“Because you didn’t look surprised. Or scared. Or even remotely caught off guard.” After the fact, that’s the part thatfreaked me out the most. “On the contrary. You looked calm. Even calculated. Like you knew exactly how you would respond.”
Finally, she puts down her knife and looks up at me. “He never hit me,” she starts, “but he threw something at me once. And another time, he grabbed me and walked me across the room, kind of like he did today.”
“You’re saying that like him not specifically hitting you makes what he did less of a big deal. It’s a big fucking deal, Kenley.”
She sighs and curls her lower lip in over her teeth, biting on it before she goes on. “Ididused to think it wasn’t that big of a deal.” She puts up her hand, gesturing for me to zip it when I open my mouth at the sound of those words. “I told him, that day he threw something at me, the only reason I was forgiving him and letting it go, was because it didn’t physically hurt. I thought somehow, that made it different. And for a long, long time,years even, after I understood that the mental and emotional abuse he put me through was just as much considered domestic violence as physically beating the shit out of me on a regular basis, I still thought what I dealt with wasn’t that bad. That it wasn’treallydomestic violence. BecauseI wasn’tgetting the shit beat out of me on a regular basis. How could I possibly compare my situation to what other women have had to survive...what many of them didn’t. Still don’t.”
“Kenley.” I want to say a million different things to her. But I can’t get any of them out because suddenly all I can think is how I was living in a world in which I could have lost her at any given moment leading up the one I finally crossed paths with her. And I had no idea.
“Wasn’t until after I found a way to get out with Sloan that I was talking to this woman about my marriage and why I had left. I thought I was being pretty vague, though I probably implied certain things...but then she just came right out and saidthe words,‘so, you’ve been living with domestic violence’and it just struck me like a fucking lightning bolt. Like, that was some stranger’s definition of my life. And I argued, and said, ‘oh, he never hit me. It wasn’tviolent.’”
She pauses and it’s the first I see how much this is getting to her. Up until this very second, she had all those feelings perfectly shut down. And even as I’m fighting the urge to rush to her, to hold her, I make a mental note to remember, there will be times down the road, she’ll hide from me, and I’ll have to look extra close to find her, buried under all that numb detachment.
I grip the counter, forcing myself to allow her space to say her piece without having to consider my feelings on top of her own.
“Then she told me something I’d never heard. That this huge percentage of women living in domestic violence situations never get hit because they learn early on where the threshold is, and how not to push past it with their abusive partners.” Tears roll down her cheeks, but she continues, “That was the first time, after over ten years of living with him, that I realized I’d been scared the whole time. That she was right. That I always,always, made sure to deescalate the situation when it started to get out of hand. And that there was one night, one explosive night, I thought I’d fucked up and pushed it too far. All I remember thinking the whole time he was getting in my face was, ‘Don’t look down. Keep your eyes locked on his, keep your head up. And don’t fucking look down’.” Her face tightens and her lips tremble, threatening to surrender to all the feelings I know must be raging within her. “So, you’re right. I was calm when he grabbed me today. I was calculated. Because I’ve been actively avoiding having the shit beat out of me for over a decade and I’m a fucking pro at it now.”
KENLEY
I wipe at my face with the backs of both of my hands, repeatedly sighing loudly. I’m a mess. Two years I’ve been working on cleaning my shit up, and here I am, chaos still spilling out of me, just as unhealed as ever.
“I don’t believe he’d physically hurt Sloan,” I explain, still sniffing. “But he does plenty of damage just the same. I just can’t fucking do anything about it.” I don’t think he’s a physical threat in general. If I did, I’d sure as hell do my part to put a stop to him. I think most people succumb to his manipulations fairly easily, and even then, he’s not likely to stay invested for long. He gets bored or his lies get too convoluted for him to keep up with, and he moves on. Why I was so fucking special, I’m not sure I’ll ever know. Maybe because he couldn’t ever quite snuff me out. And maybe, the fact I stayed feral while caged, made me all the more valuable among his trophies.
“You do plenty about it,” he says quietly. “She knew to call you as soon as things went south, knew you’d show up to get her. Take the brunt of his anger and shield her from it. And you still managed to spin all of his bullshit in a way that kept her from taking it on herself and left him sitting pretty enough to keep his relationship with her, even when he sure as shit doesn’t deserve it,” he growls at the end and an unfamiliar sort of gratitude swells within me to hear him so protective of us both.
“It’s a balancing act,” I explain, still struggling to swallow back all the feelings coursing through me since we started this conversation. “Allowing her to see enough of who he is to keep from being caught in his games, but not letting her see so much that it destroys their relationship. Because, hard as it may be to see sometimes, there are good parts too. And she deserves to have a father. Even if she has to learn to sift through the bullshit to find the gems. At least for now. Someday, in the future, when she’s grown and a judge can’t force her otherwise, she can choose to cut ties with him. And she knows that. We’vetalked about that. But for now, she has to learn to navigate the relationship as is.”
“She’s lucky she has you.”
I nod. People like to say that. I’m not always sure how true it is.
“I’m lucky I have her.” In the end, I’ll never care what he put me through, because I got her. And that made everything worth it.
“You have me, too,” he murmurs softly, gradually making his way around the counter to meet me. “Both of you. You both have me.”
“Sure you don’t have some sort of hero complex that’s kicking into overdrive right about now?” I tease, trying to make light of the situation. He ignores my efforts.
“The only thing kicking into overdrive right now, is how totally and completely I’m falling for you here,” he rasps just as he’s close enough to wrap both arms around me. “And it has nothing to do with wanting to be your hero, but you should know, right goddamn now, that I am. And will be. And there’s not a single fucking thing you can do to stop me. Got it?”
“Got it,” I whisper, gazing up into his blue eyes. They’re darker than normal. Like there’s a beautiful storm brewing within and it’s about to surface. And it has my name all of over it.
“Good.” He barely breathes the word. Then he sighs, and it sounds like a ragged painful breath coming out on a wave of hurt and regret. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.” He shakes his head slowly, forehead gently twisting against mine as he does. “I hate that I only just found you. That you had to handle all of it alone.”
“Any sooner and this might not even be happening.” I reach up to cup his face in both my palms. “Any sooner, and we wouldn’t have been the two people we were the moment we met. Any sooner, and we might have handled the situation differently. We might never have recognized each other at all.” Ikiss him and he returns the gesture in the most tender way. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Your timing was perfect.”
Then, slowly, I tilt my head away from his to eye his cutting board sitting abandoned across from mine. “Your dicing skills, however, could use a little work,” I tease, trying to get him to lighten up a bit again.
He groans dramatically. “Come on. Dicing tomatoes is a joke. They’re mushy and mostly liquid. As long as they’re bite-sized chunks by the time I’m done, what difference does it make?”
I laugh, in part because his antics are amusing and he’s not wrong about the mush factor, but mostly because I appreciate how willingly he left behind a topic I know he needed to discuss and will likely want to discuss more in the future, to honor my process of sharing it.
“You’ve obviously never prepared a meal for a teenager before,” I inform him, taking his hand to lead him back to his work station. “They’re picky, you know. Have all sorts of ridiculous, illogical requirements. Mine, for example, is somewhat obsessed with the texture of foods. And not in a welcoming way.” I grimace just in case he’s missing out on how over-the-top tragic it is when a displeasing texture lands on her tongue. And also, to make sure he knows it’s totally obnoxious to accommodate this insanity, but that it doesn’t stop me. Because it’s easy to accommodate. And because I have dumb things that matter to me too. “Point is,” I get back to his tomato chunks, “if she takes a bite of lasagna and ends up with a mouthful of mush attached to a large piece of rubbery tomato skin, it won’t be pretty.” I think about my choice of words and amend them, “Actually, visually there won’t be much to see. It’s more of an audible thing. We’ll hear about it. A lot. For a long time. Possibly days. And most definitely, every time we make lasagna moving forward, or anytime you and tomatoes are paired together in the future.”
He stares at his tomatoes for a minute. Then looks back at me. “So, how do I fix it?”
“Um,” I poke at the chunks with the tip of my knife, assessing the damage. “Today, I’m going to go with the food processor and just puree the shit out of it.”
He nods. “I like it. Let’s do that.”
