Chapter 16
It happens faster than I can control.
One second I’m making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the next I’m on the floor with my hands shielding my head.
He moved too quickly. All I saw in my periphery was a hand coming at my face and instinct took over to protect me.
Blood’s pounding in my ears, I can’t get enough oxygen, and the rational portion of my brain is telling me Greyson would never hurt me, leaving me burning with embarrassment.
Shadow casts over me as he hovers, frozen in place.
We exist in a bubble of deafening silence as my muscles uncoil and my arms drop, heavy from the adrenaline.
“Mia.”
I shake my head violently, not wanting to have this discussion.
“I was reaching for the plates to help you with lunch.” His voice is distant and sad.
A bobblehead nod is all I can muster.
Greyson stretches out his hands from the fists they’ve been curled in, fidgeting, like he doesn’t know how to be around me.
“What did he do to you?” His voice is tight with restrained rage, but he doesn’t scare me because his anger comes from wanting to protect me.
“It’s nothing,” I deflect, slowly rising to my feet, dusting my hands on my pants. I retrieve the plates Greyson had been reaching for and resume building the sandwiches.
He gets to his feet and leans against the counter a couple of feet away from me, either intentionally or subconsciously giving me breathing room.
“It’s not nothing,” he grits out.
“Mama! I’m hungry!” Everly bounds down the hall with Harper hot on her heels.
“I love peanut butter!” Harper does a little clap, smiling brightly at me. “Daddy, can we have apple juice?”
Greyson looks to me for permission, which is absurd. It’s his daughter and his home.
“Think we’ve got some juice boxes,” he affirms, giving Harper the go ahead to snag two from the fridge and the girls start awkwardly trying to stab the flimsy straws into the cartons.
He leans into me a fraction and whispers, “We aren’t done with this conversation.”
I spend lunch and the rest of the afternoon in a daze. I’ve never been more grateful Everly’s a clingy child.
It’s not until her bedtime that I’m alone with Greyson again. I can’t delay any longer, so I take a seat on the couch just one cushion away from him, folding my legs beneath me.
“I’ve never told a soul any of this. I don’t even know where to start.”
Being a man of few words, he’s comfortable waiting me out. Eventually, he pulls out his phone and gestures it in my direction.
“Don’t ask how, but from experience, having this type of thing documented is paramount. Would you be comfortable if we recorded our conversation? If you ever need to use it in court? I’m probably overstepping but I assume you might eventually want to file for divorce or to get custody of Everly?”
“What do you mean, get custody? I’m her mother.” Panic rises in my chest.
“You are, but he could twist this and claim you took her without consent and file a report. We don’t want him weaponizing the system.”
I can’t get enough air, the room swirling in front of my unfocused eyes. A heartbreaking moan fills the air, so loud in my ears my head swivels trying to find the source.
The noise is coming from me.
“Shh, shh. It’s okay,” Greyson soothes, having eliminated the space between us, gently stroking my hair.
“That’s why it’s important to get a record of your experience—to protect you should it ever come down to it,” he explains.
His kind touch grounds me, but I reflexively pull away. The only positive touch I’ve had since Charlie died has been from Everly. Greyson graciously moves back to his spot, giving me space. I nod and he starts recording on his phone.
I can’t bear to see his reactions, so I focus on my split ends. When was the last time I had a haircut? Carter hadn’t let me go to the salon in months as punishment.
“My parents kicked me out when I turned eighteen.” I shake my head in disbelief. “I didn’t understand it then, and now as a parent, I can’t imagine doing that to Everly. I suppose not everyone is meant to have children.”
“Carter asked me on a date not even a month later. I turned eighteen right before graduating and was lucky the restaurant I’d been working at was able to give me full-time hours after graduation.
” I dare to look at Greyson through the curtain of my hair, to find him clasping his hands together, head hung between his shoulders.
“He said he’d been a regular at the restaurant and had been admiring me for months. He started requesting to be seated in my section. I don’t know how he always knew when I’d be on shift. Maybe he went every day hoping to see me? Or maybe he was already controlling me, and I had no clue.”
“I’d bet money on the latter.” Sad thing is, if he bet that money, he’d win.
“Carter swept me off my feet. He was like my savior, sheltering me in his protective arms and taking me in. A whirlwind of promises and love bombing led to us walking down the aisle after dating only a couple of months.” I shake my head in disgust for being so na?ve.
“He moved you in?” Greyson asks.
“Almost immediately. As soon as I explained my situation, he insisted. I was unsure, but being offered a reliable place to live muffled my doubts.”
He nods, biting the inside of his lips, probably to stop himself from telling me how stupid I was for trusting Carter. The funny thing is, on paper, it doesn’t look all that different from my situation here. Greyson moved me in after only a couple of days, too.
But my body knows the difference. With Greyson, nothing in me is bracing for impact. There’s no buzzing under my skin, no warning sirens I have to shove down just to function. With Carter, those alarms were screaming, but I convinced myself security mattered more.
“People say hindsight is twenty-twenty, which is a nice way of saying you don’t know you’ve made a terrible mistake until it’s too late. My wedding night revealed the truth of the situation in which I’d willingly entered.”
Greyson cracks his neck to the left, and then the right, growing agitated with the gravity of the situation I got myself into.
“I don’t know how much more of this you’re going to want to hear…”
“I need to hear it all.” I start to interject but he cuts me off, “I need to know what kind of man might show up here one day to take you and Everly back.”
It’s a fear that long suffocated me, but I’ve felt so safe with Greyson, I’ve worried less as time’s gone on. The reality that my presence here could bring danger to Greyson’s door, and affect Harper, makes me sick.
“Greyson, I’m so sor—” He holds a hand up.
“Don’t apologize. I just…need to know.”
I gather my composure but can’t look at him as I confess further.
“I thought he was unbelievably patient and understanding when I wanted to keep my virginity during our courtship. Not that he had to wait all that long, in the end. Our wedding night was nothing like the soft touches and careful lovemaking I’d hoped for.”
Greyson pops to his feet, pacing the length of the living room in front of me. I fold in on myself, revolted by the onslaught of memories. I had to detach myself for so many years, it became easier to pretend those terrible things happened to someone else, not me.
“It was as if as soon as I was legally bound to him, he shed his disguise and the monster beneath slithered out.” My admission is quiet, but clear enough. Greyson rakes his hands through his hair, pulling at the strands so hard it must hurt.
“I was scheduled to work the day after we got back from our honeymoon, but he wouldn’t drive me to my shift.
Instead, he made me call the manager and quit.
I hadn’t made many friends because my family had only moved to Kansas City a few months before graduation. So, no one noticed when I disappeared.”
“No one? Does anyone know where you are?” he asks pointedly.
“No. I think my parents moved away after they kicked me out, so I was completely alone until Carter. Then he isolated me, only showing me off at his work events when it suited him. Those were infrequent, so I doubt anyone’s thought twice about my absence.
He could easily dispel any suspicion by saying I was home sick or taking care of Everly.
“He liked to boast about being the ultimate family man, when in reality, he only valued us as pieces he could move across a chess board. I was Mrs. Carter Whitaker, because that’s all I was anymore. My identity disappeared. I only existed in relation to him.
“Before we were married, he called me Mia, like I asked him to, after explaining why the name Amelia hurt me. The only people who ever called me Amelia were those who didn’t respect me, love me, or even notice me.
Once we were married, he only called me Amelia, saying it was more sophisticated, that ‘Mia’ was childish.
He never missed an opportunity to make me feel less than him,” I explain.
Greyson processes this information by his resumed pacing.
“Everly wasn’t in preschool?” he asks, not judgmentally, but straight to the point.
“No, Carter didn’t think it was necessary. He never let me use a babysitter or anything of the sort. So aside from our neighbors and his family, I don’t think anyone even knows Everly and I exist,” I admit.
“Wouldn’t his family be concerned having not seen you in all these months?”
A derisive laugh escapes me, resentment giving me the courage to meet his eyes.
“Apparently, marriage was a condition for them to release the remainder of Carter’s trust fund.
I was a pawn, nothing more than an object to be shuffled around.
The extent they concerned themselves with me was if I was keeping their secrets.
They were kind enough to Everly, but they nor Carter were warm or affectionate with her. ”
“Did you try for her?”
“No. I got pregnant soon after the wedding. I wasn’t on birth control. I didn’t even have a doctor. He told me husbands didn’t need to wear condoms…let alone ask permission.”
“I’ll fucking kill him,” Greyson seethes, almost like a promise.
I don’t respond, because what would I even say?
“I’ll never know if getting me pregnant was an accident he used to his advantage, or part of a well thought out plan to keep me tied to him and eager to submit.
“Even during the most turbulent seas of my adolescence, never did I think I’d be a mother at nineteen, married to a man fifteen years my senior—trapped.
Everything I thought I knew about my new husband had been a fabrication.
He presented himself as a sweet, kind man who’d fallen head over heels for me after a chance meeting.
“I spent every night for years agonizing over if our meeting was chance at all, or if he preyed on my vulnerability. It was all too easy for him to lie about his age, values, and dreams. He fed into every insecurity I had beautifully. The ultimate con.”
I take a deep breath in through my nose and exhale slowly, the wreckage of my life weighing heavily on my chest.
“He got his wish. A young, docile wife who wouldn’t dare talk back or stand up to him. I was barely older than a child, and he was a grown man who used his status, age, and physical stature to intimidate me into unquestioning obedience.”
Purging seven years of poison from my body has left me with a gaping wound, bloody and raw. After long moments of silence Greyson stops the recording on his phone and sits beside me on the couch.
He sets his phone on the cushion between us without looking at me.
“It’s up to you. Save it. Delete it. Text it to yourself. I’ll support you any way I can.”
I save the recording and text it to myself. I don’t know if I’ll ever use it, or need to use it, but I’m grateful for it. For Greyson.