Chapter 16 Sebastian
SEBASTIAN
Gwen squinted and leaned back in her seat.
When she didn’t say anything, I did the same. “What? What’s that face about?”
“You know what the ranch is.”
“I do.”
“Then you know why my past relationships failed.”
I knew she’d been abused in some way. That it’d been bad enough that she’d felt the only way out was to erase her identity and start over. He had to have been one sick son of a bitch.
But I didn’t know what made her who she was. It wasn’t my place to insist she tell me every detail, but wasn’t it my place to know what she had been through? To be sensitive to the specific topics or issues? So that I didn’t accidentally say or do something that’d trigger her PTSD?
“Vaguely,” I said.
Still, she said nothing.
Cocking my head to the side, my eyes flicked over her, surveying for a signal of discomfort or pain. This was supposed to be fun for both of us. I wasn’t trying to turn our first date into trauma porn. If she wasn’t ready to talk about it, or if she never wanted to, that was okay.
I made sure to soften my voice when I said, “You don’t want to talk about it?”
Gwen scratched the side of her head. She opened her mouth and shut it a few times. Eventually, quietly, she said, “I don’t want you to pity me for it.”
“What does pity mean to you?”
Her open mouth stayed silent a moment longer. Eventually, she shrugged. “I don’t know. Whiny, I guess. Pathetic. They’re all synonyms.”
“That’s what’s wrong with the world,” I said under my breath. After grabbing a chip from the center console, I dipped it in the queso. “Pity, by definition, means compassion and sorrow on someone else’s behalf. Why the hell is having compassion and sorrow for someone viewed as whiny or pathetic?”
She arched a brow at that, and I saw the wheels turning behind her eyes.
“Not saying that you’re wrong for viewing it that way,” I told her. “I mean, if you don’t actually look up the word, it does sound like an insult. But I think we should all pity each other a little more. Life might be a little less grim if we did.”
Gwen’s eyes sparkled. Not with tears, but consideration. Like my words made her think. Eventually, she said, “Yeah. It might.”
“The rest of the world can go on making fun of us, and we can have our pity party.” I smiled. “Only if you wanna talk about it. You don’t have to.”
A breathy laugh escaped her. “Well, I don’t really want to talk about it. But I feel like you have the right to know?”
“I’d consider it more of an honor than a right.”
Her expression softened. An unusual start to the night, maybe, but it seemed to have broken all the ice. She was only an octave or two above a whisper when she continued.
“It’s probably the same story you’ve heard a thousand times.
We were together until last year, when I left.
Mostly, anyway. I don’t know. I tried to leave many times before I finally did.
And it didn’t go the way it does in movies.
He didn’t wear a wife beater and come home each day and scream at me about the dishes.
“I guess he did, a couple times. Scream at me about the dishes, I mean.” She scratched her head.
“I don’t know. I was young. I was dumb. My mom thought he was great, mostly because I didn’t tell her everything.
By the time I was eighteen, he wasn’t really interested in me anymore.
Not romantically, not physically. But he didn’t want to lose the other things I gave him.
A clean house. An assistant to arrange his life. A therapist to vent to.
“Every time I tried to leave, it was chaos. Most of the relationship wasn’t, though.
I guess because, somewhere along the way, I realized that if I didn’t bring up how I felt or the problems we had, there wasn’t a fight, so I stopped talking.
Gradually stopped caring. The only thing that was hard about leaving were the logistics.
Hence, the ranch.” Pressing her lips together, Gwen looked out the windshield for a moment, watching the snowflakes.
When she turned back, the melancholy tone was gone, and a smile spread across her lips.
“But he never wore the wife beaters. Wasn’t half bad at it, but he never dressed the part. ”
A half laugh escaped me, not because I found it funny. Because that’s what she needed. The only way she could manage spitting that out was if she knew I wouldn’t look at her like she was pathetic for having put up with it.
And I wouldn’t. I would never.
To show some semblance of solidarity, understanding, I said, “Yeah, my dad never dressed the part either.”
She didn’t shudder. No wince either. Just a frown of the same solidarity. Understanding. “They usually don’t.”
“So, did you have any other romantic relationships?” I dug around in the paper bag for a napkin. When I found one, I wiped my mouth with it. “Outside of him.”
“A couple. But it’s your turn.” Gwen grabbed her soda and tucked herself against the door. Legs crossed lotus style in the passenger seat, she slurped away. “Go on. Tell me about your dating history.”
I chuckled. “Not much to tell, really. Had my first girlfriend during my senior year of high school. I was still the weird, dorky kid, but I got contacts and gained a little weight. We were too young to understand what love was.” I swiveled in my seat as well, propping one knee against the steering wheel and tucking the other underneath me.
“We thought we were going to stay together when we went to college. Over winter break, she let me know she’d cheated, so that was the end of that. ”
“Ouch.”
“Second girlfriend was a rebound, right after I broke up with the first. She was cool? Edgy, exciting. We painted together, she had blue hair and a vinyl collection—you know the type.”
Air lighter now, Gwen’s smile returned. “Sounds like my kind of people. What happened there?”
“She was just a little too eccentric. Asked to open the relationship, and I had to duck out.”
“As a monogamous myself, I can respect it.”
“We stayed friends though.” I took a sip from my paper cup. “We still wish each other happy birthday on Facebook.”
“Amicable.”
“I think so.”
“So, anyone after her?” She took the last air-filled slurp of her soda.
I passed her the rest of mine, chest warm when she grinned her thanks. “One more. But I think it’s your turn again.”
There went the joy in her eyes. Slowly returning the soda to its holder, she nibbled on her bottom lip. “Your relationship stories are all so normal and suburban. Mine are a lot messier.”
I gestured to the disaster that was my truck. “I don’t mind a mess.”
The tilt at the corner of her lips didn’t come close to reaching her eyes. Eventually, she exhaled. “I was twelve when I met my only other boyfriend. He was sixteen, I want to say?”
My stomach turned, and I did my damnedest to school my expression.
I remembered being sixteen. Twelve and sixteen were very different numbers. Sure, in ten years, a four-year age gap wasn’t a huge stretch. Gwen and I were five years apart, but mentally, we were in the same headspace. We were both adults. Our development had reached a certain plateau.
Twelve-year-olds had barely hit puberty, if they had at all. Sixteen-year-olds were deciding between college and the job force.
That was why I didn’t allow Lizzie to date anyone older than her.
“I know.” Gwen cupped a hand over her face.
There was no hiding the shudder that coursed down her spine.
“I know how bad that is now. How gross he was for even looking at me. But he did a lot worse than that, so.” Another shudder, followed by a harsh clearing of her throat.
“Anyway, that was a really bad relationship too. Just in a different way. Some of the same ways, I guess? But it doesn’t matter.
It was a long time ago. I’ve blocked out most of it. I only remember bits and pieces.”
I wished that my brain’s defense mechanism worked like that. I hadn’t forgotten a single thing my dad did. Every fight, every broken piece of furniture, every mark on my mom’s, my sister’s, or my skin, was forever etched into my memory.
Not to say that made it easier for Gwen. But maybe it would’ve made it easier for me.
“Anyway.” A big smile, this one playful. “Tell me about your other failed relationship.”
I snorted and rubbed the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. “Her name was Ashley.”
“Ashley.” Gwen wiggled her brows. “Sexy.”
Unsure if I should laugh or grimace at that, I did some combination of the two.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I was in a really bad place when we met.
Sarah had just died. My parents were raising Lizzie, and they wanted me to come home.
I wanted to, to be there for my niece, but it was midsemester.
I couldn’t just leave. And then Ashley asked me out, and we fell hard, and we fell fast.
“Year or two later, I got a call. The doctors were vague. Just said that my parents were in an accident. Made sure to tell me to get on the first flight out. It was early December, and Ashley and I were already planning on coming up here for Christmas. But she couldn’t move her flight up.
Which was understandable. Then I was here, at my parents’ deathbeds, and she decided to go to her family’s for Christmas instead. ”
Gwen’s face screwed up in confusion, head cocked to the side. “Wait, she just completely bailed on you?”
“I wouldn’t put it like that.” I rubbed a hand over my beard.
“I’d only ever told her the bad things about my parents.
She knew that I hated my dad, that I didn’t have that great of a relationship with my mom, so she hadn’t wanted to come to Black Pines to begin with. But the bigger issue was Lizzie.”
Face still scrunched up, Gwen blinked a few times. “Are you saying you guys broke up because your already orphaned niece was orphaned a second time, and you didn’t dump her into the system?”