I let Abby continue with her story. “He told me that because I wanted to wait to have sex, that he had done the gentlemanly thing by scratching his itch elsewhere so that he didn’t have to bother me. He phrased it like he was being the good guy and I was being the irrational girlfriend. He told me that if I ever tried to leave him, he would hunt me down and make me regret it. He looked crazy, but he also looked like he was serious, and I stayed with him that night out of sheer terror.”

“You didn’t think about calling Devon at that point?”

“Devon and I weren’t really close enough that I thought of him as an option at the time. It was only after… that night when he tried to choke me that I called Devon out of desperation because I didn’t feel like the cops were going to do anything to help.”

I nodded. “Well, he’s never going to be able to put his hands on you again… ever.”

Abby nodded, but she looked unsure. “You can’t protect me forever, Ryder,” she said softly.

“I wasn’t referring to myself,” I said. “I was referring to you.”

“Me?” Abby said.

“You broke a man’s nose today,” I pointed out.

“He and Walter are two completely different men with two completely different skill sets.”

“Maybe, but you’re not the same scared little girl you were when you first stepped into this house,” I pointed out. “Remember that and don’t let Walter get inside your head. If you let him get inside your head, you are giving up your power to him. Understood?”

Abby nodded with determination and new resolve. “Understood.”

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