Chapter 38 - THEO
THEO
This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.
The storm howling outside sounds so soothing from the couch, and the dim firelight illuminates Alex, warm and soft and perfect beneath me. We’re so fucking connected right now. I know she’s still scared, but I can see how she feels when she looks up at me.
She loves me, too.
“Alex?” My voice is barely audible, and I can see on her face that she knows what I’m going to say.
Her eyes go wide and tear up, and she starts sobbing.
For a split second, I’m thrilled she’s so overwhelmed with happiness, but I go cold when I realize she’s not crying tears of joy.
I pull out of her and hold her close, shushing her, touching her, trying to soothe her and ignore the panic I’m feeling.
This can’t be her reaction. She’s a fucking wreck.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” She buries her face in her hands and sobs, her body heaving in my arms. She hasn’t cried like this in a while, maybe ever.
She loves me, I know she does, so there has to be something else going on.
It takes her a long time, but eventually she calms down enough to take a few deep breaths, pulling out of my arms and facing me. I reach for her immediately, but she backs away.
“Honey, what’s going on?” She looks at me with a devastated expression and shakes her head, wiping her cheeks. “Please talk to me. What happened? Everything was going so perfectly.” I wince at how desperate I sound, but Alex doesn’t seem to notice. She just stares at me, her bottom lip trembling.
“That’s the problem, Theo,” she whispers. “Everything going perfectly is making me fucking miserable.” Ice courses through my blood. That can’t be true. She finally adjusted to our relationship, and she’s been so happy since then.
She’s not miserable, she’s just not.
“I don’t understand.” She sighs and looks into the fire, chewing on her bottom lip and crying softly. She seems torn about what she wants to say, opening her mouth and closing it several times, but eventually, she closes her eyes, nods to herself, and takes a deep breath.
She seems like she’s steeling herself for something, which makes me nervous.
“Theo, I didn’t stay married to Danny for nine years because things were always bad.
You know that, right?” She looks at me and must see on my face that I didn’t know that, and she sighs.
“I know it’s probably easier for you to think he’s just some horrible bastard, which he is, but he’s also the only reason I didn’t kill myself after my parents died.
“I was so fucking lost, and he came into my life and made everything worse, but I let him make choices for me and take care of me and he let me completely withdraw into myself. It took me years to realize that it wasn’t good for me, that he’d let me isolate myself in a way that made controlling me easier, but at the time, it was all I wanted. ”
My knee starts bouncing quickly, and I can feel my shoulders tense. I don’t understand why she’s telling me all of this, but it’s making me really fucking uncomfortable.
She looks over at my leg and smiles sadly.
“Danny, at his best, was a provider. He grew up working class, and his dad died when he was eighteen, so he felt like it was his job to take care of everything. He got a decent job and took care of his mom and his little brother, and after his mom died, he made it his job to take care of his aunts and his cousins however he could. When he met me, he wanted to take care of me, too. He was really controlling, and it only got worse over time, but if I toed the line, he made my life easier. He could also be sweet when he wanted to be, and I was happy sometimes.”
It feels like she’s just hit me over the head with a bat. That can’t be true. She can’t possibly have been happy with Danny. He was fucking abusive, so there’s no way. She takes in the shocked look on my face and raises her eyebrows, looking down at her hands and exhaling hard.
“Look, anytime Danny lost his shit and hurt me and made me apologize the way he liked, he’d feel so guilty afterward, and my life would become extremely easy.
He’d apologize and dote on me and feel so ashamed that he’d take on extra shifts at work so he didn’t have to see me.
Danny likes to stay really busy, so I had a lot of time to myself anyway, but if he felt guilty for hurting me, it was basically like I lived alone.
I got to do whatever I wanted, within reason.
I took online classes, I read, I helped organize precinct fundraisers, I worked out, I had a book club with his coworkers’ wives, and I spent pretty much every Saturday shopping and going to movies and restaurants by myself.
It was fucking great, honestly.” She laughs humorlessly, pressing her forehead against her knees for a moment before she curls in on herself tighter, resting her chin on her knees and staring into the fire.
“That would go on for weeks or months before he’d be around more, and then he’d start getting angry about everything again.
I tried to do everything to keep him from getting mad at me.
I looked the way he liked, I played nice with his friends’ wives, I endured his family with a smile, I let him fuck me whenever he wanted, everything.
I was on my best behavior all the fucking time, and it was never enough.
Any time he’d get mad at me, I’d get angry with myself for being this absolute fuckup, and it always kind of felt like I deserved what happened to me.
I know that’s not true, but I felt that way for a long time.
” She takes a deep breath and wipes her cheeks with her palms quickly.
I want to touch her, to comfort her, but I feel frozen. She’s sharing so much with me, but something about how she’s acting has me extremely on edge.
“Theo, the point I’m trying to make is that things going well sometimes made it easy for me to pretend things were normal.
I was able to ignore what was wrong and occasionally buy into the fantasy that my marriage was good.
I was still trapped in it, still fucking miserable, but I got to lie to myself most of the time.
” She looks at me and shakes her head, sighing.
“Now I’m trapped here with you, but I can’t lie to myself about it. ” Shock and indignation flood my body.
I can’t believe she’s comparing me to her fucking husband.
“I’m not like that, Alex. This relationship isn’t like that.” She levels me with a pitying look that sets my teeth on edge.
“I know you care about me, Theo, and I don’t think you mean to be the way you are, but you’re more delusional than I thought if you can’t see how hard you worked to trap me here.” What she’s saying doesn’t make sense, but a chill runs down my spine at her words anyway.
“You know, Danny was the wrong person at the right time. I was young, and I had just lost my parents. I needed somebody, and he took advantage of that to create a situation that worked for him. That’s not how he sees it, but that’s what happened.
He had some level of access to me, though.
You came out of fucking nowhere. You stalked me, you figured out that I was vulnerable, you inserted yourself into my life, and you’ve used the fact that I’m hiding to keep me under your thumb.
” My temper flares, hot and sharp in my core.
Why does she keep lying to herself like this?
That’s not what’s happened between us, not at all.
“I didn’t fucking do that,” I snap.
“Yeah, you did, and you did a great job,” she snaps back.
“You knew I would run and found a way to stop me. You knew if I went to the cops, I’d have to use my real identity and Danny would find me.
I know you know who he is, Theo. I know you know about my life in Boston, my real name, my parents, all of it.
I’m sure you’ve known everything since before you broke into my house, and you used all of it to trap me here with you.
” Something inside me cracks slightly, and anxiety buzzes under my skin.
Is that what she thinks happened? She’s so wrong about this.
I mean, she’s not wrong about some of it, but I didn’t do all of that.
I shake my head at her, too anxious to talk, and she looks over at the fireplace and lets out a long sigh.
“My only options now are to go home to my husband, who’ll kill me because I ran away, or stay here with you, and you’ll kill me when you don’t get what you want. It’s him or you, but it ends the same for me.” I look at her incredulously, my heart sinking.
Is she seriously fucking afraid of me?
“I…Alex, I wouldn’t…no,” I force out, and she gives me a tight, sad little smile.
“I believe you think you won’t hurt me, but I can’t trust you.
You’re violent and delusional and wound so fucking tightly that you’ll snap the second you realize you can’t ever have what you want from me, which will happen soon.
” Tears prick behind my eyes, and I try to hold them back.
I can’t believe she’s saying these things.
I’m not like that at all.
“Sweetie, what the fuck?” Alex reaches out for my hand, squeezing hard.
I’m so confused and hurt and angry right now, but I twine my fingers through hers and hold on tightly, focusing on the feel of her skin against mine.
She gives our joined hands a conflicted look as she runs her thumb against mine soothingly.