Total pages in book: 176
Estimated words: 164533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 823(@200wpm)___ 658(@250wpm)___ 548(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164533 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 823(@200wpm)___ 658(@250wpm)___ 548(@300wpm)
She exhaled a heavy breath, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. “It feels amazing, like a weight’s been lifted.”
“Was it that bad being married to him?” I knew it was a question I shouldn’t ask, but a part of me needed to know about her ex-husband. Some of the small details she’d revealed about him concerned me. They didn’t sit well.
Charli’s gaze flickered up, meeting mine for a second before returning to chin level. “Not right away. The first two years were good. I was happy. Mostly. And then …”
“And then?”
“I guess the first warning sign was when he convinced me my relationship with my mom was toxic, that the way she’d lied to me as a child made her some sort of narcissist and that she was the reason why I was on medication for depression.”
My jaw tightened as I listened to her. I’d met Charli’s mother when she came to visit at the end of her stay that summer. The woman seemed anxious and a little uptight, but she was no narcissist. “Why were you on medication?”
Charli blew out a small breath, the air of it gently hitting my face, and I leaned closer to her on instinct. “I found my first couple of months at college challenging. It was all such a big change, and with everything I’d just discovered about my parents and my family, I went through a bit of a crisis.” My hands fisted where they hung at my sides because this was the same period when I’d been in hell over Mam getting sick. Charli had been going through her own struggle, and I couldn’t help wondering if I’d just gotten my shit together and kept in touch, maybe even gone to see her, she might not have felt so lost.
“I was very down, so Mom found a therapist who I started seeing. Talking to her really helped, and the medication kept me on an even keel. Then I met Jesse, he proposed, and I felt like my life was on track, but, well, it didn’t turn out how I thought.” She laughed joylessly, her eyes faraway.
“Did he convince you to stop talking to Nuala, too?”
Charli nodded sadly. “Not just Nuala, it was my entire support network. My friends from school, Lydia and Gwyn. Jesse had a way of getting into my head. He figured out what made me tick and used it against me. It took years for me to see his manipulation for what it really was, and by that point, I’d lost so much time with the people who were truly important to me.”
The more she revealed, the more my insides hardened to stone. I knew what an abusive relationship looked like growing up in a house with my parents, but that was mostly physical violence. Yes, there was emotional manipulation going on, too, and my dad was good at getting Mam to keep his behaviour behind closed doors a secret, but he’d never tried to cut her off from her family. What Charli was describing was different, and I was filled with a kind of rage I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
“Is that what you fought over the day you finally left him?”
A shadow flickered behind her eyes like she was pushing down a bad memory, then she said, “Partly, yes.”
I nodded to myself, battling with the anger that was stewing and toxifying within me. I wanted to round up a few of my old legion friends, jump on a plane, find her ex-husband, and teach him a real lesson. Burying the urge, I sent her a look of respect.
“I’m proud of you for leaving.”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure if you should be. My leaving came more than a decade too late.”
“Don’t do that,” I said, my voice rough.
Abusive relationships took a long time to get out of, I knew that from personal experience with Mam, how long it took to convince her to finally leave my father for good. A lot of the time it was a psychological cage rather than a physical one. What Charli just revealed to me made everything about how she’d changed make so much sense. Her anxious disposition, the panic attacks, and fretfulness.
I stood there, taking her in and battling between vicious fury and aching pride that she’d found the courage to leave and get a divorce. I couldn’t imagine the mental battle she’d gone through just to get to where she was. The relief that she was close enough I could protect her was overwhelming. Wherever her path led, I made a promise to myself I wouldn’t ever abandon her like before.
I’d make sure she was safe.
A few minutes went by, but I didn’t make any move to leave. The conversation didn’t feel over yet, and I sensed Charli had more she wanted to say.