Page 63 of This Life of Mine

She presses a hand to her mouth.

“And I believed him,” she whispers. “But he was only arranging a grand production. I thought I was helping. I thought I was protecting you and whatever regret you might have for leaving agood thing.”

Her eyes fill. “I helped convince you to stay. Every time. God! What the fuck was I thinking?”

The words linger between us, weighty and devastating.

“I didn’t realize he was manipulating both of us,” she says. “Using me—your best friend—to keep you where he wanted you. And now, after seeing that video…after seeing who he really is—“

Her voice cracks fully now.

“It kills me, Lina. Knowing I played a part in keeping you there.”

I step closer. “You didn’t know, and you didn’t. I stayed all on my own,” I say quietly.

“But I should have known,” she insists. “I should have questioned it. The way he always controlled what you wore. How he controlled where you could go and who you could be around. In some weird way I thought it was his way of loving you. But saying that all out loud, I can see how fucked up it really is.”

She drags her hands down her face.

“Seeing the video made it click,” she says. “That wasn’t new behavior; it was just the first time it wasn’t hidden.”

She observes me, the sorrow and disappointment within herself is written all over her face.

“And you lived with that for fifteen years,” she whispers. “Starting when you were sixteen. You were only a fucking kid, Lina.”

Kidresonates more than I anticipated. It catches me somewhere deep, in a place I didn’t know still existed. I let the word linger between us, quietly claiming a part of me.

“Yes,” I say.

She gives a small nod. “I don’t know how you didn’t lose yourself.”

“I did,” I answer honestly. “More than once.”

Val nods, absorbing that.

“I hope you realize,” she says firmly, “I don’t see you as weak. I see someone who survived something most people don’t recognize as threatening until it’s too late.”

I meet her gaze. “I refuse to be pitied,” I say.

She nods. “I know.”

“I’m angry,” I tell her. “And I’m allowed to be. But I won’t live in misery. If I do, I’d never get back up. And I worked too hard to find myself again.”

She steps forward and grips my hands.

“I see it now,” she says. “All of it. The words. The intimidation. The obsession.”

“And it ends here,” she adds. “For good.”

The first time Cole used cruel words towards me was six months into dating. By then, he’d already made sure I was head over heels.

I was sixteen—young enough to believe intensity meant love, old enough to believe being chosen by someone so certain of me meant I’d found forever.

He was nineteen. Older. Confident and experienced. Attentive and flattering.

I didn’t see it as grooming. I didn’t have the language for that yet.

The words came out of his mouth so heated and sudden.