Page 363 of Sticks and Stones
“I love you, Corbin. I love you more than anything in this whole world, and I’m not going to quit on you. I hate what has happened to you, and I’m sickened by the cruelty of what they did to you, but I’m not weak. I’m staying and I’ll fight for both of us. I think you believe that you have to be the strong one in our relationship. Well, I’m strong too.”
Corbin said nothing.
He couldn’t.
Instead, he listened.
“I’ve seen survivors face down their attackers. I’ve seen family stand up for their dead loved ones. I’m not weak, Corbin. Because I let you top me in bed doesn’t mean I can’t lead us in our daily lives. You need me now, and I’m here to prove I’m your other half.”
His heart was racing, but Will had to get it out. Losing Corbin wasn’t an option.
“I have to believe that deep down, you love me. I have to believe that you thought I was worth being with for the rest of our lives, and I have to believe that we were meant to be.”
A tear slipped down Corbin’s cheek.
“Will, I might never be the same again,” he whispered. “You deserve someone who can be a husband. Right now, I’m a shell. They tore out all of me, and left me a shell of a man.”
Will didn’t look over.
“Can I ask you one thing?”
Corbin sniffled.
“Yes.”
Will had worked with victims before, and he had the utmost compassion for rape survivors. He never believed it would hit this close to his life, but now, it had.
He needed Corbin to think about the future.
Not the past.
There was a light at the end of the tunnel if he kept moving forward.
“If it happened to me, would you leave me behind? Would you stop loving me? Would you have left when I told you to?”
In that moment, his heart skipped, and that hit Corbin in the heart.
HARD.
He pictured Will broken, battered, and destroyed like him, and that rage rose up.
But with it came compassion.
Tenderness.
Love.
Yeah, Corbin knew the truth.
There was no way he’d quit on Will. If this happened to him, he’d take care of him…
Like he was doing for him right now.
Shit.
He’d been outmaneuvered by the prosecuting attorney. He’d never seen that coming.
“Well?” Will asked, finally looking over at him. He hoped Corbin loved him like Ethan said he did. He was putting a whole lot of faith on his conversation with the Fed.
