Following Me (25 page)

“It’s…more than that,” she said,
fumbling for the words.  “It’s not like fate or soul mates because that makes
it sound silly, but it’s a sense of rightness of the way things are meant to
be.”

“Alright.  I’ll buy that,”
Garrett said.

He has no idea,
Devon
thought.

“Having that with someone opens
everything up.  Everything is on the table.  Trust isn’t even a consideration
because there could never be anything or anyone else.”

Garrett shifted uncomfortably.

“I know what you’re thinking,”
Devon said.

“I doubt it.”

“Well, tell me,” she insisted. 
This was hard enough without trying to read him, too.

“Sounds a bit like…obsession to
me.”

Devon sighed.  “That’s what I
thought you’d say.  I can’t explain it any other way, so try to be
open-minded,” she said. 
He would need to be open-minded.
  “I’m not sure
when it started exactly, but the sex changed.”

Garrett’s ears perked up at
that.  “Changed…for the worse?”

She shook her head.  “For the
better.”  Devon bit her lip.  When she saw that he was watching, she stopped. 
She couldn’t believe she was telling this story.

“Not to say the sex was bad
before because it wasn’t.  It was amazing.  In fact, I didn’t believe it could
get better.  But one day, it was one way, and the next day, I was being held to
the bed, forced to comply.”

“What?” Garrett snapped. 
“Forced?”

Devon nodded.  “I didn’t think I
would like it.  I mean, it sounds really bad.  It’s probably why I never talk
about it.”

“Isn’t that…rape?” he whispered.

“Don’t use that word,” she said
immediately, drawing her knees to her chest. 
Not that word.  Anything but
that word. 
“It wasn’t like that.”

“Okay, sorry.  I didn’t mean to
say…I don’t know what.  Just keep going,” he urged, brushing her blonde hair
away from her face.

She looked back up at him, and he
smiled.  Her mind blurred from the alcohol, and she scooted closer to him.  It
was better to feel him comforting her through this.  “So, after that started,
it never stopped.  It only escalated.  I don’t know if you want details—”

“If it helps you,” he said,
allowing her to continue.

She took a deep breath. 
Here
goes nothing
.  “He started getting creative—demanding me to do things at
any time or any place, holding me down, sometimes choking me.  He would come
home to find me in the shower and turn the water to the hottest temperature it
would go.  He would bend me over into the scalding spray, and we would have sex
like that.  I remember him waiting for me when I got home from school late one
night.  He threw me over the hood of his car and told me to be a good girl.  We
had sex at the end of the driveway under a streetlight. Anyone could have seen
us.  And I let him.”

Garrett was staring at her with a
mixed expression.  She wasn’t sure how much she should read into it.  He looked
really interested in what she was saying.
How could she blame him?
  She
was talking to a guy about sex, about a particular form of rough sex that he
had likely never experienced.  The interest was mingled in there with something
resembling disbelief.  She didn’t know if that meant he didn’t believe that she
would put up with it or he didn’t believe someone would actually do this.  All
she really knew was that he had adjusted his pants, and Hadley had been right
about the size of the contents that lay within.

“I didn’t think I would like it
at first, but as you can imagine…maybe…” She shifted her eyes away from him. 
“Well, it kept things interesting.  I never knew what he was going to do.  That
came with a price at times, but the more it happened, the higher the price I
was willing to pay.  I trusted him completely…until something tipped the
balance further.”

“Tipped the balance…how?” Garrett
asked curiously.

“It stopped being about sex.  I
have zero complaints about the sex.  When it stopped being about us, it got out
of control,” she said, trying to explain.  “If I told people about this, I
would tell anyone I know to try that kind of relationship.  I have never felt
more safe and sexy and wanted.  You’re looking at me like you don’t believe me,
but try it out first, and you’ll come around.”

She crossed her arms against his
disbelief.  She would never be able to explain this to someone who had never
experienced it, and she would never want to change how it had happened.  She
would never take it back.

“It was more about him being in
control that changed everything.”

“Wasn’t he in control during
sex?” Garrett asked, looking more curious than judgmental.

“No, not exactly.  It was
mutual.  He might have looked like he was in control, but it was consensual. 
He would only give me as much as I could handle, and I wanted him to push those
limits.  It’s a hard thing to grasp…”  She trailed off.

How could she explain the next
part?  How could she make Garrett see the difference?
  Sex was
not
the problem. 
He
was the problem.

“He changed, and it had nothing
to do with the sex.  He needed to control me.  He had always been one of those
people who asked where I was going and when I would be back.  He always had to
know.  But then, he started asking why was I going there, and he started
telling me when I had to be back.  Then, I wasn’t allowed to go at all.  I just
wanted to make him happy because I love him so damn much, but he wanted all the
control in my life, which left me with none.  That’s when I realized I was no
longer a person anymore.  I was his object.”

Devon stopped trying to explain
and went back into her story.  “I was home early from school one day.  I wasn’t
expecting him, but I could tell something was wrong.  And it might sound
strange, but I never thought he did any of these things out of anger.  He did
them out of love.”

“You think he held you under
boiling water out of love?” Garrett asked incredulously.

Devon glared at him.  “I didn’t
say you would understand.  The sex was not a threat.  It had nothing to do with
him being angry with me.”

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. 
“Keep going.  It was my question.  I want to hear the answer.”

Devon didn’t want to continue. 
She didn’t want to tell him the extent of her story. 
How could he ever
understand what she had gone through and why she had allowed it?
  “I don’t
know.  Maybe it’s not the night for this,” she said, standing on wobbly legs.

Holy shit, how much did I
drink?
she wondered.

“Whoa,” he said, jumping to his
feet to steady her.

She didn’t know how he was more
stable than her.  He had shown up drunk, and then he had proceeded to drink
twice as much as her.  His hands were on her hips, holding her up, as her head
spun so fast that she had to close her eyes.  She gripped the collar of his
shirt to keep herself standing, and she felt more than heard his intake of
breath.

Whoops!

“You should sit back down,” he
said, guiding her back to the couch.  “I’ll get you some water.”

When he returned with a glass of
water, Devon took a few sips of it, thankful for the distraction.  The more she
talked about this story, the more she missed St. Louis, and the more she wanted
to go home.  Her heart ached to feel that all over again, for it to be as it
once was. 
Maybe it could be like that again.

“Dev,” Garrett whispered, taking
the drink out of her hand and placing it on the table, “what happened that day
when you came home early?”

She didn’t want to recall the
memories.  Suppressing them was easier than reliving them.  She tipped her head
to the side and settled it against his shoulder.  That was easier than facing
him.

“That day, he came home and hit
me until I was knocked unconscious.”

She definitely heard Garrett’s
intake of breath that time.

“I remember waking up, lying on
the floor of my bathroom.  It was really cold, and I found I had been stripped naked. 
I couldn’t stop shivering, but I was careful not to move too quickly.  My head
was throbbing, and my body was splattered in bruises.  At first, I couldn’t
remember what happened, but when he walked into the bathroom, it all came back
to me.  I started crying from the pain and the disbelief that he would do this
to me.  I remember his words.  ‘How could you make me do this to you?’  It was
my fault.  It was all my fault that it had happened.”

Garrett squeezed her knee
softly.  “Devon, it wasn’t your fault.”

A tear fell from her eye, and she
let it roll down her cheek.  “It was my fault.  If only I had been better to
him or if I had done more, he wouldn’t have gotten so upset.”  She took a
shuddering breath.  “I never wanted to make him that unhappy ever again.  We
had greatness, you know?”

“Dev—”

“I swore I would do better and
try harder.  I wanted us to work.  We had to work.  I asked him to promise he
would never do it again,” she whispered.

“But he didn’t?” Garrett asked.

“No, it happened again,” she
said.  “Not right away, but it did.  I just couldn’t figure out how I could do
any better.  I was everything to him.  I tried so hard to be what he needed.”

“If you think that, then why did
you end up coming to Chicago?”

Devon could hear the desperation in
his voice.  He didn’t understand.  He didn’t get what she had gone through. 
This was why she had never told anyone.  She couldn’t break the silence only to
suffer through disbelief.  She couldn’t stand the thought of people judging
her, or worse, people pitying her decisions.  She had made the right choices
for her at the time.  Now, what happened if she returned…

Her heart sank at the thought
she’d had every day since leaving. 
Would it all be as it was before?  Would
he do worse?  Or would he realize that she was everything he needed?

“We started in this cycle that I
didn’t think would ever break.  He would get so angry, and I would take the
brunt of it.  Sometimes, I just cowered and cried until he forgave me.  Other
times, I would get angry and storm out.  But then, I stopped getting angry. 
Leaving was not an option.  It only made things worse.  It made his anger more
frequent.”

“You just kept letting this
guy…hit you?” Garrett asked.

“You don’t understand,” she said,
shaking her head.  “I love him.”

“Dev—”

“It got worse,” she whispered. 
“I had to cancel classes for a week.”

“What for?”

“I could normally hide the
bruises…that week I couldn’t,” she whispered, staring down at the carpet.  “He
never left bruises on my face again.  It raised too many red flags.”

Garrett hissed through his teeth
at the imagery.  He didn’t say anything.
What could he say?
  She didn’t
want to look up at him and read what was clearly written on his face, so she
pushed through, just wanting to get this story over with.

“But that wasn’t what made me
leave,” she told him.  “I had just finished my last final for the semester. 
When I finished, I was supposed to meet my favorite professor in his office to
discuss my plans for next year.  I got a text, telling me to meet him instead. 
I rescheduled plans with my professor and rushed to see him.  I didn’t want to
be late.  When I got back, I should have smelled trouble.  Candles were lit
everywhere.  There was a bottle of champagne and even rose petals.”

“That’s a sign of trouble?” Garrett
asked.

Devon nodded against his
shoulder.  “It should have been, but I saw it as a romantic gesture.  I saw it
as a way to get back to the way it had been.  He popped open the bottle of
champagne while I stripped down for him.  I thought it was going to be that
kind of night.  It felt like we were finally back on the right track.

“But then, he started asking
questions about my professor and why I was going to see him.  I told him that I
had tutoring, of course, and that my professor wanted to congratulate me for a
job well done this semester.  It was an odd conversation.  I mean, he didn’t
like that I had tutoring, but that week off had put me so far behind that I had
to use every opportunity to get caught up.  He didn’t believe me.

“He grabbed my arm and squeezed
as hard as he could, forcing me backward against the bed.  He begged me to tell
him the truth.  I cried and cried and cried, telling him that I had told him
the truth.  There was nothing more for me to tell.”  Devon took a deep breath
and then continued.

“I felt like the bones in my arm
were going to snap, but the pain evaporated when he yanked a candle off the
table and held the flame to my skin.  I screamed where it touched me.  He said
he would stop when I told him the truth.  I tried to tell him that I was
telling the truth, but he slapped me across the face so hard that I saw spots. 
He told me I was lying.  Whenever the flame neared my skin, burning wax was
dribbling down my body.  He said that if I didn’t tell him, then I didn’t leave
him any choice.  I couldn’t convince him, and the pain was blinding.  He moved
the flames to the area, uh…just above my…” Devon pointed down to her nether
region.  She blushed but continued.  “The feel of my flesh burning so near all
those nerve endings was the most intensely painful thing I’ve ever endured, and
soon, I blacked out.”

Garrett reached forward and
threaded his fingers with hers.  She didn’t know where it came from, but it was
a sign of strength.  Devon sighed and used her other hand to pull down the
front of her tiny sleeping shorts.

“See,” she said, pointing at the
scar right above her sensitive skin.

“Fuck,” Garrett grumbled.

Devon pulled her shorts back up,
ashamed by the conversation.  She had made him think she was cheating, so she
had pushed him over the edge.  Still, even she could see that his punishment
was excessive, and her realization had spurred her to action.