Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
M aggie
I didn’t expect to be put on the spot like this. And I don’t have an answer ready for him, but maybe that’s for the best. No time to think about it and having it roll off the cuff is making me be more honest with him and myself. “I don’t know. I’ve not really done this… I’ve gone, aside from you, on a grand total of two dates since my husband and I separated. And none, other than you, since our divorce was final. I’m kind of finding my feet here, hoss.”
He nods, but his grin isn’t quite as cocky as it normally is. In fact, he looks a little vulnerable and that makes me feel bad. But I’m perverse enough to admit that it makes me feel hopeful too.
“I don’t want to rush you,” he says, then shakes his head. “No, that’s not true. I do want to rush you, but that’s just for my own selfish reasons. Some things, Margaret Sloan, are worth waiting for.”
Why didn’t I meet him when I was twenty and full of hope? Why the fuck did I have to meet Calvin Farnsworth first? I spent five years with him, and the whole time he picked at me like a buzzard with roadkill. That’s how it felt too, like he was tearing away little pieces of me one at a time until—by the end of it— I didn’t even know who I was anymore. Tack on another three years of fighting to get the divorce finalized, and here I sit, twenty-nine, bitter as fuck, and too gun-shy to take that last big leap.
“Can we have this conversation later? When we’re alone?” I ask him. Because if I’m going to expect him to wait, he deserves to know why. But that’s not something for public consumption.
He doesn’t say anything. Just leans in and kisses my cheek. It’s a sweet gesture and one that I know other people caught. This man is going to be trouble for me. By turns cocky and arrogant, then vulnerable and achingly sweet. It’s the best and worst of both worlds.
—
After we leave Cody and Emma’s—a long process of Southern goodbyes—we head back to Damien’s house. And I’m nervous. I hate talking about my ex. I hate talking about my marriage. And it’s not that I’m heartbroken or that it’s too painful. The fact is, it’s just humiliating. I hate myself for letting it get to that point, for tolerating everything that I did for as long as I did. I look back at who I became during all of it, and I don’t even recognize myself.
“I can literally hear the wheels turning in your brain,” he says.
“I know. There’s a lot of things I need to tell you… about me, and I just am not looking forward to it,” I confess.
“Do you think it’s going to change anything?”
Logically, no. But anxiety is never logical.
“You know that I was married to Calvin Farnsworth… I was with him for five long, hellish years.”
“Cause he’s a lying, cheating sack of shit with bad hair plugs and worse taste,” he says. “And you clearly had the worst lawyer on the fucking planet because you walked away from it empty-handed.”
“How do you know that?” I ask with a laugh as we enter the family room of his house. Leave it to Damien for that to be his takeaway.
“One, you’re working. Two, I’ve seen your apartment. Three, I know Cal—I know what a dick he is. What an entitled fucking ass he’s always been. And you should have, by virtue of tolerating the son of a bitch for even a day, been due a very large settlement.”
“All of those things are true.” I pause long enough for him to open the back door and turn on the lights. I follow him inside then. “But I didn’t want his money. I didn’t want anything that would make me feel tied to him in any way… How exactly do you know him?”
“We’ve got history. Middle school bully. High school rival. Then watched him crash and burn in college ’cause he couldn’t stop boozing and partying long enough to go to class. Then, since I moved back, I’ve represented some people who have taken legal action against him,” he says. “And won some pretty significant judgments against him. Your ex is a shady motherfucker.”
“You have no idea… When I met Cal, I was twenty. Working as a waitress in a fairly upscale restaurant in Louisville… going to U of L. Not a fucking word about the Cardinals,” I warn him. “This is not the time for basketball rivalry.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says. Then points up. “I don’t have to.”
I look to where he’s pointed and see an entire display case of UK memorabilia. I just shake my head. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Only if you want to tell me. It’s not gonna change a fucking thing in the way I feel for you.”
It might. “He never hit me, but you don’t have to beat someone to break them. It was just endless criticism. That dress made me look fat. My hair was too dark. My hair was too light. I needed a boob job. I needed to lose ten pounds. Gain ten pounds… From the minute we got married, I was never enough… and that, according to Cal, was why he fucked his secretary. And his best friend’s wife. And his cousin’s wife. And—you get the drift.”
Damien has his arms crossed now. He’s pissed. I can see it. “That’s about him, Maggie. That’s about his insecure bullshit. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“One divorce and a shit ton of therapy later, I absolutely agree with you… But that was nine years ago when that started. The truth, Damien, was that I was too young to be married to anybody, but especially to someone like him. I didn’t know who the hell I was at twenty years old. And looking back I can see that was part of the appeal for him. He got to tell me who I was, who I could become… and it wasn’t until I was sitting in our bedroom, alone again, staring at a bottle full of sleeping pills and actually thinking about swallowing the whole thing, that I realized that… I was so fucking miserable that death looked like a better option.”
He doesn’t say anything to that. And when I look at his face, I know it isn’t because he doesn’t have anything to say. He’s giving me the space I need to finish—to tell him all of it.
“So I left. I packed a bag and left. I went to my mom’s house in Fort Mitchell for a bit, but I didn’t stay there. One, everyone I knew was gone—nobody fucking stays there if they can help it. And two, she’s got some old-fashioned ideas about marriage and financial security… She kept telling me to go back, that if I begged, Cal would take me back. It was a complete mystery to her how I could actually feel good about walking out on him. But it did feel good. It felt like, for the first time since I met the son of a bitch, that I was me again—whoever the fuck that was. And I liked Bellehaven, or what he’d let me experience of it. So I decided to build a life for myself here… maybe out of spite.”
I finish and then the house goes quiet around us. I have to fight the urge to fill the silence, to defend both my decision to marry the ass and to leave him. Because therapy or no, I still haven’t forgiven myself for what I allowed him to do to me.
But Damien does something that surprises me. He doesn’t speak. He just takes my hand, pulls me close, and wraps his arms around me. And there’s no judgement there. There’s no disapproval or false sympathy. And he’s not holding me like he thinks I’m some fragile, broken thing. He’s just doing it because he can… and nothing has ever felt more right.