Page 65 of Caught Looking

“Exactly, babe. He tricked us all. Whatever happened with Montgomery is in the past. The only reason I care about it is because it’s making you sad and because it’s part of who you are, and I care about all of you, even the dark parts.”

To my complete surprise that earned me a soft chuckle. “You’re very convincing, Seth Butler.” She sniffled, her lower lip still trembling.

“I promise to only use my powers for good.”

After another chuckle she sighed out a heavy breath, looked right into my eyes, and broke my heart into a few dozen more pieces. “At first I was taken by surprise. He’d been a very attentive lover at first. And then…he just stopped caring. As long as he got off, everything was fine. I thought it was a phase. Stress. How could someone go from caringonlyabout my pleasure to not caring at all?”

The motherfucker.

“Then he woke me up with sex. Not like us,” she whispered. “Like, I woke up and he was already climaxing. He swore he thought I was into it. That I’d been responding to him. When I told him I was most definitely asleep he said he’d be more careful. That he was just trying to be romantic. But it happened again. After that, I told him I needed space.”

It took all of my strength and concentration to keep from digging my fingers into Annalise. All I wanted to do was react but that wasn’t what she needed. She needed soft. She needed me to listen. I could punch walls later.

“I was so confused. I’d never been in a situation even remotely like that. Luckily I was out of the country for a few weeks. When I came back, he was sweet. Like he had been in the beginning. I told myself everything was fine.”

“But it wasn’t.” Unfortunately I knew all too well how much fun Montgomery derived from fucking with people’s minds.

“After a month of things being nice and what I thought was normal, he started manipulating me. He said he just wanted more of my time. Then he remembered things differently than I did. He was always right, always the one hurt. I was so busy that I kept putting him off, pushing our breakup off until I had time to deal with the fallout—because I knew there’d be fallout. I might have fooled myself into thinking Owen was a normal guy, but somewhere in the back of my mind I’d seen the signs. He was going to blow up when I ended things with him and I needed the mental fortitude to deal with it all. Owen must have realized I was done because he ‘surprised’ me with a romantic weekend getaway.”

I wanted to tell her to stop. That I didn’t need to know. But I couldn’t. Because we both needed this out in the air between us.

She laughed. “That’s when I knew Owen wasn’t a good guy. This romantic trip? On the ride there he told me all our problems were because our sex life wasn’t interesting enough. It was too vanilla. Too basic and boring. Then he started back in with the mind games. If I cared about him…If I just opened my mind.” Then she closed her eyes and groaned. “Then he told me that my athletic body wasn’t feminine enough, but he could help me choose the right lingerie to make my body more appealing. And if I combined that with a more interesting sex life, I’d be wanted by so many more men.”

“What. The. Hell?” I spat out. Annalise was perfect. Beyond perfect.

She shrugged. “I knew he was trying to twist me up, and it was so obvious at the time. I liked my body. I didn’t care who found me attractive. My first question was why he was with me at all if he found me so unappealing.”

“I bet he didn’t have a straight answer for that.” From the sounds of it, Annalise’s encounter with Montgomery was from before he’d gotten better at his mind games.

“He deflected, tried to turn things back on me, all the usual tactics. I broke up with him as soon as we got to the hotel and called a cab. He followed me around for two weeks, threatening me, telling me that if we didn’t get back together, I’d die alone. That I’d regret rejecting him. Six months later his big documentary came out and he became famous. Six months after that we ran into each other and he threatened to use his new connections to end my career.”

“Jesus Christ, Annalise. None of that is your fault. None of it.” I ran my fingers through her soft hair, wishing I could pluck every one of those memories out of her mind. “And before you ask, no, I’ve never heard that story.”

She relaxed. “I hate that I stayed with him as long as I did. That I excused so many of the things he said.”

“Stop.” I shook my head. “He’s an asshole.”

“True. But I knew he wasn’t treating me right. I trusted he simply made some mistakes. I shouldn’t have done that.” Another look flashed through her eyes.

A look that made my heart stop. “What?” I croaked out.

She looked away. “Jeri keeps saying you’re Owen’s opposite.”

Thank fuck for that.

“But it scares me that I think I stayed with Owen for the same reason I’m so swept up in you, even though I know it’s totally different.”

“What’s the reason?” She still didn’t look at me and I got the impression that this was the big confession. Montgomery’s shit was bad, but this was the thing that mattered to Annalise. The thing that scared her.

“In the beginning…I liked having all his attention.”

And she liked having mine. “I won’t hurt you,” I reminded her. “I swear it. You deserve to be worshiped, Annalise. And you should crave it. You should bask in it. Because the attention I give you is just that.Given. I will only ever take what you give me and no more. I promise.”

She sniffled but didn’t say anything else.

We needed a fucking light. I reached for the nightstand, fumbling around until I found a switch and flipped it. Soft yellow light filled the room as my gaze locked on Annalise and froze. “You’re wearing my shirt.” My heart fucking soared.

The last woman to wear my shirt washer. Lori. And she’d made it a game. Stealing one here and there. I never got them back.

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