Chapter 10
Magnolia
Sitting on the couch, eating dinner, and watching a TV show with Levi is exactly how I imagined being married would be.
It’s desperately what I had wanted my life with Cody to look like.
And it had, for all of a couple of months.
It hadn’t lasted, which is why I’m wary of what this feels like with Levi.
But in my bones, I know this is different.
The way he laughs at the appropriate places in the show.
The easy way he’s flung his arm along the back of the couch, and scooted me into his body.
It’s so comforting and simple. I’m not nervous, the way I was in my own home, and it doesn’t feel like he’s doing me a favor.
I begged Cody for affection and attention. Levi is out here just giving it. I’ve obviously been manipulated before, so I throw up a little prayer that isn’t what’s happening now. As the first episode ends, we look at each other.
“That was good,” he says with a grin.
It’s then that I’m struck with just how hot of a man he’s turned into.
This late, the five-o-clock shadow has darkened into almost a light beard on his face.
Cupping it like I wish my hands were. Allowing my gaze to roam his body, I catch a glimpse of tattoos that are both covered and uncovered by his t-shirt.
There’s definitely more that I can’t see, and I want desperately to.
“It was good. Are you a one episode a day guy, or do you like to do more?”
He tilts his head to the side as if he’s giving it a lot of thought. “I love a good binge, but not typically when I have to work early the next day.”
“I thought you were on nights.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, my cheeks heat. There is absolutely no reason I should know his schedule like this, even if we are kind of living together.
“Yeah, I was going to tell you about that. Seems like I’ll be here at night, rather than at work.
This undercover operation will be done mostly in the day, at least on the front half.
Are you okay with that? You probably thought that you’d be here by yourself for the most part.
I’d be sleeping during the day, and then wouldn’t even be here at night.
Is that gonna be a problem for you?” He scoots closer, turning so that he opens the side of his body up into mine.
God why did I have to ignore the kid who kept telling me he thought I was pretty, and that he had a crush on me?
Our age difference felt like such a big barrier, but by the time he was twenty-one, it wasn’t that big a deal, was it?
So when I answer, I do it with everything I’m thinking of.
“Not at all. I was actually kind of hoping I wouldn’t have to be by myself here at night.
When things were bad with Cody, they were always the worst at night. ”
His face turns stormy, anger making his eyes dark. “Magnolia Grace, did he hurt you?”
No one has ever asked me the question like that before.
It’s always been specific. Did he scream obscenities at you?
Did he raise a hand to you? Was he just not nice?
Did you fear for your life? No one has asked me if Cody hurt me.
For some reason, this hits harder than it probably should, and tears pool in my eyes.
I do my best to keep them from spilling over, but he notices it immediately and reaches forward, tilting my chin.
“You can cry if you need to, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m a safe space for you.”
Immediately I’m hit with the need to know an answer to a question I’ve had for years. “Why do you call me Magnolia Grace?”
“It’s your name.” He smiles softly.
“No one else calls me by both,” I argue.
“Because I’m not everyone else, and neither are you.
You’re pretty fucking important to me. So you deserve to be called by your name.
Not anything else,” he grunts in the back of his throat.
“I know he called you out of your name more than once, and I want you to know, Magnolia Grace,” he puts emphasis on it.
“I care about that name as much as I care about you.”
With those words, the tears fall. I cry for the woman I was, the one I’ve become, and the one I want to be.
I’ve needed a safe space, someone to understand what I’m going through.
No one else in my life has been able to give it to me.
Even the people I’ve asked, they’ve not been able to understand it.
Truthfully I began to wonder if anyone at all could ever make me feel safe again, especially after my house became a place where Cody held everything over my head.
I let myself cry for a few minutes, mourn the person I thought I was, the marriage I hoped I would have. Then I turn to Levi, and answer his question. “He did. He did a lot of things that hurt me. Some were mental, financial, emotional, and there was one night it turned physical.”
Anger moves across his face in waves. First it seems to hit his eyes, then his jaw as he develops a tick, then his lips when he sneers. “I’m not mad at you, I want you to know that. I’m fucking pissed at him. What did he do?”
There’s a very visceral and physical reaction to him asking that question.
Immediately I’m thrust back to that night, to the way my stomach felt as if I were about to puke.
The way my hands shook as I tried to reason with him, the scream that ripped from past my throat, and echoed off the walls.
It all comes back to me as if I’m a person not participating in the memory itself.
It’s as if it happened at me, not to me. But I know I have to tell him.
I have to tell someone.
I’ve never said the words out loud, and I need to. Keeping them to myself just continues to give him the power I keep swearing he doesn’t have.
“I’m not even sure what started it,” I say quietly as I shake my head.
“He and I had been fighting more often over stupid shit. Things that don’t even tend to make a difference in everyday life.
One minute we were talking. The next? We were screaming at one another.
It isn’t how I was raised. My parents barely paid attention to one another.
I spent more time with your parents than I spent with mine.
They showed me what a marriage was supposed to look like. ”
Levi breaks in. “They weren’t perfect.”
“No, but they loved each other, and they loved y’all.
There was never any doubt of that, even when they were arguing.
We all knew that they would respect one another.
So that’s what I brought into my marriage with Cody.
I wanted what they had. Maybe they weren’t perfect, but they turned their marriage into a great life.
So many days I prayed that’s what I would have.
That night, I realized those prayers wouldn’t be answered. ”
I have to stop for a minute, closing my eyes to take myself back there. So often I’ve not wanted to think about it, but if I’m going to tell Levi what happened, it’s going to have to be all of it.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says as he reaches forward, taking my hand in his.
“I do, I’m never going to be able to move on if I don’t. If I don’t admit what happened and give actual words to it.”
“At any time if you need to stop, all you have to do is stop. You owe me nothing, not your pain, your happiness, your emotional feelings. I’m asking, and you can permit that if you want.”
God, this man doesn’t realize what a good guy he is.
How has no one scooped him up yet? “Like I said, we’ve been fighting more often lately.
That night, I was on edge, was definitely overstimulated, and I just didn’t want to deal with him that night.
Maybe it was the fact that I’d had a crazy day at work too?
Back then I was both working a day job and doing the dipped treats on the side, but the side job was starting to take the place of the day job.
That particular night, I was going on around ten hours of sleep in three days. ”
“So you were tired?”
My stomach rolls slightly as the feelings from that night replace what I’m feeling tonight.
“Exhausted,” I admit. “And I was annoyed. He hadn’t cooked dinner, and I’d texted him asking him to do it because I knew I had a really long night ahead of me.
When I got home,” I stop, licking my suddenly dry lips.
“He hadn’t done anything, and I was so pissed.
He actually wasn’t even there. A note on the counter said that he’d run an errand.
All I could keep thinking about was that he had time to run errands. I didn’t have that time.”
In my mind, I’m wondering if Levi is thinking I’m selfish. I say as much to him.
“No, I don’t think you’re fuckin’ selfish.
If there’s one thing I’ve realized watching my parents, it’s that you have to be willing to do things outside of your comfort zone.
There may be traditional roles, but when your partner is having a hard time, then you have to step up and help them.
You’re not selfish. You wanted a fucking partner and he couldn’t handle it. That says way more about him than you.”
I want to believe him, desperately want to believe him, but I’ve lived so long thinking that all of this issues are my fault.
If I’d been a better wife, then we wouldn’t have had issues.
But his words give me the confidence to continue.
“I had a lot going on,” I remember the overwhelm I was feeling that night.
“On one hand I’d just finished melting my chocolate and tinting it, right at the time the dinner I’d gone out of my way to fix, because I was hungry, was done.
Timers were going off. Two of them, and I just needed peace and quiet for five minutes, without the threat of something burning. I just needed five minutes.”
“Which you should’ve been allowed to have. Even if you didn’t ask him for it, I imagine, he could tell. He was supposed to be your person. The one who could tell when you needed a break, right?”
Yes, all of this. It’s what I wanted. “Yeah, exactly. That’s all I’d wanted, for him to take some of that pressure off of me. I went to grab my chocolate out of the microwave, and I dropped it. All over the place, including on my legs.”
“Did it burn you?” He asks immediately.
“That would’ve been the first question you think my husband would’ve asked, right? He came through the door right as it happened. I said something like fuck, and started screaming because I just had to get the feelings out.” He hadn’t asked if I was okay. “You know what he did?”
“What? And don’t try and make him seem like a better guy, Magnolia. Tell me exactly what he said.”
I smirk, thinking back to the look that was on his face. “He told me to calm down. Those were the only words he said. He told me to calm down.”
“Oh shit,” he whispers.
“Yeah, I lost it. Fucking lost it. I was so overwhelmed. In physical pain, because the chocolate had hit my legs and gotten under the pants I was wearing, but in emotional pain, too. I was drowning, and I just wanted my husband to help me.”
He reaches out, moving his hand from mine. Instead, he cups the side of my cheek with his palm. His thumb rubs slowly and carefully against my skin. I lean into it, because it’s as if he realizes I need to feel connected. “He didn’t though, did he?”
“No, he kept telling me to calm down while I lost my damn mind. That’s when everything went from bad to horrible.”