Page 47 of Until You Found Me

“You aren’t some toy that she had the right to take off the shelf whenever she wanted and—”

“I can’t do this.” He gets up abruptly, limbs tense and voice raised. In a split second, she flinches as if his agitation might lash out in her direction.

Their eyes lock and mutual regret clusters together in the space between them, sucking every ounce of familiarity from the room until it feels like he’s staring at a stranger. She knows he wouldn’t hit her, but some habits root so deep that all it takes is the right combination of moments to unlock them.

He bolts for the door before she can speak and down the front steps, sitting in the cold air, regretting not bringing acoat but refusing to go back inside for one.

What the hell has he done? How did he manage to ruin this without even getting naked first? He opened his mouth and a bunch of shit she didn’t need to know tumbled out, that’s how. Now he can’t take it back and his skin flames hot at knowing how she must see him. Weak. Broken. A victim. All things he’s thought about himself for other reasons but rarely when it came to Lydia.

He isn’t a victim because of her. Weak, sure. Broken, yes. But he could have stopped her any time he chose to. It’s not the same, he tells himself, pulling out a pack of smokes to light up and grimacing at the taste.

The click of the door opening makes his heart sink. He doesn’t want to see Tessa now.

She drapes his coat over his shoulders. “Can I sit?”

“Yeah.” Why did he say that? He only wants to be alone.

She takes up the step beside him, clad in his other jacket and a pair of jeans, and tilts her head toward the cigarette between his lips. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Been trying to quit. Got enough health problems, I don’t need lung cancer too.”

“Smells familiar.”

He offers her the stick that neither of them should be smoking and she inhales like she’s done it all her life. Doesn’t cough once.

“Well, damn.” She hands it back. “Guess I’m a smoker. Bet my lungs have been glad I forgot that.”

“No withdrawal all this time. Lucky.”

“Too stressed already to tell the difference.”

Now he feels even worse for saying she was lucky after knowing what she’s been through.

“It wasn’t how you think between me and her,” he says quickly, staring out through a curtain of freshly falling snow.

“Okay.”

“I was the problem. She didn’t hurt me. I could have stopped her. I was twice her size.”

“Did you want to take the pills when she gave them to you? Did you want to sleep with her when you woke up and…”

He goes quiet because the answer is no and saying it aloud is difficult. It would be admitting that he can’t protect himself from someone he could bench press and he isn’t in the mood for that tonight. Maybe he really is such a disaster that someone could take advantage of him that easily and he’d hardly be able to recognize it.

“I have a lot of dreams,” Tessa begins, folding her arms to lean over them, her eyes on the same snowfall as his. “Nightmares, memories, but you already know that. It’s always him. He’s always doing something awful to me. Sometimes it’s different, sometimes it’s the same. One of the worst was when I woke up…I was still dreaming, but I woke up, and he was already inside me in bed. I didn’t understand what was happening at first and then I did and I cried the whole time until he finished.”

She pauses with a defiant wrinkle of her nose, her tone even.

“He didn’t see me as his wife. I wasn’t a person to him. I was something he used to get off. He didn’t respect me enough to make sure I was awake, but I didn’t say no. I didn’t tell him to get off me. I couldn’t. I know you’re gonna say it’s not the same, but it’s not that different, Logan.”

He’s having a hard time wrapping his mind around any of this, but he knows the mental image she gave him is enraging.

“You’re angry about what he did?” She asks matter-of-factly, taking the cigarette from him to slide between her lips for another pull.

“Of course I am. If he were here right now I’d—”

“And I’m angry at her for what she did.”

She gives him back the little white stick, catching his eyes with her gaze that turns soft as she looks at him. “You are worth so much more than how she treated you, Logan.”

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