Chapter 38
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
JULIETTE
I can’t stand across from him and talk to him about this—about my past, my life, and the world I’ve lived in for years. About running, barely scraping by, and being scared shitless for far too long.
Walking over to the bed, I sink down on the edge and place my hands in my lap. I don’t know what I expect, but it’s not for him to walk to the closet and drag out a chair that’s pressed against the wall, placing it in front of me.
He sinks down, his thighs spread, his elbows on those spread thighs, and his gaze focused on me and only me.
“Talk,” he grinds out.
He doesn’t look mad. His eyes are focused on mine, but he is clearly focused. His voice is growly, his tone is sharp, so if I were to close my eyes, I’d probably think he’s pissed at me, but looking into his eyes, I don’t see anger. I see concern. Even if I can detect the bite of anger.
“Victor and I met ten years ago when I was nineteen. I thought he was the one. The most perfect guy I’d ever met,” I begin.
Slade doesn’t say anything. He continues to focus on me, watch me, wait for me to say what I need to say, the way I need to say it. There’s no sugarcoating what Victor did to me, and Slade wants it all for the sake of his son. He deserves it all, too.
“My homelife wasn’t great. When I turned eighteen, my parents made me pay rent to live with them. Victor offered to let me stay at his place. I took him up on it. I thought it was the chance of a lifetime. I thought it was my future.”
“But it wasn’t,” Slade states.
“No,” I whisper. “It wasn’t. It was a living hell. He isolated me from anyone and everyone I could possibly come into contact with. Then he started hitting me. Then it became some kind of sick, sexual thing. He would do things to me—make me crawl, naked. Use my body for hours and sometimes days.”
I’ve never actually said any of this out loud before. I’ve thought it a million times, analyzed it all in my head more times than I could ever count. But spoken about it? Never. Even with Alex and Elodie, I only gave them the basics.
“I don’t know what to do here, Jules.”
I can tell he’s got a lot going on right now. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. My lips twitch into a smirk, but only for a moment. Clearing my throat, I continue.
“I stayed longer than I should have. Like an idiot, I believed him all the times he said he was sorry and it would never happen again, even when I was bruised and couldn't walk for a week. I knew I didn’t love him about a year into it. I didn’t stay because I thought I loved him. I stayed because I was terrified.”
Inhaling a deep breath, I hold it for a moment. My eyes fill with tears, but not because I’m sad about what happened. I’m angry at myself for not leaving sooner. The rest of the story is where I’m pretty sure this relationship is over.
“I left LA, but by then, it was too late,” I whisper. “He thought he owned me. He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t even like me, but he thinks he owns me,” I hiss.
“What happened when you left?” he asks.
No doubt he already knows the answer to that, but I need to tell him in my own words. I don’t want him to think that this is over by any means, because I know that Victor hasn’t decided to just give up. That’s not who he is.
I go on to explain that every time I ran, Victor would drag me back, and once I was healed enough to run again, that’s what I did. And that I ended up in Vegas, hoping I would be a small enough fish in a big enough pond that he wouldn’t find me.
But he did.
Every single time.
And the night before I came here, he’d found me. “My car broke down right outside Boulder City. I walked to the first gas station and called a tow. It wasn’t worth fixing, but the tow truck driver gave me a ride to the motel, and I let him keep the car for scrap metal.”
“And you haven’t seen him here yet?” Slade asks.
Shaking my head a couple of times, I press my lips together, rubbing them.
“I didn’t think about this before, but it hit me that he has to have been tracking me somehow.
I’ve been careful about only working under the table, not having utilities or bills mailed.
Everything is by email. So either there was something on my piece-of-shit car or my phone. ”
Slade growls, but he doesn’t say anything. “Alex helped me get a new phone and destroy my old one.”
“Thank fuck for that,” he barks.
Then, as if he’s done with the conversation—maybe even with me—he stands so fast the chair behind him goes flying. He turns his back to me, walking away, but stops almost as abruptly.
Slowly, he turns to face me and dips his chin slightly, his eyes looking directly into mine. I suck in a breath, holding it as I wait for him to end what’s just begun because I know it’s coming. It has to be, because there is no way in hell he wants all this drama.