Page 89 of Finally Mine
“He told me he didn’t like me talking to his woman. I told him I didn’t like the way he was treating you. We got into a shoving match. Luke and Linc broke it up fast.”
“I had no idea.”
“He dragged you out of there by your arm.” Aldo’s voice was dangerous. “I made a point to run into you the next day, and you had a black eye. You said you fell at the bonfire.”
Gloria couldn’t look him in the eye. She stared down at her hands resting in her lap. It had been the first of many, many lies she’d told.
“You swore you were fine, laughed it off. But I could see that part of that sparkle, part of that shine from the spotlight, was already gone. He was already taking pieces of you.”
She closed her eyes. “You tried to get me to break up with him. Told me he was trouble. Then I pretended like it was a joke, and I laughed.”
“He hit you because of me. You got hurt because of me.”
The words poured out of him like water over Niagara Falls. They couldn’t stop, even if Gloria wasn’t ready to hear them. “I enlisted the next day.”
“Oh my God, Aldo!”
“Luke had been talking about it, and I hadn’t decided. But I knew if I didn’t get away, I’d be the reason you got hurt again, and I couldn’t live with that, Glo. So I enlisted, and I walked into the first tattoo parlor I could find in the phone book.”
“It’s the serenity prayer, isn’t it?” Gloria asked. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change?”
He nodded.
“You had to accept that you couldn’t change me.” The man had marked his skin and enlisted in the military because of feelings he had for her that she’d never known about. He’d carried the burden of blame for something he had no responsibility in.
Had she left Glenn that first time, their story could have been completely different. The Gloria that Left Glenn could have still been the Gloria that Ended Up with Aldo.
“I took every training, every assignment. I went to college. All just to get away from here. But I kept coming home. And I kept hoping.”
She reached for him. Put her hand on his strong arm. “Aldo. He was always going to hit me. You were an excuse, not the reason.”
He didn’t move away from her touch, but he didn’t try to hold her either. “When you didn’t leave him… I didn’t understand.”
Her heart hurt. Another person she had disappointed, devastated.
“I hate this. I hate knowing that I let you down, Aldo.”
“You didn’t let me down. I didn’t understand. I didn’t get it. But I do now. I don’t blame you for staying.”
“I do. I blame myself every day. Aldo, what if I left him the first time it happened? What if you and I had that shot? My entire life would be different. I would have gone to college. I would have made something of myself. We might have kids and pets and soccer practice and lasagna for dinner.”
Staring into the darkness beyond the windshield, she mourned the loss of things she’d never had.
“Or we would have been too young to know what a good thing we had and screwed it all up,” Aldo pointed out. “I was eighteen. All I knew was football. The Guard, college, all of that turned me into who I am today. I wouldn’t be here now, if it had gone down differently. I believe that, Gloria. I really do.”
Maybe he had a point. But not enough to get her to unwallow. “I hate that I was a textbook battered woman.”
“There are reasons why women don’t leave,” Aldo argued.
“And there are women who would never let themselves be put in that situation. Do you think Sophie would have ever let Ty hit her? Even once? No! She would put his balls in a pickle jar. But I didn’t have that spine at sixteen. I didn’t have that confidence. I was so hungry for attention I was willing to accept abuse and humiliation and isolation as the price to pay for it.” Her voice was raised, and she didn’t care. The words had been trapped inside her for too long.
“I can’t forgive myself any more than I can forgive him,” she admitted. Her eyes were dry, but her heart was pounding in her head.
Aldo brought his fingers to the back of her neck where he stroked gently.
“This is a second chance for both of us. I’m going to try real hard not to blow it. But isn’t the important thing not what you did or didn’t do at sixteen but what you choose now as an adult? Isn’t the point of all of this that now you’ll have that pickle jar, and you’ll be ready to use it?”
“It terrifies me that I might not be ready. It shakes me to the bone to think that I might be exactly the same girl I was at sixteen, ready to make the same mistakes again. Still too hungry for attention. Too eager to please.”
