Love Me Gently (Deer Creek #1)

Twenty-One

Trina

“Trina!”

There was a thundering. A shout. I jolted up in the bed in the small dark room and panic clawed its way up my throat.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no. He was not supposed to see me like this. Not supposed to?—

The thundering stopped and the light switched on, blinding me so badly I shirked back from him, closer to the white wicker headboard, and squeezed my eyes closed.

This was bad. So very, very bad.

He wasn’t supposed to know I did this. Wasn’t supposed to know I came here…

How pissed was he going to be?

“I thought you left,”

he finally said. And there wasn’t anger in his tone, something that sounded more like relief.

I forced my eyes to peel open and stared directly at him.

Cole had both hands braced against the sides of the doorframe, confusion making his brows rise and the what the hell is going on expression on his face was clear.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I clambered out of June’s bed, and stood, patting down the rumpled covers as I rushed to get away. “I’ll just… “I’ll…”

I’d go back to my hole. Go back to ignoring him. Go back to living in fear and waiting. There were a million things I could just go do so easily, but as I stood in that tiny little beautiful room, with the fluffy pink bed coverings on the beds and the ladybug nightlight and books on the shelf, all I wanted to do was collapse and cry.

Cole had this. A beautiful life with everything he’d always wanted. The career he dreamed of. Girls. I’d thought it so bizarre the day he told me he wanted daughters and not sons. How something about being a girl dad made him excited.

I sold my soul, my morals, and my body until I was a shell of a human being, nothing like the girl he remembered, and Cole had everything he always wanted.

In a way, I’d given him that.

“What are you doing in here, honey?”

“Don’t,”

I rasped. “Don’t call me that. Or Trina. I hate them.”

I shook my head and edged away from him. Desperate to flee and hide, but he was standing in the doorway now and I was stuck with no escape.

“Why are you in June and Ella’s room?”

I shrugged. No answer I could give could make sense other than it felt safe. Clean. I never should have put my dirtied body in it.

The bright-colored, daisy-shaped rug beneath my feet blurred. “I’ll go back to my room.”

There was a beat… then… “We should talk about this.”

“It won’t happen again.”

He was never supposed to know I did this in the first place. Wandered through his home, soaking up everything I could see, hints of treasures of pure beauty.

“I’m not mad you’re in here. I’m curious as to why.”

Because it was pretty and clean and beautiful and had pops of vibrant color that made me, in glimpses, remember the little girl I used to be.

I’d never intended Cole to find out I did this. I’d never fallen asleep before. This was a mistake I’d ensure I never made again.

I shrugged and kept my blurred vision on the adorable little rug. It was so soft and thick my toes wanted to curl into it. “I’d like to go back to my room now.”

Another heavy, weighted silence hit and then there was the ruffle of something. I glanced up, hoping he’d backed away, but that wasn’t what was happening at all.

Cole was moving closer, slowly, and I had nowhere to go to get away from him. He stopped in front of me, chin dipped down.

It was the care in his eyes, the cautious way he held himself back even while being so close that had a sob lodge itself in my throat. He was scared, and I’d done that to him.

“You can talk to me. You can tell me…”

I shook my head. Absolutely not.

“You need to talk about it, Trina. You need to heal.”

There was nothing to heal. I was broken beyond repair and the sooner he learned that the better off we’d both be. Cole had always been a protector, a fixer. But he couldn’t fix me.

He couldn’t back then, and he definitely couldn’t now.

“If not me, then you need to call one of the therapists. Or someone else. Valerie or someone. This isn’t healthy. You’re not healthy.”

I scoffed and found the strength to look him directly in his eyes. “I know that.”

He blinked. Surprised I was self-aware? Please.

I was well aware of my faults and my mistakes. They were blinking neon lights in my brain every time I tried to shut it off and since being here, in his home and in this town, I could no longer find my weapons for dimming them.

And because of that, because I couldn’t find my reasons or ways to hide them, anger rose. Fast, furious, so quickly and so powerfully my body trembled, and my fingertips burned as my hands curled into fists.

“He wasn’t the first you know.”

Cole jolted, head snapping back as I spoke. For once, he needed to know. “What do you?—”

“Jonathan. He wasn’t the first to beat me. He wasn’t the first to force me to do other things. He wasn’t the first to hurt me, Cole. There were many before him. And I did it all. Willingly. All to get what I wanted. All to get my dream. I had choices in front of me and I made every single one of them knowing exactly what I was doing. Don’t stand there and feel sorry for me. Just stop it. I’m not a wounded victim who needs to heal. The person you knew died the moment I left town, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to help bring me back. So just…stop!”

Rage made my voice shake. Shame made my tears fall. I skirted around him and ran down the hall, down the stairs, slammed the door, and dove into the bed.

Covers yanked up over me, I shoved my face into my pillow.

He was so wrong.

No one, not a single person, could help me… especially when I’d never been able to help myself.

I was still crying when the stairs creaked. Stupid of me. Stupid of me to think he’d leave it alone. Leave me alone.

There was a quiet knock and then the squeak of the door.

“You don’t have to look at me. And I’m sorry, for tearing you away from your life, for trying to help. It’s just…you might think you died that day, but I think you’re still there. You’re just too afraid to come back out.”

A quiet thud landed on my nightstand, and my breath hitched.

“If you want…”

He cleared his throat and there was pain ripping through him. I’d done that. Brought him more pain. God…what a loser I was. “If you want to go back to your husband, I can’t force you to stay here. I know I can’t, even as much as I want to protect you from him and more pain. But if that’s what you want…I’ll call Kip. We’ll figure something out.”

My tears froze and my blood turned to ice. Send me back? To Jonathan? Did I…did I want that?

“If you want to stay, if you want to be safe, I can make that happen. Other people can, too. You still got friends in this town, both Heather and Ashley are here. I bought you a phone today. Call someone, if you want, but maybe try considering something else.”

He paused, and I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, I couldn’t resist temptation, and I pushed the covers off my face. I rolled to my back and peeked up at him.

My room was dark, and the lights from the playroom shadowed his figure, but there was no hiding the defeat in his curled shoulders and the way his head hung.

I couldn’t quite tell if he was looking at me, but I wasn’t sure that mattered. Cole saw something in me, he always had.

“Maybe you can’t go back and correct your mistakes or get over the things that happened. But if you want to stay, only you get to decide what kind of person you want to be moving forward. There are lots of people around who would help you figure out who that new person is. Including me.”

“The day I got rid of our baby…”

I started and pushed through the wretched pain and memories in my throat and forced the words out. He had to know who I was now. The monster I’d become.

“I don’t hate you for that anymore. I don’t.”

That didn’t matter. It also wasn’t my point.

“If I could go back and do it all over again, knowing what I know now…I’d kill myself right along with it.”

His entire body flinched and swung back, but he couldn’t be surprised by that. “Thanks for the phone. I want to sleep now.”

I rolled to my side, closed my eyes, and pretended he didn’t stand there silently watching me for a long time. Pretended I didn’t give him a glimmer into the kind of person I truly was.

“You give me a chance, you have any inkling of a desire to be happy, I’ll get you to a place where you want to live again. I swear it.”

The door closed. The stairs creaked.

I doubted with every fiber in my being that would ever be possible again. But as I fell asleep, there was a glimmer.

A tiny shimmer of a thought floated by on a breeze that asked, but what if you did?