Chapter 26 Confession Is Good for the Soul
CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL
ELYXANDRE
Frozen. She was deathly afraid to move her body. If she had heard anyone else describing this experience to someone, she would have been amused. How do you panic after being loved within an inch of your life by possibly one of the best men on the planet?
And yet, here she was, panicking.
As if he knew, even in his sleep, his arm around her waist tugged her closer to him.
“Stop it,” he mumbled. “You’re overthinking.”
Okay. So he wasn’t asleep.
“Was I talking in my sleep?”
“No, but your body went so rigid, you could have communicated a dissertation entitled ‘How to Sex and Dash After a Disaster.’”
She barked out a laugh, and with that expulsion, she felt some of the tension leave her body. “Sex and Dash? What the hell is that?”
“You know. When you sleep with someone, then as soon as you’ve popped, you throw your clothes back on and run like your ass is on fire.”
She turned over in his arms to face him. “Well, given my history, no, I don’t know. How are you familiar with it?”
He snuggled further into her, his body touching every square inch it could reach. “I watched my frat brothers get honorary degrees in it. Obviously, with only two partners, I never slept around like some of my friends did.
“This one buddy, he came to college a virgin. Nothing wrong with that, but he met a girl before classes even started and slept with her the first night he met her.” He laughed.
“She had all the red flags of batshit crazy, but because he was so sex-blind, he didn’t see it.
I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t hear me.
After months of dating, one night out of the blue, he came tearing into our dorm like he was being chased by the devil himself.
When he finally calmed down, he told me what happened.
They were in the middle of having sex, and he had this epiphany that if he didn’t get out of there immediately, she would suck out his soul, and he would never escape.
So, he stopped right in the middle of what he was doing, got out of bed, got dressed, and walked away. ”
She raised a hand to caress his cheek. Their faces were so close, she could feel the faintest movement of air from his exhales against her skin.
This, right here—side by side, facing each other this close, under the sheets of a bed they’d set on fire several times during the night—was one of the most intimate moments of her life.
Now that she had taken the step of engaging in this relationship with Lucas, she felt like she needed to open up to him more. Let him see why she’d been hesitant. It was a risk, but one worth taking.
“There was no thought of leaving, I promise.” Here went nothing.
Or maybe everything. “It’s no secret that I have issues with being in a relationship with someone I’m working with.
Knox and I talked about it when we were both offered jobs together at the police department.
I should have known it was going to be as big of an issue as I feared by how nonchalant he was about it.
We agreed that we could keep things separate and made a pact not to talk about personal things at work or discuss work at home.
Promised each other that if we didn’t agree with something the other was doing on the job, we would keep it to ourselves and let the chips fall where they may, letting our chief handle things, just like we would if we were working in separate precincts. ”
“Let me guess. He didn’t keep to those agreements.”
“At first, he did. Then he started what I guess he’d planned to do all along.
Little things at first. ‘Your uniform is making your ass really defined. I like it, but maybe we should stop going into the bakery before work every day. Don’t want the guys at work staring at it and fantasizing about tapping it.
’ Then he added comments at work in front of the other officers.
‘You do everything so quickly compared to me. Bet if I drank as much caffeine as you do, I’d probably be just as fast, but I take a lot of pride in my error-free work.
’ Stuff like that. It was so subtle, I didn’t even realize what he was doing.
“Over time, he started to get more distant. I’d come home from shifts, but he’d claim that he had to stay longer because the chief had him working on special projects.
There were so many extra things the chief asked him for, and I remember asking the man if he had anything special he needed help with.
The chief always looked at me funny when I did that.
He probably thought I was hinting at a blow job under the desk or something.
Hell, by that time, Knox was probably telling him I was looking for a way to move up the ladder.
I didn’t realize the ‘special projects’ he was ‘doing’ was every female we worked with at the courthouse and then some. ”
“So the work-relationship issue isn’t only about the two of you—it’s that he cheated on the job.”
“I should have known better. Eventually, I began to notice that when I interacted with people at work, some of them had this look on their face, like they were sorry for me. Sometimes, when I would come into a room where others were talking, they’d stop as soon as they saw me, either waiting for me to leave so they could start up again, or they’d suddenly leave to go do something else.
Other times, there’d be a quick pause in the conversation, and it was clear they’d shifted topic.
They all knew what he was doing, but I hadn’t a clue. ”
“Someone should have been a better person and told you what was going on.”
“A lot of people genuinely feel it isn’t their place.
Others just enjoy watching the disaster as it approaches, then relish the fallout.
People who might have stepped up probably didn’t because of who Knox was.
He always seemed to have the chief’s ear, and if you didn’t want the shit assignments or be on the wrong side of either one of their tempers, you kept your nose out of it. ”
“So let me ask you this. What would you have done if the situation were reversed?”
She folded her hands into a prayer position and pushed them between her cheek and the pillow.
“I’d like to think I would have said something.
But it’s an unfair question, Lucas. None of us really knows what we’d do until we’re in the situation ourselves.
I get it. It’s a hard spot to be in, so I’m not blaming anyone but myself for not seeing the signs. ”
“So when did you realize?”
“About the affairs? That one was easy. I didn’t have many girlfriends, but there was one officer’s wife who I chatted with when we got together for police stuff.
I knew she went to this one bar on Ladies’ Night.
She loved karaoke, and it was a big draw in our local police hangout.
I was bored one night and thought I’d go find her. ”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. She was there. I caught her and Knox fucking in the bathroom. I was so stunned, I just stood there. When they finally noticed me, they didn’t even stop.
They just kept going. Finally, I found my feet and went home.
When the bastard got home, he had the nerve to tell me it was my fault, actually.
Since I wasn’t any good at giving head, and I didn’t seem to like sex because I was such a miserable lay, he was actually doing me a favor by going elsewhere for it. ”
“That’s when you went to get tested.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t leave him? I’m not judging!” he added hastily. “I am surprised though.”
“We’d been married about seven years by that time.
He’d been working on me for so long that I actually wondered if maybe he wasn’t right in his assessment.
I didn’t have any girlfriends to talk to about it.
The one I did have, he was fucking, so I couldn’t exactly go to her for support.
Tripoli and everyone else I knew from school were scattered around the world doing their thing, and he’d effectively cut me off from them, claiming people didn’t stay in touch with high school friends.
Besides, I wasn’t doing anything nearly as exciting as they were, so why would they want to talk to me?
I just cut him off and went about my life.
We lived in the same house, we slept in the same bed, we worked at the same place, but the marriage was over. ”
“He never threatened you or hurt you, did he?”
This was where the feelings of failure began.
“I married a man just like my dad. It didn’t start that way.
In fact, at the beginning, like I said, everything he did was so subtle that even when I finally realized what he was doing, if I’d told people about it, there would have been easy ways to explain it away, or it was wrapped up in a passive-aggressive compliment.
It wasn’t until after I cut him off that things started to escalate. He was careful. Nothing to the face.
“By then, leaving would have been walking into the unknown at a stage where I was petrified. Part of me thought that even though he was abusive, it was what I knew, and it was better than the unknown. I was too afraid to try and survive on my own, and obviously, I was never sure that he wouldn’t come after me. ”
“You might have to arrest me if I ever come into contact with that asshole. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. You’re doing great now,” he told her with a sincere smile.
“Maybe. But I learned the hard way how to take care of myself.”
“Why did you finally decide to leave?”
“Ironically, it wasn’t the abuse. The last straw was actually work-related. I didn’t realize it then, but he’d been sabotaging me at work for years. Again, he started small, but it infiltrated the workplace and became so toxic, I wasn’t really left with much choice but to leave.