By the time I reach the door, she’s already asleep. My heart contracts at how beautiful she is, how peaceful. I’ve fought hard for that peace—to protect her from the violence that lived under the same roof we did the first year of her life. How many times did Caleb beat me, rape me with her just a wall away? And yet she hasn’t been touched by it. If there is one thing I got right, I hope it was preserving her innocence while he stripped mine away.
August stands and sets the book on her bedside table. He doesn’t otherwise move but stares down at her for long moments before bending to leave a kiss in her hair. My heart contracts again, harder, longer, watching him watching her. He loves her like his own. I know that. I also know he wants us here every night, all the time.
My beautiful prince in sweatpants.
His body has changed since I met him that night in a bar. He was leaner, lankier then. Playing in the NBA he has, by necessity, added more muscle, reduced his body fat to almost zero. The ridges of his abs, the chiseled line of his legs, and the cut of bicep where his shirt sleeve catches and strains prove it. All over, he’s harder and more defined.
So am I. Harder. Defined by all the things I’ve experienced and what it took to survive. I’ve been through a lot since I was a college senior on the verge of graduating. I’m not that bright-eyed girl in a bar whose biggest concern was bad calls by the refs. I’ve had a daughter. I’ve lived through hell. I’ve killed a man.
I will never be the same.
Some things imprint us so deeply, we can never return to what we were before. But would I want to? Sure, I’m more guarded, but I like to think I have more compassion because I’ve known true suffering, and I hurt when I see it in others. I may be more cynical, but I like to think I’m wiser, too.
When I told my story, some said I was a hero. I’m not. I’m just a woman who ended up in a bad relationship with a bad man and had to fight my way out of it. I did what I had to do to protect my daughter and to protect myself. That doesn’t make me special, but it does make me a survivor. It’s happening to women just like me and nothing like me all the time. To our neighbors, to our best friends, to our sisters. It’s happening behind closed doors, or even out in the open, documented in redacted police reports or in a million views on viral videos that we judge and poke at and debate.
Even when I shared my story, everyone had opinions. I should have left sooner. I should have pressed charges. Why didn’t I trust the system to “punish” him? Why didn’t I tell everyone? Was it really self-defense, or was it revenge?
If you’ve never had to fight for your life in your own home, if you’ve never had someone you thought loved you hurt you the most, then you don’t know. But I do. I know how it feels to wake up every day living in a nightmare and sleeping with a monster, and I told the world in my own words and on my own terms.
Maybe for women like me, after what we’ve lived through, what we almost died through, love is harder to come by. But itcancome. August is living proof that itcancome. Truly. Richly. After all I’ve been through, August is my reward.
When he sees me at the door, he startles a little, then grins and puts a finger to his lips, shushing me. He walks to the hall and closes the bedroom door.
“Don’t shush me,” I whisper-hiss with a smile.
“I don’t want you to wake her up.” He turns me by my shoulder and pops my bottom, making me squeak and jump a little. He urges me ahead of him down the hall. “I have plans for you.”
He walks behind me toward his bedroom, and I’d know his footfalls anywhere.
They sayI’d follow you to the ends of the earth.When he pauses, they sayI’ll wait until you’re ready. And he has. August has asked me to marry him three times in the last year, and every time I’ve said no. It has nothing to do with not trusting him, and everything to do with not trusting myself. I know that sounds weird and I can’t explain it, but these are the issues I work through in counseling.
“Plans?” I ask teasingly, turning to face him and walking backward. “What kind of plans, Mr. West?”
He gives me a gentle shove into his bedroom, closing and locking the door behind us. I’m immediately pressed into the door, crowded in the most delicious way by his big body. I’m crowded by his affection and pressed by his love. His hands, commanding and gentle, skim my sides and mold to my waist. He lifts my breasts with his thumbs. My breath hangs in my throat while I wait for a stroke across my nipples that never comes. He knows, damn him, grinning, his hands melting away. His fingers meet when he splays them across my back. He’s so much bigger. Someone standing behind him wouldn’t even see me on the other side of his broad shoulders. He’s a wall and a fortress. He’s twice my size, but I feel no fear. Only trust. Only sheltered.
“Road trips suck.” His chin, a sexy scruff of bristles, scrapes the curve of my neck and shoulder when he kisses me there. “I missed you.”
Cradling my head, he sinks his fingers into my hair and lowers his head to hover over my lips. For a few seconds, our breath mingles. We share the very air keeping us alive, and then our tongues touch, tease, and tangle. We torture each other with tiny licks and half-kisses until I need more, need to hold and clutch and grip him. I roam the hardness of his chest, caress his biceps, trace the strong sinew in his forearm, and search for his hands. I thread our fingers together, our palms fused by a connection as electric today as it was the night we met. He coaxes my off-the-shoulder sweatshirt completely off my shoulder, so my naked breast comes into view.
“Hmmmmm.” The hungry monosyllable rumbles in his chest, rattles behind his lips. He frees his hands to scoop under my arms and lift me until my feet leave the floor. The wet, velvety warmth of his mouth surrounding my breast, the tantalizing bite of teeth and suction at my nipple, leaves me boneless. I’m limp and suspended in the air while he drinks from me like a man dying of thirst.
“August.” My hips move reflexively, seeking friction, satisfaction. “Baby, come on.”
“What?” he mumbles around my breast, the vibration of the word tightening my nipples and causing my core to clench.
I lift and curl my legs around his waist, thrusting slowly, deliberately. I burrow my nose through the thick curls to whisper in his ear, “Fuck me.”
His mouth drifts to the other breast, swiping the areola lovingly with his tongue. With his hands sliding down to cup my ass, he walks us to the bed and lays me down gently. He stands there, watching me with the same protective reverence he watched my daughter, only there’s also lust in his eyes. Passion. Hunger.
Not releasing his gaze, I tug the sweatshirt over my head and work my arms free of the sleeves. My nipples peak in the cooler air, and he fixes his eyes there, a hard swallow bobbing his Adam’s apple.
I lift my hips an inch or so, just enough to hook my thumbs in my yoga pants and push them past my knees and over my toes. I toss them across the room and wait for his smile. He traces a finger over my purple and gold boy-short underwear.
“You little traitor,” he says with husky humor.
My reply is a throaty chuckle.
We both stop laughing when he grabs the panties at my hips and jerks them off, throwing them to join my discarded yoga pants in some corner. His face sobers, and there are embers in his eyes. I want to stoke them—to blow on them. To enflame him the way he burns through me, like gasoline in my veins. A blaze in my heart.
