Page 153 of Cross Checked
The fact that she could say something like that with the same voice she used to order coffee should’ve been impossible, but somehow that was just Bliss.
I rubbed a hand across my jaw. “If it comes to that—and I don’t know if it will—guys like that usually jump on the first plea deal that offers protective custody.”
Her eyes flickered toward mine. “But?”
I pulled her closer automatically. “But if they give me a witness stand, Pip, it’s going to be historical.”
That earned the faintest twitch of her mouth.
Good.
I wanted every smile I could get tonight. Even the tiny ones. Especially the tiny ones. I kissed the top of her head andpulled the blanket higher around us while she settled against my side.
“He made everything feel confusing,” she whispered. “One minute he’d tell me I was beautiful and special, and the next he’d be furious about what I wore or who I talked to or whether somebody else looked at me too long.”
The rage came back immediately. Not the loud kind or the kind that burned hot and disappeared just as fast. This was something colder and far more deliberate. The kind of anger that sat quietly in the corner of my mind taking notes.
“Around my family, he was perfect,” she continued. “Always helpful. Always charming. Always there. And nobody knew. I agreed they wouldn’t understand our connection. He was twenty and I was barely fifteen, and my young heart believed every lie. He banked on that, knowing I would never tell them what was happening.”
I looked down at her where she was curled against my side, blonde hair spilling across the pillow and hiding the bruise she kept pretending wasn’t there. She’d spent half her life surviving things that should’ve broken her and somehow still showed up every day armed with a joke and enough sunshine to blind a small village.
And holy shit.
For the first time all night, I realized she wasn’t telling me this because she needed me to understand Luke.
She was telling me because she finally wanted somebody to understand her.
“Keep talking,” I said quietly.
She nodded, and I watched my thumb move against her hip in slow circles while she gathered herself.
“I kept thinking if I loved him enough, he’d stop being angry and mean all the time,” she whispered. “By the time Iwas seventeen, I realized there was nothing resembling human decency in him.”
The sadness in her voice hit harder than the anger ever could have. She wasn’t describing a monster anymore. She was describing disappointment. The kind that only came after years of believing in something that had never existed in the first place. Listening to her, I realized the thing that still hurt wasn’t who Luke was.
It was the moment she finally understood who he wasn’t.
Silence settled between us while she stared at the blanket gathered over our legs.
Then she abruptly sat upright, like one second she was curled against my side and the next she was bolt upright because somebody had launched an idea directly into her bloodstream.
“Pip.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh my gosh.”
That tone never led anywhere normal.
“What?”
She threw the blanket off herself. “I want to show you something.”
I sighed. Of course she did. Ten seconds ago, we were discussing felony-level trauma. Now she looked excited. “That sentence concerns me.”
“It should.”
“Fantastic.”
She pointed toward the living room. “Come on.”
