Page 40 of Off-Limits Love
And every time it happened, he built the pain threshold a bit higher. Moved the bar and tested her again. “I was so in love.”
“Because he trained you to focus on the good in him,” Zoey said. “After treating you badly, he’d treat you well. Just enough that you’d forgive him. And then he’d do it again?”
She stared at her hands and grimaced as she nodded. “He wasn’t all bad, though. That’s what’s so hard about all of this. Why it’s so hard to wrap my head around the man I thought he was and the one he…is.”
“Mak, you’ll make yourself crazy trying to understand it. You can’t, because mentally healthy people don’t think the way a narcissist thinks.”
Mak hugged the pillow more tightly and shifted on the loveseat. “I feel so stupid.”
The last part emerged low and raw, barely a whisper. But it was true. And even though she knew she wasn’t the one who should feel bad or angry or stupid, she did.
Had she seen it, acknowledged the red flags she’d excused for whatever reason, she could’ve saved herself so much pain. So much hurt and devastation.
“You have to forgive yourself. You married young. And you didn’t know what you didn’t know. And unless you’ve been exposed to a narcissist before? People have no idea how manipulative they can be.”
Mak lifted her head and forced herself to look at Zoey. “So after all of that—how do I ever trust anyone again? Trust a man again?”
Zoey’s expression softened. “Trust takes time. But now that you look back and see the red flags and have experienced everything that you have? You’ll spot them if they’re there.”
Mak’s thoughts shifted to other things, other moments with her ex, and she winced.
“What?” Zoey asked.
Mak took a shuddered breath. “Nothing. I’m just remembering. Once…we were on a trip. A vacation. There was a free class in the evenings at a shop near our hotel. It only lasted an hour or so, and I signed up because— Brad had a nightly routine. He controlled the television even though he was always on his phone or computer, and—I was expected to just sit there. The class was only an hour or so,” she repeated, “and the weather was going to be rainy and wet anyway, so I thought, why not go? It was free.”
“What happened?”
The fear she’d felt that night surged through her like a flash flood. “He insisted on driving me. Then he complained about me ruining our evening together. I told him I would’ve driven myself, and he got upset because I wasn’t appreciative. Then…we get there, and he drives right past the building. He won’t turn around, he won’t speak. Every time I ask what he’s doing, he drives faster and faster. The roads were curvy with steep embankments, unfamiliar, and he’s going way too fast. In total silence. He just drives and drives, and then—he suddenly stops in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, in the rain.” Her breath hitched in her throat as it all came back to her in vivid detail. “He turned his head and stared at me with this look, and— I think my heart stopped for a second. I was so scared. I didn’t know if he planned to leave me there or…what. But his expression…”
“He did everything you just said to intimidate you and make you afraid of him, Makayla. To put you in your place, to show he held the power. I’m guessing that’s not the only time something like that happened over the years, was it?”
Mak took another shaky breath, still caught in that moment, in the car and the fear. “No.” There had been other times. Other incidents.
“Did he physically hurt you? That night or any other?” Zoey pressed.
Mak opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. Images flashed through her head but she couldn’t give them voice. “He never hit me. He threatened to numerous times, and he punched walls or threw things, broke things, but…he didn’t hit me.”
“There are a lot of ways to abuse someone without physically hitting them, Mak. He abused you with that drive you took. He scared you. Cowed you. That’s emotional abuse and manipulation. Same thing with throwing things. That’s about fear and intimidation…. How are your finances?”
Mak blinked at the sudden change in subject. Was Zoey afraid she wouldn’t get paid? “Um, well, not great. I’m still not sure how he got away with it, but he drained our savings and retirement accounts. He said that it was his money because he’d earned it, that I hadn’t worked because I was lazy and was freeloading off him. I’m supposed to receive spousal support, but Brad doesn’t pay it. He only pays the child support for Emi, and he threatens to take her away from me whenever I bring up spousal.”
“He’s using fear to manipulate you again.”
He was. But the threat of losing her daughter? She was afraid to push too hard. Afraid of what might happen.
“What about in the bedroom? Were you compatible?”
Mak blinked at the questions and squirmed on the loveseat. But she’d told herself she would reveal every painful molecule of her past if it meant rebuilding herself and healing from all things Brad. “At first.”
“And then?”
Her stomach knotted up and her breathing turned shallow. Could she actually say it? Admit it out loud?
Long seconds passed, but Zoey waited Mak out, like she already knew the answer to her question.
Maybe she did.
After several more heartbreaking moments, Mak whispered, “He didn’t always take no as no. He said…husbands have rights.”
