Her gaze drops to the headphone box, and she traces over the picture on the front.
“I’m guessing it wasn’t the headphones themselves that caused the panic attack. Am I right? Headphones don’t scare you?”
She slowly nods but still doesn’t look at me. “He used to give me presents. It was part of the cycle.”
He, who?“What cycle?”
“According to Robyn, it’s called trauma bond. During the good times with my husband, he would shower me with gifts and affection. That’s why when he first hit me, I was surprised. He’d never done anything like that before. He’d been a great boyfriend and husband.”
Jess swallows, and her gaze returns to the windshield and whatever she’s staring at. “After he hit me, he apologized, said it had been a bad day at work. He promised it wouldn’t happen again. You know how it goes. He showered me with gifts and affection to make up for it. Things were fine after that…until the abuse cycle started. The hitting, the mean comments that made me feel bad about myself, followed by the period of gifts and intimacy and affection.”
Jess continues looking out the window as she traces over the surface of the headphone box. “Robyn told me the gifts and the periods of affection and intimacy were positive reinforcement.”
“Positive reinforcement for what?”
“The gifts and affection…” Jess turns her face to me. “According to Robyn, they caused my body to release dopamine. That’s like a happy hormone.”
The role of the hormone does sound familiar.
“Dopamine creates feelings of pleasure and can lead to addiction,” Jess explains. “The gifts and physical affection diminished the emotional hurt from the abuse, and that made it harder for me to leave my husband. Everything I did to try to please him was because I was desperate for that dopamine rush. Only I didn’t know it at the time.”
Shit.And here I am giving her noise-canceling headphones. I want to make her life easier, and her asshole of a dead husband has made that impossible. She’s scared of falling into that cycle of abuse again.
And now I have something new to worry about with Jess. It’s not just inadvertently setting off a PTSD trigger I have to worry about. She’s like a delicate flower poking through the pavement. Easily missed and stepped on. Easily damaged or destroyed, even though that’s not what I had intended.
“How about we start over? Those are my headphones”—I point to the box on her lap—“but I’m lending them to you if you want, so you can work on your book outside and not be bothered by the protesters?”
She worries her bottom lip. “That might work.” A small smile breaks through on her face. “It was a sweet gesture, Troy. And if I had been any other woman, you would have gotten a different response.” She leans in and kisses me on the cheek.
I want more than the chaste kiss. I want to pull her onto my lap and kiss her until her breaths come in fast but for a different reason this time. But I’m not sure if Jess also wants that, so I don’t push it.
I just keep reminding myself that Jess is like no other woman in so many ways.
She’s a woman who’s worth taking the time to get to know and fall in love with. A woman who’s still confronting so many challenges because of her past.
A woman who’s dealing with so many losses—some of which she’s unsure if she’ll ever be able to move on from.
* * *
“I’ll be back in a moment.”Jess’s breath brushes my ear. “I just need some air.”
She gets up from Zara’s couch and walks to the balcony door. Bailey goes with her.
I can’t leave tomorrow morning. All week, I’ve been hoping the protesters will be gone before the next Warriors weekend, but it seems they’re committed to the cause. And I won’t be here to protect her.
Jess steps onto the balcony and closes the door behind her.
Zara is in the kitchen. Emily, Kellan, Lucas, and Garrett are sitting on the couch and armchairs discussing…I have no idea what. I haven’t been paying attention.
Simone walks over from the kitchen island with a glass of white wine in her hand and sits next to me. Her gaze goes to Jess. “I’d ask you if she’s okay,” Simone says, her voice low, “but clearly she isn’t.”
“It’s been a rough week for her. And it won’t get any easier if things don’t change with those idiots outside her house.”
“Do they ever go home?”
I nod, the movement robotic. “Fortunately, they’re not nocturnal. She gets a break from them at night, but they’re waiting for her first thing in the morning when I pick her up.”
“Why doesn’t she sleep at your place?”
