Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lyndsey
I haven’t said a word since we left my apartment.
I don’t know what to say. There is nothing that can fix it.
I’m scared. I don’t like admitting that but I am.
When it was just texts, I could compartmentalise that, but they came into my home.
My safe place. It wasn’t the best apartment in the world, it wasn’t exactly safe even if I tried to convince Aiden it was.
I just wanted a minute alone from him, I have spent every day surrounded by his presence since we flew to Texas but I won’t be getting that space any time soon.
I will be living in his house. It’s a big one at least. If I tried hard enough, I could probably live under his roof and avoid him, but after that scare I don’t think I want to.
I like the way it feels in his arms. I like how safe I feel when he is next to me.
He might only be my husband on paper but it is nice to feel like I have a family on my side.
I can tell that the silence is getting to him, he wants to ask questions, but either he doesn’t know what to ask or he is scared of the answer.
So we drive in silence until we pull up at his house.
The large modern house is more like what I expect from an athlete.
Of course, this isn’t the first time I have come to his place, but for the foreseeable future it is my house too.
It makes me look at it with a different lens.
The large entryway opens into an open-plan room. The sofas face one direction with the kitchen on the other side. It feels warm even with all the large windows looking out over his back garden. Though it is more like a field than a garden: a pool, trees and even a greenhouse dots the scenery.
“Cassie will be here soon.” Aiden interrupts my perusal of his, our place.
I don’t answer him though. I need him to take the step, to ask what he wants to know because I don’t want to pour myself out for him if he isn’t ready to hear it.
“Darlin’, I need to know,” he says after a moment of silence, then puts his arm over my shoulder and guides me over to his plush sofa.
“Did you know I’ve never seriously dated a man?” I tell him. My voice is quiet but I know he hears me because his eyebrows furrow.
“What?” He scoots closer to me so my legs are pressed against his. It isn’t close enough, so I drop my head to his shoulder. It works for two things. One, I’m closer to him; but two, it means I don’t need to look in his eyes.
“I have slept with men but I’ve never dated one. It felt wrong.” I can hear my parents’ voices in my head telling me that I’m a heathen. That I’m a disgrace, that being gay is a choice.
“Wrong?” He is confused. I don’t blame him but when you have been told a million times that being bisexual isn’t real, it gets to you.
“Like my parents were right.” I take a deep breath and then I pour it all out. I tell him what happened when my parents found out I kissed a girl. The memory is still raw, as though it was only yesterday.
“Lyndsey Stone, you make me sick!” My father is red in the face. With every word spit flies out of his mouth, but I don’t flinch as it hits my face. It will just make him angrier.
“You said God doesn’t make mistakes!” I throw back. I should keep my cool but I can feel my family’s judgement seeping into me. My mom stands at my dad’s side, looking just as disappointed.
“Don’t you dare use God against me, girl! You have no right. You have been touched by the devil,” he seethes. My heart hammers in my chest. He might be right. I think Ellie is beautiful but I shouldn’t have kissed her. It’s wrong. But it felt so right. It made me so happy.
“Dad. Mom?” I look between them, but instead of coming to my rescue, my mom take a step back, and my dad just laughs in my face as tears start to stream down my cheeks.
“Don’t look at her, she is with me. You will not live under my roof if you’re out there acting like a harlot, I’ll find you a good man to marry.
” He nods. As though what he said makes sense.
He wants me to marry? He can’t do that, it would be wrong.
He can’t just pass me over to somebody I don’t love. That’s not what God would want.
“I’m seventeen! I’m too young to get married,” I gasp out, but he clenches his jaw before yelling even louder than before.
“No, you will do what I say!” He takes a second to breathe before he steps closer to me, lowering his voice to a deadly timbre. “You will never speak of this gay nonsense ever again, do you hear me?”
“Why don’t you love me?” I sob openly now. God taught us to love. That a parent’s love is unconditional. Why won’t they love me despite what they see as my flaws? I know they love Peter more than me but I have tried to please them.
“Because you are a sinner, Lyndsey. Be a good girl and I might be able to look at you again.” He turns away then, storming out of the house, but before he can slam the door behind him, I call after him.
“Please, Dad. I didn’t choose this.” I’m begging but it just causes him to sneer.
“Either you marry who I find or you get out of my house.” With that the door slams behind him. The door officially closes on my childhood.
“That night I left, I haven’t been back since. I try calling every now and then but… nothing,” I tell Aiden, still not looking up at him. As I speak I feel the tension in his shoulders but once I started talking I couldn’t stop.
“They just let you go?” he asks, still trying to wrap his head around their cruelty.
“Yeah. And now whoever this is, they’re saying that they will tell the world that they have proof that I’m gay.
That I don’t date men, so I must be using you for your money.
” I hate that they might be believable. To someone looking in, they might think that is the truth.
All of my public relationships have been with women and, suddenly, I have a rich, famous hockey player husband. It does look suspicious.
“Fuck, darlin’.” He tightens his arms around my shoulders and it is only then I realise how much I’m shaking.
“I decided that if they thought I was evil, I’d show them evil.
I dyed my hair fun colours, I’d get whatever piercings I wanted and wear whatever made me feel good.
I drank and partied and dated around, trying to find some stability.
Don’t get me wrong, I like who it made me; I like this version of myself.
But it didn’t fix what was wrong deep down.
The horrible, festering feeling of rejection.
” I sigh, it still hurts to talk about this part of my life.
“Eventually I realised that I wasn’t happy because I was still trying to prove something to them.
I tried to give myself the stability I obviously craved.
I got a job, I started dating a girl called Mel, but she wanted to settle down and I wasn’t there yet.
She showed me that I didn’t need to be the opposite of my parents to be happy, I just needed to be me.
Still, that internalised homophobia that I learned growing up was hard to shake.
Whenever I tried to date a man, I would hear my parents in my head telling me that they knew being gay was a phase that I would grow out of. ”
Silence settles between us, a black cloud, before he finally speaks. “They made you think you were some terrible person because you like women? They don’t deserve to call themselves parents.” I can hear the genuine offence through his deep voice.
“The blackmailers are wrong though. You know that, right? I don’t want your money, Aiden.
I swear. Please don’t look at me like they did.
” I feel like all I have done for days is cry, but there is no stopping it when the tears come again.
Aiden has always looked at me with reverence and if he thinks less of me it would crush me.
“Hey.” He tuts, pulling my head out of his shoulder so I can look into his stormy blue eyes.
There isn’t an ounce of hatred or disappointment there.
He looks at me like I’m precious. “I know you. I know the truth. Nothing could make me hate you.” He stares into my eyes, determined to make me see the truth there.
And I do. I believe that he cares about me.
That he is willing to accept me even with all of my pitfalls.
“The public don’t know me though, Aid, they will believe that I’m some gold digger.
They were rude enough when they found out you married an ‘average woman’, what will happen when they find out I’m queer?
” It’s a valid fear. If the blackmailers share proof that I have dated women, then the world is going to paint me with one brush: that I’m a liar, and it won’t just be me that suffers.
Every bi woman dating a man will suffer because people are always looking for a reason to invalidate them.
“I’ll set them straight. You are my wife.
That is the truth. You have dated women and now you are married to me, they don’t cancel each other out, and if anyone thinks it does, well, that’s their problem.
” I fall in love with him right there. With his arms around me and his words painting an armour around my skin.
He must see the adoration in my eyes because before I can thank him he pulls me closer to him with a hand wrapped around the back of my neck.
He kisses me hard. His lips are soft but determined against mine. He is kissing me with everything he has. As though if he kisses me hard enough he can wipe away all of the hatred I have had in my life. I’m willing to let him try. He is my lifeline and I cling to his shirt.
A knocking on the front door pulls us apart.
Cassie is here and now I’ll have to do this all over again.
I’m exhausted at the thought. I don’t know who is harassing me but I won’t let them win.
I have let enough people make me feel like I’m lesser than them and I don’t want to feel that any more.
I can be both. I’m a bisexual woman and I’m married to a man.
That doesn’t make me any less queer than I was when I was dating Kayla or Mel.
Aiden might want to divorce me one day soon but he has changed my life forever.
He has shown me that I don’t need to be scared to show who I am.
All of it. The things that I hide behind masks.
With his support I have finally found that I’m not that young girl begging for love.
I’m a grown woman who won’t be beaten by small-minded assholes any more.
I’ve suffered enough. I won’t let them defeat me.