Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Z oey sat back in the chair behind her desk and pierced Mak with a searching stare. “Sounds like your ex is quite a character. How does he do, interacting with Emi? He’s scheduled to get her Wednesday evenings, and every other weekend, right?” she asked with a glance at her notes.
“When he doesn’t cancel,” Mak said. “He’s been cancelling a lot. As to Emi…”
Mak repeated some of the things Brad had said to Emi during his previous visits when things had gotten tense between the two of them.
“So he’s manipulative and willing to use his child to get his way. Has he always been that way?”
Mak plucked at the pillow she held as a shield and nodded again. “No, Brad was charming at first. He made me laugh, left sweet notes and gifts, flowers. He couldn’t know enough about me. We’d talk for hours and hours about our future and dreams. Then we got married, and…after a while, it was like I’d married a different man entirely. He’d lie and then deny lying. Sometimes about stupid things that he didn’t need to lie about at all. Or he’d do things he knew would upset me, and then blow up at me for questioning him. It felt like Jekyll-and-Hyde-type stuff. Then he’d go back to being Mr. Charming again and act like he did when we were dating.”
Emi was in her appointment with Dr. Rachel while Mak had hers with Zoey. It was a relief to know Emi was cared for and allowed Mak to relax a bit and open up since she didn’t have to worry.
“I can’t diagnose someone who isn’t in my office,” Zoey said, “but I think it’s safe to say your ex is a textbook narcissist. You’ve described love bombing, gaslighting, future faking, devaluation followed by reward, and ultimately discard. But that man at the end? Rest assured that was him all along.”
Mak nodded, knowing in her heart that Zoey was right. “I made so many excuses for him. To myself and other people.”
“Unfortunately narcissists train their victims to do just that. And when you see the truth and you can’t unsee it or go back to accepting breadcrumbs and making excuses for them, that’s when the discard happens. You’re no longer useful to them. And by then they’ve usually already lined up their next supply.”
“Oh, he had,” Mak mused softly. “I think she was barely twenty-one. And there at the end, he didn’t even try to gaslight me anymore. He did things—awful things—and laughed when I got upset. Brad could always be a jerk, but he’d never turned the worst of his behavior on me until then. He had these tells, though…”
“What kind of tells?” Zoey tilted her head.
“He’d make this sound when he talked to people. People he pretended to like but thought beneath him. Mmm-mmm-mm, ” she said, imitating him. “At first, I thought it was him showing sympathy, but then once we were away from the person, he’d rip into them and make fun of them for how stupid he thought they were. Family or friends, it didn’t matter. I started seeing the pattern, and sure enough, every time he made that sound, I’d get an earful later of why he was better than them. And if they were better off financially? He talked about how he should have whatever they had because he deserved it more than they did.”
“Entitlement is probably the number one narcissistic trait. Narcissists believe they are above everything, including the laws. They think the rules don’t apply to them.”
Mak pressed her palms to her eyes and rubbed, careful to try to avoid smearing the light eyeshadow and mascara all over her face but needing to release the tension making her face feel pinched. “I think the thing I struggle with the most is the anger I feel for not seeing it earlier, for getting fooled by it in the first place, and for putting up with it for so long. For not getting out sooner.”
“Mak, the upset and anger are very real and it’s something you have to address, but you need to be kind to yourself. You didn’t know he was a narcissist, so when he began to show himself, you tried to survive a marriage that was riddled with minefields. And trust me, narcissists are master manipulators.”
Makayla couldn’t look into Zoey’s kind gaze right now. She felt…bombarded by all the things. The anger and rage, the embarrassment and pain, the hurt and betrayal.
They were a shotgun blast of needle pricks that left her bleeding and hurting from the many cuts. “He would tear me down so badly. Mock and belittle me. Make me feel so small and pathetic and…unworthy.”
“He did that to feel better about himself. It had nothing to do with you.”
“I’m starting to see that now but then? Nothing I did was ever right or good enough, and I tried so hard to please him. I felt like such a failure because of the things he said to me, about me to friends and his family. He criticized everything. The house, my body, my clothes. The way I walked, talked, laughed. My shoes . Nothing was ever right. But I stayed.” She made a derisive sound. “ Why did I stay?”
“From what you’ve told me, you were trapped. Can you not see that? He didn’t want you to work, correct?”
Mak nodded. “He said it would make him look bad, like he couldn’t take care of us and support us.”
“Makayla, that was his way of isolating you and keeping you financially dependent on him.”
“But I wanted to be home with Emi,” she confessed. “I agreed to it. At the time I thought it was…sweet. That he was being supportive of me being home for our daughter.”
Zoey’s expression didn’t change, and Mak wanted to kick herself for defending Brad once again. Maybe she had wanted to be at home, but even then, she’d felt controlled by him because he’d made it clear that only he got to decide what they’d spend money on. She hadn’t had a say whatsoever. He’d made her feel as though she was being disrespectful and foolish when she argued counter to whatever he wanted. And since she didn’t earn money, he was in charge.
“One of the hardest things to understand about people are their motives. In our goodness, we want to take people at face value. And there are men who do and say the things we love to hear because they genuinely care for us and want to support us and our endeavors. They wouldn’t dream of using our desire to be a stay-at-home mother against us as a way of controlling us.
“Then there are narcissists, who say all the right things, but they do it so that you trust them, confide in them, and then they use everything you’ve told them to control you.”
Mak knew Zoey was right. It was such a twisted, awful concept to wrap her head around, though. To think someone would be so manipulative and deceptive. “Did he ever love me? Did he ever plan to spend his life with me, or was I just someone to fill a void?”
Zoey inhaled and sighed, her gaze soft and kind but brutally truthful. “Do you think he loved you?”
Her heart sank, and she stared down at her chipped nail polish. “He liked to introduce me as his first wife. He thought it was funny.” And he hadn’t cared that it hurt her or that she’d asked him repeatedly to stop. How could she have been so foolish for so long?
“Mak, narcissists train you to put them first. They want their needs met, want all our attention and adoration, and when you see beneath their mask and can no longer give that to them, that’s the beginning of the end.”
Realization settled in, hard and bitter and soul-stabbingly deep, shredding her very core. Her life with Brad had all been a lie. Right from the start. It was crystal clear now. And so very hard to accept because of the love she’d felt for a man who had only used her until he’d used her up.
The looks she hadn’t been able to decipher in the beginning, the expressions that weren’t kind at all but…assessing and measuring. Like he was deciding how far he could push. How much he could say and do and get away with.
How much she’d tolerate.
And every time it happened, he built the pain threshold a bit higher. Moved the bar and tested her again. “I was so in love.”
“Because he trained you to focus on the good in him,” Zoey said. “After treating you badly, he’d treat you well. Just enough that you’d forgive him. And then he’d do it again?”
She stared at her hands and grimaced as she nodded. “He wasn’t all bad, though. That’s what’s so hard about all of this. Why it’s so hard to wrap my head around the man I thought he was and the one he…is.”
“Mak, you’ll make yourself crazy trying to understand it. You can’t, because mentally healthy people don’t think the way a narcissist thinks.”
Mak hugged the pillow more tightly and shifted on the loveseat. “I feel so stupid.”
The last part emerged low and raw, barely a whisper. But it was true. And even though she knew she wasn’t the one who should feel bad or angry or stupid, she did.
Had she seen it, acknowledged the red flags she’d excused for whatever reason, she could’ve saved herself so much pain. So much hurt and devastation.
“You have to forgive yourself. You married young. And you didn’t know what you didn’t know. And unless you’ve been exposed to a narcissist before? People have no idea how manipulative they can be.”
Mak lifted her head and forced herself to look at Zoey. “So after all of that—how do I ever trust anyone again? Trust a man again?”
Zoey’s expression softened. “Trust takes time. But now that you look back and see the red flags and have experienced everything that you have? You’ll spot them if they’re there.”
Mak’s thoughts shifted to other things, other moments with her ex, and she winced.
“What?” Zoey asked.
Mak took a shuddered breath. “Nothing. I’m just remembering. Once…we were on a trip. A vacation. There was a free class in the evenings at a shop near our hotel. It only lasted an hour or so, and I signed up because— Brad had a nightly routine. He controlled the television even though he was always on his phone or computer, and—I was expected to just sit there. The class was only an hour or so,” she repeated, “and the weather was going to be rainy and wet anyway, so I thought, why not go? It was free.”
“What happened?”
The fear she’d felt that night surged through her like a flash flood. “He insisted on driving me. Then he complained about me ruining our evening together. I told him I would’ve driven myself, and he got upset because I wasn’t appreciative. Then…we get there, and he drives right past the building. He won’t turn around, he won’t speak. Every time I ask what he’s doing, he drives faster and faster. The roads were curvy with steep embankments, unfamiliar, and he’s going way too fast. In total silence. He just drives and drives, and then—he suddenly stops in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, in the rain.” Her breath hitched in her throat as it all came back to her in vivid detail. “He turned his head and stared at me with this look, and— I think my heart stopped for a second. I was so scared. I didn’t know if he planned to leave me there or…what. But his expression…”
“He did everything you just said to intimidate you and make you afraid of him, Makayla. To put you in your place, to show he held the power. I’m guessing that’s not the only time something like that happened over the years, was it?”
Mak took another shaky breath, still caught in that moment, in the car and the fear. “No.” There had been other times. Other incidents.
“Did he physically hurt you? That night or any other?” Zoey pressed.
Mak opened her mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. Images flashed through her head but she couldn’t give them voice. “He never hit me. He threatened to numerous times, and he punched walls or threw things, broke things, but…he didn’t hit me.”
“There are a lot of ways to abuse someone without physically hitting them, Mak. He abused you with that drive you took. He scared you. Cowed you. That’s emotional abuse and manipulation. Same thing with throwing things. That’s about fear and intimidation…. How are your finances?”
Mak blinked at the sudden change in subject. Was Zoey afraid she wouldn’t get paid? “Um, well, not great. I’m still not sure how he got away with it, but he drained our savings and retirement accounts. He said that it was his money because he’d earned it, that I hadn’t worked because I was lazy and was freeloading off him. I’m supposed to receive spousal support, but Brad doesn’t pay it. He only pays the child support for Emi, and he threatens to take her away from me whenever I bring up spousal.”
“He’s using fear to manipulate you again.”
He was. But the threat of losing her daughter? She was afraid to push too hard. Afraid of what might happen.
“What about in the bedroom? Were you compatible?”
Mak blinked at the questions and squirmed on the loveseat. But she’d told herself she would reveal every painful molecule of her past if it meant rebuilding herself and healing from all things Brad. “At first.”
“And then?”
Her stomach knotted up and her breathing turned shallow. Could she actually say it? Admit it out loud?
Long seconds passed, but Zoey waited Mak out, like she already knew the answer to her question.
Maybe she did.
After several more heartbreaking moments, Mak whispered, “He didn’t always take no as no. He said…husbands have rights.”
“He sexually assaulted you.”
It wasn’t a question. But Mak couldn’t bring herself to nod. It had taken years for her to come to terms with what he did, to acknowledge to herself that it was what it was, much less tell someone.
“Makayla, sexual coercion isn’t consent. Guilting someone to have sex isn’t consent. Neither is manipulating them or forcing them into it citing marital duty or rights. Force in any way is rape.”
“I won’t press charges. I can’t.” Her throat hurt from strain as she hugged herself and the pillow tight. “He’d just deny it like he did then. And every woman in the world knows how impossible it is to prove rape in court.”
“No means no, Mak. But I’m glad you’re willing to call it what it was. You have nothing to feel ashamed of or embarrassed about. He is to blame. Not you.”
Tears flooded her eyes faster than she could stop them, and a sob emerged before she clamped her lips shut. Mak grabbed tissues from a nearby box and dabbed at her eyes, struggling to get a grip on her emotions.
Zoey didn’t question her words or whether or not she might have made Brad’s actions into more than what they were. Zoey didn’t downplay what had happened to her, and for that, Mak would be forever grateful. To know she was believed. It meant everything, to know all those times when Brad had forced her weren’t right. Weren’t acceptable.
Once she finally got her emotions under control, she twisted her fingers around the tissues and fought back the urge to scream. To rage at the unjustness of Brad walking around telling people she was crazy and greedy and not a good wife.
Yeah, he cheated, but he’d tried to make things right. He didn’t want a divorce. She was the one who insisted on ending things and had walked away from him after he’d been so tolerant of all her shortcomings.
And there was that part of her that feared moving forward because she’d once trusted a man, married him, loved him—and he’d very nearly destroyed her.
What if it happened again?
Emi was the only good thing that had come out of it and the reason the darkness of that time hadn’t consumed her. But there were a lot of bits and baggage to heal, and sometimes she wondered if they ever would.
If it ever could.
Not because she was bitter or vengeful and holding onto the past but because his treatment had broken something deep inside of her.
“Mak? What happened to you is unfair and unjust, and sometimes the hardest thing to do is accept that someone we love would betray our trust that way. Betray us that way. But right now? Choose.”
Mak blinked and frowned at the woman across from her. “I’m sorry?”
“You have to choose. You can accept what happened and move forward. Or you can let what he did and all the anger and rage consume you until he wins every moment of every day. You shouldn’t have had to deal with any of that. But it happened. And now you have to decide if you want your life back.”
She did. She wanted that as much as she needed her next breath.
“Do you want to build a life for yourself and Emi without the verbal, emotional, financial, and sexual abuse?”
“You know I do,” Mak whispered, her voice cracking and breaking over the words as tears filled her throat once more.
“Then you have to choose, and you stick to that decision and protect it with every thought from here on out. Your mind and heart, your very soul, have been battered for years . Your body too. They’re scared, and we hold that fear within us as trauma. But you are not that person anymore. Look at how far you’ve come since you separated from your ex and then followed through with filing for divorce. Those choices were major life changes, but you did it because you knew they were the right ones for you. Now, you have to take the next step forward.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“I know it’s not,” Zoey said with an empathetic shake of her head. “But look at how far you’ve come. You can do this. It’s about taking one hard, slow step at a time.”
She leaned her head back against the cushion behind her and closed her eyes. “Does it exist? Love? Real love?”
Zoey sighed and shifted in her seat. “I’m going to tell you something not many know about me. And it’s not flattering. For a long time, I didn’t believe love was real, and I thought all relationships were doomed to fail.”
Well, that was disconcerting coming from her counselor. “Because?” Mak asked, giving Zoey a wary glance.
“Because… I should preface this by saying I love my job. I love that I get to help people on a daily basis. But I hear a lot of horrible things from my patients. And, like your story, a lot of what I hear is inflicted by the people claiming to love them.”
“So what changed? Aren’t you married?” she asked, looking at the rings sparkling on Zoey’s left hand.
Zoey smiled, and Mak blinked at the way it transformed the petite woman’s face.
Mak was small, shorter than every adult she knew—but Zoey was shorter and if Mak had to guess, under five feet. But what she lacked in height, she apparently packed in emotional punches.
Zoey held up her left hand and nodded, smiling. “I am. Now,” she corrected. “But for a long time, I didn’t believe in love, and I built walls to protect myself from all the awful things I’d heard over the years. Until Logan called me on it. My husband pulled the ultimate BS card whenever I tried to sidestep the subject.”
“But how did he convince you?”
“How does anyone? He showed me. And he continues to show me every day.” Zoey shook her head softly, eyes sparkling with a hint of tears she didn’t shed. “Mak, people like your ex make us— all of us—afraid of love. But the truth is, we’re empty shells without it. I now believe we’re never truly whole until we know that kind of love, as elusive as it is to find.”
She hadn’t known that love. Not with Brad. In the beginning she’d believed he loved her as much as she loved him, but like Zoey said—the mask had fallen away after a while and she now knew the truth because she’d lived it.
But Zoey’s words left an image of Finn flittering through her mind, and even though she’d only just met the man, she couldn’t help but think of his innate kindness.
Yet another part of her knew Finn had the same type of walls around him as Zoey described. Because of the stutter? Because of losing his parents so young?
And then to kiss her. Where did that fit into the equation?
“Mmm. Where’d you go just then?” Zoey asked.
Mak blinked and then laughed uncomfortably. “Nowhere.”
“Nowhere made you smile after some tough conversation. Was it a person?”
Hesitant, Mak bit her lower lip and nodded. “It— He is. But just a friend.”
“Friends are nice to have,” Zoey said. “Are you interested in him as more than a friend?”
She shrugged, trying to appear casual and failing miserably. “I haven’t allowed myself to think like that.”
“Because of fear.”
“Of course.”
“And now? After our talk?” Zoey tilted her head.
Mak waved her hand to indicate herself and the office and all the things. “It’s helped, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not terrified of making another mistake.”
“You’re human, Makayla. You’re going to make mistakes. The good—and bad—news is that once someone has survived and seen the worst of narcissistic abuse, they don’t forget it. And you have been gifted a lifelong, hard-earned red-flag warning sensor like no other. Has your friend set off any alarms?”
“No,” she said honestly. “Not yet.”
Zoey smiled. “That’s good. So why not embrace him as a nice guy and monitor those sensors, but don’t shut down because of fear. You deserve to have a good guy in your life, and they are out there. Though for Emi’s sake, I wouldn’t introduce them any time soon.”
Mak winced. “They’ve already met. He’s—kind of our neighbor.”
When they’d had their first appointment, Zoey had asked about Mak and Emi’s living situation. Though she didn’t know Sam, Zoey knew where they lived because she knew of Blackwell Farm like most locals apparently.
Zoey’s eyebrows lifted, and a knowing smile quirked her lips.
“I see. May I ask his name?”
“Um, it’s Finn. Blackwell. Do you know him?”
The counselor’s expression softened slightly. “I do, yes. I went to school with several of the Blackwells, and the entire island came together for the memorial when their parents were killed. My husband knows Alec and the brothers quite well. They’re all known to be good men. Not perfect,” she quickly clarified, “but good.”
Mak wasn’t sure why the words meant so much to her, but they did. That was the impression she’d gotten at the birthday party as well. That the family of nine—eight brothers and their younger sister—were all good people. Living their lives, working hard and helping their community when and where they could. Maybe that meant her red-flag meter was working?
“Do you have any plans to see him?”
Mak shook her head, her cheeks heating up at the question. “No. I mean, nothing official.”
“Official?” Zoey pressed.
“He, um, mentioned going riding one day. I haven’t decided though.”
“I see. Because?”
Mak squeezed her eyes shut and wrinkled her nose. “It seems like a fun idea but…”
“You’re afraid.”
“Beyond words.” Him and her alone? How would that go? “I’ve gone on dates, but—this seems different.”
“How so?”
She struggled to find the words. “I don’t know, just different. Maybe because Finn’s…different.”
“Because of his stutter?”
Mak shook her head. “I don’t mind that. He’s… I can’t explain it.”
“But you didn’t feel that way with the people you dated in the past?”
Mak shook her head, earning another head tilt and contemplative look from Zoey. “You think I should go.”
“If no sensors have gone off, why not? It’s a ride, Mak—not a walk down the aisle.”