Chapter 32 #2
“Congratulations on the job offer.” Jesse softly encouraged. “You should be proud of yourself for making the best of a difficult situation. Doing something you don’t want to do is courageous.”
I tipped my head to the side, considering that. “Nothing about this is courageous, Jesse. It’s passive at best, a coward’s move at worst.”
His brow knitted. “Why’s that?”
“I feel like I’m doing everything I can to fly below the radar and not cause waves. If I was brave I would drag his ass to court and make him pay and not stop until I had full custody of my girls. I would do what I want for my future instead of thinking about his all the time.”
Jesse hummed in understanding. “Well, what do you want for your life? Maybe you should start there.”
I gave an incredulous laugh. “That’s the thing, Jesse. I don’t even know. Without Garrett, I…” My words faltered. Jesse and I had been real plenty of times, but this was raw and ugly. I wasn’t sure how deep I wanted to go. Some of these memories hurt. Bad.
The back of Jesse’s fingers touched my arm. “It’s just you and me here. You don’t have to find the right way to say it.”
Swallowing down my reservations, I continued.
“Without Garrett, I don’t know who I am.
The last real Hollie I remember was seventeen with childish hopes and dreams. I’ve spent the last thirteen years being whoever Garrett wanted me to be.
” My voice cracked. “I mistook his approval for love and…and I lost myself in pursuit of it.”
Muscle memory kicked in, and my right hand reached for my left, ready to dig the pain out of my heart via my cuticles.
In one motion Jesse pulled my left hand into his lap to keep it safe and plowed his work-scarred fingers between mine.
Desire pooled low in my belly as his thumb moved over my skin.
I knew he only held my hand to protect me, but our palms together and our fingers entwined felt so right—like my hand belonged in his.
He continued our conversation like nothing happened. “I take it he was hard to please.”
I jerked my head back to our conversation.
“Impossible. And even if I did pass his tests, he never wanted me to be happier, needier, or angrier than him.
If I got sick, he'd be sicker. If I was tired postpartum, he had nineteen hour work days. If I had plans with a friend, he had an emergency work meeting. Everything had to be about Garrett.”
“And if it wasn’t?”
“Then he withdrew from me and blamed me for things.” I shrugged.
“If I confronted him about how he treated me, he’d go on this long tangent about how I was forgetful and overbearing or too sensitive.
And somehow I’d leave the conversation agreeing with him.
” I huffed, realizing how crazy that was.
“He could make me view myself as the root of all our problems—I have no clue how he managed to do that. Maybe I’m not making sense. ”
“Isn’t that called gaslighting someone?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“It makes a lot of sense.”
“It happened so often that I spent years thinking I must be totally insane. The narrative was that Garrett was this selfless, great guy who was just doing his best and I was some merciless woman whose standards were basically Jesus Christ in the flesh.” Tears blurred my vision but I blinked them back.
“I don’t know how he got me to believe it, but I did.
” I gave a watery laugh. “And because I wanted to love him, I justified his actions with the rationale ‘we all make mistakes, I’m not perfect either.’”
Jesse quietly shook his head, his thumb tracing the length of mine.
“Anyway, sorry—”
“Stop.” He squeezed my hand. “No sorries.”
“Still. That was a lot to dump on you. The point is I’m afraid my current plan is simply being what I need to be for Garrett again.” My right hand picked at the seam of the tent chair for lack of cuticles to torture.
“If you don’t know who you are without him, it might be time to find out.”
A lump of emotion choked me. “I agree. But I don’t even know where to start.”
“What were your seventeen-year-old hopes?”
I scoffed. “Trust me, they aren’t even worth repeating.”
“Hollie,” he whispered.
I turned my gaze to him, surprised to see him leaning back, his eyes soft and concerned.
He gave my hand another gentle squeeze. “You need to be nicer to yourself.”
My eyes prickled with heat but I shrugged. “I was a stupid kid.” My voice sounded more hollow than I intended.
“Is that what you really believe? Or did someone believe that for you?”
My words faltered. “That’s—what I believe.”
“List them. All those stupid things you wanted as a kid.”
I huffed, growing agitated at his persistence. A few tears trickled down my cheeks, officially ruining the night. I shrugged again, a crevice of pain opening my chest. “What all kids want—I guess.”
“Like what?”
“I wanted—my parents to be okay. I wanted Peter to live. I wanted to have a man who loved me, kids, and a family one day. I wanted to go to college. Other than that, I just…” My words tapered as shame crept up my spine.
Jesse shifted, his left hand moving to hold mine as his right hand reached behind me to play with a curl hanging down the back of my chair. “Finish.”
I swallowed so the words would come out brave. But they wobbled anyway. “I—just—wanted to dance.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I blinked, rivulets of tears now dripping from my chin.
I swiped them with the top of my shoulder.
“I wanted to go to Denver University and try out for the dance team, but I didn’t know what to study.
I didn’t have passions or money or scholarship-worthy grades, and I couldn’t justify the debt just to go dance for fun.
Before I’d made a decision about it, I met Garrett.
He was successful and wealthy and he promised to pay my way. ”
The following silence felt loud. Jesse could probably put two and two together, but the truth bubbled up in my heart like poison I had to spit out of my mouth.
I spent so much energy trying to avoid Garrett’s betrayals that they hit me like an avalanche.
My heart quivered at the memories of how he reeled me in.
“But, obviously, he didn’t pay.” I leaned back and looked at the hazy sky, my scalp tickling as Jesse lightly touched my hair.
“I think he just told me that so he could take advantage of me. He always painted these beautiful ideas about the future when I had doubts.”
An abrupt cheer rose from the arena, filling the silence like a cresting wave.
“So your dream died.”
“Yeah, after we got together, dancing came at too high a price. He convinced himself I was cheating on him with one of the guys from my old troupe because I looked ‘too happy’ when I came home after meeting up with them to dance.” I snorted at the absurdity of it.
“He made a big deal of his needs on the nights I tried to leave the house, or gave me lectures about moving provocatively, or he just…belittled it until I was ashamed.” I sniffed loud, trying not to fall apart again.
“My insecurities got so loud, I couldn’t even dance alone in a closet. ”
Jesse’s hand, growing a little braver, gingerly sunk into the roots of my hair, letting the strands slip between his fingers. My eyes fluttered closed as chills skittered down my arms. His question was undemanding. “What did you like about it?”
I smiled. “It felt like a different dimension. I could forget everything but my body and the music and say whatever I didn’t have the words for. I turned to dancing during some hard years as a teen—it was how I coped with heavy family stuff. Something about it just…set me free.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Yes.”
Jesse’s fingers lightly scraped my scalp, and it took everything in me to keep my eyes from rolling back. His touches felt safe and familiar, oddly intimate. Garrett’s touches were often gentle, but I couldn’t trust them because he always demanded a worthy return on his investment.
Jesse wasn’t like that.
I melted deeper into my chair, relishing in the way my body responded to him.
After a few quiet moments, his hand fully cupped the back of my head and he tensed his fingers, signaling me to look at him.
Pulling my eyes away from the sky, I turned toward him to find eyes so soft they seemed liquid. He whispered, “I’ll be right back.”
He disappeared into the truck, and a moment later, the country tunes coming from the semi were louder. When he came back, he stood directly in front of my chair and held out his open hand. “Hollie Lynette, could I have the pleasure of dancing with you?”