Chapter 21 Daisy #2
"He cried after," I continue. "Held me and sobbed and promised it would never happen again. And I believed him, because I wanted to believe him, because the alternative was admitting that I'd wasted a year of my life on someone who could do that to me."
"That's not—" Adam stops himself. Takes a breath. "Can I say something, or do you need me to just listen?"
"Go ahead."
"That wasn't wasted time. You were surviving. You were doing what you had to do with the information you had. That's not weakness, Daisy. That's being human."
The tears come before I can stop them. Hot and sudden, sliding down my cheeks and stinging the cuts there.
"I was with him for two years in all," I whisper. "By the end, there were broken dishes and black eyes and promises that tomorrow would be different. I got good at makeup. Got good at lying. Got good at believing him when he said no one else would ever want me."
"What made you leave?"
I close my eyes. "He put me in the hospital.
Told them I fell down the stairs, and they believed him because he was so concerned, so attentive, such a loving boyfriend.
But the nurse, she saw right through it.
She gave me a card for a shelter three counties away and told me that falling down the stairs doesn't leave handprints on your throat. "
"Jesus, Daisy."
"I packed one bag while he was passed out drunk. I was so scared I threw up twice before I could even get to my car. And then I drove until I couldn't drive anymore, and I stayed at that shelter for two months while I figured out how to be a person again."
Adam reaches across the console, his hand hovering near mine. "Can I touch you?"
I nod, and his fingers close around mine, warm and steady.
"I reported him," I say. "I know… I know a lot of women don't, and I don't judge them for it, because I understand how hard it is.
But the shelter had advocates, and they helped me, and I went to the police and I told them everything.
They took pictures of my injuries. They documented the hospital visits. And then I testified."
Adam goes very still. "You testified."
"At his trial. Sat in that courtroom and looked at him and told the jury exactly what he did to me. Every detail. Every bruise. Every lie he made me believe." I squeeze his hand hard enough to hurt. "He went to prison for assaulting me. His release is why the missed notification mattered."
"I didn't know." Adam's voice is barely a whisper. "You told me he hurt you. I knew that much. I should have listened when you first tried to tell me about the flowers."
"You were busy."
"Don't." He turns to face me fully, and the guilt on his face is carved so deep it looks like a wound.
"Don't make excuses for me. I should have asked.
I should have listened. You tried to tell me about the flowers, and I filed it away and moved on because actually dealing with it would have meant being present, and I was too much of a coward for that. "
"Adam—"
"No, let me say this. Please." He takes my other hand, holding both of them like they matter more than anything.
"I have spent five years being physically in our marriage and emotionally somewhere else.
You have been carrying this alone because I made it clear, over and over, that my attention was too valuable to waste on your past. That is not your fault. That is mine."
"You couldn't have known he would come back."
"I should have known you were scared. I should have paid attention to my own wife." His voice breaks on the word. "You are the strongest person I have ever met, and I let you feel like you had to be strong alone. I will never forgive myself for that."
I don't know what to say. Part of me wants to absolve him, to smooth this over the way I smooth everything over. But another part, the part that spent two months in a shelter learning that my pain was allowed to matter, won't let me.
"I needed you," I say quietly. "I needed you to ask. To notice. To care about something other than work for five minutes."
"I know."
"And you weren't there."
"I know." He brings my hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to my knuckles.
"I can't undo that. I can't fix it by saying the right thing tonight.
But I can promise you that I am here now, and I am not going anywhere, and I will spend however long it takes earning back the trust I should never have lost."
"It's going to take time."
"I have time."
"It might not be enough. Saying the right words, being here tonight, that doesn't erase five years of feeling invisible."
"I know." He meets my eyes, and there's no defense there, no justification.
Just grief and determination and a look terrifyingly like love.
"You're allowed to be angry at me. You're allowed to need more than I can give right now.
You're allowed to not forgive me, Daisy.
I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm asking for the chance to show you that I can be different. "
I look at him for a long moment. This man I married. This stranger I'm only just beginning to know.
"I was scared tonight," I say. "In that cabin. I was so scared I could barely breathe."
"You don't have to be brave with me. Not anymore. Not ever."
"I'm not being brave." I pull one hand free to wipe my eyes. "I'm being honest. I was terrified. And the thing that kept me going, the thing that made me believe I could survive it, was knowing that you would come."
Adam's face crumples.
"I thought about you the whole time," I whisper. "About the dinosaur nuggets, and the way you look at me in the morning, and how you held me during the snowstorm. I thought: he will find me. He will come. And you did."
"Daisy—"
"So no. I don't forgive you. Not yet. But I'm choosing to believe that you can be the person you were tonight. That's the man I want to be married to. That's the man I want to know."
He leans across the console and presses his forehead to mine. We stay like that for a long moment, breathing the same air, our hands tangled together.
"What happens now?" I ask instead. "With Cole, I mean."
"He's being charged with kidnapping, assault, whatever else they can make stick.
Gray helped me find legal support for you.
And I've already talked to a victims' advocacy attorney who specializes in cases like this.
She can help you navigate the legal process, make sure you're protected, make sure your voice is heard. "
"You did all that tonight?"
"I made some calls from the hospital." He shrugs like it's nothing.
"Adam."
"I can't guarantee he'll be locked up forever.
I wish I could. The justice system is broken in about a thousand ways, and money can only buy so much.
But I can promise that you'll have every resource, every expert, every support I can possibly provide.
And if you want to make a public statement, or if you want to stay completely private, that's your choice. Not mine, not the company's. Yours."
My chest feels tight. "You're not going to tell me what to do?"
"I'm going to ask what you want and then help you get it. That's the job."
I laugh, and it comes out wet. "That's not a job, Adam. That's just… being a decent person."
"Then I'm going to be a decent person." He reaches over, slow enough that I can pull away if I want to, and wipes a tear from my cheek with his thumb. "I know I wasn't before. I know I let you down in ways I'm still discovering. But I'm here now, and I'm not going anywhere unless you tell me to."
I should probably say something smart, a line about boundaries and not rushing into anything, about needing time to process what just happened. Instead, I unbuckle my seatbelt and lean across the center console and wrap my arms around him.
He's careful with me, so careful it makes my heart hurt, pulling me closer while avoiding my bandaged wrists, tucking my head under his chin, murmuring things I can't quite make out against my hair.
I breathe in the smell of him, hospital antiseptic and underneath it the scent that's just Adam, and for the first time since Cole grabbed me in that alley, I feel safe.
"Thank you," I whisper against his chest. "For finding me. For showing up."
When he lifts his head, his eyes are wet. Adam Smith, crying in a hospital parking lot at midnight because his wife is safe. "Rule one," he says, his voice cracked. "Show up. Every time. No matter what."
I kiss him.
It's gentle for one heartbeat. Then a floodgate gives, wider than grief: need, sharp and alive, the kind that demands proof that my body still belongs to me and not to a cabin and a knife and a man who tried to unmake me.
"Back seat," I whisper against his mouth. "Please. I need… Adam, I need you to remind me I'm alive. Careful, but real. The careful you give someone alive."
He searches my face in the hospital-lot dark. Rain sheets the windshield and turns the sodium lights to watercolor. His stitched forearm rests between us like a bright reminder of what showing up cost.
"You're sure?" His voice is wrecked. "After everything, with your bandages and your wrists. If you want to stop at any second—"
"I'll say stop." I already have tears on my cheeks again. "Right now I'm saying please. Put me in your lap. Let me feel you. Let me choose this."
"Then we choose it."
He gets out, comes around, opens my door like the night is a ceremony.
Rain needles our hair. We climb into the back seat of his car (leather cold, space tight for a man his size) and he settles with his injured arm angled carefully along the top of the seat.
I straddle him. The parking lot is empty enough.
The rain is a curtain. My bandaged wrists rest lightly on his shoulders; he guides them there himself so I won't brace wrong.
"Tell me if anything hurts," he murmurs. "Your wrists, your cheek, any of it. I will stop mid-breath."
"Your arm—"