Chapter 19 Darvill and Denise #2
“Yeah, so when she said no to sex when he wanted it, and he just took it anyway, the first time she was scared and alarmed. But since it kept happening, it just became what happened, until she didn’t bother saying no, but she didn’t want it, so their sex life wasn’t about sex at all. It was repeated rape.”
Since this tale of woe just got worse and worse, until it became the very worst that could happen to a woman, I swallowed down the urge to vomit and whispered, “Oh, Gabe.”
“She was young. They got together when she was seventeen. He was just eighteen. Fucks with my head to understand a guy that young could be so good at pulling that shit.”
It fucked with my head too, and I was a woman who knew that shit could start even before that age (thanks, Christian).
Gabe kept going.
“In the end, he beat her so bad, he put her in the hospital. Next day, he was gone, and her dad was there. He told her she had two choices, leave that fuck or he was shipping her to stay with her aunt and uncle in Alaska. By that time, she was twenty-one. Her father didn’t have the right to give her that ultimatum, but he saw his daughter in the hospital, he was done with that guy’s shit and his daughter eating it.
Her dad being there for her, something broke through, and she chose leaving her boyfriend as well as going to Alaska.
She was there a year before she came back.
He was with another woman when she returned.
What she didn’t know was, she wasn’t in the clear. ”
Ugh!
“Did she go back to him?”
“No, within a few months, she was with me.” He took a deep breath and continued, “Men like that aren’t big men, Willow.
They aren’t strong men. A strong man knows his strength and he doesn’t have to prove it to anybody.
They sure as fuck don’t have to prove it by cowing a woman, beating her and raping her. ”
That was the absolute truth.
“But that guy also wasn’t a stupid man,” Gabe continued. “He took one look at me and steered clear.”
“Well, that’s good,” I muttered.
“But she was fucked up,” he said, and his tone had changed to something tight, but distant.
Like he wasn’t there with me.
Like he was somewhere else.
Somewhere I didn’t want him to be.
Somewhere he didn’t want to be either.
“I don’t know if it was the consistent rape, the beatings, the emotional manipulation, probably all of it, but it got under her skin, it sank into her bones, it infected her mind.”
I slid a hand up his chest so I could stroke the side of his neck and noted, “It was a rough go for you with her.”
“No,” he said. “For the most part, she hid it. Or tried to.” That faraway tone again when he said, “They do that.”
Oh no!
“They?” I asked unsteadily.
He cleared his throat, focused on me and didn’t address my question.
He said, “But she wasn’t right. We weren’t right. She didn’t trust me. She’d flinch away from me, and you know I wasn’t doing anything that would make her do that.”
I knew that for certain.
“I know,” I assured, giving his neck a squeeze before I went back to stroking it.
“She was uptight in bed. She couldn’t relax. Couldn’t get into what we were doing. It was like it was her duty, and that didn’t feel great.”
Yuck.
“It wouldn’t,” I agreed.
“I got it. She told me all about him. But she didn’t fight it. She didn’t fight what he did to her. What he left her with. I asked her to go to therapy. She said she would. Even lied once and told me she was going, and I found out she wasn’t. That was not a good scene.”
Yuck again.
“I bet,” I said.
“I explained we couldn’t move forward unless she got healthy.
She kept telling me she’d get on it, but she didn’t.
I told her it felt like she didn’t think I was worth it, or she didn’t think we were worth it, but worst of all of that, she didn’t think she was worth it.
She made more promises she didn’t keep. And we stayed stuck where we were.
With her away from that guy but still living that nightmare even when she was with me. ”
And for a guy like Gabe, being tarred with the brush of a man like that, unable to break through and show her what she had, show her she’d made it to the other side, it would kill.
God, all of this was totally breaking my heart.
“I’m so sorry, Gabe.”
“So I broke up with her.”
Even if it meant that if she did what she should to try to heal, he wouldn’t be mine, my heart still finished breaking with the way he said that.
“God, I’m sorry, Gabe.”
“And six months later, we got a call someone found a body by the Colorado River.”
Oh…
Fuck.
Now it was my body that was strung tight.
“No clue,” he said.
I stopped stroking his neck and latched on to it.
“Went out, knew it was her by what was left of her hair, but she’d blown her face off with a twelve-gauge shotgun.”
“Oh my God, Gabe,” I moaned, and overwhelmed, my head dropped so I shoved my face in his chest.
He cupped the back of my head.
“She was fucked up, but she hid that part of how she was,” he said. “I had no idea she was even close to that place. No fuckin’ idea.”
I pressed my face harder into his chest.
“I dream of it sometimes,” he whispered. “Finding her by the river.”
I pushed up to press my face into his neck and struggled to round him with my arms.
He turned so I had my back to the couch, we were both on our sides, and I could hold him better.
“I wonder, if I’d stayed with her—” he began.
I pulled out of his neck and gripped his head in both hands. “Stop it.”
“I gave up on her, Willow.”
“She gave up on herself, baby,” I returned.
“It’s an ugly truth, but it’s still truth.
What she went through with that guy, maybe he took too much, there wasn’t anything left for her to work on.
But what she decided to do to end the pain is not on you.
And the bottom line is, obviously, she was in pain, and it was her life, so she got to decide what to do to stop that pain. ”
I could tell he listened to me, he heard me, but he had to give it all to me, and there was more, so he gave it.
“You should have seen her parents at the funeral,” he said.
Oh God.
“They were nice to me,” he continued. “They always liked me. They had hope when we were together. But I felt their blame.”
“I’m not gonna talk shit about them, I don’t know them, and they lost their daughter,” I replied.
“But they did that before she went to Alaska. And I wasn’t there, I don’t know if they were doing what you said, or you’re simply taking it on.
But if they did it, it wasn’t right, and they probably know that deep down. But it wasn’t right, Gabe.”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
“Yes,” I stated forcefully.
He came back to me, gave me a small smile, it chased itself away, and he said, “Day-to-day, what we had, babe, it was good. I was genuinely in love with her.”
“I can’t imagine you’d stay if you weren’t.”
“Yeah, but I came to the understanding it was all surface good. If anything needed to be deep, intimate, that was a no-go zone. It wasn’t that the sex was shit, but it was shit, and I exhausted all the tools I had to get her there with me.”
Of course Gabe was that guy who would try to work with a woman he cared about to get them where they needed to be with intimacy instead of just chalking her up to “shit in bed” and dumping her.
“That’s an important part of a relationship, baby,” I reminded him.
“I know, but it wasn’t just that.”
“I know, you said all it was. And you’re a deep guy, Gabe. You’re intense. Observant. Self-reflective. Ambitious. It isn’t asking much to expect the same from your partner. Maybe not all of that, all you are, but…something.”
“That’s what I thought, until I saw her by the river.”
I pushed my face into his neck again.
His first love.
He found his first love’s dead body by a river.
He ran his fingers through my hair.
“Part of how Ariana could get away with all she pulled was that I was determined to put more effort into following through with a woman I thought was worth it.”
I groaned, because it was the worst already, and it still managed to get more depressing.
“It took me too long to realize I was looking at her like she was a project I could fix, and not seeing she was a pretty girl who grew up to be a pretty woman who’d been given everything she wanted since her first breath, mostly because she was pretty and for no other reason.
And that meant she didn’t have to work for dick, and worse, she thought the world revolved around her. ”
Oh boy.
I pulled my face out of his neck.
“I’m not a project either, Gabe,” I said carefully, but firmly.
“Yeah, cupcake, I can recognize the way that is now and make sure I don’t get caught in that trap.
I don’t want a project. I don’t need to swing my dick by fuckin’ the pretty girl.
I need a good, solid woman who works hard, loves hard and gives as good as she gets.
” He pushed my hair over my shoulder and grinned.
“Doesn’t hurt she’s fuckin’ gorgeous, though. ”
There it was again.
“I’m not gorgeous,” I whispered.
“Baby, don’t fish,” he replied.
I was confused. “Fish for what?”
“Compliments.”
He thought…?
I pushed up a little. “I’m not fishing for compliments.”
“You can’t not know you’re gorgeous.”
“Uh, I can,” I retorted. I lifted a finger when he opened his mouth to say something. “And I’m not saying I’m unattractive. I’m just saying I’m not gorgeous.”
He stared at me.
Then he said, “Whatever.”
I studied him and…
Um…
Good Lord, he thought I was gorgeous.
That didn’t cause a heart squeeze.
It caused a spasm.
“You eat dinner?” he asked.
“Are we done talking about this?” I asked back.
“Yeah.”
“Gabe, the way you—”
He rose up, twisted, and came back down with him mostly on top.