Page 49 of Ride Me Cowboy

She blinks up at me, undoes her seatbelt, then goes to step out of the car, so I have to step back a little, to make good and sure we don’t brush against one another.

“Cole, listen,” she says, and I really wanna hear what she says next, at the same time as being shit scared for her to finish this sentence.

But I brace myself, waiting. After all, I’ve offered to hear her out. To let her talk, if it’ll help.

“What I said before, about you being the last person on earth I’d want to talk to about Christopher?—,”

I furrow my brow, not sure she put it quite as harshly as that.

“I didn’t mean it like it sounded.” Her throat shifts as she swallows, the silver of the moon picking up the delicate gesture. She looks so tiny and vulnerable, so sweet and lost. So haunted. My chest hurts for her.

“It’s fine, Beth. I just wanted you to know I’m here. I mean, if you need anything.”

Her eyes flutter closed, and she sways a little. Not from wine, because she’s been drinking soda all night. “I just don’t want you to hate me,” she says, and the words are so raw, so achingly sensitive that I burn to reach out and hold her.

I stand my ground though, the hand on her car door gripping it tighter, giving me strength.

“I’m not gonna hate you.”

“How do you know?”

I pull a face. She steps further away from the car, her body tense, her movements showing extreme agitation. The gravel scrunches audibly as she paces toward me and then away.

“I mean, you don’t really know me,” she says. “No one does.” She fidgets with her hands again and I feel all kinds of confused.

“I haven’t known you that long, but I do know you, Beth. And I know I could never hate you.”

“I’m a terrible person,” she whispers, dropping her head. I feel like she’s carrying every single responsibility in the world right around her neck. She stares at the ground for a long time and then her shoulders stoop.

“I’m not grieving my husband. Everyone expects me to be, but I’m not. I’m not in mourning. I’m not sad.”

Her voice trembles though with the strength of her feelings, and it’s something I understand. “When my dad died, I wasn’t sad either, Beth. I was angry. So damn angry. Why’d he go get himself killed? Always putting others first, that was my old man. Going into a fire, trying to save someone? That’s him. Never mind that he left us. I was furious.” I move to her, needing, above all else, to offer comfort. “You can’t predict how you’re going to react to the death of a loved one. There’s no one way to chart your way through loss.”

She fixes me with a sympathetic gaze, then shakes her head quickly. “It’s not that.”

“Anger is just a sign of how much you loved him.” I hate saying it, but why should I? This guy was her husband. “I’m pretty sure it’s normal.”

“You don’t understand. I was angry before he died. I was…I hated him, Cole. I hated my husband, and I’m glad he’s dead.” She throws the words at my feet, almost victoriously, but she’s trembling from head to toe, like she can’t think straight, and then the words are coming out of her like a chemical reaction, as though they’re just overflowing of their own accord.

“I didn’t always hate him. In the beginning, I thought we were in love. I mean, I’d never met anyone like him before. He was so charming and smart, and his money meant he could open whatever doors he wanted. His lifestyle, everything about it, it was such a luxury, such a novelty.”

I take that in, nodding slowly, like I know who she’s talking about.

Her eyes are locked to mine, like she’s trying toshowme what she’s feeling, but all I can do is stand there and wait for her explain it to me. Or maybe it’s not even me she’s seeing, but a vision of her past, playing out before her?

“The first time he hit me, we were on our honeymoon.”

Fuck.I feel the ground tilt beneath me. My hands form fists at my side. Anger pummels me from the inside out; it is a tide rising in my chest, filling me with bitter hatred. I stand perfectly still, because even through the mist of my rage, I know she’s telling me this because she needs to say it. She needs to get it out. Like a blood letting, of sorts, but of her past. Her awful marriage.

“I told myself it was just a slap, like there could be any such thing.” She touches her cheek. “He apologized. Told me he’d been stressed with work. I loved him, and we’d just had this huge society wedding. We were in the goddamned Times. I mean, what could I do?” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I was such anidiot. I just wanted to belong. For the first time in my life, I had a family…I felt loved. I didn’t have anyone else, you know? It was just my mom and me and she died when I was seventeen.” Her voice is so soft, I can’t believe I haven’t brought her to my chest yet, to hold her tight.

“Anyway, I really believed him, that it was just a one off. It doesn’t excuse it; I just wanted, so badly, to think…But a week after we got home, he came back late from work, drunk as a skunk. I’d put his dinner away, and he was so angry at me for not having it ready for him, laid out on the table.” She flinches, like she’s reliving that memory. “That was a bad night,” she whispers, and I don’t ask for details, because I can’t bear to have her say anything she doesn’t want to. And maybe, also, I don’t want to hear it. To imagine it.

“We lived in this amazing apartment, on Fifth, with this incredible view. The building is super old and grand, with this fancy white marble foyer, and a huge gold and crystal chandelier. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. We looked out over the park, and from my bedroom, I could see the zoo. I’d stare down at the animals, in their cages,” she pauses, to take a deep breath, then starts again. “I’d look down at their cages, and think, we’re just the same—them in their cages, me in my penthouse. I was trapped, I couldn’t escape. He made sure of that.” She trembles, and I feel like a lightning rod has spiked through me.

“So, that’s what my marriage was,” she whispers. “Three and a half years of him punishing me, hurting me, terrifying me, all because once upon a time I believed that I loved him. For being stupid enough to marry a guy I’d only known a few months.”

I nod, slowly, while my insides turn to lava.

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