28. Chapter 28
Chapter 28
After dinner, on the drive home, David kept glancing over at Paige’s book sitting on the passenger seat like a ticking bomb. He hadn’t read one word of the book, except for the blurb, but even without reading anything else, he didn’t doubt that she’d been molested. Even not knowing any of the details, it explained things.
It actually explained everything.
He thought about the part Paige’s molestation had probably played in the deterioration of their marriage. He thought about everything that hadn’t made sense before—her reluctance, her reserve, her inhibitions—and how everything now made complete sense. The only thing that didn’t make sense was Paige’s not knowing. How did she not know what had been happening to her for thirteen years?
But, apparently she hadn’t known, because she’d thought she was a virgin when they met. She hadn’t been faking that.
“How was dinner with your mom?” Ashley asked when he and Jacob arrived home.
“Fine,” he replied absently, knowing she didn’t care one way or the other.
Distracted, he gave Jacob a bath and then put him to bed.
Before going to bed himself, David decided to take a shower and was standing under the hot water when Ashley joined him.
“You seem sort of off since you got home,” she told him, stepping into his space, until she was hugging him from behind and he could feel her breasts pressed against his back.
“I just have a few things on my mind.”
She rested her cheek in the spot between his shoulder blades, right where Paige’s name was spelled out. He knew Ashley hated the tattoo because she’d said so many times, and each time she did, it reminded him of the conversation he’d had with Paige about other women who might see the tattoo and hate it. Ashley had even started pointing out the confusion Jacob would experience if he saw it, which was the only reason David was thinking about having it removed in the future. In the meantime, though, for reasons he didn’t completely understand, it remained intact.
“Like what, baby?” Ashley asked.
He shook his head.
“Well, whatever it is, maybe I can re-direct your thoughts.”
She stepped around to his front and he watched her drop to her knees, looking up at him as she took his cock in her hand and started stroking. There was no denying that she was a beautiful woman, with a lush body that usually never failed to light his fire, and when she began licking him in earnest, he thought maybe she could re-direct his thoughts. However, that hope didn’t last long. David kept seeing the picture of Paige on the beach with her uncle, and that, coupled with the knowledge he had molested her, made it impossible for David to achieve an erection. “Ash, stop. It’s not going to happen tonight.”
She didn’t stop.
“Jesus, I said stop,” he said, pushing her away.
He turned off the water and got out of the shower, quickly drying off with a towel and then going into the bedroom. He was in the process of putting on a pair of briefs when Ashley came in, wrapped in a towel and looking pissed.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” she told him, her expression arctic, even as her face was flushed with anger. “You’re lucky I didn’t crush your balls.”
“You weren’t listening to me and I didn’t want you sucking my dick any more. Does ‘no’ only mean ‘no’ if you say it?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? And don’t give me that ‘I just have a few things on my mind’ bullshit answer again. I want a real answer.”
He picked up Paige’s book and held it up. “My mom gave me this.”
She looked at it and then shrugged. “Okay. She gave you a book. What about it?”
He held it out closer. “Paige wrote it.”
“Your ex-wife?”
“Yes. Would I be talking about any other ‘Paige’ having written this?”
Ashley came forward and looked at the cover more closely. “Is Clemons her maiden name?”
He gave a short nod.
“It’s interesting that she went back to using it. Especially after going on about what a ‘privilege’ it was to be married to you.”
David didn’t say anything to that, figuring Ashley was just trying to push his buttons.
“So, you’ve been acting weird all night because of Paige’s book,” she said slowly, before asking, “What’s it about?”
Instead of answering, David pointed at the blurb, much like Valerie had done with him.
Rolling her eyes, Ashley looked down and read it, her expression turning incredulous. “She was molested by her uncle? And she didn’t know it? What? For God’s sake, how do you not know you’ve been molested?”
“I don’t know, but that’s probably covered in the book.”
“You’re not going to read it, are you?” she asked, as if it would be the most outlandish thing he’d ever do.
“Yes, I’m going to read it.”
“Why?”
“That shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole, David.”
“I’m not being an asshole. I’m simply pointing out that your question was kind of stupid,” he told her. He could push a few buttons, too.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s not stupid to me. I honestly don’t know why you’d want to read her book. So, humor me and explain. And make sure to use small words so I understand and don’t have to ask any more stupid questions.”
“I’m going to read the book because I want to know what happened to her. I need to know.”
“Why?”
“Because I think it could change some things for me.”
“What ‘things’?”
So maybe that had been a poor choice of words, but they couldn’t be taken back, so he kept going. “Well, it could change the reason why my marriage failed, for starters.”
“Why does it matter? The marriage did fail and it’s been over for almost five years—”
“Because I blamed myself,” he said, louder than he’d intended. “That’s why it matters. And if I can quit blaming myself, then maybe I can get back that part of me that I lost.”
Her expression lost its edge but was still wary. “Is that all you’d want to get back?”
The question gave him pause. “What else is there to get back?”
“Paige. Your marriage.”
He stared at her for so long, that she threw up her hands. “You have nothing to say?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why you would think that.”
“You said Paige’s book could change some things for you. Your relationship with her could be one of those ‘things’. Which, in turn could change our relationship.”
“It won’t change our relationship,” he said, somewhat dismissively. What did she think? That he would read the book, then run off into the sunset with Paige? “And as far as changing my relationship with Paige, it obviously didn’t change things for her. She never told me about the abuse—or the book—and she easily could have. Hell, she could’ve responded to one of my texts and she hasn’t. So there’s no need for you to be thinking what you’re thinking, because—”
“You’ve been texting her?”
Well, shit. “Yes. To see how she was doing after her concussion. But like I said, she’s never texted back.”
There was a bit of a showdown as David waited for her to ask to see the texts to prove what he was saying and he deliberately didn’t offer to show them to her.
“I don’t want you to read her book,” she finally said.
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care what I want?”
“Not when it comes to this book. I’m going to read it.”
“God damn it, David, I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me since that night at Bender’s. Please. All I’m asking for is this one small thing in return. Don’t read it.”
“It’s not a small thing,” he argued. “And I am going to read it.”
Then, done with the conversation—even though she clearly wasn’t—he took the book and left. Deciding he needed a few fingers of Knob Creek (a beer just wasn’t going to cut it), he took a detour through the kitchen before heading to the living room.
He sat on the couch for a while, slowly sipping his bourbon and looking at the copy of The Moment You Know. Finally, after his glass was empty, he opened the book, still in shock that Paige had written it. Slowly turning the first few pages, he came to a quote from Bob Marley, which took him by surprise, if only because he seemed like an odd person to be quoting, even though the quote itself was great: “You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice.”
When he got to the prologue, the hands holding the book started to shake.
The moment you know can refer to many things: silly things, important things, heartbreaking things, life-altering things.
The moment you know you don’t like onions. The moment you know you’re in love. The moment you know a loved one is gone forever. The moment you know you’ve been molested.
I was nine when I knew I didn’t like onions. I was twenty-one when I knew I was in love. I was four when I knew a loved one was gone forever.
The moment I knew I’d been molested came when I was thirty-two years old. And it wrecked me, splitting my life in two. From that moment on, my life was made up of ‘before I knew’ and ‘after I knew’. I learned very quickly that the hardest thing I’d ever face was living in the ‘after’, because in the ‘after’, there’s nowhere to hide from the truth and nowhere to take shelter from it. And there’s no going back to ‘before’, because ‘before’ is gone.
For me, the moment I knew I’d been molested was both the best and worst moment of my life, because I knew—good or bad—that I would never be the same. And it was also the moment that I started the journey to get my life back.
I would learn many things on this painful and unpleasant journey, the most important thing being that it takes a phoenix to rise from the ashes. And I was going to be a phoenix.
Fuck, yeah, I was.
David closed the book and set it down, deciding that he would talk to Paige before he read any more of it. He had questions that needed to be answered first.
He picked up his phone and looked at the dozen unanswered texts that he’d sent her in the past couple of months and frowned. He knew the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, but he had no choice.
He typed out a short text, then sent it.